There is a very bright pentagram: and now the stone is gone, and the whole heaven is black, and the blackness is the blackness of a mighty angel. And though he is black (his face and his wings and his robe and his armour are all black), yet is he so bright that I cannot look upon him. And he cries: O ye spears and vials of poison and sharp swords and whirling thunderbolts that are about the corners of the earth, girded with wrath and justice, know ye that His name is Righteousness in Beauty? Burnt out are your eyes, for that ye have seen me in my majesty. And broken are the drum-heads of your ears, because my name is as two mountains of fornication, the breasts of a strange woman; and my Father is not in them.
Lo! the pools of fire and torment mingled with sulphur! Many are their colours, and their colour is as molten gold, when all is said. Is not He one, one and alone, in whom the brightness of your countenance is as 1,728 petals of fire.
Also he spake the curse, folding his wings across and crying: Is not the son the enemy of his father? And hath not the daughter stolen the warmth of the bed of her mother8? therefore is the great curse irrevocable. Therefore there is neither wisdom nor understanding nor knowledge in this house, that hangeth upon the edge of hell9. Thou art not 4 but 2, O thou blasphemy spoken against 1.
Therefore whoso worshippeth thee is accursed. He shall be brayed in a mortar and the powder thereof cast to the winds, that the birds of the air may eat thereof and die; and he shall be dissolved in strong acid and the elixir poured into the sea, that the fishes of the sea may breathe thereof and die. And he shall be mingled with dung and spread upon the earth, so that the herbs of the earth may feed thereof and die; and he shall be burnt utterly with fire, and the ashes thereof shall calcine the children of flame, that even in hell may be found an overflowing lamentation.
And now on the breast of the Angel is a golden egg between the blackness of the wings, and that egg grows and grows all over the aethyr. And it breaks, and within there is a golden eagle.
And he cries: Woe! woe! woe! Yea, woe unto the world! For there is no sin, and there is no salvation. My plumes are like waves of gold upon the sea. My eyes are brighter than the sun. My tongue is swifter than the lightning.
Yet am I hemmed in by the armies of night, singing, singing phrases unto Him that is smitten by the thunderbolt of the abyss. Is not the sky clear behind the sun? These clouds that burn thee up, these rays that scorch the brains of men with blindness; these are heralds before my face of the dissolution and the night.
Ye are all blinded by my glory; and though ye treasure in your heart the sacred word that is the last lever of the key to the little door beyond the abyss, yet ye gloss and comment thereupon; for the light itself is but illusion. Truth itself is but illusion. Yea, these be the great illusions beyond life and space and time.
Let thy lips blister with my words! Are they not meteors in thy brain? Back, back from the face of the accursed one, who am I; back into the night of my father, into the silence; for all that ye deem right is left, forward is backward, upward is downward.
I am the great god adored of the holy ones. Yet am I the accursed one, child of the elements and not their father.
O my mother! wilt thou not have pity upon me? Wilt thou not shield me? For I am naked, I am manifest, I am profane. O my father! wilt not thou withdraw me? I am extended, I am double, I am profane.
Woe, woe unto me! These are they that hear not prayer. It is I that have heard all prayer alway, and there is none to answer me. Woe unto me! Woe unto me! Accursed am I unto the aeons! All this time this brilliant eagle-headed god has been attacked, seemingly, by invisible people, for he is wounded now and again, here and there; little streams of fresh blood come out over the feathers of his breast. And the smoke of the blood is gradually filling the Aethyr with a crimson veil. There is a scroll over the top, saying: Ecclesia abhorret a sanguine; and there is another scroll below it in a language of which I do not know the sounds. The meaning is, Not as they have understood.
The blood is thicker and darker now, and it is becoming clotted and black, so that everything is blotted out; because it coagulates, coagulates. And then at the top there steals a dawn of pure night- blue, --- Oh, the stars, the stars in it deeply set! --- and drives the blood down; so that all round the top of the oval gradually dawns the figure of our Lady Nuit, and beneath her is the flaming winged disk, and below the altar of Ra-Hoor-Khuit, even as it is upon the Stele of Revealing. But below is the supine figure of Seb, into whom is concentrated all that clotted blood.
And there comes a voice: It is the dawn of the aeon. The aeons of cursing are passed away. Force and fire, strength and sight, these are for the servants of the Star and the Snake.
And now I seem to be lying in the desert, exhausted21.
The Desert, near Sidi Aissa.
November 25, 1909. 1:10 - 2 p.m.