Dedicated to L.K.

The stench of the gross goat is in my nostrils instead of

the perfume of Artemis.

I plucked the Virgin by his broidered chlamys....who

could have guessed that hairry horror hidden ?

I have got gall to be my drink, who mingled my wine

with myrrh and musk and ambergris.

I made my bed of silk and and furs; and waking I found I had

swooned to sleep upon the midden.

Ah! Were those virgin lips of thine polluted with some

rank savour of Sabbatic lust ?

What spell turned thee, the maiden, to a monkey jibbering

antiphonal blasphemies

To those chaste chants I woed thee by, the moment that

touching thee, my fruit dissolved to dust,

Fair-seeming Sodom-apple ! Yet thy kisses smote all my

spine to shuddering ecstasies !

So strode the fool upon the mountain ridges, crying; One

step, and I attain the crest !

Lo! The loose cornice tricks him, and he tumbles, a

mangled nothing, to the glacier.

So the nun cries: One effort and I conquer; I pass the

gate, I win the appointed rest !

And passing it discovers the foul body of Sin that waits to

set his teeth in her.

So in my dreams, escaping from a monster, I turn one

corder; "there is refuge - there!"

Nay, there he lurked who never had pursued me....'twas

I who chased him to his proper holt.

Then, O thou vile adorable, my lover, my master, catch me

backward by the hair !

Fasten thy fangs upon my mouth's gasped anguish, and

split my dream-clouds with thy thunderbolt !

Though thou be God or Satan, do thaou master my death-

pand with thy life-pang, and possess

All that I am with all thou art, my Vampire, my Siren

that I thought a nightingale !

Abase me! Spit upon me! Scourge me! Murder me !

Take thy wolf's meal of my loveliness !

Give me the reek of thy foul breath, and show me the

leper's face behind the shining veil !

Yae! Though I sink through measureless abysses, I trace

the incommensurable curve.

Thy foursqure wedge that rages in my circle shall match

it at the infinite period.

Polluted body, violated spirit, corrupted soul, stunned brain

and tortured nerve:-

These merge into thy bloody maw, Echidna, that shall

emerge the lone white flame of God.

-Aleister Crowley