Strong as a man, the Queen strides in.
          Even she shrank frighted! – my aspect
More dreadful than all shapes of sin
          Her dreams might shape or recollect,
Hideous with fasting, madness, grief,
Beyond all speaking or belief.

Aleister Crowley, Ahab, Part II

Hermetic quote Crowley Ahab more dreadful than all shapes sin hideous fasting madness grief beyond speaking belief

Consider also:

  1. “Hark! they are leaping from the valley views Into the light and laughter and deep grief Of that immortal heart that sings beyond belief.”
  2. “Nostalgia can be contained and marketed—but actual difference would threaten the hegemony of the one worldview. The ‘Gift Economy’ of some nearly-extinguished ‘primitive tribe’ makes excellent TV; our mourning for its disappearance can only boost the sales of whatever commodity might soothe our sense of loss. Mourning itself can become fetishized, as in the victorian era of onyx and jet and black-plumed graveyard horses. Death is good for Capital, because money is the sexuality of the dead. Corpses have already appeared in advertising—’real’ corpses.”
  3. “And how could the Soul lend itself to any admixture? An essential is not mixed. Or of the intrusion of anything alien? If it did, it would be seeking the destruction of its own nature. Pain must be equally far from it. And Grief- how or for what could it grieve? Whatever possesses Existence is supremely free, dwelling, unchangeable, within its own peculiar nature. And can any increase bring joy, where nothing, not even anything good, can accrue? What such an Existent is, it is unchangeably.”
  4. “Good grief, Sal thought. This is awful. They can do all kinds of things we can’t; they’re centuries ahead of us. Who around here that I know can annihilate time? No one. He groaned aloud.”
  5. He giggled like a hyena when Booker didn’t get it. “There’s no drugs.” “You said they were mules,” Booker insisted. “They are,” Rask crowed. “Not heroin – organs. Why the fuck do you think I told you not to shoot the truck?”