But horror
Seizes on the heart of the judicious.
They see only madness and destruction
In the mockery’s self innate, implicit.
Horror, deeper grief, most dreadful musings
Theirs who penetrate the poet’s purpose!

Aleister Crowley, Oracles, Sabbe Pi Dukkham

Hermetic quote Crowley Oracles horror seizes heart madness destruction mockery self innate explicit deeper grief dreadful musings penetrate poet purpose

Consider also:

  1. “such is the holy gift of the Muses to men. For it is through the Muses and far-shooting Apollo that there are singers and harpers upon the earth; but princes are of Zeus, and happy is he whom the Muses love: sweet flows speech from his mouth. For though a man have sorrow and grief in his newly-troubled soul and live in dread because his heart is distressed, yet, when a singer, the servant of the Muses, chants the glorious deeds of men of old and the blessed gods who inhabit Olympus, at once he forgets his heaviness and remembers not his sorrows at all; but the gifts of the goddesses soon turn him away from these.”
  2. “The Lofty Master Arabi says, wrote Gramps, that the meaning of the lexical root J-N-N in Arabic is ‘concealed.’ Jinn isn’t just another created being ontologically placed between man and angel; it is the entirety of the hidden world.”
  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. “What any man has suffered I would meet, that I may know the griefs, the disappointments and the sore temptations of my brother man; that I may know just how to succor those in need.”