Know Naught! All ways are lawful to Innocence. Pure folly is the Key to Initiation. Silence breaks into Rapture. Be neither man nor woman, but both in one. Be silent, Babe in the Egg of Blue, that thou mayest grow to bear the Lance and Graal! Wander alone, and sing! In the King’s Palace his daughter awaits thee. — The Heart of the Master
Quote featured at BE NEITHER MAN NOR WOMAN from the Ministry of Information.
I am the aspiration unto the higher; I am the love of the unknown. I am the blind ache within the heart of man. I am the minister of the sacrament of pain. I swing the censer of worship, and I sprinkle the waters of purification. I am the daughter of the house of the invisible. I am the Priestess of the Silver Star.
Aleister Crowley, The Cry of the 19th Aethyr, Which is Called POP, The Vision and The Voice
Mason opened the door, said, “Ground floor, ladies and gentlemen. Department of frame-ups just ahead of you—separate cells, phony confessions, telling the daughter her mother’s confessed, telling the mother the daughter’s confessed, throwing in stool pigeons and detectives as cell mates, and all the usual police traps, right this way!”
Erle Stanley Gardner, The Case of the Lazy Lover [Bookshop, Amazon, Publisher]
The Homeric Hymn to Demeter: Translation, Commentary, and Interpretative Essays, edited by Helene P Foley, 3rd printing of the 1994 paperback published by Princeton University Press, is part of the collection at the Reading Room.
“The Homeric Hymn to Demeter, composed in the late seventh or early sixth century B.C.E., is a key to understanding the psychological and religious world of ancient Greek women. The poem tells how Hades, lord of the underworld, abducted the goddess Persephone and how her grieving mother, Demeter, the goddess of grain, forced the gods to allow Persephone to return to her for part of each year. Helene Foley presents the Greek text and an annotated translation of the Hymn, together with selected essays by Helene Foley, Mary Louise Lord, Jean Rudhardt, Nancy Felson-Rubin and Harriet M. Deal, Marilyn Arthur Katz, and Nancy Chodorow. These essays give the reader a rich understanding of the Hymn’s structure and artistry, its role in the religious life of the ancient world, and its meaning for the modern world. The authors also study the Hymn in the context of early Greek epic and cosmology, examine its critical attitude to the institution of marriage, and analyze the dynamics of mother-daughter relations in the poem.” — back cover
CXXXVII
As Persephone You’ve haunted my dreams,
The daughter of Styx is not what She seems!
My fate is tied to You forever and on,
I raise up the cup and adore Babalon!
— In Nomine Babalon: 156 Adorations to the Scarlet Goddess
The Hermetic Library arts and letters pool is a project to publish poetry, prose and art that is inspired by or manifests the Western Esoteric Tradition. If you would like to submit your work for consideration as part of the Arts and Letters pool, contact the librarian.
XCVIII
The blinding white light of the glorious Crown
Flashes from the top of the tree on down
To the daughter awaiting her consummation!
I raise up the cup and adore Babalon!
— In Nomine Babalon: 156 Adorations to the Scarlet Goddess
The Hermetic Library arts and letters pool is a project to publish poetry, prose and art that is inspired by or manifests the Western Esoteric Tradition. If you would like to submit your work for consideration as part of the Arts and Letters pool, contact the librarian.
Pax Hominibus Bonae Voluntatis by Aleister Crowley in International, Dec 1917.
“These words, ‘Peace to men of good will,’ have been mistranslated, ‘Good will towards men.’ Christ said that he did not come to bring peace, but a sword; that he would divide mother from son and father from daughter, careless of the effect of such remarks upon the feelings of Dr. Sigmund Freud.” [via]
The Lesbian Hell in The Gate of the Sanctuary from The Temple of the Holy Ghost (Collected Works, Vol I) by Aleister Crowley.
“O desecrated lovers! O divine
Passionate martyrs, virgin unto death!
O kissing daughters of the unfed brine!
O sisters of the west wind’s pitiful breath,
There is One that pitieth!” [via]
ΚΕΦΑΛΗ ΛΣ The Star Sapphire in Liber CCCXXXIII, The Book of Lies by Aleister Crowley.
“GLORIA PATRI ET MATRI ET FILIO ET FILIAE ET SPIRITUI SANCTO EXTERNO ET SPIRITUI SANCTO INTERNO UT ERAT EST ERIT IN SAECULA SAECULORUM SEX IN UNO PER NOMEN SEPTEM IN UNO ARARITA.” [via], [see]
The queen has tipped her chalice to my lips and her intoxicating contents run down my chest soaking my body in her scent
I have been anointed by the daughter of heaven and been named by her heir apparent to the kingdom of her for this moment
She is the mother of my lust and my tower topples under her toplessness only to rise again in anticipation of another impending confusion of tongues
And the babel of the workers as they rush in becomes a ritual song rising and descending without and within, above and below, solve et coagula
At her next touch I dissolve into nothing and then surge forth resolving into pure gold
She is an inspiration to greater and greater intention and the mystery of her religion is the secret sanctuary of my excess
Her dance inspires me to religion within the pylons of her temple and the hieroglyphics there in her inner precincts teach me all the secret spells necessary to survive another afterlife
I am her rememberer and she is my passage to the underworld, and we abide in the darkness lit by an inner light
My negative confession is nothing but stuttering and slips of the tongue in the shadows of her inner temple where the sacred waters are stored for the worthy worshippers to wash themselves
Going down in the dark, I am drowning in light
The Hermetic Library arts and letters pool is a project to publish poetry, prose and art that is inspired by or manifests the Western Esoteric Tradition.