Tag Archives: fear

The Nameless Quest in The Gate of the Sanctuary from The Temple of the Holy Ghost (Collected Works, Vol I) by Aleister Crowley.

“What meets mine ear,
That every nerve and bone of me cries halt?
What is this cold that nips me at the throat?
This shiver in my blood? this icy note
Of awe within my agonising brain?
Neither of shame, nor love, nor fear, nor pain,
Nor anything? Has love no antidote,
Courage no buckler? Hark! it comes again.
Friend, hast thou heard the wailing of the damned?
Friend, hast thou listened when a murderer shammed
Pale smiles amid his fellows as they spoke
Low of his crime: his fear is like to choke
His palsied throat. How, if Hell’s gate were slammed
This very hour upon thy womanfolk?
Conceive, I charge thee! Brace thy spirit up
To drink at that imagination’s cup!
Then, shriek, and pass! For thou shalt understand
A little of the pressure of the hand
That crushed me now.” [via]

The Nameless Quest in The Gate of the Sanctuary from The Temple of the Holy Ghost (Collected Works, Vol I) by Aleister Crowley.

“Mine eyes had fixed them on the sphinx, the sky.
‘Is then this quest of immortality?’
And echo answered from some unseen caves:
Mortality! I shrink, and wonder why.
Strange I am nothing tainted with this fear
Now, that had touched me first. For I am here
Half-way I reckon to the field of salt,
The pillar, and the bones—it was a fault
I am cured of! praise to God!” [via]

The Nameless Quest in The Gate of the Sanctuary from The Temple of the Holy Ghost (Collected Works, Vol I) by Aleister Crowley.

“The king was silent. None of us would stir.
I sat, struck dumb, a living sepulchre.
For—hear me! in my heart this thing became
My sacrament, my pentecostal flame.
And with it grew a fear—a fear of Her.
What Her? Shame had not found itself a name.
Simply I knew it in myself. I brood
Ten years—so seemed it—O! the bitter food
In my mouth nauseate! In the silent hall
One might have heard God’s sparrow in its fall.
But I was lost in mine own solitude—
I should not hear Mikhael’s trumpet-call.
Yet there did grow a clamour shrill and loud:
One cursed, one crossed himself, another vowed
His soul against the quest; the tumult ran
Indecorous in that presence, man to man.
Stilled suddenly, beholding how I bowed
My soul in thought: another cry began.
‘Gereth the dauntless! Gereth of the Sea!
Gereth the loyal! Child of royalty!
witch-mothered Gereth! Sword above the strong,
heart pure, head many-wiled!’ The knightly throng
Clamour my name, and flattering words, to me—
If they may ‘scape the quest—I do them wrong;
They are my friends! Yet something terrible
Rings in the manly music that they swell.
They are all caught in this immense desire
Deeper than heaven, tameless as the fire.
All catch the fear—the fear of Her—as well,
And dare not—even afraid, I must aspire.” [via]

The Nameless Quest in The Gate of the Sanctuary from The Temple of the Holy Ghost (Collected Works, Vol I) by Aleister Crowley.

“‘Even I myself—my youth within me said:
Go, seek this folly; fear not for the dead,
And God is with thine arm! I reached the ridge,
And saw the river and the ghastly bridge
I told you of. Even then, even there, I fled.
Nor knight, nor king—a miserable midge!
‘Yet from my shame I dare not turn and run.
My oath grows urgent as my days are done.
Almost mine hour is on me: for its sake
I tell you this, as if my heart should break:—
The infinite desire—a burning sun!
The listening fear—the sun-devouring snake!'” [via]

The Nameless Quest in The Gate of the Sanctuary from The Temple of the Holy Ghost (Collected Works, Vol I) by Aleister Crowley.

“THE king was silent. In the blazoned hall
Shadows, more mute than at a funeral
True mourners, waited, waited in the gloom;
Waited to hear what child was in the womb
Of his high thoughts. As dead men were we all;
As dead men wait the trumpet in the tomb.
The king was silent. Tense the high-strung air
Must save itself by trembling—if it dare.
Then a lone shudder ran across the space;
Each man ashamed to see his fellow’s face,
Each troubled and confused. He did not spare
Our fear—he spake not yet a little space.” [via]

All Night in White Stains by Aleister Crowley.

“But we, one joy, one love, one shame for leaven,
Quit hope and life, quit fear and death and love,
Implacable as God, desired above
All loves of hell or heaven, supremely wed,
Knit in one soul in one delicious bed
More hot than hell, more wicked than all things,
Vast in our sin, whose unredeeming wings
Rise o’er the world, and flap for lust of death,
Eager as anyone that travaileth” [via]

Intervention

 

“Video for Arcade Fire’s ‘Intervention’ cut to Sergei Eisensteins iconic 1925 film, Battleship Potemkin”

 

“I can taste your fear
It’s gonna lift you up and take you out of here
And the bone shall never heal
I care not if you kneel

We can’t find you now
But they’re gonna get the money back somehow
And when you finally disappear
We’ll just say you were never here

Working for the church while your life falls apart
Singing hallelujah with the fear in your heart
Every spark of friendship and love will die without a home
Hear the solider groan, ‘We’ll go at it alone’
Hear the solider groan, ‘We’ll go at it alone'”

The Great Dictator

 

The Great Dictator by Charlie Chaplin

“I’m sorry but I don’t want to be an Emperor, that’s not my business. I don’t want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone if possible, Jew, gentile, black man, white. We all want to help one another, human beings are like that. We all want to live by each other’s happiness, not by each other’s misery. We don’t want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone and the earth is rich and can provide for everyone.

The way of life can be free and beautiful. But we have lost the way.

Greed has poisoned men’s souls, has barricaded the world with hate;
has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed.

We have developed speed but we have shut ourselves in:
machinery that gives abundance has left us in want.
Our knowledge has made us cynical,
our cleverness hard and unkind.
We think too much and feel too little:
More than machinery we need humanity;
More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness.

Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost.

The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men, cries out for universal brotherhood for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world, millions of despairing men, women and little children, victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people. To those who can hear me I say “Do not despair”.

The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed, the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress: the hate of men will pass and dictators die and the power they took from the people, will return to the people and so long as men die liberty will never perish …

Soldiers: don’t give yourselves to brutes, men who despise you and enslave you, who regiment your lives, tell you what to do, what to think and what to feel, who drill you, diet you, treat you as cattle, as cannon fodder.

Don’t give yourselves to these unnatural men, machine men, with machine minds and machine hearts. You are not machines. You are not cattle. You are men. You have the love of humanity in your hearts. You don’t hate, only the unloved hate. Only the unloved and the unnatural. Soldiers: don’t fight for slavery, fight for liberty.

In the seventeenth chapter of Saint Luke it is written:

“The kingdom of God is within man”

Not one man, nor a group of men, but in all men; in you, the people.

You the people have the power, the power to create machines, the power to create happiness. You the people have the power to make life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure. Then in the name of democracy let’s use that power, let us all unite. Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give you the future and old age and security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power, but they lie. They do not fulfill their promise, they never will. Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people. Now let us fight to fulfill that promise. Let us fight to free the world, to do away with national barriers, do away with greed, with hate and intolerance. Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men’s happiness.

Soldiers! In the name of democracy, let us all unite!”