Tag Archives: live

“You love the sea, don’t you, Captain?”

“Yes, I love it! The sea is everything. It covers seven-tenths of the globe. Its breath is pure and healthy. It is an immense desert where a man is never alone, for he can feel life quivering all about him. The sea is only a receptacle for all the prodigious, supernatural things that exist inside it; it is only movement and love; it is the living infinite, as one of your poets has said. And in fact, Professor, it contains the three kingdoms of nature — mineral, vegetable, and animal. This last is well represented by the four groups of zoophytes, by the three classes of articulata, by the five classes of mollusks, by three classes of vertebrates, mammals and reptiles, and those innumerable legions of fish, that infinite order of animals which includes more than thirteen thousand species, only one-tenth of which live in fresh water. The sea is a vast reservoir of nature. The world, so to speak, began with the sea, and who knows but that it will also end in the sea! There lies supreme tranquillity. The sea does not belong to tyrants.”

Jules Verne, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea [Amazon, Bookshop, Publisher, Local Library]

Hermetic quote Verne Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea everything breath pure healthy immense desert man never alone feel life quivering prodigious supernatural movement love living infinite

I learned through skating and punk rock what it was to live at the outskirts of society and to take care of your tribe. There could have been no lodge training, no liber whaterverthefucks that could have prepared me as fully for the transformation into magician.

Samuel 23, At Edges in the Key 23 archive.

Hermetic quote Samuel 23 At Edges learned skating punk rock live outskirts society take care tribe no lodge training liber whatever the fuck prepared fully transformation magician

Let the Aspirant live the Life Beautiful and Pleasant. For this freedom hath he won. But let each act, especially of love, be devoted wholly to his true mistress, Nuit.

Aleister Crowley, Liber NU sub figura XI

Hermetic quote Crowley Liber NU XI let aspirant live life beautiful pleasant freedom won each act especially love devoted wholly true mistress nuit

We should therefore attempt to remove all external impediments which are in the way of our spiritual development and live in a state of purity. Our thoughts should be continually directed inwardly and within ourselves; for within ourselves is the element of consciousness, knowledge, and power. Nothing hinders us to develop and exercise our own powers, except our misconceptions, imaginations, and external desires. Therefore the divine influences will only come to him who liberates his soul of all such hindrances, carnal desires, prejudices, and hallucinations. A diseased eye cannot bear to look at the light; an impure soul is repulsed by the divine light of truth.

Franz Hartmann, In The Pronaos of The Temple of Wisdom

Hermetic quote Hartmann In the Pronaos of the Temple of Wisdom attempt remove external impediments spiritual development live purity impure soul repulsed divine light truth

Horribly useless, this business called life. What does it all matter, when love is gone? And who can hold love? Oh, misery! misery! And still so many years to live. To live alone.

Helen Woljeska, Nocturne

Hermetic quote Woljeska Nocturne horribly useless business called life what matter love gone hold love misery many years to live alone

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.

Hesiod, Theogony

Hermetic quote Hesiod Theogony happy is he whom the muses love

The struggle is so (beat) pointless. We live exactly as insects, and yet we look on them with horror, because they are us without justification, without the endless need to do things. The conscious mind is a freak accident, a program for double-checking cause-and-effect logic extended far beyond its purpose, an anti-virus program gone out of control.

Alan Ryker, When Cthulhu Met Atlach-Nacha [Amazon]

Hermetic quote Ryker When Cthulhu Met Atlach-Nacha struggle pointless conscious mind freak accident

Saint, hero, and poet are all inspired; the difference is that saint and hero work in their “… own flesh and blood and not in paper or parchment…” (PASL, 333). Their very lives are works of art, because they have permanently found the anti-self, and so, live in an inspired ecstasy. The poet lives in the tension between inspiration and the workaday world. According to this theory, the ecstatic state of mind, immersion in the anti-self, allows the daimon to inspire the artist.

Susan Johnston Graf, W B Yeats Twentieth Century Magus: An In-Depth Study of Yeat’s Esoteric Practices and Beliefs, Including Excerpts from His Magical Diaries [Bookshop, Amazon]

Hermetic quote Graf Yeats flesh blood ink parchment

“Dearest princess!” I replied, “I do not know what you are talking about. I am not luminous, and I never saw a luminous man. In our country nobody has a light of his own.”

“Alas!” said the princess, “what a fearful fate it must be to have no light, and to live in a country of perpetual darkness.”

Franz Hartmann, Among the Gnomes

Hermetic quote Hartmann Among the Gnomes to live in a country of perpetual darkness