Shemhamphorash! all hail, divided Name!

     Utter it once, O mortal over-rash --

The Universe were swallowed up in flame

     -- Shemhamphorash!

 

Nor deem that thou amid the cosmic crash

     May find one thing of all those things the same!

The world has gone to everlasting smash.

 

No! if creation did possess an aim

     (It does not.) it were only to make hash

Of that most "high" and that most holy game,

     Shemhamphorash!

     There are three consecutive verses in the Pentateuch, each containing 72 letters. If these be written beneath each other, the middle verse being reversed, i.e. as in English, and divisions are then made vertically, 72 tri-lateral names are formed, the sum of which is Tetragrammaton; this is the great and mysterious Divided Name; by adding the terminations Yod He or Aleph Lamed, the names of 72 Angels are formed. The Hebrews say that by uttering this Name the universe is destroyed. This statement means the same as that of the Hindus, that the effective utterance of the name of Shiva would cause him to awake, and so destroy the universe.
     In Egyptian and Gnostic magick we meet with pylons and Aeons, which only open on the utterance of the proper word.
     In Mohammedan magick we find a similar doctrine and practice; and the whole of Mantra-Yoga has been built on this foundation.
Thoth, the god of Magick, is the inventor of speech; Christ is the Logos.
     Lines 1 - 4 are now clear.
     In lines 5 - 7 we see the results of Shivadarshana. Do not imagine that any single idea, however high, however holy (or even however insignificant!!), can escape the destruction.
     The logician may say, "But white exists, and if white is destroyed, it leaves black; yet black exists. So that in that case at least one known phenomenon of this universe is identical with one of that." Vain word! The logician and his logic are alike involved in the universal ruin.
     Lines 8 - 11 indicate that this fact is the essential one about Shivadarshana.
     The title is explained by the intentionally blasphemous puns and colloquialisms of lines 9 and 10.