<![CDATA[LIBER A'ASH vel CAPRICORNI
PNEUMATICI SUB FIGURA CCCLXX.
1. Gnarled Oak of God! In thy branches is the lightning nested! Above thee
hangs the Eyeless Hawk.
2. Thou art blasted and black! Supremely solitary in that heath of scrub.
3. Up! The Ruddy clouds hang over thee! It is the storm.
4. There is a flaming gash in the sky.
5. Up.
6. Thou art tossed about in the grip of the storm for an aeon and an aeon
and an aeon. But thou givest not thy sap; thou fallest not.
7. Only in the end shalt thou give up thy sap when the great God F.I.A.T.
is enthroned on the day of Be-With-Us.
8. For two things are done and a third thing is begun. Isis and Osiris are
given over to incest and adultery. Horus leaps up thrice armed from the
womb of his mother. Harpocrates his twin is hidden within him. SET is
his holy covenant, that he shall display in the great day of M.A.A.T.,
that is being interpreted the Master of the Temple of A.'. A.'., whose
name is Truth.
9. Now in this is the magical power known.
10. It is like the oak that hardens itself and bears up against the storm.
It is weather-beaten and scarred and confident like a sea-captain.
11. Also it straineth like a hound in the leash.
12. It hath pride and great subtlety. Yea, and glee also!
13. Let the Magus act thus in his conjuration.
14. Let him sit and conjure; let him draw himself together in that
forcefulness; let him rise next swollen and straining; let him dash
back the hood from his head and fix his basilisk eye upon the sigil of
the demon. Then let him sway the force of him to and fro like a satyr
in silence, until the Word burst from his throat.
15. Then let him not fall exhausted, although he
WEH NOTE: EQUINOX I, 6 has "...the might..."
might have been ten thousandfold the human; but that which floodeth him
is the infinite mercy of the Genitor-Genitrix of the Universe, whereof
he is the Vessel.
16. Nor do thou deceive thyself. It is easy to tell the live force from the
dead matter. It is no easier to tell the live snake from the dead
snake.
17. Also concerning vows. Be obstinate, and be not obstinate. Understand
that the yielding of the Yoni is one with the lengthening of the
Lingam. Thou art both these; and thy vow is but the rustling of the
wind on Mount Meru.
18. How
WEH NOTE: EQUINOX I, 6 has "Now..."
shalt thou adore me who am the Eye and the Tooth, the Goat of the
Spirit, the Lord of Creation. I am the Eye in the Triangle, the Silver
Star that ye adore.
19. I am Baphomet, that is the Eightfold Word that shall be equilibrated
with the Three.
20. There is no act or passion that shall not be an hymn in mine honour.
21. All holy things and all symbolic things shall be my sacraments.
22. These animals are sacred unto me; the goat, and the duck, and the ass,
and the gazelle, the man, the woman and the child.
23. All corpses are sacred unto me; they shall not be touched save in mine
eucharist. All lonely places are sacred unto me; where one man
gathereth himself together in my name, there will I leap forth in the
midst of him.
24. I am the hideous god, and who mastereth me is uglier than I.
25. Yet I give more than Bacchus and Apollo; my gifts exceed the olive and
the horse.
26. Who worshippeth me must worship me with many rites.
27. I am concealed with all concealments; when the Most Holy Ancient One is
stripped and driven through the market place, I am still secret and
apart.
28. Whom I love I chastise with many rods.
29. All things are sacred to me; no thing is sacred from me.
30. For there is no holiness where I am not.
31. Fear not when I fall in the fury of the storm; for mine acorns are
blown afar by the wind; and verily I shall rise again, and my children
about me, so that we shall uplift our forest in Eternity.
32. Eternity is the storm that covereth me.
33. I am Existence, the Existence that existeth not save through its own
Existence, that is beyond the Existence of Existences, and rooted
deeper than the No-Thing-Tree in the Land of No-Thing.
34. Now therefore thou knowest when I am within Thee, when my hood is
spread over thy skull, when my might is more than the penned Indus, and
resistless as the Giant Glacier.
35. For as thou art before a lewd woman in Thy nakedness in the bazaar,
sucked up by her slyness and smiles, so art thou wholly and no more in
part before the symbol of the beloved, though it be but a Pisacha or a
Yantra or a Deva.
36. And in all shalt thou create the Infinite Bliss and the next link of
the Infinite Chain.
37. This chain reaches from Eternity to Eternity, ever in triangles --- is
not my symbol a triangle? --- ever in circles --- is not the symbol of
the Beloved a circle? Therein is all progress base illusion, for every
circle is alike and every triangle alike!
38. But the progress is progress, and progress is rapture, constant,
dazzling, showers of light, waves of dew, flames of the hair of the
Great Goddess, flowers of the roses that are about her neck, Amen!
39. Therefore lift up thyself as I am lifted up.
WEH NOTE: EQUINOX I, 6 makes this sentence the first of the
following paragraph.
Hold thyself in as I am master to accomplish. At the end, be the end
far distant as the stars that lie in the navel of Nuit, do thou slay
thyself as I at the end am slain, in the death that is life, in the
peace that is mother of war, in the darkness that holds light in his
hand, as an harlot that plucks a jewel from her nostrils.
40. So therefore the beginning is delight, and the end is delight, and
delight is in the midst, even as the Indus is water in the cavern of
the glacier, and water among the greater hills and the lesser hills and
through the ramparts of the hills and through the plains, and water at
the mouth thereof when it leaps forth into the mighty sea, yea, into
the mighty sea.
(The Interpretation of this Book will be given to members of the Grade of
Dominus Liminis on application, each to his Adeptus.)
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