One Star...


Thy feet in mire, thine head in murk,
     O man, how piteous thy plight,
The doubts that daunt, the ills that irk,
     Thou hast nor wit nor will to fight —
How hope in heart, or worth in work?
     No star in sight!

Thy Gods proved puppets of the priest.
     "Truth? All's relation!" science sighed.
In bondage with thy brother beast,
     Love tortured thee, as Love's hope died
And Love's faith rotted. Life no least
     Dim star descried.

Thy cringing carrion cowered and crawled
     To find itself a chance-cast clod
Whose Pain was purposeless; appalled
     That aimless accident thus trod
Its agony, that void skies sprawled
     On the vain sod!

All souls eternally exist,
     Each individual, ultimate
Perfect - each makes itself a mist
     Of mind and flesh to celebrate
With some twin mask their tender tryst
     Insatiate.

Some drunkards, doting on the dream,
     Despair that it should die, mistake
Themselves for their own shadow-scheme.
     One star can summon them to wake
To self; star-souls serene that gleam
     On life's calm lake.

That shall end never that began.
     All things endure because they are.
Do what thou wilt, for every man
     And every woman is a star.
Pan is not dead; he liveth, Pan!
     Break down the bar!

To man I come, the number of
     A man my number, Lion of Light;
I am The Beast whose Law is Love.
     Love under will, his royal right —
Behold within, and not above,
     One star in sight!

A. Crowley “One star in sight”

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

No birth, no death

No birth, no death The Buddha taught that Nirvana comes when we awaken to the Truth that our essential selves have never been born, and so can never die.  But this is not just a spiritual’ belief, it’s literal and physical too. E=MC2 enshrines the Truth that neither matter nor energy can be destroyed, only transformed, each into the other. NOTHING ever ‘dies’, nor is it truly ‘born’ - all things material are simply recycled, reused and repurposed. EVERYTHING that makes up what you think of a ‘me’ is actually ‘borrowed’: the minerals in your bones and cells that used to be part of the Earth, the carbon and oxygen that fuels your body that comes from the plants and animals you consume to live, the DNA that tells your body how and ‘who’ to be that come from your parents and ancestors - even the ideas and beliefs in your head that you learnt from Wise Ones and Teachers of the past - EVERYTHING that makes up ‘you’ has all previously been parts of something else Greater and more continuous t
Read more

Where have the young witches gone…? #paganpride

We celebrated Beltain this weekend at a beautiful Grand Sabbat - a coming together of eight different covens and lines to call up the Oak and the May, and give our love and energy to the land. It was a truly beautiful and heart opening evening - but for the thoughtful comment from one of our young Third Degrees, after being introduced to all the familiar old faces Geoff and I have known for decades :  “Where are the witches of my generation? Where is the New Blood that will keep the Craft alive and thriving…?”  And it’s true: we used to get regular emails and requests from people all over the U.K. in response to  The Wellhead ’s pages - most of them young pagans desperate to find a Traditional Coven to work and learn with, yet unable to find anyone else online or ‘open’; that utter lack of accessible and open signposting to the Initiatory Craft was the reason we first established our online presence - and it’s how many of the Witches we’ve initiated and trained came to find the Craft a
Read more

Yogi, Buddhist, or Occultist…?

I was asked a really good question at this months Frampton Moot :  “How does your Yoga inform your Witchcraft?” - which threw me because I don't see them as separate things, but tools for living and Enlightenment. Many Westerners think of Yoga as either a form of exercise and stretching, or as some kind of esoteric ‘spiritual gymnastics’ - rarely do they understand that it is an embodiment practice of “coming home” to the miracle of incarnation.  Yoga is only one small part of a bigger philosophy and way of being in the world, rooted in thousands of years of teachings and practices that evolved from the peoples of the Indus Valley: one of the oldest civilisations, with roots and connections right back to the Cradle of Civilisation itself, in the Fertile Crescent of Mesopotamia, Sumer, and Egypt - where humanity first moved from itinerant hunter-gatherers to settled farmers, and birthed a flowering of human arts, culture and religious understanding that still form the roots of most
Read more