THE SCOTSMAN

Edinburgh, Midlothian, Scotland

23 November 1903

(PAGE 3)

POETRY.

The God-Eater: A Tragedy of Satire. By Aleister Crowley. London: Watts & Co.

Symbolic poetry does not seem so soul-satisfying as the more substantial sort. John Gilpin, for example, or “Father, dear father, come home with me now,” or “Good-bye, Dolly, I must leave you,” or something of that kind, seems preferable, if only because more tangible, to such airy, misty, gleamy, glamorous, and ghostly things as this so-called tragedy of satire. The poem, which is in dramatic form, makes allusions to the researches into the origin of religion made by philosophers and by inquirers like the writer of “The Golden Bough,” and its action represents how, working under the spell of the hag of eternity (as the principal lady of the piece is, more poetically than politely, called), a brother intoxicates his sister by giving her hashish to drink and then kills her, with the result that she comes to be worshipped as a goddess, and the brother, learning this, dies satisfied. Free is not the word for the treatment this theme receives. The piece goeth as it listeth, showing indeed a certain not uninteresting skill in the making of nebulous evasions in speech, but never, as Hamlet might say, coming to Hecuba.