THE SEVENFOLD SACRAMENT

By Alice Wesley Torr [Aleister Crowley]

Published in the English Review

London, England

November 1911

(pages 208-213)

I

In eddies of obsidian,

At my feet the river ran

Between me and the poppy-prankt

Isle, with tangled roots embanked,

Where seven sister poplars stood

Like the seven Spirits of god.

Soft as silence in mine ear,

The drone and rustle of the weir

Told in bass the treble tale

Of the embowered nightingale.

Higher, on the patient river,

Velvet lights without a quiver

Echoed through their hushèd rimes

The garden’s glow beneath the limes.

Then the sombre village, crowned

By the castellated ground,

Where in cerements of sable,

One square tower and one great gable

Stood, the melancholy wraith

Of a false and fallen faith.

Over all, supine, enthralling,

The young moon, her faint edge falling

To the dead verge of her setting,

Saintly swam, her silver fretting

All the leaves with light. Afar

Toward the Zenith stood a star,

As of all worthiness and fitness

The luminous eternal witness.

So silent was the night, that I

Stirred the grasses reverently

And hid myself. The garden’s glow

Darkened, and all the gold below

Went out, and left the gold above

To its sacrament of love,

Save where, to sentinel my station,

Gold lilies bowed in adoration.

Had I not feared to move, I might

Have hid my shame from such a night!

Man is not worthy to intrude

His soullessness on solitude;

Yet God hath made it to befriend

Pilgrims, that His peace may pend,

A dove upon the dire and dark

Waters that assail the ark,

And lure their less love to His own

Life is a song, a speech, a groan,

As may be; none of these have part

In the silence of His heart.

II

Lapsed in that unweanèd air,

I awaited, unaware

What might fall. The silence wrapped

Veil on veil about me, trapped

By the siren Night, whose words

Were the river and the birds.

So close it swaddled me, and bound

My being in the pure profound

Of its own stealthy intimacy,

Had Artemis come panting by,

Silver-shod with bow and quiver

Hunting along the reedy river,

And called me to the chase, I should

Have neither heard nor understood.

Or had Zeus his dangerous daughter,

Aphrodite, from the water

Risen all shining, her soft arms

Open, all her spells and charms

Melted to one lure divine

Of her red mouth pressed to mine,

I had neither heard nor seen

Nor felt the Idalian.

Between

My soul and all its knowledge of

The universe of light and love,

Thought, being, nature, time and space,

The Mother’s heart, the Father’s face,

All that was agony or bliss,

Stretched an infinite abyss.

All that behind me! but my soul,

With no star left to point the pole,

Witless and banned for grace or goal,

Beggared of all its wealth, bereft

Of all its images, unweft

Its magic web, its tools all broken,

Its Name forgot, its Word unspoken,

Widowed of its undying Lord,

Its bowl of silver broke, its cord

Of gold unloosed, its shining ladders

Thrown down, its ears more deaf than adders,

Its windows blind, its music stopped,

From its place in Heaven dropped,

From its starry throne was hurled

Beyond the pillars of the world—

Borne from the abyss of light

To the Dark Night!

III

The moon had sunk behind the tower

When, for a moment by the power

Of nature, as even the eagle’s eye

Turns wearied from the sun, did I

Fall from the conning crag, that springs

Above the Universe of Things,

Into the dark impertinence

Of the mirrored lies of sense.

Yet, when I sought the stars to espy

And rede the runes of destiny,

Mine eyes their wonted office failed,

So diligently God had veiled

Me from myself! I could not hear

The drone and rustle of the weir.

No help in that world or in this!

I was alone in the abyss.

IV

No Whence! no Whither! and no Why!

Not even Who evokes reply.

No vision and no voice repay

My will to watch, my will to pray.

Vain is the consecrated vesture;

Vain the high and holy gesture;

Vain the proven and perfect spell

Enchanting heaven, enchaining hell.

Unyoked the horses from the car

Wherein I waged celestial war:

Mine angel sheathes again his sword

At the Interdiction of the Lord.

Even hell is shut, lest spite and strife

Should show my soul a way to life.

Hope dies; faith flickers and is gone.

Love weeps, then turns its soul to stone.

All nearest, highest, holiest things

Drop off; the soul must lose her wings,

And, crippled, find, with no one clue

The infinite maze to travel through,

The goal unguessed, the path untrod,

And stand unhelmed, unarmed, unshod,

Naked before the Unknown God.

Oh! stertorous, oh! strangling strife

That cleaves to love, that clings to life!

The Will is broken, falls afar

Extinct as an accursèd star.

The Self, one moment held behind,

Whirls like a dead leaf in the wind

Down the Abyss. The soul is drawn

To that Dark Night that is the dawn

Through halls of patience, palaces

Of ever deeper silences,

Æons and æons and æons

Of lampless empyreans

Darker and deeper and holier, caves

Of night unstirred by wind, great graves

Of all that is or could ever be

In Time or Eternity.

Drawn, drawn, inevitably spanned,

Tirelessly drawn by some strange hand,

Drawn inward in some sense unkenned

Beyond all to an appointed end,

No end foreseen or hoped, drawn still

Beyond word or will

Into Itself, drawn subtly, deep

Through the dreamless deaths whose shadow is sleep.

Drawn, as dawn shows, to the inmost divine,

To the temple, the nave, the choir, the shrine,

To the altar where in the most holy cup

The wine of its blood may be offered up.

Nor is it given to any son of man

To hymn that sacrament, the One in Seven,

Where God and priest and worshipper

Deacon, asperger, thurifer, chorister,

Are one as they were one ere time began,

Are one on earth as they are one in heaven;

Where the soul is given a new name,

Confirming with an oath the same,

And with celestial wine and bread

Is most delicately fed,

Yet suffereth in itself the curse

Of the infinite universe,

Having made its own confession

Of the mystery of transgression;

Where it is wedded solemnly

With the ring of space and eternity,

And where the oil, the Holiest Breath,

With Its first whisper dedicateth

Its new life to a further death.

V

I was cold as earth: the night

Had given way. One star hung bright

Over the church, now gray;

I rose up to greet the ray

That thrilled through elm and chestnut, lit

The grass, made diamonds of it,

And bade the weir’s long smile of spray

Leap with laughter for the day.

The birds woke over all the weald;

The sullen peasants slouched afield;

The lilies swayed before the breeze

That murmured matins in the trees;

The trout leapt in the shingly shallows.

Soared skyward the great sun, that hallows

The pagan shrines of labour and light

As the moon consecrates the night.

Labour is corn and love is wine.

And both are blessèd in the shrine;

Nor is he for priest designed

Who partakes only in one kind.

Thus musing joyous, twice across

Under the weir I swam, to toss

The spray back; then the meadows claim

The foot’s fleet ecstasy aflame.

And having uttered my thanksgiving

Thus for the sacrament of living,

I lit my pipe, and made my way

To break fast, and the labour of the day.