Clouds without Water

Front matter

Rev. C. VEREY (ALEISTER CROWLEY)

FOR CIRCULATION AMONG MINISTERS OF RELIGION

1909

Preface

"Receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was meet."

So wrote the great apostle nearly two thousand years ago; and surely in these latter days, when Satan seems visibly loosed upon earth, the words have a special and dreadful significance even for us who—thanks be to God for His unspeakable mercy!—are washed in the blood of the Lamb and freed from the chains of death—and of hell.

Surely this terrible history is a true Sign of the Times. We walk in the last days, and all the abominations spoken of by the apostle are freely practised in our midst. Nay! they are even the boast and the defence of that spectre of evil, Socialism.

The awful drama which the unhappy wretch who penned these horrible utterances has to unfold is alas! too common. Its study may be useful to us as showing the logical outcome of Atheism and Free Love.

For the former, death; for the latter, the death-in-life of a frightful, loathsome, shameful disease.

"Receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was meet".

It may seem almost incredible to many of us, perhaps safely established in our comfortable cures, among a simple and Godfearing people, that any man should have been found to pen the disgusting blasphemies, the revolting obscenities, which defile these pages.

Nor can it be denied that a certain power of expression, even at times a certain felicity of phrasing—always, indeed, a profound dramatic feeling—is to be found in these poems. Alas! that we should be compelled to write the words! That an art essentially spiritual, an art dignified by the great names of Gascoigne Mackie, Christina Rossetti, Alfred Tennyson, George Herbert, should here be prostituted to such "ignoble use". Truly the corruption of the best is the lowest—corruptio optimi pessima. Nor can one gleam of Hope, even in the infinite mercy of our loving Father, tinge with gold the leprous gloom of our outlook.

These clouds without water have no silver lining.

The unhappy man need not have feared that the poor servants of God would claim him as repentant, though surely we would all have shed the last drop of our blood to bring him to the grace of God. Alas! it was not to be.

The devilish precautions of this human fiend excluded all such possibilities. He died as he had lived, no doubt. Alas! no doubt.

Where is now that spotted soul? There is but one appalling answer to the question. In the "place prepared for the devil and his angels"; for "he that believeth not is condemned already".

Not even in that modern evasion, the plea of insanity, can we find any hope. Nothing is clearer than that these wretched victims of Satan were in full possession of their faculties to the last moment.

Surely the maniacal violence of their unhallowed lust and hate is no ground for pity but for reprobation. When our blessed Lord was on earth He made no excuses for those who were possessed of devils. He took this simply as a fact—and He healed them.

It is only the shocking atheism and materialism or modern science that, in an insane endeavour to whittle away the miracles of our blessed Saviour, has sought to include "possession" in the category of disease.

Our Lord had no doubts as to the reality of demoniacal possession; why should we, His humble servants, truckle to the Christless cant of an atheistical profession?

The facts of this shocking case are familiar enough in the drawing-rooms of the West End.

Both the characters in the story were persons of considerable education and position.

On this account, and because a statement of the truth (however guarded) would have compromised persons of high rank, and was in any case too disgusting to publish in the press, the tragedy has not—one is glad to say in these days of yellow prurience—become matter for public comment.

But the wife of the man, driven to drink and prostitution by the inhuman cruelty of his mistress—this modern worse than Lucrezia Borgia or Mdme de Brinvilliers—and the fiancé of the girl betrayed and ruined by her machinations, still haunt the purlieus of the Strand, the one an unfortunate of the lowest order, the other a loafer and parasite upon the ghouls that traffic in human flesh and shame.

Thus we see evil reproducing itself, spreading like an incurable cancer throughout society from one germ of infidelity and unhallowed lust.

I may perhaps be blamed for publishing, even in this limited measure, such filthy and blasphemous orgies of human speech (save the mark) but I am firmly resolved (and I believe that I have the blessing of God on my work) to awake my fellow-workers in the great vineyard to the facts of modern existence.

Unblushing, the old Serpent rears its crest to the sky; unashamed, the Beast and the Scarlet Woman chant the blasphemous litanies of their fornication.

Surely the cup of their abominations is nigh full!

Surely we who await the Advent of our blessed Lord are emboldened to trust that this fren- zy of wickedness is a sure sign of the last days; that He will shortly come—whose fan is in His hand, wherewith He shall throughly purge His floor—and take us His saints—however failing and humble we may be—to be with Him in His glory for ever and ever, while those who have rejected Himburn in eternal torment, with wailing and gnashing of teeth, in that Lake of Fire and Brimstone from which—thank God! He in His infinite mercy hath delivered us.

But until that happy day we are bound to work on silently and strenuously in His service.

May the perusal of these atrocious words enlighten us as to the very present influence of Satan in this world—naked and unashamed,

May it show us the full horror of the Enemy with whom we are bound to fight; may it reveal his dispositions, so that under our great Captain we may again and again win the Victory.

It is my prayerful hope that He who turns evil to good may indeed use to His glory even this terrible and wicked book.

It has cost me much to read it; to meditate on it has been a terrible shame and trial; to issue it, much against my own poor human judgment, in obedience to His will, has been a still harder task; were it permitted me to ask a recompense, I would ask none but that of His divine blessing upon my fellow-labourers in His great field.

C. V.

The Manuscript

We dedicate this record of our

loves

to

the memory of

<>

Dieu libre et libertin, sacrifice et hommage; De ma virginité recevez les louanges! Votre empire triomphe sur mon pucelage, Paradis de la boue, empire de la fange! Dieu libre et libertin, sacrifice et hommage.

<>

Chez vous les crimes infàmes ne sont que des blagues; Chez vous, mon Dieu, les dieux ne sont que des idées. Frappez votre esclave! Ah! le sang qui coule en vagues La comblera de joie, éventrée et pâmée. Chez vous les crimes infâmes ne sont que des blagues.

<>

Satyre se moquant des femmes légitimes, La mort est une blague, et l'amour trop comique. Vois êtes un dieu! pour vous les seules choses intimes, Dieu qui m'a baisé tant! sont les choses cosmiques. Satyre se moquant des femmes légitimes!

<>

Dieu qui m'a baisé tant! Baisez-moi donc encore! Vois m'avez rendu ma chère virginité. C'est pourquoi follement sous vous, ah! je me tords Eros inconnu, masque illisible et doré! Dieu qui m'a baisé tant! Baisez-moi donc encore!

<>

Vous qui vous dressez sur l'abîme de l'enfer, Vous dont les plumes gravissent le haut des cieux, A moi la bouche d'or, à moi le v.. de fer! A l'âme, au corps! je suis la déesse des dieux— Et je me dresse sur l'abîme de l'enfer.

A Quean of the Quality

<>

King of myself, I labour to espouse An equal soul. Alas! how frail I find The golden light within the gilded house. Helpless and passionate, and weak of mind! Lechers and lepers!—all as ivy cling, Emasculate the healthy bole they haunt. Eternity is pregnant; I shall sing Now—by my power—a spirit grave and gaunt Brilliant and selfish, hard and hot, to flaunt Reared like a flame across the lampless west, Until by love or laughter we enchaunt, Compel ye to Kithairon's thorny crest— Evoe! Iacche! consummatum est.

The Augur

<>

Look! Look! upon the tripod through the smoke Of slain things kindled, and fine frankincense. Look—deep beyond the phantoms these evoke Are sightless halls where spirit stifles sense. There do I open the old book of Fate Wherein They pictured my delight and me Flushed with the dawn of rapture laureate And leaping with the laughter of ecstacy. Mine eyes grow aged with that hieroglyph Of doom that I have sought: the fatal end. That which is written is written, even if Great Zeus himself—great Zeus!—were to befriend. Even in the spring of the first floral kiss: "No happy end the gods have given for this".

<>

Save death alone! I see no happy end, No happy end for this divine beginning. Child! let us front a fate too ill to mend, Take joy in suffering for the sake of sinning. Ay! from your lips I pluck the purple seed Of that pomegranate sleek Persephone Tasted in hell; the irrevocable deed I do, and it is done. Naught else could be For us, the chosen of so severe a god To act so high a tragedy, the elect To suffer so, and so rejoice, the rod And scourge of our own shame, the gilt and decked Oxen that go to our own sacrifice At our own consecrated shrine of vice.

<>

Over the desert ocean of distress We reach pale eager hands that quiver and bleed With life of these our hearts that surge and stress In agony of the mediated deed. For in the little coppice by the gate Wherein I drew you shy and sly, and kised Your lips, your hushed "I love you" smooth and straight Sweeping to wrap us in the glittering mist Of hell that holds us—even there I heard The lacerating laugh of fate ring out, The dog-faced god pronounce the mantic word, And saw the avengers gather round about Our love. The Mairae neither break nor bend; The Erinyes hunt us to—no happy end.

<>

Our love is like a glittering sabre bloodied With lives of me; upsoared the sudden sun; The choral heaven woke; the aethyr flooded All space with joy that you and I were one. But in the dark and splendid dens of death Arose an echo of that jewelled song: There swept a savour of polluted breath From the lost souls, the unsubstantial throng That tasted once a shadow of our glory And turn them in the evil house to adore The godhead of our sin, the tragic story We have set ourselves to write, the sombre score Our daggers carve with poesy sublime Upon the roof tree of despair and crime!

<>

As we read Love and Death in either's eyes, We see the cool mild splendour of the dawn Damned by some tragic throw of murderous dice To slash like lightning over lea and lawn Jagged and horrible across the curtain Of heaven, writing ruin, ruin—we see Our certain joy marred with a doubly certain Soul-shattering anguish.—Bah! To you and me Such loathing, such despair are little things. We are afloat on the flood-tide of lust— A lust more spiritual than life, that stings Till death and hell dissolve i' the aftergust. So? But the Gods avert their faces, bend Their holy brows, and see—no happy end.

<>

Thus shall men write upon our cenotaphs: "Traitor and lecher! murderess and whore!" The rat-faced god that lurks in heaven laughs; There is rejoicing on the immortal shore. The angels deem us hurled from the above, Burnt out of bliss, blasted from sense and thought, Barred from the beauties of celestial love And branded with the annihilating Naught. O! pallid triumph! empty victory! When we sit smiling on the infernal thrones Starred with our utmost gems of infamy, Builded with tears, and cushioned with the groans Of these the victims of our joys immense— Child! I aspire to that bad eminence!

<>

Hell hath no queen! But, o thou red mouth curving In kisses that bring blood, shall I be alone? What of the accomplice of these deeds unswerving? Will not your dead hot hisses match mine own? As here your ardours brand me bone and marrow Biting like fire and poison in my veins, Shall you not there still ply your nameless harrow. Mingle a cup from those our common pains To intoxicate us with an extreme pleasure Keener than life's, more dolorous than death's Till these infernal blisses pass the measure Of heaven's imagined by the tremulous breaths Of silly saints and silly sinners, swaying From scraps of blasphemy to scraps of praying?

<>

You love me! trite and idle word to darken (With all its glow) the splendour of our sun! No soul of heaven or hell may hearken The unbearable device that we have done. Nor may Justine nor Borgia understand Nor Messalina nor Maria guess The infernal chorus swelling darkly grand That echoed us our everlasting 'Yes!' Nor shall the Gods perceive to damn or praise The deed that shakes their essence into dust, Disrupts their dreams, divides their dreary days. Supreme, abominable, rides our lust Armed in the panoply of brazen youth And strength, since, if we are Hell's, Hell's worm is Truth.

<>

We are still young enough to take delight In wickedness for wickedness' sole sake. Eve did not fall because she knew aright The fruit an apple, but the snake a snake. Nor shall we sink among the foolish throng That seek an end, but rise among the few Who do the strong thing because they are strong And care not why they do, so that they do. Therefore we wear our dread iniquity Even as an aureole, therefore we attain Measureless heights of nameless ecstasy, Measureless depths of unimagined pain Mingled in one initiating kiss That those dissolve in the athanor of this.

<>

We tread of earth in our divine disdain And crush its blood out into purple wine, Staining our feet with hot and amorous stain, The foam involving all the sensual shrine Of love whose godhead dwells upon your mouth Wherein the kisses clustering overflow With brimming ardour of the new sin's growth Till round us all the poisonous blossoms blow, And all the cruel things and hideous forms Of night awake and revel in our revel, While in us rage the devastating storms Whose dam is Luxury and their sire the devil... It is well seen, however things intend, The Gods have given for this—no happy end.

<>

Crown me with poppy and hibiscus! crown These brows with nightshade, monkshood and vervain! Let us anoint us with the unguents brown That waft our wizard bodies to the plain Where in the circle of unholy stones The unconsecrated Sabbath is at height; Where the grim goat rattling his skulls and bones Makes music that dissolves the dusk of night Into a ruddy fervour from the abyss Such as I see (when cunning can surprise) Our Argus foe and give us leave to kiss Within your deep, your damned, your darling eyes. Ay! to the Sabbath where the crowned worm Exults, with twisted yard and slime-cold sperm.

<>

There gods descend; there devils rise. We dance, Dance to the madness of the waning moon, Write centuries of murder in a glace, Chiliads of rape in one unearthly tune. There is the sacrament of sin unveiled And there the abortion of Demeter eaten, The potion of black Dione distilled, The measure of Pan by whirling women beaten. These are but symbols, and our souls the truth; These sacraments, and we the gods of them; The sabbath incense curls to us to soothe Our spleen, engarlands us, a diadem For that unutterable deed that hurled Us, flaming thunderbolts! against the world.

<>

There needs not ask the obscure oracle Whereto these dire imaginations tend. We read this sigil in the dust of Hell: "The Gods have given for this no happy end." What end should we desire, who grasp the gain We have despoiled from everlasting time, Who gather sunshine from the iciest rain And turn the dullest prose to rhythm and rime? Think you we cannot warm our hands and laugh Even at the fire that scatheth adamant? Think you we shall not knead the utmost chaff Into a bread worth Heaven's high sacrament And from the bitter dregs of Hell's own wine Distil a liquor utterly divine?

<>

Behold! I have said. The destiny obscure Of this our deed obscure we shall not skry. We know "no happy end!"—but we endure, Abiding as the Pole Star in the sky. You mix your life in mine—then soul in soul We shoot forth, meteors, travelling on and on Far beyond Space to some dark-glimmering goal Where never a sun or star hath risen or shone; Where we shall be the evil light beyond time, Beyond space, beyond thought, supreme in deathless pang: Nor shall a sound invade that hall of crime. Only the champing of the insatiate fang Of the undying worm our love, fast wed Unto—no happy end. Behold! I have said.

The Alchemist

<>

Love is sore wounded by the dragon shame, O maiden o' mine! its life in jets of blood Languidly ebbs. I see the gathering flame Aspire—expire. I see the evil flood Of time roll even and steady over it, Bearing our God to the accurst ravines; Bearing our God to the abysmal pit Whence never a God may rise. The wolfish queens Of earth have set their fates stern and sour Against us; we are bidden to cease—to cease! Ha! how eternity laughs down their hour, Dragoons their malice with its dominant peace. We are forbidden to love—as one who tries At noontide to forbid the sun to rise.

<>

There is an alchemy to heal the hurt Done to our love by shame the dragon of ill With his allies the fear, that wars begirt With clouds, and that sad sceptic in the will That sneaks within our citadel, that steals The keys and opens stealthily the gates When we are sleeping, when the dawn conceals Its earliest glimmer and our blood abates Awhile its tide! O mystic maiden o' mine, Did I not warn you of the insulting foes? Blind worms that writhe for envy, pious swine That gnash their teeth to espy the gold and rose Out flaming like the dawn when kiss for kiss Passed and for ever sealed our bale and bliss.

<>

Behold! the elixir for the weeping wound! Is it that wine that Avallaunius poured From the Red Cup when fair Titania swooned Before the wrath of her insulted lord? Is it the purple essence that distilled From Jesu's side beneath the invoking spear? Or that pale vase that Proserpina filled From wells of her sad garden, cold and clear And something overbitter and oversweet? Or in the rout of Dionysus did Some Bassarid prophesy in her holy heat On such a draught as I for you have hid In this the Graal of mine enchaunted shrine To pour for you, o mystic maiden o' mine?

<>

Lola. The name is like the amorous call Of some bright-bosomed bird in bowers of blue. Tis like the great moon-crested waterfall With hammering heart. 'Tis like the rain of dew That quires to the angel stars. 'Tis like a bell Rung by an holy anchoret to summon Out of the labyrinths of heaven and hell Some grave, majestic, and deep-breated woman To bring her naked body shining, shining With flowers of heaven or flames of Phlegethon Into his hermit cell, her love entwining Into his life with spells that murmur on Black words! For one thing be you sure the same My wine is as the music of your name!

<>

Maiden. Believe me, mystic maiden o' mine, That title shall assure the throne of heaven To you—the more so that your love divine That maidenhood to me hath freely given? Nor have I touched the ark with hands unholy, Nor with unsaintly kisses soiled the shrine: Nepenthe, amaranth, vervain, myrrh and moly Are deathless blooms about our chaste design. Not you resisting, but myself refraining, Gives us the eternal spring, the elixir rare, That mage and sage have sought, and uncomplaining Never attained. We found it early where The Gods find children. Maiden o' mine, be sure My wine shall be as pure as you are pure!

<>

Sweet. O my sweet, if all the heavenly portion Of nectar were in one blue ocean poured Their fine quintessence were a vile abortion Bitter and flat, foul, stagnant and abhorred Should one compare it with the tiniest tithe Of one soft glance your eyes on me might shed, One gesture of your body limber and lithe, One smile—the sudden white, the abiding red! Then—should one slander you in idiot verse By speaking of the subtle seven-fold sweetness Your lips can answer me, all fate to amerce In one mad kiss in all its mad completeness? O Gods and Muses! give me grace for this To match my wine for sweet with Lola's kiss.

<>

Mine. 'Tis impossible, but so it is. My mouth is Lola's and my Lola's mine When in the trance, the death we call a kiss, Earth is done down, and the immanent divine Exists! Impossible! no mortal yet Suffered such bliss from the all-envious gods; Whence we may guess we are immortal, set From the beginning over the periods Of ages, set on thrones of jasper and pearl, Wreathed with the lilies of Eternity, While on our brows the starry clusters curl Like flashes from the sunkissed jewelry, Dew on the flowers our garlands. Ay! you are mine, And mine as you are shall I pour the wine.

<>

Now I have told you all the ingredients That go to make the elixir for our shame. Already make the fumes their spired ascents; The bubbles burst in tiny jets of flame, And you and I are half-intoxicated (I hid the heart of madness in my verse) Therewith, like Maenads ready to be mated Before the Lod of bassara and thyrse. Yea! we are lifted up! Crested Kithairon Shakes his black mane of pines, and roars for prey. Heave all his bristling flanks of barbèd iron! Flesh thy red hunger on the bleeding day, O fangèd night! till from thy mother maw We wrench the lion child of wonder and awe!

<>

This wine is sovereign against all complaints. This is the wine the great king-angels use To inspire the souls of sinners and of saints Unto the deeds that win the world or lose. One drop of this raised Attis from the dead; One drop of this, and slain Osiris stirs; One drop of this; before young Horus fled Thine hosts, Typhon!—this wine is mine and hers Ye Gods that gave it! not in trickling gouts, But from the very fountain whence 'tis drawn Gushing in crystal jets and ruby spouts From the authentic throne and shrine of dawn. Drink it? Ay, so! and bathe therein—and swim Out to the wide world's everlasting rim!

<>

To drink one drop thereof is to be drunk. The firm feet stagger, and the world spins round; The fair speech stammers—nature's God hath sunk Into some trivial place of the profound. But he who is drunk thereon is wholly sane, Being wholly mad; he moves with space-wide wings Sees not a world—engulphed in the inane! Nor needs a voice for speech, because he sings. What then of them who are most drunk together As you and I are, mystic maiden o' mine, Beyond Dionysus and his tedious tether, Beyond Kithairon and his topmost pine? Why, even now I am drunk who scribble amiss These lines, not thinking—save of your last kiss!

<>

So Lola! Lola! Lola! Lola! peals, And Lola! Lola! Lola! echoes back, Till Lola! Lola! Lola! Lola! reels The world in a dance of woven white and black Shimmering with clear gold greys as hell resounds With Lola! Lola! Lola! and heaven responds With Lola! Lola! Lola! Lola!—swounds All light to clustered dazzling diamonds, And Lola! Lola! Lola! Lola! rings Ever and again on these inchaunted ears, And Lola! Lola! Lola! Lola! swings My soul across to those inchaunted spheres Where Lola is God and priest and wafer and wine— O Lola! Lola! mystic maiden o' mine!

<>

I think the hurt is healed, for (by the law That forms our being) you must suffer as I, Hunger as I, rejoice as I, withdraw Into the same far transcendental sky Of this initiated rapture. Hurt Of shame for me is past, beholding Gods Only a little part of me, and dirt Such as men fling and women paste, no odds. Moreover, by the subtle and austere Vintage we drain, albeit we drain the less, There is no headache for the morning drear, No fluctuant in our tideless ecstasies— Whereby, o maiden o' mine, the runic rime Tells me we have ree'd the riddle of old Time.

<>

Never, o never shall I call you bride! Never, o never shall I draw you down Unto my kisses by the dim bedside Bathing my body in the choral crown, Your comet hair! Nor smooth our shimmering skins Each to the other and mount the sacred stair Even from the lesser to the greater sins Up to the throne where sits the royal and rare Vision of Pan. O never shall I raise This oriflamme, and lead the hope forlorn Up to the ruining bloody breach, to daze Death's self with pangs too blissful to be borne. No! dear my maid. A maiden as you be You may be all your lily life, for me.

<>

Alas! the appointed term is sternly set Inviolable to this our colloquy. For though you be afar, my Lola, yet You have been with me, whispering to me. I bow my head to write, and on the nape O' th' neck I feel you lips. I raise my head To dream—you mouth achieves its luscious rape— I fall back—you are on me—I am dead. Could it be better? For I surely know That you will follow me adown the deep When I lay pen and paper by, and go Into the ardent avenues of sleep:— There also we will drink the appeasing wine, Lola, my Lola, mystic maiden o' mine!

The Hermit

<>

Lonely, o life, art thou when circumstance Occult or open keeps us twain apart! Lamenting through the dreary day there dance Anaemic thoughts; the bruised and bloodless heart Beats as if tired of life, as I am tired Who all these days have never seen your face, Nor touched the body that my soul desired, Nor have inhaled the perfume of the place That you make sweet—black dogs of doubt and fear Howl at my heels while care plies whip and spur, Driving me down to the dull damned dead sphere Where is no sight or sounds or scent of Her Our Lady Dian, but where hag and witch Hecat bestrides her broom—the bestial bitch!

<>

Like to a country in the interdict Whose folk lack all the grace of eucharist, My heart is; all the pangs its foes inflict Are naught to this unutterable mist Of absense. Where's the daily sacrament, The glad devouring of your body and blood, Sweet soul of Christ, my Lola? I am rent Even as the demons from the face of God When they would peer into beatitude. I am barred from the incalculable bliss, The unutterable chrism, the soul's food, Of you, your gaze, your word, your touch, your kiss O Gods, Fates, Fiends—whoever plays the Pope! Lift up your curse—leave me not without hope!

<>

My soul is like the savage upland plains Of utmost wretchedness in Tartary. No strength of sun, no fertilizing rains! Only a bitter wind, intense and dry, Cuts over them. Hardly the memory stands Of one who travels there; his pain forgets The golden bliss of all those other lands Where he was happy. So the blizzard frets Its sterile death across my soul, and chills All hope of life even from the rare sad seeds It blows from sunnier values and happier hills, Though at the best they be but worthless weeds. I stand—I scan the infinite horizon Of hopeless hope—yet I must travel on.

<>

When for an hour we met (to call it meeting Barred by the bleak ice of society From even the lover's glance, the lover's greeting. The intonation that means ecstasy!) One ray of saddest gladness lit the dusk: This—that I saw you pale and suffering, A goddess armed with myrrh instead of musk, With lips too cold to pray, too dry to sing. For by that sigh I knew the adorable Truth, that you wept in secret over me. Your silence was the dumb despair of hell; Who read it right read love. Strange cruelty, That who would die for you, sweet murderess, Should find his comfort in your bitterness!

<>

For there you sat, you smiled, you chatted on, Myself alone perceiving the keen cold Sword at your heart, the speechless malison That trembled on your tongue, the while it trolled Its senseless clamour of necessary wit, And woke the senseless necessary laughter, The senseless necessary reply to it, The long sad silly commonplace thereafter. Suppose we had risen, as quick as thought, and stood And caught and kissed—what could the storm have done Worse than this sickening fog of solitude? Who can do worse than take away the sun? They better had take care, I think. One day We shall go mad, and take ourselves away.