The Cry of the 4th Aethyr,
Which is Called PAZ1
The Stone is translucent and luminous, and no images enter therein.
A voice says: Behold the brilliance of the Lord, whose feet are set upon him that pardoneth transgression. Behold the six-fold Star that flameth in the Vault, the seal of the marriage of the great White King and his black slave2.
So I looked into the Stone, and beheld the six-fold Star: the whole Aethyr is as tawny clouds, like the flame of a furnace. And there is a mighty host of Angels, blue and golden, that throng it, and they cry: Holy, Holy, Holy art thou, that art not shaken in the earthquakes, and in the thunders! The end of things is come upon us; the day of be-with-us is at hand! For he hath created the universe, and overthrown it, that he might take his pleasure thereupon.
And now, in the midst of the Aethyr, I beheld that god.
He hath a thousand arms, and in each hand is a weapon of terrible strength. His face is more terrible than the storm, and from his eyes flash lightnings of intolerable brilliance. From his mouth run seas of blood. Upon his head is a crown of every deadly thing. Upon his forehead is the upright tau, and on either side of it are the signs of blasphemy. And about him clingeth a young girl, like unto the king's daughter that appeareth in the ninth Aethyr. But she is become rosy by reason of his force, and her purity hath tinged his black with blue.
They are clasped in a furious embrace, so that she is torn asunder by the terror of the god; yet so tightly clingeth she about him, that he is strangled. She hath forced back his head, and his throat is livid with the pressure of her fingers. Their joint cry is an intolerable anguish, yet it is the cry of their rapture, so that every pain, and every curse, and every bereavement, and every death of everything in the whole universe, is but one little gust of wind in that tempest-scream of ecstasy3.
The voice thereof is not articulate. It is in vain to seek comparison. It is absolutely continuous, without breaks or beats. If there seem to be vibration therein, it is because of the imperfection of the ears of the seer.
And there cometh an interior voice, which sayeth to the seer that he hath trained his eyes well and can see much; and he hath trained his ears a little, and can hear a little; but his other senses hath he trained scarcely at all, and therefore the Aethyrs are almost silent to him on those planes. By the senses are meant the spiritual correlations of the senses, not the physical senses. But this matters little, because the Seer, so far as he is a seer, is the expression of the spirit of humanity4. What is true of him is true of humanity, so that even if he had been able to receive the full Aethyrs, he could not have communicated them.
And an Angel speaks: Behold, this vision is utterly beyond thine understanding. Yet shalt thou endeavour to unite thyself with the dreadful marriage-bed.
So I am torn asunder, nerve from nerve and vein from vein, and more intimately --- cell from cell, molecule from molecule, and atom from atom, and at the same time all crushed together. Write down that the tearing asunder is a crushing together5. All the double phenomena are only two ways of looking at a single phenomenon; and the single phenomenon is Peace. There is no sense in my words or in my thoughts. "Faces half- formed arose." This is the meaning of that passage; they are attempts to interpret Chaos, but Chaos is Peace. Cosmos is the War of the Rose and the Cross6. That was "a half-formed face" that I said then. All images are useless.
Blackness, blackness intolerable, before the beginning of the light. This is the first verse of Genesis. Holy art thou, Chaos, Chaos, Eternity, all contradictions in terms!
Oh, blue! blue! blue! whose reflection in the Abyss is called the Great One of the Night of Time; between ye vibrateth the Lord of the Forces of Matter.
O Nox, Nox qui celas infamiam infandi nefandi, Deo solo sit laus qui dedit signum non scribendum. Laus virgini cuius stuprum tradit salutem.
O Night, that givest suck from thy paps to sorcery, and theft, and rape, and gluttony, and murder, and tyranny, and to the nameless Horror, cover us, cover us, cover us from the Rod of Destiny; for Cosmos must come, and the balance be set up where there was no need of balance, because there was no injustice, but only truth. But when the balances are equal, scale matched with scale, then will Chaos7 return.
Yea, as in a looking-glass, so in thy mind, that is backed with the false metal of lying, is every symbol read averse. Lo! everything wherein thou hast trusted must confound thee, and that thou didst flee from was thy saviour. So therefore didst thou shriek in the Black Sabbath when thou didst kiss the hairy buttocks of the goat, when the gnarled god tore thee asunder, when the icy cataract of death swept thee away8.
Shriek, therefore, shriek aloud; mingle the roar of the gored lion and the moan of the torn bull, and the cry of the man that is torn by the claws of the Eagle, and the scream of the Eagle that is strangled by the hands of the Man. Mingle all these in the death-shriek of the Sphinx, for the blind man hath profaned her mystery. Who is this, Oedipus, Tiresias, Erinyes? Who is this, that is blind and a seer, a fool above wisdom? Whom do the hounds of heaven follow, and the crocodiles of hell await9? Aleph, vau, yod, ayin, resh, tau, is his name10.
Beneath his feet is the kingdom, and upon his head the crown. He is spirit and matter; he is peace and power; in him is Chaos and Night and Pan, and upon BABALON his concubine, that hath made him drunk upon the blood of the saints that she hath gathered in her golden cup, hath he begotten the virgin that now he doth deflower. And this is that which is written: Malkuth shall be uplifted and set upon the throne of Binah11. And this is the stone of the philosophers that is set as a seal upon the tomb of Tetragrammaton, and the elixir of life that is distilled from the blood of the saints, and the red powder that is the grinding-up of the bones of Choronzon.
Terrible and wonderful is the Mystery thereof, O thou Titan that hast climbed into the bed of Juno! Surely thou art bound unto, and broken upon, the wheel12; yet hast thou uncovered the nakedness of the Holy One, and the Queen of Heaven is in travail of child, and his name shall be called Vir, and Vis, and Virus, and Virtus, and Viridis, in one name that is all these, and above all these13.
Desolate, desolate is the Aethyr, for thou must return unto the habitations of the Owl and the Bat, unto the Scorpions of the sand, and the blanched eyeless beetles that have neither wing nor horn. Return, blot out the vision, wipe from thy mind the memory thereof; stifle the fire with green wood; consume the Sacrament; cover the Altar; veil the Shrine; shut up the Temple and spread booths in the market place; until the appointed time come when the Holly One shall declare unto thee the Mystery of the Third Aethyr.
Yet be thou wake and ware, for the great Angel Hua is about thee, and overshadoweth thee, and at any moment he may come upon thee unawares. The voice of PAZ is ended.
Biskra, Algeria.
December 16, 1909. 9 - 10:30 a.m.