I flung out of chapel and church
Temple and hall an meeting-room
Venus' Bower and Osiris' Tomb,
and left the devil in the lurch,
While God got lost in the crowd of gods,
And soul went down in the turbid tide
Of the metaphysical Lotus-eyed,
And I was -- anyhow, what's the odds?
[...]
Yet by-and-by I hope to weave
A song of Anti-Christmas Eve
And First- and Second-Beast-er Day.
There's one who loves me dearly (vrai!)
Who yet believes me sprung from Tophet,
Either the Beast or the False Prophet;
And by all sorts of monkey tricks
Adds up my name to Six Six Six.
Retire, good Gallup! In such strife her
Superior skill makes you a cipher!
Ho! I adopt the number. Look
At the quaint wrapper of this book!
I will deserve it if I can: It is the number of a Man.
Aleister Crowley, from "Ascension Day" in The Sword of Song
I find some folks think me (for one)
So great a fool that I disclaim
Indeed Jehovah's hate for shame
That man to-day should not be weaned
Of worshipping so foul a fiend
In presence of the living Sun,
And yet replace him oiled and clean
By the Egyptian Pantheon,
The same thing by another name.
Thus when of late Egyptian Gods
Evoked ecstatic periods
In verse of mine, you thought I praised
Or worshipped them -- I stand amazed.
I merely wished to chant in verse
Some aspects of the Universe,
Summed up these subtle forces finely,
And sang of them (I think divinely)
In name and form; a fault perhaps --
Reviewers are such funny chaps!
I think that ordinary folk,
Though, understood the things I spoke.
For Gods, and devils too, I find
Are merely modes of my own mind!
Aleister Crowley, from "Pentecost" in The Sword of Song