Aleister Crowley - The Sword of Song

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THE SWORD OF SONG

CALLED BY CHRISTIANS

THE BOOK OF THE BEAST

ALEISTER CROWLEY

y h

“Here is wisdom: let him who hath

understanding reckon the number of the

Beast. For it is the number of a man; and

his number is six hundred, three score, and

six”

The Apocalypse of John

This electronic edition

prepared by Celephaïs Press

somewhere beyond the Tanarian Hills

First published

Society for the Propagation of Religious Truth

“Benares” [i.e. Boleskine, Foyers, Inverness]

1904 e.v.

Reprinted in vol ii. of Crowley’s Collected Works

Society for the Propagation of Religious Truth

1906 e.v.

This electronic edition

(based on the Collected Works printing)

hastily prepared by Frater T.S.

for Sunwheel Oasis, O.T.O.

2001 e.v.

Re-proofed and corrected edition

issued by Celephaïs Press

August 2003 e.v.

JAF Box 7666

New York

NY 10116

U.S.A.

“YOU are sad!”! the Knight said, in an

anxious tone: “let me sing you a song to

comfort you.”*

“Is it very long?” Alice asked.

“It’s long,” said the Knight, but it’s

very very beautiful. The name of the song is

called ‘The Book of the Beast.’ ”

“Oh! how ugly” cried Alice.

“Never mind,” said the mild creature.

“Some people call it ‘Reason in Rhyme.’ ”

“But which is the name of the song?”

Alice said, trying not to seem too interested.

“Ah, you don’t understand,” the Knight

said, looking a little vexed. “That’s what the

name is called. The name really is

‘Ascension Day and Pentecost; with some

Prose Essays and an Epilogue,’ just as the

title is ‘The Sword of Song’ you know, just in

the same way, just in the same way, just in

the same way . . .”

Alice put her fingers in her ears and gave

a little scream. “Oh, dear me! That’s

* This passage is a parody on one in “Alice

through the Looking-Glass.”

harder than ever!” she said to herself, and

then, looking determinedly intelligent: “So

that’s what the song is called. I see. But

what is the song?”

“You must be a perfect fool,” said the

Knight, irritably. “The song is called

‘Stout Doubt; or the Agnostic Anthology,’

by the author of ‘Gas Manipulation,’ ‘Solu-

tions,’ ‘The Management of Retorts,’ and

other physical works of the first order—but

that’s only what it’s called, you know.”

“Well, what is the song then?” said

Alice, who was by this time completely be-

wildered.

“If I wished to be obscure, child,” said

the Knight, rather contemptuously, “I should

tell you that the Name of the Title was ‘What a

man of 95 ought to know,’ as endorsed by

eminent divines, and that . . .” Seeing that

she only begin to cry, he broke off and con-

tinued in a gentler tone: “it means, my dear

. . .” He stopped short, for she was taking

no notice; but as her figure was bent by sobs

into something very like a note of in-

terrogation: “You want to know what it is,

THE SWORD OF SONG

CALLED BY CHRISTIANS

THE BOOK OF THE BEAST

1904

TO MY OLD FRIEND AND COMRADE IN THE ART

BHIKKU ANANDA METTEYA

AND TO THOSE

FOOLS

WHO BY THEIR SHORT-SIGHTED STUPIDITY IN

ATTEMPTING TO BOYCOTT THIS BOOK

HAVE WITLESSLY AIDED THE

CAUSE OF TRUTH

I DEDICATE THESE MY BEST WORDS.

[This book is so full of recondite knowledge of various kinds that it seems quite ineffective

to annotate every obscure passage. Where references and explanations can be concisely given this

has been done.]

THE SWORD OF SONG

I suppose!” continued the Knight, in a

superior, but rather offended voice.

“If you would, please, sir!”

“Well, that,” pronounced the Knight, with

the air of having thoroughly studied the question

and reached a conclusion absolutely final and

irreversible, “that, Goodness only knows. But I

will sing it to you.”

PRELIMINARY INVOCATION

NOTHUNG.*

THE crowns of Gods and mortals wither ;

Moons fade where constellations shone ;

Numberless aeons brought us hither ;

Numberless aeons beckon us on.

The world is old, and I am strong—

Awake, awake, O Sword of Song !

Here, in the Dusk of Gods, I linger ;

The world awaits a Word of Truth.

Kindle, O lyre, beneath my finger !

Evoke the age’s awful youth !

To arms against the inveterate wrong !

Awake, awake, O Sword of Song !

Sand-founded reels the House of Faith ;

Up screams the howl of runing sect ;

Out from the shrine flits the lost Wraith ;

“God hath forsaken His elect !”

Confusion sweeps upon the throng—

Awake, awake, O Sword of Song !

Awake to wound, awake to heal

By wounding, thou resistless sword !

Raise the prone priestcrafts that appeal

In agony to their prostrate Lord!

Raise the duped herd—they have suffered

long

Awake, awake, O Sword of Song !

My strength this agony of the age

Win through; my music charm the old

Sorrow of years: my warfare wage

By iron to an age of gold :—

The world is old, and I am strong—

Awake, awake, O Sword of Song !

* The name of Siegfried’s sword.

INTRODUCTION TO “ASCENSION

DAY AND PENTECOST”

NOT a word to introduce my introduction! Let

me instantly launch the Boat of Discourse on

the Sea of Religious Speculation, in danger of

the Rocks of Authority and the Quicksands of

Private Interpretation, Scylla and Charybdis.

Here is the strait; what God shall save us from

shipwreck? If we choose to understand the

Christian (or any other) religion literally, we

are at once overwhelmed by its inherent

impossibility. Our credulity is outraged, our

moral sense shocked, the holiest foundations

of our inmost selves assailed by no ardent

warrior in triple steel, but by a loathy and dis-

gusting worm. That this is so, the apologists

for the religion in question, whichever it may

be, sufficiently indicate (as a rule) by the very

method of their apology. The alternative is to

take the religion symbolically, esoterically;

but to move one step in this direction is to

start on a journey whose end cannot be

determined. The religion, ceasing to be a tan-

gible thing, an object uniform for all sane

eyes, becomes rather that mist whereon the

sun of the soul casts up, like Brocken spec-

tres, certain vast and vague images of the

beholder himself, with or without a glory en-

compassing them. The function of the facts is

then quite passive: it matters little or nothing

whether the cloud be the red mist of

Christianity, or the glimmering silver-white of

Celtic Paganism; the hard grey dim-gilded of

Buddhism, the fleecy opacity of Islam, or the

mysterious medium of those ancient faiths

which come up in as many colours as their

investigator has moods.*

* “In order to get over the ethical difficulties

presented by the naïve naturalism of many

parts of those Scriptures, in the divine authority of

which he firmly believed, Philo borrowed from the

Stoics (who had been in like straits in respect of

Greek mythology) that great Excalibur which they

had forged with infinite pains and skill—the

method of allegorical interpretation. This mighty

‘two handed engine at the door’ of the theologian

is warranted to make a speedy end of any and

every moral or intellectual difficulty, by showing

that, taken allegorically, or, as it is otherwise said

“poetically’ or ‘in a spiritual sense,’ the plainest

words mean whatever a pious interpreter desires

they should mean.” (Huxley, “Evolution of

Theology”).—A.C.

INTRODUCTION

If the student has advanced spiritually so

that he can internally, infallibly perceive

what is Truth, he will find it equally well

symbolised in most external faiths.

It is curious that Browning never turns his

wonderful faculty of analysis upon the

fundamental problems of religion, as it were

an axe laid to the root of the Tree of Life. It

seems quite clear that he knew what would

result if he did so. We cannot help fancying

that he was unwilling to do this. The proof of

his knowledge I find in the following lines:—

“I have read much, thought much, experienced

much,

Yet would rather die than avow my fear

The Naples’ liquefaction may be false . . .

I hear you recommend, I might at least

Eliminate, decrassify my faith

Since I adopt it: keeping what I must

And leaving what I can ; such points as this . . .

Still, when you bid me purify the same,

To such a process I discern no end . . .

First cut the liquefaction, what comes last

But Fichte’s clever cut at God himself ? . . .

I trust nor hand, nor eye, nor heart, nor brain

To stop betimes: they all get drunk alike.

The first step, I am master not to take.

This is surely the apotheosis of wilful

ignorance! We may think, perhaps, that

Browning is “hedging” when, in the last

paragraph, he says : “For Blougram, he

believed, say, half he spoke,”* and hints at

some deeper ground. It is useless to say,

“This is Blougram and not Browning.”

Browning could hardly have described the

dilemma without seeing it. What he really

believes is, perhaps, a mystery.

That Browning, however, believes in

universal salvation, though he nowhere (so

far as I know) gives his reasons, save as they

are summarised in the last lines of the

below-quoted passage, is evident from the

last stanza of “Apparent Failure,” and from

his final pronouncement of the Pope on

Guido, represented in Browning’s master-

piece as a Judas without the decency to

hang himself.

“So (i.e., by suddenness of fate) may the

truth be flashed out by one blow,

And Guido see one instant and be saved.

Else I avert my face nor follow him

Into that sad obscure sequestered state

Where God unmakes but to remake the soul

He else made first in vain: which must not be.

* Probably a record for a bishop.—A.C.

This may be purgatory, but it sounds not

unlike reincarnation.

It is at least a denial of the doctrine of

eternal punishment.

As for myself, I took the first step years

ago, quite in ignorance of what the last would

lead to. God is indeed cut away—a cancer

from the breast of truth.

Of those philosophers, who from unas-

sailable premisses draw by righteous

deduction a conclusion against God, and then

for His sake overturn their whole structure by

an act of will, like a child breaking an

ingenious toy, I take Mansel as my type.*

Now, however, let us consider the esoteric

idea-mongers of Christianity, Swedenborg,

Anna Kingsford, Deussen and the like, of

whom I have taken Caird as my example.

I wish to unmask these people : I perfectly

agree with nearly everything they say, but

their claim to be Christians is utterly

confusing, and lends a lustre to Christianity

which is quite foreign. Deussen, for example,

coolly discards nearly all the Old Testament,

and, picking a few New Testament passages,

often out of their context, claims his system as

Christianity. Luther discards James. Kings-

ford calls Paul the Arch Heretic. My friend

the “Christian Clergyman” accepted Mark and

Acts—until pushed. Yet Deussen is honest

enough to admit that Vedanta teaching is

identical, but clearer ! and he quite clearly

and sensibly defines Faith—surely the most

essential quality for the adherent to Christian

dogma—as “being convinced on insufficient

evidence.” Similarly the dying-to-live idea of

Hegel (and Schopenhauer) claimed by Caird

as the central spirit of Christianity is far older,

in the Osiris Myth of the Egyptians. These

ideas are all right, but they have no more to

do with Christianity than the Metric System

with the Great Pyramid. But see Piazzi

Smyth!† Henry Morley has even the audacity

to claim Shelley—Shelley !—as a Christian

“in spirit.”

Talking of Shelley :—With regard to my

open denial of the personal Christian God,

may it not be laid to my charge that I have

dared to voice in bald language what Shelley

* As represented by his Encylopædia article;

not in such works as “Limits of Religious

Thought.”—A.C.

† An astronomer whose brain gave way. He

prophesied the end of the world in 1881, from

measurements made in the Great Pyramid.

THE SWORD OF SONG

sang in words of surpassing beauty : for of

course the thought in one or two passages of

this poem is practically identical with that in

certain parts of “Queen Mab” and “Prome-

theus unbound.” But the very beauty of these

poems (especially the latter) is its weakness :

it is possible that the mind of the reader, lost

in the sensuous, nay ! even in the moral

beauty of the words, may fail to be impressed

by their most important meaning. Shelley

himself recognised this later : hence the direct

and simple vigour of the “Masque of

Anarchy.”

It has often puzzled atheists that a man of

Milton’s genius could have written as he did of

Christianity. But we must not forget that Milton

lived immediately after the most important

Revolution in Religion and Politics of modern

times : Shelley on the brink of such another

Political upheaval. Shakespeare alone sat

enthroned above it all like a god, and is not lost

in the mire of controversy.* This, also, though

“I’m no Shakespeare, as too probable,” I have

endeavoured to avoid : yet I cannot but

express the hope that my own enquiries into

religion may be the reflection of the spirit of

the age ; and that plunged as we are in the

midst of jingoism and religious revival, we

may be standing on the edge of some gigantic

precipice, over which we may cast all our

impedimenta of lies and trickeries, political,

social, moral and religious, and (ourselves)

take wings and fly. The comparison between

myself and the masters of English thought I

have named is unintentional though perhaps

unavoidable ; and though the presumption is,

of course, absurd, yet a straw will show which

way the wind blows as well as the most

beautiful and elaborate vane : and in this

sense it is my pmost eage hope that I may not

unjustly draw a comparison between myself

and the great reformers of eighty years ago.

* So it is usually supposed. Maybe I shall one

day find words to combat, perhaps to overthrow,

this position. P.S. As, for example, the Note to

this Introduction. As a promise-keeper I am the

original eleven stone three Peacherine.—A.C.

I must apologise (perhaps) for the new note

of frivolity in my work : due doubtless to the

frivolity of my subject : these poems being

written when I was an Advaitist and could not

see why—everything being an illusion—there

should be any particular object in doing or

thinking anything. How I have found the

answer will be evident from my essay on the

subject.* I must indeed apologise to the

illustrious Shade of Robert Browning for my

audacious parody in title, style, and matter of

his “Christmas Eve and Easter Day.” The

more I read it the eventual anticlimax of that

wonderful poem irritated me only the more.

But there is hardly any poet living or dead

who so commands alike my personal affection

and moral admiration. My desire to find the

Truth will be my pardon with him, whose sole

life was spent in admiration of the Truth,

though he never turned its formidable engines

against the Citadel of the Almighty.

If I be appealed of blasphemy of irreve-

rence in my treatment of these subjects, I will

take refuge in Browning’s own apology, from

the very poem I am attacking :

“I have done: and if any blames me,

Thinking that merely to touch in brevity

The topics I dwell on were unlawful—

Or worse, that I trench with undue levity

On the bounds of the holy and the awful—

I praise the heart and pity the head of him,

And refer myself to Thee, instead of him,

Who head and heart alike discernest,

Looking below light speech we utter

Where frothy spume and frequent splutter

Prove that the soul’s depths boil in earnest !”

But I have after all little fear that I am

seriously wrong. That I show to my critics the

open door to the above city of refuge my be

taken as merely another gesture of

contemptuous pity, the last insult which may

lead my antagonists to that surrender which is

the truest victory.

PEACE TO ALL BEINGS

* Vide infra, “Berashith.”

Curious posi-

tion of poet.

What is Truth?

said jesting

Pilate: but

Crowley waits

for an answer.†

Alternative

theories of

Greek authors.

Browning’s

summary.

I FLUNG out of chapel1* and church,

Temple and hall and meeting-room,

Venus’ Bower and Osiris’ Tomb,2

And left the devil in the lurch,

While God3 got lost in the crowd of gods,4 5

And soul went down5 in the turbid tide

Of the metaphysical lotus-eyed,6

And I was—anyhow, what’s the odds ?

The life to live ? The thought to think ? Shall I take refuge

In a tower like once Childe Roland‡ found, blind, deaf, huge, 10

Or in that forest of two hundred thousand

Trees,8 fit alike to shelter man and mouse, and—

Shall I say God? Be patient, your Reverence,9

I warrant you’ll journey a wiser man ever hence !

Let’s tap (like the negro who gets a good juice of it, 15

Cares nought if that be, or be not, God’s right use of it),10

In all that forest of verses one tree11

Yclept “Red Cotton Nightcap Country”:

How a goldsmith, between the Ravishing Virgin

And a leman to rotten to put a purge in, 20

Day by day and hour by hour,

In a Browningesque forest of thoughts having lost himself,

Expecting a miracle, solemnly tossed himself

Off from the top of tower.

Moral: don’t spoil such an excellent sport as an 25

Ample estate with a church and a courtesan!

“Truth, that’s the gold”12 But don’t worry about it!

I, you, or Simpkin13 can get on without it!

If life’s task be work and love’s (the soft-lippèd) ease,

Death be God’s glory ? discuss with Euripides ! 30

* The numbered notes are given at p. 51

† Bacon, “Essay on Truth,” line 1.

‡ “Childe Roland to the dark Tower came.”—BROWNING.

ASCENSION DAY

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Aleister Crowley - The Sword of Song

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