DRUNK WITH THE DELIGHT OF LIFE

“Drunkeness is a curse and a hindrance only to slaves. Shelley's couriers were 'drunk on the wind of their own speed.' Any one who is doing his true Will is drunk with the delight of Life. Wine and strange drugs do not harm people who are doing their will; they only poison people who are cancerous with Original Sin.”
— Aleister Crowley, The New and Old Commentaries to Liber AL vel Legis, The Book of the Law, II, 22

“Thus, I was broken on the wheel of Truth.
Fled all the hope and purpose of my youth,
The high desire, the secret joy, the sin
That coiled its rainbow dragon scales within.
Hope's being, life's delight, time's eager tooth;
All, all are gone; the serpent sloughs his skin!”
— Aleister Crowley, The Nameless Quest

“Sleep on, poor fool, and in thy sleep deceived
Defy the very beauty that thou seekest!
Now is the solemn portal of the dusk
Lifted; and in the gleaming sliver-gray,
The eastern sky, steps out the single One,
Hathoor and Aphrodite – whom I mock!
I may not follow in the dimness – I
Chained unto matter by my evil will,
Delight of death and carnal life.”
— Aleister Crowley, Tannhäuser

“Now if there is a coalescence, the lower is ennobled, the nobler degraded; the body is raised in the scale of being as made participant in life; the Soul, as associated with death and unreason, is brought lower. How can a lessening of the life-quality produce an increase such as Sense-Perception?

No: the body has acquired life, it is the body that will acquire, with life, sensation and the affections coming by sensation. Desire, then, will belong to the body, as the objects of desire are to be enjoyed by the body. And fear, too, will belong to the body alone; for it is the body's doom to fail of its joys and to perish.”
— Plotinus, The First Ennead

“My home is on the brink of heaven's delight,
But for that endless day a lovelier night
Is in my home, that sunset's arms enfold,
Lit with the mellowness of autumn gold.”
— Aleister Crowley, Spolia Optima

“And Jesus said to them, with much delight 'I speak to you concerning life–the brotherhood of life.'”
— Drew Ali, The Holy Koran of the Moorish Science Temple of America

“O you that were my lover and my wife!
          Come back to life!
Come back, breathe softly from the breast of gold
          These arms enfold.
Give me your lips and kiss me once! O wife,
          Come back to life!
Nay, let the wind but stir the silky hair,
          (God's lesser air,
Not his full blossom of woman's breath!) O wife,
          Come back to life!”
— Aleister Crowley, Orpheus

Athena hears me swear
To right all this – nay, answer me before
Anger get all the spoil of me, and drink
Thy life-blood in one gulp! Descend that dais!
Bend thou a suppliant at my awful knee,
And thus – perhaps – at least get grace of life.
— Aleister Crowley, The Argonauts