LIFE LOVE DEAD LIVE
Hermetic Library Ministry of Information
“Evoe! life burns in the brasier of love as a ruby flame in a sapphire bowl. I am dead, yet I live for ever!”
“Let him also practice the art of the Analysis of Ideas, and that of refusing to allow the mind its natural reaction to them, pleasant or unpleasant, thus fixing himself in Simplicity and Indifference. These things being achieved in their ripe season, be it known to you that all ideas will have become equal to your apprehension, since each is simple and each indifferent: any one of them remaining in the mind at Will without stirring or striving, or tending to pass on to any other. But each idea will possess one special quality common to all: this, that no one of any of them is The Self, inasmuch as it is perceived by The Self as Something Opposite.
When this is thorough and profound in the impact of its realization, then is the moment for the aspirant to direct his Will to Love upon it, so that his whole consciousness findeth focus upon that One Idea.”
“O if these words were lightnings, and their flame
Deluged the world, and drowned the seed of shame
In these ill waters where alone Truth’s ark
May float, where only lovers may embark,
I were contented to abandon fame
And live with love for ever in the dark.
— Excerpted from Fame in The Court of the Profane from The Temple of the Holy Ghost
“I am the flame that burns in every heart of man, and in the core of every star. I am Life, and the giver of Life, yet therefore is the knowledge of me the knowledge of death.”
“Beside or above me
Nought is there to go;
Love or unlove me,
Unknow me or know,
I am that which unloves me and loves; I am stricken, and I am the blow.“
— Algernon Charles Swinburne’s Hertha quoted in The Rite of Venus
“Nature everywhere is prolific of live things, animal and vegetable. (Pray note that these things, and only these avail to feed us.) What wealth of ‘spiritual’ force in and acorn! What history, its beginning veiled beyond all search! What potentiality of future life, of growth, of multiplication, beyond all conjecture! Like us, it has the power of Life; it can take live things and dead things into its own substance, bidding them, for its own purposes, to live again, transfigured! There’s far more energy in the acorn than in radium, at which fools gape so wide in wonder. Far more, and far higher; radium only degenerates and dissipates; the acorn lives!”
— Liber CCCXLIII: AMRITA: Some Comments on the Elixir of Life
“The absolute desire hath hold of me.
Death were most welcome in that solemn sea;
So bitter is my life. But carelessness
Of life and death and love is on me—yes!
Only the quest! if any quest there be!
What is my purpose? Could the Godhead guess?
— Excerpt from The Nameless Quest in The Gate of the Sanctuary from The Temple of the Holy Ghost
| ESARHADDON | You make earth heaven. |
| ASTARTE | And heaven hell. To choose thee Is to interpret misery ‘To lose thee.’ |
| ESARHADDON | Ay! death end all if it must end thy kiss! |
| ASTARTE | And death be all if it confirm life’s bliss! |
| ESARHADDON | And death come soon if death fill life’s endeavour! |
| ASTARTE | and if it spill life’s vintage, death come never! |
“For it hath been shown unto thee in many other places how Death and Love be twins. Now art thou the hunter, and Death rideth beside thee with his horse and spear as thou chasest thy Will through the forests of Eternity, whose trees are the hair of Nuit thy mistress! Thrill with the joy of life and death! Know, hunter mighty and swift, the quarry turns to bay! Thou hast but to make one sharp thrust, and thou hast won. The Virgin of Eternity lies supine at thy mercy, and thou art Pan! Thy death shall be the seal of the promise of our agelong love. Hast thou not striven to the inmost in thee? Death is the crown of all. Harden! Hold up thyself! Lift thine head! breathe not so deep—die!”