Rosa Mundi By Aleister Crowley

I’ve been reading Aleisters Poems for weeks, Ive been doing some research about him for a while now and every day i find new info that draw me closer to him, his life, his whole world! I’m getting attached to him…i wish he were still alive, i would love to spend time with him…I’m sure we have in many past lives….I look a lot like his first wife Rose, found that out two weeks ago anyway i read Rosa Mundi about 6 times…hope you enjoy it as much as i did…

Rose of the world! Red glory of the secret heart of love: Red flames, rose-red, most subtly curled into its own infinite flower, all flowers above! its flower in its own perfumed passion, in faint sweet passion, folded and furled in flower fashion; and deep spirit taking its pure part of hidden happiness!

Arise, strong bow of the young child Eros! (while the maddening moonlight, the memoried caress stolen of the scented rose stir me bids each racing pulse ache, ache!) Bend into an agony of art whose cry is ever rapture, and whose tears for their own purity’s individed sake are molten dew, as, on the lotus leaves silver-coiled in the sun into green-girdled spheres purer than all the maiden’s dreams enweaves, lies the unutterable beauty of the waters. Yea, arise, divinest dove of the idalian, on your crimson wings and softly-spoken one, Mine Aphrodite! Touch the inperfect strings,  oh thou, immortal, throned above the moon! Inspire a holy tune lighter and lovelier than flowers and wine offered in gracious gardens unto Pan by soul of man!

In vain the solemn stars pour their pale dews upon my trembling spirit; their caress leaves me moon-rapt in waves of loveliness all thine, o rose, o wrought of many a muse in music, o thou strength of ecstasy incarnate in a woman-form, creat of her own rapture, infinite, ultimate, not to be seen, not grasped, not even imaginable, but known of one, by virtue of that spell of thy sweet will toward him: thou, unknown, untouched, grave mistress of the sunlight throne of thine own nature; known not even of me,but of some spark of  woven eternity immortal in this bosom. Phosphor paled and in the grey upstarted the dread veiled rose light of dawn. Sun-shaped shone thy spears of love forth darting into myriad spheres, which i the poet called this light, that flower, this knowledge, that illumination, power this and love that, in vain, in vain, until thy beauty dawned, all beauty to distil into one drop of utmost dew, one name choral as floral, one thin, subtle flame fitted to a shaft of love, to pierce to endue my trance-rapt spirit with the avenue of perfect pleasures, radiating far up and up yet to where thy sacred star burned inits brilliance: thence the storm was shed a passion ofgreat calm about this head, this head no more a poet’s; since the dream of beauty gathered close into a stream of tingling light, and, gathering ever force from thine own love, its unextended source, became the magic utterance that makes me, dissolving self into the stales sea that makes one lake of molten joy, one pond steady as light and hard as diamond, one drop, one atom of constraint intense, of elemental passion scoring sense, all the concentred music that is I. O! hear me not! I die; I am borne away in misery of dumb life that would in words flash forth the holiest heaven that to the immortal God of Gods is given, and, tongue-tied, stammers forth–my wife!

I am dumb with rapture of thy loveliness. All lights, all sounds, all perfumes, all gold stress of the honey-palate, all soft strokes expire in abject agony of broken sense to hymn the emotion tense of somewhat higher: fall, o fall, ye unavailing eagle-flights of song! O wife! these do thee wrong.

Thou knowest how I was blind; how for mere minutes thy pure presence was nought; was ill-defined; a smudge across the mind, drivelling in its brutal essence, hog- wallowing in poetry, incapable of thee.

Ah! when the minutes gew to hours, and yet the beast, the fool, saw flowrs, and loved them, watched the moon rise, took delight in perfumes of the summer night, caught in the glamour of the sun, thought all the woe well won. How hours were days, and all the misery abode, all mine: O thou! didst thou regret? Wast thou asleep as I? Didst thou not love me yet? for, know! the moon until she hath the knowledge to fulfil her music, till she know herself the moon. So thou, so I! the stone unhewn, foursquare, the sphere, of human hands immune, was not yet chosen for the corner-piece and key-stone of the royal arch of sex; unsolved the ultimate x; the virginal breeding breeze was yet of either unstirred; unspoken the Great Word.

Then on sudden. we knew. From deep to deep reverberating, lightning unto lightning across the sundering brightening abyss of sorrow’s sleep, there shone the sword of love, and struck, and clove the intorable veil, the women chain of mail prudence self-called, and folly known to who may know. Then, O sweet drop of dew thy limpid light rolled over and was lost in mine, and mine in thine. Peace, ye who praise! ye but disturb the shrine! This voice is evil over against the peace here in the west, the holiest. Shaken and crossed the threads Lachesis wove fell from her hands. The pale divided strands were taken by the master-hand, Eros! Her evil thinkings cease, thy miracles begin. Eros!–Eros!–Be silent! it is sin thus to invoke the oracles of orde. Their iron gates to unclose. The gross unhospitable warder of loe’s green garden of spice is well awake. Hell hath enough of her three-headed hound; but love’s server bound knows for his watcher a more fearful shape, a formidable ape skilled by black art to mock the gods profound in their abyss of under ground. Beware! who hath entered

hath no boast to make, and conscious Eden sureleir breeds the snake. Be silent! O! for silence’ sake!

That asks the impossible. Smite! Smite! Profaned Adytum of pure light, Smite! but i must sing on. Nay! can the orison of myriad fools provoke the Crowned-with-Night hidden beyond sound and sight in the mystery of his own high essence? Lo, Rose of all the gardens in the world, Did thy most sacred presence not fill the real, then this voice were whirled into forgotten places and unknows. So I sing on!

Sisters and wife, dear wife light of my love and lady of my life, answer if thou canst from the unsullied place, unveiling for one star-wink thy bright face! Did we leave then, once cognisant, time for some fear to implant his poison? Did we hesitate? Leave but little chance to fate? For one swift second did we wait? There is no need to answer god is god, a jealous god and evil; with his rod He smiteth tiniest atoms of intangible time, that men may know he is the lord. Then with that sharp division, Did he divide our wit sublime? our knowledge bring to nought? We had no need of thought. We brought his malice in derision. So thine eternal petals shall enclose me, O most wonderful lady of dilight, Immaculate, indivisible circle of night, inviolate, invulnerable Rose!

The sound of my own voisce carries me on. i am a ship whose anchors are all gone, Whose rudder is held by love indomitable perposeful helmsman! were his port high hell, who should be fool enough to care? suppose hell’s wares wash the memoriy of this rose out of my mind what matters then? Or, if they leave it, all the woes of men are as pale shadow in the glory of that passionate splendour of love.

Ay! my own voice, my own thoughts, These, then must be the mutiny of some worm’s misery, some chained despair knotted into my flesh, some chance companion, some soul damned afresh since my redemption, that is vocal at all, for i am wrapt away from light and call in the sweet heart of the red rose. my spirit only knows this women and no more; who would know more? I, i am concentrate on the unshakable state of constant rapture, who should pour his ravings in the air for winds to whirl, far from the central pearl of all the diadem of the universe? let god take pen, rehearse dull nursery tales; then, not before, O rose, Red rose! shall the beloved of thee infinite rose! pen puerile poetry that turns in writing to vile prose.

were in this the quintessential plume of keats and shelley and swinburne and velaine, could i outsoar them, all their lyrics feats, excel their utterance vain with one convinsing rapture, beat them hallow as an ass’s skin; wert thou, Apollo, mere slave to me, not lord they fierist flight and stateliest shat of light thyself surpassing: all were dull, and thou, o rose, sole, sacred, wonderful, single in love and aim, double in from and name, triple in energy in radiant flame, informing all, inall most beautiful, circle and sphere, perfect  in every part, high above hope of art: though, be it said! thou art nowhere now, save in the secret chamber of my heart. Behind the brass of my anonymous brow.

Let the croward and slave who writes write on! he is no more harm to love than the grey snake who lurks in the dusk brakes for the bare legged village boy, is it to the sun. the sire of life the lover and the wife, immune intact ignore the people hear then, the people smitten of grey fear it is no odds!

I have seen the eternal gods sit, star wed, in old egypt by the nile the same calm pse, the inscrutable, wan smile on every lip alike. Time hath not had the will to strike at them they abide, they pass through all through their most ancient names may fall, they stir not nor are weary of life for with them, evenas with us, life is but love. they know, we know; let, then the writing go! that in the very deed, we do not know.

It may be in the centuries of our life since we were man and wifethere stirs some incarnation of that love. somerosebud in the garden of spices blows, some ofshoot from the Rose of the world, the rose of all delight, the rose of dew, the rose of love and night, the rose of silence, covering as with a vesture the solemn unity of things, behold the mirror of truth, the Rose indifferent to gods gesture, the rose on moonlight wings that flies to the house of fire, the rose of honey-in-youth! ah! no dim mistery of desire fathoms this gulf? ` no light invades the mystical shades of a faith in the futurek a dream of the day when athwart the dim glades of the forest a ray og sunlight shall flash and the dew die away!

Let there then be obscurity in this! there is an after rapture in the  kiss, the fire flesh perfume, music, that outpaced all time, fly off, they are subtle: there abides a secret and most maiden taste; salt, as of the invisible tides of the molten sea of gold men may at times behold in the rayless scarab of the sinkin sun; and out of that is won hardly, with labour and pain that are as pleasure, the first flower of the garden, the stored treasure that lies at the heart’s heart of eternity. this treasure is for thee.

O! but shall hope arise happiness? that may not be. my love is like a golden grape, the veins peep through the ecstasy of the essence of ivory and silk, pearl, moonlight, mother-milk that is her skin its swift caress flits like ans angels kiss in a dream, remains the healing virtue from all sin all ill one touch sets free. My love is like a star oh fool! oh fool! is not thy back yet tender from the rod? is there not learning in the poets school? wilt thou achieve what were too hard for god? I call him to the battle; ask me when the hinds calve? what of eternity when he built chaos?

shall leviathan be drawn out with an hook? enough; i see this i can answer or ernst haeckel can! now, god almighty, rede this mystery! what of love that is the heart of man? take stars and airs, and write it down! fill all the interstices of space with myriad verse own the disgrace! diminish thy renown approve my riddle! this thou canst not do.

O living rose! o dowerded with subtle dew, o love, the tiny eternities of time, caught between flying second, are well filled with these futilities of fragrant rhyme; in love’s retort distilled, in sunrays of fierce loathing purified, in moonrays of pure longing tried, and gathered after many moos of labour into the compass of a single day, and wrought into continuous tune, one laughter with one languor for its neighbour. One thought of winter with one word of June, muddled and mixed in mere dismay, chiselled with the cunning chisel of dispair, found wanting well aware of its own fault, even insistent thereon: some fragrance rare stolen from my lady’s hair perchance redeeming now and then the distant fugitive tunes.

Ah! Love! the hour is over! the moon is up, the vigil overpast. Call me to thee at last, O Rose! o perfect miracle lover, call me! I hear thee though it be across the abyss of the whole universe, though not a sigh escape, delicious loss! though hardly a wish rehearse the imperfection underlying ever  the perfect happiness. Thou knowest not in flesh lies the fair fresh delight of love; not in mere lips and eyes the secret of these bridal ecstasies, since thou art everywhere, Rose of the world, Rose of the uttermost abode of glory, Rose of the high host of heaven, mystic, rapturous Rose! The extreme passion glows deep in the breast, though knowest (and love knows) how every word awakes its own reward in a thought akin to thee, a shadow of thee; and every rhyme tingles and shakes in me the filaments of the great web of love.

O Rose all roses far above in the garden of god’s roses, sorrowless, thornless, passionate Rose, that lies full in the flood of its own synpathies and makes my life one tune that curls and closes on its own self delight; a circle, never a line! safe from all wind, secure in its own pleasure-house confined, mistress of all its moods, matchless, serene, in sacred amplitudes of its own royal rapture, deaf and blind to aught but its own mastery of song and light, shown ever a silence and deep night secret as death and final, Let me long never again for aught! this great delight involves me, weaves me in its pattern of bliss, seals me with its own kiss, draws me to thee with every dream that glows, poet, each word! maiden, each burden of snows extending beyond sunset, beyond dawn! O Rose, inviolate, utterly withdrawn in the truth:–for this is truth: love Knows!  Ah! Rose of the world! Rose! Rose!