[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

stupid and obstinate as these Strulbrugg remnants of the age of Tennyson and John Stuart Mill.]) will have
a great deal to say with regard to the European War. I think that the war will be followed everywhere by
revolution. I think that humanity will have had the facts of life presented to it with such soul-shaking
violence that the pitiful pretense which some of us still make will fall at last by its own weight. I think that
the controversy of the future will be between the law of nature or of Nietzsche, and that of compassion or
of Shelley. It think that supernaturalism has received the mercy-stroke. I think that Christianity will be
studied by {233} everybody (who has the leisure and inclination) just as it is to-day by antropologists, is
in the due relation to other religions of the world. I think that the use of Christianity as an engine of
oppression of the poor is ended. I think that the tyrants of humanity will have to think up something new:
-
Or it may be that a brighter day is in store for us! The author[Aleister Crowley.] of The world's Tragedy
has presented his Jesus as the willing tool or rather the blind tool of oppression. He consents to his death
in order to carry out the scheme of destroying the Golden Age. On the cross he attains humanity. We
venture to quote the dialogue between him and the great magician whose power is directed to turn the
tragedy to final good. We shall quote the passage at some length.
Scene
. - The thick darkness of the Emptiness of Things.
Yet in the midst appears a certain glory veiling the figure of a tall stern man, the king Alexander. In his
hand is a black rod clothed with twin glittering snakes, the royal Uraeus Serpents of ancient Khem; at its
point gleams faint and blue A star of six rays, whose light now illumines the pale and tortured features of
a man, with outstretched arms, who is hanging (apparently) in space. It is Issa, but the weariness is gone;
and noble-strong is the scarred brow of his agony.
Alexander
.
In the puissance of my will,
Issa, I uphold thee still.
Issa
.
Thou art?
Alexander
Keeper of the Way.
Issa
I am?
Alexander
Man, at mine essay.
By the balance reaching forth
To the south and to the North {234}
Have I consecrated thee
Co-victim with humanity.
O Mis-begotten, miscreate
Dwarf as thou wast, the child of hate;
Thou who hast felt the sordidness
Of thine own effect on thine own distress;
Art comest hereby to the stature of man
By my power, who am Pan.
And by this death shalt laugh to know
Thy father's final overthrow.
My soul the heights and depths has spanned.
I hold the star-streams in mine hand.
I am the master of life and death
And of every spirit that quickeneth.
Yea! in the light of knowledge, Pan
Hath grasped at the blackness of the ban:
And thus do I crush it. As the storm
Whirls shrieking round thy ghastly form,
Thy spirit's torture shall abate
The bodily pangs of thy fearsome fate.
Weak fool! The fate of Arcady
And the whole world - that hung on thee!
Hadst thou but made thee Emperor,
And led thy legions into war!
Thou broken reed - a birth unclean,
A life sucked up in sordid spleen,
A death absurd, most foully wrought
To the shape of thy father's leper-thought.
This be thy doom, that thou shalt see
The curses that are born of thee!
Thou black bat that hast barred the sun
From the sight of man, thou minion
Of death and disease, of toil and want,
Of slavery, knavery, greed and cant,
Of bigotry, murder, hypocrisy
- Speak thou the things that are seen of thee!
Issa
Canst thou not save me, Pan,
And balk the bestial plan?
Alexander
I too have died to Pan, and he
Hath begotten upon me
A secret wonder that must wait
For the hour of the falling of thy fate.
Nineteen centuries shalt thou
Plague earth with that agonizing brow,
And then that age of sordid strife
Give place to the aeon of love and life.
A lion shall rise and swallow thee,
Bringing back life into Arcady. {235}
So strong shall he roar that the worlds shall quake
And the waters under the heaven break,
That the earth, of thy father's hate accurst,
Shall be greener and gladder than at first.
Issa
I shall endure then, if the Ultimate
Be reached through the black fate.
Alexander
Let that sustain thee - yet this hour
I put forth all my torture-power
To grind thee in the mills of martyrdom,
That at last thy spirit may fully come
To understand and to repent -
Else might thy new-born strength relent
And all thy father's hate corrode
Thy will, as the breath of a bloat toad
Might rot the lungs of a young child.
Then were indeed the earth defiled
And the sole seedlings that must lurk [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]