NOTES ON REREADING THE MASKS OF GOD
I.
Feast or famine: a hunter's luck.
Sail the cosmic sea, dream the universe, churn the milky ocean for its butter.
Grow corn, tame and order the unruly individual.
Disprove the myth of fingerprints.
Thunder of four colors: feasts and rainbows.
If we all dance, the mountain will grow!
Roar the wild roar!
Know the void beyond all horizons.
Become like Little Mosquitos, become like All Crazy Dogs!
Lady Civet Cat and Sir Monitor Lizard, regressed Neolithic.
Claw marks of the cave bear: herd the herds of eternity.
Lord of celestial pastures: moon and sun.
Magna Mater and Magdalene: goddess guardians of sacred fires.
Match that order in mime, where rats do the work of the Law.
Gird yourselves and be dismayed!
When to war with the Wolf they go!
Arise!
Like fire in tinder: at the time when flowers close.
Battle the demons of the night sea!
Dream the dreams of ten thousand Worlds!
II.
make the sky firm in rafterless space
hold the lightning in both hands
when the earth is sweet as sugar
and the waters rich as wine
Slightly Tilted
their souls released from attachment
Dwellers in the Mansions of the Storied Heavens
annihilated infatuation
place without wind where the great umbrella soars
the lion roars
principle of pure light of mind
unafraid
ignorance, action, desire
captain of the Great Ferryboat departing from nowhere
hands of welcome in the light
golden lotus
brilliant as the disk of the sun
hear the voices! rejoice!
twelves and sevens are the order of the real.
twelve hundred great years, whose truth is sexagesimal:
six times sixty degrees of the circle.
Alas! she is gone; for I have let her go!
Your teeth are black with the make-up of her eyes.
when Radha, in her dwelling, hearing the melody,
like a jewel, majestic as the gait of an elephant,
bashfully screened her face with the hem of her garment,
and goddesses were born as little girls into the houses of kings.
Above: K'un, the Receptive, Earth
Son-of-the-Widow
superior man,
rectification of names by cinnabar and white honey,
when Sincerity becomes the Way of Heaven
and the Doorway of the Mysterious Female
opens at last to the Great Inner Room
alone in the Age of Spirits
III.
Ningizzida, Lord of the Tree of Truth, consort of Mother Goddess Eve.
Black Time, womb and tomb of the world.
A week of years, a little life.
The order of Mother Right.
Self-moving power, earthbound serpent destiny.
Cursed yet gravid earth, defeated, subdued, never wholly absorbed.
Do you not hear the deeper song?
God the Son, slain and resurrected child,
born of caves, fathered by doves and snakes,
incarnate like Dionysus in bread and wine.
Goddess of the land of youth,
in perilous coracles,
Moon-Bull and Lion-Bird, Mother of the Minotaur,
female system of seriousness.
Death which is no death; life to all creatures of the earth
crescent moon of rebirth
in the drumbeat of time.
Nobodaddy, Lord of the Tree of Life, Lord of tides, master of serpents.
Ladder of God and a bride at the well,
in gowns of changeable jade,
sarsen circled,
hatched from the egg of Night,
serpent at the end of the world.
Twelve thousand years, the span of the world.
Read! Read, and let pagans kiss their fingers at the moon.
Protect me, Silence!,
as blood pours from the wound as grain —
grain from the marrow of the Ox —
like water from the rock struck by Mithra,
and Moses,
for such mighty motions cannot be carried on so swiftly in silence,
a cosmology of bounded time.
Who spreads light in the assembly on the mountain?
Who foretells the ages of the moon?
How long will your thoughts be fixed upon the lowly earth?
Do you not see what lofty regions you have entered?
Ea, Water God, Tenth Sign of the Zodiac, Oannes, Ioannes, Johannes, Yohahan, John.
Nothing is invisible.
I am the Light that is above them all.
Lift up the stone, you will find me there.
Glory be to thee, Divine Spirit!
Glory be to thee, Holy One!
Glory be to thee, Transfiguration! - Amen!
In your drive toward wisdom, you have me for a bed: rest upon me.
You will know who I am when I depart.
I am the Wine-drinker, the Wine, and the Cup-bearer!
I will be saved, and I will save! — Amen!
Proclaim!
IV.
Waste Land of the Fisher King,
Grail Maiden, dark knight of the soul.
Waters of the fountains of inspiration:
Gottfried, Wolfram, Wagner, Joyce: infinite resources of the source abyss of history itself.
Violate the King's bed as rampaging boar.
Old King Bear, with Wyrd, in Hel.
In the middle of the road of our life,
sacrificed, resurrected, an offering to oneself:
for the path is to the left,
and God's knowledge is the cause of things.
Music of the Land Below Waves
Player of the Lyre, Poseidon, Shiva, Satan,
drunk beneath wild hills
at the time of the sweet sighs
O Truly Blessed Night!
The Graces in the Abyss
Cleave a piece of wood, I am there
Lift up the stone and you will find Me there
I am the Self, established in the hearts of all beings
I am the gambling of cheats
I am victory.
I am the dreamery creamery butter.
Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast!
at the still point of the turning world
there the dance is!
Eternal Child!
Three tongues of Mercurial fire:
blackness decay disintegration;
an elementary matter
the urine of chaste boys.
Prodigious crack of thunder!
blackening separation pandemonium
incompatible dreamson reduced to shadow
a discipline of intentional regression,
the awful daring of a moment's surrender,
blank as a piece of uncarved wood.
Bold splash
A breath disturbs heaven's clarity.
Dreamer of the world-illusion
not this, not this
woman without navel
aleph, alpha: nought, nought, one
Apollo, Dionysus, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche:
the four quarters of Being.
Maimed King
metal of the moon
Lord of Beasts
Orpheus-Christ
god of the present
Terror-Joy
Turner of the Wheel
beneath hazel trees of knowledge
seeking the stone of wisdom
death and birth, time and eternity, the slayer and the slain
Nes? Yo?
Uncle, what ails thee?
Munsalvaesche, interior voice,
force God by defiance to make His Trinity grant your will.
For distinctly different were their duadestinies.
Marvel Bed of bolts and darts
signs of an unfolding dimension of nature
victory of the cross
Knight of Rueful Countenance
Oh God! Oh God! This dawn, how quickly it comes.
Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss.
I am in the east and in the west, I am above and below, I am this whole world.
Word made Flesh of the dragon Thou Shalt!
Borrowed symbols, borrowed god:
eat their magic! swallow their spirits! attain the faunal hour! Old Adam disintegrated
who breaks the limbs' strength.
Common-to-All-Men
the become and the set-fast: the dead
Shining One
Beginning and End of beings
Haunted Inkbottle
formless forms of Dreamless Sleep
Mother Dark, Mother Night
All's set for restart after the silence.
in sleep without finding, in death without finding
What is the meaning of a bubble from the bottom of the sea?
Let go the past: die to the world!
Thabronit!
(Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!)