Corpus Corvidae

Birthed through the Cervix of Suffering
For leaving behind everything that is observed, not only what sense comprehends, but also what the intelligence thinks it sees, it keeps on penetrating deeper until by the intelligence’s yearning for understanding it gains access to the invisible and...

For leaving behind everything that is observed, not only what sense comprehends, but also what the intelligence thinks it sees, it keeps on penetrating deeper until by the intelligence’s yearning for understanding it gains access to the invisible and the incomprehensible, and there it sees God. This is the true knowledge of what is thought; this is the seeing that consists in not seeing because that which is sought transcends all knowledge, being separated on all sides by incomprehensibility, as by a kind of darkness.

“In a very interesting way one is reminded also of the councils, purges, manifestos, and pretensions of the so-called people’s governments of the Iron Curtain province, where the precepts of the Prophet Marx, reinterpreted by an elite of Ulamas, are put forth as the Ijmā of a purely mythical entity, the People. Remarkable too is the power of the symbols even of such a clown-parody of the City of God to work upon the nerves of free individuals outside of the geographical control of census, but in whom the Magian system of sentiments still lives. Like the virtue of the Sacraments of the Roman Catholic Church, which are unaffected by the realities of the world, the fall of Christian empires, the personal lives of the clergy, or the total refutation through science of the mythology on which they rest, so, too, the garment of Islam – and now likewise the People – is of a transcendental order untouched by the realities of time, or by the sins of those upon whose shoulders it descends.”

[…]

“One more remark concerning the contrast of the Jewish, Byzantine, Moslem, and Communist conceptions of the ungainsayable consensus: The first three of these four Magian churches obviously are distinguished from the last in as much as their ultimate appeal is to God, whereas the last takes particular pride in its Robert Ingersoll type of hard-skulled late-nineteenth-century atheism: its sacred object, the Worker, is a mythic being supposed to be incarnate in every factory of the world. But this transfer of the mystique of authority from heaven to a supposed social entity on earth simply adjusts to a modern, secular mode of symbolization the shared concept of an authentic law, known only to those of the faithful in whom orthodox knowledge resides, which is to break into full manifestation when the day or days arrives. Meanwhile, the so-called laws of the nations are but delusions, afflicting all in whose hearts the light has not yet dawned.”

What secret waits for our communion? What arson will we commit with the stolen fires of Heaven?

What secret waits for our communion?
What arson will we commit with the stolen fires of Heaven?

I am who you think I am, and no one else.

I am who you think I am, and no one else.

The first novelty of this radically new teaching lay in its treatment in purely ethical terms of the ultimate nature and destiny of both mankind and the world. In the Orient of India no attempt was ever made to bring into play in the religious field...

The first novelty of this radically new teaching lay in its treatment in purely ethical terms of the ultimate nature and destiny of both mankind and the world. In the Orient of India no attempt was ever made to bring into play in the religious field any principle of fundamental world reform or renovation. The cosmic order of eons, ever cycling in a mighty round of ineluctably returning ages - from eternity, through eternity - would never, by any act of man, be changed from its majestic way. The sun, the moon, the stars in their courses, the various animal species, and the order of the castes of the orthodox Indian social system would remain forever established in their modes; and truth, virtue, rapture and true being lay in doing, as before, whatever had been traditionally done - without protest, without ego, without judgement - precisely as taught. The individual had, therefore, but two courses: one, to accept the entire system and strive to play his part as an actor in the play, competently, without hope or fear; and the other, to resign, disengage himself, and let the play of fools run on. The ultimate Being of being (or, in Buddhist terms, the Void of the phantasmagoria of appearance) lay beyond the reach of ethical judgement– indeed, beyond all pairs of opposites: good and evil, true and false, being and non-being, life and death. So that the wise (as those were termed who had at last arrived, through many lives, at the point of recognizing the futility of hope), “scorched” as we read, “with the fire of an endless round of birth, death, and the rest – like one whose head is on fire rushing to a lake–” either retired to the forest, there to plunge beyond the non-being of being, or else remained in the fire, to be burned willingly to naught through an unremitting giving of themselves, without hope, but with compassion, to futility.

The Raven, the black bird of death with whom the mystic was identified in the first initiation, carried him symbolically beyond the lunar sphere, which was the sign - here as everywhere - of the waxing and waning of the life-round of birth and death:...

The Raven, the black bird of death with whom the mystic was identified in the first initiation, carried him symbolically beyond the lunar sphere, which was the sign - here as everywhere - of the waxing and waning of the life-round of birth and death: the nutritive, vital energies of the vegetal aspect of existence. Identified with the Raven, the mystic imagination left the physical body to the work of change and dissolution, flying, as it were, through the lunar gate, to the second sphere: that of Mercury (Hermes, Thot, Woden), the sphere of occult powers and of magic, and of the wisdom of rebirth.

When the Indo-Aryan chariot fighters, cattle-herders, and Vedic chanters with their pantheon of Aryan gods (Indra, Varuna, Mitra, Vayu, Agni, and the rest), shattered the Indus cities and passed on to the Gangetic plain [c. 1500-100bc], they too were...

When the Indo-Aryan chariot fighters, cattle-herders, and Vedic chanters with their pantheon of Aryan gods (Indra, Varuna, Mitra, Vayu, Agni, and the rest), shattered the Indus cities and passed on to the Gangetic plain [c. 1500-100bc], they too were left on the vine; and their valor, as well as that of their gods, was presently absorbed into the timeless, all-absorbing and regenerating substance of the goddess-mother Kali, to the dreamy drone of “Peace! Peace! Peace! Peace to all living beings!” while the blood of the beheaded victims poured in peace, continuously, as ambrosia, into her maw.

As we climb, we draw nearer to that secret whose final mysteries are hidden in the dust. So with every upward step the chance pattern of the horizon is lost among the mountains, but when we have climbed sufficiently it encircles us on every hand,...

As we climb, we draw nearer to that secret whose final mysteries are hidden in the dust. So with every upward step the chance pattern of the horizon is lost among the mountains, but when we have climbed sufficiently it encircles us on every hand, whatever our point of vantage, with the pure ring that unites us to eternity.

As we ascend to the heights To see a world in decline We shall not fall through this trial But only continue to climb

As we ascend to the heights
To see a world in decline
We shall not fall through this trial
But only continue to climb

The myth can be understood only if it is completely lived from the heart, but to do so makes it impossible to describe objectively.

The myth can be understood only if it is completely lived from the heart, but to do so makes it impossible to describe objectively.

Bursting forth from dark unto light Bridging both the earth and the air And by root, sew night to that burning star Who weathers void by his blaze

Bursting forth from dark unto light
Bridging both the earth and the air
And by root, sew night to that burning star
Who weathers void by his blaze

To hunt the antlered path Twixt naught and dawn Given of the elder gods Returned unto the buried wings Myself to myself Darkness into light …

To hunt the antlered path
Twixt naught and dawn
Given of the elder gods
Returned unto the buried wings
Myself to myself
Darkness into light
…