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Binah, the Mother.
Paragraph 6 whispers the ultimate and dread secret of initiation into his ear,
identifying the vastness of the Most Holy with the obscene worm that gnaws the
bowels of the damned.
NOTES
(36) Death is said by the Arabs to ride a Camel. The Path of Gimel (which
means a Camel) leads from Tiphareth to Kether, and its Tarot trump is the High
Priestess.
(37) UNT, Hindustani for Camel. I.e. Would that BABALON might look on thee
with favour.
153
74
KEFALH OD
CAREY STREET
When NOTHING became conscious, it made a bad
bargain.
This consciousness acquired individuality: a worse
bargain.
The Hermit asked for love; worst bargain of all.
And now he has let his girl go to America, to have
success in life : blank loss.
Is there no end to this immortal ache
That haunts me, haunts me sleeping or awake?
If I had Laylah, how could I forget
Time, Age, and Death? Insufferable fret!
Were I an hermit, how could I support
The pain of consciousness, the curse of thought?
Even were I THAT, there still were one sore
spot
The Abyss that stretches between THAT and
NOT.
Still, the first step is not so far away:
The Mauretania sails on Saturday!
154
COMMENTARY (OD)
Carey Street is well known to prosperous Hebrews and
poor Englishmen as the seat of the Bankruptcy buildings.
Paragraphs 1-4 are in prose, the downward course, and the
rest of the chapter in poetry, the upward.
The first part shows the fall from Nought in four steps; the
second part, the return.
The details of this Hierarchy have already been indicated in
various chapters. It is quite conventional mysticism.
Step 1, the illumination of Ain as Ain Soph Aour; step 2, the
concentration of Ain Soph Aour in Kether; step 3, duality and
the rest of it down to Malkuth; step 4, the stooping of Malkuth
to the Qliphoth, and the consequent ruin of the Tree of Life.
Part 2 show the impossibility of stopping on the Path of
Adeptship.
The final couplet represents the first step upon the Path,
which must be taken even although the aspirant is
intellectually aware of the severity of the whole course. You
must give up the world for love, the material for the moral
idea, before that, in its turn, is surrendered to the spiritual.
And so on. This is a Laylah-chapter, but in it Laylah figures
as the mere woman.
155
75
KEFALH OE
PLOVERS EGGS 38
Spring beans and strawberries are in: goodbye to the
oyster!
If I really knew what I wanted, I could give up
Laylah, or give up everything for Laylah.
But what I want varies from hour to hour.
This wavering is the root of all compromise, and so
of all good sense.
With this gift a man can spend his seventy years in
peace.
Now is this well or ill?
Emphasise gift, then man, then spend, then seventy
years, and lastly peace, and change the intonations
each time reverse the meaning!
I would show you how; but for the moment!
I prefer to think of Laylah.
156
COMMENTARY (OE)
The title is explained in the note, but also alludes to
paragraph 1, the plover's egg being often contemporary with
the early strawberry.
Paragraph 1 means that change of diet is pleasant; vanity
pleases the mind; the idée fixe is a sign of insanity. See
paragraphs 4 and 5.
Paragraph 6 puts the question, Then is sanity or insanity
desirable? The oak is weakened by the ivy which clings
around it, but perhaps the ivy keeps it from going mad.
The next paragraph expresses the difficulty of expressing
thought in writing; it seems, on the face of it, absurd that the
the text of this book, composed as it is of English, simple,
austere, and terse, should need a commentary. But it does so,
or my most gifted Chela and myself would hardly have been at
the pains to write one. It was in response to the impassioned
appeals of many most worthy brethren that we have yielded
up that time and thought which gold could not have bought, or
torture wrested.
Laylah is again the mere woman.
NOTE
(38) These eggs being speckled, resemble the wandering
mind referred to.
157
76
KEFALH OF
PHAETON
No.
Yes.
Perhaps.
O!
Eye.
I.
Hi!
Y?
No.
Hail! all you spavined, gelded, hamstrung horses!
Ye shall surpass the planets in their courses.
How? Not by speed, nor strength, nor power to stay,
But by the silence that succeeds the Neigh!
158
COMMENTARY (OF)
Phaeton was the charioteer of the Sun in Greek mythology.
At first sight the prose of this chapter, though there is only one
dissyllable in it, appears difficult; but this is a glamour cast by Maya. It is
a compendium of various systems of philosophy.
No = Nihilism; Yes = Monism, and all dogmatic systems; Perhaps =
Pyrrhonism and Agnosticism; O! = The system of Liber Legis. (See
Chapter 0.)
Eye = Phallicism (cf. Chapters 61 and 70); I = Fichteanism; Hi! =
Transcendentalism; Y? = Scepticism, and the method of science. No denies
all these and closes the argument.
But all this is a glamour cast by Maya; the real meaning of the prose of
this chapter is as follows:
No, some negative conception beyond the IT spoken of in Chapters 31,
49 and elsewhere.
Yes, IT.
Perhaps, the flux of these.
O!, Nuit, Hadit, Ra-Hoor-Khuit.
Eye, the phallus in Kether.
I, the Ego in Chokmah.
Hi!, Binah, the feminine principle fertilised. (He by Yod.)
Y?, the Abyss.
No, the refusal to be content with any of this.
But all this is again only a glamour of Maya, as previously observed in
the text (Chapter 31). All this is true and false, and it is true and false to
say that it is true and false.
The prose of this chapter combines, and of course denies, all these
meanings, both singly and in combination. It is intended to stimulate
thought to the point where it explodes with violence and for ever.
A study of this chapter is probably the best short cut to Nibbana.
The thought of the Master in this chapter is exceptionally lofty.
That this is the true meaning, or rather use, of this chapter, is evident
from the poetry.
The master salutes the previous paragraphs as horses which, although in
themselves worthless animals (without the epithets), carry the Charioteer in
the path of the Sun. The question, How? Not by their own virtues, but by
the silence which results when they are all done with.
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