Ye shall gather store of women .
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"The Guesthouse
This being human is a guesthouse
Every morning a new arrival
A joy, a depression, a meanness
Some momentary awareness
Comes as an unexpected visitorWelcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows
Who violently sweep your house
Empty of its furniture
Still treat each guest honorably
He may be cleaning you out
For some new delight!The dark thought, the shame, the malice
Meet them at the door laughing
And invite them in
Be grateful for whoever comes
Because each has been sent
As a guide from the beyond
~ Rumi (Translated by Coleman Barks)"That is Beautiful, and true to the letter, Love under law, love under will
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@Solitarius said
"You've sold it to me.
Can you perhaps provide me with a short reading list? I'm not familiar with sufi philosophy and don't really know where to start."Idries Shah wrote "The Sufis", though I'd start with the poetry of Rumi. You can Google lots of it, or Ebay & Amazon have loads of books by him if you prefer, and they're ALL good. There's one called "Love poems" or "Love Poetry", something like that (I don't have it on hand) and I think it's a nicely focused collection. The wonderful thing about the Sufis is that the soul of that Beauty (I'm inclined to substitute the word "Tipareth") is all you need to learn about them!
I think I have a PDF of Shah's book round here somewhere if you'd like.
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@danica said
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@Seraph said
".... There's one called "Love poems" or "Love Poetry", something like that (I don't have it on hand) and I think it's a nicely focused collection. "www.4shared.com/document/y84kcEZB/24981522-Rumi-The-Book-of-Love.htm"
Exactly the one, thank you!
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Since I last saw this thread I have read quite a lot of Rumi, you really sold it to me, I have also introduced some of my friends and Brethren to his writings.
Life changing, my whole attitude towards love and pain is now a source of joy rather than suffering, or should I say, joyful suffering.
Thank you. -
The verse says:
"Ye shall gather goods and store of women and spices; ye shall wear rich jewels; ye shall exceed the nations of the earth in splendour & pride; but always in the love of me, and so shall ye come to my joy."We are being given guidance to be fruitful in our lives and endeavors so that we may come to the joy of Nuit. So that we can reach our individual potentials. It is not simply mundane collection of humanly affairs plagued by the duality of gender and its attendant issues, these are instructions to bear and enjoy the fruit of our lives.
"If this be not aright; if ye confound the space-marks, saying: They are one; or saying, They are many; if the ritual be not ever unto me: then expect the direful judgments of Ra Hoor Khuit!"
If we lose sight of our potential then the ritual (life) is no longer always in the love of Her.
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This guy did:
news.aol.co.uk/uk-news/story/cult-leader-had-sex-with-girl/1572707
and now he's in the dock. Centre of Pestilence indeed!
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@Alrah said
"Ye shall gather store of women.
If you take the time to try and understand each woman you meet, to mirror their cognition, to reflect upon their nature, to try and see a small part of the Goddess in every woman, and to store each woman in your memory, then the full essence of the Goddess will emerge.
If you only look at the image of woman that the media sells you then you'll never see her."
I always see the goddess.
There is no law beyond Do what thou wilt.
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There are way too many posts to wade through to get up to speed on this thread, so fuck it. I'm just gonna jump in at the end as if I know everything that has already happened.
the full quote:
"But to love me is better than all things: if under the night-stars in the desert thou presently burnest mine incense before me, invoking me with a pure heart, and the Serpent flame therein, thou shalt come a little to lie in my bosom. For one kiss wilt thou then be willing to give all; but whoso gives one particle of dust shall lose all in that hour. Ye shall gather goods and store of women and spices; ye shall wear rich jewels; ye shall exceed the nations of the earth in splendour & pride; but always in the love of me, and so shall ye come to my joy. I charge you earnestly to come before me in a single robe, and covered with a rich headdress. I love you! I yearn to you! Pale or purple, veiled or voluptuous, I who am all pleasure and purple, and drunkenness of the innermost sense, desire you. Put on the wings, and arouse the coiled splendour within you: come unto me!"
The list, "Ye shall gather goods and store of women and spices; ye shall wear rich jewels; ye shall exceed the nations of the earth in splendour & pride" is hypothetical, and could be anything—store of men, match box cars, mountain climbing achievements, anything.
The important part for me is the injunction that no matter what you do, it must be a devotional act.
It's really not all that different from the advice given by Krishna to Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita. Arjuna is about to start a war where brother will kill brother and the earth will be left burnt and broken. Arjuna has doubts—can this be the right thing to do? Krishna tells him he was born to be a warrior, that is his true will, so he should do it. The only thing he has to remember is not to lose himself in the act, but in all things, to love Krishna. This is one way of achieving non-attachment, working without lust of result, etc...
The list will be different for every man and every woman.
EDIT: the key for me is the phrase "with a pure heart." How is it possible to have this purity in this world?
Love and Will
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@Alrah said
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@Follower said
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@Middleman said
"Doesn't purity in this case mean 'singularity of intent'? Good thread."Another variant may be perfect balance."
Yet another variant could be a perfectly balanced singularity of intent.
"How big is big? This is the idea behind the 'in the world,' active yoga's—karma, bhakti. Much of The Book of the Law can be viewed as a Thelemic yoga along these lines—do what you gotta do, but do it this way.
Concerns about the political correctness of your actions are misplaced if your actions are unreservedly offered up to the goddess as so many boxes of chocolate and bouquets of flowers. I'm certain she likes flowers!
"...to love me is better than all things..."
So why be content to own the Cadillac for oneself? The real party begins after you sign the title over to her and she invites you back to her place for a drink!
Love and Will
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@Chris Hanlon said
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Crowley was a great poet. His prose sings like music, like an aria.
The goods are the riches and valuables that a woman is in charge of for the household. The head of the house, the châtelain, had the keys for all the storage of valuables of food and other things. Just another allusion to gviing up all for the kiss of Nuit, or the experience of the divine.
Think that's it?
"That helps me a lot. I had thought that it meant that one had to gather women as if women were chattel. This troubled me, and all I could think was to try to forgive some sexist attitude for his time period or something.
"Ye shall gather goods and store of women and spices"
So the women are in charge of the goods and the spices, OK, that makes more sense and I feel better about it.
Thank you. -
@AliceNui said
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@Chris Hanlon said
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Crowley was a great poet. His prose sings like music, like an aria.
The goods are the riches and valuables that a woman is in charge of for the household. The head of the house, the châtelain, had the keys for all the storage of valuables of food and other things. Just another allusion to gviing up all for the kiss of Nuit, or the experience of the divine.
Think that's it?
"That helps me a lot. I had thought that it meant that one had to gather women as if women were chattel. This troubled me, and all I could think was to try to forgive some sexist attitude for his time period or something.
"Ye shall gather goods and store of women and spices"
So the women are in charge of the goods and the spices, OK, that makes more sense and I feel better about it.
Thank you."But it doesn't make grammatical sense; it's a very strained interpretation. The expression "store of X" has existed for a very long time in the English language, and has always and only meant just what it seems to mean -- a collection of property at one's disposal. In this case, "women and spices" are the property. I wish we could white-wash this and other verses to make them more palatable, but I think we just have to be honest and admit a trace of residual sexism in our holy book.
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"Ye shall gather goods and store of women and spices; ye shall wear rich jewels; ye shall exceed the nations of the earth in splendour & pride; but always in the love of me, and so shall ye come to my joy."
Of course, this is symbolic. This is a formula for worshiping Nuit. That's the essential point of this verse. You gather things of value (whether material or not), and then you exchange them for a spiritual blessing. You're transforming potential energy into kinetic energy. You're arousing the coiled serpent.
If we're talking grammar, then the question I have is why the verse says, "store of women" instead of just "women".
The term is probably more common as "store of value". Money, jewels, spices have each been at different times "stores of value" because a large amount of value can be concentrated in a smaller space. However, the actual value is not inherent; it is in what those things can be exchanged for.
If we're following the "store of" line of reasoning, then IMO "store of women" would be something be some concentrated essence of femaleness...
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93 93/93
I love this quote.
"The important part for me is the injunction that no matter what you do, it must be a devotional act.
It's really not all that different from the advice given by Krishna to Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita. Arjuna is about to start a war where brother will kill brother and the earth will be left burnt and broken. Arjuna has doubts—can this be the right thing to do? Krishna tells him he was born to be a warrior, that is his true will, so he should do it. The only thing he has to remember is not to lose himself in the act, but in all things, to love Krishna. This is one way of achieving non-attachment, working without lust of result, etc...
"There is no law beyond Do what thou wilt.
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@AvshalomBinyamin said
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If we're talking grammar, then the question I have is why the verse says, "store of women" instead of just "women"."You make it sound as though "grammar" were some exotic and fringe way of interpreting a text
The text of the Book of the Law is undoubtedly symbolic, it has many layers of meaning, and to fixate on the literal meaning of any passage is to miss the point. Nonetheless, to get to the symbolic meaning, you have to understand the literal meaning.Suppose I have an image of a cross. Person A says, "That's a symbol of light," and person B says, "No, it's a symbol of sacrifice," then you have an honest disagreement. But if person C says, "No, that's not a cross; it's a Formula 1 race car" -- well, that person would just be wrong.
I won't express an opinion as to the deeper meaning of "store of women and spices", but I doubt you will find the deeper meaning if you don't start with the surface meaning. These are ordinary English words arranged in an ordinary grammatical sequence, and yield an ordinary meaning -- something like "a collection or warehouse of women and spices that one has at one's disposal". It does not mean "spice that one has given over to the disposal of women" any more than it means "let's make a peanut butter sandwich."
This is important to me because The Book of the Law is my holy book, and I would like to think that all its images and metaphors are in accord with my personal ethical sensibilities, especially when I am presenting the book to somebody else -- but the fact is, they are not, and I have to deal with that. This particular passage bothered me so much, I looked up "store" in the online Oxford English Dictionary -- one of the most reliable and authoritative references for the history of English words and their use -- in hopes that the word had some special meaning that I was not aware of, but it does not. In fact, the phrase "store of (something)" is common enough in the history of English that it had its own little paragraph in the dictionary.
I apologize for going off for so long about something as boring as language, but language is very near and dear to my heart. And for Horus's sake, somebody's got to care! I realize I'm an old fogey and "spelling is defunct" and that thee wave uv thee fyuchur iz 2 hell with speling n' grammer n 2 rite n txt msg stile or like thee timple uv sickick L82r8s. But if you want to understand Crowley's writings, inspired and otherwise, you need to understand his language, which was not the English of the 21st century internet. He was educated in the 19th century and had a preference for the language forged by the poets and scholars of the 16th century. In other words, it was a bit old-fashioned even in his day, and today has to be treated to a certain extent like a foreign language. At any rate, it would pay the earnest Thelemite to learn to read Spencer, the King James Bible, etc., and to practice love under will with a good dictionary.
Okay, I'll shut up now.