30 April - (Earth) Liber LXV, 1:47-49
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**47. There was a maiden that strayed among the corn, and sighed; then grew a new birth, a narcissus, and therein she forgot her sighing and her loneliness.
48. Even instantly rode Hades heavily upon her, and ravished her away.
49. (Then the scribe knew the narcissus in his heart; but because it came not to his lips, therefore was he shamed and spake no more.)
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I'm a bit puzzled by this passage. It doesn't make much sense to me. I've read the commentary by Crowely and it still doesn't strike home.
Possibly this refers to the mythical narcissus rather then the standard definition. The mythological figure being one who refused many maidens' love and instead fell in love with himself. The maiden then either gives birth to or is a witness to the birth of the narcissus. Possibly the maiden turns into the narcissus and she is taken away by Hades.
Seems the sribe didn't know exactly how to describe this either at this point because the scribe is shamed by not knowing how to express it.
EDIT: Read the commentary again - nothing I posted above makes sense..lol. I'll leave it to mean to me that the maiden is within and is taken to the depths of the soul for a union. In this mystery is beauty both dark and secret.
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**47. There was a maiden that strayed among the corn, and sighed; then grew a new birth, a narcissus, and therein she forgot her sighing and her loneliness.
48. Even instantly rode Hades heavily upon her, and ravished her away.
**I assume that corn is a general term denoting grain, probably wheat in this context.
The maiden sighs:
Liber AL 2:17
" Hear me, ye people of sighing!
The sorrows of pain and regret
Are left to the dead and the dying,
The folk that not know me as yet."The narcissus is attributed to the twentieth path of Yod/Virgo/The Hermit; it is that brilliant, secret flame in the lamp of The Hermit, the star burning in the heart of every man and woman—Hadit. Coming to this knowledge is described as a birth; when it happens one forgets the sighing and the loneliness, which is odd because Yod is that secret seed, hidden and apart.
There is a transition from commenting and aesthetic distance—a maiden that strayed among the corn, and sighed—to immediacy and swift experience: forgetting is one of the rivers of the Underworld—Lethe—the ties that bind to the past are broken; enter Hades, infamous ravisher of young maidens in corn fields—experience, raw and immediate. Heraclitus said that Dionysus and Hades are one. The maiden dies and yet experiences life as if for the first time; or life in its virility is a constant death—a feast every day in your hearts in the joy of my rapture 2:42.
49. (Then the scribe knew the narcissus in his heart; but because it came not to his lips, therefore was he shamed and spake no more.)
The silencing of the mind—Enough of Because! 2:33
I don't think the idea is that something is wrong, or that someone is being punished. Rather, it is a necessary education and subjugation of the lower principle. The mind is the slayer of the real; slay the slayer. It is the core of the mind the maiden is possessed by, not the mind, hence the narcissus was in the heart—it did not rise to the lips. The mind is appropriately silenced because it is just one of the caterers at the bridal...mojorisin44, thanks for posting the passage!
Edit: 2:6 ...I am Life, and the giver of Life, yet therefore is the knowledge of me the knowledge of death.
Love and Will
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"**47. There was a maiden that strayed among the corn, and sighed; then grew a new birth, a narcissus, and therein she forgot her sighing and her loneliness.
- Even instantly rode Hades heavily upon her, and ravished her away.
- (Then the scribe knew the narcissus in his heart; but because it came not to his lips, therefore was he shamed and spake no more.)**"
ANALYSIS:
Persephone is the Heh-final in us - the "soul" (in the biological sense), the aspirant at the start of the Path. This passage shows the moment of her puberty: Ceres' daughter, the corn-maiden, steps to womanhood, looks in the pool to see a truer and fuller reflection of herself and, at once, the fires of the depth rise and flare in her and she surgest into her New Life.REFLECTION:
This myth has been with me for decades... I even rewrote Liber Pyramidos at one point, reverting it to its Greek original and making more clear that the aspirant self-initiating was identified as Persephone, swung through her ordeals of confrontation of Hades, then Demeter, then Hermes - before returning to herself, now self-governing and assuming, at will rather than by compulsion, her rightful place as Queen of Hell.So it is difficult for me to look at these passages afresh - they are so much a part of me. In part, I remember that stage of waking to the New Life. In part, I pause from my mundane activities today to set aside what presently passes for my childhood and rise in ardor, more fully myself, to my Angel. My outermost surrenders to the Hidden One, who, indeed, ravishes me away...
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Jim,
would you mind sharing what role (conflict + resolution) the 3 players (Persephone already explained) played in your rewrite of Liber Pyramidos? Reading your post, I jumped to a Hades (Hadit), Demeter (Nuit), Hermes (RHK) relationship, but that was just me seeing 3 and trying to make it fit.
"47 — 48
Persephone, the earth-bound soul. Corn = material nourishment; its result is sorrow. Narcissus = the sexual instinct flowering as Beauty.
Instantly the soul forgets the “corn” and desires the flower, Hades comes and carries her off. Hades is the lord of “Hell,” i.e., the dark and secret but divine Soul within every man and woman. The rape thus means that the desire for Beauty awakes the Unconscious Self who then takes possession of the Soul, and enthrones her, only allowing her return to earth (Knowledge of the material world) at certain seasons, in order to attend to the welfare of mankind."
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@Tinman said
"would you mind sharing what role (conflict + resolution) the 3 players (Persephone already explained) played in your rewrite of Liber Pyramidos? Reading your post, I jumped to a Hades (Hadit), Demeter (Nuit), Hermes (RHK) relationship, but that was just me seeing 3 and trying to make it fit."
Their names are the basis of the original code in the ritual. Alpha Delta Epsilon and Iota are the initials, respectivfely, of Hades, Demeter, Hermes, and Iacchus (Perseophone's brother). They are the equivalencies, in this ritual, of Hoor-Apep, Isis, Thoth, and Asar-un-Nefer, respectively.