31 August (Spirit) Liber LXV, 5:46-47
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46. O Thou who camest from the land of the Elephant, girt about with the tiger's pell, and garlanded with the lotus of the spirit, do Thou inebriate my life with Thy madness, that She leap at my passing.
47. Bid Thy maidens who follow Thee bestrew us a bed of flowers immortal, that we may take our pleasure thereupon. Bid Thy satyrs heap thorns among the flowers, that we may take our pain thereupon. Let the pleasure and pain be mingled in one supreme offering unto the Lord Adonai! -
46. O Thou who camest from the land of the Elephant, girt about with the tiger's pell, and garlanded with the lotus of the spirit, do Thou inebriate my life with Thy madness, that She leap at my passing.
I've read that Dionysus was probably an eastern import, from India. Regardless, the imagery suggests Yesod/Elephant, Tiphareth/Tiger, and Kether/Lotus... The column 'stablished in the void? The prodigious child of Zeus?
The last half is the object of invocation. It's thematic at this point in the text—the relationship of the earth and the spirit—life and intoxication—the reveler and the wine. Still, the text leaves me wondering if the intent is to deliberately excite the gunas. What leaps? The Sulfur—Green Lion? One strategy suggested by the alchemists as a way to control the destructive power of this beast was to cut off its paws, but here...
Maybe she is just the earth.
47. Bid Thy maidens who follow Thee bestrew us a bed of flowers immortal, that we may take our pleasure thereupon. Bid Thy satyrs heap thorns among the flowers, that we may take our pain thereupon. Let the pleasure and pain be mingled in one supreme offering unto the Lord Adonai!
The high and the low, the sacred and the profane, the sacrament and the sacrifice...
The whole feels like a return, after the return. The soul is totally awake now and forever wedded to Adonai, who in their turn, return to this life where there has always been formal divisions between the good and the bad. But now, these divisions are transcended and no difference is made between any one thing and any other thing."Let there be no difference made among you between any one thing & any other thing; for thereby there cometh hurt."
Love and Will