Partial File of the Collection in "The Sword and the Song" -Liber 67- I flung out of chapel and church Temple and hall an meeting-room Venus' Bower and Osiris' Tomb, and left the devil in the lurch, While God got lost in the crowd of gods, And soul went down in the turbid tide Of the metaphysical Lotus-eyed, And I was -- anyhow, what's the odds? [...] Yet by-and-by I hope to weave A song of Anti-Christmas Eve And First- and Second-Beast-er Day. There's one who loves me dearly (vrai!) Who yet believes me sprung from Tophet, Either the Beast or the False Prophet; And by all sorts of monkey tricks Adds up my name to Six Six Six. Retire, good Gallup! In such strife her Superior skill makes _you_ a cipher! Ho! I adopt the number. Look At the quaint wrapper of this book! I will deserve it if I can: It is the number of a Man. Aleister Crowley, from "Ascension Day" in _The Sword of Song_ I find some folks think me (for one) So great a fool that I disclaim Indeed Jehovah's hate for shame That man to-day should not be weaned Of worshipping so foul a fiend In presence of the living Sun, And yet replace him oiled and clean By the Egyptian Pantheon, The same thing by another name. Thus when of late Egyptian Gods Evoked ecstatic periods In verse of mine, you thought I praised Or worshipped them -- I stand amazed. I merely wished to chant in verse Some aspects of the Universe, Summed up these subtle forces finely, And sang of them (I think divinely) In name and form; a fault perhaps -- Reviewers are such funny chaps! I think that ordinary folk, Though, understood the things I spoke. For Gods, and devils too, I find Are merely modes of my own mind! Aleister Crowley, from "Pentecost" in _The Sword of Song_