The Ecstasy Of Life And Death
"Then saith the prophet and slave of the beauteous one:
Who am I, and what shall be the sign? So she answered
him bending down, a lambent flame of blue,
all-touching, all-penetrant, her lovely hands upon the
black earth, & her lithe body arched for love, and her
soft feet not hurting the little flowers: Thou knowest!
And the sign shall be my ecstasy, the consciousness of
the continuity of existence, the omnipresence of my
body.
"Then the priest answered & said unto the Queen of
Space, kissing her lovely brows, and the dew of her
light bathing his whole body in a sweet smelling
perfume of sweat; O Nuit, continuous one of Heaven, let
it be ever thus: that men speak not of Thee as One but
as None; and let them speak not of thee at all, since
thou art continuous!
"None breathed the light, faint and faery, of the
stars, and two. For I am divided for love's sake, for
the chance of union. This is the creation of the world,
that the pain of division is as nothing, and the joy of
dissolution all." Liber al vel Legis 1:26-30
I was fortunate to have spent my childhood in a rural
Michigan area where I had access to untouched forest,
streams and nature within easy walking distance of our
home.
I fondly remember walking through the woods in late
spring, just as the trees, the ferns, the brush and all
of nature was awakening after a long winter of sleep. I
remember a sensation of total exhilaration, of almost
hearing the sound of the sap flowing through the veins
of the plants and trees, the leaves opening to the sun,
the ferns around me unfolding. I looked down and there,
at my feet in the humus of the ground, a small cluster
of snap dragons, peaking out from among the other
foliage.
It was never in my mind that all of this beauty was
getting its energy from the compost of the ground. The
compost, of course, was the rotting corpses of things
once living.
I only knew that day, as I have known at numerous other
moments like this, that I was truly standing in the
presence of the energy of all Creation. What I did not
understand, even though I sensed it deep within me, was
that this "God" was not an external grandfather looking
down from above. It was a living force that overpowered
me, and it included me!
It was in that supreme moment that I understood the
ecstasy of being in the presence of Nuit, "her soft
feet not hurting the little flowers."
Aleister Crowley's said in his comment about these
verses that he thought they implied "some mystic bond"
between the human priest and Nuit that brought about an
interaction of "divine ecstasy."
Because Nuit describes herself as bending down to touch
the Earth, just as she is portrayed in the picture on
the Stele of Revealing, Crowley suggests that the
verses are a "direct translation of the first section
of the stele. It conceals a certain secret ritual, of
the highest rank. . ."
I tend to think Crowley is quite right in this. Not
only is it an interpretation of the events pictured on
the stele, it is a description of the ritual that the
priest, Ankh-af-na-khonsu, performed either before or
during the act of passing from life to death.
Nuit explains: "For I am divided for love's sake, for
the chance of union. This is the creation of the world,
that the pain of division is as nothing, and the joy of
dissolution all."
The Egyptian priest, who sacrificed himself to carry
his important message into the future, experienced
extreme joy of dissolution. For him, death was ecstasy
and there was no pain.
The word dissolution means decay, decomposition and
death. All life feeds upon the dead carcasses of former
living things. That is the reality of our existence.
The cycle of life on this planet depends upon the death
of those bodies that exist before ours.
In parallel verses in Chapter Two, Hadit describes
himself as "the secret Serpent coiled about to spring:
in my coiling there is joy. If I lift up my head, I and
my Nuit are one. If I droop down mine head, and shoot
forth venom, then is rapture of the earth, and I and
the earth are one.
"There is great danger in me; for who doth not
understand these runes shall make a great miss. He
shall fall down into the pit called Because, and there
he shall perish with the dogs of Reason," Hadit warns.
Both verses suggest a sensual union between male and
female for the creation of life. Yet hidden in Chapter
One, and more clearly visible in the second chapter,
are images of death and also danger for those who
follow this path without understanding.
Notice the moment when Ankh-af-na-khonsu questioned his
own path. He asked "Who am I and what shall be the
sign?"
Nuit assured him that the sign would be pure joy and
ecstasy. And thus Ankh-af-na-khonsu entered a holy
realm of the secret powers to become Aiwass, and the
author of The Book of the Law.
Visit the author's web site at: perdurabo10.tripod.com
or contact him at: jdona999@bau-net.com
