Men, tired of the light, take refuge in the shadow of corporeal substance:
the dream of the void which God fills soon seems to them greater than God himself,
and hell is created.
—Lévi1
i. NEQVAQVAM MORIEMINI
[You shall never die]
A void and a plenitude, an arrow
and a wound, digging the sound of
that tombstone’s echo which becomes for me
a touchstone, refuge for our wandering
gods, this aching pit into which
the cherries of bitter lips fall, cloud and
mist kissing rock to find an echo for
my words, those who work under earth
to heal its impurest inhabitants,
all obscurity flees before you, you
sages who know how to make of
a name such fame that makes men quake, I want
you to want to know me, to lie with me
biblically and sell the slave
masses their own shadows without shame, shades
profaning the sanctity of their heads’
limited space by giving them
nothing taking on the shape of something,
I am the first page of the book of Thoth,
I am the man who does not touch
the ground except with my thoughts, you are hot
flame and evaporate like pure incense,
returning to where you began,
at the bottom of the bowl of heaven,
tears of ink and breath of pain painting grey
the ceiling of this world’s grave from
underneath, from upside down you write with
silver fingertips feigned innocence on
the bellies of clouds, thorning storms
of goat-bearded blackness with broken horns
more abundant and plentiful, even,
than the trembling hands of kings whose
crowns are bent under the crippling weight of
enlightenment, we are doctors who should
be sent to the asylum, who
play with fire near the gunpowder we do
not see, brilliant wandering hierophants
ii. SED ERITIS
[but you will become]
inhaling hell to exhale it,
together we are twins who have bombed our
shells, frail, crackling filaments who act like
omens, throwing out sparks of what
love draws us above those whose hearts, harder
than stone, fall well below our mark, comets
are heroes who only visit
the earth to announce great changes the soul
makes itself new clothes to wear, terrible
revelations taking revenge
upon beauty by redefining it
with knives of words twisting from inside minds
unaccustomed entirely to
the bruised nudity of untranslated
lines of ancient poetry, whenever
I try to deny you, your eyes
glow like those of the audience gawping
at Schröpfer’s last lantern show, shooting down
my own act’s shooting down of your
magic’s advances by firing glimpses
indestructible as the threads that stitch
thick the webs of constellations,
glances indifferent to being spent
on conquests you menace with impatient
ultimatums more than men who
chance tasting your gaping chalice, no point
in waiting since lethargy is death that
has begun but never ends, and
magic is the therapy of the gods
remaking our symbolism, transforming
philosophy into belief
to popularize it, a sharp cry from
a mouth’s bleeding chasm asking is loving
me a probability or
a problem, knowing astrology is
the magical calculation of all
possible quandaries, an art
iii. SICVT DII
[as gods]
and a skill defying superstition
with an underlying logic, stars are
the bent mouths of heaven, regrets
of its ancient senate jettisoning
opinions no century turns back to
mention, an old collection of
brittle-boned auguries burning until
we interpret in our own reflections
the fleeting shapes of fate’s pattern,
either revealing or re-veiling those
most sacred of our hidden thoughts, jaded
mysteries of faith in our Selves
inscribed like god’s law on the stone of our
hearts, profaned when crushed by the weight of deeds
which implicate us as thieves whose
greed exceeds that of Prometheus, each
taking what we want without consulting
these famed oracles whose veins of
specious metal pain turns to blood, a void
and a plenitude, an arrow and a
wound we turn to art, god is an
infinite man, man is a finite god,
and yet god can only be defined by
describing what he is not, god
is a finger tracing my path, a palm
of ash filthying a fist attached to
the mummy of a queen whose sex
has been ravaged by the kisses of asps
whose black skins they have shed to rebandage
the veil of that temple their love
of wisdom had damaged, a prophetess
enthroned in a Baphomet pose, poised on
the edge of ruins of destroyed
civilizations, a Tiresian
tyrannicide whose pleasing men’s only
consolation after life has
been the privilege of knowing at once
iv. SCIENTES BONVM ET MALVM
[knowing good and evil.]
both the pierce and the thrust of the sword of
lust as it goes about making
victims of its sin, that variety
of hindsight informing the foresight of
minds still clothed in skin to erect
columns in their cities to protect them
from us, your fable’s reflection left an
imprint on my light, a newly
accredited legend reigning in my
imagination for a vengeance, and
even though in each heaven I
change my form, the annihilation of
each successive decade since my poor soul’s
rebirth decimates me, and I
know I am worth more than thirty pieces
of silver your memory’s ritual
unearths to purchase what others
call eternal unrest, to magnetize
my chain so that my name does not fade from
the lips of men is the great work
I accomplish well whenever my words
awaken them, verbs opening eyes once
heavily closed to second sight’s
indelible and uncompromising
light, my poetry dividing the herd
into those who cannot be taught,
and those invited to learn, what thought keeps
the whole earth turning on its axis, to
behold that Christ is the sun and
the apostles are the zodiac, to
lead them on the day of atonement as
you did, driving me off into
the wilderness, unable to forget
any of this since love is the void we
created in order to fill
it and how can shadows talk when they have
already been killed? By keeping silent.
__________
1Eliphas Lévi, “Introduction to the Doctrine of High Magic” in “Part One: The Doctrine of High Magic” of The Doctrine and Ritual of High Magic: Translated by Mark Anthony Mikituk: Introduction and Notes by John Michael Greer, published at New York by TarcherPerigee in 2017; page 17.
Jono Borden 