The Complete Simon Iff

by Aleister Crowley

  "'The Book of the Heart's Blood of the Lily of God.' Do you understand?" he asked.

  "I was never one for this highbrow stuff."

  "Well," said Iff, "it means that she regarded herself as a being divinely pure, perhaps even uniquely pure, and that she had pressed out her sorrow, like rich wine, into this book. Let us go on."

  The second page bore the author's name, and a date: May, 1891. Beneath this, in brackets, 'My first poem'. Then the title 'The Angel of the Sun.' Simon proceeded to read it.

  'I am he the soul that dwelleth

  In the Sun mine habitation.

  I must cloke myself with glory,

  Clouds of burning flame and glory,

  Lest the people of the planets

  See my face and die of terror,

  Hear my voice and die of terror,

  O be silent! O be silent!

  Such a little slip might slay them,

  Just a glimpse or just a whisper.

  For I am the soul that dwelleth

  In the Sun mine habitation.'

  "Now what is the meaning of this poem? Why does a girl of twelve or thirteen occupy herself with such ideas? She uses the first person, yet who is speaking? The most glorious being possible to imagine, so glorious that the photosphere of the Sun himself is a thick mask upon his face. Yet this being is afraid! He fears that mortals might see or hear him, and die of terror.

  "Now what does this really mean? Here is a child of unusual plainness, rather despised, feeling herself already an inferior person..."

  "Why yes, she was never of any account."

  "So, being sensitive, she created a psychic compensation. She deliberately retired from reality, and identified herself with what is really little less than God. Probably she would have made it God but that the idea of Him was bound up too closely with the minds of the people whom she hated, and so had become repellent. It was God, too, who had made her weak, plain, feminine; so she had to invent a 'Saviour' of her own. She had to be very careful, too, not to let out this secret life of hers; so she invents a reason for her own shyness and reticence and fear of others. If those who tortured her guessed for one second Who She Really Was, they would fall dead with terror. Thus her social weakness is pictured as the virtue--she was taught to consider it as such--of compassion. Let us turn over."

  The next poem was entitled 'Knut Olaf' with a date two years later. It was in ballad form, quatrains, and began by describing the power of this great Norseman, how he slew the Dragon of the Sea, and made war on giants and kings. At last he comes to America; the Red Man resists him in vain. But he meets his Waterloo in the end. "Now, listen to this particularly," said Simon, who had been reading out only a few lines here and there to give the general idea.

  "'Spare me', the father cried, 'and I

  Will give thee for thy bride

  My daughter, the White Butterfly,

  That is my country's pride.'

  'Nay, I will take her 'gainst thy will,

  For she is beautiful.'

  Knut Olaf swung his axe with skill,

  And split the father's skull.

  But then came forth White Butterfly

  Dressed in her silk attire;

  Knut Olaf laughed 'Come here, and I

  Will tell thee my desire.'

  She came, but oh! to end my tale!

  Never a word she said.

  She simply lifted her white veil.

  The Viking fell down dead."

  "Exactly the same idea as in the first poem; but we have a touch of the sex-symbol, as she is now of age to use it. Here is the incarnation of all might and violence, the world-conqueror, slain in an instant by the mere lifting of White Butterfly's veil. Kindly note the complete absence of any sense of humour in this passage! Note too, please, that there is a distinct feeling of satisfaction in allowing Olaf to split her father's skull. Let us go on."

  The third poem in the book was entitled 'A Dream.' It began, shamelessly enough:

  "Here, where the forest primeval once sheltered the tent of the redman."

  and continued, less obviously,

  "We may be thankful to see nice farms and churches and railroads,

  Yet, in the night there may come, to those who are fitted to see them,

  People pure in the heart, like the moon, some dreams.

  And I dreamt one,

  And I cannot imagine at all why it seemed so exceedingly vivid.

  It was in the fall of the year, and the trees

  were losing their verdure.

  I went through the woods, and the leaves on the

  ground were all of them corpses.

  Then I came to the town where my father was

  selling a diamond,

  But nobody wanted to buy it; but then came a

  squab, and he took it

  Away in his beak to the woods, and buried it

  under the corpses

  And sat on it all through the winter, and then,

  when I wanted to know most

  Of all what would happen, I woke, and I found

  that the pillow was moistened

  With tears. Ah, what did it mean? It was really

  exceedingly vivid."

  "I want only to call attention to the fact that in the first scene she is the one live being in a world of corpses; in the next, her father is trying to sell a diamond, a clean and precious jewel, unvalued except by a squab (or dove; connected in her mind, of course, with the Holy Ghost). She herself has really disappeared in this scene; in truth, she has become the diamond. And though she is sure that some glorious fortune is in store for her, the feeling of doubt enters, and prevents a triumphant conclusion to the dream, which therefore makes her cry.

  "Hullo, here's prose. August 1895.

  "'Diarfa saw eh LLA fo em debbor sah rehtaf ym niatrec si ti

  llik ot hguone gnorts eb dluohs yeht tsel syob owt evah ot

  eht meeder ot nesohc ma I live lla si nam suht mih

  deyortsed eb lliw nam snaem siht yb ytinigriv yb dlrow'*

  "She may have thought that a sentence with the words written backwards was undecipherable. Poe is unknown in America as yet. Now what is the next lyric? 'The Waterfall.'

  "'I loathe thy ceaseless clamour in my ears,

  O waterfall! I would thy noisome flood

  That speaks to me of evil and of fears

  Were turned, as Moses turned the Nile, to blood.

  Nay, I would rather have thee turned to glassy steel,

  So to beat back the Sun in proud disdain;

  For in thy motion and thy noise I feel

  Only the threat of everlasting pain.'

  "In a dream or a phantasy water usually means maternity. That idea is to her the climax of horror. Birth is the device by which nature perpetuates suffering--for to her the world now appears wholly evil. Of course, she did not know what she was writing. She thought of it only as a 'poem'. But to us who have the key the reference to Moses is highly significant. The blood is the safeguard. Yet there is still danger from which the subconscious mind shrinks. Nothing can really alleviate its anxiety but the cessation of the water altogether, its transformation into a glassy steel, which shall repel the assault even of the sun, the greatest of creative forces. It is a symbolic confirmation of the cipher, at least of part of it. Here's another lyric, same month: 'The Sun'.

  "'O father of all woe, I will not deign

  To plead with thee for universal pain.

  I will remind thee only that thy face,

  Red robber, is no match for icy space.

  The time is coming when thy race so rash

  Is run, and thou a crust of cinder ash.'

  "Same story; the father had robbed her; she hates his energy, his superiority, his power; and she delights to think that he will die. And what is it that will overcome him? Empty space, cold, formless, infinite. She is no longer merely the angel of the sun, who wishes only to avoid striking men dead. She is space itself. She will strike the sun himself
dead, and she rejoices in it.

  "This change is brought about by her experience of the world. As a child she was still hopeful of acquiring superiority in the world of reality. Now she knows that it is hopeless. Her vanity-phantasy is not strong enough to compensate; she hates her torturers, and begins to concentrate that hatred upon her father, who robbed her, by one of those mysterious sex-magic tricks, of her right to be a boy."

  "But this is rubbish," broke in Smith. "Mamie was very fond of her father. And she didn't want to be a boy; she was always boasting of her womanhood."

  "I said so. Men were all evil to her. Yet she did want to be a boy before she invented these phantasies. Think now. Go back to your earliest memories."

  "That's so, by Gosh. I remember it all now. And then one day she shut up like a clam, and got furious when I teased her."

  "And she only developed the hate of her father when she was old enough to have all this subconscious stuff thoroughly suppressed. She would have been horrified if you had told her what those poems meant. And yet the cipher is plain enough. It was dictated by the neurotic's need of confession, and put in cipher by his parallel need of secrecy. Cheer up! I know it sounds mysterious and contradictory, and not a little unlike humbug; but I've a hunch that we'll come out to a Fact with a capital F before we're through this book. Come along; let's skip a little--suppose we find something about nineteen five or six. What's this? The title-poem! 'The Lily of God.'

  "'There is a lake--'tis everlasting space,

  And on its windless calm a lily flowers

  Alone, no sunlight to insult her face,

  No Time to violate her with his hours.

  Ages and ages ere she was a bud

  God made her, then she could not well be less

  Than he, and so she sucked away his blood,

  And bleached it for the dye of her own dress.

  Then she pressed out that purity to still

  Her soul, for music also is a curse.

  She wrote the triumph of her virgin will

  Over the ruins of the universe.'

  "In this poem the phantasy has fulfilled itself. She has destroyed God, and remains sole and supreme; she even pretended to despise the record of her victory. Note also how definite is the conception; we shall find, perhaps, that in this year (1904 it is) she is more independent in reality. Possibly her father was actually sick."

  "Well, this is sure some stunt. Funny stuff, I call it. Dad had the grip that winter, and laid up for a month. Never quite the same man, to my way of thinking."

  "Let us go on. Whew! here's Buddhism!"

  "Why yes, 'bout that time she was plumb crazy on Nirvany or some such heathen god."

  "This is her 'Ode to Nirvana'.

  "'O vast abyss! Engulf all seeming form

  Within thine amphitheatre of ice!

  Shield me from Life's inhospitable storm,

  And slay me Mara's dazzling cockatrice!

  O Nirvana! blest Nirvana!

  Save me from the woes of Prana!'

  "Verse Two!" announced Simon Iff, with a savage look at Miss Mollie Madison, who was making things excessively difficult for his self-control, though (as she subsequently swore by all red-headed gods) she was doing her utmost to preserve propriety.

  "'O bliss of nothingness! Thy silence great

  Hath swallowed moon and planet, star and

  sun;

  With the inexorable Urge of Fate,

  Thy Virgin Nought hath mastered Father One.

  O Nirvana! blest Nirvana!

  Shila! Kshanti! Virya! Dana!'

  "There's a lot more, but we have enough here. It's the same thought, in a jargon of misunderstood Theosophy, and a great show of sham learning introduced to give her the sensation of superiority of knowledge or scholarship: more psychic compensation. But the main idea is this vast formless negative icy sphere--she's compelled to the formula she hates, poor girl!--which swallows up the fire and energy of the father, not by construction but by annihilation. Observe, she is no longer content to have his skull split; she wants him to disappear without leaving the minutest trace. Oh we're getting near nineteen seven, be sure!"

  William Smith had become strangely excited. He trembled continusouly, and the sweat ran over his face.

  Simon Iff turned the pages. The poems were more confident and positive as he proceeded. There was one that ended:

  "The Curse, the Everlasting

  Curse,

  Swept beyond the Universe."

  Another was on sympathetic magic, as if she had been reading "The Golden Bough". One verse read:

  "Every boy that fills a cup

  Winds eternal mischief up,

  And every girl that breaks a rod

  Throws his malice back to God."

  "Something of Black in that, somehow, eh? Never mind; it shows she was thinking of doing a magic ceremony. Just as you can raise a wind by blowing in some ceremonial fashion, so you could blot out the infinite evil if you could blot out some person whom you took to symbolize the cause of evil. In this case, the father. Now--come to the critical year--hullo! This s great. Words no longer seem adequate to the conception. So we find a symbolic picture."

  It was a very simple drawing, entirely crude and untutored, but with a curious fascination of evil such as one often sees in 'automatic' or 'spirit' pictures. The whole page was covered with stars, and the Milky Way ran through it like a snake. Part of this group was thickened into the likeness of a shark, on whose head was set the crescent moon. With open jaw it was rushing upon the sun, to whom the artist had given not only features, but thin arms and legs. In one arm he was brandishing a stick. The picture was full of movement; a most skillful artist might have been less successful in this respect than this untrained woman.

  At the bottom of the page appeared the earth, a hilly landscape with clouds masking the sky. There was a house upon a hill-side, and between the house and the hill a rude bridge of planks. Under the bridge was a small black circle, and in the air above it a broken stick.

  Simon Iff did not take long to read the message.

  "Here," said he, "we see an attempt to picture the relations between heaven and earth. The shark Nirvana, with the Chaste Moon for the crest, is going to swallow the Sun with his symbol of authority and paternity. The corresponding facts on earth concern this house on the hill. Mr. Smith, was there a plank gangway to the back door of the house?"

  "Why yes, Mr. Iff. There was a shallow cave in the shale where things were kept for coolness. The planks saved one from walking over the rough shale, which was pretty wet, too, most times, from a spring somewhere."

  "Then if you will get into my car, I will take you to the grave of your father."

  Smith, like a man in a trance, followed, with Miss Mollie Madison and the coroner to bring up the rear. He had a new shock of terror when Dobson produced pick and shovel from beneath his seat. He perceived that all had been understood and foreseen.

  The planks of the gangway were already rotted. They broke at once under Dobson's vigorous blows.

  "Dig a six-inch channel," said the magician, "it won't be very deep."

  He was right. The loose shale flew high as Dobson shovelled. Less than a foot beneath the surface he struck a hard smooth surface. It was cement. A few strokes disclosed a circular plate of this material. The chauffeur took the pick, and broke it. He stopped, and flung the loose pieces to one side. A broken stick, all rotten, lay upon the skeleton of a man.

  It dawned suddenly upon William Smith that this whole operation had been designed to trap him. He trembled. He read something akin to his own apprehension in the eye of the coroner, who was regarding him askance.

  "I swear by God," he cried solemnly, "that I had not art nor part in this."

  "My dear man," returned Simon, "I never supposed for one moment that you had. Your alibi is perfect."

  "Alibi!" stammered Smith, more alarmed than ever. "I don't know what you mean. I was here."

  "A moral alibi, friend
Smith! Your mind was not on sharks and suns; you were cantering away to Boston, having a glorious time with the girls. You had conquered reality; you did not need any psychic compensation for a sense of inferiority." He extended his hand; Smith took it, with tears in his eyes.

  "Understand, please," said the magician, "that I knew this whole story, all but the location of the body, before I had been three hours in Potter's Place.

  "It was certain that your father had met with foul play; his psychology was all against a voluntary disappearance. And how could he have avoided the family? And why should he not have disappeared in some simple way, by going off to Boston, and crossing the Atlantic, for instance? Besides, he had touched no money for such a journey. It was then clear that one of the family was responsible; perhaps two, or even all three. But the active agent must have been Mamie; it was she who followed her father into the house, and was alone with him for five minutes or so. She could easily arrange the details: a place of concealment for the body, possibly a temporary affair like her trunk. Anything would serve, since no one would think to look for a hidden corpse, but only for a living man. She had then merely to hide his stick, so as to detain him in the house, and give her an excuse to go back and do the murder. More likely still, she may have hidden the stick as a symbolic gesture--and simply seen and taken the opportunity--despite her conscious will--when it presented itself. Some casual word of the old man may have fired the hidden train of gunpowder.