The Rite of Luna
The Officers of the Temple
Luna. Silver Robe and Veil, Violin. Artemis. The Lady of the Moon.
Cancer. Amber Robe, Cup. Warden of the Holy Graal.
Taurus. Orange Robe, Bow and Quiver. The Lord of the Bow.
A Nymph. White robe. The Head of the Dragon.
A Satyr. Black Robe. The Tail of the Dragon.
Pan. Black Robe, Tom-tom.
In the East Luna is throned, Cancer on her right, Taurus on her left.
Beyond these the Satyr and the Nymph.
At the apex of a descending Triangle, upon the earth, Pan.
The Rite of Luna
One reciteth The Twelvefold Certitude of God, from 963. The veil is withdrawn.
Cancer
[333-333-333].
Taurus
[333-333-333].
Cancer
[1]. Brother Taurus, what is the hour?
Taurus
Moonrise.
Cancer
[1]. Brother Taurus, what is the place?
Taurus
The Chapel of the Holy Graal.
Cancer
[1]. What is my office?
Taurus
Warden of the Graal.
Cancer
[1]. What is my robe?
Taurus
Chastity.
Cancer
[1]. What is my weapon?
Taurus
Vigilance.
Cancer
[1]. Whom do we serve?
Taurus
The Lady Artemis.
Cancer
[1]. How many are her servants?
Taurus
Nine.
Cancer
[1]. Who are they?
Taurus
Three for the dew; three for the rain; and three for the snow.
Cancer
[1]. Who are the great Officers?
Taurus
Thyself, the Warden of the Holy Graal.
Myself, the Lord of the Bow.
A nymph, a satyr —
Pan
[1]. And Pan!
Cancer
Brother Pan, I command thee to honour our Lady Artemis.
Taurus
Bear the Cup of Libation!
Cancer
[333-333-333].
Pan recites chorus from Swinburne's "Atalanta".
Taurus
The Goddess stirs not.
Cancer
Silence is the secret of our Lady Artemis.
Pan
Hath no man lifted her veil?
Cancer
No man hath lifted her veil.
Taurus
Bear the Cup of Libation!
Cancer
[333-333-333]. It is the hour of sealing up the shrine.
Taurus
Let us banish the spirits of the elements.
Performs the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram and returns.
Bear the Cup of Libation!
Cancer
[333-333-333]. Let us banish the spirits of the planets.
Performs the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Hexagram and returns.
Bear the Cup of Libation!
Pan
[333-333-333]. Let us banish the holy Emanations from the One, lest our Lady’s sleep be stirred.
He banishes the Sephiroth by the appointed Ritual.
Bear the Cup of Libation!
Cancer
[333-333-333]. Brother Taurus, the shrine is well guarded.
Taurus
The shrine is perfectly guarded.
Satyr
Bear the Cup of Libation!
Cancer
[333-333-333].
Pan
Hear me, Lord of the Stars!
For thee I have worshipped ever
With stains and sorrows and scars,
With joyful, joyful endeavour.
Hear me, O lily-white goat!
O crisp as a thicket of Thorns,
With a collar of gold for Thy throat,
A scarlet bow for Thy horns!
Here, in the dusty air,
I build Thee a shrine of yew.
All green is the garland I wear,
But I feed it with blood for dew!
After the orange bars
That ribbed the green west dying
Are dead, O Lord of the Stars,
I come to Thee, come to Thee crying.
The ambrosial moon that arose
With breasts slow heaving in splendour
Drops wine from her infinite snows,
Ineffably, utterly, tender.
O moon! ambrosial moon!
Arise on my desert of sorrow,
That the magical eyes of me swoon
With lust of rain to-morrow!
Ages and ages ago
I stood on the bank of a river,
Holy and holy and holy, I know,
For ever and ever and ever!
A priest in the mystical shrine,
I muttered a redeless rune,
Till the waters were redder than wine
In the blush of the harlot moon.
I and my brother priests
Worshipped a wonderful woman
With a body lithe as a beast’s
Subtly, horribly human.
Deep in the pit of her eyes
I saw the image of death,
And I drew the water of sighs
From the well of her lullaby breath.
She sitteth veiled for ever,
Brooding over the waste.
She hath stirred or spoken never.
She is fiercely, manly chaste!
What madness make me awake
From the silence of utmost eld
The grey cold slime of the snake
That her poisonous body held?
By night I ravished a maid
From her father’s camp to the cave.
I bared the beautiful blade:
I dipped her thrice i’ the wave;
I slit her throat as a lamb’s
That the fount of blood leapt high
With my clamorous dithyrambs,
Like a stain on the shield of the sky.
With blood and censer and song
I rent the mysterious veil:
My eyes gaze long and long
On the deep of that blissful bale.
My cold grey kisses awake
From the silence of utmost eld
The grey cold slime of the snake
That her beautiful body held
But — God! I was not content
With the blasphemous secret of years;
The veil is hardly rent
While the eyes rain stones for tears.
So I clung to the lips and laughed
As the storms of death abated,
The storms of the grievious graft
By the swing of her soul unsated.
Wherefore reborn as I am
By a stream profane and foul,
In the reign of a Tortured Lamb,
In the realm of a sexless Owl,
I am set apart from the rest
By meed of the mystic rune
That reads in peril and pest
The ambrosial moon — the moon!
For under the tawny star
That shines in the Bull above
I can rein the riotous car
Of galloping, galloping Love;
And straight to the steady ray
Of the Lion-heart Lord I career,
Pointing my flaming way
With the spasm of night for a spear!
O moon! O secret sweet!
Chalcedony clouds of caresses
About the flame of our feet,
The night of our terrible tresses!
Is it a wonder, then,
If the people are mad with blindness,
And nothing is stranger to men
Than silence, and wisdom, and kindness?
Nay! let him fashion an arrow
Whose heart is sober and stout!
Let him pierce his God to the marrow!
Let the soul of his God flow out!
Whether a snake or a sun
In his horoscope Heaven hath cast,
It is nothing; every one
Shall win to the moon at last.
The mage has wrought by his art
A billion shapes in the sun.
Look through to the heart of his heart,
And the many are shapes of one!
An end to the art of the mage,
And the cold grey blank of the prison!
An end to the adamant age!
The ambrosial moon is arisen.
I have bought a lily-white goat
For the price of a crown of thorns,
A collar of gold for its throat,
A scarlet bow for its horns;
I have bought a lark in the lift
For the price of a butt of sherry:
With these, and God for a gift,
It needs no wine to be merry!
I have bought for a wafer of bread
A garden of poppies and clover;
For a water bitter and dead,
A foam of fire flowing over.
From the Lamb and his prison fare
And the Owl’s blind stupor, arise!
Be ye wise, and strong, and fair,
And the nectar afloat in your eyes!
Arise, O ambrosial moon,
By the strong immemorial spell,
By the subtle veridical rune
That is mighty in heaven and hell!
Drip thy mystical dews
On the tongues of the tender fauns,
In the shade of initiate yews,
Remote from the desert dawns!
Satyrs and Fauns, I call.
Bring your beauty to man!
I am the mate for ye all;
I am the passionate Pan.
Come, O come to the dance,
Leaping with wonderful whips,
Life on the stroke of a glance,
Death in the stroke of the lips!
I am hidden beyond,
Shed in a secret sinew,
Smitten through by the fond
Folly of wisdom in you!
Come, while the moon (the moon!)
Sheds her ambrosial splendour,
Reels in the redeless rune
Ineffably, utterly, tender!
Hark! the appealing cry
Of deadly hurt in the hollow: —
Hyacinth! Hyacinth! Ay!
Smitten to death by Apollo.
Swift, O maiden moon,
Send thy ray-dews after;
Turn the dolorous tune
To soft ambiguous laughter!
Mourn, O Maenads, mourn!
Surely your comfort is over:
All we laugh at you lorn.
Ours are the poppies and clover!
O that mouth and eyes,
Mischievous, male, alluring!
O that twitch of the thighs,
Dorian past enduring!
Where is wisdom now!
Where the sage and his doubt?
Surely the sweat of the brow
Hath driven the demon out
Surely the scented sleep
That crowns the equal war
Is wiser than only to weep —
To weep for evermore!
Now, at the crown of the year,
The decadent days of October,
I come to thee, God, without fear;
Pious, chaste, and sober.
I solemnly sacrifice
This first-fruit flower of wine
For a vehicle of thy vice,
As I am Thine to be mine.
For five in the year gone by
I pray thee give to me one;
A lover stronger than I,
A moon to swallow the sun!
May he be like a lily-white goat,
Crisp as a thicket of thorns,
With a collar of gold for this throat,
A scarlet bow for his horns!
Cancer
May our Lady Artemis be favourable!
Taurus
May our Lady Artemis never be awakened!
Nymph comes forward and dances her virginal dance.
Pan
Of what worth is the gold in the mine?
Cancer
Brother Pan, be silent.
Nymph
Bear the Cup of Libation!
Cancer
[333-333-333].
Pan
Recites.
Mother of Light, and the Gods! Mother of Music awake!
Silence and Speech are at odds; Heaven and Hell are at stake.
By the Rose and the Cross I conjure; I constrain by the Snake and the Sword;
I am he that is sworn to endure — Bring us the word of the Lord!
By the brood of the Bysses of Brightening, whose God was my sire;
By the Lord of the Flame and the Lightning, the King of the Spirits of Fire;
By the Lord of the Waves and the Waters, the King of the Hosts of the Sea,
The fairest of all of whose daughters was mother to me;
By the Lord of the Winds and the Breezes, the King of the Spirits of Air,
In whose bosom the infinite ease is that cradled me there;
By the Lord of the Fields and the Mountains, the King of the Spirits of Earth
That nurtured my life at his fountains from the hour of my birth;
By the Wand and the Cup I conjure; by the Dagger and Disk I constrain;
I am he that is sworn to endure; make thy music again!
I am Lord of the Star and the Seal; I am Lord of the Snake and the Sword;
Reveal us the riddle, reveal! Bring us the word of the Lord;
As the flame of the sun, as the roar of the sea, as the storm of the air,
As the quake of the earth — let it soar for a boon, for a bane, for a snare,
For a lure, for a light, for a kiss, for a rod, for a scourge, for a sword —
Bring us thy burden of bliss — Bring us the word of the Lord!
Taurus
In vain thou askest speech from our Lady of Silence!
Cancer
Bear the Cup of Libation!
Pan
[333-333-333].
Recites.
Roll through the caverns of matter, the world’s irremovable bounds!
Roll, ye wild billows of ether! the Sistron is shaken and sounds!
Wild and sonorous the clamour, vast in the region of death.
Live with the fire of the Spirit, the essence and flame of the breath!
Sound, O sound!
Gleam in the world of the dark, where the chained ones shall tremble and flee!
Gleam in the skies of the dusk, for the Light of the Dawn is in me!
Light on the forehead and life in the nostrils, and love in the breast,
Shine, O Thou Star of the Dawning, thou Sun of the Radiant Crest!
Shine, O shine!
Flame through the sky in the strength of the chariot-wheels of the Sun!
Flame, ye young fingers of light, on the west of the morning that run!
Flame, O thou Meteor Car, for my fire is exalted in thee!
Lighten the darkness and herald the daylight, and waken the sea!
Flame, O flame!
Crown Her, O crown Her with stars as with flowers for a virginal gaud!
Crown Her, O crown Her with Light and the flame of the down-rushing Sword!
Crown Her, O crown Her with Love for maiden and mother and wife!
Hail unto Isis! Hail! For She is the Lady of Life!
Isis crowned!
Cancer
In vain thou invokest our Lady of the Moon!
Taurus
Bear the Cup of Libation!
Cancer
[333-333-333].
Pan
Must every star that saves the night
Gleam fearfully afar,
Give no man love, but only light,
Or cease to be a star?
Nay, there’s no man since time began
Through the ages until now,
But won the goal of his set soul,
A star upon his brow!
Oh! though no star serene as thou
Shine in my night forlorn,
Come, let me set thee on my brow,
And make its darkness morn!
Pan
Rises.
Brother Satyr, scourge forth these that profane the sanctuary of our Lady: for they know not the secret of the shrine.
Satyr dances the dance of the scourge, driving the officers down the stage, where they crouch.
Pan
Goes to altar.
Brother Satyr, I command you to perform the dance of Syrinx and Pan, in honour of our Lady Artemis
Satyr
And in thine honour!
He dances the dance and falls prostrate in the midst.
Pan
Advancing to the Throne of Luna.
Uncharmable charmer
Of Bacchus and Mars,
In the sounding rebounding
Abyss of the stars!
O virgin in armour,
Thine arrows unsling
In the brilliant resilient
First rays of the spring!
By the force of the fashion
Of love, when I broke
Through the shroud, through the cloud,
Through the storm, through the smoke,
To the mountain of passion
Volcanic that woke —
By the rage of the mage
I invoke, I invoke!
By the midnight of madness,
The lone-lying sea,
The swoon of the moon,
Your swoon into me;
The sentinel sadness
Of cliff-clinging pine,
That night of delight
You were mine, you were mine!
Your were mine, O my saint,
My maiden, my mate,
By the might of the right
Of the night of our fate.
Though I fall, though I faint,
Though I char, though I choke,
By the hour of our power
I invoke, I invoke!
By the mystical union
Of fairy and faun,
Unspoken, unbroken —
The dusk to the dawn! —
A secret communion,
Unmeasured, unsung,
The listless, resistless,
Tumultuous tongue! —
O virgin in armour
Thine arrows unsling,
In the brilliant resilient
First rays of the spring!
No Godhead could charm her,
But manhood awoke —
O fiery Valkyrie,
I invoke, I invoke!
He tears down the veil.
Luna plays accordingly. [Bach: Ciaccone]
A long silence.
Cancer
[333-333-333].
Taurus
[1]. Brother Warden of the Graal, our task is ended.
Cancer
Let us depart, it is accomplished.
