"The Great Beast Speaks" by Aleister Crowley used to be available from www.amazon.co.ukMark Anthony Quested wrote:It used to be on sale at www.amazon.co.uk That's where I bought my copy of The Great Beast Speaks. Carl has also used The Poet during live performances of Psychonaut, especially during the 2000 gigs.Maisey wrote:Is there anywhere I can listen to this redition of the poem via the interweb, or do I have to track down the album?wild bill buttock wrote:Yep, it's Aleister Crowley reading his poem "at sea" from an album called "The great beast speaks".
MQ
At the gates of silent memory - features sound clips from AT SEA
Submission remixes (as found on the For Her Light CD) - features sound clips from AT SEA and LA GITANA.
Psychonaut LIVE - when performed live, Carl has used clips from THE POET and AT SEA.
Personally speaking, La Gitana is one of my favourite ever poems! Very romantic; about a sexual liaison that Crowley had with a Spanish gypsy.
Here are some Aleister Crowley poems from the CD...
(C) Copyright, Edward Alexander Crowley, the estate of, and/or the OTO.
At Sea
As night hath stars, more rare than ships
In ocean, faint from pole to pole,
So all the wonder of her lips
Hints her innavigable soul.
Such lights she gives as guide my bark;
But I am swallowed in the swell
Of her heart's ocean, sagely dark,
That holds my heaven and holds my hell.
In her I live, a mote minute
Dancing a moment in the sun:
In her I die, a sterile shoot
Of nightshade in oblivion.
In her my elf dissolves, a grain
Of salt cast careless in the sea;
My passion purifies my pain
To peace past personality.
Love of my life, God grant the years
Confirm the chrism - rose to rood!
Anointing loves, asperging tears
In sanctifying solitude!
Man is so infinitely small
In all these stars, determinate.
Maker and moulder of them all,
Man is so infinitely great!
The Poet
Bury me in an nameless grave!
I came from god the world to save.
I brought them wisdom from above:
Worship, and Liberty, and Love.
They slew me for I did disparage
Therefore Religion, Law, and Marriage.
So be my grave without a name
That earth may swallow up my shame!
La Gitana
Your hair was full of roses in the dewfall as we danced,
The sorceress enchanting and the Paladin entranced,
In the starlight as we wove us in a web of silk and steel
Immemorial as the marble in the halls of Boabdil,
In the pleasaunce of the roses with the fountains and the yews
Where the snowy sierra soothed us with the breezes and the dews!
In the starlight as we trembled from a laught to a caress
And the god came warm upon us in our pagan allegresse.
Was the Baille de la Bona too seductive? Did you feel
Through the silence and the softness all the tension of the steel?
For your hair was full of roses, and my flesh was full of thorns,
And the midnight came upon us worth a million crazy morns.
Ah! my gipsy, my Gitana, my Saliya! were you fain
For the dance to turn to earnest? – O the sunny land of Spain!
My Gitana, my Saliya! more delicious than a dove!
With your hair aflame with roses and your lips alight with love!
Shall I see you, shall I kiss you once again? I wander far
From the sunny land of summer to the icy polar star
I shall find you, I shall have you! I am coming back again
From the filth and fog to seek you in sunny land of Spain.
I shall find you, my Gitana, my Saliya! as of old
With your hair aflame with roses and your body gay with gold.
I shall find you, I shall have you, in the summer and the south
With our passion in your body and our love upon your mouth –
With our wonder and our worship be the world aflame anew!
My Gitana, my Saliya! I am coming back to you!
The Titanic
Forth flashed the serpent streak of steel,
Consummate crown of man's device;
Down crashed upon an immobile
And brainless barrier of ice.
Courage!
The grey gods shoot a laughing lip: -
Let not faith founder with the ship!
We reel before the blows of fate;
Our stout souls stagger at the shock.
Oh! there is Something ultimate
Fixed faster than the living rock.
Courage!
Catastrophe beyond belief
Harden our hearts to fear and grief!
The gods upon the Titans shower
Their high intolerable scorn;
But no god knoweth in what hour
A new Prometheus may be born.
Courage!
Man to his doom goes driving down;
A crown of thorns is still a crown!
No power of nature shall withstand
At last the spirit of mankind:
It is not built upon the sand;
It is not wastrel to the wind.
Courage!
Disaster and destruction tend
To taller triumph in the end.
Aleister Crowley