It was Michelangelo, Raphael, and Leonardo Da Vinci who brought the Individual Artist under the spotlight, the Shekinah. Before them, artists were nameless servants and craftsman of the Pope and the very wealthy. Hollywood does not immortalize people, it only makes them famous – and gives them a star over their palm prints on Hollywood Boulevard.
In Christine Rosamond’s biography Khara Bromeley says she did a Tarot Card reading for my later sister – and the Death card came up in the spread. This is extremely interesting as the Tarot is a recognized work of art that some associated with the Freemasons who built the cathedrals Artists, true unto themselves, rendered their frescos in, and where their beautiful marble statues find sanctuary – this very day.
Immortality is granted to an artist – after they die! Death must come to the door of the gifted, and take the name they were born with, and place it in a Cathedral of Souls. This can only happen if the artist passes The Test. What is the test?
Very rarely does Death arrive at the Artist’s door, in the form of a living being. When he come, he will be carrying a banner, and on that banner is the Mystical Rose, also known as ‘The Rose of the World’.
Above is a photograph of me in Rosamond’s studio. She wanted me to be her first male portrait. She, and my friend, shot a role of film. When Christine had them developed, there were slivers of energy looking light lightening – on both roles. She freaked, and my portrait was never done.
In the Death card we see two pillars above a cliff. Was Andromeda tied to these pillars? How about Samson? El was the first god of the Jews and was a sea serpent.
Samson means “liken to the sun” the Shekinah “the light of God” which is the Rose of the World.
Two days ago there was an eclipse of the sun.
I have come to restore that which has been defiled and lost. I have refreshed the Spirit of the Rose, for I am ‘The Lamp of the Rose’. Darkness can not hide anything from me. I have measured the thrsehing floor with the Rod of God. I maketh the Lampstead whose light can be seen by the Holy between the Two Pillars.
I have passed over the river and through the curtain veil that God opened from the top to the bottom. Repent!
There was a solar eclipse when Jesus died on the Rose Cross. The great curtain in the temple that concealed the Holy of Holiies was opened by the Hand of God that brought Death to the Pharough of Egypt – and all the first born!
Repent!
Jon ‘The Nazarite of the Way’
Rosamona
Arise, strong bow of the young child Eros!
(While the maddening moonlight, the memoried caress
Stolen of the scented rose
Stirs me and bids each racing pulse ache, ache!)
Bend into an agony of art
Whose cry is ever rapture, and whose tears
For their own purity’s undivided sake
Are molten dew, as, on the lotus leaves
Silver-coiled in the Sun
Into green-girdled spheres
Purer than all a maiden’s dream enweaves,
Lies the unutterable beauty of
The Waters. Yea, arise, divinest dove
Of the Idalian, on your crimson wings
And soft grey plumes, bear me to yon cool shrine
Of that most softly-spoken one,
Mine Aphrodite! Touch the imperfect strings,
Oh thou, immortal, throned above the moon!
“The cross on the chest of the Death figure is made deliberately hard
to see, perhaps to obscure the reference of the Templars. The
Templars wore a red cross on white, their sergeants-at-arms wore red
on Brown/Black. The representation on the Death card is closer to the
uniform of the Teutonic Knights, an early offshoot from the Templars
who wore a black mantle with a white cross. The Hierus, one of the
officers in the Golden Dawn ceremonies, wore a black mantle with a
white cross (Regardie p 349) – but the cross is over the heart, not
centered.
The advanced Masonic grade of Knight Commander of the Temple has the
cross as one of its symbols (Waite The Secret Tradition in
Freemasonry p 287) and the Sovereign Grand Inspector-General, a grade
from the Masonic order of Teutonic Knights (Ibid. p 287) wears a
Teutonic cross on the chest (Ibid. p 269),
There are also higher Masonic orders associated with Rosicrucianism.
In the grade of the Red Cross of Rome and Constantine (Waite “The
Secret Tradition in Freemasonry” p 239), the cubic stone (i.e.,
the ‘perfect ashlar’ suggested in the High Priestess throne and the
cubic Chariot) now becomes the Rose, seen on Death’s banner. The
initiation for the grade of Sovereign Prince Rose-Croix of Heredom
includes a ceremony of Death: “Death must be tasted in its
bitterness” (Waite The Secret Tradition in Freemasonry, pp 237 and
320).
The rose on the banner is drawn in the manner of the
Rosicrucian symbol. Examples of this same symbol can be found in
Waite’s The Secret Tradition in Freemasonry (pp 227, 248, 550). In
the background of the card, along the near shoreline there appear to
be three black crosses. These may represent tombstones in keeping
with the Death theme, but may also hint at the Cross, the second
element of the “Rosy Cross” symbol. In The Real History of the
Rosicrucians and The Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross, Waite depicts the
Rosicrucians as an occult “church within the church” of Christianity.
http://www.whitedragon.org.uk/articles/rose.htm
That grandiose book of occult lore, the Tarot, has the symbol of the
rose pressed within its pages. Perhaps the most significant image in
teh deck is that portraying Death. This card retains its image and
its number throughout the history of the Tarot. Its likely origin is
in the Black Death which swept Europe in 1348 and which became a
popular image for artists and writers in the centuries that followed.
In the reknowned pack published by Waite, Death in black armour is
riding a white horse. He carries in his left hand a flag on which is
a white rose on a black field. In the field through which he rides
are a dead king, a curious child, a despairing woman and a praying
bishop. The sun is rising. The mysterious horseman moves slowly, and
the square black banner is emblazoned with the Mystic Rose which
signifies life. The interpretation of the card signifies renewal and
rebirth. Waite rightly called his study of the Tarot “fragments of a
secret tradition under the veil of divination”. The square banner
equates to the number four, a feminine number, and relates to the
elements and the Earth, and recalls all those sets of four things so
often met with in esoteric literature. In this context, the rose on
the banner is Rosa Mundi, emblematic of the eternal renewal of
manifestation through Anima Mundi, the Soul of the World.
“Rosa Mundi”, wrote Crowley, “red glory of the secret heart of love”.
Perdurabo defined ritual as the uniting of the microcosm with the
macrocosm. The androgynous figure of the magus must conjure with the
elements if he is to pluck the rose at the heart of nature. The
Gnostic Gospel of Thomas declares: “When you make the two one, and
when you make the inner as the outer and the outer as the inner and
the above as the below, and when you make the male and female a
single one, then shall you enter the kingdom”. Herein lies that
consummation devoutly to be wished, the accomplishment of the Great
Work whihc is possession of the Mystic Rose. Pico Mirandola, in his
essay on human dignity, said that every man was higher than the
angels. Dante may have been led by St Bernard but “every man and
every woman is a star” said the Beast, and each has his or her won
guardian angel as guide to Paradise wherein thr Rose of Shekinah
blooms. In lesser quests, roses are made use of in works of
attraction and devotion, for healing and purification. The ancients
burned roses for luck. Rose of Crucifixion oil is variously used by
modern spirit cults. A crown of roses is worn by the practitioner in
all operations of Venus. The rose is also related to Hulda, Hathor
and Demeter, and to Aurora, Goddess of the dawn. In the Almadel of
Solomon the angel guardians of the Eastern altititude are crowned
with roses. The Roman Sybil who foretold the birth of Jesus also has
the rose as her emblem, a seal for the new covenant given her by
grateful monks.
The Shekinah (Hebrew “shachan”, meaning “to reside”) is the female
manifestation of God in humanity, the indwelling spark of the divine.
In the New Testament the Shekinah is the glory emanating from God,
his effulgence. She is equated with certain Sephira, particularly
Malkuth, the Kingdom, and is mentioned as a messenger from on high,
when she appeared to Moses. Maimonides regarded Shekinah as an
intermediary between God and the World.14. This blinding light of
Shekinah was the flame of the burning bush, a bush with thorns, a
rose-bush no less, guarded by the angel Zagzagel, which name
means “divine splendour”, the angel of the Presence. This bush is the
ever-flaming, ever-revealing blossoming of divine power that is truly
Rosa Mundi, the Rose or Soul of the World, that had dwelt in Eden
since the Creation, and which sustains the world. The Talmud tells us
that when God drove Adam out of the earthlly paradise, the Shekinah
remained behind “enthroned above a cherub under the Tree of Life, her
splendour being 65,000 times brighter than the sun”, and that this
radiance “made all upon whom it fell exempt from disease”, and,
further, that then “neither spirits nor demons could come nigh unto
such to do them harm”. Here is the origin of that sheltering star
invoked in the ritual of the cabalistic cross.
http://www.aiwaz.net/durer/reuter/secretinsignias.htm
According to Waite’s The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, the card represents life of the imagination apart from life of the spirit. The dog and wolf are the fears of the natural mind in the presence of that place of exit, when there is only reflected light to guide it. This reference is a key to another form of symbolism. The intellectual light is a mere reflection and beyond it is the unknown mystery which it cannot reveal. It illuminates our animal nature, types of which are represented below—the dog, the wolf, and that which comes up out of the deeps, the nameless and hideous tendency which is lower even than the savage beast. It strives to attain manifestation, symbolized by crawling from the abyss of water to the land, but as a rule it sinks back whence it came. The face of the mind directs a calm gaze upon the unrest below, and the dew of thought falls. The message is: “Peace, be still,” and it may be that there shall come a calm upon the animal nature, while the abyss beneath shall cease from giving up form.
The basic theme of the card is Death. However, Waite says in The Pictorial Key that it is “more fitly represented…by one of the apocalyptic visions than by the crude notion of the Reaping Skeleton.” He is possibly referring to Revelation 6:8, “another horse appeared, deadly pale, and its rider was called Plague.” The death theme explains the black color of armor and banner and the four figures: temporal and spiritual, male and female, old and young – death comes to everyone.
1. Atop the cliff in the background we see a path, towers, and a sun that silhouettes a city, i.e., the mystical journey to the New Jerusalem. Notice the similarities to the imagery on the Temperance card. In Renaissance art, the “new earth” (i.e. following the apocalypse) is typically represented as a city, the New Jerusalem. This representation appears on 15th-16th century World cards.
In The Pictorial Key, Waite says: “Behind it lies the whole world of ascent in the spirit…between two pillars on the …horizon there shines the sun of immortality.” The image of the rising sun may come from the Golden Dawn Consecration ceremony for the Vault.
Regardie p 264f: “I have passed through the gates of Darkness unto Light. I have fought upon Earth for good. I have finished my work. I have entered into the invisible. I am the Sun in his rising…the Opener of the day…I am the Lord of Life, triumphant over Death…I am the preparer of the Pathway, the Rescuer unto the Light! Out of the Darkness, let the Light arise.” This is essentially a Rosicrucian image of the mystical journey and notice the roses on the bishop’s cloak, the woman’s hair and the banner.
2. A number of other themes also come together in this card – the red plume from the Fool card and the fourth river from the Garden of Eden. The bishop wears the three crosses from the Hierophant card and also the crossed circles from that card. A vertical strip of cloth with three crosses appears in Masonic ritual attire. The crosses represent the 3 basic initiations that the wearer has experienced: Apprentice, Fellow Craft, and Master.
The submissive kneeling woman resembles the Strength card, particularly the flowers in the hair. Besides the obvious cross-reference to the Moon card, the two towers may also hint at Boaz and Jachin, the pillars of Solomon’s Temple that appear on the High Priestess card. The pillars were situated in the west and so the rising sun would have been visible between them as one looked to the East. These pillars also appear in the rituals of Freemasonry and the Golden Dawn. There would also be a reference to the Knights Templars, also known as The Knights of Christ of the Temple of Jerusalem.
3. The rose on the banner is drawn in the manner of the Rosicrucian symbol. Examples of this same symbol can be found in Waite’s The Secret Tradition in Freemasonry (pp 227, 248, 550). In the background of the card, along the near shoreline there appear to be three black crosses. These may represent tombstones in keeping with the Death theme, but may also hint at the Cross, the second element of the “Rosy Cross” symbol. In The Real History of the Rosicrucians and The Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross, Waite depicts the Rosicrucians as an occult “church within the church” of Christianity.
Into the cloth of Rosicrucianism, Waite weaves the Knights Templar, Alchemy, Kabballah, Levi, Papus, Masonry, and the Golden Dawn. The three founders of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn were members of the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia. The Higher or Inner Order of the Golden Dawn was known as Rosae Rubeae et Aureae Crucis. When the Golden Dawn broke up and Waite formed his own version of the society, he called it the Fellowship of the Rosy Cross.
The rose is not a symbol commonly associated with the Templars; however, on the Gothic Cathedrals that they helped to design, there was a large rosette over the ogive archway. In the Adeptus Minor initiation of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, the initiate is introduced to the “Vault of the Adept.” This is a reconstruction of the tomb in which the mythical Christian Rosenkreutz was buried for 120 years, and from which he arose. On the ceiling of the “Vault” was a stylized white rose (same sort of rose as seen on the Death card but with 22 petals). It would be the first thing seen when the lid was removed from the coffin and the resurrected mystic opened his eyes. So its presence on the Death card may symbolize a note of optimism – there is a rebirth following the Death represented here. Waite may be suggesting that this is not the Death that comes at the end of life, but the Mystical Death.
4. The Bishop’s hat/crown is shaped like a long-nosed fish, such as a gar or pike. The Golden Dawn assigned this card to the Hebrew letter Nun which means fish. However, see The Fool, footnote 6 for a caveat about assuming that the Hebrew letters can be found in the Waite-Smith designs.
5. Many of the details on the card appear to be drawn from the advanced Templar orders of Freemasonry. There were a number of such advanced programs within the English lodges (e.g., Knight of the Red Cross, Knight Templar, and Knight of Malta), and the original Order of the Golden Dawn society was set up as a sort of advanced Masonic degree program. Two of the officials at the Templar initiation ceremonies are the Sovereign Master (enthroned and wearing a crown) and the Prelate in robes and bishop’s miter.
There is a possible connection to the King and Bishop on Waite’s card. In addition, other officials wear gauntlet gloves with a cross (see pp 124 & 131 Knight Templarism Illustrated, C. A. Blanchard, 1911). As a part of their ceremonial garb, masons wear a sheepskin apron. The way the apron is worn and the symbols on the apron indicate the levels or degrees that the wearer has achieved.
The apron of the Templar orders shows a Skull and Crossbones as seen on the reins of Death’s horse. The historical Knights Templars didn’t wear black armor but Waite says (A New Encyclopedia of Freemasonry Vol 1, p 114): “There are grades of Christican Chivalry which connect with Black, and in particular the Order of the Temple.” The “battle banner” of the Templars was divided into a black and white half by a vertical stripe. The banner on the Waite-Smith Death card is solid black, so the match with the Templar banner is questionable – but suggestive, nonetheless.
The cross on the chest of the Death figure is made deliberately hard to see, perhaps to obscure the reference of the Templars. The Templars wore a red cross on white, their sergeants-at-arms wore red on Brown/Black. The representation on the Death card is closer to the uniform of the Teutonic Knights, an early offshoot from the Templars who wore a black mantle with a white cross. The Hierus, one of the officers in the Golden Dawn ceremonies, wore a black mantle with a white cross (Regardie p 349) – but the cross is over the heart, not centered.
The advanced Masonic grade of Knight Commander of the Temple has the cross as one of its symbols (Waite The Secret Tradition in Freemasonry p 287) and the Sovereign Grand Inspector-General, a grade from the Masonic order of Teutonic Knights (Ibid. p 287) wears a Teutonic cross on the chest (Ibid. p 269),
6. There are also higher Masonic orders associated with Rosicrucianism. In the grade of the Red Cross of Rome and Constantine (Waite “The Secret Tradition in Freemasonry” p 239), the cubic stone (i.e., the ‘perfect ashlar’ suggested in the High Priestess throne and the cubic Chariot) now becomes the Rose, seen on Death’s banner. The initiation for the grade of Sovereign Prince Rose-Croix of Heredom includes a ceremony of Death: “Death must be tasted in its bitterness” (Waite The Secret Tradition in Freemasonry, pp 237 and 320).
7. The Templars had a fleet of ships, so the ship in the background may be another veiled reference. The Templar ships were probably merchant ships typical of the Mediterranean rather than the “Viking” style ship on the card. On the other hand, the Teutonic Knights ruled areas along the Baltic Sea and might well have had ships like those shown on the card. So Waite might also be making veiled reference to all of the warrior monks, not just the Knights Templar.
8. Although the image of Death on Horseback is found on older decks, the specific image on the Waite/Smith deck is from a Durer print: “The Knight, Death, and Time.” The horse is a close copy from the print. What I find interesting is that the Waite-Smith card does not represent the figure of “Death” from the Durer print, but the figure of the Knight!! Perhaps another Waite-esque reference to the Templars?
9. Directly below the ‘Viking Ship’ there is a black object that looks like an upside-down letter F. It’s a stretch, but this could be the Enochian letter Drun. The Golden Dawn assigned the Death card to Hebrew Nun = English N = Enochian Drun. The Enochian alphabet can be found on page 652 of Regardie: The Golden Dawn.
10. There appears to be a cave entrance in the background cliff – right above the ship. There also appears to be an arrow on that hillside, pointing to the cave. The arrow may be mistaken for a spur on the riders heel, except there is a gap between the arrow and the heel and it is not actually attached.
The cave may be a hint at Dante’s journey into the underworld, the Mystic’s “dark night of the soul,” which may be the logical path from the Death card to the Moon, Sun, and New Jerusalem symbols at the top of the background cliff. At the beginning of the Divine Comedy, Dante finds himself is a dark wood, perhaps suggested on the Death card by the black trees near the cave entrance. Dante has become exhausted trying to scale the sheer mountain to reach God. His guide, Virgil, appears and tells him that he must “go another way” and leads him down into the Inferno, symbollizing the death of the self needed for the mystical journey. Only then can Dante climb the Mount Purgatory and reach Paradisio.
This may be hinted at in Waite’s commentary on the Card (Pictorial Key) where he says: “transformation and passage from lower to higher,” that is, from the cave entrance to the top of the cliff. He also states: “the exotic and almost unknown entrance, while still in this life, into the state of mystical death.” In Waite’s Azoth or the Star in the East (p 190), we find: “It is the portentious darkness of initiation, the passage of the soul through Hades, the Kingdom of Pluto…which precedes the evolution of the inner light.”
The reference to Dante’s mystical journey may also be hinted at by the rose on Death’s banner since Dante describes one of the levels of Paradisio as a great rose.
1. Rose of the World!
Red glory of the secret heart of Love:
Red flame, rose-red, most subtly curled
Into its own infinite flower, all flowers above!
Its flower in its own perfumed passion,
Its faint sweet passion, folded and furled
In flower fashion;
And my deep spirit taking its pure part
Of that voluptuous heart
Of hidden happiness!
[TOP]
2. Arise, strong bow of the young child Eros!
(While the maddening moonlight, the memoried caress
Stolen of the scented rose
Stirs me and bids each racing pulse ache, ache!)
Bend into an agony of art
Whose cry is ever rapture, and whose tears
For their own purity’s undivided sake
Are molten dew, as, on the lotus leaves
Silver-coiled in the Sun
Into green-girdled spheres
Purer than all a maiden’s dream enweaves,
Lies the unutterable beauty of
The Waters. Yea, arise, divinest dove
Of the Idalian, on your crimson wings
And soft grey plumes, bear me to yon cool shrine
Of that most softly-spoken one,
Mine Aphrodite! Touch the imperfect strings,
Oh thou, immortal, throned above the moon!
Inspire a holy tune
Lighter and lovelier than flowers and wine
Offered in gracious gardens unto Pan
By any soul of man!
[TOP]
3. In vain the solemn stars pour their pale dews
Upon my trembling spirit; their caress
Leaves me moon-rapt in waves of loveliness
All thine, O rose, O wrought of many a muse
In Music, O thou strength of ecstasy
Incarnate in a woman-form, create
Of her own rapture, infinite, ultimate,
Not to be seen, not grasped, not even imaginable,
But known of one, by virtue of that spell
Of thy sweet will toward him: thou, unknown,
Untouched, grave mistress of the sunlight throne
Of thine own nature; known not even of me,
But of some spark of woven eternity
Immortal in this bosom. Phosphor paled
And in the grey upstarted the dread veiled
Rose light of dawn. Sun-shapen shone thy spears
Of love forth darting into myriad spheres,
Which I the poet called this light, that flower,
This knowledge, that illumination, power
This and love that, in vain, in vain, until
Thy beauty dawned, all beauty to distil
Into one drop of utmost dew, one name
Choral as floral, one thin, subtle flame
Fitted to a shaft of love, to pierce, to endue
My trance-rapt spirit with the avenue
Of perfect pleasures, radiating far
Up and up yet to where thy sacred star
Burned in its brilliance: thence the storm was shed
A passion of great calm about this head,
This head no more a poet’s; since the dream
Of beauty gathered close into a stream
Of tingling light, and, gathering ever force
From thine own love, its unextended source,
Became the magic utterance that makes Me,
Dissolving self into the starless sea
That makes one lake of molten joy, one pond
Steady as light and hard as diamond;
One drop, one atom of constraint intense,
Of elemental passion scorning sense,
All the concentred music that is I.
O! hear me not! I die;
I am borne away in misery of dumb life
That would in words flash forth the holiest heaven
That to the immortal God of Gods is given,
And, tongue-tied, stammers forth – my wife!
[TOP]
4. I am dumb with rapture of thy loveliness.
All metres match and mingle; all words tire;
All lights, all sounds, all perfumes, all gold stress
Of the honey-palate, all soft strokes expire
In abject agony of broken sense
To hymn the emotion tense
Of somewhat higher – O! how highest! – than all
Their mystery: fall, O fall,
Ye unavailing eagle-flights of song!
0 wife! these do thee wrong.
[TOP]
5. Thou knowest how I was blind;
How for mere minutes thy pure presence
Was nought; was ill-defined;
A smudge across the mind,
Drivelling in its brutal essence,
Hog-wallowing in poetry,
Incapable of thee.
[TOP]
6. Ah! when the minutes grew to hours,
And yet the beast, the fool, saw flowers
And loved them, watched the moon rise, took delight
In perfumes of the summer night,
Caught in the glamour of the sun,
Thought all the woe well won.
How hours were days, and all the misery
Abode, all mine: O thou! didst thou regret?
Wast thou asleep as I?
Didst thou not love me yet?
For, know! the moon is not the moon until
She hath the knowledge to fulfil
Her music, till she know herself the moon.
So thou, so I! The stone unhewn,
Foursquare, the sphere, of human hands immune,
Was not yet chosen for the corner-piece
And key-stone of the Royal Arch of Sex;
Unsolved the ultimate x;
The virginal breeding breeze
Was yet of either unstirred;
Unspoken the Great Word.
[TOP]
7. Then on a sudden, we knew. From deep to deep
Reverberating, lightning unto lightning
Across the sundering brightening
Abyss of sorrow’s sleep,
There shone the sword of love, and struck, and clove
The intolerable veil,
The woven chain of mail
Prudence self-called, and folly known to who
May know. Then, O sweet drop of dew,
Thy limpid light rolled over and was lost
In mine, and mine in thine.
Peace, ye who praise! ye but disturb the shrine!
This voice is evil over against the peace
Here in the West, the holiest. Shaken and crossed
The threads Lachesis wove fell from her hands.
The pale divided strands
Were taken by the master-hand, Eros!
Her evil thinkings cease,
Thy miracles begin.
Eros! Eros! – Be silent! It is sin
Thus to invoke the oracles of order
Their iron gates to unclose.
The gross, inhospitable warder
Of Love’s green garden of spice is well awake.
Hell hath enough of Her three-headed hound;
But Love’s severer bound
Knows for His watcher a more fearful shape,
A formidable ape
Skilled by black art to mock the Gods profound
In their abyss of under ground.
Beware! Who hath entered hath no boast to make,
And conscious Eden surelier breeds the snake.
Be silent! O! for silence’ sake!
[TOP]
8. That asks the impossible. Smite! Smite!
Profaned adytum of pure light,
Smite! but I must sing on.
Nay! can the orison
Of myriad fools provoke the Crowned-with-Night
Hidden beyond sound and sight
In the mystery of His own high essence?
Lo, Rose of all the gardens of the world,
Did thy most sacred presence
Not fill the Real, then this voice were whirled
Away in the wind of its own folly, thrown
Into forgotten places and unknown.
So I sing on!
Sisters and wife, dear wife,
Light of my love and lady of my life,
Answer if thou canst from the unsullied place,
Unveiling for one star-wink thy bright face!
Did we leave then, once cognisant,
Time for some Fear to implant
His poison? Did we hesitate?
Leave but one little chance to Fate?
For one swift second did we wait?
There is no need to answer: God is God,
A jealous God and evil; with His rod
He smiteth fair and foul, and with His sword
Divideth tiniest atoms of intangible time,
That men may know he is the Lord.
Then, with that sharp division,
Did He divide our wit sublime?
Our knowledge bring to nought?
We had no need of thought.
We brought His malice in derision.
So thine eternal petals shall enclose
Me, O most wonderful lady of delight,
Immaculate, indivisible circle of night,
Inviolate, invulnerable Rose!
[TOP]
9. The sound of my own voice carries me on.
I am as a ship, hose anchors are all gone,
Whose rudder is held by Love the indomitable
Purposeful helmsman! Were his port high Hell,
Who should be fool enough to care? Suppose
Hell’s waters wash the memory of this rose
Out of my mind, what misery matters then?
Or, if they leave it, all the woes of men
Are as pale shadows in the glory of
That passionate splendour of Love.
[TOP]
10. Ay! my own voice, my own thoughts. These, then, must be
The mutiny of some worm’s misery,
Some chained despair knotted into my flesh,
Some chance companion, some soul damned afresh
Since my redemption, that is vocal at all,
For I am wrapt away from light and call
In the sweet heart of the red rose.
My spirit only knows
This woman and no more; who would know more?
I, I am concentrate
In the unshakable state
Of constant rapture. Who should pour
His ravings in the air for winds to whirl,
Far from the central pearl
Of all the diadem of the universe?
Let God take pen, rehearse
Dull nursery tales; then, not before, O rose,
Red rose! shall the beloved of thee,
Infinite rose! pen puerile poetry
That turns in writing to vile prose.
[TOP]
11. Were this the quintessential plume of Keats
And Shelley and Swinburne and Verlaine,
Could I outsoar them, all their lyric feats,
Excel their utterance vain
With one convincing rapture, beat them hollow
As an ass’s skin; wert thou, Apollo,
Mere slave to me, not Lord – thy fieriest flight
And stateliest shaft of light
Thyself thyself surpassing: all were dull,
And thou, O rose, sole, sacred, wonderful,
Single in love and aim,
Double in form and name,
Triple in energy of radiant flame,
Informing all, in all most beautiful,
Circle and sphere, perfect in every part,
High above hope of Art:
Though, be it said! thou art nowhere now,
Save in the secret chamber of my heart.
Behind the brass of my anonymous brow. 1
[TOP]
12. Ay! let the coward and slave who writes write on!
He is no more harm to Love than the grey snake
Who lurks in the dusk brake
For the bare-legged village-boy, is to the Sun,
The Sire of Life.
The Lover and the Wife,
Immune, intact*, ignore. The people hear;
Then, be the people smitten of grey Fear,
It is no odds!
[TOP]
13. I have seen the eternal Gods
Sit, star-wed, in old Egypt by the Nile;
The same calm pose, the inscrutable, wan smile
On every lip alike.
Time hath not had his will to strike
At them; they abide, they pass through all.
Though their most ancient names may fall,
They stir not nor are weary of
Life, for with them, even as with us, Life is but Love.
They know, we know; let, then, the writings go!
That, in the very deed, we do not know.
[TOP]
14. It may be in the centuries of our life
Since we were man and wife
There stirs some incarnation of that love.
Some rosebud in the garden of spices blows,
Some offshoot from the Rose
Of the World, the Rose of all Delight,
The Rose of Dew, the Rose of Love and Night,
The Rose of Silence, covering as with a vesture
The solemn unity of things,
Beheld in the mirror of truth,
The Rose indifferent to God’s gesture,
The Rose on moonlight wings
That flies to the House of Fire,
The Rose of Honey-in-Youth!
Ah! No dim mystery of desire
Fathoms this gulf? No light invades
The mystical musical shades
Of a faith in the future, a dream of the day
When athwart the dim glades
Of the forest a ray
Of sunlight shall flash and the dew die away!
[TOP]
15. Let there then be obscurity in this!
There is an after rapture in the kiss.
The fire, flesh, perfume, music, that outpaced
All time, fly off; they are subtle: there abides
A secret and most maiden taste;
Salt, as of the invisible tides
Of the molten sea of gold
Men may at times behold
In the rayless scarab of the sinking sun;
And out of that is won
Hardly, with labour and pain that are as pleasure,
The first flower of the garden, the stored treasure
That lies at the heart’s heart of eternity.
This treasure is for thee.
[TOP]
16. O! but shall hope arise in happiness?
That may not be.
My love is like a golden grape, the veins
Peep through the ecstasy
Of the essence of ivory and silk,
Pearl, moonlight, mother-milk
That is her skin;
Its swift caress
Flits like an angel’s kiss in a dream; remains
The healing virtue; from all sin,
All ill, one touch sets free.
My love is like a star – oh fool! oh fool!
Is not thy back yet tender from the rod?
Is there no learning in the poet’s school?
Wilt thou achieve what were too hard for God?
I call Him to the battle; ask of me
When the hinds calve? What of eternity
When he built chaos? Shall Leviathan
Be drawn out with an hook? Enough; I see
This I can answer – or Ernst Haeckel can!
Now, God Almighty, rede this mystery!
What of the love that is the heart of man?
Take stars and airs, and write it down!
Fill all the interstices of space
With myriad verse – own Thy disgrace!
Diminish Thy renown!
Approve my riddle! This Thou canst not do.
[TOP]
17. O living Rose! O dowered with subtle dew
O love, the tiny eternities of time,
Caught between flying seconds, are well filled
With these futilities of fragrant rhyme;
In Love’s retort distilled,
In sunrays of fierce loathing purified,
In moonrays of pure longing tried,
And gathered after many moons. of labour
Into the compass of a single day:
And wrought into continuous tune,
One laughter with one languor for its neighbour.
One thought of winter with one word of June,
Muddled and mixed in mere dismay,
Chiselled with the cunning chisel of despair,
Found wanting, well aware
Of its own fault, even insistent
Thereon: some fragrance rare
Stolen from my lady’s hair
Perchance redeeming now and then the distant
Fugitive tunes.
[TOP]
18. – Ah! Love! the hour is over!
The moon is up, the vigil overpast.
Call me to thee at last,
O Rose! O perfect miracle lover,
Call me! I hear thee though it be across
The abyss of the whole universe,
Though not a sigh escape, delicious loss!
Though hardly a wish rehearse
The imperfection underlying ever
The perfect happiness.
Thou knowest that not in flesh
Lies the fair fresh
Delight of Love; not in mere lips and eyes
The secret of these bridal ecstasies,
Since thou art everywhere,
Rose of the World, Rose of the Uttermost
Abode of Glory, Rose of the High Host
Of Heaven, mystic, rapturous Rose!
The extreme passion glows
Deep in this breast; thou knowest (and love knows)
How every word awakes its own reward
In a thought akin to thee, a shadow of thee;
And every tune evokes its musical Lord;
And every rhyme tingles and shakes in me
The filaments of the great web of Love.
[TOP]
19. O Rose all roses far above
In the garden of God’s roses,
Sorrowless, thornless, passionate Rose, that lies
Full in the flood of its own sympathies
And makes my life one tune that curls and closes
On its own self delight;
A circle, never a line! Safe from all wind,
Secure in its own pleasure-house confined,
Mistress of all its moods,
Matchless, serene, in sacred amplitudes
Of its own royal rapture, deaf and blind*
To aught but its own mastery of song
And light, shown ever as silence and deep night
Secret as death and final. Let me long
Never again for aught! This great delight
Involves me, weaves me in its pattern of bliss,
Seals me with its own kiss,
Draws me to thee with every dream that glows,
Poet, each word! Maiden, each burden of snows
Extending beyond sunset, beyond dawn!
O Rose, inviolate, utterly withdrawn
In the truth: – for this is truth: Love knows!
Ah! Rose of the World! Rose! Rose!
The” Cycle of the White Rose the white
rose being the badge of the Stt~artscomposed of members of the
principal Welsh families around Wrexham, including the Williams-Wynns
of Wynnstay, lasted from 1710 until some time between I 85o and 1860.
Jacobite traditions also lingered among the great families of the
Scottish Highlands; the last person to suffer death as a Jacobite was
Archibald Cameron, a son of Cameron of Lochiel, who was executed in
1753. Dr Johnson’s Jacobite sympathies are well known, and on the
death of Victor Emmanuel I., the ex-king of Sardinia, in 1824, Lord
Liverpool wrote to Canning saying “there are those who think that the
ex-king was the lawful king of Great Britain.” Until the accession of
King Edward VII. finger-bowls were not placed upon the royal dinner-
table, because in former times those who secretly sympathized with
the Jacobites were in the habit of drinking to the king over the
water.
Among
the modern Jacobite, or legitimist, societies perhaps the most
important is the” Order of the White Rose,” which has a branch in
Canada and the United States. The order holds that sovereign
authority is of divine sanction, and that the execution of Charles I.
and the revolution of i 688 were national crimes; it exists to study
the history of the Stuarts, to oppose all democratic tendencies, and
in general to maintain the theory that kingship is independent of all
parliamentary authority and popular approval. The order, which was
instituted in i886, was responsible for the Stuart exhibition of
1889, and has a newspaper, the Royalist. Among other societies with
similar objects in view are the ” Thames Valley Legitimist Club ” and
the ” Legitimist Jacobite League of Great Britain and Ireland”
Rosamond Press 
Reblogged this on Rosamond Press and commented:
We sail to see Helen – of Troy!