Liber A'ash vel Capricorni Pneumatici

1Gnarled Oak of God! In thy branches is the lightning nested! Above thee hangs the Eyeless Hawk

2Thou art blasted and black! Supremely solitary in that heath of scrub

3Up! The Ruddy clouds hang over thee! It is the storm

4There is a flaming gash in the sky

5Up

6Thou art tossed about in the grip of the storm for an aeon and an aeon and an aeon. But thou givest not thy sap; thou fallest not

7Only in the end shalt thou give up thy sap when the great God F.I.A.T. is enthroned on the day of Be-With-Us

8For two things are done and a third thing is begun. Isis and Osiris are given over to incest and adultery. Horus leaps up thrice armed from the womb of his mother. Harpocrates his twin is hidden within him. SET is his holy covenant, that he shall display in the great day of M.A.A.T., that is being interpreted the Master of the Temple of A.'. A.'., whose name is Truth

9Now in this is the magical power known

10It is like the oak that hardens itself and bears up against the storm. It is weather-beaten and scarred and confident like a sea-captain

11Also it straineth like a hound in the leash

12It hath pride and great subtlety. Yea, and glee also!

13Let the Magus act thus in his conjuration

14Let him sit and conjure; let him draw himself together in that forcefulness; let him rise next swollen and straining; let him dash back the hood from his head and fix his basilisk eye upon the sigil of the demon. Then let him sway the force of him to and fro like a satyr in silence, until the Word burst from his throat

15Then let him not fall exhausted, although he

might have been ten thousandfold the human; but that which floodeth him is the infinite mercy of the Genitor-Genitrix of the Universe, whereof he is the Vessel

16Nor do thou deceive thyself. It is easy to tell the live force from the dead matter. It is no easier to tell the live snake from the dead snake

17Also concerning vows. Be obstinate, and be not obstinate. Understand that the yielding of the Yoni is one with the lengthening of the Lingam. Thou art both these; and thy vow is but the rustling of the wind on Mount Meru

18How

shalt thou adore me who am the Eye and the Tooth, the Goat of the Spirit, the Lord of Creation. I am the Eye in the Triangle, the Silver Star that ye adore

19I am Baphomet, that is the Eightfold Word that shall be equilibrated with the Three

20There is no act or passion that shall not be an hymn in mine honour

21All holy things and all symbolic things shall be my sacraments

22These animals are sacred unto me; the goat, and the duck, and the ass, and the gazelle, the man, the woman and the child

23All corpses are sacred unto me; they shall not be touched save in mine eucharist. All lonely places are sacred unto me; where one man gathereth himself together in my name, there will I leap forth in the midst of him

24I am the hideous god, and who mastereth me is uglier than I

25Yet I give more than Bacchus and Apollo; my gifts exceed the olive and the horse

26Who worshippeth me must worship me with many rites

27I am concealed with all concealments; when the Most Holy Ancient One is stripped and driven through the market place, I am still secret and apart

28Whom I love I chastise with many rods

29All things are sacred to me; no thing is sacred from me

30For there is no holiness where I am not

31Fear not when I fall in the fury of the storm; for mine acorns are blown afar by the wind; and verily I shall rise again, and my children about me, so that we shall uplift our forest in Eternity

32Eternity is the storm that covereth me

33I am Existence, the Existence that existeth not save through its own Existence, that is beyond the Existence of Existences, and rooted deeper than the No-Thing-Tree in the Land of No-Thing

34Now therefore thou knowest when I am within Thee, when my hood is spread over thy skull, when my might is more than the penned Indus, and resistless as the Giant Glacier

35For as thou art before a lewd woman in Thy nakedness in the bazaar, sucked up by her slyness and smiles, so art thou wholly and no more in part before the symbol of the beloved, though it be but a Pisacha or a Yantra or a Deva

36And in all shalt thou create the Infinite Bliss and the next link of the Infinite Chain

37This chain reaches from Eternity to Eternity, ever in triangles --- is not my symbol a triangle? --- ever in circles --- is not the symbol of the Beloved a circle? Therein is all progress base illusion, for every circle is alike and every triangle alike!

38But the progress is progress, and progress is rapture, constant, dazzling, showers of light, waves of dew, flames of the hair of the Great Goddess, flowers of the roses that are about her neck, Amen!

39Therefore lift up thyself as I am lifted up

Hold thyself in as I am master to accomplish. At the end, be the end far distant as the stars that lie in the navel of Nuit, do thou slay thyself as I at the end am slain, in the death that is life, in the peace that is mother of war, in the darkness that holds light in his hand, as an harlot that plucks a jewel from her nostrils

40So therefore the beginning is delight, and the end is delight, and delight is in the midst, even as the Indus is water in the cavern of the glacier, and water among the greater hills and the lesser hills and through the ramparts of the hills and through the plains, and water at the mouth thereof when it leaps forth into the mighty sea, yea, into the mighty sea

(The Interpretation of this Book will be given to members of the Grade of Dominus Liminis on application, each to his Adeptus.)