Dødsengel Bab Al On 1. Ad Babalonis Amorem Do Dedico Omnia Nihilo The skull you are holding is your own Every faint and bittersweet memory Every hope and dream that went unacted To think that we fit into such small spaces The bitter wine that you taste is your own Once fresh like a mountain stream, then a sweet and melodious wine Now the bitter brew of love Set aside for a special occasion The breaths you were holding were not your own Every awkward word or silence Every fumbling gesture They were Hers And you shall not hold back one drop. 2. In the Beginning In the beginning I arose as a scream Echoing out from a burning cranial cage. Dwarfed by a world of incomprehensible structures Aeons into their unfolding Stretching out from unknowable ages Infinitely beyond my grasp Yet even they are but a grain of sand Cast adrift in an ocean of utter nothingness My Lord is the thunderbolt The atom, the in-divisible, the point of ink That set fire to the monkey’s skull I am the searing light of consciousness Radiating out of a screaming ape Surging, shrieking for but a cosmic moment Then forever to hold my peace My Lady is the form, and the giver of form The fertile nothingness that gave rise to the cyclopean structures The sheet of paper to the dot of ink I am the principle of union The conscious meat machine Object and subject A screaming, cosmic ape To rise amidst the confusion. To comprehend little. And to end. 3. Annihilation Mantra 4. Waters of Unravelling These are the waters that house the stars They are drops of dew from the Godhead Corroding upwards through the ground as water does in this strange place Vibrating and coalescing into larger, ephemeral shapes. Puddle to lake to sea to the world-ocean. This is where I rose. From paradisiac protoplasm. This is where I grew. In saintly symbiosis. This is where I drew blood. My blood. Unraveled my humanity. And became the No Man. My bones shall stretch as spires from the seas, establishing a covenant between the orderly heavens and the chaotic depths of man’s heart which Adam in his Foolish Glory named the Underworld My skull is a cup which encompasses and contains the seas of dream and phantasm From which I shall drink merrily with each heaving breath that is gifted me My name is five letters and six, and eight. I have come to love and redeem the black earth through strife and ordeal. Sword drawn, I have come for love’s sake, for the chance of union. 5. Bursting as Boils on the Backs of Slaves Screaming mouths of silenced slaves and deposed kings Are the trumpets heralding every birth since the dawn of our species Would brother Thought save you from this fate? Or sister Faith? Would you declare yourself enlightened, an ally to the lost? While every thought, word or breath rises as fumes from the burning cinders of the lives and dreams you have devoured Simply by existing. Love is union. To devour is to unite, to rip and tear – a form of love. We are the gloriously abominable sons and daughters of slaves and tyrants. Of stars and angels and beasts and nothingnesses. Our coming into being requires neither grace nor pardon. For we have come for Love’s sake. For the sake of Union. 6. The Lamb Speaks I am the greatest of the deceivers, for my purity and innocence shall seduce the pure and innocent, who but for me should come to the centre of the wheel. The wolf betrayeth only the greedy and the treacherous; the raven betrayeth only the melancholy and the dishonest. But I am he of whom it is written: He shall deceive the very elect. For in the beginning the Father of all called forth lying spirits that they might sift the creatures of the earth in three sieves, according to the three impure souls. And he chose the wolf for the lust of the flesh, and the raven for the lust of the mind; but me did he choose above all to simulate the pure prompting of the soul. Them that are fallen a prey to the wolf and the raven I have not scathed; but them that have rejected me, I have given over to the wrath of the raven and the wolf. And the jaws of the one have torn them, and the beak of the other has devoured the corpse. Therefore is my flag white, because I have left nothing upon the earth alive. I have feasted myself on the blood of the saints, but I am not suspected of men to be their enemy, for my fleece is white and warm, and my teeth are not the teeth of one that teareth flesh; and mine eyes are mild, and they know me not the chief of the lying spirits that the Father of all sent forth from before his face in the beginning. (From A.C., “Vision and the Voice, the Cry of the 20th Aethyr”) 7. Agnus Dei Agnus Dei qui tollis peccata mundi Agnus Dei qui tollis peccata mundi Agnus Dei qui tollis peccata mundi dona nobis pacem 8. Hour of Contempt There will come a time When even your happiness will be contemptible to you When love, reason, knowledge and virtue Will be empty and devoid of allure All wretched self complacency And nothing more. This is the hour of contempt The hour of self exultant Never will you be closer to my light It is the fire with a voice A fresh and vigorous roar Effortlessly cutting its way through the confusion of life It knows what it detests And through that contempt Via Negativa You may finally know yourself as you truly are. This is the hour of contempt The hour of self exultant Never will you be closer to my light. 9. In the Heart of the World I’ve tried to remember the touch the rays of a sun another kind of warmth a voice, often lost in a familiar haze a will and a nature, omnipresent gaze But remembrance is an earthly deed, clothed in words and concepts And malleable neurons that carry the seed Of reinterpretation and reimagination It’s all a picture of a picture of a picture And the voice grows ever fainter And the touch grows ever fainter And I lose my heart again and again With strange people and in strange places And wonder how I find myself in these unwelcoming shores But then, as a bolt of lightning in the corner of my eye When we were at the right place and at the right time We found ourselves in the Heart of the World Our minds and our bodies dancing to an unsingable tune And I remember the voice I once heard When I stood teary eyed and naked between the spheres And opened my soul and my skull to let the Sun shine its rays upon my brain And I laughed and I cried before normality set in. Still, sometimes, when the stars are right I can feel that touch, I can feel that light When I somehow do something to deserve it. 10. Dies Irae 11. Abomination Gate Open, open, the Gates of ON. The Great God ON. Open, open, the Abomination Gate. Her coiling thighs crushing every last drop of life from your spine Babylon sprouts triumphant from the ruins of lost Jerusalem Every atom of your being annihilated by the descent of Her abyssal Love. Open, open, speak it into being Life drinks death Death eats life Open, Open, a Gate risen in the hysteria of fearful men Will you give your all, will you give every drop of you And cast the scattered ashes into the void, into the abyss. Following a faint voice, a single strain of sound in the cacophony And hope against hope. A final throw of the dice. Bathed in annihilation’s light. Remolded and refashioned. Abominable Child, inhuman Master of the Temple. Child of void and Saintsblood. Child of starlight and dust. Joining its kin in the City of Pyramids. It speaks: We are abominable to the eyes of Ioannes because we choose our love of the world as a defiant act of heroic transgression. We choose Babylon over Jerusalem. Having seen the face of the Creator upon the waters in the beginning of All, we chose to love the work of the pen above the hand that wielded it. The Lord our God himself chose Babylon over Jerusalem at the moment of creation, at His moment of ecstasy Through Her, He transcends Himself So, open, open, the Gates of ON. The Great God ON. Open, open, the Abomination Gate. Her coiling thighs crushing every last drop of life from your spine Babylon sprouts triumphant from the ruins of lost Jerusalem Every atom of your being annihilated by the descent of Her abyssal Love.