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Saturday, April 22, 2006

Crowley's Hymn to Pan


Listening to the Thelemite podcast made me go and look up one of Crowley's milder sex poems, Hymn to Pan. My favorite lines are: Come with flute and come with pipe/Am I not ripe ?

Hymn to Pan

Thrill with lissome lust of the light,
O man ! My man !
Come careering out of the night
Of Pan ! Io Pan .
Io Pan ! Io Pan ! Come over the sea
From Sicily and from Arcady !
Roaming as Bacchus, with fauns and pards
And nymphs and styrs for thy guards,
On a milk-white ass, come over the sea
To me, to me,
Coem with Apollo in bridal dress
(Spheperdess and pythoness)
Come with Artemis, silken shod,
And wash thy white thigh, beautiful God,
In the moon, of the woods, on the marble mount,
The dimpled dawn of of the amber fount !
Dip the purple of passionate prayer
In the crimson shrine, the scarlet snare,
The soul that startles in eyes of blue
To watch thy wantoness weeping through
The tangled grove, the gnarled bole
Of the living tree that is spirit and soul
And body and brain -come over the sea,
(Io Pan ! Io Pan !)
Devil or god, to me, to me,
My man ! my man !
Come with trumpets sounding shrill
Over the hill !
Come with drums low muttering
From the spring !
Come with flute and come with pipe !
Am I not ripe ?
I, who wait and writhe and wrestle
With air that hath no boughs to nestle
My body, weary of empty clasp,
Strong as a lion, and sharp as an asp-
Come, O come !
I am numb
With the lonely lust of devildom.
Thrust the sword through the galling fetter,
All devourer, all begetter;
Give me the sign of the Open Eye
And the token erect of thorny thigh
And the word of madness and mystery,
O pan ! Io Pan !
Io Pan ! Io Pan ! Pan Pan ! Pan,
I am a man:
Do as thou wilt, as a great god can,
O Pan ! Io Pan !
Io pan ! Io Pan Pan ! Iam awake
In the grip of the snake.
The eagle slashes with beak and claw;
The gods withdraw:
The great beasts come, Io Pan ! I am borne
To death on the horn
Of the Unicorn.
I am Pan ! Io Pan ! Io Pan Pan ! Pan !
I am thy mate, I am thy man,
Goat of thy flock, I am gold , I am god,
Flesh to thy bone, flower to thy rod.
With hoofs of steel I race on the rocks
Through solstice stubborn to equinox.
And I rave; and I rape and I rip and I rend
Everlasting, world without end.
Mannikin, maiden, maenad, man,
In the might of Pan.
Io Pan ! Io Pan Pan ! Pan ! Io Pan !

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Powerful poem. Thanks for posting this.

Lucas said...

It appears that Wicca has a very particular and some might claim distorted view of Hectate.

The context in which Hesiod defines Hecate's powers may
have been influenced by her genealogy. Hecate is first cousin to Artemis, who undeniably embodies characteristics of a To'rvla 01p(bv and has other associations with nature.'7 Artemis also has a negative potential among men (II. 21.483-84; Od. 11.171-73).
Hecate's name seems to correspond to Apollo's title Hekatos
(from 'EKarrffi6Aos), which was applied also to Artemis (e.g.
'Aptejpi sKaKraA;e s. Supp. 676). Hecate and Artemis were identified
with each other from an early date and they eventually had
in common at least a dozen cult-titles. In Hesiod, though,
Hecate is an esteemed goddess involved in the highest affairs of
men and especially different from Artemis in her role as goddess
of royal judgment and war.

Hecate's underworld characteristics and identification with black magic did not begin to dominate in literature until the late fifth century
with the appearance of Euripides' Medea (395-97).

Theodor Kraus theorizes that Hecate was transformed from a great goddess, like the Hesiodic Hecate, into a goddess of witchcraft through identification with the Thessalian road-goddess Einodia, who appeared in Athens in the fifth century carrying with her the strong traditions of Thessalian witchcraft. The earliest representations of Hecate in triple form (Hekataea) date, in fact, to this period.

see

A Portrait of Hecate
Author(s): Patricia A. Marquardt The American Journal of Philology, Vol. 102, No. 3 (Autumn, 1981), pp. 243-260