Boma

“ It is even the bursting forth of the ardent Desire in Nature. It is, as I may term it, the magical Fire-breath, whereby the Powers either of Light or Darkness are dismayed. In short, it is the pregnant Echo of the Sound of Eternity everywhere speaking, working, and opening itself in Love or Anger, in each Thing according to its Will and Desire: In some it is the horrible Flagrat to Death; and in others it is the pleasant triumphant Flagrat to Life. ”

“ Nothing should perish [or be lost] in Man, for God had created him to his Image.
41. Thus let the Philosopher observe, that when the three Murtherers, viz. Saturn, Mars, and Mercury, sink in the crimson-coloured Blood of the Lion, they do not perish; but they are pardoned, that is, their Wrath is changed into a Love-Desire, viz. out of Venus into Sol; for when the fiery Desire enters into the Watery Desire, then a shining, viz. a glorious Splendour, arises from and in the Fire; for Venus is white, and the Fire-Desire is red. ”

“ Drive him out of me, that he may not overcome me; for no one living can stand in thy Sight, if thou withdraw thy Hand from him.
O come, thou Breaker-through the Anger of God, destroy its Power, and help my poor Soul to fight and overcome it. O bring me into Victory, and uphold me in thee; break in Pieces its Seat in my Vanity, that is kindled in my Soul and Flesh. O mortify the Desire of my Vanity in Flesh and Blood, which the Devil hath now kindled by his false Desire, by hellish Anguish and Desperation. ”

“ The bosom's treasures it would make its prey,— Besieges fancy,—dims e'en faith's pure ray. Yet issuing like thyself from humble line, Like thee a gentle shepherdess is she— Sweet poesy affords her rights divine, And to the stars eternal soars with thee. Around thy brow a glory she hath thrown; The heart 'twas formed thee,—ever thou'lt live on! The world delights whate'er is bright to stain, And in the dust to lay the glorious low; Yet fear not! noble bosoms still remain, That for the lofty, for the radiant glow Let Momus serve to fill the booth with mirth ”

“ In like Manner also we are to consider of the Heat, which needs no cold Property, but the Likeness; yet it must be first freed from the Wrath of the same Likeness, and brought into its own highest Joy and Good, so that this Likeness does not effectually operate either in Heat or Cold, but in its own Love-Desire, viz. in its best Relish, and so it will bring the Heat in the Body into such a Desire: All Corruptions in the Body proceed from the Cold; if the Brimstone be too vehemently enkindled by the Heat, then the Right and Property of the Cold dies, and enters into Sorrow. ”

“ This being done, the young Man with his Virgin-like Heart will wholly give himself up to the Mother, when the Tempter comes and assaults him, and the Mother will wholly swallow him up into herself through the Devil's Wrath: He gives himself forth wholly out of his own Will into the Nothing. Now, thinks the Artist with himself, I have lost all; for he thinks that he has lost Heaven; for he seeks Nothing, and does not consider that a Virgin has now brought forth: But let him have Patience; that which is impossible to the Artist, that is possible to Nature ”

“ Here the Virgin does again take the Soul into herself, and gives it her Crown of Pearl, as to a noble Champion, and calls him in his own Name the white Lion or Champion. O ye Children of Men, observe it, I beseech you; open the Gates of the World in your Heart ”

“ The other Kingdom which thou walkest in, is the outward World, wherein thou dwellest in the vain corrupt Flesh and Blood, and where the Pleasures of the World and Assaults of the Devil beset thee every Hour. Thou mayest perhaps in thy great Joy bring Earthliness again into my Beauty, and thereby darken my Pearl; or thou mayest possibly grow proud, as Lucifer did, when he had the Pearl in his Possession, and so turn thyself away from the Harmony of God, as he did, and then I must be deprived of my Love forever afterwards. ”

“ For all do Work and Desire in Man, God's Love and Anger: He stands while he is in this Tabernacle in the Gate either to go out or in: Both eternal Principles are stirring in him; to which the Soul's Will gives itself, of that it is received, and thereto it is chosen; he is drawn of both, and if the Will of the Soul remains in Self-hood, then he is in the Hand of God's Anger. ”

“ Now when the heavenly Body, and also the earthly, do thus yield unto these three Murtherers, then appears the Image of John and Mary by the Cross as a Type; for the young Man's Life, and also the Virgin's in the young Man, has freely surrendered, and given forth itself: And now the two Properties, viz. the divine and human, divide themselves in the Form of each Power, which the Artist may see if he has the eyes and Understanding thereunto. ”

“ For before she will crown thee, thou must be judged, that thou mayest taste the bitter Potion of Dregs, which thou hast filled for thyself in thine Abominations. Thou must come before the Gates of Hell first, and there shew forth thy Victory for her in her Love, in that Strength wherewith she upheld thee in Opposition to the Devil's malign Influence. ”

“ In old days when, as we have seen, tradition, aided by the most fantastic superstitions, insisted on the baleful aspects of sex, the whole emphasis was placed against passion. Since knowledge and self-guidance, without which passion is likely to be in fact pernicious, were then usually absent, the emphasis was needed, and when Bohme, the old mystic, declared that the art of living is to “harness our fiery energies to the service of the light,” it has recently been even maintained that he was the solitary pioneer of our modern doctrines. ”

“ It is not a book to be placed unwarily in the hands of the young and tender; parts of it are exaggerated, parts may be wished away, but, when all has been said, it remains, not the picture of la vie de Bohème at its best and brightest, but the classic expression of the Bohemian spirit—a frank confession, not the pseudo-pathetic souvenir of a prosperous greybeard. Its pages are among those rare ones in the world's library that have caught and held for a moment the intangible freshness, the poetry, and the gaiety of youth. ”

“ This Birth of the Astrum begets in the four Elements, viz. in its Body or Essence, Joy and Sorrow, and all is very good in itself; only the Alteration of the Creature proceeds from the lustful Imagination, whereby the Creature elevates the Wrath of the Fire in the Properties, and brings them forth out of the Likeness of their Accord: Nothing is evil which remains in the equal Accord ”

“ Bomba does not fear what the natives fear. He does not tremble like Ashati and Neram who talk foolish words about ghosts and demons. For Bomba is white. He is like Gillis and Dorn, who laugh at the talk of ghosts. If they can laugh, so can Bomba. For Bomba has a white skin and he has a white soul, and he is afraid of nothing that the foolish people say walk in the darkness. ”

“ Upon this the Devil drew near the Soul, and brought it on from one vice to another, for he had taken it captive in his Essence, and set joy and pleasure before it, therein, saying thus to it: Behold now thou art powerful, mighty, and noble, endeavour to be greater, richer, and more powerful still. Display thy knowledge, wit and subtlety, that every one may fear thee, and stand in awe of thee, and that thou mayst be respected, and get a great name in the World. ”

“ Foma listened, and his imagination, captivated by the quiet, charming narrative, pictured to him those wide fields and dense forests, full of beauty and soul-pacifying silence.
“You look at the sky, as you rest somewhere under a little bush, and the sky seems to descend upon you as though longing to embrace you. Your soul is warm, filled with tranquil joy, you desire nothing, you envy nothing. And it actually seems to you that there is no one on earth save you and God.” ”

“ The Devil said, as he had also said to Adam, Eat of the Evil and Good: Hast thou not Bread? Then make Bread of Stones: Why dost thou Hunger so long in thy own Property? Then said the Divine Desire, Man liveth not of Bread alone, but of every Word of God.
29. Thus the Property of the fiery Soul resigned itself with its Desire into the Love, viz. into the speaking Word's Property, and the fiery Desire did eat Manna in the Love-Desire. O ye Philosophers! observe it well, when this was done, the Love transmuted the fiery Property into its Love-Property ”

“ Thus we are to search and find out the great Mystery, how there is an Oil, Brimstone, and Salt in every Thing, and how they arise; for God has made all Things out of Nothing, and that same Nothing is Himself, viz. a Love-Lubet dwelling in itself, wherein there is no Affection: But now the Love-Lubet would not be manifest, if it remained one in the Stillness without Essence, and there would be no Joy or Moving therein, but an eternal Stillness. ”

“ Thou wilt yet be greatly enticed to draw Matter, and to gather that which the World calls substance; thereby to have somewhat visible to trust to. But by no means consent to the Tempter, nor yield to the lustings of thy Flesh against the Spirit. For in so doing thou wilt infallibly obscure the Divine Light in thee; thy Spirit will stick in the dark Covetous Root, [Pg 66] and from the fiery Source of thy soul will it blaze out in pride and anger; thy Will shall be chained in Earthliness, and shall sink through the Anguish into Darkness and Materiality ”

“ Having threshed out in his mind all the possibilities with regard to this anxious charge, he allowed his thoughts to drift back to his afternoon at Bramwell Castle two days before, to Baba's winsome ways, to the sweetness of Baba's mother, to his own dream idyll, the dreaming of which had, he was convinced, been such an absurdity, and yet—and yet, the dream had seemed so wonderful.
"People may scoff at the bare idea of love at first sight," he mused, as the car passed on its rapid way in the gathering twilight, "but—sometimes it happens—even to the most prosaic of us." ”

“ This was now the Flagrat of the Wrath, that the Love should so come into it; whereupon the Earth trembled, and the Rocks clave asunder; for so the Death was dismayed at the Life: And here the awakened Wrath's Property did separate itself into the Centre, viz. into the first Principle, into the Fire-Root; and now from the Centre there proceeded forth the Hunger to the New-Birth in the human Property; of the Hunger unto Death was made a Hunger to Life; for the Love tinctured the Anger, that the Fire-Desire to the dark Impression became a Desire of Life. ”

“ Doth not in every corner a Momus lurk, from the venom of whose spiteful or petulant tongue no eminency of rank, dignity of place, or sacredness of office, no innocence or integrity of life, no wisdom or circumspection in behaviour, no good-nature or benignity in dealing and carriage, can protect any person? Do not men assume to themselves a liberty of telling romances, and framing characters concerning their neighbour, as freely as a poet doth about Hector or Turnus, Thersites or Draucus? ”

“ That talent, were there no other, of spontaneously standing in queue, distinguishes, as we said, the French People from all Peoples, ancient and modern.
Let the Reader confess too that, taking one thing with another, perhaps few terrestrial Appearances are better worth considering than mobs. Your mob is a genuine outburst of Nature; issuing from, or communicating with, the deepest deep of Nature. When so much goes grinning and grimacing as a lifeless Formality, and under the stiff buckram no heart can be felt beating, here once more, if nowhere else, is a Sincerity and Reality. ”

“ And then for that brief moment I am blest,
For I am folded to thy sheltering breast;
And in the sacred rapture of thy love
A holy spell is on my spirit laid:
This mighty hunger of my heart is stayed. ”

“ But when the Essence is in its wrestling Combat, the Artist must assist the Soulish, viz. the fiery Property, till the Soul's Spirit attains its Life, then he appears in the Woman's Form and Lustre: Now the Artist supposes that he has the Child that is born, but there belongs a further Time to it, till the Soul grows strong, and then it appears and shews itself in its red and white Coat. ”

“ The glitter and glamour of society; the devil-may-care fascinations of Bohemia; they had lured him to such agony as this!
Such agony? What, you ask, had this young man to be in agony about? He was a very nice young man—all the world would have told you that! Ah, but was there never a moment in your lives, my dear fellow-sinners—you men and women of the world—when it came to your conscience like a sword-thrust, that the beautiful bloom of your youth and innocence was gone from you forever and that ever afterward there would be a bitter memory or a bitterer forgetfulness? ”

“ Hides away his face of light,
Though Minerva looks askance,
Deigning me no smiling glance,
Kings and queens may envy me
While I claim the god of glee.
Wisdom wearies, Love has wings—
Wealth makes burdens, Pleasure stings,
Glory proves a thorny crown—
So all gifts the gods throw down
Bring their pains and troubles after;
All save Momus, god of laughter.
He alone gives constant joy. ”

“ Now concerning the incorruptible Essence of Corporality, the same arises also in the first Desire to Nature, yet in the Impression of the free Lubet, and goes all along through all the Forms even into the highest Sharpness, where it retires again into itself, as a Life out of the Fire: The eternal Fire is magical, and a Spirit, and dies not; the Liberty is its Enkindler, but the eternal Nature is its Sharpness ”