<A good solid
diatribe in colorful language. One easily imagines it being delivered at the
Hermetic equivalent of a tent revival meeting. - JMG>
1. Whither
stumble ye, sots, who have sopped up the wine of ignorance and can so far
not carry it that ye already even spew it forth?
Stay ye, be
sober, gaze upwards with the [true] eyes of the heart! And if ye cannot all,
yet ye at least who can!
For that the ill
of ignorance doth pour o`er all the earth and overwhelm the soul that's
battened down within the body, preventing it from fetching port within
Salvation's harbors.
2. Be ye then
not carried off by the fierce flood, but using the shore-current <lit.,
"back-current" or "up-current">, ye who can, make for Salvation's port, and,
harboring there, seek ye for one to take you by the hand and lead you unto
Gnosis' gates.
Where shines
clear Light, of every darkness clean; where not a single soul is drunk, but
sober all they gaze with their hearts' eyes on Him who willeth to be seen.
No ear can hear
Him, nor can eye see Him, nor tongue speak of Him, but [only] mind and
heart.
But first thou
must tear off from thee the cloak which thou dost wear - the web of
ignorance, the ground of bad, corruption's chain, the carapace of darkness,
the living death, sensation's corpse, the tomb thou carriest with thee, the
robber in thy house, who through the things he loveth, hateth thee, and
through the things he hateth, bears thee malice.
3. Such is the
hateful cloak thou wearest - that throttles thee [and holds thee] down to
it, in order that thou may'st not gaze above, and having seen the Beauty of
the Truth, and Good that dwells therein, detest the bad of it; having found
out the plot that it hath schemed against thee, by making void of sense
those seeming things which men think senses.
For that it hath
with mass of matter blocked them up and crammed them full of loathsome lust,
so that thou may'st not hear about the things that thou should'st hear, nor
see the things thou should'st see.
