[Monday, Jan. 19, 1914 e.v.]
Die Sol 11.45 P.M. — 12.30 A.M.
A most admirable working, the best we have done for Juppiter. During O.S.V.'s invocation of Amoun, his vibration of the Name Divine was echoed in second by a voice audible to the ear. Now then fair omens dexter prosper ye the work. During the Quia Patris Fra. L.T. at the Altar of the East being genuflected, beheld the colossal form of Juppiter our Father, manubis plenis. Yea, with gold were his hands full; praise unto our Father and our god! In the morning Fra. O.S.V. awoke early, having (as hath only occurred to him once before) dreamed a story which he remembered. He therefore spent the day from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. in writing down this story which he called 'The Stratagem'. May it bring fame and fortune.
The Esoteric Record [of the Ninth Working]
The Rites of Juppiter were duly performed on this and the next two days. With regard to the ceremony of Wednesday, I have to add to the esoteric record that Fra. O.S.V. was at one time a consecrated prostitute in the Temple of the sun at Agrigentum. This Temple had a 'long square' (2 X 1) outer court. In the upper square was a square Temple — with facade and pillars. O.S.V., whose name was at that time Asteris (or something similar), used to sit on the steps and receive sacrifices. I think the name was Astarte, but am afraid of having been rational.
[1]
The great sacrifice of Spring was to cut open a bull, and lay a virgin in the hot carcass, there to be violated by the High Priest. She was finally choked in the bull's blood (in orgasmo). Within the Temple was a circular domed shrine about 40 feet across. The priestesses used to carry their offerings to the altar of Incense in the East, while the blood of the victims went to a big font in the West.
[2]
The secret of the Temple was the Midnight Sun. Globes of fire used to gather on the font, and from the other altar, and begin to revolve in the shrine.
They would coalesce and then become one, which stood single and unmoving all night, only fading with dawn. Astarte surprised the secret, and penetrated into the shrine at the midnight sacrifice and adoration of this globe. She was slain instantly by the priests, who passed their swords again and again through her body. This death was extreme pleasure. The body was thrown out upon the court at the foot of the Temple steps, and made tabu, so that it might be 'devoured by the Sun'.
She had incurred this incarnation as the result of various misdemeanors in Greece about an hundred years before. Her incarnations had always been at short intervals. It appears that in the beginning most people cannot bear frequent incarnations, and need long restorative periods of rest and peace. But superior spirits take a great oath, and get on faster. They suffer more in proportion. You can recognise them by sensitiveness, which is sometimes in the painful or morbid degree. This is the case when the Great Work has been forgotten for an incarnation, or a part of it; the idea is to impress the fact of the oath upon the sufferer.
Astarte in her Grecian avatar had been a rather worldly priest. Her childhood was one of great misery. She had been taken by pirates and ill-treated — she came from Leghorn or its neighbourhood. A ship-wreck left her on the coast of Sicily. People found her, and finding her an excellent prostitute (she was now 14), put her in a brothel. She hated the life. At a spring festival she was lucky enough to attract a young priest who took her, put her through a year's purification, and added her to the Temple staff. But she only saw a dull routine, though applying herself to advancement in her profession by the skill of her embraces. However, by the age of 20 or there-abouts she 'got religion', and began to act con amore. From this time she was rather the terror of the Temple. She used to do strange things, excesses, record-breaking acts, and so on. In fact she was a little mad; had a touch of the Sun as it were. However, she got the name of being inspired now and then, and was used in some of the public ceremonies. She made a young priest fall madly in love with her on one such occasion, and they violated their vows by carnal copulation of an irreligious character. In this way she made him tell her the secret of the Temple; she then killed him the same night, so that he should never betray the fact that he had betrayed the Mysteries.
She was a slim, lean, nervous girl with a long face, a Roman nose, rather full lips, very strong from constant exercise, a habit of wriggling as if consumed by an inward itch, abundant and very wiry black hair which she sometimes dyed, very strong and very sharp and white regular teeth, deep violet eyes, very wide apart, and set obliquely like Chinese eyes. Her cheek-bones were high, and her expressions fierve. Her breasts were quite undeveloped, and her body body like a man's, or rather, like a boy's. Her vulva was lean and muscular, the nymphae hardly developed at all.
Astarte was her Temple name; her own was Felicia. Her parents were peasants, vine-dressers, in winter woodcutters. (This description is most strangely like Alostrael.)
