THE ORDO TEMPLI ORIENTIS AND SODOMY

by Ordo Templi Orientis

Excerpts from "The Scented Garden of Abdullah the Satirist of Shiraz"

It is sunset, and the rose rays fall aslant the woodland; they trace patterns of wondrous witchery on the velvet of the glade. A ruddy glow lightens the marble leer of the all-glorious one, the child of Arcady, the ineffable Pan -- Pan! Pan! Io Pan! -- before whom I lie prostrate with my robes careless and freeflung, so that the red warmth of Apollon burns on my live quivering flesh, as I lie and yearn in utter worship towards the all glorious one, not daring to raise my eyes to yonder rosy shaft of Parian stone. The love in my heart melts all the winter of my body, and the warm salt springs gush from my eyes upon the ground -- surely the latter spring shall see green violets grow thereon!'

Then, in the hush of the sunset, come noiseless hoofs treading the enammelled turf; and ere I know it a fierce lithe hairy body had gripped mine, and the dread wand of magic shudders its live way into my being, so that the foundations of the soul are shaken. The heavy breath and the rank kisses of a faun are on my neck, and his teeth fasten in my flesh -- a terrible heave flings our bodies into mid air with the athletic passion that unites us with the utmost God "hid i' th' middle o' matter" -- and the life of my strange lover boils within my bowels -- there is a ronronnement as of myriad nymphs and fauns, satyrs and dryads, -- a stirring of the waters of life -- we fall back in an ecstacy -- somewhat like death -- with the gasping murmur Pan! Pan! Io Pan! while the marmorean splendour before us turns with the last ray of sunlight his goodly smile upon still and stricken bodies -- the heap of the slain of Priapus -- perinde ac cadaver -- ah! it is night, it is death.

Arse makes life golden, want of it dull yellow;
The rest is only leather and prunella.

With sodomy, too, no children come, to cloud one's love with cares material and profane. I love my own children deeply, intensely; but they are rivals to my wife. Nothing can intervene between my boy and me but the slow foot of change, for sodomites are mortal; but that immortal longing in them which is [pi-alpha-iota-delta-epsilon-rho-alpha-sigma-tau-epsilon- iota-alpha] -- . That twins them with the Lord of Resurrection; and even as I plunge my member into the sarcophagus, the flesh eater, the podex of my lover, and withdraw it, its strength renewed as the eagles, so do I know that when the Eater of all flesh devours me altogether, I shall arise in my strength, through the blessed resurrection of our Lord Jesus, the lover of John the beautiful, into a world where erectio penis shall be the rule and not the exception. Where, please God, we shall all be Sapphists and Sodomites, joined each to each in one incredible spinthria, with the extreme orgasm (which is the Holy Ghost) abiding upon us and within us for ever and ever.

He will know that in the rites of sodomy duly done, even more than in the rites of heterosexual passion, lies the great secret of the Universe, the Key of the Gardens of God.

But I must not proselytize; many are called, but few chosen; a sodomite is born, not made; you can't make a silk sodomite out of an English grocer's boy; one sodomite doesn't make a scandal; take care of the boys, and the girls will take care of themselves; strike while the tool is hot; don't bugger in haste, or withdraw at leisure; a turd in the hand is worth two in the bush; a prick in time saves nine; it's a wise Wilde that knows his own Q.; one good turn deserves another; frig wise and fuck foolish; there's better boys in the choir than ever came out of it -- all of which goes to show that it took no genius to write `John Ploughman'. Not that if Charles Spurgeon had been{fn12} one of us, his style would have approximated to that of Walter Pater; a stylist is as direct a miracle of God as a sodomite. No! I must not proselytize! there are enough of us in the world; a select body of idealists, of men cleansed from gross passions, of poets and mystics linked in a perfect freemasonry of style and manner, of ships (as it were) who have dropped anchor in a safe harbour, of conquerors at ease in the towns they have captured, whose inhabitants are too crass and stupid even to know themselves slaves.

Wine is red, and so are thy lips; what wonder then if El Qahar is doubly intoxicated? Thy mouth brims over with laughter at the antics of thy lover, so that in thy mirth thy podex also brims over. Then the guests cry shame; and fall down with laughing, until the feast is disordered and becomes a debauch, so that the decorous are embarrassed. So drunk am I, however, that I shamelessly demand thy love before them all. Then the officers rush in and lead us before the Qazi.

But while I am punished, thou, the author of my offence, art bidden to sup. Go not, O sweet Habib! that ass-calibred Jew is as unsuited to thy tender podex as the elephant to the nightingale. By Allah, I say go not! 'twere shame, when thou returnest, that thou shouldst seem to thine El Qahar like Hatim Tai's tunic to that Allah-forgotten hunchback Ali Bukhti.

Art thou one or many, Habib? Surely thou hast need to be a thousand, since thou hast taken to prostituting thyself to Hindus and Afghans, Nubian slaves and immodest boys from Bushir.

When they saw thee of old, with thy tunic hanging upon thy jutting buttocks, like the flowing draperies of the Caliph's tent, men said of thee: "The complexions of the women are well shaded from the sun". Now it is thin and transparent, that tunic of thine, and people are saying: "Please Allah it may not rain, else will the horses catch cold and die!"

Every gossip comes to me and prates of thy misdemeanours; my beard waves with anger like an old goat's. Come to me, and I will beat thee soundly; and if thou offendest again, I will carry thee before this ass-calibred Qazi -- Allah on him! -- I know well what punishment he will give thee -- love; but ever after thou shalt have no need to be a thousand, but accomodate thirty lovers at one time within thy podex.

So saith El Qahar, but I am not so sure that if thou comest to him with thine impudence and prettiness, he will not forgive thee. Allah is the Forgiver.

I shall anoint myself with camel's dung, and drink many decoctions of chob-chini, [5] since nothing appeases thee but male vigour.
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5. Reputed aphrodisiacs. In reality of little more use than the boasted South American Damiana. Chob-chini (wood of China) is the "ginseng" of Sze-Chuen and Corea. The modern biological methods of restoring sexual vigour are interesting. Brown-Sequard prepared a testicualar infusion, but his was not found -- everywhen, everywhere, and by all, a success. Today they kill a goat, obtain the semen while the animal is still not quite dead, and preserve by a special process. Such a decoction, even when a year old, exhibits live and active spermatazoa when warmed by an experienced microscopist on the stage of a good instrument. Injected under the skin, it produces magnificent results, both as a general tonic and a cure for impotence. Thus the goat, deposed from his satanic glory, and proved (like a young virgin) useless in gonorrhea, has at last found his causa finalis in the laboratories of Chicago. (The following addition to the above note was communicated to me by the able and learned M. Merryweather of Armours).

Thou didst not laugh, O spoiler of sport!

Nor did the rattans of the eunuchs move thee to mirth, falling like the first hard rain of summer upon thy back, and upon thy buttocks, and upon thy feet, Thou art no longer cheerful; Laila in the night bade me observe that in thy song, which thou sangest to the eunuchs, there was a note as of pain. Is it because thou hast not eaten for three days that thou hast lost thy good spirits? Or wast thou ashamed, shooting the peppercorns? [3]
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3. To amuse oneself at the expense of another, one may fill his rectum with peppercorns, and apply a pinch of pepper to the nose. This causes the peppercorns to shoot forth, often noisily.

So eagerly did I kiss every red weal upon thy velvet buttocks that thou didst wish thy beating had been prolonged by a whole day. Also, for every peppercorn that did shoot from thy podex, thou hadst a balm. Wise art thou who badest me sell this my garden to buy more pepper therewithal.

I am a bearded and a turbaned sar; [1]
Thou art a boy more lovely than a star.
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1. The Sanskrit root Sar "head" has given to Europe and Asia the word for Ruler; as Sar, sir, sieur, Caesar, Sarah, Kaiser, Tsar, Shah, sirdar, sirkar, sire, signor, senor, seigneur and a host of others.

Like peacocks in a garden spread
our thousand eyes of jewel-sheen.
Though squawking with an eunuch's voice,
our paederastic plumes we preen. [8]
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8. This and the following stanzas seem inconsequent. But they contain profound allusions. The thousand eyes of the peacock's tail are equivalent to the thousand petals of the Sahasrara lotus in India; the divine lotus that only exists as a throne for the descending Shiva upon his devotee. The eunuch's voice is the shrill sound heard by adepts at the moment of union with the divine. The garden is of course the sphere of the trained soul.

THE POTTER

The dew is on the rose; behold
The sun illumine them with his gold!
My dew is on thy rose; what Light
Their love with rapture doth enfold?
They are immune from Life and Death;
From heat and hunger, thirst and cold.
The worn ascetics of the mosque
Guess not what joy the ages hold.
Seek we the tavern and the stream,
The garden and the grassy wold!
No potter fashioned thee, o man!
`Tis thou that didst the Potter mold.
From Fear grew Hell, from Hope sprang Heaven;
From Love our Ecstasy untold.
Those are delusions, slow to live,
This hath no death, the iron-souled.
(Therefore the podex of Habib
To pierce am I, thy lover, bold.)
Only from the weariness of love
Was death's unholy camel foaled.
Be this the song of El Qaha
In gold on ivory enscrolled.

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