The Chaldean Oracles

Altogether clad in clamorous light
arming mind and soul with trident force
throw the entire synthema of the triad
into your being;
nor frequent the water-course of the celestial fire flux
in a distracted manner; 

rather—concentrate!                                                                                     [2]

*

There exists a certain mind thing.
To it 
one must put 
mind's Flower.

And if you incline mind to it
as if attending a thing,
you are not minding that.

It is the very possibility of mightiness
flashing circumambient light
in mental sectors.

And do not attend it with vehemence
but by means of the long-
                                    extended      flame of mind
that measures all things
but   not   that   one   mind   thing.

And do not hold mind to it
with an obstinate intensity

but holding the eye of your soul the other way
turn an empty mind toward that one mind thing
in order to study that mind thing

because it already exists outside the mind.                                                 [1]

*

It is not possible to adduce a name for it, 
as if a name could be adapted to it. 
This therefore:

What is beyond all things 
is only referred to as the One
by those desiring to utter the ineffable.                           [9]



*
The mind of the Father
   has sown symbols
       down in the world.
The mind, that is, that thinks the Intelligibles.

They are said to be 
   things of ineffable beauty.                                         [108]

*

For all things that issue from the One,
and to the One return,
are divided, intellectually, into many bodies.                 [9]

*                                                                                    

Do not retain in your mind
the multiplicitous otherness

but amplify the intelligence in the Soul
towards The One.

*

Urge yourself onward
to the center
of the clamorous light.                                                  [111

*

Unlock the Immortal
depth of Soul.

Let all your eyes
fly up! 

UP UP!
                                                                                   [112]
*

The most robust of natures
behold truth on their own account
and are the more the discoverers
being saved through their own strength.

Weaker natures
require tutelage 
from others
            complete
where they are not.                                                      [117]


To some, the god has provided instruction
so that the mark of the light
might be recognized.

Others he has fructified in their slumber
by their own strength.                                                [118]

*

How do the angels
elevate the soul?

By irradiating soul with fire, 

casting light upon it from everywhere

making it full of   undefiled    fire 
imparting to it
un-in-clining order
and capacity
not to scatter
to matter’s dis-order
but make contact
with the light
of god-like things.                                                 [122]

*

Hekate says:

These are the thoughts of the Second Father
after which

                        my fire

                                       spirals.                                     [38]

*

Those who release 
the soul on the breath
are free.                                                                 [124]

*

For god things are not accessible
to bodily-minded mortals
but are accessible to such as, 
naked, hasten up—

Up Up!                                                                     [116]

*

When you see
         the shapeless
                sacrificial fire
   shining
                 leaping
down through the depths
         of the whole cosmos:

Listen to the voice of the fire .                             [148]

*

Says Hekate:

Invoke me often
and you'll see
that everything 
                                    is LIONS:

For neither does the arched mass of the sky appear,
nor do the stars shine.
The light of the moon is occluded;
the earth has no fixed place.

All things are seen in lightning flashes.               [147]

*



Having intoned these things
you will see a fire like a child
leaping extended on the billowing air
or a fire on which no form has been impressed
and from it a voice sent out

or a rich light rushing in spirals about a field
or perhaps you'll see a horse
more glittering than starlight
or a child mounted on the fast back of a horse
or a fiery child ornamented with gold
or, again, a naked one
on the back of a horse
standing, shooting a bow.                                            [146]

*

Unique.        Beyond. 

Not cut into small pieces

but of one form, indivisible.                                    [152]

*

Nor will you leave
       the detritus of matter
              back on a beetling crag,
but that there'd be a portion for an image
at a place
                 surrounded by light.                                     [158]

*

Avengers—person stranglers.                                        [161]


******



Apollo

                exulting

                       in harmony of light                                  [71]

*

I, the divine, have arrived

armed to the teeth.                                                           [72]

*

Zeus in the sky, 

in the midmost region,
the Concourse of Air.

Then another—the third—heats up earth.

These three furious Princes
are served by all things.                                                    [73]

They are Originaries
because they're the first to give rise
to the flow of their own streams.

Therefore their cosmic level is celebrated as:

                     Primordial Fountain.                                        [74]

******

Implacable thunderbolts leap out of him
and the lightning-bolt-receiving 
womb of shining rays
of Hekate sired by the Father

and the under-girdling fire-flower
and the strong spirit beyond the fiery poles…                       [35]

*

The Mind of the Father 
minding with strong intent
spun out thought forms,

putting before an ordered, 
polymorphous, world
an imperishable paradigm

and down its disorderly track, 
appeared an ordered cosmos 
engraved with all ideas.

One source exists for this;
and from it, dividing and dividing 
entities unapproachable
spin off 
having splintered on the body of the world.

Those who are borne about
the terrifying wombs
like a swarm of bees
flashing hither and yon—
are thoughts 
from the Paternal source
copiously culling the Fire Flower
from the pinnacle of sleepless time.
The Father's primal self-perfected source-spring
gushed these first ideas.                                                                [37]

*

In the midst of the Fathers

the center of Hekate.                                                                       [50

*

In her womb-hollows
all things are sown.                                                                                 [28]

*

Visible from everywhere

she has faces on all sides

and sends forth
    vessel-channels
 of embodied life

containg within her
the center
from which all beings 
proceed.                                                              [189]





About her womb on the right
a hollow full of lumpy gruel
gushes abundantly:
it is the primordial font of psychic fluid
ensouling, abundantly, 
light, aether, fire, worlds.                                                                 [51]

*

On the left side of her womb
there lies the source of virtue—
remaining wholly within
not giving up 
                       the virgin state.                                                          [52]
*

From the back of the goddess is hung 
inexhaustible Nature.

*

Says Hekate:

After the paternal thoughts—
I, the Psyche, dwell
ensouling all things
with my heat.                                                                                     [53]

*

Sun-fire
                           fixed at the place of the heart.                                   [58]

Sun-world—entirely luminous                                                              [59]

*

Helios: Fire; 
Out-channel of fire;
House-keeper of fire.                                                                           [60]

*

Moon after sun
air after moon:
Aethereal course
                          and inexhaustible lunar impetus-onset.
Air flows;
                    Aether, sun, moon-breaths, air chiefs.

Of the solar: cycles;
Of moon plash: clangs; 
Of air: wombs.

Portion of ether and sun, 
and channels of moon and air; 
portion of ether and sun and moon; 
such things as swim with air.

Air: expanse; 
Moon: course; 

Eternal circuit of the Sun.                                                                      [61]

*

When the channels merge, 
the Highest Life 
consummates the work 
of inextinguishable fire.                                                                         [66]

*

Whatever
            other
   fiery mass there was

self-working all things
  so that the cosmic body be completed
and cosmos come clear
                  and not appear
          to be like a membrane…                                                              [68]

*


Though the sky exists mimetic of intellect,
that which is fashioned from it
has something somatic about it.                                                              [69]

*

Nature, making space through all things, 
hovers suspended from Great Hekate:

For tireless Nature rules worlds and actions
so that sky might turn
drawn down along its eternal course
and swift Helios come about the center
according to his ethos.                                                                              [70]

*

Says Hekate:

Complete my animal image
purged as I shall instruct you:

Make a body from field rue;
ornament with delicate small beast forms
       (such as spotted lizards 
            that live about the house);

Pound storax, myrrh, and frankincense
with these beasts
into a mixture

and under 
a waxing moon
in the clear light of ether
finish the telestics                                                                                   [224]

*

You do not know that god is good,
O drudge-mule-men: so sober Up!                                                           [15]

*

Matter?

               Squalid.    Needy.
                                                                                                                [100]

*

Don't look Nature in the face:
her name is Destiny:  Heimermene [102]

*

Don't augment
the Heimarmene        [103]

*

Don't extinguish your mind         [105]

lest earth beasts
                         keep house
                                         in your vessel.                 [157]

*
 
Don't change
the Barbarous Names                             [150]

*

O Person—impudent Nature's contrivance…       [106]

*

Don't cast monstrous reckonings
from under the field
into your mind—
the plant of truth grows not on earth.

Nor take the measure of the Sun with rods—
the Sun is borne according
to the everlasting intent of the Father
and not because of you.

Leave the Moon alone—
she courses through the action of Necessity.

The procession of the stars was
not brought  to birth for your pleasure

and the flat planing motion 
of common birds
never yields 
true omens
nor do the cuts 
of sacrificial entrails.

All these are toys,
support for the frauds of the market.

Flee these.

Rather go up to the holy     pleasure garden of true piety
where Virtue, Wisdom, and Good Order 
come together.                                                             [107]

*
And do not stoop to the cosmos of black light
below which an abyss is established
always amorphous 
cloud-surrounded
image-besotted
thoughtless and unclean
beetling, distorted
always in contortions
about a maimed depth
always given in marriage
to an inapparent shape,
idle—barren—
breathless…                                                                   [163]

****

The god-sustaining silence
of The Fathers.

*

The Father seized himself—nor locked his private fire
away in mind's potential…                                                                          [3]

*

Possibility is with him; mind is from him.                                                  [4]


*

For the First Father perfected all things
and gave them to a Second
whom you, and the entire human race,
mistake for the First one.                                                                              [7]

*

The Father 
is
the noetic entity, 

having the thinking thing 

within himself                                                                                          [20]

*

The gods have provided instruction in many Iunxes:

Many of these 
throw themselves into the picture
riding on the glittering 
of apparent worlds.                                                                                 [76]

*

The Iunxes
     thought  up    by the Fathers—
                     themselves 
                                    think
moved as they are
       by his unspeakable intentions
                     so as to think.                                                                   [77]


*

The First Connector

at the very peak 
of his singular subsistence
exists 
by himself

outside of everything.                                                                          [84]

*

The Father of gods and men
put Mind in Soul
and Soul in sluggish body.                                                                  [94]

*

             That the Soul
    a shining fire
              by power
                       of the Father
   remains immortal
                              and is
       Mistress of Life
                              and has
 the fullnesses

                   of many cosmic worlds.                                                      [96]

*

Those who have turned 
to serve Generation
but served with unbowed necks
leave Generation

to go back UP.                                                                                       [99]

*

Flying up and away

       the soul of one
                                 Whose-Voice-Is-Divided
   
         will throttle the god

                               into its own entity

        and no longer holding         anything mortal inside it

    but drunk on the god now within it

justly boast of the harmony 
under which 
                       even the mortal body
lives.                                                                                               [97]

*

But the mind of the Father
does not receive
the intent of the Soul
until it come out of forgetfulness
and utter the word
that has been placed within it
mindful of the pure paternal synthema.                                         [109]

*

Seek the channel of soul
by which
in sequence
it descended
and became the body's menial

Seek 
in sequence
how to reascend

unifying ceremonial action 
with theurgical formulae.                                                               [110]

*

Hasten to the light  and to the light beams
of the Father
whence the soul
by Mighty Mind engarmented
has been sent to you.                                                                      [115]

*

          Take care
for the purification
of our Body of Light

                         the soul-vessel 

                                       clean of husks.                                        [120]

*

A mortal
        having drawn near the fire
     will radiate god-light

allowing a greater share
 
          and participation more piercing

                                                   in the light of the gods.                   [121]


*

The souls, by cognizing the acts of the Father,
flee the reckless wing of fate's apportioning

In god they requiesce
and quaff the full-flowering flames
                                               that fall out of the Father
from which, as the flames descend,
the souls pluck the soul-fost'ring blooms

of the fire-fruits.                                                                        [130]

*

The sluggish theurgist 
loses the god.                                                                             [141]

*

Things unstamped
get stamped.                                                                              [144]

*

Theurgists 
don't fall
into the rabble
                                  [the ones who go about in packs]
subject to Destiny                                                                     [153]

*

       That
which is One
without a kind
here

                   has its singular nature
from The One.                                                                        [169]

*

The Father guides us, 
opening paths of fire
lest, out of forgetfulness, 
we pour ourselves away
into an abject basin.                                                                   [171]

*

The vehemence of matter
by which
many are pulled down
into twisted fluxes--                                                                   [172

*

                 many-minded truth                                                     [182

                                    is in the depths                                        [183]

*

Since the soul
is a pantomorphic image
it possesses the principles of everything that is                        [186b]

*

Thus
    a hidden order

                embraces
                     the whole noetic realm

              with a single form                                                       [198]

*

Sing the praises of Chronos, 
that he is both older and younger,
an unfurling circle—eternal.                                                        [199]

*

Particular souls
             become encosmicized
        according to the vehicles
                              peculiar to each.                                             [201]

*

Swiftly flee from chthonic passivities, flee far away—
O you who possess the highest eye of the soul
                                                         and un-inclining rays
that you might hoist
the body's great ponderous bridle
by means of pure soul
and the Father's ethereal luster…                                                 [213]

*

The moon mounts 
all generation 
and visibly governs 
all things beneath her--

Nymphs of springs and spirits that live in water
and those in chthonic depths, and aerial spirits
and ones beneath sun rays
and male and female moon riders—
Ouranian, stellar, or abysmal…                                                     [216]

*

A sweet desire grips all
to dwell forever on Olympos 
as fellows of the deathless gods.
But it is not lawful 
for all to step into those halls.

It is not the person who has mindfully fixed his intent
on sacrificial entrails
that will make it to Olympus
airborn on the subtle wings of the soul
when his body's scattered,
but whoever is wise.                                                                [217]                                                              

*

Says Hekate:

After dawn burst splendor 
infinite, full of stars,
I left the unpolluted house of god 
and stepped
on life-fost'ring earth
according to your request
persuaded by those ineffable words
by which a mortal person 
delights in delighting
the mind of the immortals…                                                      [219]

*

Drawing them out of the aether
by means of secret Iunxes,
you easily lead them to earth against their will;
but the middle beings—
the ones who ride the middle winds—
far from the god fire,
you  take them for split-voiced mortals,
as if they were oracular dreams,
shamefully doing the demons harm…                                       [223]

*

It has both: it holds mind things in its Mind
and brings sensuous perception 
to the worlds.                                                                              [8]

*

Paternal intellect, self-engendered,
having conceived his works,
inseminated everything
with a fire-burdened chain of love

that all things might go on loving
till time without limit;
that things woven 
            by the intellective 
                                  light of the Father
never fall…                                                                               [39]

*

The principles, 
                         that know
                     the intellective 
                                    acts of the Father,

concealed them in an ambiance
of sensible and somatic workings.                                               [40]

    *

Ideas are at once
separated and compounded
by the chain of wondrous love
that first leapt from the mind,
mind-fire engarmenting chained fire,
so as to blend together
the mixing bowls of the sources
while holding forth the Flower
of his fire…                                                                          [42]

*

For Aion alone,
imbued with the strength of the Father,
copiously culling the Flower of Mind,
has the wherewithal to know
the Father 
           Mind
imparting it to all 
                       Principals and Sources
sustaining their constant vortex
in ceaseless motion.                                                                          [49]

*

Hekate indeed is the source 
and spring of blessed intellection, 
for the First Power receives the birth of All
in her unspeakable womb hollows
and pours it forth on the All
as it runs its course.                                                                          [56]