the Lamen

1.00 - Main, #The Book of Certitude, #Baha u llah, #Baha i
O banks of the Rhine! We have seen you covered with gore, inasmuch as the swords of retri bution were drawn against you; and you shall have another turn. And We hear the Lamentations of Berlin, though she be today in conspicuous glory.
91

1.05 - The Second Circle The Wanton. Minos. The Infernal Hurricane. Francesca da Rimini., #The Divine Comedy, #Dante Alighieri, #Christianity
There are the shrieks, the plaints, and the Laments,
There they blaspheme the puissance divine.

1.10 - THINGS I OWE TO THE ANCIENTS, #Twilight of the Idols, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
Thucydides for the Lamentably rose-coloured idealisation of the
Greeks which the "classically-cultured" stripling bears with him into

1.13 - The Pentacle, Lamen or Seal, #The Practice of Magical Evocation, #Franz Bardon, #Occultism
A lamen is very similar to a universal symbol, but is not a symbol of the microcosm and macrocosm: it represents symbolically the intellectual and psychic authority, the attitude and the maturity of the magician. the Lamen is usually sewn to the magician's garment, somewhere on his chest, or it is specially engraved into a suitable piece of metal, or drawn on a piece of parchment
Ind worn like an amulet. It expresses, by its symbolic presentation, the absolute authority of the magician.

1.15 - The element of Character in Tragedy., #Poetics, #Aristotle, #Philosophy
Thirdly, character must be true to life: for this is a distinct thing from goodness and propriety, as here described. The fourth point is consistency: for though the subject of the imitation, who suggested the type, be inconsistent, still he must be consistently inconsistent. As an example of motiveless degradation of character, we have Menelaus in the Orestes: of character indecorous and inappropriate, the Lament of
Odysseus in the Scylla, and the speech of Melanippe: of inconsistency, the Iphigenia at Aulis,--for Iphigenia the suppliant in no way resembles her later self.

1.20 - Talismans - The Lamen - The Pantacle, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
object:1.20 - Talismans - the Lamen - The Pantacle
class:chapter
--
Talismans: the Lamen: The Pantacle
Cara Soror,
--
For one thing, you forgot to mention the Lamen. Now what are these things when they are at home? That's easy enough.
the Lamen is a sort of Coat of Arms. It expresses the character and powers of the wearer.
--
The Pantacle is often confused with both the others; accurately, it is a "Minutum Mundum", "the Universe in Little"; it is a map of all that exists, arranged in the Order of Nature. There is a chapter in Book 4, Part II, devoted to it (pp. 117 - 129); I cannot make up my mind whether I like it. At the best it is very far from being practical instruction. (The chapter on the Lamen, pp. 159 - 161, is even worse.)
An analogy, not too silly, for these three; the Chess-player, the Openings, and the Game itself.
But you will object why be silly at all? Why not say simply that the Lamen, stating as it does the Character and Powers of he wearer, is a dynamic portrait of the individual, while the Pantacle, his Universe, is a static portrait of him? And that, you pursue flattering, is why you preferred to call the Weapon of Earth (in the Tarot) the Disk, emphasizing its continual whirling movement rather than the Pantacle of Coin, as is more usual. Once again, exquisite child of our Father the Archer of Light and of seaborn Aphrodite, your well-known acumen has "nicked the ninety and nine and one over" as Browning says when he (he too!) alludes to the Tarot.
As you will have gathered from the above, a Talisman is a much more restricted idea; it is no more than one of the objects in his Pantacle, one of the arrows in the quiver of his Lamen. As, then, you would expect, it is very little trouble to design. All that you need is to "make considerations" about your proposed operation, decide which planet, sign, element or sub-element or what not you need to accomplish your miracle.
--
Then there are the Elemental Tablets of Sir Edward Kelly and Dr. John Dee. From these you can extract a square to perform almost any conceivable operation, if you understand the virtue of the various symbols which they manifest. They are actually an expansion of the Tarot. (Obviously, the Tarot itself as a whole is a universal Pantacle forgive the pleonasm! Each card, especially is this true of the Trumps, is a talisman; and the whole may also be considered as the Lamen of Mercury. It is evidently an Idea far too vast for any human mind to comprehend in its entirety. For it is "the Wisdom whereby He created the worlds.")
The decisive advantage of this system is not that its variety makes it so adaptable to our needs, but that we already posses the Invocations necessary to call forth the Energies required. What is perhaps still more to the point, they work without putting the Magician to such severe toil and exertion as is needed when he has to write them out from his own ingenium. Yes! This is weakness on my part, and I am very naughty to encourage you to shirk the hardest path.

1.27 - Guido da Montefeltro. His deception by Pope Boniface VIII., #The Divine Comedy, #Dante Alighieri, #Christianity
With the Lament of him, and that was right,
Who with his file had modulated it)

1.29 - The Myth of Adonis, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
Like the Lament that a house lifts up for its master,
lifts she up a lament,
Like the Lament that a city lifts up for its lord,
lifts she up a lament.
Her lament is the Lament for a herb that grows not in the bed,
Her lament is the Lament for the corn that grows not in the ear.
Her chamber is a possession that brings not forth a possession,

1.33 - The Gardens of Adonis, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
the infant Christ and the Lament for Adonis.

1.38 - The Myth of Osiris, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
reminds us of the Laments for Adonis. The title of Unnefer or "the
Good Being" bestowed on him marks the beneficence which tradition

1.39 - The Ritual of Osiris, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
to thy house," which often occur in the Lamentations for the dead
god.
--
practices the Lamentations and the invocations of the Old Woman of
the Corn resemble the ancient Egyptian customs of lamenting over the

1.47 - Lityerses, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
lament; each would be the Lamentation raised by reapers over the
dead spirit of the corn. But whereas Adonis, like Attis, grew into a

1.anon - The Epic of Gilgamesh Tablet VIII, #Anonymous - Poems, #unset, #Zen
the Lamentation priests, may their hair be shorn off on
your behalf.

1f.lovecraft - A Reminiscence of Dr. Samuel Johnson, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
Reign, including the Lamented Mr. Dryden, who sat much at the Tables of
Wills Coffee-House. With Mr. Addison and Dr. Swift I later became very

1.pbs - The First Canzone Of The Convito, #Shelley - Poems, #Percy Bysshe Shelley, #Fiction
How the Lamenting Spirit moans in it, 10
And how a voice there murmurs against her

1.wby - The Lamentation Of The Old Pensioner, #Yeats - Poems, #William Butler Yeats, #Poetry
object:1.wby - the Lamentation Of The Old Pensioner
author class:William Butler Yeats

2.15 - The Lamen, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
object:2.15 - the Lamen
class:chapter
--
5:The Pantacle is merely the material to be worked upon, gathered together and harmonized but not yet in operation, the parts of the engine arranged for use, or even put together, but not yet set in motion. In the Lamen these forces are already at work; even accomplishment is prefigured.
6:In the system of Abramelin the Lamen is a plate of silver upon which the Holy Guardian Angel writes in dew. This is another way of expressing the same thing, for it is He who confers the secrets of that power which should be herein expressed. St. Paul expresses the same thing when he says that the breastplate is faith, and can withstand the fiery darts of the wicked. This "faith" is not blind self-confidence and credulity; it is that self-confidence which only comes when self is forgotten.
7:It is the "Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel" which confers this faith. The task of attaining to this Knowledge and Conversation is the sole task of him who would be called Adept. An absolute method for achieving this is given in the Eighth thyr (Liber CDXVIII, Equinox V).

3.14 - Of the Consecrations, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
of Abramelin the Mage. That Angel wrote on the Lamen the Word
101

4.1.1 - The Difficulties of Yoga, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
This Yoga is certainly difficult, but is any Yoga really easy? You speak of the lure of liberation into the extracosmic Absolute, but how many who set out on the path of Nirvana attain to it in this life or without a long, strenuous and difficult endeavour? Which of the paths has not to pass through the dry desert in order to reach the promised land? Even the path of Bhakti which is said to be the easiest is full of the Lamentations of the bhaktas complaining that they call but the Beloved eludes their grasp, the place of meeting is prepared but even now Krishna does not come. Even if there is the joy of a brief glimpse or the passion of milana, it is followed by long periods of viraha. It is a mistake to think that any path of Yoga is facile, that any is a royal road or short cut to the Divine, or that like a system of French made easy or French without tears, so there can be a system of Yoga made easy or Yoga without tears. A few great souls prepared by past lives or otherwise lifted beyond the ordinary spiritual capacity may attain realisation more swiftly; some may have uplifting experiences at an early stage, but for most the siddhi of the path, whatever it is, must be the end of a long, difficult and persevering endeavour. One cannot have the crown of spiritual victory without the struggle or reach the heights without the ascent and its labour. Of all it can be said, Difficult is that road, hard to tread like the edge of a razor.
You find the path dry precisely because you have not yet touched the fringe of it. But all paths have their dry periods and for most though not for all it is at the beginning. There is a long stage of preparation necessary in order to arrive at the inner psychological condition in which the doors of experience can open and one can walk from vista to vistathough even then new gates may present themselves and refuse to open until all is ready. This period can be dry and desert-like unless one has the ardour of self-introspection and self-conquest and finds every step of the effort and struggle interesting or unless one has or gets that secret of trust and self-giving which sees the hand of the Divine in every step of the path and even in the difficulty the grace or the guidance. The description of Yoga as bitter like poison in the beginning because of the difficulty and struggle but in the end sweet as nectar because of the joy of realisation, the peace of liberation or the divine Ananda and the frequent description by sadhaks and bhaktas of the periods of dryness shows sufficiently that it is no unique peculiarity of this Yoga. All the old disciplines recognised this and it is why the Gita says that Yoga should be practised patiently and steadily with a heart that refuses to be overcome by despondency. It is a recommendation applicable to this path but also to the way of the Gita and to the hard razor path of the Vedanta, and to every other. It is quite natural that the higher the Ananda to come down, the more difficult may be the beginning, the drier the deserts that have to be crossed on the way.

4.2.1 - The Right Attitude towards Difficulties, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
I am afraid I can hold out but cold comfort for the present at least to those of your correspondents who are lamenting the present state of things. Things are bad, are growing worse and may at any time grow worst or worse than worst if that is possible and anything however paradoxical seems possible in the present perturbed world. The best thing for them is to realise that all this was necessary because certain possibilities had to emerge and be got rid of if a new and better world was at all to come into being; it would not have done to postpone them for a later time. It is as in Yoga where things active or latent in the being have to be put into action in the light so that they may be grappled with and thrown out or to emerge from latency in the depths for the same purificatory purpose. Also they can remember the adage that night is darkest before dawn and that the coming of dawn is inevitable. But they must remember too that the new world whose coming we envisage is not to be made of the same texture as the old and different only in pattern and that it must come by other means, from within and not from withoutso the best way is not to be too much preoccupied with the Lamentable things that are happening outside, but themselves to grow within so that they may be ready for the new world whatever form it may take.
***

6.10 - THE SELF AND THE BOUNDS OF KNOWLEDGE, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
[786] It therefore seems to me, on the most conservative estimate, to be wiser not to drag the supreme metaphysical factor into our calculations, at all events not at once, but, more modestly, to make an unknown psychic or perhaps psychoid238 factor in the human realm responsible for inspirations and suchlike happenings. This would make better allowance not only for the abysmal mixture of truth and error in the great majority of inspirations but also for the numerous contradictions in Holy Writ. The psychoid aura that surrounds consciousness furnishes us with better and less controversial possibilities of explanation and moreover can be investigated empirically. It presents a world of relatively autonomous images, including the manifold God-images, which whenever they appear are called God by nave people and, because of their numinosity (the equivalent of autonomy!), are taken to be such. The various religious denominations support this traditional viewpoint, and their respective theologians believe themselves, inspired by Gods word, to be in a position to make valid statements about him. Such statements always claim to be final and indisputable. The slightest deviation from the dominant assumption provokes an unbridgeable schism. One cannot and may not think about an object held to be indisputable. One can only assert it, and for this reason there can be no reconciliation between the divergent assertions. Thus Christianity, the religion of brotherly love, offers the Lamentable spectacle of one great and many small schisms, each faction helplessly caught in the toils of its own unique rightness.
[787] We believe that we can make assertions about God, define him, form an opinion about him, differentiate him as the only true one amongst other gods. The realization might by this time be dawning that when we talk of God or gods we are speaking of debatable images from the psychoid realm. The existence of a transcendental reality is indeed evident in itself, but it is uncommonly difficult for our consciousness to construct intellectual models which would give a graphic description of the reality we have perceived. Our hypotheses are uncertain and groping, and nothing offers us the assurance that they may ultimately prove correct. That the world inside and outside ourselves rests on a transcendental background is as certain as our own existence, but it is equally certain that the direct perception of the archetypal world inside us is just as doubtfully correct as that of the physical world outside us. If we are convinced that we know the ultimate truth concerning metaphysical things, this means nothing more than that archetypal images have taken possession of our powers of thought and feeling, so that these lose their quality as functions at our disposal. The loss shows itself in the fact that the object of perception then becomes absolute and indisputable and surrounds itself with such an emotional taboo that anyone who presumes to reflect on it is automatically branded a heretic and blasphemer. In all other matters everyone would think it reasonable to submit to objective criticism the subjective image he has devised for himself of some object. But in the face of possession or violent emotion reason is abrogated; the numinous archetype proves on occasion to be the stronger because it can appeal to a vital necessity. This is regularly the case when it compensates a situation of distress which no amount of reasoning can abolish. We know that an archetype can break with shattering force into an individual human life and into the life of a nation. It is therefore not surprising that it is called God. But as men do not always find themselves in immediate situations of distress, or do not always feel them to be such, there are also calmer moments in which reflection is possible. If one then examines a state of possession or an emotional seizure without prejudice, one will have to admit that the possession in itself yields nothing that would clearly and reliably characterize the nature of the possessing factor, although it is an essential part of the phenomenon that the possessed always feels compelled to make definite assertions. Truth and error lie so close together and often look so confusingly alike that nobody in his right senses could afford not to doubt the things that happen to him in the possessed state. I John 4 : 1 admonishes us: Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God; because many false prophets are gone out into the world. This warning was uttered at a time when there was plenty of opportunity to observe exceptional psychic states. Although, as then, we think we possess sure criteria of distinction, the rightness of this conviction must nevertheless be called in question, for no human judgment can claim to be infallible.

BOOK III. - The external calamities of Rome, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
nor Venus herself, could assist the children of the loved neas to find wives by some right and equitable means? For the lack of this entailed upon the Romans the Lamentable necessity of stealing their wives, and then waging war with their fathers-in-law; so that the wretched women, before they had recovered from the wrong done them by their husbands, were dowried with the blood of their fathers. "But the Romans conquered their neighbours." Yes; but with what wounds on both sides, and with what sad slaughter of relatives and neighbours! The war of Csar and Pompey was the contest of only one father-in-law with one son-in-law; and before it began, the daughter of Csar, Pompey's wife, was already dead. But with how keen and just an accent of grief does Lucan[136] exclaim: "I sing that worse than civil war waged in the plains of Emathia, and in which the crime was justified by the victory!"
The Romans, then, conquered that they might, with hands stained in the blood of their fathers-in-law, wrench the miserable girls from their embrace,girls who dared not weep for their slain parents, for fear of offending their victorious husbands; and while yet the battle was raging, stood with their prayers on their lips, and knew not for whom to utter them. Such nuptials were certainly prepared for the Roman people not by Venus, but Bellona; or possibly that[Pg 104] infernal fury Alecto had more liberty to injure them now that Juno was aiding them, than when the prayers of that goddess had excited her against neas. Andromache in captivity was happier than these Roman brides. For though she was a slave, yet, after she had become the wife of Pyrrhus, no more Trojans fell by his hand; but the Romans slew in battle the very fathers of the brides they fondled. Andromache, the victor's captive, could only mourn, not fear, the death of her people. The Sabine women, related to men still combatants, feared the death of their fathers when their husbands went out to battle, and mourned their death as they returned, while neither their grief nor their fear could be freely expressed. For the victories of their husbands, involving the destruction of fellow-townsmen, relatives, brothers, fathers, caused either pious agony or cruel exultation. Moreover, as the fortune of war is capricious, some of them lost their husbands by the sword of their parents, while others lost husb and and father together in mutual destruction. For the Romans by no means escaped with impunity, but they were driven back within their walls, and defended themselves behind closed gates; and when the gates were opened by guile, and the enemy admitted into the town, the Forum itself was the field of a hateful and fierce engagement of fathers-in-law and sons-in-law. The ravishers were indeed quite defeated, and, flying on all sides to their houses, sullied with new shame their original shameful and lamentable triumph. It was at this juncture that Romulus, hoping no more from the valour of his citizens, prayed Jupiter that they might stand their ground; and from this occasion the god gained the name of Stator. But not even thus would the mischief have been finished, had not the ravished women themselves flashed out with dishevelled hair, and cast themselves before their parents, and thus disarmed their just rage, not with the arms of victory, but with the supplications of filial affection. Then Romulus, who could not brook his own brother as a colleague, was compelled to accept Titus Tatius, king of the Sabines, as his partner on the throne. But how long would he who misliked the fellowship of his own twin-brother endure a stranger? So, Tatius being slain, Romulus remained sole king, that he might be the[Pg 105] greater god. See what rights of marriage these were that fomented unnatural wars. These were the Roman leagues of kindred, relationship, alliance, religion. This was the life of the city so abundantly protected by the gods. You see how many severe things might be said on this theme; but our purpose carries us past them, and requires our discourse for other matters.

BOOK XXII. - Of the eternal happiness of the saints, the resurrection of the body, and the miracles of the early Church, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
At Hippo a Syrian called Bassus was praying at the relics of the same martyr for his daughter, who was dangerously ill. He too had brought her dress with him to the shrine. But as he prayed, behold, his servants ran from the house to tell him she was dead. His friends, however, intercepted them, and forbade them to tell him, lest he should bewail her in public. And when he had returned to his house, which was already ringing with the Lamentations of his family, and had thrown on his daughter's body the dress he was carrying, she was restored to life.
There, too, the son of a man, Irenus, one of our tax-gatherers, took ill and died. And while his body was lying lifeless, and the last rites were being prepared, amidst the weeping and mourning of all, one of the friends who were consoling the father suggested that the body should be anointed with the oil of the same martyr. It was done, and he revived.

Prayers and Meditations by Baha u llah text, #Prayers and Meditations by Baha u llah, #unset, #Zen
Lauded be Thy name, O my God! Thou beholdest me in the clutches of my oppressors. Every time I turn to my right, I hear the voice of the Lamentation of them that are dear to Thee, whom the infidels have made captives for having believed in Thee and in Thy signs, and for having set their faces towards the horizon of Thy grace and of Thy loving-kindness. And when I turn to my left, I hear the clamor of the wicked doers who have disbelieved in Thee and in Thy signs, and persistently striven to put out the light of Thy lamp which sheddeth the radiance of Thine own Self over all that are in Thy heaven and all that are on Thy earth.
The hearts of Thy chosen ones, O my Lord, have melted because of their separation from Thee, and the souls of Thy loved ones are burnt up by the fire of their yearning after Thee in Thy days. I implore Thee, O Thou Maker of the heavens and Lord of all names, by Thy most effulgent Self and Thy most exalted and all-glorious Remembrance, to send down upon Thy loved ones that which will draw them nearer unto Thee, and enable them to hearken unto Thine utterances.
--
Lauded be Thy name, O Thou Who beholdest all things and art hidden from all things! From every land Thou hearest the Lamentations of them that love Thee, and from every direction Thou hearkenest unto the cries of such as have recognized Thy sovereignty. Were their oppressors to be asked: "Wherefore have ye oppressed them and held them in bondage in Baghdád and elsewhere? What injustice have they committed? Whom have they betrayed? Whose blood have they spilled, and whose property have they plundered?" they would know not what to answer.
Thou knowest full well, O my God, that their only crime is to have loved Thee. For this reason have their oppressors laid hold on them, and scattered them abroad. Aware as I am, O my God, that Thou wilt send down upon Thy servants only what is good for them, I nevertheless beseech Thee, by Thy name which overshadoweth all things, to raise up, for their assistance and as a sign of Thy grace and as an evidence of Thy power, those who will keep them safe from all their adversaries.
--
Praise be to Thee, O Lord my God, my Master! Thou hearest the sighing of those who, though they long to behold Thy face, are yet separated from Thee and far distant from Thy court. Thou testifiest to the Lamentations which those who have recognized Thee pour forth because of their exile from Thee and their yearning to meet Thee. I beseech Thee by those hearts which contain naught except the treasures of Thy remembrance and praise, and which show forth only the testimonies of Thy greatness and the evidences of Thy might, to bestow on Thy servants who desire Thee power to approach the seat of the revelation of the splendor of Thy glory and to assist them whose hopes are set on Thee to enter into the tabernacle of Thy transcendent favor and mercy.
103
--
Unto Thee be praise, O Thou Who inclinest Thine ear to the sighing of them that have rid themselves of all attachment to any one but Thee, and Who hearest the voice of the Lamentation of those who are wholly devoted to Thy Self! Thou beholdest all that hath befallen them at the hands of such of Thy creatures as have transgressed and rebelled against Thee. Thy might beareth me witness, O Thou Who art the King of the realms of justice and the Ruler of the cities of mercy! The tribulations they have been made to suffer are such as no pen, in the entire creation, can reckon. Should any one attempt to make mention of them, he would find himself powerless to describe them.
As these tribulations, however, were sustained in Thy path and for love of Thee, they who were afflicted by them render thanks, under all conditions, unto Thee, and say: "O Thou Who art the Delight of our hearts and the Object of our adoration! Were the clouds of Thy decree to rain down upon us the darts of affliction, we would, in our love for Thee, refuse to be impatient. We would yield Thee praise and thanksgiving, for we have recognized and are persuaded that Thou hast ordained only that which will be best for us. If our bodies be, at times, weighed down by our troubles, yet our souls rejoice with exceeding gladness. We swear by Thy might, O Thou Who art the Desire of our hearts and the Exultation of our souls! Every trouble that toucheth us in our love for Thee is an evidence of Thy tender mercy, every fiery ordeal a sign of the brightness of Thy light, every woeful tribulation a cooling draught, every toil a blissful repose, every anguish a fountain of gladness."
--
Thou beholdest, O my God, what hath befallen Thy dear ones in Thy days. Thy glory beareth me witness! The voice of the Lamentation of Thy chosen ones hath been lifted up throughout Thy realm. Some were ensnared by the infidels in Thy land, and were hindered by them from having near access to Thee and from attaining the court of Thy glory. Others were able to approach Thee, but were kept back from beholding Thy face. Still others were permitted, in their eagerness to look upon Thee, to enter the precincts of Thy court, but they allowed the veils of the imaginations of Thy creatures and the wrongs inflicted by the oppressors among Thy people to come in between them and Thee.
146
--
The hearts that yearn after Thee, O my God, are burnt up with the fire of their longing for Thee, and the eyes of them that love Thee weep sore by reason of their crushing separation from Thy court, and the voice of the Lamentation of such as have set their hopes on Thee hath gone forth throughout Thy dominions.
Thou hast Thyself, O my God, protected them, by Thy sovereign might, from both extremities. But for the burning of their souls and the sighing of their hearts, they would be drowned in the midst of their tears, and but for the flood of their tears they would be burnt up by the fire of their hearts and the heat of their souls. Methinks, they are like the angels which Thou hast created of snow and of fire. Wilt Thou, despite such vehement longing, O my God, debar them from Thy presence, or drive them away, notwithstanding such fervor, from the door of Thy mercy? All hope is ready to be extinguished in the hearts of Thy chosen ones, O my God! Where are the breezes of Thy grace? They are hemmed in on all sides by their enemies; where are the ensigns of Thy triumph which Thou didst promise in Thy Tablets?
--
No sooner, however, had the Pen traced upon the tablet one single letter of Thy hidden wisdom, than the voice of the Lamentation of Thine ardent lovers was lifted up from all directions. Thereupon, there befell the just what hath caused the inmates of the tabernacle of Thy glory to weep and the dwellers of the cities of Thy revelation to groan.
Thou dost consider, O my God, how He Who is the Manifestation of Thy names is in these days threatened by the swords of Thine adversaries. In such a state He crieth out and summoneth all the inhabitants of Thine earth and the denizens of Thy heaven unto Thee.
--
O Lord of all being and Possessor of all things visible and invisible! Thou dost perceive my tears and the sighs I utter, and hearest my groaning, and my wailing, and the Lamentation of my heart. By Thy might! My trespasses have kept me back from drawing nigh unto Thee; and my sins have held me far from the court of Thy holiness. Thy love, O my Lord, hath enriched me, and separation from Thee hath destroyed me, and remoteness from Thee hath consumed me. I entreat Thee by Thy footsteps in this wilderness, and by the words "Here am I. Here am I" which Thy chosen Ones have uttered in this immensity, and by the breaths of Thy Revelation, and the gentle winds of the Dawn of Thy Manifestation, to ordain that I may gaze on Thy beauty and observe whatsoever is in Thy Book.
322

Tablets of Baha u llah text, #Tablets of Baha u llah, #Baha u llah, #Baha i
Magnified be Thy Name, O Lord of all beings and Desire of all created things! I beseech Thee, by the Word which hath caused the Burning Bush to lift up its Voice and the Rock to cry out, whereby the well-favored have hastened to attain the court of Thy presence and the pure in heart the dayspring of the light of Thy countenance, and by the sighing of Thy true lovers in their separation from Thy chosen ones and by the Lamentation of them that long to behold Thy face before the dawning splendor of the light of Thy Revelation, to graciously enable Thy servants to recognize what Thou hast ordained for them by Thy bounty and Thy grace. Prescribe for them then through Thy Pen of Glory that which will direct their steps to the ocean of Thy generosity and will lead them unto the living waters of Thy heavenly reunion.
O Lord! Look not at the things they have wrought, rather look unto the loftiness of Thy celestial bounty which hath preceded all created things, visible and invisible. O Lord! Illumine their hearts with the effulgent light of Thy knowledge and brighten their eyes with the shining splendor of the day-star of Thy favors.

The Dwellings of the Philosophers, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
(4) Ezekiel, chap. 327-9, 15, the Lamentation for Pharoah.
(5) II Peter 3:3-7, 10, 13.

Timaeus, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
It is true, however, that the Timaeus is by no means confined to speculations on physics. The deeper foundations of the Platonic philosophy, such as the nature of God, the distinction of the sensible and intellectual, the great original conceptions of time and space, also appear in it. They are found principally in the first half of the dialogue. The construction of the heavens is for the most part ideal; the cyclic year serves as the connection between the world of absolute being and of generation, just as the number of population in the Republic is the expression or symbol of the transition from the ideal to the actual state. In some passages we are uncertain whether we are reading a description of astronomical facts or contemplating processes of the human mind, or of that divine mind (Phil.) which in Plato is hardly separable from it. The characteristics of man are transferred to the world-animal, as for example when intelligence and knowledge are said to be perfected by the circle of the Same, and true opinion by the circle of the Other; and conversely the motions of the world-animal reappear in man; its amorphous state continues in the child, and in both disorder and chaos are gradually succeeded by stability and order. It is not however to passages like these that Plato is referring when he speaks of the uncertainty of his subject, but rather to the composition of bodies, to the relations of colours, the nature of diseases, and the like, about which he truly feels the Lamentable ignorance prevailing in his own age.
We are led by Plato himself to regard the Timaeus, not as the centre or inmost shrine of the edifice, but as a detached building in a different style, framed, not after the Socratic, but after some Pythagorean model. As in the Cratylus and Parmenides, we are uncertain whether Plato is expressing his own opinions, or appropriating and perhaps improving the philosophical speculations of others. In all three dialogues he is exerting his dramatic and imitative power; in the Cratylus mingling a satirical and humorous purpose with true principles of language; in the Parmenides overthrowing Megarianism by a sort of ultra-Megarianism, which discovers contradictions in the one as great as those which have been previously shown to exist in the ideas. There is a similar uncertainty about the Timaeus; in the first part he scales the heights of transcendentalism, in the latter part he treats in a bald and superficial manner of the functions and diseases of the human frame. He uses the thoughts and almost the words of Parmenides when he discourses of being and of essence, adopting from old religion into philosophy the conception of God, and from the Megarians the IDEA of good. He agrees with Empedocles and the Atomists in attri buting the greater differences of kinds to the figures of the elements and their movements into and out of one another. With Heracleitus, he acknowledges the perpetual flux; like Anaxagoras, he asserts the predominance of mind, although admitting an element of necessity which reason is incapable of subduing; like the Pythagoreans he supposes the mystery of the world to be contained in number. Many, if not all the elements of the Pre-Socratic philosophy are included in the Timaeus. It is a composite or eclectic work of imagination, in which Plato, without naming them, gathers up into a kind of system the various elements of philosophy which preceded him.

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