The Cosmic Process

The twofold truth is that The One grows from Many into being.

From the One It disparts and comes the Many.

Twofold the birth, twofold the death of things.

The meeting of the Many brings birth and death. Whatever grew from out their sundering, flies apart and dies.

This long interchange shall never end.

Love unites all into One. The same One is ripped through the hate of Strife.

The One grows from the Many. The Many, again, springs from primeval scattering of the One.

So far they have a birth and mortal date. But the long interchange does not end.

This forever establishes gods which move around the circle of the world.

Knowledge gained strenthens your soul.

Now grows the One from Many into being. From the One disparting come the Many: Fire, Water, Earth and awful heights of Air.

The deadly Strife shuts them apart from each other.

In equipoise, and Love within their midst

In all her being in length and breadth the same.

Behold her now with mind, and sit not there.

With eyes astonished, for ’tis she inborn

Abides established in the limbs of men.

Through her they cherish thoughts of love, through her perfect the works of concord, calling her by name Bliss or Aphrodite.

She speeds revolving in the elements. But this, no mortal man has ever learned.

Behold those elements’ own equal strength and equal origin. Each rules its task. Unto each its primal mode. Each prevailing conquers with revolving time.

Beyond these there is no birth nor end. For were they wasted ever and evermore,

They were no longer, and the great All were then

How to be plenished and from what far coast?

How might they to come to ruin since nothing lives that is empty of them?

These are all. As they course along through one another, now this, now that is born, and so forever down Eternity.

Love
Firm-clasping Lovingness

Love and Hate in the Organic World.

The world-wide warfare of the eternal 2 well in the mass of human limbs is shown:

Love unites them into One. And mortal members take the body’s form.

Life flowers at the prime.

Again dissevered by the Hates perverse, they wander far and wide and up and down.

The surf-swept beaches and drear shores of life.

So too with thicket, tree, and gleaming fish

Housed in the crystal walls of waters wide;

And so with beasts that couch on mountain slopes,

And water-fowls that skim the long blue sea.

The elemental forms

²¹ The Sun is warm and bright-diffused.

The eternal Stars are forever steeped in liquid heat and glowing radiance.

The Rain is obscure, cold and dark.

From Earth streams forth the Green and Firm.

Wrath splits up things into diverse shapes.

Love makes each draw near and yearn for each other.

For from these elements hath budded all

That was or is or evermore shall be—

All trees, and men and women, beasts and birds,

And fishes nourished in deep waters, aye,

The long-lived gods, in honors excellent.

For these are all, and, as they course along

Through one another, they take new faces all,

By varied mingling and enduring change.

Similia Similibus.

²² For amber Sun and Earth and Heaven and Sea

Is friendly with its every part that springs,

Far driven and scattered, in the mortal world;

So too those things that are most apt to mix

Are like, and love by Aphrodite’s hest.

But hostile chiefly are those things which most

From one another differ, both in birth,

And in their mixing and their molded forms—

Unwont to mingle, miserable and lone,

After the counsels of their father, Hate.

²³ Artists are men who know their craft through wits of cunning.

These paint with streak and hue the Bright temple-tablets.

They will seize in hand the oozy poisons pied and red and gold (Mixing harmonious, now more, now less)/

From this they:

fashion innumerable forms

peopling a fresh world with trees, men and women, beasts and birds, and fishes nourished in deep waters, and long-lived gods in honors excellent

Just so (and let no guile deceive thy breast), Even so the spring of mortal things, leastwise Of all the host born visible to man.

O guard this knowledge well, for thou hast heard in this my song the Goddess and her tale.

The Cosmic Process