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A
snake came to my water-trough |
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He
reached down from a fissure in the earth-wall in the gloom |
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Someone
was before me at my water-trough, |
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He
lifted his head from his drinking, as cattle do, |
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The
voice of my education said to me |
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But
must I confess how I liked him, Was
it cowardice, that I dared not kill him? And
yet those voices: And
truly I was afraid, I was most afraid, |
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He drank enough |
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And
as he put his head into that dreadful hole, |
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I
looked round, I put down my pitcher, |
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I
think it did not hit him, |
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And
immediately I regretted it. |
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And
I thought of the albatross, |
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For
he seemed to me again like a king, |
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And
so, I missed my chance with one of the lords |
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The snake has long been a
cultural symbol of the Satanic. After being involved with Wicca and Satanism
for over 13 years, I had almost forgotten what it was like to face down my own fear
of the devil, "the voices of my human education," as Lawrence would
say.
There are a lot of emotions
that go into the choice to be a Satanist, most of them are fear. Fear of Hell plays a
smaller role than most people would think. Those people who make their living
on promoting Satanic Panic have inculcated the belief that Satanism is the
opposite of Christianity. Wiccans promote that lie, as it takes
"heat" off of them, and the Ninth Satanic Statement (and much of the
Satanic Bible) promotes the idea of Satan existing in opposition
to Jehovah and Christ.
To embrace Satan as one's
god-image is an act of courage. You are taking something that most people would
call "evil" and acknowledging the power that image has for you. For most
people, this involves ignoring the part of their mind that Freud would call the
"Superego" and embracing that "Id" that demands we pay
Homage to the Grand Architect of the Universe.
The most amazing think
about this poem is that it while it did not exist until 1923, Abraham Lincoln
actually gave the perfect summery of it in a his New Hampshire speech in 1860:
When charmed by the beauty of that viper, did it never occur to you to change personalities with him? to feel what it was to be a snake? to glide unsuspected in the grass? to sting, to kill at a touch; your whole beautiful body one iridescent scabbard of death? In short, did the wish never occur to you to feel yourself exempt from knowledge, and conscience, and revel for a while in the care-free joyous life of a perfectly instinctive, unscrupulous, and irresponsible creature?
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© 2001, Temple of Lylyth, Original poem by D.H. Lawrence
Artwork ã
2001 Peter Sharpe - http://www.petersharpe.com
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