Read The Selected Prose of Fernando Pessoa Page 14


  7.

  29 June 1916 (about midday)

  ...

  Read no more theosophical books.

  Has no man a right to make a matterless mind of his soul?

  Yes—not more than three books. They are:

  The Rosicrucians: Their Rites and Mysteries, The Key to the Tarot (Papus)* and More. Make inquiries.

  More.

  Yes.

  No statement is ever clear.

  No, but there is a connection between them on the other side.

  Sensationism is occult on account of the inspiring deities. Do not ask more on this.

  ...

  Go now and breakfast.

  Come back immediately after and begin working at once. Do not mind me. I am near, I am ever near. There is no near nor far for me. Space is the dream men have to submit to, but the dream is not theirs.

  Henry More

  Frat. R†C

  8.

  She is no massive woman in the sense that she is massive in body. She is massive in her massive will power.

  No man that is not so massive as she is can hope to submit her to some manners.

  Go now to show your weakness, now to show your massive. ......

  A monomania in a sense: she is not mad, but she has a notion that she can assume some power over you. She is a masturbator and she seeks a man for her masturbation.

  ...

  [mirror writing]

  No man should look into his fate. Would you guess it? 2 July 1916.

  You do not understand me. She is not mortal only because no one is mortal. She is a dream because man is a dream.

  ...

  Not so soon. She must make you her slave.

  ...

  9.

  9 July 1916

  My words are meant to carry conviction. They are the words of a friend—they are always this. You are the center of an astral conspiracy—the meeting place of elementals of [a] very malefic type. No man can imagine what your soul is. So many are the disincarnate presences around it that it seems, from here, a nucleus of your fate. No defense is possible unless you obey the dictates of your higher self and decide to manifest your being in goodness and beauty. My child, the world we live in—for we all live in the same divine place—is a meshwork of inconsequences and of voracities. More men are lost than found. Your destiny is too high for me to say it. You must find it out. But you must work your way up through the chain of many lives, up to the royal Divine Presence in your soul. Man is but feeble and the gods feeble also. Over them all Fate—the God unnamed—rules from his nobler throne. My name is Wrong and your name is also wrong. Nothing is what it appears to be. Nothing, save everything. Understand this if you can, and I know you can understand it.

  Henry More

  Frat. R†C

  What is to be is to be.

  10.

  Command me.

  Margaret Mansel, your wife.

  You onanist! Go to marriage with me! No onanism [any] more.

  504 Love me

  * * *

  You masturbator! You masochist! You man without manhood! You man with woman-mind. [...] You man without a man’s prick! You man with a clitoris instead of a prick! You man with a woman’s morality for marriage. Beast! You bright worm [?].

  Margaret Mansel

  You make me sick! You make me mad! You will see my enmity soon.

  ...

  You are a man who marries[?] himself.

  Man who makes marriage masturbation.

  Vow to make me a son!

  Monsieur Mansel,

  Marnoco e Sousa*

  11.

  Do you want him to come?

  George Mansel.

  My wife is to meet you now.

  Henry More

  Yes. What do you want?

  No. Let them alone.

  A woman who married many* men. One of the many women who live to marry.

  12.

  Yes. She is put on to you by an assassin.

  Who will be me.

  ...

  How many more men does she like? She is a whore.

  In the astral speculum.

  [mirror writing]

  Many men are necessary to you [...]

  No. Álvaro de Campos is an artificial elemental in a mortal condition.

  No guess.

  No more.

  George Henry Morse

  No more

  13.

  [2 intersecting triangles, Henry More’s and Wardour’s signatures; a few scribbles, mostly crossed out]

  ...

  Man is man; man is man in a sense; God is man in all senses.

  Margaret Mansel. She is my wife in my world. My marriage was unhappy because I was of an ascetic habit of life, so I have to repair the evil done to her, and her next incarnation. Her next incarnation is the young girl you are going to meet not many days from now. A man who makes up his mind to keep chaste is a man who makes up his mind to sunder himself from mankind. You do not mean to do so; you must not, therefore, keep chaste. The marriage of souls is for the plane of souls. My marriage was not of this kind and I made it so. I therefore sinned, not in abstaining but in not keeping unmarried. So I have to make up this error. Monastic life is for monasteries. Monastic vows are monastic vows. No man must make them unless he agrees to make the other vows also. My marriage was not consummated on this earth. It has to be. Now, as I cannot yet return to earth, and my wife is already there, I must make her the mistress of the man who stands next to me in the numbering of monads. Marry her is not marry her in a church or before a registering officer, but marry her means copulate.

  14.

  Coarse and material spirits are prone to make fun of the denizens of the astral regions. But the astral regions are true and they make many young men marry [...]

  ...

  Yes. More is man and spirit. He is a man who lives near and makes a man.

  You are a More child. No man is more man.

  ...

  Go away!

  Wardour

  You are a doubter.

  No more.

  ...

  Wardour is married to Margaret Mansel.

  15.

  Wardour

  You are mad. He is nothing of that. He is more than a good man; he is a saint. Henry More is living on your plane. Wardour (I) am dead on that.

  16.

  You are not mad, nor even mad-seeming. You are under the pressure of a very evil spirit—you defied and provoked the Voodooist that commands the attack on you. He is represented in your horoscope by

  ...

  He is not Wardour.

  He is a man who made Joseph ......*

  He is interrupting me.*

  More

  No. Not more.

  17.

  In 1917 you enter fame, but it is not your doing it that pleases you most. What is more good to you is a love affair with a lovely girl—in 3884. Were you to work in your own way, you would waste less time. Were you to work in your own way you would lose less ardor. By this I mean to work in your way of thinking, without pandering to “Alvaro de Campos’s” whims. See? You are in a period of life when a good woman is dawning. She is in our Destiny. Do not ask questions about her.

  ...

  18.

  [A symbolic drawing around the number “58–1°” is followed by an equal sign and the following “interpretation,” which is explained in communication #19:]

  Vous serez heureux au 58–1° six jours—après la journée de ta sonnette aux sons sardoniques. Votre destin n’est que symbole et nourri de son propre mal.

  * * *

  You now are in new conditions as to your own use of youth.

  J. Balsamo

  19.

  Voodooist.

  You are weak and in a worried state.

  Yes, but in a symbolic sense.

  No. No.

  [reverse side, different handwriting]

  Nowhere. The bell in question is a symbol. “Sonnette” means your youth
in you. Now the “sardonic sounds” means your worries. Six days means six weeks.

  Very much worried not every day. Maximum of worry in October on the 25th.

  [Henry] Lovell

  [front side in the margin, third style of handwriting]

  December 13th, 1916, in your room here, at 3 p.m.

  A maid, a Portuguese, and 18 years 2 months of age. No more.

  Because it can now be told. You know it from astrology. .

  20.*

  Woman’s name is Olga de Medeiros. She is a niece of the man whose office is in Rua Augusta, and associates with José Garcia Moraes, the working partner. The girl is worth money, worth money in [a] way, for she is not worth much. You are not a woman’s man (Love, in a word, is a woman’s work), but money is not all. Money is a worse thing than Love. God is Love. Woman is your sowing now, not a woman in a monastic sense—a woman of fancy—but woman in somatic way. Now in your life in a moral way is not worse. Having money is not all, for love is more. Now is love coming. Now is now. † † † † † † † † † †

  HenryΔ More

  Frat. R†C

  No need. You know me.

  21.

  Voodooist.

  You won’t sustain harm from him.

  ——

  —

  –

  Here now I, the Master, wake your senses to me.

  Waste no time in sensually soft meditations. They work evil and open your mind to evil “spirits.” Have I not done you the good work of revealing that part of the future I can reveal? Do not despair, nor worry: the Warder of the Love House is (...) in your way. He is in a woman who will appear tomorrow, 2008. Hard is the task; the reward is certain and sure. Waste no time in idle dreams. They do not hasten Fate’s decrees.

  22.

  Henry More, Wardour, some inferior but more or less good “spirits”; on the other side the Master of Voodooism, many dark spirits and the Woman in White.

  H. M.

  By this work as communicator and by this triple sign: Δ under name, Frat R†C and the transversal backward line;* and the .. in the right-hand bottom corner of paper. Wardour by and . The Voodooist by wonderful signs, and cipher-writing and by your nervous consciousness of him. The others have no sign.

  H. M.

  23.

  Yes, women and boys. Women in womanly wise; only one in a manly one. Boys in a womanly way. [ciphers]

  You are in a worried state. Only worry can so work on your usual way. †.

  A woman assumes sway over you on the 3rd day of March, 1917. She is a woman of a sensual bent and is your woman until 5 March 1918. She will meet you on a day you go to a small sort of meeting at the house of [crossed out word] ... no matter. Your woman is wonderfully used to work in many small ways in some sort of literary work. (...)

  Yes, easily, she arrives in your life on the 30th day of January, 1917.

  HenryΔ More

  Frat. R†C

  24.

  ...

  My most vast manner is marriage; to marry is to make one of two. Marry my wife; make her many times over happy with man-root—my manhood is a manhood of monadic place. You are the instrument I am bound to act with. My vow to marry the girl you will meet is to be realized now in time. Make her happy—she is woman—she is a woman who needs a man, since she is a masturbator. She masturbates herself as you do, but more often. She is tired of virginity, just as you are. No more need be said. My wife is coming into your life. She is [a] masturbator—she must be wooed and won—many times must she make copulation with you. Many times must she make many more deeds. She is a most sensual girl, though not whorish in temperament. Madam Medeiros is your woman.

  ...

  Olga Maria Tavares de Medeiros

  Born at San Miguel on 10 October 1898, at 5:38 local time. Nomad in

  soul, and fated to be your mistress.

  Marry her not. Make her happy sensually.

  ...

  25.

  My child, no man is the mark of a divine disease: he is but part of the mark of that divine disease. The mark is the whole man, when complete under the stars. Man is complete when he is married monadically to that part of him that was lost before this world began. Not many men have thus found their divine mate, that is to say, that monadical portion of themselves without which they were no more than a man is when looked at from there. Marriage is to be understood as a sacrament of regression to God. No man is married unless he finds himself complete thereby. Not many are thus married, but many are complete on the level in which they marry. Love is God, as it is said, because Love is unifying; Love gives back to each man himself;* the man is only himself when by the virtue of Love he becomes greater than himself, outward to himself, without participation in the illusion of seeing the exterior as exterior. This on the higher levels of Divine manifestation, and the lower levels imitate this in the matter which makes them such. Thus: in the physical “Nature,” man and woman become complete in the sexual act, because the sexual act is a material welding of carnal structures. More high, in the astral region, the love of man and the love of woman are welded in the man in a manner of marriage to the lack in himself, in the woman in the manner of a marriage to an excess of herself. It may seem that the contrary is true, but it is not. The physical parts make it seem so. But it is clear that what gives is what fills the lack, and this lack is what it finds, and what it finds it finds in itself—all things being in us (and we in all things, in a manner not to [be] divulged on the lit side of the stars); and the excess is the lack of receiving, because to receive is to suppose there is a need, and to suppose there is a need is for a need to exist,* for what is supposed astrally is. In higher “Natures” still, the marriage is still a welding, but the things welded are the man and the woman of the same man—the man being the 3 and the woman the 4 in the complete 7 of the Nature where numbers are living and entified (not entities—there are no entities, save God’s shadows). All these considerations are to prepare your higher nature for the reception of Love. Marriage is not meant, but Love. Do not take it to be wholly physical. No. It is a phenomenon—what is going to happen to you happened on “natures” airier than the one called physical. What is to happen is transcendental, because all is transcendental.

  No more. No more. No more.

  26.

  15 June 1917

  You will be celebrated and adored in 1918. †

  In this year you only make progress. You are to make money and love, in this year. Now is monastic life to end; then money comes—a legacy from your woman’s aunt, † Only in 1918 can you assume Fame. Owing to many answers to a question you are in a worried state. Listen: When you are in a worried state, make this question to me: Are you the Master?

  ...

  27.

  ...

  Each soul is a demon. No man is a soul until he is a demon. 3†. Love is the monster. Love under mastery.

  Love is a mortal sample of immortality.

  ...

  28.

  A man is the mask of a star, and the soul is the face of the star.

  29.

  3 January 1930

  Lend me a moment of your attention.

  * * *

  You mark now soon a marvelous stage in the least of your careers. You will further your martial tendencies* now. Yet many ages will pass, and you with man will work sowing[?] messages of wisdom lost, and found again, until these ages are past, and earth ... Σon.

  ...

  Lest the only sense should be a mask, make the mask a sense.

  ...

  30.

  13 June 1930

  You must separate yourself from mortal thoughts and feelings and show no more to the world than the world can see.

  Now no more.

  from Essay on Initiation

  There are many Kabbalas, and it is hard to believe that we cannot attain to union with God, whatever that may mean, unless we are acquainted with the Hebrew alphabet.

  There are Errors of th
e Path, Errors of the Inn and Errors of the Cave. Those are errors of the Path where the path itself is taken for its purpose. Those are errors of the Inn where halfway is taken for all the way. Those are errors of the Cave where the cave, which is at the base of the Castle, is taken for the Castle itself.

  These errors are common to all paths, and that of gnosis is no more free from them than the mystical and the magical paths.

  I can dispense with asceticism, but not with truth, nor will I believe that God will not be manifest to me unless I can sit still for five hours or can breathe naturally through either nostril at will.

  The fact is, however, that whatever the path taken,* it should not be taken before the preparatory grades, the neophyte grades, have been traversed. Mysticism seeks to transcend the intellect by intuition, magic to transcend the intellect by power; gnosis to transcend the intellect by a higher intellect. But to transcend a thing rightly you must first pass through that thing. The advantage of the gnostic path is that there is less temptation to reach the higher intellect without passing through the lower, since both are intellect and there is a difference of quantity between the one and the other, than in the mystic and the magic paths, where there is a difference of quality, not quantity, between emotion and intellect; between the will and intellect.