(12/20/1941) Perturbations

Perturbations
Frater Perdurabo, where have you gone,
Hast come a cropper of mystical brawn?
Frater Perdurabo, you’ve wandered afar,
Please tell us concerning the mythical star
That is of yourself and none other yet
Frater Perdurabo, why keep us in fret?
Now I say that you are a whole galaxy
With names that are numbered by systems of three,
But others are yelling that this isn’t so,
We must add and subtract you with fours, in a row,
By dividing and adding and squaring the cube
We’ll find you are nothing but some Irish rube,
Who with powers, dimensions, and shymical hobbs
Has taken to raising his korn for the khabs.
Some say you are Baphomet; puissant, supreme,
That you stand on your head in a dream of a dream;
Some say you are Crowley, a man what’s a man,
Who would if he could and usually can.
Some say you are known with five V’s in a string
Who ordered and templed a most solemn king;
Some say you are numbered by six and six six,
You would roast the profane on a bonfire of sticks
(All this for their own good, we no doubt suppose,
Tho a cross the wide land the foul stench a rose);
Some say you are Buddha, with bare pate and ghauts,
That you sit on a tack and think ponderous thoughts;
You say you can levi a tax on the brain
Whose constant perusal would rid of all pain;
Some say you are Therion, and therefore are free
Of adenoids, hay-fever, and such allergy;
Some say you are gypsy Ank Af, and construe
The scriptures you scribble to be literally true:
Nor must we forget on the Russian to count
Or how you kahn climb the Himalayan Mount.
All these and more others you are known by, it seems,
Frater Perdurabo, the spinner of dreams.

Grady McMurtry
12/20/41 e.v.

Originally published in Thelema Lodge Calendar, January 1988