Here are some selected quotes and images from Liber Novus along with a link to the New York Times article by Sara Corbett.
Here are a few selected quotes from Liber Novus
“To the
extent that the Christianity of this time lacks madness, it lacks divine
life. Take note of what the ancients
taught us in images: madness is divine.
But because the ancients lived this image concretely in events, it
became a deception for us, since we became masters of the reality of the
world.” (238)
Life does
not come from events, but from us.
Everything that happens outside has already been.” (239)
I would not
have been able to see what was to come if I could not have seen it myself.
Therefore I take part in that
murder; the sun of the depths also shines in me after the murder has been
accomplished; the thousand serpents that want to devour the sun are also in
me. I myself am a murderer and murdered,
sacrifice and sacrificed. The upwelling
blood streams out of me. You all have a
share in the murder. In you the reborn
one will come to be, and the sun of the depths will rise, and a thousand
serpents will develop from your dead matter and fall on the sun to choke
it. Your blood will stream forth. The peoples unforgettable acts, that will be
written with blood in unforgettable books for eternal memory. (239)
It is
unquestionable: if you enter into the world of the soul, you are like a madman,
and a doctor would consider you to be sick.
What I say here can be seen as sickness, but no one can see it as
sickness more than I do.
This is how I overcame madness. If you do not know what divine madness is,
suspend judgement and wait for the fruits.
But know that there is a divine madness which is nothing other than the
overpowering of the spirit of this time through the spirit of the depths. Speak then of sick delusion when the spirit
of the depths can no longer stay down and forces a man to speak in tongues
instead of in human speech, and makes him believe that he himself is the spirit
of the depths. (238)
But during
the 25 days, I gave all my love and submission to things, to men, and to the
thoughts of this time. I went into the
desert only at night. (238)
Blood shone
at me from the red light of the crystals and when I picked up to discover its
mystery, there lay the horror uncovered before me: in the depths of what is to
come lay murder. The blond hero lay
slain. The black beetle is the death
that is necessary for renewal; and so thereafter, a new sun glowed, the sun of
the depths, full of riddles, a sun of the night. And as the rising sun of spring quickens the
dead earth, so the sun of the depths quickened the dead, and thus began the
terrible struggle between light and darkness.
Out of that burst the powerful and ever unvanquished source of blood. This is what was to come, which you now
experience in your life, and it is even more than that. (I had this vision on the night of 12
December 1913). (239)
As the fate
of the peoples is represented to you in events, so will it happen in your
heart. If the hero in you is slain, then
the sun of the depths rises in you, glowing from afar, and from a dreadful
place. But all the same, everything up
till now seemed to be dead in you will come to life, and will change into
poisonous serpents that will cover the sun, and you will fall into night and
confusion. Your blood also will stream
from many wounds in this frightful struggle.
Your shock and doubt will be great, but from such torment the new life
will be born. Birth is blood and
torment. Your darkness, which you did
not suspect since it was dead, will come to life and you will feel the crush of
total evil and the conflicts of life that still now lie buried in the matter of
your body. But the serpents are dreadful
evil thoughts and feelings. (239)
If the God
grows old, he becomes shadow, nonsense, and he goes down. The greatest truth becomes the greatest lie,
the brightest day becomes darkest night.
So the reality is meaning and
absurdity. Noon is a moment, midnight is
a moment, morning comes from night, evening turns into night, but evening comes
from the day and morning turns into day.
(242)
So meaning is a moment and a
transition from absurdity to absurdity, and absurdity only a moment and a
transition from meaning to meaning.
(242)
After death
on the cross Christ went into the underworld and became hell. So he took on the form of the Antichrist, the
dragon. The image of the Antichrist,
which has come down to us from the ancients, announces the new God, whose
coming the ancients had foreseen. (242)
The rain is
the great stream of tears that will come over the peoples, the tearful flood of
released tension after the constriction of death had encumbered the peoples
with horrific force. It is the mourning
of the dead in me, which precedes burial and rebirth. The rain is the fructifying of the Earth it
begets the new wheat, the young, germinating God. (242)
No one knows
what happened during the three days Christ was in hell. I have experienced it. The men of yore said that he had preached
there to the deceased. What they say is
true, but do you know how this happened?
It was folly and monkey business, an
atrocious Hell’s masquerade of the holiest mysteries. How else could Christ have saved his
Antichrist? (243).
That is the
ambiguity of the God: he is born from a dark ambiguity and rises to a bright
ambiguity. Unequivocalness is simplicity
and leads to death. But ambiguity is the
way of life. If the left foot does not
move, then the right one does, and you move.
The God wills this.
You say: the Christian God is
unequivocal, he is love, But what is more ambiguous than love? Love is the way of life if you have a left
and right. (244)
My soul
spoke to me in a whisper, urgently and alarmingly: words, words, do not make
too many words. Be silent and listen:
have you recognized your madness and do you admit it? Have you noticed that all your open
foundations are completely mired in madness?
Do you not want to recognize your madness and welcome it in a friendly
manner you wanted to accept everything.
So accept madness too. Let the
light of your madness shine, and it will suddenly dawn on you. Madness is not to be despised and not to be
feared, but instead you should give it life.
(298)
I am he, the
nameless one, who does not know himself and whose name is concealed even from
himself. I have no name, since I have
not existed, but have only just become.
To myself I am an Anabaptist and a stranger. I, who I am, am not it. But I, who will be I before me and after me,
am it. In that I abased myself, I
elevated myself as another. In that I
accepted myself, I divided myself into two, and in that I united myself with
myself, I became the smaller part of myself.
I am thus in my consciousness as if I were also separated from it. I am not in my second and greater state, as
if I were this second and greater one myself, but I am always in ordinary
consciousness, yet so separate and distinct from it, as if I were in my second
and greater state, but without the consciousness of really being it. I have even become smaller and poorer, but
precisely because of my smallness I can be conscious of the nearness of the
great. (304)
Great is the
power of the way. In it Heaven and hell
grow together, and in it the power of the Below and the power of the Above
unite. The nature of the way is magical,
as are supplication and invocation, malediction and deed are magical if they
occur on the great way. Magic is the
working of men on men, but your magic action does not affect your neighbor; it
affects you first, and only if you withstand it does an invisible effect pass
from you to your neighbor; it affects you first, and only if you withstand it
does an invisible effect pass from you to your neighbor. There is more of it in the air than I ever
thought. However it cannot be
grasped. (308)
I saw the
black serpent, as it wound itself upward around the wood of the cross. It crept into the body of the crucified and
emerged again transformed from his mouth.
It had become white. It wound
itself around the head of the dead one like a diadem, and a light gleamed above
his head, and the sun rose shining in the east.
I stood and watched and was confused and a great weight burdened my
soul. But the white bird that sat on my
shoulder spoke to me. Let it rain, let
the wind blow, let the waters flow and the fire burn. Let each thing have its development, let
becoming have its day. (309)
The devil is
the sum of the darkness of human nature.
He who lives in the light strives toward being the image of God; he who
lives in the dark strives toward being the image of the devil. Because I wanted to live in the light, the
sun went out for me when I touched the depths.
It was dark and serpentlike. I
united myself with it and did not overpower it.
I took my part of the humiliation and subjugation upon myself, in that I
took on the nature of the serpent. (322)
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