5/30 2015

Vassago

The Third Spirit is a Mighty Prince, being of the same nature as Agares.

He is called Vassago. This Spirit is of a Good Nature, and his office is to declare things Past and to Come, and to discover all things Hid or Lost.

For the king of Babylon will stop at the fork in the road,

at the junction of the two roads, to seek an omen:

He will cast lots with arrows, he will consult his idols, he will examine the liver.

Ezekiel 21:21

The world is a dice-box,

a bag of stones

a deck of cards is a book

we shake, shuffle, rewrite

The suicide king,

Jack with one eye

the queen of spades

collide, run through

a forest of shovels,

of cudgels,

of bloody hearts

and stones.

The railroad bible,

the thrown bones

and cowry shells

burnt oferings and the flight of birds

the counting of days

of arrow staves

haruspicy and bloody mirrors

return to us what is lost

the dead boys from the river

the girls from the soft black dirt

the days and hours that the clock has eaten

the boy I was, who threw the bones

to see through the mirror, darkly,

my son now, in the halls of the shadow,

this future, out of all possible

the lives I won in the house of knives

this unanswered riddle

going forth by day

here is a shrouded figure,

here a drowned man

here is the skull of a parricide.

A black cockeral, a hangman's rope

here is a garden, the river.

A full house.