BETH ב‎

By the road of silence one comes to the gate of the City of God. As the mind is the warring might (that is peace unshakeable) of these Eight Elements of the Desert, so at last the Ego is found alone, unmasked, conscious of itself and of no other thing. This is the supreme anguish of the soul; it realizes itself as itself, as a thing separate from that which is not itself, from God. In this spasm there are two ways: if fear and pride are left in the soul, it shuts itself up, like a warlock in a tower, gnashing its teeth with agony. “I am I,” it cries, “I will not lose myself,” and in that state damned, it is slowly torn by the claws of circumstance, disintegrated bitterly, for all its struggles, throughout ages and ages, its rags to be cast piecemeal upon the dungheap without the city. But the soul that has understood the blessedness of that resignation, which grasps the universe and devours it, which is without hope or fear, without faith or doubt, without hate or love, dissolves itself ineffable into the abounding bliss of God. It cries with Shelley, as the “chains of lead about its flight of fire” drop molten from its limbs: “I pant, I sink, I tremble, I expire,” and in that last outbreaking is made one with the primal and final breath, the Holy Spirit of God.

— Such must be the climax of any retirement to the Desert on the part of any aspirant of the Mysteries who has the spark of that fire in him.

Aleister Crowley, The Soul of the Desert

References: Thoth Tarot, Lady Frieda Harris