The Selected Prose of Fernando Pessoa (19 page)

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. † † † † † † † † † †

Henry
_Δ
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.

Henry
_Δ
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.