"...she is not taken by force, but enters Wonderland, or the Looking-Glass World, of her own volition, because she is trying to get there. This expression of agency trumps even Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, wherein her entrance to the Underworld is more explicit—she literally descends beneath the earth—but essentially accidental. Her truly heroic gesture, unambiguous in its intent, is her penetration of the Victorian mirror."
It is the going underground that preserves the body,
so though Persephone is ancient
and Alice long ago became antique
each could pass for sixteen.
They stand close, arms about each other's waist,
faces pressed together -- halves of an apple
cut to show the star of seeds.
They stand on opposite sides of knowing,
balance each other. What Alice lacks in weight
she makes up in fear, heavy as the denser metals.
It is the going underground that gives them
this battered look -- dark crescent moons beneath
the eyes, lips swollen and split at the corners.
Dirt in their scalps, at the roots.
--Stephanie Bolster, from: Portrait of Alice with Persephone
(Pishsalver & Upelkuchen's from my 1/2 guinnea hat):
CURRICULUM OF A.'. A.'.
COURSE I.
GENERAL READING.
SECTION 2. --- Other books, principally fiction, of a generally suggestive and helpful kind:
[...]
Alice in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll. Valuable to those who understand the Qabalah.
Alice Through the Looking Glass, by Lewis Carroll. Valuable to those who understand the Qabalah.
— Aleister Crowley
Magick in Theory and Practice Appendix 1
"...one can hardly comment upon a theme which has been so fruitfully
treated by Ludovicus Carolus, that most holy illuminated man of God."
-From BOOK 4, by Fra. Perdurabo and Sor. Virakam (Aleister Crowley and Mary d'Estes Sturges)
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