Occult luminary Aleister Crowley was born on this day in 1875 (and by complete coincidence – I swear! – this is Strange Flowers post number 666). From Crowley’s very rare 1910 volume of poetry The Scented Garden of Abdullah the Satirist of Shiraz comes this verse, “The Riddle”. Amid all the exotic scents, raging members and dewy emissions, if you look closely you’ll begin to see the connection with yesterday‘s subject:
Habib hath heard; let all Iran who spell aright from A to Z
Exalt thy fame and understand with whom I made a marriage-bed;
Resort to tool-and-podex play till all the world in tears is shed
Before the sword of Azrael the trump of Israfel the dread,
Exalt, exalt our love at last among the living and the dead,
Resort to love, and press its purple calix with His purple head,
Till fall the pearls with rubies strung, the dews upon the dawn that bled.
Crimson, o lover, was our love, and crimson streams the sunset past;
Hyacinthine glows the vault of night, the Future certain, sure to last.
Accept the gold of noon that pours its white-hot flood, its radiant blast!
Rampant within thy podex take this member, stiffer than a mast.
Lively as love itself, supreme in pride, stupendous in the vast!
Even the present gold and white, the Moment ever fleeting fast,
Surrendered never! this delight the Venus-throw hath surely cast.
Jehannum shall exclaim “Habib!” and light inform its murky fire,
Entrancing all the ghouls to love, waking the Shaitans to desire!
Rejoicing souls in Paradise shall spurn the Hur al Ayn with ire,
Opening their lips in pangs of woe, offering their souls in pawn to hire!
Men from the utmost desert lands shall spur their steeds through sand and mire,
Even to look upon the face immortal from this lewdly lyre.
Perfect, Habib, my magic song; perfect our loves for ever are: —
Olibanum and ambergris, nargis and rose of the attar,
Lily and lilac, thus they rise in fragrance to the morning star.
Light springs and liberty is fair — o break the intoxicating jar!
It is enough that thou art Near, the shamer of the foolish Far,
To glut thy jasmine podex on the member of thine El Qahar;
To glut thine almond member in the podex of thine El Qahar.
The rapture in rapture.
Strange Flowers 
So subtle!
(I had to Google a ‘podex’ definition to make sure it meant what I thought it meant. I feel somehow more ignorant and more enlightened at the same time.)
Amazingly Pierre Molinier is one of the *least* disturbing things which comes up on a Google image search for ‘podex’