Hypatia's Gude to the Virtious Lover

“meine Geliebte”

In comparing Sonnet 130 by W. Shakespeare and Sonnet of Blasphemy by A. Crowley one can clearly see that many of the traditional attitudes and approaches to sonnets and their Muse are upended and in many instances, rebuked and reviled. The Authors of both works lay the groundwork for a discovery that would shake modern society to its foundation if the true meaning were understood and applied. In this discourse I will call upon that most wonderful Muse from antiquity, Hypatia to act as my guide and bearer of scientific rule to better understanding what these two authors are attempting to conclude.
Sonnet 130 serves as a mockery of popular sonnets that exalt the Muse above Nature. Nature being the standard of measurement for all scientific and philosophic endeavors and in Shakespeare’s take on the Muse/Sonnet dynamic, a higher form of beauty than capable of being obtained by any mortal muse.  The author of Sonnet 130 unveils a deductive process in his (her) writing that works its way from the most exalted aspects of the Heavens to the most honest and materialistic. When at the end of the sonnet Shakespeare writes;
“And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
 As any she belied with false compare.”...he is being incredibly introspective and self aware noting that while intoxicated by love for his muse (“A Muse ment” the act of being enthralled by a Muse) he was apt to place the muse above Nature. Recognizing the impossible nature of this act the author was able to deduct that to be enthralled by Love places reason below the compulsion to worship. Love compels Shakespeare to attribute those loving qualities to his Muse, not that she possessed them of her own volition.
In Aleister Crowley’s Sonnet of Blasphemy a similar process is employed as was in Sonnet 130. The author begins by placing the Muse above Nature in the opening line of the sonnet. What follows is a detail of the historical consequence of placing a mortal muse above Nature. Crowley’s Muse is blood stained and indifferent to the chaos unleashed by worship of her. The author relates that she holds three unlikely curses as the cost of worshiping at this altar. The first, is Life itself being as Crowley described a well of poison, taking the stance that there is existence outside this present incarnation and that dipping into this well ( Earth) is an act of self poisoning.  The second curse the Muse bequeath is Lying and its devilish offspring, Hatred and Envy who in turn sow Strife.. It is in the third curse that Crowleys sonnet and sonnet 130 find a correlation as the author names Love to be more reviled than the other afflictions put together.
“ These twain are bitter; but the last is Love.”
Both Crowley and Shakespeare have named Love as something contrary to all the teaching and preaching of the last two thousand years. While it is easy to dismiss either of these sonnets as the potential venting of two romantically scorned men, the third testimony to the ill nature of love comes from one of historys greatest Muses herself, Hypatia. Some accounts held that Hypatia remained a virgin which wasn’t uncommon for an unmarried woman in the fourth century AD and lent credence to her work as a philosopher of the school of Plotinus. Philosophers of antiquity understood that physical substance began with a healthy immune system, the first biological system weakened by carnal abuse of the body. In one account from the Byzantine Suda Encyclopedia,  Hypatia’s antithesis to a relentless sutor’s premise of courtship was to wave a fist full of menstrual rags at him while proclaiming, there is “nothing beautiful” about carnal desires. This incident is oft cited by Christian historians as an example of Hypatia’s Virtue and what led many early Christian to campaign in vain for her canonization.
By her celebrated intellect and her experience with Nature as her muse Hypatia would surely have agreed with Shakespeare and Crowley when they deducted that Love is mostly misunderstood and misused by not only the poets and bards but by normal everyday peoples as well. To properly credit Love with the wars it has inspired and the suffering endured by another at the hands of a Lover would place Love in the proper context. It is amorous love that binds us and breaks us down as some sort of amino acid secreted by an  invisible digestive system where we go willingly to our doom carried on the backs of illusion and personal gratification.