The Anathemata
Sherthursdaye and Venus day (continued)
Failing
(finished?) West
your food, once.
Upon a time
the Daughter’s torch
Demeter’s arch3
extinguished
down
David Jones notes
3 Persephone associated with her mother Demeter in sending forth Triptolemus to teach man agriculture and the arts of civilization.
See note 1 to page 230 above.
additional notes
Another reference to Spengler’s Decline of the West.
The text also refers to the Eleusinian Mysteries, which were initiations held every year for the cult of Demeter and Persephone based at Eleusis in ancient Greece, and are the most famous of the secret religious rites of ancient Greece. Torches were carried; but they are now extinguished and the ceremonial arch is broken down.
see also
semantic structures
The chiasmus (torch–extinguished, arch–down) is disguised by the page turn.
comments
Another rite of fore-time now replaced by the new rite.