Mary Butts Diary Entry

Wednesday, 3 August 1921

‘Grass’. Considered—(control got better each time.)

(i) Advisability of introducing [illegible] to sexual acts. Daimon ‘one is as a[illegible] as the other’. Then very clearly ‘It is impossible to [illegible] the cave any further. That’s that’. (They might see them.)

(ii) Sharp ‘cyclic’ appreciation of the Beast—cruelty, kindness, decency, indecency—the pairs of opposites very cursorily examined and applied. But he is shrewd—he [illegible] me on to examine them.

The question is—there are 2 things ? Put them together, what happens? One answer is at their point of union there is a third thing. That was my answer—and entirely new creation, not normally appreciable by man’s senses, needing perhaps extasie [sic], but whole conception now, was comfort.

A.C. said ‘no’—but that there is an absolute identify behaviour opposite.

Both may be true—my ‘third perception’ for sensual life, his for some ultimate mysticism.

I took an emotional case. I suffered terribly to hurt John [John Rodker]. I could (—idiotically—have ruined 3 lives) I have had a moment’s gratification of undoing. Those are opposites. What has happened now—(the acute wound is over, its complete [illegible] impossible.) i.e. a quite good love, a secret, inexpressible, unphenomenal thing. Is that an image of a third creation, or of an identity?

This was most that was important—began to think I could see auras.

Watched faces in the crowd’s faces—G.I.’s trouble in Lea’s [Leah Hirsig].

Pranayama. 12 minutes. Nothing particular.

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