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Aleister Crowley Diary Entry Tuesday, 9 June 1903
Arrived at Boleskine House accompanied by my "Aunt" [Annie] Mrs (Jonathan) Crowley.
Access of malaria on Loch Ness.
Prefaratory.
In the year 1899 I came to Boleskine House, and put everything in order with the object of carrying out the Operation of Abramelin the Mage.
I had studied Ceremonial Magic for years, and obtained very remarkable success.
My Gods were those of Egypt, interpreted on lines closely akin to those of Greece.
In Philosophy I was a Realist of the Qabalistic School.
In 1900 I left England for Mexico, and later the Far East, Ceylon, India, Baltistan, Egypt and France. Idle here to detail the corresponding progress of my thought. Passing through a stage of Hinduism, I had discarded all Deities as unimportant and in Philosophy was an uncompromising nominalist. I may call myself an orthodox Buddhist.
With the reservations:
(i) I cannot deny that certain phenomena do accompany the use of certain rituals. I only deny the usefulness of such methods to the White Adept.
(ii) Hindu methods of meditation are possibly useful to the beginner and should not therefore be discarded at once (necessarily).
With regard to my advancement, the redemption of the Cosmos, etc, etc, I leave for ever[1] the "Blossom and Fruit" Theory and appear in the character of an Inquirer on strictly scientific lines.
This is unhappily calculated to damp enthusiasm: but as I so carefully of old, for the magical path, excluded from my life all other interests, that life has now no particular meaning, and the Path of Research, on the only lines I can now approve of, remains the one Path possible for me to tread.
1—Note. Against 'for ever' Crowley pencilled: "till 1906."
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