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Aleister Crowley Diary Entry Wednesday, 31 October 1906
9.30. Took a smaller dose of H[ashish] than before. Smoking Hashish cigarettes. Incense etc. as before. Must work known dosage.
Wrote a long letter to A [Elaine Simpson] or rather V.H.S. F∴[idelis].
10.25. Before invoking I feel some sort of effect introspection developed. Time sense shaken; blanks in thought; feeling of fullness back of neck etc. etc. All very slight—only the strong introspection shows them. Inv[oke] nearly twice—terrible agony. Barbarous names. Supreme test, for a man who is really praying. Cannot bring himself to say a riduculous thing to his God, even on the latter's mandate.
I shall go and recite Greenland's etc—If with faith samadhi. Time after time I feel the sickening pangs of dissolution; physically I nearly faint; but I don't get over the bar. I am very sick and retire in disorder pursued by dog-faced demons of all kinds. Once again I nearly got there—all went brilliance—but not quite. I had too much drug and too little invocation. I completely forgot L[ola] [Vera Snepp] Thanksgiving altogether.
The real meaning of "Change not barbarous names etc." is the one thing good out of all this.
There is nothing but d[og]-f[aced] d[emon]s after I get to bed; but there is always the consciousness behind thoughts. Thus when the conc[sciousness] realizes that "I am apart from my thoughts" that thought itself is pictorially as a thought. Thus the Bhagavad-gita, "I am all and in all, yet apart from all—I who am all, and made it all, abide its separate Lord." This consciousness is the real Self in all probability; it would never trouble to command its thoughts, for all are alike to it.
The spine should be vertical, as the Hindus justly say.
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