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Aleister Crowley Diary Entry Thursday, 1 October 1908
John St. John The Book of the Magical Retirement of G.H. Frater O. M. October 1908
Private and Confidential
PREFACE
Nobody is better aware than myself that this account of my Retirement labours under most serious disadvantages.
The scene should have been laid in an inaccessible lamaserai in Tibet, perched on stupendous crags; and my familiarity with Central Asia would have enabled me to do it quite nicely.
One should really have had an attendant Sylph; and one’s Guru, a man of incredible age and ferocity, should have frequently appeared at the dramatic moment.
A gigantic magician on a coal-black steed would have added to the effect: strange voices, uttering formidable things, should have issued from unfathomable caverns. A mountain shaped like a Svastika with a Pillar of Flame would have been rather taking; herds of impossible yaks, ghost-dogs, gryphons. . . .
But my good, friends, this is not the way things happen. Paris is as wonderful as Lhassa, and there are just as many miracles in London as in Luang Prabang.
I did not even think it necessary to go into the Bois de Boulogne and meet those Three Adepts who cause bleeding at the nose, familiar to us from the writings of Macgregor Mathers.
The Universe of Magic is in the mind of a man: the setting is but Illusion even to the thinker.
Humanity is progressing; formerly men dwelt habitually in the exterior world; nothing less than giants and Paynim and men-at-arms and distressed ladies, vampires and succubi, could amuse them. Their magicians brought demons from the smoke of blood, and made gold from baser metals.
In this they succeeded; the intelligent perceived that the gold and the lead were but shadows of thought. It became probable that the elements were but isomers of one element; matter was seen to be but a modification of mind, or (at least) that the two things matter and mind must be joined before either could be perceived. All knowledge comes through the senses, on the one hand; on the other, it is only through the senses that knowledge comes.
We then continue our conquest of matter; and we are getting pretty expert. It took much longer to perfect the telescope than the motor-car. And though, of course, there are limitations, we know enough to be able to predict them.
We know in what progression the Power to Speed coefficient of a steamboat rises—and so on.
But in our conquest of Nature, which we are making principally by the use of the rational intelligence of the mind, we have become aware of that world itself, so much so that educated men spend nine-tenths of their waking lives in that world, only descending to feed and dress and so on at the imperative summons of their physical constitution.
Now to us who thus live the world of mind seems almost as savage and unexplored as the world of Nature seemed to the Greeks.
There are countless worlds of wonder unpath’d and uncomprehended—and even unguessed, we doubt not.
Therefore we set out diligently to explore and map these
‘untrodden regions of the mind.’
Surely our adventures may be as exciting as those of Cortes or Cook!
It is for this reason that I invite with confidence the attention of humanity to this record of my journey.
But another set of people will find another disappointment. I am hardly an heroic figure. I am not The Good Young Man That Died. I do not remain in holy meditation, balanced on my left eyelash, for forty years, restoring exhausted nature by a single grain of rice at intervals of several months.
You will perceive in these pages a man with all his imperfections thick upon him trying blindly, yet with all his force, to control the thoughts of his mind, so that he shall be able to say “I will think this thought and not that thought” at any moment, as easily as (having conquered Nature) we are all able to say “I will drink this wine, and not that wine.”
For, as we have now learnt, our happiness does not at all depend upon our possessions or our power. We would all rather be dead than be Mr. J. B. Joel.
Our happiness depends upon our state of mind. It is the mastery of these things that the Magicians of to-day have set out to obtain for humanity; they will not turn back, or turn aside.
It is with the object of giving the reins into the hands of others that I have written this record, not without pain.
Others, reading it, will see the sort of way one sets to work; they will imitate and improve upon it; they will attain to the Magistry; they will prepare the Red Tincture and the Elixir of Life—for they will discover what Life means.
PROLOGUE
It hath appeared unto me fitting to make a careful and even an elaborate record of this Great Magical Retirement, for that in the first place I am now certain of obtaining some Result therefrom, as I was never previously certain.
Previous records of mine have therefore seemed vague and obscure, even unto the wisest of the scribes; and I am myself afraid that even here all my skill of speech and study may avail me little, so that the most important part of the record will be blank.
Now I cannot tell whether it is a part of my personal Kamma, or whether the Influence of the Equinox g [of Autumn] should be the exciting cause; but it has usually been at this part of the year that my best Results have occurred. It may be that the physical health induced by the summer in me, who dislike damp and chill, may bring forth as it were a flower the particular kind of Energy—Sammaváyamo—which gives alike the desire to perform more definitely and exclusively the Great Work, and the capacity to achieve success.
It is in any case remarkable that I was born in October (1875); suffered the terrible mystic trance which turned me toward the Path in October (1897); applied for admission to G\D\ in October (1898); opened my temple at Boleskine in October (1899); received the mysteries of L.I.L. in October (1900); and obtained the grade of 6º=5o; obtained the first true mystic results in October (1901); first landed in Egypt in October (1902); landed again in Egypt in October (1903); first parted from my wife [Rose Kelly] in October (1904); wrote the B.-i-M. [Bagh-i-Muattar] in October (1905), and obtained the grade of 7º=4o; received the great Initiation in October 1906) and, continuing, wrote THE Books in October 1907.
So then in the last days of September 1908 do I begin to collect and direct my thoughts; gently, subtly, persistently turning them one and all to the question of retreat and communion with that which I have agreed to call the Holy Guardian Angel, whose Knowledge and Conversation I have willed, and in greater or less measure enjoyed, since Ten Years.
Terrible have been the ordeals of the Path; I have lost all that I possessed, and all that I love, even as at the Beginning I offered All for Nothing, unwitting as I was of the meaning of those words. I have suffered many and grievous things at the hands of the elements, and of the planets; hunger, thirst, fatigue, disease, anxiety, bereavement, all those woes and others have laid heavy hand upon me, and behold! as I look back upon these years, I declare that all hath been very well. For so great is the Reward which I (unworthy) have attained that the Ordeals seem but incidents hardly worthy to mention, save insofar as they are the Levers by which I moved the World. Even those dreadful periods of “dryness” and of despair seem but the necessary lying fallow of the Earth. All those 'false paths' of Magic and Meditation and of Reason were not false paths, but steps upon the true Path; even a tree must shoot downwards its roots into the Earth in order that it may flower, and bring forth fruit in its season.
So also now I know that even in my months of absorption in worldly pleasure and business, I am not really there, but stand behind, preparing the Event.
Imagine me, therefore, if you will, in Paris on the last day of September. How surprised was I—though, had I thought, I should have remembered that it was so—to find all my necessary magical apparatus to my hand! Months before, for quite other reasons, I had moved most of my portable property to Paris; now I go to Paris, not thinking of a Retirement, for I now know enough to trust my destiny to bring all things to pass without anxious forethought on my part—and suddenly, therefore, here do I find myself—and nothing is lacking.
I determined therefore to begin steadily and quietly, allowing the Magical Will to come slowly forth, daily stronger, in contrast to my old plan, desperation kindling a store of fuel dried by long neglect, despair inflaming a mad energy that would blaze with violence for a few hours and then go out—and nothing done. “Not hurling, according to the oracle, a transcendent-foot towards Piety.”
Quite slowly and simply therefore did I wash myself and robe myself as laid down in the Goetia, taking the Violet Robe of an Exempt Adept (being a single Garment), wearing the Ring of an Exempt Adept, and that Secret Ring which hath been entrusted to my keeping by the Masters. Also I took the Almond Wand of Abramelin and the Secret Tibetan Bell, made of Electrum Magicum with its striker of human bone. I took also the magical knife, and the holy Anointing Oil of Abramelin the Mage.
I began then quite casually by performing the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram, finding to my great joy and some surprise that the Pentagrams instantly formulated themselves, visible to the material eye as it were bars of shining blackness deeper than the night.
I then consecrated myself to the Operation; cutting the Tonsure upon my head, a circle, as it were to admit the light of infinity: and cutting the cross of blood upon my breast, thus symbolizing the equilibration of and the slaying of the body, while loosing the blood, the first projection in matter of the universal Fluid.
The whole formulating the Ankh
I gave moreover the signs of the grades from 0º=0o to 7º=4o.
Then did I take upon myself the Great Obligation as follows:
I. I, O.M. etc., a member of the Body of God, hereby bind myself on behalf of the whole Universe, even as we are now physically bound unto the cross of suffering:
II. that I will lead a pure life, as a devoted servant of the Order:
III. that I will understand all things:
IV. that I will love all things
V. that I will perform all things and endure all things
VI. that I will continue in the Knowledge and Conversation of My Holy Guardian Angel
VII. that I will work without attachment
VIII. that I will work in truth
IX. that I will rely only upon myself
X. that I will interpret every phenomenon as a particular dealing of God with my soul. And if I fail herein, may my pyramid be profaned, and the Eye be closed upon me! All this did I swear and seal with a stroke upon the Bell.
[I also invoked by the 6
Then I steadily sat down in my Asana, having my left heel beneath my body pressing into the anus, my right heel in the instep of the left foot, the right leg vertical; my head, neck, and spine in one straight vertical line; my arms stretched out resting on their respective knees; my thumbs joined each to the fourth finger of the proper hand. All my muscles were tightly held; my breath came steady, slow and even through both nostrils; my eyes were turned back, in, up to the Third Eye; my tongue was rolled back in my mouth; and my thoughts, radiating from that Third Eye, I strove to shut in unto an ever narrowing sphere by concentrating my will upon the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel.
Then I struck Twelve times upon the Bell; with the new month the Operation was duly begun.
The First Day.
At Eight o’clock I rose from sleep and putting on my Robe, began a little to meditate. For several reasons—the journey and business of the day before, etc., etc., I did not feel fresh. But forcing myself a little I rose and went out to the Café du Dôme where I took coffee and a biroche, after buying an exercise book in which to write this record.
This was about 8.45; and now (10.10) I have written thus far.
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(Pentagrams) the 5 elements into my little bottle of
Hashish, in case I should need it]
Hanged Man posture to formulate sacrifice and pain
self-inflicted; for I feel such a worm, able only to
remain a few minutes at a time in a position long
since ‘conquered.’ For this reason too I cut again
the Cross of Blood; and now a third time will I do
it. And I will take out the Magical Knife and
sharpen it yet more, so that this body may fear me;
for that I am Horus the terrible, the Avenger, the
Lord of the Gate of the West. 
of
[spiritual] nature of O shewn by 3 trumps and an Ace.
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—3C-Q5-3S-PsP—
—K.W.—10W—2C—5W—
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