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Aleister Crowley Diary Entry Thursday, 8 January 1914
Opus VII
The Seventh Working
[Thursday, January 8—Friday, January 9, 1914 E.V.]
Hitherto, so far as we are aware, nothing great of the result of the operation of Juppiter is obtained. Yet tonight I feel more confidence than usual; I am in a highly nervous or electric state. My cold was better, and I went on a fairly long walk and dined out. Am tired, excited, feverish; I think a slight relapse. Juppiter bring all to a good end!
The Temple opened about 10; the Rite being done ut ordinatur we beheld an universe of the most brilliant purple with golden stars, and Juppiter seated on His throne surrounded by the Four Beasts upon thick clouds borne upon a phalanx of eagles.
In the Book did we find "LVX" V:9 or 10—the passage 8-13. Subsequently there appeared a great Peacock, meaning (according to Fra. L.T. [Victor B. Neuburg] Change-Journeys-Motion-Excitement-Improvement—? Some word unknown. (.להיכם עפי לו) The Peacock is now crowned, and regards himself in a mirror. This word is summarized in "Breaking," i.e., of all old conditions.[1] Fra. L.T. connects this with the word of Equinox of Libra, An. IX. The Temple was closed about 11:20.
Received several visitors; the Art-Bachelor W.D. [Walter Duranty], the fair Damozel J.C. [Jane Chéron] and the good knight my brother-in-arms Sir Lionel [Leon Engers-Kennedy]. Sculptured a sacred Phallus till nigh 2.
4:15 A.M. Die Venerii
A wonderful and repeated dream. I wake up, at last able to get down the truth I have long seen. Ælfreida Tillyard the beloved disciple and one "Clairbelle" (Lady Walkoskie) figure in it. "Mental Images leave no trace when destroyed." Conservation of matter and energy are not paralleled by thought. (I had kept on reducing symbols to the linga and the yoni and thence destroying them, much to the expressed wonder and alarm of Æ.T.) Of course the linga and yoni are only convenient standards of reduction: the point is that illusions destroyed leave no trace or effect, but merely vanish. As this process becomes general in one's life it really diminishes one's universe. The bourgeois is subconsciously aware that this must result, and is therefore right in his own way in refusing to destroy even one illusion, and in persecuting those who shatter them. Also there is only one right path; to either side leads not merely off, but to the Abyss. I remember in my dream mimicking the bourgeois a-tiptoe marking time, trembling and blind. This idea was also presented in many other ways, intensely vivid, which now I forget. Moreover as I wake myself thoroughly by writing this note, the lens of my intellectual comprehension of the great truth seems to dim, and I find myself fearing in the morning I should find the words obscure. "The destruction of mental images is the only possible real annihilation" is my dream-idea. "(Destroyed) mental images leave no trace" is close, if not quite, the wording. My contrast with matter and energy (set forth above) was a waking rational comment. I remember catching up an old felt hat, and explaining to Æ.T., Saraswati the beloved disciple, that it was only to be destroyed by first perceiving it as a disguise for the yoni—I think the dream ran thus. But much I fail to recapture. Let me sleep again, and may the Holy One give again (if it be His will) to His beloved in sleep.
9:30.
The post has brought a letter from my lawyers, a pot of opium, and a love-poem of a religious type [Chicago May]. Some readers may boggle at the attribution, but they are dull.
1—This was seven months only before the outbreak of war.
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