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Aleister Crowley Diary Entry Rex de Arte Regia Saturday, 7 November 1914
Opus[1] IV
11.15 a.m. to 10.30 p.m. Babalon per mentis imaginem manu sinistra.[2]
Object: Success. Things in New York have moved slowly and badly so far. The lapse of time between this entry and the next is due to lack of leisure and opportunity.
Result: Many Magi might rejoice seeing that I sold £500 or so of books[3] on 12 Nov. and that today, 14 Nov. all my difficulties on other lines seem to have cleared away. But this Magus (not used as 9º = 2o but as a ‘magician’) wants definite, complete success all round. ‘Call no man happy till he is dead’—or at least has left New York!
I had rather a cold following this operation. I had a ‘feeling’ or ‘intuition’ that this method is not altogether right. Divination says (I judge) that it is right, [Liber] VII 4.49.
22 Dec. in I think on the whole I may say I have had success, though its results are not manifest altogether. But I have had love, money, pupils, clients, fame and my prospects look very bright all ’round. Yes, I shall call this success.
P.S. 14 Feb. Every one of these apparent successes materialized only to part. They vanished again almost at once. I think it is all part of the formula.[4]
I evidently don’t know how to fix the volatile at all, though the first half of the Op[eratio]n is all right.
1—[Crowley performs a magical sexual operation.] 2—[‘Babalon as imagined through the mind, [and] with the left hand.’ This opus, or sexual operation, was an act of masturbation while Crowley visualized the image of Babalon, the Scarlet Whore. Babalon is here written in Enochian characters. It is so spelt to accord, cabbalistically, with Crowley’s doctrine of Thelema (Do what thou wilt).] 3—[Sold to John Quinn, the American lawyer and famous book, manuscript and picture collector. The price, however, was less than £500.] 4—[The invocation of Mercury according to the ritual in Liber LXIV, published in Crowley’s The Equinox, no. 7.]
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