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Aleister Crowley Diary Entry Wednesday, 12 July 1916
A storm struck the lake; I went out to put my canoe in safety. Returning, I found a father, mother, and child who had taken refuge under my roof. I was wet through, and went into the Middle Chamber of the cottage to change my clothes. I had just got the clean shirt on, and was stooping for the trousers, when a globe of fire burst a few inches from my right foot. A spark sprang to the middle joint of the middle finger of my left hand.
From this I conclude:
1. The Masters still need me; the Initiation is real. Cf. the fall with my horse on the Burma-China frontier in 1905.
2. I have repeatedly thought that death must be the issue of this initiation. This is then wrong.
It seems to me as if this Initiation were taking place “elsewhere,” i.e., not in my consciousness at all. It is obviously too big for my human consciousness; yet its results must work down through that.
I will write down my woe, that maybe it be thereby alleviated. . . . . There is nothing in me that corresponds at all to the grade. There is utter impotence on all planes. This has persisted through the whole period, save for short spells, when I have been more or less normal. But always I slip back into the state for which I find idiocy an adequate and even euphemistic term. I do not in the least fail to understand the grade; I am simply unable to act. It is no good making up my mind to do anything material; for I have no means. But this would vanish if I could make up my mind. I am as it were inhibited from everything. I am tempted for example to crucify a toad, or copulate with a duck, sheep, or goat, or set a house on fire or murder someone with the idea—a perfectly good magical idea, of course—that some supreme violation of all the laws of my being would break my karma, or dissolve the spell that seems to bind me. And I cannot do it, because (chiefly) I have no faith that it would actually do so. T.
Note dream of Feb. 15, 1915, as to “killing the Lion very dead indeed.”
Perhaps I worry too much about “When shall I be free?” Perhaps after having preached to others so much of serpents and humming-birds, I myself may be a castaway! At all events, every species of divination on this matter gives negative results.
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