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Aleister Crowley Diary Entry Wednesday, 23 August 1916
Note that this long solitude has developed my physical clairvoyance to its old pitch; I can tell the suit of a card, and usually whether it is high or low; right nearly every time.
I want, too, to place on record my certainty that all my failures came from abandoning my magick formula—of the moment—as I do now and again in deference to “rational” considerations.
7:35 p.m. I have been sucking up to the vapour of Ether for a few moments, and all common things are touched with beauty. So, too, with opium and cocaine, calm, peace, happiness, without special object, result from a few minutes of those drugs. What clearer proof that all depends on state of mind, that it is foolish to alter externals. A million spent on objets d’art would not have made this room as beautiful as it is just now—and there is not one beautiful thing in it, except myself. Man is only a little lower than the angels; one step, and all glory is ours!
8:02. More Ether: a delightful case of the “a” state caught for once. I started to think I would write an article urging men to Yoga by above arguments. Next, I would write a beautiful article. Next: the tragedy of it is that I shall merely have written one more beautiful thing! I then cried “O God!”, recognizing the state of “deep calling unto deep!” There were some physical futilities—tapping—starting to play Patience—then Science won, and I jumped up to write this down. The “a” state is very active; e.g., the antithesis in the above sentence between “up” and “down” excites all sorts of ideas.
9:05. And more.
There is a state of (visualized) mind which I’ve been calling the Ultimate Samadhi—in this state!
NOTHINGNESS WITH TWINKLES[1]
It appears that will and memory are exceptionally good under Ether; but I am taking the drug in an unusual way, the active nostril to the can, and it may be the usual business of stimulation and exhaustion and that I experience my present advantages owing to my being new to Ether. Or of course it may be specially suited to me physiologically—though I remember this hypothesis when I began most other drugs!
9:43. Soon I got “Nothingness with twinkles—BUT WHAT TWINKLES!” and now I find all that merely physical. It’s the old resolution of splendour into Bliss.
Ether-states are, as science says, ephemeral; so are all drug-states; it’s an instability. Time flies fast, though. I note that toleration of the sharpness of the smell of the ether is acquired gradually. Hence one should allow 3 hours or so to get honestly drunk, taking an easy curve.
1—This passage describes what Crowley would later term “The Star-Sponge Vision”; it is cited frequently in his commentaries to Liber AL and elsewhere.
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