Aleister Crowley Diary Entry

Monday, 3 September 1917

Last night (C₂H₅)₂O [Ether].

Prana. Ether makes all body glow; but after the glow stops above mμlodhora. This glow is spherical or auric, not branching as it would be if nervous in origin. This is an argument for auras. It is love that opens the gates of the heavens, will that shuts those of the hells. I got this as a flash of cosmic memory. As a rational corollary, I got: Love is the power to say “yes”; will the power to say “no.” Cheap epigram leading to heresy; beware!

My 9º=2^o consciousness is now quite fixed in the depths.

There is a point in evolution where all the different lines of argument run together with a rush I was identifying the eye of a potato with the Eye of Horus, when all the other eyes joined in the dance! This always happens as the consciousness expands, becomes erectile or enthusiastic, in the course of any general resolution of propositions.

Asked by Anubis, my dog-headed concubine [Anna Catherine Miller], to say something else beautiful about love, I replied: “Ill-temper is a disagreeable quality, but it never gave anybody the clap.”

Kipling is a Puritan. “The sins ye do two by two” etc. Θελγμχ must be the touch-stone of the true artist. “A sarcoma is fed in the same way as the body; so it ought to share in the general glee of ether.” It does so; consciousness feels glad of this. This seems a good joke, with a  Christmassy flavour, so I laugh. Then I think of those who don’t see the joke, like the poor little boys who have no turkey, so I get a maudlin sadness. this is all one idea and might be called the Pickwick-complex!

“One stops taking ether not from fear, but because one reaches one’s limit. This is distressing, but should not be. One has done one’s own Great work; it is for one’s H.G.A. [Holy Guardian Angel] to do His. Yet I can slip into Shivadarshana any moment.—What are moments?

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