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Aleister Crowley Diary Entry [Reincarnation Memory Diary] Thursday, 22 August 1918
3.40 P.M.
I have been living in the past once more? Eliphas Levi was born of one of those olive women who flush so darkly and so deeply. It was in a house-shop, in the outskirts (as I suppose) of a town of medium size. A blacksmith's was hard by.
I came to my death as Cagliostro. This took place in some mountain woodland—I feel sure that it was the Pyrenees, on the north slopes. There were stacks of cut branches about. I was on a journey of some sort, attended by a youth, a peasant type, about 20, in very gay clothes, broidered with silver, rather tarnished. I died about sunset, very peacefully, in the open, outside a nut—the woodcutter's I suppose.
I now begin to remember a little about the life itself. I remember youth in a fishing boat in some very warm seas. Two men were with me in the boat, my father and another, his brother, I think. My mother was a bronze eagle-featured woman, Scorpio at a guess, a terrible scold and very passionate, earrings of gold and coloured kerchief.
I remember my life at the Paris
court; I hated it intensely. I took it on with the idea of
Preaching a Law. It is from Cagliostro that I got my Secret
Society Ideas. Levi was always a little shy of them, because
of the rebound from Cagliostro. L.P.D. means Laud Priapa
Deo so that I was trying to establish Phallicism. I was
a full—very full—
6º=5o,
thinking to do everything by virtue of that attainment, not
knowing or caring about the Abyss above me. My idea of a
'Master' was a
7º=4o;
this was the old Arab of whom I used to talk. Acharat (
I made tremendous ceremonial effort. I preserved chastity very carefully, and used Virginity in my formulae, making each act of sex the climax of a long ritual. I obtained Fascination in this way, and developed it to a very high degree.
I remember very clearly a long residence in a kind of profess-house, some 10 years or nearly before my death. It was kept by a disciple, a man of 30 or 40, with a dark brown beard, pointed. He procured young girls for me; I used these in some experiments to make the Elixir of Life and Youth. I met with some terrible shock of enlightenment which sent me forth on that last journey.
There is also a very clear record
of some years before the Paris episodes. I either owned, or
resided with the owner of some Vineyards on Aetna; here I
studied the philosophy of Empedocles, and obtained my Power
over the Living Fire
My childhood was spent in Northern Africa. It was only later, about 12 or 14, that the fishing life began. My first memories are of a goat-skin tent. I think it was Tunis to which my father eventually came. This action was all due to the influence of an old Arab, who picked me out in childhood as a chosen person. I was a very bad pupil, though, and came to hold him in a peculiar detention. But he always had his way, sooner or later. Somehow or other, he reminds me of Oscar Eckenstein. He must have had the Elixir, for I remember him always as a man of 60 or so, in childhood as well as fifty years later. He gave me up—at least, I never saw him again—after the French Revolution.
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)
is 903 = 3 X 301, the three kinds of Fire x is a Magical
formula corresponding to the three kinds of Light
.
Ash is the spiritual fire or power, Ar the Solar power, Ath
the Phallic or essential power.
.
But I was deceived by the Salamanders, who lured me to
Ambition. I went, in this Illusion, to Napoli, expecting to
be able to work with Vesuvius; but my attempt to rule in
Naples led to a fearful scandal, and I had to flle the mity
[?] I went to Venice, where I met a certain Initiate, who
taught me such truths that I was ready for the Paris
adventure. I went by way of Germany, and struck the
Illuminati again. The Venetian Initiate was one of these, by
the way.