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Aleister Crowley Diary Entry [Reincarnation Memory Diary] Saturday, 24 August 1918
3.26 P.M. As Cagliostro I was born in a brothel, kept by my mother's mother. My mother was half-Arab, my father presumably some rich traveller. It was a very gorgeous brothel. It was because of my birth that my mother was married off to the fisherman person. There is a profound horror ands gloom antecedent to this birth; at present it merely darkens as I seek to penetrate it. One other thing about Cagliostro; my father seems to have been the Adept known to Lytton, and described by him as "Sir Phillip Derval": of course a previous incarnation of that Adept. Hence, I conceive a certain distant care of me, and education, fitting me for a station above that of my reputed parents. My physical appearance (in that incarnation) rather confirms this memory. The brother was, I feel certain, in Tunis. (P.S. There is a strong feeing that this adept was Oscar Eckenstein again.)
8.15 P.M. The incarnation before Cagliostro is very obscure. It seems to have been the result of some serious magical error connected with the Grade of Adeptus Major. I remember myself as a dark, pallid, pimply youth with hollow eyes purple-ringed, a sparse beardlet, a head too big for the body, fleshless, without strength, nervous almost to insanity, a haunted look. I hanged myself at the age of 26-28. I remember my mother, a big lumpish placid woman, dressed in bright clothes; I think she must have been Dutch, German, or German-Swiss. She was severe and authoritative. Following the suicide I passed through a dreadfully dark purgation, but the main Karmic current took hold again after only a few years. I think my name was Heirich von (or van) Dorn, (P.S. or Zorn?) but am quite vague.
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