Aleister Crowley Diary Entry

[Reincarnation Memory Diary]

Thursday, 5 September 1918

5.30 P.M.

I now feel more free to write down the incarnation between Father Ivan and Sire Edward Kelly. This was in some hilly district in North Italy. I was named —— some long name beginning with A—— Ser A——————? I was really more girl than boy, an hermaphrodite dreadfully malformed. I was rich, and well-born; I remember my dark blue velvet breeches and lace cape and feathered hat. My hair was a shock of fawn—I was small, thin, tuberculous, with some spinal curvature, very slight. I had a fierce temper, and was a hater of mankind. I died of syphilis contracted from a German Ritter, who raped me. I had lots of other diseases too. All these messes seem to have been expiations of Kelly's blunder in not accepting the Law which was shadowed forth for him. On the other hand, Kelly, grasping at 6º=5^o, failed to get much of the result of 5º=6^o attainment of the previous incarnation; so I, Ser (not quite Alcofribas, though it suggests it), lived a marvellous mystic life, going through all the trances and reaching the "vie unitive" at about 22 years old. My nose was thin, aquiline, and reddish; my mouth thin and bitter, my eyes yellowish and very large, with deep blue about them from sickness. I drank constantly to great excess, but the wine never affected me at all. I had very thin long fingers and was a most accomplished musician on the—gamba, was it? My face was a very marked triangle, with a sharp chin. The forehead, broad and clear, did something to relieve the unpleasant effect.

[263]