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Aleister Crowley Diary Entry Tuesday, 30 December 1919
[I Ching Hexagram] LXIV. This is a bad hexagram rather as Pi is.
The right action is energy despite worries and confidence which does not become overweening or forget prudence. ‘The fox who wets his tail’—a story echoed from the text [text indecipherable] by G[reatly] H[onoured] Frater D.D.S. [George Cecil Jones]. It was a sad interview. He is the same dear man as he was, strangely gray for 46, but his turning back from the Abyss is evident. He is just a nice simple bourgeois, interested in the number and quality of his offspring.
6.55 p.m. Determined to overcome any traces of the Oedipus Complex! Purchased the food of heroes. (I had a blade of grass[1] at lunch—a little one.) It resembles manna, or snow, is instantaneously invigorating and tempts one to breathe deeply and continuously. It makes one want to write and pack and—oh! anything active. No: it doesn’t seem at all Freudian. When I contemplate the Feminine Principle, I think how wonderfully The Three Mothers cover the Cosmos.
Mother. I know all. From East, Juno.
Wife. I know half. From Centre. Venus.
Maid. I know nothing. From West. Minerva.
8.5 p.m. Some hero! Another time, if I cannot be good, I will recall the Eight of Pantacles.
9.5 p.m. All right, but—après!
Give general symbol for journey and sojourn in, France, beginning on Friday 2 Jan. 1920 E.V.—[I Ching Hexagram] Lingam of Earth—‘Big Air’. A short period, some annoyances. Stick to the plan; retire with magnanimity. Line 1 says, ‘Don’t hurry’; line 3, ‘Don’t get tied up by inferiors,’ e.g. concubines. (But oh! you Maison Julia!).[2]
P.S. I doubt this interpretation [of Hexagram XXXIII]—see entry 2 Jan. My love for Alostreal [Leah Hirsig] is very strange and beautiful. It is absolutely part of my nature, so that I obey it without question; yet (why ‘yet’) it is not at all like ‘being in love’, with the anxieties and cravings usually associated therewith.
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