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Aleister Crowley Diary Entry Monday, 5 January 1920
This [I Ching Hexagram XX] is the manifestation symbol characteristic of this whole period. I have satisfied Ida (12.15 a.m.) and I think I’ll write a few letters.
No incidents all day, just shopped and slept and dined with Beadle [Charles Beadle] and Willy. Am trying to place my Hero among the Snows. I wonder what will happen.
There ought to be particular gods for these varied methods of invoking Hadit. Of course we have Dionysus for Wine, and I suppose Ceres for Corn Whiskey. Some bearded God for the ‘Barley Brew’? Cocaine is Chokmah, with special extension to Geburah, and the Fool, if one pushes it. Opium is Jupiter-Venus-Water we know of old. Anhalonium can still be Mercury-Solar Plexus because of the Rainbow. Heroin seems a distorting force added to the concentrating sedative Morphine effect. Can this refer to the Dwarf? Grass [Hashish] has the analytic power for its truly valuable function; it’s the Sword or rather Scimitar for that it adds Beauty to its sharpness. What then is keen and curved and lovely? There’s a very feminine element in it. Binah, of course; it seems to combine Her with the Word that is ‘quick and powerful and therefore a two-edged sword’. Pan reveals ‘Hell’ and punishes thieves in the Greenwood. Is this the ‘Five Words, each one a boon, Pan, Night, a Cloud, Arcadia, and the Moon’? There is a quality of rape in its action. What about Hades and Persephone? This includes the ‘Hell’ idea. I can’t think of any divine simplicity to name its duplex deity; but עג describes it, and adds to 73 which is the number of both Chokmah and Gimel. Yes ’tis an Unknown God and as it is I that discovered the Right Mode of its use, I have the right to name it; so ‘I make an effort and call it’—A’ag. Ether is of the nature of Iacchus, because of the power of its purity, the gift which it has to enable supreme concentration of Will in Judgement. It makes distinct the planes, as if to form the base of a triangle, and then solidifies and brings them to a point, the Apex of the Pyramid. I seem to know nothing of Datura, Atropine, Calabar Bean, and a few others.
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