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Aleister Crowley Diary Entry Sunday, 1 February 1920
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.
Kindly read over the entry of 12 Jan, with care exceeding. Now, then, on Friday, 30 Jan., I went to Paris to buy pencils, Mandarin, a palette, Napoleon Brandy, canvasses, and other appurtenances of the artist’s dismal trade. I took occasion to call upon an old mistress of mine, Jane Chéron, concerning whom, see The Equinox, number 6, ‘Three Poems’. She had never the slightest interest in occult matters, and she had never done any work in her life, even of the needlework order. I had seen her once before my escape from America, and she said she had something to show me, but I took no particular notice and she did not insist. My object in calling on this second occasion was multiple: I wanted to see the man with whom she is living, who has not yet returned from Russia; I wanted to make love to her; and I wanted to smoke a few pipes of opium with her, she being a devotee of that great and terrible God.
Consider now; the Work whereby I am a Magus began in Cairo (1904) with the discovery of the Stélé of Ankh-f-n-Khonsu, in which the principal object is the Body of our Lady Nuith. It is reproduced in colours in The Equinox, volume I, number 7. Jane Chéron has a copy of this book. On Friday afternoon, then, I was in her apartment. I had attained none of my objectives in calling on her, and was about to depart. She detained me to show me this ‘something’. She went and took a folded cloth from a drawer. ‘Shut your eyes!’ she said. When I opened them, they saw a cloth four feet or more in length on which was a magnificent copy, mostly in appliqué silk, of the Stele. She then told me that in February 1917, she and her young man had gone to the South of France to get cured of the opium habit. In such cases insomnia is frequent. One night, however, he had gone to sleep, and on waking in the morning found that she, wakeful, had drawn the copy of the Stele on a great sheet of paper.
It is very remarkable that so large a sheet of paper should have been at hand; also that they should have taken that special book on such a journey; but still more that she should have chosen that picture, nay, that she, who had never done anything of the sort before, should have done it at all. More yet, that she should have spent three months in making a permanent thing of it. Most of all, that she should have shown it to me at the very moment when I was awaiting an ‘unmistakable sign’.
For observe, how closely the words of my entry of 12 Jan., describe the Sign, ‘the omnipresence of my body’, and there She was—in the last place in the world where one would have sought Her, and that by reason of a most unusual circumstance three years old. Note, too, the accuracy of the Yi King symbol 36, for K.[teis] is of course the symbol of Our Lady, and the God below Her in the Stele is Sol the Sun.
All this is clear proof of the unspeakable power and wisdom of Those who have sent me to proclaim the Law.
I observe, after a talk with M. Jules Courtier, that all their S.P.R. [Society for Psychical Research] work is proof only of extra-human forces. We knew about them all along, the universe is full of obscure and subtle manifestations of Energy. We are constantly advancing in our knowledge and control of them. Telekinesis is of the same order of Nature as the Hertz Rays or the Radium emanations. But what nobody before me has done is to prove the existence of extra-human Intelligence, and my Magical Record does this. I err in the interpretation, of course; but it is impossible to doubt that there is Somebody there, a Somebody capable of combining events as a Napoleon forms his plans of campaign, and possessed of those powers unthinkably vast, by which to direct the actions of people whom he has chosen to play a part in the execution of his purpose.
12.30 a.m. circa. Opus I,[1] 31-666-31 [Leah Hirsig], p.o.d. [per os Dominae].[2] Opus difficult but excellent in the end. Elixir plenteous and rich. Object: That I may perform the Task of a Magus.
1—[Crowley performs a magical sexual operation.] 2—[‘By the mouth of the lady.’]
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