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Aleister Crowley Diary Entry Sunday, 9 May 1920
Went to scramble on the rock with Leah [Leah Hirsig]—very hot—after lunch, slept a long while. Dreamt that Leah and I were at the Cafe de la Paix. I forget what we had eaten but the maitre d'hotel was disappointed because he had specially ordered on our account the materials for making two or three dishes, one of which was some preparation of fish, the other called 'Flames of the Forest'. I kept on looking at a corner shelf in the room on which was fruit, including some black grapes so big that I was not sure whether they were plums. There was also, I think, one plum. As we went out we stopped by this shelf—there was a very beautiful melon and just one bunch of these black grapes. I took about half this bunch and ate them, giving Leah one of them to eat. Going downstairs, we found a placard in the Grill Room, 'Pelican's Milk, Ass's Milk'. This seems to have started me rationalizing whether the ass should not be the symbol of a certain high degree of initiation, as the pelican[1] is of another not so high and I wandered off into all sorts of reflections about the sacred ass of Priapus or Dionysus or Jesus—which succeeded in waking me.
I think the melon may refer to Ninette's [Ninette Shumway] hair and the plum and grape business be a memory of Helen Hollis, of whom we have been talking, or it may refer to Leah's hair. I cannot find the source of the idea 'Pelican's Milk' which is very strange and beautiful, almost suggesting some mysterious phrase of initiates, as when Swinburne calls poppy pods, grapes of Proserpine, or as the alchemists spoke of the power of succession.
7.40 p.m. Opus[2] XI. Ninon, p.v.n.[3] Opus, AI. Elixir, AI. Object: Invocation ∏AN.
These invocations of the Gods seem very fruitful. There's a lot of Jesus force here: why not use the IX° to invoke Jesus? Isn't it a somewhat pedantic and priggish attitude to invoke all the forces but 'Jesus'? It makes him a sort of 'devil', and so liable to attract all the good peoples. In fact, he originally was that 'devil' whose worshippers were burnt alive and thrown to beasts and so on. Then that would be why he attracted the people who were bored with highly respectable gods like Priapus and Venus. This should be fine material for a play.
1—[The pelican who nourishes its young with its own blood is an allegory of Christ, or the Redeemer.] 2—[Crowley refers to a magical sexual operation.] 3—[Per vas nefandum. By the unmentionable vessel, i.e. anal intercourse.]
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