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Aleister Crowley Diary Entry Wednesday, 2 June 1920
12.15 a.m. I am inclined to contemplate the Virtue of Thelema being 93. 31 being AL and LA, the positive and negative three-in-one, the 'love' of these two produces the third, which makes 93, and is the Will-Love-Word, and also the Formula Father-Mother-Child. Capricornus, Ayin, very well represents Will, especially as it is the Eye, and the Devil.
Virgo, Iod, is the Silence of the Hermit, enveloping the Speech of Hermes, Lord of Virgo. Taurus, Vau, seems the formula of Reproduction, for its number is 6, Tiphereth, the Sun, made of + 1 + 2 + 3, and of 1 x 2 x 3; and 6 is the Solar Seal of Solomon, made of the united Triangles. Finally, Gemini, Zain, is Love, for its card is 'The Lovers', and its whole symbolism is the twin Nature, the duality (by virtue of polarization) of things, as if it asserted the formula of 'Division for the sake of Uniting again' ('I am divided for love's sake for the chance of union').
In Aiwaz, then, we have a Word which combines the Four-in-One aspects of the Three-in-One All-Nothing—and such is the Name of Him who opened unto us the The Book of the Law, of mine Holy Guardian Angel, being, as was the genius of Plotinus, Very God of Very God.
I may here say that I have long felt that 31 and 93 were rather feminine numbers, I think because the Circle-idea and the Nothing-idea suggest the Yin rather than the Yang. 'Thrice Thirty-One is the triple negative veil', and so on. Of course Tzaddi the Emperor is of phallic shape, and Aleph is the 'Bolt' of Zeus, and 'Hammer' of Thor; but that doesn't quite compensate. It's my own fault, I've no doubt, for leaning to the feminine interpretation of 'Nothing'. Nothing is n + Minus n, which we (rather absurdly) call Two, in order to lay stress on its manifestation. Here is another difficulty, or rather another as yet unsolved arcanum: if we take Alas the Two phase, and La as the None phase, what is the nature of the third 31, which goes to make 93? How can we attach any meaning at all to it? Can it be the Shin Teth which is so often 31 (XX plus XI) in the Qabalah of the Book of the Law? Teth is Energy, Leo, the Solar Force; it is BABALON and the Beast conjoined.
Shin is the Fire of Pralqya, the 'Last Judgement'. The combination would therefore exhibit the methods whereby the 'None' and the 'Two' phases alternate.
(Curiously, LAShTAL is 371, equals 7 X 53, while 53 is the sum of the Tarot-Key Numbers.) But I don't see much in this—yet. We might call LA 'not-being', ShT 'becoming', and AL, 'being', thus declaring the three possible states. Each being 31, they are ultimately identical. Our own formula is 93, to show that we can apprehend them. This sounds right. (We must not rashly try to assimilate this Trinity to the Gunas, for example; with LA Tamas, ShTRajas, and AL Sattvas; the Gunasare but reflections, pallid and distorted of this true Trinity. Similarly, to take LA for Mother, AL for Father, and ShT for Child, is too bold, though tempting; for these ideas have all been absorbed into the unities of each 31.)
Now let us turn to note the formula of the Aeon, 418, which is not, as one might have expected, of Horus, but of Cheth, the Chariot. A formula of going! It is the House of the Moon, body of Change. This balances the Solar 666. 'He is ever a sun, and she is a moon.' The Scarlet Woman is therefore Lunar. I am the White, and she is the Red, of Alchemical Perfection; and my failure has been due to lack of Her, in whom is all power given. I have achieved my own private initiation quite nice and nimbly but I have not been able to manifest in power for lack of Her.
Let me consider: the seer Ouarda [Rose Kelly], candidate Number 1, gave me the power to get The Book of the Law. Virakam [Mary d'Est Sturges], Number 2, gave me Book Four, in part, but broke down, surely through my own great default of faith in her, more than her quite justified distrust of me. We neither of us gave ourselves wholly without reservation to the Work. Third, Soror Hilarion [Jeanne Foster] gave me the Child of Promise [Charles Stansfeld Jones], and probably helped me to attain my Grade of Magus. Fourth, Soror Ahitha [Roddie Minor] helped to build the Temple of Juppiter. I may not yet appreciate the effect of this; but if, on the whole, the Work was marred, as appears on the surface, I must again blame myself for my imperfect non-attachment. I feel sure that I was always upsetting the Gods' plans by obtruding my own rational ideas of the proper way to do things. Fifth, Almeira [Bertha Bruce], whose vocation I cannot doubt, seems to have failed altogether, unless she gave me that very non-attachment I so needed. But I cannot make out whether she is still in office.
The question arises, is Jane Wolfe, who is extremely lunar and long ago got communications signed 'Sol-Luna' (in symbols) a, or rather the, Scarlet Woman? Or is she, as she herself seems to think, an Iris to bring word of something else, and so to pass on other errands? None of the other women have been of lunar type. (By the way, I omitted altogether the doubtful case of Marie [Marie Lavroff], who gave nothing, anyhow, and soon abandoned the unequal contest.) Ouarda was Fire, of the Archer; so was Hilarion Virakam was Air, of the Balance; Ahitha Fire and Earth of Ram and Bull; Almeira, Air of the Twins. I forget Jane Wolfe's horoscope, but she's lunar, in every line she writes. She's pure, romantic, phantasy-loving, and constant through her phases. There's no augury so far of the Moon of Blood that she would have to be if she were the Scarlet Woman—unless I've totally misinterpreted The Book of the Law with regard to her, as is quite likely.
Many men would deny the propositions set forth in this diary at various times, but just these men are bewildered by the Universe, call it a mystery, and are restless and unhappy: which states are congruous.
The man who knows everything, like Johnson stamping to confute Berkeley, and is happy like an ox, does not deny, for he does not understand. It's 'all damned nonsense' to him. So is Ibsen, to him. His mere vocality is not evidence. This too is congruity of anaesthesia with amentia. The existence of these classes is no argument against my thesis.
2.50 a.m. When I call the Universe orgiastically dynamic (better, kinetic?) I seem to mean little more than that the phenomena of change are accompanied by emotion, or rather, by changes in the quality of consciousness or perception. We might consider the heat generated by chemical reaction as orgiastic. H plus Cl equals HCl is a weight equivalence; but volume, state, and other physical qualities are changed, and heat disengaged. Of these things the equations says nothing. Similarly, when I put two thoughts together, their conclusion expresses but one crude reaction. All the sub-thoughts, all the accompanying reflections, are ignored. It is evident that the universe is orgiastic in this sense of the word. Now what of the heat disengaged? It radiates infinitely. If we electrolyse an acid, the heat must be replaced from without. Why did I choose the word 'orgiastic'? I suppose because the sexual act is peculiarly typical or must seem so to man, on account of the excessive amount of spiritual forces evoked by an act so comparatively trifling from the standpoint of pure physics. The spermatozoon contains quite incalculable spiritual possibilities, more in its milligramme than the whole brain in its ounces, one may say. To us, then, sex seems to offer the best available and universally comprehensible example of a 'talisman'—a thing physically almost negligible, spiritually of huge potentiality. It's the animal analogy of radium. The spiritual by-products of change are all kinds, as also is the case with sex. The congruity of the word with my experience makes it 'true for me'; so I'm right to use it.
Pleasantness is the natural accompaniment of all willed change otherwise it would not be made. One must work 'without lust of result', for no result is really possible, since any apparent result is compensated elsewhere. Must pleasure be balanced by pain? No, the threat of pain makes one wish to change again, as when one tires, one wants to sleep or die, and wake fresh, a cycle wholly agreeable. It's the stopping that hurts, as in the case of the man who fell off the Monument. To resist change is to ask for pain—that's where the Black Brothers err. Any 'result' is pleasant, being the fruit of love, but becomes painful if maintained against the course of Nature, as in the extreme case of the Universe itself becoming Naught. It must not dread the impulse to manifest itself again.
9.00 a.m. Awake from very sweet deep sleep, feeling rather well. I had 'asked Aiwaz' to arrange this. The Initiates' Logick is very necessary in all sorts of ways. E.g. is Aiwaz a 'separate Being'? I am bound to answer No, but I must explain that such No is to answer a question about any name soever. No difference between you, and Him, and a brick, then? None. Not even in the sense that there is a difference between the Persons of the Trinity? Yes; in fact there is a perfectly real difference between the three things, and they are quite separate, though it is easier to cease to think so of Aiwaz than of the brick. Any possible thought is both real and separate, and neither. Whatever the subject, one reaches the Fourth Formless State in a very short time.
Be not weary in ill-doing; for persistence in mispronunciation results in a New Language.
Back to Cefalu by the 1.55.
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