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Aleister Crowley Diary Entry Sunday, 6 June 1920
Headache after a bad night looking after sick folk, etc. Letters from Aimee [Aimée Gouraud] and 31-156 [Jane Wolfe]. Dreamt of being asked questions about certain gold cups, including my altar cups, and bowl 'presented to Captain Fuller [J.F.C. Fuller] by the 11th Hussars'. Also about my old disciple, the Earl of Tankerville.
7.30 p.m. Have painted the 'Cock and Snake', which might do to boost the next French Loan!
Shall I get ****'s faeces, now the Cock and Rattlesnake, without further trouble? Give general symbol. [I Ching] Hexagram XLI. Some of it; and I am to act in the best and truest interests of all without thought of self.
Give general symbol for my proposals at the Zurich meeting.[1] [I Ching Hexagram] XLIV. The symbol represents in its trigrams exactly my plan. It is a 'bold female'. I should be quite non-attached; I should not go to Zurich; I should make a great point of being the Secret Master; there will be quarrelling, but my force should prevail.
Give the general symbol for David Ross. [I Ching Hexagram] XXXVIII. Sun of Water. Khwei. Disunion—the 'pig with the load of mud'. I think he's superstitious. If the hexagram is prophetic at all, it means that I can help him (line 2) by disciplining him (line 3) and isolating him (line 4), thus initiating him (line 5). He has a bad time with the Dweller on the Threshold, but attains in the, end (line 6). However: give definite symbol for his relations with me. [I Ching Hexagram] XXI. Sun of Fire. Very close and enthusiastic, but liable to overbalance. Note: I have been assuming both philosophically and in my work in the Gnosis, the Conservation of Matter and that of Energy. Here is a substance, A (I have said) evidently capable of 'initiating' (shall I say?) a lot of other things, B to Z, and acting as their Hegemon, to the perpetuation and fulfilment and development of itself and them. If I 'kill' A by preventing it from reaching D, must not its potentiality find fulfilment on some other, the astral or spiritual plane? Then, pariter, pigs cannot eat acorns; they (the acorns) must grow to oaks and to fathers and grandfathers of oaks, in some way or other. But Nature being so prolific, would not then the totality of matter multiply? Absurd; hence the forces hidden in the acorn must simply be transferred; in other words, the 'transmigration of souls' is a mathematical necessity. In the Sealed Matter that we know of, then it is evident that there is a Treasure-House of Talismans, all ready charged with force whose normal function is, naturally enough, simply self-preservation; which end each attains' through the elaborate device of uttering the Word of our Third Degree. Its nature can be modified, in the course of this process, by the environments which it acquires; but there is a limit to variety, because some environments would 'kill' it, i.e. send it off on the astral. E.g. by hybridism (note the word Hybris, the pride that would beat down the laws of Nature) is either immediately or proximately impossible. I can use my talismans for any purpose in sympathy with my True Will, for I have made them myself of mine own substance. But I can't do magick to get money for myself (for instance) because I originally offered all my money for Magick; such an operation would be an endothermic reaction. (Good term, that! Now the closer I come to full comprehension of my True Will, the simpler it appears. I am (as said often afore) not a man, but a Word; at most, the mechanism of Its utterance. I am 'a Word with a piece of meat wrapped around it', to parody my definition of Woman. Should I then consecrate each and every Talisman to the Work of Utterance? Yes; but my life itself, even the details of what I have for dinner, may help that Utterance. I ought to stay healthy and sane, if possible; I ought to illustrate how to keep the Law; and so on. Therefore, I may do any Operation within the limits of the Nature of my Talisman.
But how am: I to incarnate the spiritual forces which I let loose? (First, I have to give them direction, impressing a particular Will on their plasticity.)
By the Sacrament, answers Liber C. That is all right, when it is a case of awakening or inspiring some existing power of my own body or mind; for the right environment instantly surrounds the invoked Force. (I have found such experiments almost invariably successful, ,the 'good' operation attaining the willed result, usually more or less instantaneously, and the 'bad' one being a direct and deadly poison.) But if the object is to move some power or thing external to myself, it can only act by radiation. (If I communicate the Wafer-Wine, it acts directly, of course; hence one can heal the sick.) Now, consuming It oneself, one can increase one's personal magnetism, and induce people to act so that the Result follows. One can do this at a distance with sensitive persons, by an astral visit, or by simple thought-telegraphy. Perhaps, too, one can raise storms and so on by influencing the consciousness of the elementals. I have done such things, or seemed to do them. But all external works are obviously harder than internal, because in the latter case the environment is always present, and always sympathetic; in the former, one has to reach the 'patient', and also, probably, to convince him. The best course will be direct administration of the Sacrament. The next best, an astral visit. In the case of moving material things, one can but get at them by the beaten road of ceremonial Magick.
To sum up, I must incarnate the forces (aroused and directed by Will) in my own system, when I can accomplish the Result by personal effort; in another's, physical or astral, when it depends on his efforts; in pantacles, when impersonal or elemental forces are involved as agents. As to the limits of my Workings, I cannot use powers (a) which I have not got—e.g. I cannot conceive a child; or powers, (b) which I have paid away, or barred by a Magical Oath—e.g. I cannot make money; or powers (c) which are not in accordance with my True Will—e.g. I cannot restrict another's freedom; or powers (d) which would violate nature or truth—e.g. I cannot alter the past, or make two angles of a triangle together exceed two right angles or make thistles yield grapes. I have far less choice of action than I have in the normal state, for I am not working by order of the moods of the superficial mind, which constantly fails to observe, and even tolerates, contradictions, but by virtue of the True Will, which originally charged the Talismans, and is simple, true, and decided.
Union of the conscious mind, made stable moreover, with the subconscious, is evidently necessary to any Operation in which the Result is to be formulated beforehand. The Yi King or Thelema might be asked to enlighten the mind when doubt exists.
11.30 p.m. Shall I do an Opus of the Gnosis? [I Ching] Hexagram I!
To what end?' Hexagram XIV, Ta Yu! (After all I've been saying!) Began same, but with heat, and the result of other experiments, postponed the climax. Magick is then (to continue) an intensification and exaltation, by restriction, of normal human action. It implies a katharsis. The making of the circle, the banishings, and the purification symbolize the negative work, the 'concentration off' all other things. The consecration by fire and the invocations give the positive side, the 'concentration on' the one thing willed. All this goes to 'charge' the talisman with a clearly defined nature, and to prevent the mind from interfering by conflict or wasting by distraction. Then must come the climax, the creative act by which, in ecstasy or spasm, the 'universe' is united to the unit. At that moment the talisman is expelled from the circle, so that its form cannot be altered any more; it issues, a Star; to go upon its Way. It must now find a suitable Darkness that needs enlightenment. Thus it would seem that a Menstruum should have been prepared for it, an Egg of Blackness (so to speak) yolked with the Desire synonymous with that Will; or if this be not easy to find, full of ecstatic 'Surrender to that Will whatever it may be', a thing far easier to obtain. In this case the Two-in-One are left to ferment, and so on, as the Wizard Amalantrah [see The Almalantrah Working] did ordain in so rich detail. They, one living soul immortal, enter the body as its sole nourishment, or rather, take to themselves all powers soever of that body to their service; this is accomplished by the Sacrament. The powers in question, fortified by this Divine Impulse automatically attain this possible perfection, and so act without hindrance, they being for the time made, as it were, dictators of the body, all other powers only existing to serve them.
So much for the orthodox method; what of the Secret Path? Firstly, it seems harder to get results, the 'child' not being started in life by the sacrament of Marriage, and the wet-nurse stage of fermentation. It is a foundling Star. Of course, it is probably in some ways stronger, having missed the worst of the temptations to degenerate by manifestation in the way of its grosser nature. Yet pause: is not the triumph in that ordeal its witness? Maybe; it's the old question: shall I be a Bhikku or a householder? The concentration of will is likely to be stronger in the case of the Lone Star, at least for such as I; and control, or so my experience asserts, is better on all planes. Again, the sense of weakening is absent; there is no lassitude, no reaction, no hurt to dignity. One remains Very God, active and ecstatic. But, even so, how does the Star manage to shine? Of a surety it must take the whole body for its Egg. It must do without' any physical nourishment soever, even for the few minutes granted by Amalantrah. But this is surely no distress to it, nor let to its action; for its physical being is so wholly insignificant. The chemical reactions are not noticeable, and anyhow they are destructive. Indeed, all that is needed is to destroy the physical basis. 'The Lion must be very dead indeed.' The method of fulfilment is, as in the orthodox Work, to thrill the physical functions with its inspiration, to give them a commander-in-chief. An objector can only say that it won't work in its primitive state, that it must have those few minutes to make it visible. But this is an assertion which my experience fails to sustain. Nor, theoretically, need I prefer a Star possibly diluted or even poisoned to one less developed but alone and absolute. 'But the Egg is essential'? I think that is but a tradition from the debased folk who adore the false trinity of the bourgeois; ours being Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and our mode of creation being that given in the most ancient papyri, where one at least of the unorthodox Workings is declared as the Act of the Beginning. Note in this—or in one of these papyri—that the God uses the Earth as his Egg; and compare what Amalantrah said. The talisman is to be placed upon the Earth: may it not be that, all we being part of Earth, she transmits all messages to the proper recipients? That would explain the fact that sometimes quite material miracles are worked by our Craft in the Gnosis, that is, when we do what Amalantrah told us. In some, I think that it is easier to get some sort of result with an Egg, but the risk of a bad result is far greater.
(The [Walter Leslie] Wilmshurst idea of Alchemy is quite clear by the way, from this. He uses the hand to hypnotize another person, so as to be able to direct his talismans, a conscious mind trying to master another man's unconscious; 'tis the foulest pit of black magic.)
One may note that our Lion, being composed of five substances, is in himself a Pentagram, proper to our Work. Why should a further development be needed at the dreadful risk of spoiling not only his temper, but the whole Work of his Keeper? For who knoweth the Way of any Eagle in the Air? These be birds of prey, my brother!
1—[A meeting in Zurich of the Grand Masters of various occult lodges, to which Crowley was invited. He did not attend.]
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