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Aleister Crowley Diary Entry Wednesday, 23 June 1920
. . . What a hell of a night! It is now June 23, 3.55 a.m. I go to bed.
4.15 a.m. I suppose if I be AL 31, an L-God, and Jane [Jane Wolfe] NU 56, and an N-God, and we add V (and) 6 our Child we get 93. QED. It becomes ever clearer that the ShT god is Shin Teth, Fire, Spirit, Lion, Sun. The card XX shows Shu in his sign of Support, air as well as fire. Teth shows the Silence of the Lion, Babalon and the Beast conjoined. Set, Satan, Sad, Sud, Sax, Had, are all ShT. Can I go on to AD and AT as lesser forms of these? My chief worry is ABRASAX which must remain 3 65, I fear. ShT gives 3 I days of solar month, though, of which months we have 7, as against 4 of 30 days and I of 28 or 29.
Now AL is Solar, A being Air, Bacchus with Lance and Cup (wine-skin), the Wanderer One-Eyed, in whom all is Right, the Knight Errant procreating as he goes from King's Daughter to King's Daughter and so becoming King, the Poet-Fool-Drunkard in a Coat of many colours, the Flowers of Spring, the Visions in the Solar Plexus, the Middle of the Alchemical Work, the Rainbow where Sun kindles the marriage of Air and Water, the Prism that is Menstruum of Light, as also Harpocrates the soft-sexed or Innocent Babe on the Yoni-Lotus, treading crocodiles as Bacchus rules his Tiger, afloat in the circling amnion or womb of Nu, yet redeeming Seb with Flowers and wine and babes when he comes to his own springtide of Puberty. Of him too is Air's loved Hermes, the Goer all-wandering, the Mind of the Father, bisexual like Bacchus Diphues or his Sire Zeus Arrhenothelus, yet also Phallus, when in silence his Mercury or Semen becomes fixed in Earth (his house Virgo) and His Word spoken and recorded by the scribes Gemini His children, airy as their sire, having been judged and made just in Libra, and made Law, whereof they are the scale-gods, to accuse and defend, or to match mercy with austerity; and this Word seed in Aquarius, He, Nuith, who is 'Isis Mourning' or rather twisting herself in labour to make the Image of her Sire Aleph as a Swastika, and with Her Waters, source of the Twin streams, one issuing from and one returning to Her. Aleph, A, is the Pure Fool who wanders and wins the Lance, and plays Ghost-Errant to King's Daughter Mary: my worry is: why Hermes? The Desert Wanderer, like AL—a ShT, or AL being from 'to wander'? (L is the 'flowing' letter.) Hermes may be a veil of His name.
A is this Virgin ambiguous amphibious goer and begetter and fixer, and so his card is 0, for the Wheel, and because 9 is 2. He is only one when he adds the Phallic Unit for Love's sake, to impregnate his mother NU. Now Aleph 111 plus NU 56 is 167; 1/3 of 501, which is no less than ABRA-ALAL-AL-ABRA, 204 plus 93 plus 204.
So much for None, Two, Fool, Sot, Innocent, Wanderer, Circler, Thinker, Begetter, Oedipus, Bacchus, Parsifal, Rainbow, Hermes, Fixer, Air, Harpocrates, Buddha, Silent and Yoni-throned, Protected, etc. Aleph.
Now LA is Libra. Not is at once XI and VIII counterchanged in Tarot's natural order, as Hé is XVII and Tz IV, revolving round Pisces as the others round Virgo.
A is 0, and L, VIII. Cf. CCXX, II, so that AL is 31 as HAD, i.e. ShT is XXXI. Libra has Sword and Scales, the Judge (and Axemen!) and Two Witnesses. The card is Venus, Lady of Libra, exhibiting her weapons, this Trinity, Saturn exalted in Libra.
Justice [Lamed] is this fulfilling of Venus. (A woman's idea of Justice, anyhow!) L[amed] is then the Queen of the Romance, as before, satisfied by Set. (Saturn, the old King, is revived by the young Queen.) Now, A[leph] is the Naught and L[amed] the Two phase of this Trinity AL. A is Shin because Shu is Air, and Sh[in] is Aleph because Harpocrates is the Holy Ghost.
T[eth] and L[amed] are similarly cognate. To all this add LA, not, and AL,, God, and so on; then read ABRA-LA-ShT-AL-ABRA, which gives all the main symbols in a Trinity.
I think T[eth] is any Woman-Beast symbol, Demeter is Earth, Zeus, Air even, may be. In [Trump] XX the 'Angel' may be Nuith, with Shu and Seb: I think so. The cards of NU are Scorpio and Taurus, snake and cow, [Trumps] XIII and V: but I don't think they should be separated. NU is [Trump] XVII, Aquarius, Hé, 5, etc. Set is the Goat in the South, and matche. Diana in the North; as AL, Leo, does NU, Aquarius.
Because She's 56. Then, is there a moon N-lady opposed to a star N-lady? Yes! NU is 56 and starry; the other is Cheth and IAN and water-moony. None of Aquarius, the Star, Hé [Trump] XVII, in Jane or June. Jane is with Teth, plain Teth, as Moon to Sun. Not then as Cancer to Capricornus? Set is the Sun also.
Sunrise threatens: I'll rise and adore, merely remarking that A is Aethyr, B Light, and G connected with 0 through IAO Iacchus, and the guttural sound of Ayin. A's free passage of Air. B-humming of forces; vibration of lips. G or K the sudden gape of the mouth, hence onomatopoeic for vulva; in most languages K or G is the main sound of the name. Now I begin to see A is the Foetus in the ovum and the Ghost-Lover but not the physical organs in connection. I[od or Yod] is the Virgin or Hermit, the Spermatozoon that goes, the Yod-snake of Hermes. N[un] is the Change or Putrefaction of the Seed; it is Draco, Starry, nowise lunar. The apparent N in Jane is therefore the nasal guttural Ayin or 0, connected with the Moon of Gimel-G, the Car of Cheth, the Wheel of Kaph-K, the Moon of Qoph-Q.
She is a female Iacchus of sorts-a drunken Whore, a seed-sheath. Strange that 1 = 9, 0 =XV, Ch = VII = 31 in all. 'Twill hardly do; we know IAO as 17. N is Diana is merely adjectival I believe; cf. the Greek nasal sound made by doubling a guttural. Note: G =Moon. Ch =Moon's house: Jupiter's throne. K = Jupiter. Q =Jupiter's house. S or X = his other house. It's close-knit, Moon and Jove: gutturals. We must then deny that Zeus and S-gods are one with Jove-or K-gods. Jane has nor N nor Ayin in her. Is the card G 'the Woman in the Doorway?' the Priestess or Prostitute? She is. She is the Sibylline mate of the Fool's Jeste.
11.00 p.m. I'm getting over this Sound-Sense excitement—Tunis may be hot; but oh! to eat and drink once more!
About 10.00 Opus[1] III: Regem Aethipum Iod Reginae ALYS.[2] Object: Juventutem, IV. (This is working: a cat proved it in the Maison Donée.)
1—[Crowley conducts a magical sexual operation.] 2—[Crowley is Alys; he sometimes used this name when in a feminine mood. He captioned a photograph of himself, pasted into one of the holograph diaries for the American period, with the word Alys, a variant of Alice, the female form of Aleister. He is revealed with a painted face, clad in masonic regalia. Opus III was a homosexual working. The 'Ethiopian King' was a dark-skinned Arab, perhaps Mohammed Tsaida.]
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