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Aleister Crowley Diary Entry Wednesday, 30 June 1920
Midnight, and I'm weary of the Cabbala. My locust lied to me or I misunderstood him; for the boat's in, and I'm still singing 'Has anybody seen my Jane [Jane Wolfe]?' I'll to my saintly pallet. (I made a nice chalk of my Leah [Leah Hirsig] yesterday, by the way; a foul fierce haggard monkey with Our Lord looking from Her eyes!)
2.00 a.m. I'm feverish: can't sleep. Another trouble survived from my rash act of getting youth back!
These gods again! Nu is the true Star-Goddess of the North, not to be confused with any false moon—3 though allied by Cancer, being watery, lunar, and northern, it is opposed as Dental to Guttural.
Nu is the Pole-Star, Draco, etc. the true light of Night. In the South is the truth Seth, the undying, as opposed to the D, or dying, Sun. (What about Set = Hadit = Adonai, though?) I almost cry surrender, admit that the Word itself has been slurred, even by the Adepts.
Let's try something else, and rest the mind.
Abrahadabra is now seen to be a blind for ShT, of value 31. The formula 5 = 6, etc. is as stated so often; but its symbol is only Cheth; so it is of the Queen scale, lunar. The inmost formula is this ShT, and the card XX is really my Stele, the 'Angel' being Nuith, with Hadit as Shu, and Ra-HoorKhuit and the Priest for the other figures. The card XI is of course Babalon and The Beast. The plain English of the formula is then (a) our cosmic map (b) our secret Art, Love borne by Will. The 31-93 key opens all doors. 418 Cancer balances Set in Capricorn-Nu in Aquarius balances AL in Leo, 419.
(Something here, and it eludes me!) 666, Six, Sol, balances 729, Eight, Hermes. Aquarius, Hé, shows Nuith alone. Capricornus, Ayin (Seth) shows Hadit alone. Leo, Teth, shows us mated. Libra, Lamed, is the Scarlet Woman (shamelessly boasting) alone. Could Aleph, Beth, or Yod be the Beast alone? Or A yin? Me to Nuit and my Whore to Hadit, who might well be Yod?
Call Hadit Yod, Virgo IX, Nuith, Hé, Aquarius, XVII; R[a] H[oor] K[huit], Vau, Taurus, V XXXI. Now call The Beast Ayin XV; Babalon, Lamed VIII; My Wand, Beth I; Her Cup, Cheth VII= XXXI (Aleph can be thrown in here.) Then, as before, Shin XX, our Matter and Teth XI, our Motion for a third XXXI. This is not bad; but seems not undeniably necessary. The Yod Hé Vau is good though. Simplifying, though, 31 is equally Beast, Whore, and Bastard, our Trinity. Ayin XV and Pé XVI are XXXI, Pé being the Whore as 'Babel'. The Tower—lightning—struck throws out little Ayin-images! It's the fortress, Her womb! Ayin is Eye, too, and Pé, Mouth, i.e. Phallus and Kteis. Ayin is the Phallus by shape, and Pé the Cave with its hanging clitoris, etc. etc.
When I was Lévi [Eliphas Levi], I drew myself as Ayin or Baphomet, 'The Devil', with Beast's Head. This is the Beast throned, crowned, exalted; the leaper, the erect, the butter-in. Her womb is my city, Babel. This Ayin is then my Phallic Will, my Holy Guardian Angel, Aiwaz, who was afterwards called Satan. Distinguish their Ayin-Baphomet crowned from Teth-Therion ridden.
I am Ayin-King in Her city, Pé, Baphomet of Babalon; and she is also Babalon, Whore astride Therion in Teth. Her name seems the same both ways; perhaps always 7 whether l am 6 or 8.
11.00 p.m. I have been to Le Kram and walked to Goulette Casino thence and dined, regardless, on the terrace, in face of the Moon. Without being anxious, I have a sort of passing curiosity to know what the bloody hell has happened to Jane [Wolfe]. [I Ching Hexagram] XLVI K[teis] of Air saith the Yi. Seems to mean 'on the way'. All right: I don't care. P.S. It's the 'accomplished work' she had already arrived-but at Bou-Saada!) Why haven't I heard from Alostrael [Leah Hirsig]? [Hexagram] LX, Moon of Water. 'Regulations.' This may mean that she is hampered somehow; or that Percy (see previous question some weeks back) is to blame; or that the telegraph itself has tied up the message. How shall I act about the whole mix-up? Give symbol for the proper mental attitude on which I should base action-or non-action! I get Shang—Kteis of Air—again! In English: don't you give a damn; go onward and upward!
In GAN, to beget, surely the G is D J. It has this disappearing sound in Know, Gens, etc. is only hard in Saxon derivations such as be-gin and words like genethliacal, which is a clear case of ignorant mispronunciation. Gentile, gentle, genus, genius, and their French equivalents all have the soft g; so, too, knave, knight, knabe; and in Gnosco, gnosis, it is silent, only vocalized in the compounds ignorance, re-cognize, and the like. Note the French word 'cogner', its brutally frank allusion to the Hammer-of-Thor symbol. We must then class GN as a true dental-nasal, probably on onomatopoeia from the breathing of a man in the sexual act. Try to say JN. Note Jnana, to know, Sanskrit. Have know!, knoll, knob, knot, any hint of tumescence? And is a gnome a humped person from this cause?
'He knows' means 'he snorts with lust', as the boy who does not know does not do. This is good psychology, the Knowledge of good and evil or Moral Sense being born with the sexual consciousness. The open-throated gasp of exhaustion, 'giving up the ghost', is alluded to in the semi-guttural breathings; and these refer therefore to the emission of seed. The labials seem to serve most languages for the male word. I can't trace Lingam; it may be a title, 'the long one'. Nor can I overlook Zakar, which I am loath to connect with Zak, a raft. But I think BU, Light, whence Buddha, Bo-Tree (or Peepul). Aub, Obeah, perhaps even Beauty from Bel, Baal, Ba (to go, Hebrew, and a part of the Soul, Egyptian). Bogey, may be originally phallic, from the idea of vibration and bursting through. (What about the French But, English Butt, the latter both verb of goat and noun of vintner and archer, Bottom, Buttock, Buttress, Bout (French for End, English for Violent Episode) Batte, Butte, Bulwark or Boulevard, and possibly even Ball, Ballista, Balbo, these last with the idea of throwing? What of Bat, Beat, Bathe, Battle, which suggest the act of striking?
To return to the main thesis, we have Pear, Pater, Ab, Priapus, Phallus, conceivably also Fu in Chinese, Penis, Ap in Welsh, with very many others (Apollo, Abaddon, Apis, Abrasax, etc.) directly paternal in sense.
The muscular movement needed to pronounce labials is obvious, and the movement may well have suggested the violence, vibration, explosiveness of the sexual act of the male. The words Push, Poke, Prod, Put, Pose, Pierce, Pull, all agree, as do Fok or Fuck, to breed, and Poutre, Futuo, to perform the act. 'Form' itself may be a cousin. Then we have Fornication, Pornography, and their Sanskrit ancestors; which makes me suspect Facere, Epas, Phos, Phonos, to be equally echoes of a root FA, the Act which involves Light, Speech, etc., being the Act par exellence. In all this investigation we must be very careful to distinguish between true Names, which are probably all onomatopoeic in the first instance, and mere Titles which are often 'a non lucendo' for reasons of taboo, and in any case adjectival in character. This labial B-P-F is the male in action, not to be confused with the Din the Adam-Adonai-Adonis-Odin-Adad group. To sound Done has to catch one's breath suddenly; it suggests an unexpected catastrophe. There is a force in it, but that force turns to softness, the hero is wounded. D hints surrender, as in Debeo, Debt, Donation, Don (gift), Doubt, Die, Dote, all which have their root-idea in Duo, Dva, Deux, Due, Two, as Dubito, Divide, etc. ad libitum, the particle De itself included, seem to attest. Perhaps we approach once more the Sanctuary of Pure Number. Our N (or Nuith) is certainly very traceable through No, None, Naught, Null, in English; Non, Nul, Ne in French; Non, Nul/us, Nihil, Ne, in Latin; Ain perhaps, in Hebrew; and so forth. Nun, the fish, may or may not be entitled to wear the clan tartan of the Hollow Ship people Nave, Naus, Noah, Nu, Oannes, Jonah; but Nun, as Death, and Scorpio or Draco, undoubtedly suggests the Void.
As for One, that word with its clubmates Un, Unus, Hen, Bin, seems to intrude"upon that Hollow Space; but I feel sure that this group is somehow a false alarm, the true word for One being guttural, as in Ego, Achad, from the Sanskrit Ekam. I feel sure the Greek Heis is a softening of Hegs. Note that the most primitive ideas get their words muddled, as Heis, Mia, Hen; or in the case of 'to be', our paradigm usually shows mixed breeds, e.g. be-am-is-are-was. Esse-sum-est-sunt-eram-fui. Two is consistently dental, and its idea of sundering goes well with the thought of surrender, of mortality.
The T or Th which is in most words for Three is a sharper, quicker, livelier, more aspirate sound; it is the resurrection from the death of D.
Our word Four is Saxon from Vier: I can't trace it. But the regular word, as in Quatre, Carre, Quattuor, Char (Sanskrit) seems to be essentially KR. This root means Head, and solidity or completion; we find it in the Breton Ker as in the Greek Kara, indeed in all tongues of importance. At present the sound-sense relation is obscure to me.
Less dimly I divine why Five should be so often labial as in Pente, Panch; for Five suggests the Hand, engine of man's conscious will, and so akin to the engine of his unconscious will, the labial Phallus.
Possibly the earliest counting stopped with Five. At least I find myself wondering whether Six, Sex, Hex, is not a plural form of One, Ek, as if they had taken a chance, and started on the other hand!
The PT in most words for Seven beats me; so does the KT in most words for eight; nor can I clearly see why N should reappear in Nine, and Din Ten. (The main chance in Ten seems to beDS, as in Das, Deka's K being probably dialectic corruption, Decan, Dieci, and Dix, where K lingers feebly.) I expect all the Decad-names are compounded from units. Twenty is evidently from Two, Thirty from Three, and so all the way. Other languages fall into line here. We need not then expect to find a true sound-sense Cabbala beyond Units, or even beyond Five. Six, for example, doesn't mean much in itself; it is rather a complex secondary idea.
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