Aleister Crowley Diary Entry

Wednesday, 28 July 1920

A long night's rest has put me fairly right; the others also seem much better.

5.20 p.m. I slept again this morning and even a few minutes after bathing. Leah [Leah Hirsig] has also been physically exhausted, but we have had compensations, wakeful and vigorous periods of keen desire and action; an hour or so yesterday afternoon, half an hour this morning. I'm really inclined to charge 90% of 'symptoms' to our introspection. Our preconceived ideas of our 'danger' make us notice and exaggerate things that would otherwise pass unobserved. And everything so noticed is blamed on cocaine. Now then for the defence! One, the weather has been very oppressive. Hansi, cocaineless, was very ill with fever. Poupée, snowless and fever-free, sweats over-much and seems uncomfortable all round. Two, I have been constipated, always enough to clog my body and brain. Three, Jane Wolfe has interfered with our routine of freedom; I have had 'duty' on the brain. Four, Ninette's [Ninette Shumway] absence has put extra strain on Leah, and so on me; there have been workmen in the house with mighty hammerings. Then, Howard's [Howard Shumway] cowardice and lying have needed watchfulness. Five, I have my burn, a bad thumb, my jellyfish stings; any one such enough to take the edge off the Executioner's Axe and so reprieved the vile Soul-Murderer, Laziness. But, retorts Counsel for the Crown, you have just started sniffing snow; and your Five Points of Idle Fellowship have no more part nor magnitude; you have already sketched the Rock for a new picture, censored an Essay, and sit gloating, right in the sun at that, over your Diary, and so scribbling gleefully, aimless and joyous as the God you are!

Health, Jane, Disturbance, you have swept them from your path, like a machine-gun spraying; you have no worries but to match Star-Rhythms with the swing, blaze, and thunder of your prose, tuning your Ear's fine sense to some God's Word, your throat's fine force to utter it, its Truth's ineffability interpreted (as best may be) through Beauty. One worry more? None but this one that roars, a Blast through your heart's furnace, the lust that your Alostrael [Leah Hirsig] may seize to-night's occasion of Her pleasure, and that your part therein from soul-swoon to word-oracle, will-phrenzy to act-madness, may be one total epilepsy, your Lord the Devil possess you to the utmost, Her hour's bloom ripened to fulfilment-fruit sweeter and jucier yet than She hath tasted.

Yes: I live only to create, and to destroy; fashion a body for my Soul, in its own image, so that my invisible Godhead get him visible heirs; I, victim-priest, slay self in temple of Alostrael, Her knife to pierce my heart, Her incense to make mad my mind, Her altar the Sarcophagus, Her body, its Fire, Her lust that licks, licks up, devours, transmuting to absorbing in itself this glad Burnt Offering all of me, my Soul.

In other words, I am now doing my Will; for as the Beast I must proclaim my Word, the Aeon-Word, the Magus' Image of Truth, the Law of Liberty, Four Score and Ten and Three, the Word Thelema, that men may hear and understand; unto which end I must invoke all Art, that those who are blind, deaf, nay idiot unto Truth may yet be drawn to Her by Her veil's broidery, its perfume, its mystery, and so grope after Her in twilight.

To men must I be poet, prophet, crying aloud! Also it is my Will to be The Beast to Her that rideth me, the Scarlet Woman, loud, adulterous, Whore, mad drunk on Her own Cup. Her Cup blood-glutted, Her Cup drugged with the Herbs Insane that she hath soaked in Sin; hath bruised in Cruelty, and hath stewed in Vice, distilled in Fancy, until Imagination's cucurbit congealed, drop sweltering after drop, the Venom Her Soul's Spilth, Quintessence and Elixir, Absolute, uttermost, perfect; its name Abomination!

Even as unto Man I give my Life, reveal my Godhead, heal him, exalt him, cry my Word's deliverance; so unto Her I owe my death, and to Her body's fire feed my fierce flesh for fuel.

So my cocaine-lit 'Unconditioned-Will' is but my freed normal Will. (6.50 p.m. I may go on a little later.)

7.15 p.m. I have eaten a little—a very little dinner.

The point is: why should my normal will require cocaine, or seem to do so, if it is to realize itself in written thought and Kitten sport?

I still think (I have hinted it elsewhere) that the last paragraph before dinner explains it. My 'conditions' make my matter-mistresses miscarry! My will to write or paint? 'Troll, to thyself be enough!' I am no nearer satisfaction when the poem is typed. Suppose we ask the Idea of Physical Fatherhood one question? 'Would you rather lose your son when he is twenty, and bound your life's hope to him; or when he's ten, and keeps you wild with pride, anxiety, and the like; or when he's five, and you have just begun to take him seriously, build on him, adjust your future to his career; or when he's weaned, and your Love's-Tenderness is yet too chaste to suffer the gross wooing of Hope; or at his birth, when your girl's danger is so real, your child's life but a bubble-dream as yet; or while his being is no more than promise? If one must choose; if there be no one chance that he may bear one's honour, courage, pride, blazing Blood's Oriflamme to battle, storm the breached wall o' the City Oblivion, capture the trenches of old Marshall Time, answer the roll-call at one's name in the March-Past of Veterans; if, speak it brutally, one must pass utterly, inter with one's own carcass the dead will, stilled though, extinguished soul of sire on sire; then, Father-Will, wouldst thou not rather face thy fate at the first, fall Roman on thy sword, and cheat the torturer Hope-Deceived? Better scorn Life, live chaste, than play the mouse to the Cat Fate Rather the Priest of Atys than of Moloch, scorn Hope with Thomson than with Tennyson cringe to her! A mute inglorious Milton! Yes, I must flame with ecstasy so fierce that my contempt for man does not make me, like the American mongrel cur, 'too proud to' write! And I must lust for Leah, for this Whore my Queen, so that Her barren joy, Her scream's madness-rapture, Her swoon's glut, be all, more than all, my passion's prize, the seal of blood on my death-warrant, the smoke on my soul's pyre, and on my carrion corpse the worm's white revel. While I'm a man, weighing the thing's worth, a Jew, 'tis yes or no as Mr Justice Mind may sum the case; when I'm the cocaine-fiend, I do my Will, even as God doth His, great lust of Act, great lust; no care of Act's result. To-night I'll write as I will; I'll drench my body with drink and drugs; I'll claw Truth's face, till she shriek poetry; and in the bed where my Alostrael wriggles, I will make offering to hag's beastliness, my soul to putrefy within Her Body of Dung, my body in Her Soul of Hell to burn, the worm that dieth not, the fire that is not quenched. Weeping, wailing, gnashing of teeth! The man must shrink-the coward! I the cocaine-fiend laugh at him. I sing for God, our Devil, our Lord, Aiwaz; praise of Alostrael my flaming fiend I sing; and now to the debauch of death, of dirt, of devilry, of dire desire, of dread delight, I go; I go to my fiend-wife, and in foul quagmire of her mouth I bog the breath that was pure Life to the World. I am content to sing, to serve, my Whore. Is the price death, pain, madness? Must I be damned, to-day, to-morrow, for ever; my flesh rot with Her kisses, my nerves with this cocaine, my soul with Her fiend-self? Gladly will I! And though I love Her, gaily and strongly, as yesterday and to-day I shewed, with bodily worship, with naught but sun, sea, air, to stimulate, yet since cocaine exalts to the Absolute this Relative I'll take it, baresark. Satan shall set my battle in array, not Michael.

Come, Come, Come, Aiwaz! Come, thou Devil Our Lord! On these snow-glittering slopes of poison-crystals, these soft, crisp, deadly pure, exhilarating feather-flakes, on these my soul shall stride.

What mortal verse should please the ear that loves no less than a stabbed rival's moan, a soul's snarl as it swears Her murder-oath, or a child's scream of fear and pain when She, or I at bidding of Her, call Satan to pour brandy of Crime into our Lust's drained goblet, where once there foamed and sparkled Love's Champagne? Nor shall a man's love serve Her, whose body is now no more than Her soul's coffin, where with Her worms She revels as She rots: I must be Satan's self to-night, to ravish Her, to gallop Her, our steeds Lust's Lion, Filth's Hyaena, Murder's Tiger, Secret Rapture's Snake.

Satan I'll be, by favour of our Lord; She lies there; She desires me; one more sniff; I'll to Her!

11.10 p.m. I have been talking Love with Leah for an hour or more. We have just drunk a cocktail of White Burgundy and White Bordeaux, as our love-philtre. I asked Her to replace my Snow by Water—Russian Water—but that's a Prudence, prim young Quakeress, 'taught to be cautious' by her father, whom I know; for all his hat's broad brim, for all his sober doth. I know his eyes' evasion, his heart's stumble; he is none else than Mr Love-God Funk. No, Prudence, you're his daughter! Take your charms elsewhere. Off, pretty maid; I'll not marry you till your old dad lies dead! My whore for me: Her father is Sir Dare-All Hellfire. Hers am I, and her sister-soul's, my Maid Cocaine, her father chieftain in the warrior clan of Death, her mother of the Wild Men's Tribe of Madness. I'll take cocaine as I damn please; if I stop now, it is that my nose wants another and fierier drug; I'll to Alostrael, for no sake but this, that I'm blind drunk' with lust of Her. Her patience—she lies rubbing her flat breasts, babbling with incoherent foulness, self-sufficiency-maddens me, damn Her! Damn Her! I stay here, I write, if haply I may rouse Her appetite, set Her jaws champing, until with growl and spring she fix my haunch. But no! to-night she plays the spider! Starved body—limbs like wire—and eyes that wait! They know-They know—the end! Disgusting insect! Devilish wit! Word-excrement your web! I'm not a fly, ah no! I'm brave Tom Thumb! I'm the Dwarf-Self of me, the Secret-God, the Hero that slew Giants, that to-night shall be Thy meat!

Out, sword! The spider lures-the web gleams, quivers, sings in the wind! To its black heart! To Her lewd murderous mouth! Her breath—she has been chewing a cigar to foul Her kisses for me—creeps like miasma to me . . .

[78]