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Aleister Crowley Diary Entry Thursday, 12 August 1920
Midnight. Dialogue continued.
'Does moon refer to Jane [Jane Wolfe]?'
Alostrael [Leah Hirsig]: ‘Aiwass is always in water, in a cave-like place, or high on a mountain. He gives gestures which Alostrael calls "It all depends". Now He signifies the same in another way, and adds, "She is chosen, but may fail.'' He goes, comes back, kneels to Alostrael, unveils His face of glory.' 'Be with Us always even when our mortality fails before Thee.'
(He passes within Her, after kissing Her brow, and then stays in Her womb, and goes through Her, and returns).
'Bind Us together in love more closely and fiercely every day.'
(We follow Him together, she naked, Beast in scarlet abbai. He creates a fire by silent Will; it sucks us all into it, He following; all closes over us, and we are back in the Basilica of Saint Chrysostom in the City of Ktenoproct on the Pearl River where good King Mahalinga wields the Sceptre.)
12.45 a.m. Talking over the Vision. Discussing the rational bases of the Magick of the Gnosis, and the XI°.
1.30 a.m. Orgie begins again.
2.00 a.m. I note that I suggested to Her to order me to take Cocaine; but my reason was not 'craving' or 'vice'. I felt so marvellous strong on all planes at and after the Invocation that I wanted to abolish the limits, and to avoid cutting short my delight by physical orgasm, however wonderful.
2.35 a.m. We have been out to drink of Pactolus, to play romantic love of nights Sicilian, with Mitylene masque, then to invoke Nuith under Her Stars. She answered my first call with a white shooting star, almost like a comet, so long was its light-wake, very brilliant, and my second by a red star, bright but without a trail. Perfection's white and red!
2.45 a.m. Alys, your maiden breasts? What ape is't gibbers, mews, ,mauls them with claw, with tooth? What hag of Hecate, by Satan's craft revives her goat-soul at your milkless lamb's teats? She grins; she snarls; she sucks; the maid abhors the fascination of the foul snake slavering on her, the flickering tongue that lies, degrades, envenoms, and in stupration wins to ecstasy.
Her breath! I faint . . . I fall . . . She has me . . .
3.15 a.m. Finished our gramme (1/2 each) of cocaine.
3.40 a.m. Started ether.
4.30 a.m. Short interval for starlight romance.
4.44 a.m. More ether; a little, very little, more cocaine: two sniffs and a 'kiss'. We both went off, I ending with Alostrael, and waking again with Al; this shows (a) I love her, (b) 'Her' is a mixture of my Scarlet Woman and the 31 that is the key of 93, (c) that these three are one. I was quite inert physically. Some time or other in this Dawn-Meditation I got:
S.W. [Scarlet Woman]: 'You're like a man trying to be polite.'
B.: 'When he wants to vomit in a woman's face.'
S.W.: 'Which would disgust him, and wound love.'
B.: 'And that's where the sense of humour comes in.'
This seemed to me at the time a remarkable epitome of the whole range of emotions. Later. We are doing an operation to have a Temple of Magick, i.e. for our Gnosis and XI°. (Previously remarked that XI° rites seemed to gain value from destroying rational limitations.)
'A tired man loving a pregnant woman.' This is doubly against nature. It is then exactly the right and necessary operation for this purpose. For Magick is out to make two and two other than four, and prove it. When this is done, we must make them make four again. (Alostrael: 'Twould be easy.' Beast: 'Nay!')
This is very important, showing that I recognize Magick as concerned to reverse any existing order. (Cf. Parzival's [Charles Stansfeld Jones] idea of Reversal, which gave him the LA-31-AL Key to CCXX!!!)
Later. Found Leah out! All her remarks were just so many devices to induce erection-appeals to father-love, religion, passion, magick, vice, poetry, etc. But the cocaine won by a short head-so did my perception of her tricks-the sceptic cannot beget children. It is necessary for women to deceive men that the race may live. 'The love of knowledge is the hate of life.'
Later. Forgot all this and everything else in an absolute phrenzy of Union—I won't use the absurd word Love, but say Agape, 93, if needs must.
7.11 a.m. Opus[1] VIII, 31-666-31, p[er] o[s] D[ominae][2]. Operation as described above. Practically no erection till climax and little then. But no special desire for it; the whole work was intensely spiritual, with the physical acts no more than symbolic gestures. Bodily anaesthesia almost absolute. Several times noticed that I was conscious only of Ajna and Muladhara. The orgasm, with copious emission, seemed Three distinct drops; it brought little pleasure or relief. I was utterly concentrated on the Work, and announced the Purpose clearly and with 'logical precautions' while the drops passed. I am in splendid physical condition, and had a strong erection at the first touch of Leah before the snow [Cocaine] fell. Testes very full. It is sure that cocaine in bulk stops firm correctness either by physical action or by making one think it is detrimental. Elixir-very thick and rich; plentiful; the Eagle had been mostly consummated earlier in the Work, so the Marriage must take place within the Temples.
We had used: 1, Pactolus; 2, Sun; 3, Eagle; 4, Lion; 5, Mercurial Water; 6, Mars and Venus Oil; 7, C2H6O [Alcohol]; 8, Cocaine; 9, (C2H5)2O [Ether].
Object: To have a Temple fit for our Rites of Babalon and the Beast. I'm calculating 'B[abalon] and the B[east] conjoined' and note TO MΕΓΑ = 419 = ט. But I get no more.
8.05. Coffee and biscuit.
We used an enormous quantity of ether, nearly a litre, our dose being usually about a tenth, perhaps less. Cocaine, then, enables one to resist ether. We got no excitement of the disturbing kind at all, but the clarity of perception was much steadied and slowed; thanks to this we have snared the wary Truth-sables whose furs now cling to my Whore's throat-and hide its oval brand, month-old and more!
8.20 a.m. Damn the Greek Cabbala when it won't react to Podophyllin.[3] I'll leave it costive, and go off a-wooing.
8.25 a.m. No, I don't; for a new idea comes. I've worked so long and feel so fresh that I decide to go on with cocaine to find out how ,long the sustaining action can be kept up. Alostrael has killed my 'punctuality-complex'; and Jane's [Wolfe] presence makes me what I am, a God-damned Englishman, God damn it! And I don't give a God-damn for you, God damn your eyes! I'm the One He-Man in this Hen-Abbey.
Felt rather tired during the bath; 500 strokes or so left me gasping. At fives, I was confident, and careless, and didn't perspire much. I was very lively talking to Giosne. I came in to [perform] the Pentagram [ritual] etc., like Hansi's Big Lion, and went all but insane—yet superbly under control—with the attainment of ecstasy, singing and shouting the words, many of the Barbarous Names new-forged on my soul's anvil. I went straight to the Opus. I am now (8.35 a.m.) active, self-confident, free from all apprehension, eager to work, but not creative. I painted two fine pictures yesterday, The Pool and East o'Cefalu. I am locally tired in Ajna and Muladhara, having lived there so intensely and so exclusively for so long I'll rest (8.40), smoke, toy with Leah.
8.42. Can't rest! Leah agrees that I don't sniff, unless snow be there: previously I did this, I think it is a danger signal that the nose 'craves' snow.
8.45. Time goes slowly; above note and much talk in three minutes.
8.46. To the assault!
8.55. It is a curious feeling. Impuissance and indifference dominate me, and there is also that which wishes to 'love' the object which inspires these sentiments, for that same cause! I've turned repulsion into passion, fear into love, disgust to worship; but here beside me lies a worn-out toy. The Opus absorbed all the forces; we are both amethystine sober, our heads well-water, clear and cool, our souls at ease. Can that perfection suffer? Can I who raped the maiden, decoyed the wife, hired myself to the widow, and with wanton wild made revel, I, I, can I woo this scarecrow carrion? Can I, who writhed at stroke of the snake's fang, whose ribs cracked in her coil, can I pretend that death still lurks under that dull cast skin? I loved Her as Her slave; I lived to pander to Her lust. My neck was for Her foot; my flesh for Her tooth's need to tear, to gnaw, to pulp!
My tongue that spake God's Word, that sang as none of all my peers sang ever, nay, neither Keats nor Shakespeare, nay, not the voice that roared through Demogorgon, or his that thrilled in Hertha's throat-my tongue has lackeyed Her most villainous vices. My tongue has been Her flatterer, smooth to refute Her mirror and Her mind; it has been slave to Her, with plausibility to cheat Her very scullions of their wage, and for its own to take the greasy coins that She flings down, and takes them for fine gold of the fine gold. It was a sewer of foul speech, to pleasure her perversity that gloats on dirt and on disease. It has denied its God, in its stead had heralded Her rottenest Soul-cancer, licking the dust, the mire of dung, the scabs of leprosy, the clots of murder, yea, those most nameless things, beastly beyond all beastliness, that are the sweat Her teats drip down from Her lean, Her snaky flanks.
Ay! it, as the rest of me, served Her, and gloated! God that gat sons on Her, high gods, stark Truth, fine Art, fierce Musick, yea, that gat Poupée's flesh, and our brave bastard's that lies curled (oh! curled so close be sure!) beneath her heart till Springtide bring Him forth, my Son that shall rejoice mine age, this God that is mine inmost I was Hers. She soiled the Dove as Leda soiled the Swan, nay more, as Pantagruel the Goose!
This God was Hers to mock, scourge, spit on, to torment, Hers to tear open, Hers to devour, its bones flung at Her feet to the hyaena, to the obscene, the stinking the foul glutton of not rottener carrion, yes, to the lewd hyaena hell's-laugh in his rank throat, that She hath made Her lover.
Gladly I suffered it; her lust grew, medlar-sweet and rotten; pride, like sand-rooted gourds; cruelty, poisonous thorn, and secret murder, monkshood; more, the desire of the Infinite, as 'twere the innocent poppy, with its white flower no more than virgin veil of that pod-strumpet, her whose kiss gives delight, gives wisdom, gives even peace, until the pustule ripen, burst in agony; until those blossoms bear their fruit. This rind most bitter, astringent of the Sodom-apple; Madness its fleshless pulp; and at the core, strangling, dry strands of Death.
This God did this for his Whore's pleasure. He loved to agonize as She rejoiced. Also, the filthiest worm that lurks in me, its lair most sedulous his by Fear and Cunning he hath fed full upon Her flesh, bloated his lankness on Her blood. He was not I, the God, to offer Her godhead, liar and murderer, for I remoulded Her in Satan's Image; She standeth, Her feet's flame yet quenchless though they tread Pole's ice, and the earth spins beneath Her, and She doth evil, fancieth filth, dreameth destruction; thus and not otherwise She blesseth it.
He was not I, the Devil-God, but I the Worm of the Slime, the blind Mouth with loose lips, the deaf brain self abused, the sewer-Body; I that am leech and tapeworm, bladder-barb by Nile and in the Congo, Thread-that-is-Death-by-Sleep; I loved Her and I had Her. Mine was the joy to roam and feed upon Her, Her flesh infected, drink of Her, Her blood polluted, so soon as Her God fled his temple, scurried to heaven with them that guarded Her, when Satan glared from Her damned eyes, laughed from Her murderous mouth, when She bestrode Her Beast, and drove Her heel's hate to his heart, as with the Whip She knows of She lashed hell ward.
Ay! then the Worm was glutted; ay, all Her human self I took; I rotted it, I made her flesh as goat and stoat, I made her mind as an 'ape's mind, as an hyaena's, as a black panther's; I made her blood puff-adder's venom, tigress-gall, skunk-gland of stench; ay! even Her skin I made a mangy vixen's, set on Her brows a flush and on Her breast a coppery sheen, that he who ran might read-and run in Panic fear, an he'll be warned.
When first I found Her, She was a woman, one that held godhead, though 'twere a kite tenuity of thread perilous in such Wind of Doctrine. She had ripe womanhood, wrapping her in Motherhood's blouse, in Intellect's shawl, in Passion's slattern skirt, and Human Loving-kindness perched on Her head, a dove's wing with an eagle's feather trimming the toque's soft straw.
Now I, the God, have choked Her god in dung and bred the Basilisk, reared the fiend, Satan-Alostrael, to burn in hell with me—to burn, to writhe, to exult, to spend, to be, to will, to go, to change, to lust, to create life, to kindle love, to unveil light, to unleash liberty, my Word and Law Thelema to proclaim, to 'stablish and to execute for ever. To build that Law into Man's Soul, as Nature builds a man from the fifth primate, is Her Satan-secret Asp-brew in Her Cup's Blood (Filth, Madness, Poison, Inchantment, Putrefaction): it aids Intoxication and its One Mystery of Mysteries, Initiation.
And I the Worm have trailed my slug-slow slime across Her Breasts; so that Her mother-mood is turned and Her breasts itch with lust of Incest. She hath given Her two-year bastard boy to Her lewd lover's whim of sodomy, hath taught him speech and act, things infinitely abhorred, with Her own beastly carcass. She hath tongued Her five-month girl, and asked its father to deflower it. She hath wished Her Beast to rape Her rotten old mother—so far is woman clean of Her! Then Her blood's grown icy hard and cold with hate; and Her eyes gleam as Her ears ring with a chime of wedding bells, dirty words, or vibrate, cat-gut fashion, to the thin shrieks of a young. child that Her Beast-God-Slave-Mate is torturing for Her pleasure-ay! and his own, since of Her Cup he drank, and of Her soul he breathed.
He loved it all. He rolled each drop of filth around His tongue. All this because He loved Her. He loved Her as nor God nor Man nor Beast nor Devil has loved.
All this because She loved him as he Her; because She was of his bone marrow, and his flesh nerve, and of his blood the spirochaetes, the pallid hosts, as 'twere they swooped from Tartary even to Rome!
I could have said it in a word: She's of sound Satan-stock; I recognized Her the stuff of my ideal, fiend-whore, and under my fierce thumbs her clay's masterpiece. The summit-beauty of it is her own chief asset, her raw clay's red ochre, the volcano-brand on her still smoking and charred goat-haunch.
And now-is She indifferent? If so, all's lost, and I? Most lost were I! From Magus, Word of the Aeon, I were thrust, my Wand a tinder-twig, my Word an Idiot's babble.
And there She lies, the lazy lump of nastiness, no more to me than my cut toenails, and to Her-I am not; she's asleep!
It's now 11.50 a.m. From 8.55 I have wanted to do necrophilia, to rape her rotten corpse. But I don't love Her; it's her lust for evil, for our Lord, for me—Her furies, filths, her frenzies, fantasies, her-(would she but say Her word!)—this, this I love. And She went to sleep, wouldn't take more cocaine, snored, woke once and counselled prudence again and got some hunks of bread and cheese—I'm sweating like a sow, I'll take some milk and biscuit.
11.56. Halt!
1.10 p.m. I note, and so does Leah, as often before, that there is a great hunger aroused by cocaine; but nothing will satisfy it. The medical idea that people think more drug will do so does not apply to us.
A curious paradox, that the Body's need to get the poison out of it should become conscious as a need to put something in! It hardly compliments one's telegraph service-or one's diagnosis expert, whichever it is.
1.40 p.m. She and I go bathing as soon as Giovanni returns to take charge. I'm perfectly fresh, except as regards erection, is this so strange after some seventeen hours' irritation, with perhaps four hours' rest for it? Cocaine interferes with micturation at once, one can't let oneself go for a long time, and there is a little pain of the 'nervous weakness' type, both before and during the act. My scrotum is at present not actually clamouring for a new snake-house, but it seems as full of the Sons of the Serpent. Uraei crowned with God, as any self-respecting scrotum ever is after being subjected to a Hirsig vacuum pump with the patent Mercury-valve, warranted to extract embryo Colonels from wooden nutmegs. The trouble is purely functional and nervous; its cause is direct nerve-anaesthesia; a few hours' local rest would cure it, and probably start a reaction of strength, from the repose deeper than usual which cocaine gives them. But after such a local repose (local, as writing three hours on end counts as deep sleep for those nerves) though erection may be strong, and desire ardent, and pleasure intense, it is hard to screw one's courage to the point of the Big Plunge. Nervous again, of course. There seems to be a fault in the system of signalling. Mental and physical do not react on each other as they should. It's like trying to talk to a Cefalu man who has been twenty years in America.
2.30 p.m. I note The Vision of the Demon Parenthesis, who is a Servitor of Cocaine. Doris Gomez got him; she seemed to be walking with an armful of parcels, dropping one and then, as she picked it up, another. I get him in my literary style; also as Leah does, in flitting from one act to another; e.g. I lose my pen-I look for it; I see a bottle that needs filling; I go to the Supply. I see I need a shave; I get hot water. I find it too hot; then I fill the bottle and find the pen. And I write this; and now I'll shave.
2.45 p.m. Impatience is another symptom of cocaine; it seems connected with the hunger. Leah claims to be free from this; I think hers less than mine, but still very noticeable. It is caused by the dulled sensibility of the nerves, or the loss of the finger controls. I am now bored by the experiment, because it is one; because cocaine results are monotonous; and because I have no Will to create.
3.10 p.m. At present I can't see why anyone should go on taking cocaine after the first few hours, unless of course, to carry on some started labour.
3.30 concludes another half-hour's work.
Opus[1] IX, 31-666-31 [Leah Hirsig], p[er] o[s] B[abalon][4] and then . . . Operation: cocaine storm; very violent. Elixir: great, but only part uttered. Object: our love.
Note on above. The orgasm was in three parts, two in vagina, one in mouth. It went on and on, but almost without feeling; the third part I certainly did not know of.
3.40. Went bathing. When in water I had the sensation of wearing a bathing suit, Leah a similar illusion. She had numerous patches of cutaneous anaesthesia and also numbness of limbs.
1—[Crowley conducts a magical sexual operation.] 2—[‘By the mouth of the lady.’] 4—[‘By the mouth of Babalon.’]
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