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Aleister Crowley Diary Entry Saturday, 28 August 1920
On the contrary I have been feeling wretched all day. I slept from 11.30 p.m. till past 9.00 a.m. and again after tiffin, nearly four hours. The weather is close, not too hot, but as if the air were devitalized. I have taken three sniffs of heroin and now two of cocaine between 5.00 p.m. and 8.50, but I still feel rotten.
8.50 p.m. Strange too is an entirely new consciousness, hard to describe, and very vague. Shall I say that I feel as if my whole past were dead, that I am 'somebody else' rather than 'I'? I don't mean that my memory is gone; it is a deeper thing than that. It seems as if my world were newly presented to me, I being new too like a man after a long illness. But the springtide which gilds the heart of such an one is not in me. I feel a distaste for the restored contact. Life seems a sort of 'compulsory cricket' but with no prospect of leaving school in a year or two, nor any wish to do so.
Love of Leah [Leah Hirsig]—if I could only wing to it! I'm physically depressed. Work: I may do some as I might go to play, to throw a gaudy rag over the face of my soul's corpse. But I'm not dull or bored; I simply shrink from getting back into training because I know that the 'condition' is not a permanent gain, and the race itself and its prizes only the more bitter for the reality of their sweetness. Life is Calvary. I am scourged by my ambition; I am bound by my nature; I am mocked by my sense of Truth; I am spat upon by my sense of Fatuity; I stagger under the cross of the Fate I have earned, to torture me, slay me, and exalt me. Thrust through my hands are spikes: Thou canst not Do; Thou canst not Hold; Thou canst not Go. My thoughts, sharp tough and smooth, their tangle (for all its complexities) closed in a circle; these are the thorns of my crown. My body's weight—dull agony, stark shame, loathed impotence. My throat's thirst—Love! Quenchless art thou, o Love—alas! Seven times, alas! and alas!
Gall on the sponge and in the cup a brew of poppy and wine; though canst nor sleep nor dream! Darkness is on me, soul-sick; is not the Light my God? Clamour and curses of the crowd, wails of the thieves my peers, sobs, cacklings, lies, brutalities—and it was I whose soul loved Silence, would not that even the one word Truth profane it.
Earth spins, and moon reels round her. She is the skeleton at the feast! Where is thine air, Selene? Where is the gauze that wrapped thee, maiden of Night? Did we not watch thee dance, hail thee most pure, stainless and silver, Artemis? We focussed lense: thou art an hag. Thy corpse is leprous with burst pustules; thou art ice-cold; the sun's light shows thine ulcers, deserts for seas, dry, dark and vast; shows thy volcano-cancers, even they that slew thee slain!
Thou speakest: 'So shall it be with thee.' Earth wheels in the Sun-system; it is a watch without a dial. The sun himself? His light and force. I share them—Hail thou Sun, my sire, my mind's appreciation of the power and wisdom that made the machine that He gave me these, and that I And by so much as these are greater than I, by so much does their aimlessness appal me!
The stars? Madness immeasurable, madness most madly multiplied by madness! There, on this cross there, where once One, God-man, who had made all worlds, One that was Very God, that was the Word, One that was Truth, One that was Hanged even as I hang now. But he one roll of the ball, and he turned away from the table, though the croupier was his Father, though the wheel was loaded. I, I played never less than the maximum, I always played en plein. He—he was thirty and three when he quit; I beat him there. I hang upon my cross; my senseless pain that purges not, that warns not, have I made Virtue of it, deemed it my service that shall win me honour? Have I spun myself a web of Poesy-gossamer, woven of fancy's silk an irridescent veil, thinking to tangle a God's feet, with this to blind the eyes of a God?
Have I lulled myself, as if I were a child by a fairy-tale in which my crucifixion is the adventure whereby I win the Princess? Have I said: Life is a nightmare-when I choose I can pinch myself, wake to delight? It may be that at one time or another I have done all these things; it has been long, and my brain has swum with the spasms of mine agony, time and again. To-night? Does a soldier push up a sponge? That is Belladonna, I think, the witch-philtre that whelms the ship sense with the billow of Madness. Its foam dances bright on the crest—and hath no substance. It's rhythm and music, as it leaps and exults, this is not in itself, is only the puppet of Wind, the whim of a purposeless Fool. In itself it is bitter and idle, the cesspool of Earth. My ship is no longer the shallop of twenty years ago; Love cannot start a plank, nay, nor send qualm to my most delicate passenger! It cannot even carry me up and on with it—and I do not even wish it could. I turn my dry lips from the sponge. Another? Who is this sinister legionary, with the deep eyes, darkly and fearfully glowing, and the mouth twisted into a smile? Strange he should be so tall; he does not strain, yet the cup in his hand is at my mouth. It is of gold, chased exquisitely. It has all manner of precious stones. Its wine is wonderfully perfumed, my nostrils pulse; it soothes and excites at the same time, it clears and calms the mind, it delights desire, it gives ease and activity to the body. It offers itself like an incense, assuring its God that all his hosts, archangels, men, and all manner of fiends and arch-fiends but await his commands; that each one stands eager to offer his service, that the unspeakable variety of the Universe, being his, is one in one thing only, passion to minister to his pleasure. I turn the anguish of mine eyes from the blackness of heaven; below them, brimming the cup, is the wine.
It glitters and foams; it is crimson, and vital as blood, it is golden and luminous as the sun; it is crystal and calm as the moon. I see Force swirl in it, scarlet tongues flame in its depths. I see Wealth fructify in it, it breeds tawny globes at its edge. I see Wit flash in it, pale lightnings like snakes dart hither and thither. I see Love blossom in it, green islands of calm in its waves. I see Delight swell in it, skies of stillness without bound and seas of musical motion. I see Wisdom veiled in it, subtler than light its shadows of indigo lure me. I see Beatitude sweep in it, violet subtlety is its essence, the dominant that its harmonies reveal by concealing. I see moreover Mystery as the soul of the wine, black that allures me and fascinates me more than all else therein. I imagine; I lust. It is a snake, its coils strain, crushing mine heart; its fang spurts, convulsing my soul. Black! Is not Heaven Black? Have not I gazed and desired as I hang? Yet my mouth at the cup's lip drinks not. I say to the soldier-who art thou? What is the cup? What is the wine? He answered me: I am that I am. The Cup is the Form that contains all; it is the Breast that suckled thee, it is the Womb that served thee, when thou wouldst make thee idols in thy likeness, setting them up that men might worship them. Also this Cup is the Mouth that devoureth thee; for he that suckleth Life the same is toothsome for Death's feasts. This cup is also the Bowel that voideth thee; for who create himself God, and maketh idols, shall not his Godhead dwell therein, and his Waste self be thrust from Life, swept through the sewers of Time, and be no more?
The Wine of the Cup is all thou wouldst. Wisdom, Intelligence, Joy, Might, and Beauty; Pleasure, Activity, the tendrils of thy Root through Space extended, and thy Tree's flowers and fruit not servant of Time's seasons: drink, and all's thine.
Thou shalt be God, one ineffable brilliance, these but thy prism's play, shalt be Being's crown beyond all conception, Thou from three veils that are called Naught, Space and Light, shalt flame the Sole Star-eye. And thou shalt be thy World, Virgin and Bride, by whom thou shalt renew thee as thou wilt.
And I said again to the soldier: I am a man called God, and I hang on a cross called Life; but, prithee, speak to the man. He said; this Wine is Art. This is the Blood of God. Drink! It is life and joy; thou shalt be God, and pour thine essence of Rapture, molten gold, leaping with heat of thy love into the moulds of clay, the Empty Language-Forms, to make thee idols of thee.
Quoth I—the metal cools. He said: what Virgin hath wiped thy face? Who hath been Asia to thy Prometheus? Whom hast thou wooed, nigh forty years, nor slackened suit? Whom hast thou won again and again, and yet to-night wouldst win? Who hath displayed to thee most her beauties, who hath seduced thee most, hath borne thee sons and daughters most? Who hath been subtler and lovelier? Who hath more music or might? Thy Virgin, thy true Love, and thou her chosen above all men alive—the English Language!
I said to the Soldier: Ay! well I know this vintage. I can intoxicate myself, inspire or initiate; I can twine wreathes of ecstasy and at the symposium of the saints sup with my mates immortals; I can put Beauty's girdle about my loins and challenge Keats to try a fall with me; I can bind on my sandals of Thought, sprint five score yards with Sterne or stay the Marathon course with Trismegistus. I can snatch up my sword if the bugle of Freedom sound, or my hammer and smash the coprolite idol of Jesus. I can if I be drunk in the right way and degree, cast off my clothes with a shout, reel to the brothel my desk, hale forth virgin Notebook, lay her before me, open her, and then with madness and violence all night long, I violate her, and get on her some bastard babe of mine, who knows how it may fare? Or else, it might even be that mood or this might get mine eat, and seeing own lure lapsed play pimp for Leah [Hirsig] my love! God yawns (it may urge) at having got Everywhere and man snarls at having got Nowhere; be a Beast for an hour, and get somewhere! Is that all? asked the Soldier.
Only one word more, like Browning! I am grateful, and yet please don't think me capricious; but-just this one night—I want to hang here absolutely alone, with neither friend nor mate, with no Elixirs either as stimulant or anodyne, and to examine the universe from the point of view of the Man-in-the-Street, only an omniscient one. I want to feel without trying to explain away the agony. I want to estimate the present without reference to past or future. I will not read I.N.R.I.[1] as Igni Natura Renovatur Integra,[2] like a Magus; or as Invenis Nibil Rerum Imaginem,[3] like a Mystic; or as Ipsum Nomen Res Ipsa[4] like a metaphysician; or as Ingenio Numen Resplendet Iaccbi[5] like a poet, but only as I Never Risk Inquiry like a most English middle-class 'plain man'. I refuse to crave as I have done once or twice, a foot of your pilum between my ribs, and something to keep out angels in addition to your guard at my sepulchre. I'll just hang here as I am. And I turned my mouth from the Cup. Then he laughed, and I knew he was the Devil.
'My son!' A smile shimmered in his eyes; the words rose and fell like the song of the sea. 'My son! True-born of my lust! On the flesh of the Goddess I gat thee; on her that is the Sphinx, on her that is Tigress and Snake and Ape and Sow, my own daughter, my dearest, sweet Sin, on her whose caresses tire never, I gat thee, my bastard, and branded thy brow, and thy breast, and thy body before and behind; with my tongue did I brand thee, Alastor; and I blessed thee, that thou shouldst be lonely, the wanderer, the soul of the wilderness, and that thou shouldst avenge and destroy, attain to be God and the brute that should hunt and devour Him. I blessed thee, that thou shouldst help Man; I prepared thee a Temple, that men should worship thee by thy name, The Beast, and by the number thereof. And thy mother wrote secretly, Alys in thine heart for thy name, and blessed thee with an hidden nature to console thy solitude, and gave thee herself for thy mistress and proclaimed that to sin without shame should be a gift on thine altar.
'Then did we drive thee forth. My passion impelled thee, and hers allured thee; swift were thy goings, my son! And in season also we gave thy sister for thy mate that your flesh might have heirs, Sin's darling delight conceived at my daughter's darkest desire, and she loved me and [I] called her Alostrael [Leah Hirsig]. I blessed her with my perversity, and she with her hunger. We gave her to thee, her perversity for thy pleasure, her dowry, and thy flesh as her carrion to sate her. She stands there—the sponge ready in her hand—O my son, wilt thou hang there and thirst?'
I said: 'O my father, forgive me; for I know not what I do. But I will know. I will not moisten my tongue with her sponge. Is it not She that hath soaked up my blood with it? Nor will I taste thy wine; from my brains and my seed thou didst distil it, that its fumes might dizzy my soul till it fell and dissolved. Hast thou not drained me of Life, the God that is I, all given to mine Art, as the sponge of thy daughter, my sister, of my Leah, my mate, of me The Beast, the Woman of Scarlet, Alostrael, hath sucked up my Love, the Brute that is I, all given to my lust?'
1—[Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudaeorum, Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.] 2—['Nature is completely renewed by fire.'] 3—['You find the image of things to be nothing.'] 4—['The name itself is the thing itself.'] 5—['Divinity shines in the nature of Bacchus.']
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