Aleister Crowley Diary Entry

Wednesday, 6 October 1920

More work. Began 'The Dead Emperor' view of Capri.

6.20 p.m. Yes, meals at 10.00 and 4.00 make the day delightfully long. I have revised scenarios, tinkered pictures, started a new one, amused myself very much sexually, played some capital Fives—and the day is far from done. Leah [Leah Hirsig] and I are about to try whether the diminished dose of Our Lady's Breath [Opium]—three pipes and no more—will give her, as the Yi seems to promise, the Clear Vision, without the reverberate heaviness of sleep upon her eyes to avenge the Lords of Inertia. This makes me think again-as so often before—whether I do truly acquiesce in the Universe of None and Two. Am not I always aspiring to a 'Higher level', unwilling to compensate for attainment? I evidently prefer a Creative Orgie of two nights and days and a Reaction of similar length to the commonplace four days and nights of normal activity and normal sleep. That is, I prefer mountainous country to flats. Does it follow that I should like the valleys filled up, and then start a new catastrophic geology with the old Chogo Ri as 'sea-level'? This is evidently impossible in Nature, whose total must always be Zero; but am I ass enough to wish things otherwise? Am I still so stupid as not to see that the space-marks are arbitrary, that there is no high or low, no A or not-A, save in conditional relation with some equally fetishistic idea? Why then do I want my Aetna in eruption, valuing its spasms, impatient of its intervals? My poetry? I spend my soul in blazing torrents that roar into Night, streams that with molten tongues hiss as they lick, and consume the slopes of—not Parnassus! But that's no worth; it's time and peace that crumble my cold lava to an oil that's fit for Dionysus, for vines whose purple and gold may make men drunken, make them gods. My spilth can only make them gods in the fierce fashion of Death! Then by analogy, why should Alostrael [Leah Hirsig] lust after the Lords of Vision, that in tumultuous chariots lash stallion teams full gallop up the sky-steeps, with helmets golden and bejewelled and plumed, with monstrous serpent sceptres, with self-luminous irridescence of mantle afloat in the gale of their rushing? Bold are they, comely and terrible, with eyes beholding all, and in their mouths the Word of Truth that is Death; and to her they are as Apes to her vanity. But why should these be her pleasure more dear than Our Lady of Sleep? Alas! we are yet blind, yet deaf, she and I, as we writhe in the mire, she red and white, moon's blood of magick, and moon's ash of witchcraft, I gold and black, sun's fire of hell and sun's eclipse of annihilation, both dragons, the twin heirs of Pan, that he begat of Chaos. We are not yet ourselves, not clean from 'lust of result', not infinitely rigid and infinitely elastic as our mother Aethyr. We distinguish between things, not indeed as absolute but as 'good' or 'bad' in relation to some 'nature' or 'will' which we still think of as 'ours'. Thereby we only confess our own limitations. For it is clear that my Creative Orgies disturb Nature, as Alostrael's Visions distress Mankind; and even were this well to serve the one, and heal the other, it still stands that we make and affirm and buttress and perpetuate division between the workers and the work. And therefore—in conclusion—our High Magick is most high if on its snow-wrapped crater-cone we stand, in air too virginal to have known dust of plains or smoke of cities, air to intoxicate us laughing-mad, so that we fling our limbs abroad and scream, 'Love Under Will, indeed; the Cudgel of jolly Priapus! Vision, ay sol to divert us!' And when we pay the price in sleep, it shall be no less well; are we not sure, we who are chosen of Aiwass? Sleep bears us fruit of the Tree of Life, the Tree that our Will planted; fruit manifold, of diverse hues and shapes; monstrous, fantastic, fascinating to sight, to scent; strange to allure the taste; madness or poison, food or medicine, in our blood. Our dreams fulfill Life's passion; shall not the silence of the soul be yet diviner fruit on the Tree of Death? Be then our Life of Orgasm as our Death of Exhaustion, be then our Light of Clear Vision as our Night of Obscure Blindness! I will to her with my Beast-Lust, accounting my split Spirit as naught; I will smoke beads of poppy with her, beads gleaming blackly gold, and tasting in its clouds as they bear us aloft the Peace thereof and Vision of Truth. They shall be not more desirable than Pain of shattered bone and of bruised flesh when we fall thence into the ooze and slime of the foul marsh Stagnation. Come now, Alostrael to Alastor, come Woman of Whoredom to the Beast thy lover! Come without lust of result to Lust and its result! Come, let us praise Priapus not regarding his orchard! Come, let us burn the incense, with no heed unto whom I Let us offer oblation of poppy with no prayer to Persephone! Come, I am ready, my soul radiant, my mind whirling, my limbs trembling; is not your being equally electric, clamorous also for mine? Come, the lamp also waits, and the smooth purple tube of lacquer waits, its bowl a blossom; and the Vase brimmed with poison is ready as I to my love's hand—to her slim deadly hand! For Lust's sake let us lust, for Smoke's sake let us smoke!

It is now 8.25 p.m.—go to it!

9.30. I give Alostrael a first half-pipe. I think six such, at intervals of ten minutes, should be the arrangements. She has made up her mind not to seek visions; they began instantly as she lay back after the pipe. They ate all outlines—birds, flowers, wheat in sheaves, stars, lamps etc. Yellow, then blue, predominating colours; the blue brighter than the yellow. I ask her to invoke Aiwaz. Things now heavy-trees, landscapes, buildings, one a palace, or town, yellow with red roofs.

6.45. A second half-pipe for Leah—she sees a stork and crescent moon. 'Reject all but Aiwaz!'

8.55 A third Door-through it—ruins within—then long passage—Pillar with four limbs at top.

9.10. She sees Aiwaz's arm sweeping away things from the Universe. Is this His message? Huge sweeping movements, also firm quick wrist-parries—His left eye, now—it's all colours-dazzling. Concentric rings—pupil of azure light. This becomes a flower, lotus-like; now in that a radiant blue cross and a circle within that.

9.15. (She postpones further pipes.) I ask for proof of identity. She sees a hand, black, pointed nails, jewels on fingers. (This corresponds with my own visions of Him.) Four petalled rose—golden—I ask Him for a Word. He says SEN (?111?) YAN. These mean-a tube leading into a mountain. Then a series of dots and dashes. (?interpret symbol by Yi?) The arm again—. . . sweeping yet broader, but slower. Now—she's within. His eye sees over all the water. The hand is over the land only. 'The arm and the eye!'—that is His message. 'Keep going steadily at your work, Beast!' 'Observe vigilance, Whore!' Our IX° work? An impossible-to-climb-ladder—a tree with unripe yellow apples though not an apple-tree. (Infinite progress is possible—the way 'against Nature' is the Way.)

9.40. Began—

10.55. Opus^[1] VIII, 3I-666-31 [Leah Hirsig]. Operation: very simple, very intense, very monadogenous, to coin a word. Elixir: very homogenous and copious. Object: depth of Truth in 93.

10.20. I want to write a poem . . .

6 October. 1.45 a.m. I wrote it: 'Why I like Cefalu' is the idea. There are eighty-four lines. I mean to write 'To Him that shall come'—it went all wrong. I clean forgot the idea, side-tracked by jumping from 'The Spirit and the Bride say Come' to John's silly New Jerusalem phantasy.

2.40 a.m. Recalled to my original intention by analysing the discrepancy between my written title and the subject of the poem, I easily concentrated and wrote two sonnets 'To Him that shall Come'.

3.45. Wrote a third sonnet—very hard.

1—[Crowley performs a magical sexual operation.]

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