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Aleister Crowley Diary Entry Friday, 22 October 1920
As Thursday.
9.45 p.m. My Boil burst this morning; I have given it a Number One clean out with most substances known to Organic and Inorganic Chemistry.
It—and the two shocking disasters to my Race—have depressed me unspeakably; I am simply a poultice on the physical plane, and the mental and moral apes it. Mens inanis in corpore inani.[1] But, after the Lustration of my Boil, I make Oath and say these things following.
I have not faltered in the Great Work since the Miracle of St. Jane Chéron in Paris,[2] I have merely refused to make bricks without straw. I sent the books from Mawers [?] to Detroit 'without haggling', and I snatched at the Chiswick Press stock with instant decision when the crisis leapt from its ambush on me, broken as l was by sickness and agony. There is still much to be done before I can resume publicity but though the Chiswick Press demands over one third of my total resources merely to release my stock, I shrink not; nor shall I, should the next step strip my shirt from my back.
Hope's anchor has dragged in quicksand; Faith's compass has been lightning-wrecked; Love's engines have exhausted all my fuel. But to my oath I stand; I am the Captain, I'll stay by the ship. Alastor, Wanderer of the Waste—how close the legend of the 'Flying Dutchman'!
Make Port—who cares for land that loves the Sea? 'Afloat in the aethyr, o my god, my God!' 'Is there not joy ineffable in this aimless winging ?' Ay, though I burst my heart with running, let there be neither goal nor guerdon! I've watched the Bear all summer; steady he turns about the Pole. In March he hung above the sea where the cliff rears stark from Cefalu; tonight he glitters across the neck of our hillside. Does he ask How, or Why? He is a God, the Seven-in-One and One-in-Seven; and He goes.
I am the Beast; I am the Word of the Aeon; I am Thelema. I am the Sixfold One Extended, the Sun Six Hundred and Six Tens and Units Six and the Formula of Force is Eleven-in-One and One-in-Eleven, that is Four Hundred and Eighteen; and the Lord of the Aeon is Horus-Harpocrates, One-in-Two and Two-in-One, in his Name Ra-Hoor-Khuit; and the Herald of the Aeon is the Word thereof, being a God as He is also mine own Holy Guardian Angel, Aiwaz, who hath His Nature, Will, and Love, and the Way and the Weapon, Thelema, Agape, M***, and M*****, that are all Ninety and Three, the triple thought enfolding Thirty One, wherein is Naught made One-in-Three and Three-in-One, running and returning even from LA that is not to AL that is, for a Key of all these Gates of Going, and for a sign unto the Scarlet Woman my concubine inasmuch as her name openeth with LA, also to me The Beast whose name hath AL upon its forehead.
Tonight I am sure, sure with most utter surety, sure in my soul and sealed by my mind, that so, not otherwise at all, these things must be, that so they are, amen without lie, and amen of amen.
11.15 p.m. I note that I did not investigate The Word of the Equinox as I had taken no CCXX or Yi to Naples. Did so on October 1. I will now ask an Oracle from Aiwaz in this lull in the 'Oh, so much!' typhoon: a direct message to minds steadfast through drum-fire of Disasters. I get the beginning (above the title) of Chapter V of Liber LXV. This means that the whole chapter is a Message for the moment.
1—[‘A worthless mind in a worthless body.’] 2—[Crowley describes ‘the Miracle’ on 1 February 1920.]
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