Aleister Crowley Diary Entry Tuesday, 26 July 1921
1.5 A.M. I have written a long letter to the child of my bowels, 777 [Charles Stansfeld Jones]. I put the honour of the A∴A∴ as to money in his hands by enclosing to him my letters to Mrs. [Mathilde C.] Ford and the Chicago Tribune. I warn him about his slackness in discipline and Qabalah and the envious rancour of F.T. Lodge [Frank T. Lodge].
1.55 A.M. I have been revising the "Mark of the Beast" ritual, but am not wholly satisfied. The doxology. "Glory be to the Phallus, and to the Sun, and to the Great Wild Beast; as it was etc."
I want to write a poem proclaiming the Confessions of every Star-Soul.
Nuith! whose Body is Space And the infinite Stars thereof, I set the flame of my face To seek Thy laughter of Love; I race to Thine eager embrace Nuith! Thy Star! I surrender My soul to Thy splendour.
Hadit! abiding intense In every Shrine, I am now And here nor spirit nor sense But wholly and utterly thou By Thy virile violence, Hadit! by the whirling wonder That brake my being asunder!
Ra-Hoor-Khuit! I adore Thee Thou crowned, thou conquering Child Nuith to Hadith that bore Thee Of Force and Fire in the wild World, Death dancing before Thee Ra-Hoor-Khuit, Life leaping after With Lust and with Laughter!
Aiwaz! angel of awe, Thy sword, plunged sheer to the hilt In the world's heart, flashed Thy Law Terrible: Do what thou wilt. I leapt up free as I saw, Aiwaz, Thy Light, and heard The Truth, Thy Word!
Hail to the Great Wild Beast. The man that mastered the hour; Hail to him, passionate priest, Who uttered that word of power, Calling the vultures to feast The carcase Christ to devour! Thou Great Wild Beast, Io Paean!
Thou Word made Flesh of the Aeon
Babalon! leering and swaying Shrunkenly slack on the saddle, His strumpet of scarlet, braying Thy blasphemies, naked astraddle Thy Beast, sang Thou of the slaying, Babalon, of the Saints, and the spilth In Thy cup, of folly and filth!
Whores of The Beast, all hail! Hail, from the first, his wife Rose the sot to the Stale Strumpet that brought to life His son, to Leah whose Grail Whores of the Beast, brims with thicker With lewder and bloodier liquor!
Parsival, hail! From the cave Of the harlot hypocrisy-plastered Hilarion, whose gluttony gave Her bed to the Beast did the bastard Come forth the Pure Fool. Thou shalt save, Parsival, the whole world from its blindness, By simplicity, courage, and kindness!
Ye God-men, ye stars of Nuith, In your orbits that revel and roll, The Law of Thelema is sweet And strong to the swing of the soul. With the Word of The Beast do I greet God-men, He hath freed of fatality, Aware what ye are in reality!
5.18 A.M. This is not quite the hymn I meant. I want a short lilting epigrammatic line, with simple rimes.
Nuith! Hadith! Ra-Hoor-Khuit! I hail Thee, Queen Of Space unseen And the infinite Stars of it. I hail Thee, heart Of all that art, Thou secret source Of every force.
There is no spot Where thou art not, Thou, unextended, In bliss art blended, With Her One Space In every place At every time, That love sublime With every act Creates a fact. Each separate stress Serves Truth to express, Some element Of its extent A some new star All things that are Themselves, that know Themselves, forthshow One facet of The diamond Love, Express their norm— How infinite form Its Bodiless Blank Nothingness May find and fit With Infinite And Formless Being, Each act agreeing To its projection In imperfection
Ra-Hoor-Khuit! With huge hard beat That most intense Vast vivid sense And spirit of The hoarded love Of Space and Seed Devised the Deed That brought Thee forth Thou ravener of Wrath And Vengeance! Wild And Wanton Child Delighting Thee In cruelty And lust! Thou Son Of All and None Of Horror, hurled Through Heaven in ravage! Spew spouts of savage Spume of lust— Thy nature must! Art thou then God? This period Of earth Thine aeon? Cannon thy paean, Murder Thy pleasure, Madness the measure Of virtue, want Thy nourishment? Thy strange High Priest The Great Wild Beast, Lion and Snake As he is, may make Mirth of his dupes Before he swoops To gulp us raw. "Love is the Law, Love under will" He smiles, and still Some slaver drips From his lewd lips— I care not: Thou Art master now, Child conquering And crowned, our King Our ruler still Whether we will Or no. Yea, more I choose to adore This God of Force And Fire; my course Is His; unjust Pitiless lust. I shall not swerve His soul to serve, For in my lust Of sin I trust Truth. Mine own heart Is art and part Of Nature; she Can never be (Though doubt may dream) In Truth's supreme Analysis In aught amiss.
I rise to greet Ra-Hoor-Khuit!
Aiwaz! I heard Thy wonder-word Upon the earth Whose name is worth Will; and thereunder Love; and that thunder Of speech that seals The lightning deed That sows the seed Of Life and Breath In the soil of death: And that most vast The first and last All-comprehending, Without ending Or beginning. All the spinning, Of the curse, The Universe —Wiser, wider Than its Spider!
8.0. A.M. I will NOT go on with this damned thing; and I am more certain than ever that cocaine is no good under any conditions unless in very small doses and very few of them. This "prolonging the agony" simply transforms me into a dull prosy prolix word-cobbler. It was good up to 1.5 A.M., I having stopped cocaine at 12; and not having taken it at all regularly though I started about 4 P.M. I should have stopped dead with fuck. But the fascination—a quite unreasonable thing—keeps me going back to it; even now I want a sniff, though I'm simply angry that I ever started. Shit!
Slacking.
|