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Aleister Crowley Diary Entry Saturday, 11 March 1922
2.20 A.M. 4. Medium [dose of Heroin].
A prolonged spell of very violent breathing—since midnight or thereabouts. No cough: I think the Luminal has stopped that. Some subjective cold: great restlessness: entire recrudescence of violent passions, such as sexuality, vengeance etc.
2.26 Still unquiet.
5. Medium [dose of Heroin].
I could have endured the discomfort easily enough: my yielding was largely influenced by considerations of a critical interview tonight, at which I ought to appear in my glory. The luck of years may depend on half an hour: such is the argument urged by the heroin. Doubtless, if I were a millionaire Duke, it would find some alternative argument: however, I am breathing quietly enough, which is a physical fact, and even a faked physical fact is a p[hysical] f[act].
2.34 Small [dose of Heroin]—to finish the job.
3.45 A.M. Medium [dose of Heroin]. I have been in a very singular state; the mind filled with exciting (mostly erotic) images, of a kind quite unfamiliar and normally distasteful; there is also a velleity [?] to get up, go out, and do various absurd things, such as my good sense tells me would prove boring, disappointing, and even worse. For some reason or other I have a profound conviction that this state is unconnected with any question of drugs, but is rather a creative schema of imagery relative to my interview of tonight aforesaid. I am (so to speak) rehearsing possible scenes: and the Unconscious, in order to do this, is preparing me by forcing me to imagine various very disgusting arrangements—mostly quite impracticable, by the way—in comparison with which the actual proposal which I am contemplating will not seem so hideous. I shall therefore be able to urge it with apparent sincerity. The above explanation smells of trickery; but there are numerous side issues which confirm it. For instance, some of the pictures presented are pleasant alternatives—as if Hamlet, loath to kill the King, conceived the idea of asking for some political mission which would involve his absence from Elsinore, yet—unknown to his uncle—enable him to entwine an intrigue like that of Malcolm and Donalbain in England. I have gone at some length into this, because of its psychological importance. It is easy for the Brute with the Experience to say that the sole test of the purport of any train of thought soever is the plain physical fact of its issue in taking or not taking the forbidden drug. It is also easy to ignore what is not superficial on any subject soever. And at least I am sufficiently subtle: I note, for one thing, that the renewal of my record of observation creates the record anew. It is as if I wished to justify my whole course of conduct by emphasizing the value to mankind of the observations evoked by this opportunity (My whole life proves an intense conviction that my most trivial thought might be of tremendous import). I might even suggest that I have deliberately put myself into the power of heroin in order to experience the states of mind thereby induced, that I voluntarily embrace insanity and death—if it should come to that—because I feel that my diaries of the last two years have exhausted the possibilities of normal consciousness. I laugh scornfully at the thought that I am trying to make myself out to be a master in stating the above surmise: for I am really interested in the universe, and really beyond the illusion of self, either for profit or loss. The perusal of the criminal trash of Charles Baudouin,[1] which has poisoned my last 24 hours, is possibly an influential factor in determining my present occupation. He deliberately advocates a biological regression, the resumption of a feminine faculty which we have outgrown, the cultivation of intellectual idleness, the renunciation of the Will, conscious and unconscious. In brief, he has formulated the Creed of the vilest Black Magic. (His whole argument is based on the fact that undeveloped people do not understand the use of the Will.) He has thus aroused in me the deepest resentment. I feel like a card-player who is urged to cheat on the ground that by doing so one wins more frequently. This reaction of indignation, intensified by his prostitution of science, was at first formless because I wrapped myself in a mantle of contempt, but it rankled and a series of vague violent impulses converged ultimately, so that I became aware of the actual abomination which nauseated my nobility.
The result of realizing the nature of my abhorrence has been to arouse me to express it in the above unconcealed terms; which being done, I find myself completely free from the complex ideas which kept my mind in motion, and an intense somnolence overcomes me. The latter state is as unequivocally overwhelming as the former. All thoughts relative to my actual preoccupation with the "heroin-habit" have been swept so far out to sea: I feel no doubt that the whole night has been an episode of a strictly accidental character, due to the mention of Baudoiun's book in Captain Townshend's letter on the one hand, and on the other to the ostentatious display of a copy at the shop which I visited with the intention of buying a mere detective story to amuse me during lunch two days ago.
4.44 P.M. A small dose [of Heroin]—to show my indifference to these subtleties more than anything—a final pipe, and a few moments of meditation on the Word of the Aeon: "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law."
6.27 I have enjoyed a highly concentrated Invocation of Aiwass my Holy Guardian Angel; and I have been in some ill-defined way assured of great good fortune about to come to me, that I may be empowered so to pronounce His Word Thelema [Greek] and that it may prevail in the World as the Aeon demands. Also, I am aware of a singularly powerful current of force in myself. For one thing, the really infernal noises of all kinds which make this hotel a "House of Little Ease" seem to have no effect in causing me annoyance, as they usually do. How much of this is due to Luminal, and how much to Magick, I cannot calculate. The fact is however undeniable that I am neither tired nor sleepy.
1.30 P.M. However, I have had a sleep. 7 1.2 Bed. (This is "on the way to the crisis": whichever way things go, I can foreswear sack and live cleanly).
2.55 P.M. Wrote long reply to Whore. Medium [dose of Heroin].
3.12 Wire from A.G. [Aimée Gouraud] putting me off till Monday.
1—[Charles Baudouin (1893-1963) was a French-Swiss psychoanalyst.]
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