Aleister Crowley Diary Entry

Saturday, 31 March 1923

Midnight. Adoration. Have decided to take [Heroin] at once, though not in actual need, so as to stave off possible thoughts during the night (1), and have the big fight during daylight. [Heroin].

Slept instantly—without mantrams even.

1.40 Awake from comfortable dreams: some sweating, not bad.

2.20 Instead of sleeping again at once as I expected, I developed a nasty asthmatic attack.

2.20 Better.

3.0 [Heroin] (2) on same ground as (1).

3.20 This is all very well, but I have succeeded too nobly! I have produced an euphoria, in which I am wakeful and full of lofty thoughts and ambitions.

4.0. Slept.

8.40 Woke fairly fit. [Heroin] (3).

9.0. Eggs, toast, coffee. Laudanum.

9.15 Fine large soft motion.

11.30 Have had a nap on the terrace. 14 drops Laud[anum]. Two [doses] [Cocaine].

1.0 Lunch. 10 [drops] Laud[anum].

1.45 Enema not much use. 2 [doses] [Cocaine].

2.5 10 [drops] Laud[anum].

2.35 [Heroin] (4).

4.15 Tea, Cake.

4.30 11 [drops] Laud[anum].

5.0. Bed.

5.40 Fed up: think I'll take (4) now instead of at 9 as I first meant to do. [Heroin]. Instant euphoria.

7.35 11 [drops] Laud[anum].

8.15 Have had kidney omelette, toast, chocolate. Feel rotten. [Cocaine] to keep going—carry on somehow—till 12. The idea is to take 20 or 25 [drops] Laud[anum] when this [Cocaine] wears off, hoping to sleep till past midnight. I feel that this (5) and (4) stage is critical: once I reach (3) I propose to stay there for some days increasing the gap from Curfew at say 4 P.M. to say 11 A.M. (That [Cocaine] revived me marvellously!) with Reveille at say 9 A.M. All today nose-running has been strong and persistent; there have been one or two severe fits of sneezing, also attempts at spasms of coughing. I shot a pariah dog after lunch, and dictated two letters, one long and important. Fine weather, but chill breeze: now a cold night.

8.55 [Cocaine], the last having worked so well—but I don't want to take the Laudanum before 9.30.

9.30 15 [drops] Laud[anum].

10.12 Can't sleep: I am undoubtedly very bad: yet I feel as if the crisis were psychic not physical.

10.25 Traces of [Cocaine] to carry on—can't read, or think.

Note. Love under Will is exactly Gravitation. Now (Einstein) this is 4 co-ordinates: Height = Fire Breadth and thickness = Water and Air. Time = Earth.) There can be no fixed axes in Nuit (infinite range of possibilities) therefore all individual equations are ultimately meaningless. All we can do is to compare individuals in terms of postulated axes. Now the Four Dimensions merely fix one's physical position: which has little or no bearing on one's Nature, except as it determines the vicinity—and so the observability—of various Events. E.g. I am in Lat 52° N Long 0° on the Earth's surface in 1887: that is, I see the Jubilee as a child—which makes me loathe Queen Victoria and Public Rejoicings. Change Long 0° to Long 150° E and I miss this particular fulfilment-reaction. But my neighbour, with the same equation bar fractions of a second, delights in it all, and becomes a patriot, M.P. etc. We differ utterly in Other Dimensions. He is close to the axis "Public Opinion": I so far that I can scarcely see it, or even know that it exists. Thus his senses, physically like mine, tell him the secrets of an election campaign: mine merely clamour to be withdrawn from the offensive centre. Repeated acts of Love under Will result in each Star gravitating to a part of the Sky where its Inertia is maxim. i.e. where its distance from what it loves is least, from what it hates greatest: since the attraction of gravitation is identical for all Star alike, its fear of being forced to meet what it loathes diminishes as the square of the distance. It also forms a nucleus of friends; as they approach, the gravitational power of the group tends to increase. This policy indicates the idiosyncrasy of the Star: it is evidently proof of imperfection, and the result is to break up the homogeneity and the regular distribution of the Galaxies. Cliques are formed, each with its own characteristics common to its component Stars. Each Star makes for itself a limited world of its own clique, ignoring and keeping at a distance all other cliques. In the neighbourhood of such cliques even Light, normally rectilinear, is dragged out of its course; all such masses tend therefore to distort Truth. Yet one dare not say that a Star is "wrong" to act thus: it is its Will to take its true (relative) place, and secure the maximum Inertia. But one may and must say that the measure of the Perfection of the Nature of any Star is its approximation to the Norm of Nuit; i.e. the number of possibilities of "Love under Will" which it demands for its fulfilment, their strength, balance, and harmony, its capacity to apprehend its Galaxy as well as itself and its fellow-stars, its recognition of, and wish to understand and to enter into relation with , other Galaxies, however distant and alien, its realization that the geometry and dynamics of the whole system is but a series of equations of Zero, a symbolic statement of the properties of a Continuum, and its consciousness that Self means only the sum of its reactions with not-Self so that Perfection of Self implies total Extinction of Self, since any individual relation must be partial and therefore imperfect. The smallest souls, then, are those which gravitate [continued on 1 April 1923]

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