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Aleister Crowley Diary Entry Sunday, 20 May 1923
Die Sol, S[anctus] S[piritus]
11. p.m. A rather bad night, yesterday, due to my own mismanagement. Went a longish walk this afternoon, and a stroll half an hour ago. New moon seen. Delightful. Feel very well. Took an hour’s nap between 2.30 and 4; it was rather hot, and I had not had my due portion of repose. Dictated ‘Globular Electricity for the Hag [The Confessions of Aleister Crowley], and made a correction of Anny Ringler episode.
11.30 p.m. 1 = 1 means:
The addition of n to both sides of the equation does not alter the fact that (m plus 2)—(m plus 1) = 1. (e.g. if 7 plus l1 = 8, 27 plus 1 = 28, or words more or less to that effect!)
I begin to remember the forgotten entry of 19 May with Ethyl [Ether]. Something of this sort. (See Ethyl Oxide Records for full record.)
a) I should be [re]served for the task of training students who have undergone preliminary initiation at Cefalu.
b) Suppose I found myself a wash-out and disappointed them.
c) Suppose I found this was due to my experiments with h [Heroin] and b [cocaine].
d) Suppose I took a regular cure.
e) Suppose that the cure left me ‘a mere shadow of my former self’.
f) Why drag out a useless life, dishonouring my reputation, discrediting my methods, etc?
g) Extend this idea to all (‘mutiles de la guerre’—de la vie) [‘The wounded of the war’—of life].
h) Here is another argument against the Black Brothers, against the idea of resistance to change in general, against the static conception of the Ego etc.
i) Note that a man is in no case valuable for what he is, save in so far as that is understood as the measure of what he can do.
j) Suicide should not be taken as an indication of failure (in such a case) but of the (proper) determination to be done with a worn-out tool, or to make way for new ones, or (perhaps) to get a new one oneself.
Such were the main lines of the meditation so far as I can remember it. The point of it was (I think) to prepare the minds of Thelemites for some such apparent disaster. The main cause of my ‘forgetting it’ was sheer cowardice about recording it, and desperate horror lest it should happen from causes beyond my power to control or failure of will on my part to avert it.
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