|
Aleister Crowley Diary Entry
Friday, 25 May 1923
Die Venus
12.1 a.m. Getting ready to sleep. I note that Freud's Three Essays on Sex. Now I admit that ‘perversions’ (especially coprophilia, etc.) in normal healthy people are idealizations (purifications) of the sexual instinct. I have long ago seen this, and even elaborated a technique—see my Magical [19]20-1. He also justifies me in presuming hysteria—a pathological weakness-in all people who refuse to analyse the sexual problem.
12.25 a.m. Will go to sleep with Ethyl [Ether], turning my thoughts simply and sacredly towards Aiwass ‘without lust of result’. So long as I make myself one with Him. His thought will infiltrate my consciousness, and determine my Orbit without calculations on my part.
3.32 p.m. I recognized from early childhood that all physical pleasures were connected with sex, and therefore it seemed to me pure hypocrisy to act on any other [principle] that the orthodox Christian Mystic theory that all pleasure of all kinds is ‘evil’ and therefore to be enjoyed and used as a sacrament. Freud rather confirms this theory: which is very well, for man will be freed at last to throw over '’Restriction’. ‘Do what thou wilt'’ furnishes the maximum of pleasure, despite its apparent austerity; for pleasure is the Physical accompaniment of the free fulfilment of the functions.
9.15 p.m. Have not felt very fit today: but put in a good 2 1/2 hours with the Hag [The Confessions of Aleister Crowley]—the New Orleans Ordeal.[1]
10.40 p.m. A short spell with the Shew-Stone and Ethyl.
1—At this point in the manuscript there is inserted the horoscope of Ninette Shumway’s third child, who was born at Cefalu at 7.26 a.m. on the 19 May 1923. The horoscope is headed ‘Isabella Fraux’·(the Baronessa Ila Calce), together with the names of the goddesses, ‘Isis, Selene, Hecate, Artemis, Diana, Hera, Jane’, at the foot of the horoscope, presumably all alternate Christian names! Interestingly enough the Baron la Calce was Crowley'’s Cefalu landlord: the implication is obvious.
|