|
Aleister Crowley Diary Entry Monday, 28 May 1923
Die Luna
12.44 a.m. Worked at Qabalah copying most of yesterday when awake.
4.30. a.m. Slept early but woke sweating—had dreamt of Austin Harrison, an entirely rational dream, he just as incomprehensibly stupid and mean and inhuman as in waking life.
9.50 [a.m.] Woke again at 8 but couldn’t rouse Lea [Leah Hirsig]; so slept till 8.40 when I woke with a very bad attack of dyspnoea: it has taken me an hour to get into even a tolerable state—heroin and Ethyl [Ether] alternating. I am quite convinced by the way that the heroin ‘craving’ has nothing to do with wile: in a bout of dyspnoea one is simply reaching out for relief almost out of one’s mind, and quite so as far as ability to answer a question yes or no is concerned. I was really quite right in comparing the ‘craving’ to breathe with that alleged of heroin and cocaine. The facts have been wrongly stated: it should never have been to accustom oneself to repeated doses of heroin (or whatever it is) produces a condition in which the drug is necessary to the vital process. It is a cruel comment on life that I should have had to take such pains to find out so obvious a fact for certain. All moral implications in any such matter are thus never more than indirect.
3.0 [p.m.] Reading Freud’s Essays on Sex, I note that children should be taught from the start to criticize their teachers. The teacher should therefore tell the child something wrong, tell him that it is wrong, and get him to find out where the error lies. The history of the mistakes made by mankind in the past, as to chemistry, astronomy, religion, etc, should be emphasized, and the way in which the truth came to light made very plain.
3.15. I remember my father rebuking my mother—at Red Hill, i.e. when I was between 6 and 10—and I asked, ‘Don't you love mama?’ I wonder what Freud would make of that incident—to me it is quite ‘natural’, an obvious intellectual criticism without subconscious roots of importance.
Ethyl Oxide Dictated by 666 to 31-666-31 [Leah Hirsig]. Marsa Plage, Tunis, 28 May.
4.20 p.m. Has Magick any connection with Image?
4.46. The mingled flavour of Ethyl and Chloride of Potash tablet is disagreeable to me. The observation may be vitiated by the conditions of the experiment. It is at least probably unique and the question remains what would Henri Poincare say about the desirability of selecting it.
There are always a number of things involved in the perception of any one thing. It must therefore obviously be part of the postulate of infinity that mere multiplication of a finite does not produce an infinite. But also notice this infinite process of multiplying must be equally unable to produce an infinite. Therefore you can’t get to an infinite anyhow, either on the one supposition or the other. When I say this infinite process of multiplying, I mean this analysis in which, having shewn that any apparently single perception involves a large number of diverse factors, each of those factors must be similarly resolvable. Therefore each single perception involves an infinity, and yet, it does not, according to the postulate as above demarcated. I think this antimony the most important of all that have been stated because it involves the debated question itself.
5.30 p.m. I have doubted as to whether I am such a great Magician after all, even while smiling at the doubts of people who seem to expect me to bewitch cattle. I have just discovered the complete answer to both of us. I possess the power of causing spiritual crises. This is of course the only thing that ever happened. Produce your crisis in your man and the rest follows in due course. Note that I can do this in my absence. People instinctively recognize this power in me and are scared. John Bull is perfectly right. Furthermore, owing to the unfamiliarity of people with the Force, and even my own uncertainty as to the details of what will happen, accidents are inevitable. But as soon as it is recognised generally that this Force exists and people come to me for political or commercial success, as they now go to Christian Scientists to get rid of headaches, the confidence of the client and its reaction on me will combine to produce the happiest results. What seems to be wanted is a campaign of advertising to say that I can bring about whatever is required; and of course I need not do more than talk in the most ordinary way with the client. The miracle will happen: that is, it will happen most of the time, though sometimes nothing will occur, and sometimes disaster. It will do no harm in the long run to let people know that the process is dangerous. All big forces are so, and all big enterprises involve loss of life. Do not conclude from the above that Faith would be the motive power of success, though absence of Faith naturally operates as an inhibition.
In fact, the above analysis should serve as some indication of the real function of Faith in such an operation.
The problem is how to go to work to exploit my Power, now that I have at last discovered the conditions of using it. I am wondering whether it would be advisable to fix my energy by means of a talisman or formula.
The client should have an interview with me. He need not necessarily tell me what he wants, but if I agree to help him, he then sees Alostrael [Leah Hirsig] and tells her what it is. An oath is to be exacted pledging the client to secrecy as to what his object is, under penalty of failing to attain it.
(Later after 666 had read over the above, he added the following notes. 31-666-31.)
Later. It is, obviously, of the most vital importance to work ‘without lust of result’ and to make ‘no difference’, etc., otherwise we should get tied up with all sorts of complex magical rituals and fail from anxiety and doubts as to responsibility—ethoc genus omne.
In fact, the real secret of the success of this plan is that I am compelled by its technique to confine to imagining (cf. the Coué technique) that the various things to which I have assented take place as naturally, without effort beyond the mere gesture of command, as in the case of the Centurian in the Gospel ‘I say . . . to my Do this: and he doeth it’. I see at last what Coué means (if he does mean it) by avoiding wishing that the event contemplated will occur: to do so is to throw the whole machinery out of gear. I realized last night—in that nightmare about Austin Harrison—that the old attitude of imposing my will on nature is suicidal. My Work, since coming here, is already much better than it has been for years because I have simply been unable to make a fool of myself about it. It has flowed freely through me. I am amazed to find 1500-2000 words (Leah’s estimate) already copied and counted in the course of the mere process of digging out a few equations. The best results come as by-products, so to speak. Logos Puthios, which I had repeatedly grazed while ‘working on’ the text, came naturally as soon as I put the work away and went for a stroll. So too tonight I was just jotting down any words likely to be connected with ‘success’ (Success is your proof) and ran right into Pallas Athene = 418 and Herinus = 773, neither of which have any connection with either words, ideas, or numbers on which I was fixing my attention. Moral: attend to nothing, and everything will happen: c.f. Tao Teh King.
Again, I noticed the other night that I was always doing stunts to secure my fame. Indeed ‘the most infinity of noble minds’! for I have long since given an incalculable cohort of biographers enough material for endless gossip. I saw my silliness so clearly that I really did succeed in putting all such nonsense completely out of my head—and the result of that, I can scarce doubt, is the revelation of this new Technique of Magick this afternoon—that, too, while l was with Ethyl asking for nothing more than any accessory details of my new Business Scheme. Note, by the way, that the ‘Faith’ must be ‘perfect’ (without lust of result), e.g. I say, ‘Money is coming in shoals’. I must not go and blow in a lot to prove to myself that it will do so. I must also be careful not to formulate elaborate plans—which I should be sure to watch and so to spoil—but to work ‘as if I had Omnipotence at my command and Eternity at my disposal’ in a far more thorough sense than l have ever done. l must, in a word, resume what l call my Undergraduate Attitude—the world at my feet, nothing to bother about, no need to hurry, though doing any work as well as Ican—‘huge joy, for the Work's sake to work’.
My errors on this point have tied me up badly, as shewn by even such tests as my sexual life: in the last day or so this has been clearing up.
I now see, too, how it is that I have been more impotent than the least competent sorcerers: I have created a much more impassable barrier to my own will than they can ever conceive. Now that is breaking down, my success will be vertiginous—and I must be on my guard against my Corpse reviving!
|