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Aleister Crowley Diary Entry Sunday, 3 June 1923
Die Sol
Midnight. The Adoration to Khephra. I have just returned from the City of Tunis with Alostrael [Leah Hirsig]: on the journey I made considerations of how best to help such minds as those of J. H. Doughty & Walter Ferris—very different in all respects, but alike in the emotional refusal to investigate the premises on which the Theory of Magick is based. Ferris is too far away at present, & mentally too undeveloped to undertake any exact analysis, while Doughty1is perhaps too unreasonably antipathetic: but I should like them to answer a series of questions—somewhat as follows:—(I don’t know why this stops like this!)
2.50 a.m. Meditation—Ethyl [Ether]. I was considering the question of mental analysis in methods of discovering the True Will & so on; & I saw the whole question of making up one’s mind about anything as depending on books of reference, dossiers, & such things, & doing so more & more as thought became more complex. I then realized how utterly unsatisfactory a thing like the Sammasati meditation (above all things) would be if it were done by the help of such books, & even the intervention of scholars. It then suddenly burst upon me that this as the real reason why Tahuti is the inventor of language, reading & writing, is properly identified as The Devil, defining that person as the enemy of mankind. For without him the human mind would have been forced to develop on true evolutionary principles by creating for itself living faculties to do the work which writing pretends to do & cannot do because it is dead. (The creative word, the word of the poet, is divine, not devilish, because its substance has no importance. Its value consists in the effect that it produces on the human mind. Notice the terrific power of a word like Thelema, even when casually proclaimed in a private conversation. I might almost say ‘look at the fuss it makes’. I cannot say oft-hand whether ultimately writing will prove a benefit to mankind or no. But our chief reason for thinking so is that it has apparently speeded up evolution. We had not the patience to develop naturally, in other words, we were led astray by the ‘lust of result’. But however this may be, the importance of the meditation consists in the discovery of the stark fact of the identity of Thoth & the Principle of Evil. Note also that the Fourth Power of the Sphinx’ is incompatible with Speech. This may mean that Silence is necessary to correct Evolution. Note also to make further consideration as to how the above remarks bear on the question of the curse of the Grade of Magus, & explain why the instinct of mankind irrationally but unanimously recognizes the Magus when he appears as the personification of Evil. The problem is the most important one which the philosopher can possibly investigate. In order to justify Tahuti it would be necessary to show that the invention of Speech & its corollaries will prove ultimately advantageous. The obviously strongest argument is that by saving ourselves trouble of the kind involved, we set free energy to develop our species in other directions. But that is a mere supposition. It may be compared with the argument of Butler about the invention of machinery. As soon as we eliminate the idea of saving time, it loses most of its force & at the best it is possible to reply that nothing whatever can compensate for an error in the direction of evolution. The Law of Thelema itself makes this clear. One can in any case understand why Qabalists made Chokmah 6 the first deviation from perfection, or perhaps I should say, the first error in the Path of Perfectibility, for it is the first replacement of living tissue by a succedaneum. 3.18 a.m.
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