Aleister Crowley Diary Entry

Monday, 4 June 1923

 

 

Die Moon

 

 

3.34 p.m. Slept well. Suppose I were to say: I could not get the visions of the 16 Sub-Elements (in the Sahara 1910-11, E.V.) because I had no KYFI [Hashish]. Would that be absurd? I think it absurd. That is where my skepticism comes in all the time: although a professional Magician I cannot take Magic seriously, i.e. in this sort of way, & yet I am absolutely sincere & also, I have great & undeniable experience of the virtue of correspondences, therefore I work with them continually & find unqualified success. Yet I can’t persuade myself to take the proper measures in advance for securing any given result. (I don’t know what the above entry is about: I am delightfully delighted by the delight of delighting in delights which are so delightful that they delight me exceedingly.)

 

2.55 Note that the idee fixé is the Resistance to Change: it is intellectual Death, Insanity, the condition of Conan Doyle, the first clause in the Oath of the Black Brothers. The Law of Thelema is the Essence of Life, because of its perfect elasticity.

 

3.36 I have not put down—Freud once more—several notable thoughts in recent meditations. For instance, ‘the chief of sinners is the chief of saints’. I got the intimation that I should be exceedingly welcome in the ranks of the enemy on account of my importance as the Incarnation of Evil. I know of course that this is an impudent illusion. The meditation was suggested, I think, by a sentence of Anatole France. ‘Il etait vieux et n’avait plus d’espoirqu’en Dieu’. That is evidently what happens if one fails to get rid of the ‘lust of result’. I noticed the correctness of the psychology of ‘conversion’; that one’s past is really wiped out, one can take the position that on account of youth & folly one has never thought seriously about one’s soul. Such at least are the imbecile arguments advanced by the people who are at present engaged in attacking me. They tell me too that this is my last chance to put myself right with God. They recall to me all sorts of psychological facts about my past. It is all part of a plan for making my excuses to an offended Deity. They refuse to be banished by the obvious barrage that the whole thing is superstitious rubbish. They urge with real intelligence that it is not rubbish since it possesses moral value however intellectually ridiculous, & therefore complies with the conditions of poetic truth such as I myself have been at pains to establish. They point out to me that I am a perfectly eligible candidate as King of Puritans. They show me how easy it would be to interpret every incident of my career in this light. It is perfectly true, moreover, that I am legitimately the King of the Puritans, that the Law of Thelema is in fact the most perfect statement of Puritanism that has ever been promulgated.

     

They also prove to me with the greatest wealth of detail (I am really rather ashamed that I have already forgotten it) that the Book of the Law is after all the perfect expression of my sub-conscious self & therefore much more truly my work than anything else that I have ever written. They minimise the value of the argument about the authorship of the Book derived from the secret Qabalistic correspondences & the coincident of external events. Of course they do not throw any doubt upon my sincerity; their idea seems to be that I am self-deluded through a lack of the sense of proportion; this being my most sensitive point. The attack is venomous. It is intertwined with the attack on Alostrael [Leah Hirsig] (though they left her alone last night). If they could get me to distrust her, even in thought, the rest would be easy.

     

The above presumably explains Chap: III, 43-44-45. Her moral character must be such that the gesture of sticking to her is sufficient guarantee of my refusal to yield to temptations of this sort. If she were to become a ‘reformed character’ I should be able to enter with her into the sheepfold. That is why it is so vitally important that she should play the Goat. The Qabalistic proof of this is probably to be found in the word Αιγυπτος in which her secret name, which has the value of 93, & the prefix AIG are combined in the same way as EHEIEH & Jehovah in Hexagrammaton.

 

4.15 p.m. (We quit to add up all the words we could find in the dictionary but found nothing of the slightest interest-so far.) 4.33 p.m.

 

7.15 p.m. Vision (during Hag [The Confessions of Aleister Crowley]).

     

Every unexpected noise suggests to a tyrant that somebody is going to stick a knife him at the very least. In fact, the more innocuous the noise, the more frightfully fulminating the disaster to which it is preliminary. Most people do not realize what it means to be a tyrant or whatever the subject of conversation is, in this directly imaginative way. In fact, it is only because my own nerves have been remorselessly analysed that I was able to make this observation. It came about as follows: I was lying prone with my face buried in my pillows, taking Ether. I was interrupted by several noises. The thought came to me that it was not necessary to stir to discover their source. I was certain that they were, so to speak, friendly noises. I then thought how very different it would be if I had no such certainty, as in the case of a tyrant.

     

No doubt imagination of this sort is at the bottom of all good literature.

     

The author has the gift of bringing home to the reader some such perception. This last thought came to me as a reproach. It occurred to me that my idea about the tyrant was very obvious & commonplace. This is no doubt the case, & the importance of this entry consists in the fact that it is a particularly perfect example of analysis-I doubt whether I have got any other quite so completely satisfactory. I do not think that I have left any point unexplained. At the same time, I do not wish to whittle away altogether the value of my vision of the nervous condition of the average tyrant. The power of imagination involved, the ability to represent to one’s self in detail any given situation is extremely valuable, being in fact the basis, not only of art, but of reason itself as enabling one to state the premises of any sorites. Note that this power, which exists in varying degrees in every individual, is enormously enhanced by the proper use of Ethyl Oxide. The excess of this power naturally results in the inability to frame a higher synthesis from the elements thereby supplied, even if one can regard one’s self as safe from the cardinal danger of being completely distracted by the flow of images, overwhelmed by their multiplicity, & unable to use them as what they are—mere glyph-letters of the alphabet of the language of life. (The above should throw much light on the structure of the mind, especially in the matter of what is said about glyphs in The Psychology of Hashish. When I wrote that essay I felt that I was failing to interpret what I had seen, & it is really not till now that I have become completely conscious of that meaning. Incidentally I have quite serious doubts as to whether I shall continue to understand myself as I do now in an hour’s time, but I have a certain confidence that I have succeeded in explaining myself fairly well in the course of the above paragraph. This state of mind should be especially interesting, for it is very familiar to me. It has in fact been my established method to try to write down what I may call my illuminated thoughts at the time of thinking, well aware that their significance will, to a great extent, escape me on my return to normal consciousness, but also imbued with a conviction that the record will help me to remember what I have experienced & so to educate me; also that it will form the first childish attempts at a language which shall ultimately serve to enable superior thinkers to communicate with each other.

     

It is amusing to note that the whole of the above entry is a digression, too wide to be incorporated in the text, from a foot-note to a passage in brackets in the Autohagiography which I was dictating. 7.50 p.m.

 

11.17 p.m. After a serene starlight stroll. I wonder how far my vision of the tyrant’s fears of unexplained noises was made actual by my own experience of nights when any unexpected sound might be due to an enemy—savage, wild animal, avalanche, or the like.

 

12 .12 a.m. ‘That’s a paradox. He’s really stationary, though apparently being moved in space: I, though still, am in fact changing.’

     

This has something to do with a moving staircase on which men are being hoisted—a step a year. I objected; insisted on being an onlooker. I violently repudiated any connection with my body. Reproached with being a Black Brother, in consequence of this, I replied as above. This is important, not only in itself, but in reference to the subject which led to the ‘vision-metaphor’ of the man on the escalator. This, I think vaguely, is connected with the question ‘Who is it that observes?’ . . . I’m very confused about all this.

     

Note: I had been overwhelmed with sleep about 11.40 p.m. & took ether, with the idea that I should be dead to the world in three minutes. (I had not had a drink, or taken any of the regular ‘bedside measures’ & threw Alostrael out of bed with quite sensuous petulance. I was in a state in which I could have shot myself without a moment’s hesitation in order to get a second’s repose. I’m quite scared about my general state of mind, to be writing down things like this!) Ether woke me practically at once, & started the train of thought which led to this entry.

     

Note that Ether, imbibed during a positive process like dictation—as per entry of 7.15. p.m. yesterday—simply strengthens & deepens one’s mental processes, enables one to carry out & carry on any proposed research of type appropriate. When one is taking Ether in silence & darkness, on the other hand, especially when one has not decided on any definite line of investigation, one is liable to these fits of wandering, mental disintegration, &c. This seems to me to suggest that Ether, like alcohol, but more so, emphasises the mood; it appears really dangerous to be slack & negative about it! If the only alternative to ‘waking’ were ‘sleeping’; it is, indeed! either terms were less grossly inclusive of this totally different—unique—state; it might not matter so much. But—here’s a point!—every number being infinite, one might come at any moment to one’s ‘unlucky number’. One can’t rely on arithmetical progression! One might stumble—so to speak—upon a thought of irresistably suicidal virtue without any preliminary warning. (Or, of course, upon ‘The idea of one’s life!’) For the thought σ might occur as the sum of the series s1, s2 . . . sn & its impact upon the mental state M summarizing the conditions m1, m2. . . mn might be ω, there being no reason to suppose that S or M was commensurable with S1, or M1, or any other member of that class. I am in actual fact constantly finding that a given line of thought (apparently) jumps the rails altogether.

     

Here is an example. I am (on the face of it) taking a complicated variety of drugs, such as probably has never been done by any man before. I am in (apparent) perfectly good health; & this may be due to my experience & skill in adjusting the drugs to the needs of the moment. Now then I get the thought: “May not my ‘wisdom’ be creating an entirely original condition of mind & brain characterized by a degree of suffering more appalling than anything ever imagined & quite beyond the skill of any physician to alleviate? (This is not quite what I meant to set forth; it is an example, rather, of the way in which I conceive that I may arrive at the number p whose properties are different in kind from those of p-1 as those of 9 are from those of 8—See Comment on CCXX, 1, 4. A better instance of what I mean would doubtless be found in the last fortnight’s ‘record’, where the subject ‘changes suddenly’ to all appearance. I’m too tired to look up what I want!)

     

The real point is this: I am aware of this profound mental disintegration—this invasion of Choronzon—due to Ether taken negatively. I should be really ashamed but that my functions-sleeping, appetite, digestion, &c,—though very irregular, are otherwise all quite normal & satisfactory. I see then the possibility of a state in which one thought supersedes another not (as it should) by virtue of a sub-conscious chain but by a collision with some other dominant idea. It is as if two ‘mountain-tops’ crashed together. The more I try to explain what I mean, the less I am satisfied with my success in so doing. It will really be better to drop the subject; it is sure to come up again for discussion in—I hope-more favourable conditions.

 

1.5 a.m. To the breach! My idea is rather this: suppose a man playing about with Organic Chemistry. Some of his products will be rational & predictable & harmless; some will threaten to be poisonous & explosive. Given the power to proceed from one compound to another by casual grouping of loose elements at random, he might one day chance upon one which, perhaps innocuous in most conditions, might be deadly on account of the existing temperature, strength of solution, or what not. I might feel confident that I was in no danger of becoming insane, & yet strike one particular insane thought which would settle my hash before I had a chance to analyse it, to bring it into proper relation with the whole scheme of my mind, &c. (I cannot say, by the way, why this particular risk, of the very many that I know myself to be running, should preoccupy my mind.)

 

2.10 a.m. In the case of some stupid wish-phantam [sic] I daydream (in the middle of the night) I was looking around for somebody to do some unimportant job (I had, a little earlier, noticed somebody passing about with no obvious raison d’etre—a buxom young-middle-aged woman with a round face & features & a shock of fuzzy black hair. She wore a flowered chintz dress, or something of the sort; she was not exactly a servant or exactly a house-keeper, though evidently in a subordinate position. She seemed to be bustling about very cheerfully, & to be always in the way without annoying me too much, but to have no clearly assigned duties. I ‘corresprehended’ her—amusingly enough—with an aunt! She was like a cushion, too, the sort of person without whom one can get on perfectly well, yet who somehow eases the friction of life.) Well, I couldn’t find the person I wanted at once, & made some slightly irritable comment. There ought to be (was my idea) somebody capable & ready to do this sort of indefinite convenient job. Thence, suddenly: ‘I’m assuming a motive of general benevolent interest in other folk’s welfare.’  (I got this, note, both from the absence of the person I wanted  from the presence of the ‘aunt’ in the previous scene.) This led to a mildly sceptical consideration of the ‘True Will’ of various types of people not very intelligible on the surface. Suddenly, again: The True Will can in no case be anything but the redress of an injustice. I was brought up sharply by this, as it seemed to involve the admission that Nibbana was the sole justifiable aim. Luckily, I have solved the antinomy underlying this long since: but for all that, the interruption came as somewhat of a shock. (I have been feeling a slight malaise connected with despair—inability to invent a satisfactory wish-phantasm to go to sleep on, for one thing; a faint feeling of nausea, for another.)

 

1.30 p.m. Woke with a violent bilious attack, & am still feeling rotten in consequence. Depressed too, about the Comment, & my Work in general.

 

9.15 p.m. Just before dinner I was dictating a letter to O.P.V. [Norman Mudd], lying on my bed, & had missed my penknife half an hour earlier; it had slipped out of my pocket (I suppose while I slept exhaustedly after lunch—I shifted my position slightly & ran the big blade of the penknife aforesaid deep into the small of my back. Over an inch! The wound bled copiously. Leah dressed it & we went on with the work. (Mars sesqui-square Luna is all I can find for it: no affliction of Virgo or my radical Mercury—what rot!)

 

 

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