|
Aleister Crowley Diary Entry
Sunday, 10 June 1923
Die Sol
2.47 p.m. There’s nothing for me but a romantic death! (‘Nothing doing, my boy,’ says 31-666-31 [Leah Hirsig].) Then give me a bit of H[eroin]. (This request was made as a jest.) Shamed of himself. Dumas—greatest novelist in the world, but I’ve caught him abusing ‘coincidence’. Per instance that Milady should have given d’Artagnan the particular ring she was wearing at the time her husband hanged her.
3 p.m. It’s hard to know what’s right in these lands of fairies & giants. (Barber—No Ethyl [Ether] in Marsa—I’m a pig. 31-666-31.)
5.14 p.m. Ethyl-Shew-stone.
For nothing less than the New Aeon would I have done what I did about the G.D. [Golden Dawn]
5.20 p.m. I must pull myself together.
5.22 p.m. In everything that happens an excretory process is required. Such elements necessarily object to their conditions & agitate to change them. (Cf. political events.) The word Hell means the conditions of those unfortunates. It simply represents one state of change. The Hebrew term Qliphoth is accurate. It is not in the Rosy Cross that may be asked ‘Who am I?’, but in the Silver Star. I threw the shew-stone on the floor. I had asked this question, & realized it belonged above Tiphareth. (Not having a Silver Star-give me my cross.) I suggested the black & silver star, & that is now being used. 31-666-31.)
5.30 p.m. It (i.e., the 11-fold star) doesn’t pierce me as the other (i.e. the [The Rose Cross of the Second Order] did.
5.32 p.m. Nobody before Aleister Crowley had the means of tracing to their inmost recesses the secrets of the Magi & there had got to be a Royal Commission of Something to Mudd [Norman Mudd] & others to pester the life out of me as how I do it, because I have got the secrets of Universal knowledge, wisdom & power & understanding & of the beauty & victory & splendour that proceed from Him that is coiled within its coils. I may be a Black Magician but I’m a bloody great one. The world may have to pass through a period of error through me, but even the error will tend to the truth.
In all my visions I have seen nothing of the building up process of the Evolutionists. Note that particularly: that I have seen nothing of that. That may be an illustration of the fact, if it is a fact, that I don’t know how to synthesize. It’s very difficult to frame the question—as geomantists know. I have to say ‘Is it proper for the person represented by this creature of stars to do A or B; &, if so, why?’ I’m sorry you yawn because my eternal salvation or damnation goes with it. (This is to scribe who had the bad manners to yawn audibly.)
5.45 p.m. They called Mohammed an impostor! (Shouted).
5.46 p.m. That refers to the suggestion that the circumstances under which this physical star was made, & the circumstances under which the Book of the Law was written might suggest that it was an imposture. Every variation from the normal is an imposture! That isn’t the point.
5.49 p.m. Oh how they’d fall for it! Oh! how they’d fall for it!! I’m referring to solution of business questions via the celebrated trance medium Mme. Fatima Crowley under the influence of Ether. Oh! how these young Jews from Wall Street would eat up that prospectus!! Discussion. I asked for it quick. The Rock will be there after the storm. (Meaning: I shall pull through this delirium.) Oh but (no, don’t put that down) That’s a delusion (sotto voce) ‘Whether in accordance with the Law of Thelema I should or should not do what I contemplate doing?’
God! but the Beauty of Drugs! Nobody has seen it till this minute! They enable you to bring your wish to a single point; &, with Ether to enable you to analyse all the facets of that desire, you’re all right. Meanwhile return to previous question ‘Whether in accordance with the Law of Thelema I should or should not do what I contemplate doing.’ It says ‘Dree thy weird.’ There is no such thing as ‘upright’ in Nature. (Chess-board gone over; 666 says ‘And a good job too, it’s a child’s game.’ The damned Swiss gives me a pain in the arse.) (Hasty judgement.)
Question again.
6.08 p.m. Frank Harris was right. Everything is good enough for Life; it’s too good for Literature.
That’s not the point at all—the point. My mind keeps on tricking me.
6.12 p.m. It keeps on bringing me round to the question ‘Is there any difference between right & wrong?’ as if an answer could be given to it.
6.16 p.m. ‘Am I a woman or a man?’ is what it comes to. And that arouses the question ‘Which is the better: to bear fruit, or to die that it may be born?
It’s quite ridiculous to make rationalistic roads to apotheoses. Soldiers will salute me as Julian (said sailors first-) (I’m thinking of lbsens’ play where the obscure philosopher is suddenly acclaimed Emperor.)
6.37 p.m. The question again!
6.44 p.m. It represents myself all right (the Star)—this eager, forward, determined, murderous temperament. If I were Master of Ceremonies to the Egyptian Pharaoh, I would not have a skeleton at the feast. I would simply repeat the Indian proverb in another way: ‘To-morrow is another day.’ I refrain from moralizing.
6.57 p.m. The objection to Einstein in Geometry is that it leads a straight line wriggling round as to its end. But isn’t this all a matter of imagination?
7. p.m. I wish I had the power of description. Mme. Fatima Crowley! That’s about all I’m fit for,—to wiggle my leg in the air! I wish I had some money. Silver Star again.
The answer is very definite this time. The aspirant to prepare himself by insufflations of the prescribed . . .
7.05 p.m. (waiting for word).
7.06 p.m. thing[?],for a number of days & nights as may be denotated unto him by his Holy Guru, whereupon let him cease. And whenever he desireth an exact answer to any & every question soever that may be proposed to him, he shall be able to return an exact answer within the limits of his error from the Ultimate Zero. And this, while not being an ideal standard of rectitude, is a good enough rule for anyone to live by. In fact, it is an ideal rule considering circumstances, as if anything could be independent of circumstances! That is the maddest metaphysical chimera of them all!
I miss something. I can’t think what it is. I feel a sort of slur upon my purity. The Hindus are right. Education must be replaced by Intuition. The only things worth learning are moral qualities and these depend entirely on the results of Sammasati in each case. If, for example, I had been the Logos whose letter is Aleph, my Word would have been correspondingly upright & simple. It is, in spite of its apparent simplicity, a thing of delicious & delirious coils. It does really revel with Onan & the extremists like lovers of dragon-flies & shoe leather.
7.30 p.m. (Although I’m not speaking I hear you write very rapidly. Is that the case? It is. 31-666-31. Put all this down.)
Such is the Omen which I bring back from the Oracle of the Bottle.” One of the practical disadvantages of Ether is that one reaches so deeply into the elements of things that it is hard to make the connection. But I was wrong in thinking that the subject really got slewed round. When properly understood the most disjointed exclamation gives a final & exact transcript of the man’s point of view.
For instance, I know perfectly well whether in doing a given action I am moved by the second, third, or fourth thought. I won’t say first thought, never having been able to get beyond the naive ideas implanted in infancy about the fundamental moral qualities. For example: ‘We are dust-with exultation’, which is the finest thing I have ever said, is the slogan of just that aristocratic democracy which (it flashed upon me at this second) is the soul of chivalry.
I have waited a long while for the answer to that question: ‘What is Truth?’, & it seems to be just that sempiternal vibration of the Serpent who bears to man the Holy Graal brimming with the Law of Thelema, as my predecessor, my father Nahash gave to woman the fruit of the Tree which was so much better worth eating than the other. I am really arriving at perfect comprehension of myself; that is, of measuring the vibrations of the AinSoph which ultimately gets labelled A.C.
I said some time ago that absolute sincerity has as many sheaths as the other moral qualities. Let me add that the same considerations apply as they do to the definition of straightness in Einstein. I mean that a man can be true to himself in the deepest sense of the word when he is consciously lying in the meanest & most contemptible way to the person he loves best, or even to himself. I may in short be telling the truth by lying to myself, when to tell the truth to myself would be a lie.
Note that Cheth is the first of the Paths which join the Supernals to Microprosopus. (P.S. This is not correct! I am sure I said ‘last’ not ‘First’; or at least meant ‘First’ counting from Tau. The following paragraph shows this to be true.) I am the first man to bring a direct message from them. From this, by the way, it will be possible to predict the course of the evolution of humanity in more detail than previously. The next Magus will bring a Word whose letter is Zayin, & his successor those corresponding to Vau & He. Then there will be a frightful Aeon without a Word while Daleth is in course, & then the final communication, the pure & perfect Three-in-One Word of Gimel will be transmitted, after which the race will become extinct. We shall either cross to Venus or be dissociated completely. Note that the question which I have not solved in these meditations is really the eternal ‘Who am I?’
Dynamically, it is really simple enough. One follows the norm of one’s actual equation, not an ideal definition as stated by a crude dwarf slave. (?Euclid. Was I mixing him up with Aesop?) in the most superficiallyminded epoch in all history when Homer was considered poetry & the Faroese Hercules art.
There is no connection between truthfulness & ability to keep one’s word. The former is a debatable metaphysical puzzle hardly worth consideration except at Christmas after a bad dinner in Minnesota; (I was reading Main Street a novel about this State) the latter is like any other ability. It is a good example of the way in which Christianity has confused moral questions. It has made them unrecognizable. It requires endless analysis to disentangle the elements of the problem. It has taken me I cannot say how many hours each second of which was packed with thought at the highest pressure, assisted by Ether & absence of Heroin, merely to ask the simplest question about right & wrong to be imagined. It sounds paradoxical to say that I have simplified the ethical problem by defining Truth as one’s peculiar variety of Untruth. The parallel of Einstein, once more, is absolutely good. By introducing a slight complication into the formula for the straight line, he has in reality simplified the problem. Note also that each ray of light is responsible to itself for itself, according to the intensity of the gravitation field in its course. It was, in fact, the cardinal heresy of Christianity to distinguish between different kinds of force & so deny unity to Nature. Incidentally, all religions have made a similar error except perhaps Buddhism. (I must reserve Buddhism for subsequent analysis.)
11.04 p.m. Mother Sereda
Jurgen’s failure is that he could not fall in love with Suede.
|
= Leah
suggests that
—the
insult to Dorothy answered to
, had 3 more women to
go: Gunvieve
, Helen
, & Anaitis
. What
about Satan’s wife for
? What about my women in USA?
Lea Dewey (whore from Holland)
.