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Aleister Crowley Diary Entry
Friday, 13 July 1923
Die Venus
Hail unto Khephra!
Slept well at 1.15 pleasant dream, but woke at 3 with a little dyspnoea.
Epigram: 2 p.m.
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing; more than a little is certain disaster. (Suggested by qualms about the chaotic excess of knowledge & correspondence in 777.)
It is worth noting how at the beginning any science appears to be faced with a number of quite simple problems which are in principle answerable in a simple way. Approximate but still insufficient success in actually obtaining these answers leaves a small residue of unexplained fact. The analysis of this residue problem is usually a much more complicated matter.
1. It often involves new concepts altogether, often complementary to or even subversive of those previously used.
2. It involves a much larger region of the Universe.
3. It involves a much larger number of aspects of Nature. (Illustration, a simple pendulum.)
A close approximation is metaphorically a straight line. On close investigation this turns out to be a hyperbolic curve. The solution is to develop consciousness so that we no longer think as a child or a school-boy does ‘a straight line is simple, a hyperbola complex’, but which is capable of comprehending incommensurables as pertinent to its own formula.
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