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Aleister Crowley Diary Entry
Thursday, 19 July 1923
Die Jupiter
Hail unto Kheph-Ra!
12.30 p.m Slept well; woke early; read Octave Mirabeau I am getting at long last to the Kaif so many years stranger. I am now able to enjoy doing nothing. I worry no more about my daily output. The cure of my soulsickness is going strongly. I am perfectly happy to potter about: I do not need to be in any way amused. The nervous tension which has been killing me slowly has taken to disappearing completely for hours at a time. I have confidence in Frater O.P.V.’s [Norman Mudd] mysterious operations on the Bourse; the doubt & distrust of his power to accomplish the impossible which have been making a dull sinister eddy in the dark places of my spirit has ceased to distract me with its formidable & obscure ebullition.
I accept Peace for its own sake. I have no wish to see the Summary of this next week’s Work shame that of last week. I care nothing for time. I am ‘entered into the joy of my Lord’. Mine Holy Guardian Angel is even about me, nor speaking nor moving: it is the ‘Post Coitum Animal Gaudens’ that ‘I have loved long since & lost awhile’.
10 p.m. Yes, indeed, Frater O.P.V. gets my Nonconformist Conscience going first lick! No sooner did he get back from Tunis—beach about 2.15—than my nice Kaif vanished, & I became a bundle of fretful impatience pitifully anxious to justify my wretched existence by writing the Comment on LXV. I had begun to write before he came down—on the impulse of seeing him for a second as I started for the beach—& was doing it in comparative ease; but, he being there I had to dictate furiously with evil ardour & toil. Bar a few minutes swimming, I went on steam-rollerwise till 8.25: over 6 & a half hours’ actual writing. We did vv. 1-7, 10 pages of the MS book (= 4 pages of mine 450—500 words & 6 pages of O.P.V.’s 2750 (circa) words: total 3250). Time 500 words per hour: 50/6 (1/3 NV!) = 8 & one-third words per minute. Good work, considering the hellishly hard subject matter! At this rate, though, the Comment on Cap. V will run to 30,000 words!!! (27,000; but there are quotations to add). The first 4 chapters are estimated: Cap. I, 1,620; II, 2,100; III 1,700; IV, 11, 500! Introduction (note on Title & Number so far) 2,500. This sudden jump to 7 times the previous chapter demands stringent investigation by a Royal Commission!
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