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Aleister Crowley Diary Entry Thursday, 9 August 1923
Die Jupiter
Hail unto Kheph-Ra
1.15 a.m. Long conference with O.P.V. [Norman Mudd]—like Charleys’ Aunt!
2.30 p.m. A point lies within a circle: can I express this idea in terms intelligible to a mind which has no notion of space?
Commerce is an organic body: I can treat it as such, feed it by feeding its stomach, frighten it by playing on its nerves etc. I don’t have to feed all parts at once. Mem[o]; for dictatorship.
Mental matters depend on moral, e.g. science must have trustworthy servants. Hence 93 is important to science, apart from any direct issues.
Never again, in this Aeon, can there be ‘peace’ in the old sense of the word—a state in which there are not international problems immediately at issue. Reason: because the gaps have been filled up by railroads, steamships etc. to T.S.F. So there can no longer be periods when the Earth lies politically fallow, when it has rest from the contest of races & creeds. There is no room anywhere for any one to expand. ‘Sleep no more!’ . . . Of course, this means exhaustion & collapse.
4.30. [p.m.] Contrast the conduct of Hannibal after Cannae with that of Napoleon after Austerlitz. In both cases the result was to multiply the effect of the victory by giving the enemy a chance to recover-though on opposite courses. The Allies, since 1918, have broken the political . . . of Germany & Russia: yet find themselves forced to try to pick up the pieces lest themselves perish. Yet success would only mean a new war of die Rache. The conclusion is that all European powers, as complex political economic unities, are broken. The result must be temporary anarchy & the gradual rebuilding of states on the basis of the Facts of Nature, as of old. See Plato; & L’ile des Pingouins!
4.44. What line shall I take with regard to Frater Achad’s [Charles Stansfeld Jones] books? (I have just received The Egyptian Revival & a threat of others.) The point is this—the books—even apart from the absurd new attribution proposed for the Paths—are so hopelessly bad in almost every way—English, style, sense, point of view, oh everything!—yet they may do good to the people they are written for. My real concern is lest he get too much hubris & come a real cropper.
[Question] What line shall I take with regard to Frater Achad’s books?
[Phallus/Moon] Sung [I Ching Hexagram] VI
Contention: ‘The Creative Impulse attacking the restricted Universe’.
6.20. (Dictated to O.P.V.)
See Eq[uino]x. III (I) for ideas about governing bodies. The main principle is to give almost unlimited power to men guaranteed morally by voluntary adopted conditions of life which exclude the possibility of self-seeking, personal prejudice etc. Such men should be judges & they should judge cases not on legal principles but according to their idea of justice. Any conceivable code of laws leaves loopholes for clever scoundrels. The first story in Stalky & Co is the point. The boys have proved their innocence legally but the head-master sees through the stratagem & flogs them.
The question is how to train such men. They must be kept ignorant to a certain extent of what is going on in the world. Yet they must be kept out of danger of acquiring the narrowness & fanaticism of hermits. I rather fancy that they might have a small isolated community of their own, furnished with all comforts so that they showed for men of normal mind. In judging a dispute between two men there should be a separate investigation into their general character by a man who does not know which side of the dispute they are on.
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