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Aleister Crowley Diary Entry Sunday, 18 November 1923
M Y J U B I L E E ![1]
Slept from 1 p.m. round the clock (bar a semi-wake-up for a dish of kidneys) and woke some time in the middle of the night in utter Hell. Lying on the edge of Ether jar, and too weak to roll off! Too weak to call for help. Hanging on to sanity by turning over scenes from Babbitt dimly and dully. No glimpses of hope to induce me to wish to pull through. Went down all the avenues of despair one after the other—to the end, slept and woke—neither fully or decently—on and off till noon. Painfully and wearily dragged myself up the slopes with no top to get to My flesh on fire all over; my muscles toneless. To get out of bed and piss a desperate adventure. My bed-clothes awry—most uncomfortable—too weak to straighten them—too feeble mentally to think how I could arrange them even if I had the strength—too wretched morally to call for 667 [Leah Hirsig] to do it for me; also, dreading the pain of having anyone come near me. A violent spasm of sneezing caused diarrhoea—couldn’t wipe it or ask help. Wondered if a dose of would help—too weak to look for bottle—too irresolute. Wondered wearily about my condition—longed, longed for death not only for rest and to be done with it all, but to see my life from outside. Cold, and helpless to get covering or to crawl across to 667’s bed. Noticed it getting lighter—after aeons—and argued for more aeons as to the meaning of this. It must be morning—but what morning? The problem was insoluble—meaningless—yet frightful. I saw that it must be getting lighter or darker at any given time—but what did that imply? I can’t express the torture that all this silly stuff inflicted; and I endured it not by virtue of strength, but of being too weak to make any effort to end it one way or another. . . . . . . Little by little I stumbled into sanity. About 2.30 I crawled out and basked till 4. Then tea; I was well enough to write to O.P.V. [Norman Mudd]. Dinner better still. After coffee walked into Desert and rejoiced I the cold moon—sub omnia silentia lunae. In bed by 9.30 and scribbling this faint outline of one of the damnedest times I every went through in this puff! (667 good to me, but too anxious to get me to go out too soon—the best plan, no doubt, though I suffered all the time. I love her, anyway: and the one thing that brought me up from hell was seeing her look so fine and fresh and laughing and young—with her hair fresh hennaed!)
10 p.m. This (above) is the second time I have been in this place at all fully—the first time at La Marsa when I cut off . It strikes me as if the protective coating were stripped from all one’s nerves (I use a mediaeval form of speech) I think I should learn how to deal with the condition actively—go into it at will, and master it by will. The main difficulty is the profound intellectual conviction that there is not, and cannot in the nature of things be, any remedy. This conviction persists: there is no answer to it: yet I master it. The words are “skew-wise”. Obviously, all power and joy mean an excess of ego over non-ego and this must be paid for: it can’t be kept up for ever. Yet of course there must be a cycle of joyous changes to explain the universe at all, since all Events are the effect of Love under Will. The same line of argument goes in Pure Physics—see my essay on Garnet. Thus, AL, solves all problems, making parallels on all planes, whose No:1 axim is 0 = 2. It is useless philosophically to try to explain things by metaphysical aid”; that only pushed back the difficulty. From supposing our dilemma did not obtain among angels and gods, the defect would be in making Them unlike ourselves in this fundamental quality. It would demand the love in Nature, which is absurd. Therefore, the Cycle of Joy must be the Key to unlock the House of Mystery “How is it that anything happens; and if so, how is it that anyone is willing to have it happen?”.
10.15 p.m. I am admiring H.P.B.'s [Helena Petrovna Blavatsky] answer to some fool who asked her about the Hells: “There is no hell lower than a man-bearing planet”.
1—Today is Crowley's 25th "magical" birthday—The anniversary of his initiation into the Golden Dawn on 18 November 1898.
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