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Aleister Crowley Diary Entry Saturday, 1 March 1924
die Saturn.
12.15 a.m. Hail unto Kheph Ra. I have a dull pain in the chest, and a distinct wish for (1) [Heroin]. This is closely connected with the irritability. The pain suggests pneumonia or something absurd from overstrain; and once again I say, Don't overdo the quitting until you get word from Dr. Jarvis [Dr. Charles Jarvis]. I take 1 Gardenal[1]—not to sleep, but to see if it will quiet the general fuss.
12.35 Discomfort depression irritation etc increase. Will take O.P.V.'s [Norman Mudd] advice (on the whole) i.e. jog along as comfortably as possible and not worry about any records or any other blooming thing. (1) [Heroin] 1.24 A.M. See opposite page. [here copied] (I write this more to ease my own mind than anything else: but also from a quite wrong and stupid feeling that I ought not to let O.P.V. do all the worrying.
It is 1.20 a.m. and my mind is very confused in judgment.
Dear Earp [Tommy Earp] / You said my Rodin [Rodin in Rime] books were an 'asset'. It is really—I believe—a matter of life and death (bar accidents) for me to raise £100 instantly. If you could spare that sum, I would let you have 25 sets (publ[ishe]d at 105/- and 16/- and 16/- and 16/- = £7.13) A possibly good investment, at the worst! Or I would arrange things in some other way. But I am (presumably—Professor Mudd tells me nothing of business unless obliged) threatened by small creditors on all hands. My credit is quite exhausted, even with the kind people at this hotel: and there is less than 200 francs in hand.
And unless I can get Leah [Leah Hirsig] up to nurse me in the country and Mudd to London I see no hope save in the Gods. To whom therefore I call.) It is not even a good letter. I feel that the Gods are making it impossible for me to use my mind at all except in Their own special business. I wrote the letter deliberately as a sample of the burning-up of the last sticks of rubbish in this Pure Fire that is so thoroughly purging me, and consuming the last of that "little pile of dust" to the White Ash for The Urn. Hail! Hermes the Invisible. Sent forth by the All-Father to this end. Work Thou—that Word which is Will—that my pure Wisdom may not suffer to link the tiniest germ of aught that is below the Abyss. Ay! once more there rings in mine ears Thy voice which is Mine
ΕΡΜΗC ΕΙΜΙ
whose value is Four Hundred and Eighteen wherein is the Great Work complete and perfect—without lust of result, for is not True Wisdom to accomplish Naught?
1.40 Note on Qabalah. 8 = ¥ 8 = Mercury [sign for] 8 = 23 Chokmah interpreted in Form by Binah. ¥ = All = A L L [Hebrew] the Balance of Aleph itself balanced. A L L [Hebrew] = 61 = A I N [Hebrew] = A N I I add Ayin [Hebrew] = XV Set or Had 61 plus 70 1/3 131 = P A N [Greek] 618 See Word of XIX Sol in Libra.
Shit! I seem to have forgotten the one important discovery which made me start this note!
2.0 a.m. Pain in chest (not in the least like a pneumonia pain!) quite gone.
4.20 Must have slept for I woke coughing very violently and semi-delirious. I was I think mostly accusing O.P.V. of folly or some similar type of bad behaviour for not having me ambulanced to the American Hospital long since!!! Something too about telephoning and broadcasting. (2 1/2) [Heroin]
4.44 (Day?)-dreaming—trying to describe Gerald Kelly's stupidity. "The sort of person who if you sent him out to buy gloves wouldn't (oh yes! asleep—dropped right off then) ask what size etc. etc. In last drop-off I mix up ideas of helping Gerald Kelly mentally with a poem alleged (by whom??) to be recommended (by whom, again??) to be useful with people who fail to understand the Tao Teh King (is it?). One shuts them into a barrel properly studded, within, with nails. This is then rolled down a hill-side, the rougher the better—for illumination, I presume—and oh! I forgot what follows but in waking I get that the barrel is finally roasted—as it is—and served in that state at banquets. I'm reminded somehow of a famous way of roasting a hedgehog, rolled in a paste of mud. I go onto semi-waking lecture a group of medical men, demonstrating I wot not what on a [illegible] corpse. Then a wave of mountains surges up—now Laura Grahame and Sodomy—I am mapping a curve of my life and have to bring this in. Then—why did she like it? (For she did—mere precaution not adequate explanation.
------ oh Lord! We (who?) are debating how to [illegible] receipts for pension from somebody who has died.
5.6 a.m. I'm really wandering very far—Now I'm trying (still!) prescriptions for aq[uarius] [Heroin]. I use the hotel paper for the stamped address—lest enquiry be made at the place where I am. . .
.... Several scenes of violence cross my mind: yet I refer them to the "earlier part of my illness, when I was still strong enough" ... "And with all this goes a very strong vigilant sub-current of quite definite alarm: "Am I in danger of becoming delirious?" This wakes me to full wakening to take (3 1/2) [Heroin] saying: "I mustn't risk the slightest approach to an P.S. actual outbreak. He, homosexual, really thinks that implies inferiority. I am buggering the girl next door. The man who is (I surmise, waking, on vague grounds) sleeping with her is not Jack Holmes; but the man I talk to about it; he reproaches me with paedicatio—somehow (It has got vague as I wake).
5.20 I light a pipe, despite extreme irritability of throat etc and sleepiness such that I can hardly write. Yet t'was to watch myself (Something about hunting for something to do with a clitoris of somebody—which "will explain everything").
Honest to God, kid, I do seem about as near plain dippy as makes not much more difference. (Left out here "than whether you put salt or sodium chloride in ---- I wanted a less obvious simile and a good place to put the salt in: and so forgot the whole phrase clean.)
Speculation: WHY did the Gods devise the System of Sephiroth? This is mixed up with egg-eating by somebody and [illegible] something about detectives—Chicago—their domestic life ---------- I find myself saying "these may be the last sane words I shall ever write: I call on the Inhabitants of the 10000 Worlds to testify that I kept it up till the last minute. (Some stranger in Dieppe or Boulogne or some such place has crossed (Channel or Atlantic) to see me: hasn't the price of his ticket from the coast, having blued it in cafes------- -----I writing! --- Is this a parable (I muse) of my own present condition? The man went back to England or U.S.A. and wired me excuses. I do not. I write.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
The word of the Law is Thelema.
93 ΛΟΓΟC ΑΙΩΝΟC
[The notebook ends here but there is a section in reverse which continues as follows:]
Overflow meeting
5.30 P.M. has just struck—watch says 5.55 I alter it—quit this record of ravings—return to 2835 Mayfair, and I bet I'll be dead to the wide-wide in 2 shakes of poor old Frank Richardson's whiskers.
5.37 I'm now talking to Achad [Charles Stansfeld Jones]. He has been rude. I say "You didn't mean it". He: "Oh, I made several remarks quite abruptly". We laugh together over the mischief made by the uninitiates who misinterpreted our love as a quarrel. I was quite solidly in my Scin Laeca in his little room in Chicago; he sitting at a round table with his legs crossed and upon another chair. Smoking a pipe I think (V[ery] doubtful this) "Rational" suggestion started from this—implore each to rescue the stock in U.S.A.—the $17000 parcel of MSS etc in particular. This arose as I flashed back to 50 rue Vavin and found the aura full of [Thomas] Earp (Also: to tell him the danger of delirium and that I seem abandoned by the very doctors—see below.) But what I wonder is: do all these ravings signify danger of actual mental upset (I thought of softening of the brain, or course, at once: also of G.P.I. but decided I was probably past the age. (Also upstrokes O.K.) Note very especially that this "wonder" is entirely untinctured by a single drop of anxiety. It is sheer impersonal curiosity, followed by the calm and very reasonable decision to hand the notes to O.P.V. and ask his opinion.
The Visit to Achad, by the way. He had I think, just finished a meal. I calculate 5.50 A.M. here Midnight in Chi[cago]. Yes: that suits well. R.S.J. [Rubina Stansfeld Jones] in bed probably after not washing up. I get a very strong impression of a very unlikely object: a "table-cloth" of that old-fashioned shiny stuff like thin linoleum—or cloth waterproofed on one side with some dull pattern.
5.57 I am fairly well awake now. (Now—am I? Interruption of visions of electrocution. I am the victim. I object to die sitting and demand to stand. I manage to life the chair—until I argue with myself that it is surely fastened to the floor --- etc. ---- etc.) This interruption was to a note that I was coughing almost constantly. I take 1 aq[uarius] [Heroin] with a perfectly good conscience, like the last; as against the spasms and semi-delirium both. But I now again compose myself as best I can.
6.20 Another (day?) dream of a colloquy O.P.V.—Aimée [Aimée Gouraud] downstairs in Hotel antechamber. As vivid as life, this one, but I was half asleep.
- and another! Self explaining to Earp (I think) why I want to see Cecil Gray. All these dialogues so vivid as to be practically audible: and I am reminded of writing down AL. But at that time there were no circumstances soever at all likely to account for any hallucination. Save this! Rose [Rose Kelly] and I had out programme, high up, a visit to Frater I.A. [Allan Bennett] in his Chong at Rangoon (or Akyab. I had not seen him since he had formally joined the Sangha). Returned to Colombo from Hanbartota Jan 1904: I got a lesion on my tongue—origin unknown—and a Vision of Lady Scott and Countess Russell at the Galle Face Hotel. I fled in time from the a.s. to Kandy, a sort of momentary L[esser] M[agical] R[etirement] in order to get the full horror of Lady Scott down in W.J.W. [Why Jesus Wept]. It was the Genuine Ecstasy of Loathing of the Evil Mother—magically seen for the first time in my life, I being (I suppose) prepared by the Beauty or Rose and that of the Jungle plus the solitude.
Another dream Gurdjieff driving a dagger (my skean dhu) through the open hand of a fat woman disciple. Question concerned the acquisition of power of holy man to reduce fat of their disciples in large chunks -------- the rest gone, or so nearly so that effort to recall would snap thread of my main sentence.)
Jungle—then! My idea was (in writing this note) that the poison which had attacked my tongue also attacked (later) my sensorium, thus causing hallucinations, similar to those of to-night, in March-April '04. P.S. 7.30 of course.)
[Side note]
This does no more than suggest the mechanism of my hearing Aiwass. But then that point has always irked me, I being so free naturally from anything. (Long controversy between Copper and Conn as to the markets!!) of the kind.
6.48 Note that I am forcing myself to sit up and write for no reason at all, entirely against my will. Sheer naughty boy complex. If motive at all, 'tis wish to have something to complain about to O.P.V., to pity or to scold myself about, later in the day.
Oh Shit n plus 1 up to the bloody eyeballs. I quit this utter blasted gumfoozling tommy rot!
7.30 Coughing spells constantly rack me. A little calmer. I ring for brekker and to call O.P.V.
7.35 O.P.V. arrives. Mistook him for Earp in re a foreseen dialogue with latter who mangles 93 93/93 not thinking it has any meaning.
Aum Ha!
[Crowley's fifth notebook begins on 1 March 1924 with the following:]
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
The Magical Record of The Beast 666 Logos Aionos Thelema [Greek] at 50 rue Vavin Parie Vie from
Sol in 11 Taurus An XIX Luna in 19 Capricornus to
1 March 2.30 P.M. I say, importantly: Parcel. There is an analogy. I am breathless, Delirious, and this Wisdom is lost to the World!
1—Gardenal contains phenobarbital, a barbituate.
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