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Aleister Crowley Diary Entry Thursday, 13 March 1924
die Jupiter.
2.5 a.m. I'm in a weird state of wakefulness, hunger and irritability. I suppose it is that I am really very much better and very impatient accordingly.
8.15 Woman's Independence. Nothing has been done so far. What she has gained is at the cost of giving up her right to bear children.
8.45. Sorry, but I feel quite definitely better—despite a wretched night, mere odds and ends of sleep. But now I feel a definite impulse to get up and go out. I am going to fight it down for a bit, take a dose of aq.[uarius] [Heroin], just to test out its basic strength. If it increases, I will at least wash, shave, dress, etc. and see how things are.
9.48 A.M. Off the vivisection table. I have found several new bad faults in myself. In others (also) there is no sound flesh. I ask: what is the end of all this putrefaction? After some aeons, the answer comes: When it begins to take form [?] (See aphorism above, somewhere, during this initiation.)
I ask: When is that? My Qabalah comes to the rescue—or the Book of the Law, I think, rather—and I reply "When somebody loves it". There is of course a mystic Christian theory lurking in this. I do wish I had a list of the crimes I have discovered in myself these last weeks; fickle, liar, white slaver (in a very bad sense, selling women deliberately to physical torture) are a few of my latest results. Another—a really serious question arises, however. How far is the whole of my long sickness due to aq. starvation? Is my quick recovery of the last 2 days due to my cautious fattening up on the new supply? In the absence of a proper record, it is impossible to check this. I feel sure that a proper life would enable me to dispense with aq. with no trouble, however things may stand. The programme must be to arrange for this: no change in plans, therefore, is necessary.
P.S. Note. Iuh—messy oils—mud: the prima materia of poetry, painting and sculpture. Method: put your soul into them and give them Form.
10.22 Talking of the love for putrefaction, this is the root of my love for the lowest whores, negresses, Olga of the broken nose and so on—up to the Tenth Impurity the skeleton Leah [Leah Hirsig]!
12.35 P.M. My father: "I would rather preach to 1000 drunkards than 1000 T-totalers" I grasp this fully. Prohibition is Satanic—it decivilizes—dehumanizes. The cold cruelty of it devotees—That is the real danger to the world—its overrunning by these bloodless things that think themselves 'the scourge of God'.
6.55 P.M. at 11 a.m. I shaved and dressed. Lunched at 12. Walk 1 - 1.30. Back to bed. Deep sleep 2.30 - 6.20 very deep. Now Tea, eggs etc. milk for the night. Evidently the exertion tried me a lot.
7.5. On lying of the anecdotal picturesque Mind—the Mind that is handed out to the greenhorn. It is not lying at all: for the teller is bounded by his imagination, and so are his acts. These fields are conterminous: so the wild stories are in reality symbolic pictures of the truth—of the genius loci—and much truer than any facts could ever be.
Proposed new Magazine.
Title: The Citizen. The Month. Sol. Starlight (sub-title "Every man and every woman is a star")
Sections Poetry Mystic-philosophical Literature Politics Art—theatre—music Fiction Personal Humour
Models: the old G.R. Yellow Book Vanity Fair N[ew] Y[ork]
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