Aleister Crowley Diary Entry

Friday, 21 March 1924

die Venus.

Hail unto Kheph Ra who hath brought forth the budded morrow from Midnight! Hail in the Word [Word of the Equinox] VIHI AUD.

2.45 a.m. Managed to keep awake till 2, hoping for good night’s rest in consequence. Nothing doing! Slept at once, true, but woke thus early with a fierce paroxysm of coughing. There was the definite object of getting rid of a small piece of phlegm from the chest (and apparently (later) a large one from the nose or throat. “Gluten of Sin!” my Gawd, Agnes! Some sinner! Solid aq.[uarius] [Heroin] stopped the paroxysmal effect as Jack Dempsey might do the rush of a small boy, within a few seconds—certainly less than 30, I did not breathe thrice before it stopped. But—if you please! Asthmatic effect A appeared quite suddenly from nowhere. Ethel [Ether] helps—and there is hardly any left, though I shut the bottle early yesterday morning the room-boy disobeys on every occasion, of set purpose, of the most trifling as well as the most serious matters. I shall really have to speak to Bourcier. However, the attack seems passing off (2.5 a.m.) My night’s rest is spoiled however, I suppose.

I reflect. I think I had better have my lungs X-rayed. There seems to be a condition C not at all asthmatic in origin though passing readily into A—as it seems, from the violence of the physical effort required to get rid of the phlegm. And it seems to me as if that part of the phlegm which has to be “coughed up from the bottom of the lungs” (as opposed to the much larger and thicker and harder parts which seem to require to be coughed away (merely) from some more accessible section. There is a subjective feeling that this phlegm is being secreted (as soon as I start to sleep) around some ‘grain of grit’ like Browning’s fish! And if so, I wonder what I “charged for it”—and if I can put it up the spout!

3.20 The lungs seem quite clear now, since the first paroxysms yielded to aq., and A is settling slowly towards B. It was not by any means the worst A I’ve had.

(Define A! Very good.

1. Feeling as if chest muscles were drawing shoulders together, or were semi-paralysed. Cannot draw deep breath or expand chest.

2. Usually some wheezing—of varying depth. Usually no coughing: what there is seems my inanely-inspired effort (based on false analogies) to relieve chest. It is felt to be quite unnatural and quite ineffective.

3. There is a mental shock of great violence. I know of no similar condition, in my experience. I affirm solemnly that I am not responsible for my actions; if anything stood in the way of my getting to Ethel or aq., I should push it aside with absolute automatism.

This applies to secondary actions. Mudd [Norman Mudd] drew up a letter to Jarvis [Dr. Charles Jarvis] wh[ich] I refused to sign, and then did so, rushed by despair at having to deal with a “hog-like abortion” so stupid and unsympathetic. Jarvis naturally threw up the case at once. I felt too ill to dictate a letter, and something had to go. Just now, too, (at the first slight relief from the full fury of the onset) I struck with my pen at the corked aq. bottle. All this time since 3.25 I have been (a) dropping with sleep—so took a small aq. at 3.40 to get this note done (b) worrying hard about the exact words of the passage in Tertium Quid partly copied above. (Impossible to spare 1/2 minute to stretch a hand for the book—and I know the exact place in the poem!) (c) going right off into a day-dream about a wise man’s advice about devoting time to making the best use of Jupiter, now in course of coming into play after years of struggling against Saturn and I note with surprise how well his remark fits my horoscope and that of this Eq[uino]x etc. !!! This again is part of the complete loss of control. I am not responsible: I repeat it with energy. (4.10 My head dropped in utter exhaustion: I’ll try Jarvis’ potion. It pulls me together at once) But my mind wanders now all the time: I can’t concentrate on the note. I don’t know where I am except vaguely that I am supposed to be defining A!

4 pp ! ! ! ! with the phenomenon “enlargement as I go on” so often noticed in some stories, poems, etc. and in the drawing of Leah with small neat head, arms and coat giant-like out of proportion, and skirt and legs.

[A rough sketch appears in the notebook with the words “Only more so!”]

I even get a head (e.g. Ahmed at Nefta) like that if I’m not careful.

[Another drawing with the same words beside it.]

Enough of defining A! all off the main line)

4.18 A.M. I watched the 3.30 aq. very closely. It increased the labour of the heart at once for the time being. Desire to sleep went; concentration came back: then the effect passed (Hang it! my mind is wandering so that I cannot recall my observations or the real point of this note. I remember now. Something quite different. My irresponsibility! It is like a man on the roof of a burning house. He will jump or do anything else, with or without hope, to get away from the immediate distress (Mem[o]: read the Pit and the Pendulum again to see if Poe has this psychology correct)—Mind still wandering away to “Magdalen Blair” I wonder if I should rewrite it suppressing some of the early part about her (can’t imagine why!) and Back to Browning’s T[ertium] Q[uid]. The only possible thing is to make a dash and get the book and so to sleep.

4.35 a.m. Away to Arab coffee and coupets[?], and adulteration! Can’t trace the ‘col’ between the mountain tops of the words of this insane person! oh well! if you’ve got anything else to say

S H U T      U P !

4.35. Hunting in R[obert] B[rowning] half off asleep: am at table with Alostrael my love saying Will (while waiting for toast which she has not forgotten—it’s coming! to go with oh! such nice grilled trout—are they? not sure) I’m ever so sad to find that she isn’t here. (And all the time I’m looking in R.B. and lighting my pipe and doing some philosophical speculation wh[ich] I already forget.

/// ///// ///

(These “knocks” woke me. I lit my pipe effectively, and found the passage—line 307 sqq—instantly. 4.40 VIHI AVD!

4.55 Took off goggles—finishing pipe. Instantly a memory of childhood comes. Some ass wrote to a paper about the ages of patriarchs, suggesting it was months, not years, that the figures referred to—so that all ages must be divided by 12 or 13. Gregor Grant and I retorted: what about the small figures? E.g. Abraham’s begetting starts (on that theory) at about 4 years old, and he leaves for ‘God’s Country’ at the early age of 7 (I remember that phrase as if it were yesterday) One letter, which was published, gave some half dozen examples, showing up the imbecility of our opponent. But I had prepared, and wanted to include, an analysis of every case—pages of it! Each case driven home to the hilt with a different satirical “Gloat” (as Kipling has it) obviously, such a letter would have been cut down heavily. or thrown aside. The incident shows my peculiar lust for thoroughness—and never mind all the conditions.

[On an opposite page appears: “H A G / insert / Important /” and an arrow pointing to where this account commences. Also: “N.B. Describe Sunday brunch as ‘cold and sacred lusts’ ".]

Date? Won’t swear to a lusting, but feel sure it was after my father’s death in ’87 and before my going to Malvern ’92. Before I was 15, anyhow—yes, I begin to remember: ’88 or ’89, most likely. Could Abraham have done it, for all his Long Nose! So, once more! “Macroprosopus has nothing on me!”

5.15 Fit of wanting to scratch—did so. Delicious! Drug-virginity restored completely! Hoo-bloody-ray!

6.15 The “deep-down cough” C has been simply smothered a la Desdemona by the aq. unable to sleep, and conscious dimly of the obstruction, I force myself to cough up what I feel to be a “foreign object”. Headache threatens: however, I triumph, and up comes a small and stringy piece of veritable phlegm, to misquote the N.A. of the N.N. (The Nameless Novel! By Jove, yes! Ethel [Ether] told me yesterday—or the day before—about Frank Harris. He wrote to me once contemptuously about “Teleny” —and the next thing is that he writes a book all rotted through by inconsequent dull passages of the Teleny kind—but much worse done, an unrelieved Monotony of senile salacity restricted to the most matrimonial middle-class muddling with masturbation and mauling of the dreariest drabbest dummy femules (a great word, that!). My God in heaven above! what a capacity for friendship, and what a determination to carry it through to the ‘save-all’ is mine! I wrote a long article praising that puerile putridity, defending that demented dirt, arguing like Chrysostrom that the catchpenny clap-juice of the Galway Galilean was the first vintage of Volnay, and only needed a few years in a bottle -------- and there’s another reason why you can’t judge a man by his letters—unless they are French letters, and torn at that!

7.18 P.M. “Without shedding of blood there is no remission”. I came out of a semi-meditation semi-sleep to realize that the worst weakness of Christianity was its attempt to replace human sacrifice by a single symbolic Ceremony in the past. It is this and not her persecuting Emperors and Popes (and bricklayer dukes whose joy in the idea of a collar—found late in life—demands a collare [illegible] and no less) that are responsible for her bloodguiltiness. It is her weaknesses that have sown the seeds of war. Christianity invented poverty—and was shameless enough to praise it! —by stopping infanticide. (Note. AL. “After a child” ?? Is Primogeniture (the Christian law) a biological infamy? Should the first-born son always be sacrificed on the principle of pruning a tree—also, of course, any unwanted daughters). (except for instance) ------ etc etc etc ------ why pursue the subject?

7.30 I note, re my “rebirth”, that Introspection no longer discloses all those abysses of abjection that it did. It is therefore a fact of some order or other that I am “reborn”

 —Saved!—

—Washed in the Blood of the Lamb (Sol in Aries) like Christabel Pankhurst!!

2.50 Slept in absolute exhaustion till 2, lunched, got dyspnoea and violent coughing. aq. increased 1st stopped 2nd as before.

Note C does not “seem” bronchitic at all.

6.20 P.M. A somewhat ‘dopy’ afternoon. Half asleep, on and off. Argument about solid aq. I repeat: I take it only in emergency of A or C, or in urgent need to worship Hadit.

9.0. P.M. I must summarize my troubles briefly for [Dr.] Jarvis. A. Spasmodic asthma: constriction of chest. B. Wheezing and laboring breath: a, but less acute. C. Deep-seated cough paroxysmal to remove phlegm. Often culminates in vomiting. Heroin stops all three by local narcotism. (In some cases it accentuates the trouble before calming it—owing to stimulant action (?)) It turns C into A or B before stopping it, sometimes. It shows no sign of trying to remove the cause.

Queries. Is there some definite bronchial or pulmonary trouble, perhaps mechanical in origin: or is it functional? Is nervous exhaustion enough to account for the symptoms? Is any separate digestive trouble implied?

9.10 P.M. Have taken 3 goes of Belladonna to-day. Must continue this till Tuesday as Bourjeois asks, to see if it will stop that secretion of phlegm. Note. After coughing up everything this A.M.—“getting my lungs clear at last”, so to say—I felt just as if there were a hole in the lung which the phlegm had filled up, and which must be refilled—natura abhorret a vacuo. This may be the sheerest nonsense, medically, but I have the instinct.

9.15 Took small solid aq. (call it ‘earth aq.’?) no, = earth suppressing vibrations, will overcome agitation, calm holding—under storm) 3/4 hr back as C was very bad indeed. (I have suddenly got rattled, again, by the constantly new types of assault. Most of them, too are amenable to earth-aq. and nothing else; it seems as if the body were deliberately playing tricks in order to get it. Yet I feel the bad effects of even small doses, and that even in the liquid form, as I never did in my life. Virginity! The BVM [Blessed Virgin Mary] wasn’t in the same competition!

9.20 Mind wandering from above note—I thought of a good plot for a Simon Iff story. A murderer goes into a room full of people, shoots his man, and bolts to his own room next door, where he is found a minute later in bed sick “wakened” (he says) “by the shot”. He bangs his door; the dead man’s friends are on his heels, after the first moment of staggered surprise. He is arrested, they all having seen him fire it. He answers: Very fine, but I haven’t a gun. In fact, a revolver with discharged shell is found in the dead man’s room—a corner the gunman had not approached, on their own statement. He has forelaid this. He has hastily (He has only 30 seconds to spare) hidden the pistol that fired the shot in a prepared place in his floor. Nobody looks for a second gun. All investigators conclude that the eye-witnesses have agreed to lie. The assassin has also arranged than an ‘agent shall reach the scene much sooner than the people in the room would calculate. (They are strangers to the hotel. The gunman knows that a certain famous plain clothes man has taken the third room on the floor in order to watch a suspect in the hotel opposite. He knows, too, that this man is at home, at the window on the look-out during certain hours, so he can be sure that the shot and outcry will bring him on to the scene within a minute—but, being suspected by the ‘agent’, try to hide it hastily. Motive being found for such a plot, they are found guilty. One other point: they prove that the m[urderer] bought such a gun recently. He admits it at once, and produces it—in a state which experts [illegible] which proves that it has never been fired. This is a third gun prepared by m. ad hoc.

9.35. I am now quite calm, and feel very well indeed in all ways. It is really annoying to live on the edge of a volcano like this. Of course, too, there is every reason to think that sleep (so recently restored for 2 nights) will be all X.O.P. again. Will resolutely take a whole Gardenal^[1] at a favourable hour. 11, say?

(P.S. Didn’t? this my error? I doubt if it would have checked the cough.)

1—Gardenal contains phenobarbital, a barbituate.

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