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Aleister Crowley Diary Entry Saturday, 22 March 1924
die Saturn.
12.25 A.M. No sooner do I try to sleep than a furious coughing fit takes me. It culminates in vomiting. I take earth aq[uarius] [Heroin].
1.0 A.M. The notes on my health—all this year—constitute a fairly complete report. One question I may have failed to touch is this: was my almost complete freedom from both A and C due to my long rest, and to the very weakness of the collapse and the withdrawal of Heroin? Is my quick recovery of strength to be the signal for a new series with aq.? In view of the fact that I am really quite crippled—one way or another—I deem it lawful to ask the Yi for a Message—Diagnosis, Prognosis, and Treatment in one. So: What shall I think concerning my health, and how shall I act? II K/K Khwan. Thwan: take advice. My own initiative would lead me astray: if I follow, I find my proper Lord. I.e. masterly inactivity:—waiting on God? Advantage to get friends in S.W. and lose them in N.E.[?]
1. Go slow. I shall improve gradually.
2. Be honest with myself about it: “straight, square, and great”. Avoid spasmodic efforts to get well quick.
3. Feed creative genius (reading etc.) but don’t allow great expense of effort (No more 8000 words per diem, at present!) Accept a paid post, if offered. (I assume that Aiwass will see to it that any such post will be good for me to take).
4. Restrain still more the impulse to do big work. “Keep silence”.
5. Encourage humility. Favour and fortune will arrive and put me in a first-rate position.
6. Be careful not to get rattled, or to allow disturbing thoughts to quarrel in my mind. Final note. I should use the Formula having the firmness of a mare) maintained by means of a steady and constant policy without wavering. Formula of Water and the Womb: await the Holy Spirit.
1.40 A.M. Note on Heroin. The use of a solution implies staying in bed, or near it, and demands regular doses at short intervals—thus leading to habit. Taking it by mouth produces narcotism. In solid form, pure, it does its work and no more. Narcotism only occurs if it be taken when not really necessary.
2.45 a.m. Just an hour, observe, of a state which I suppose was sleep of sorts, and I woke to a new paroxysm, not quite so violent as the last, and with apparently no specific object (at least there is no phlegm that I can feel. Otherwise a quite typical C. I take earth-aq. [Heroin]; C stops (with one or two short rearguard action barks!) and A begins to begin. At least, a vigorous effort is required to move the walls of the chest.
3.0 And I fall asleep, leaning over the book as I write the above! Good-night!
4.30 Awake again, with yet a lesser and a lesser cough. I take a still smaller earth-aq. and put the light out after a much shorter interval. So there! Now will you be good?
(Joke on assegai being “bon a jeter”)
5.10 Woke yet again—cough even slighter, but mind bubbling with alleged ‘jokes’, poetics etc.
Thomas Paine and the Republic. They (?who) gave him a cardboard box (? my Pate pectoral box: I think so) full of neatly arrayed symbols. He put on the cover tightly, and reversed the box with [illegible]. Sudden jerk.
(I — Asleep — !) They protest. Don’t you understand? Those symbols represent our Republican institutions. Know it, retorted Paine—and you shewn them to me up side down!
(asleep again!)
And this:
[Sidenote: “? for Beasts on Business ?”]
Take away the dove of love The pigeon Of religion Put a cenotaph above Where you’ve got them hid, John!
(asleep again—
O Crow of Woe!)
6.20 Awake again (In my head, somehow, that this was an irrevocable waking. So I proclaimed 93 aloud—and I’m already 3/4 asleep again! ! !
8.0. Instinct right. Didn’t sleep really. Got idea for story (forgot it). Psychology of schoolmasters etc (forgot it). Episode for “Three Gentlemen from New Caledonia”: Andre to show the Vicomtesse the kind of man he really is. So he (a) pulls out a back tooth or two of his own with thumb and finger (b) bites off thumb. This shows his strict sense of the lex talionis.
8.30 When civilization breaks down ‘twill be like Babel—a confusion of tongues. There is no longer the common basis of general knowledge there was before specialization. So utter intelligibility will result.
10.20 P.M. Letter from Alostrael [Leah Hirsig]—so brave and simple—I can’t lose faith in the future and I won’t. O.P.V. [Norman Mudd] writes a ghoulish mysterious threatening letter. The question is: Shall I read it? And how shall I act? XXXI Hsien Water/Earth. Refuse to take notice of it. (He talks of a ‘bombshell’: must ask me “a question to shake my whole moral being”. Suggests my possible “unfaith”)
2.30 P.M. Cleared lungs with earth-aq [Heroin] this a.m. a earth-aq now to see whether it will avert C (or A) to-night, and allow me now to sleep properly. (Awake since 6.20 A.M. hardly even a mild doze since. Have felt fairly well, though weak.) The first effect oa all nowadays seems rather to excite coughing. Is this because of the sthenic basis of this kind of cough? (P.S. at 3.0 quite calm; so took one more. This had no bad effect, but increased the good.)
2.40.
“When you’re wounded and left near the Gar’ Montparnasse and the women come out in the hope of a “as” Remember: “tout lasse, tout passe, tout casse” and emmene-en-un’ [?] like a soldier a soldier of the Quim!” [?[
(Dunno why I have to but in like this!) But I like that Bon B poem this A.M. Let me go on with it!
2.45 P.M.
The Aviary. Take away the dove of Love And the pigeon of Religion! —Put a cenotaph above Where you’ve got ‘em hid, John! Never heed the crow Of Woe, Nor the raven of the Craven! —Simply lift your chin plus haut As becomes a brave ‘un! Tell the draggled swan: Begone! Lock the turkey Out with her key! —Calmly meditate upon Life, nor wroth nor jerky! Don’t be a wet hen To men! Be the eagle— Life is regal! That injunction is worth ten Of commands more legal! Skyward soar, o hawk! Don’t squawk! Shoot keen arrow, Eager sparrow! —More you act and less you talk Swiftlier reach the marrow! Waste not wealth of word On bird! Nor on droll tree Squat like poultry! —Pluck thy flowers: fruit preferred From thy sunlit soul-tree!
3.45 P.M. Write M. K. Clark and Montgomery Evans 2nd [Corespondence - Crowley to Evans].
6.45 P.M. Did [wrote] MKC[lark]—then in pops who but Sylvia Sullivan? In the usual kind of trouble, of course. I diagnosed her with great accuracy: she admitted everything. I showed her the way out—the Law of Thelema. How wonderfully it cuts the Gordian Knots, no odds how complex! a single deft stroke, and all comes clean and clear! Happy indeed am I to have been chosen to bring such Wisdom to the world!
8.0. Did [wrote] Montg. E. 2nd.
9.50 P.M. “Ten Years later!” Met Hope Johnstone at the Dome. Since before the War I had not seen him: yet we fell at once into chat like old friends. I knew him only slightly at the any time.
11.35 P.M. In bed at 10. Went to sleep, not meaning to—woke with a perfectly frightful paroxysm. The swine here have forgotten to bring my Ethel [Ether]: there’s hardly any. I have to shovel in earth-aq. hard: C is already turning to A. Potion helps slightly to pull me round. Thus thoroughly upset, I can but think of writing an Essay “Personae”—a study of W.S.’s girls dressed as boys.
11.55 P.M. C gone, and A reduced to mild B. But it was hot while is lasted.
Hail unto Kheph Ra!
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