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Aleister Crowley Diary Entry Sunday, 23 March 1924
die Sol.
O.P.V.s [Norman Mudd] ghoul-grim threats of nameless horrors are on my nerves. I can only imagine “something worse than anything I have imagined as yet”: as I have sounded all conceivable abysses of disaster and infamy, this meditation has a faint tinge of unpleasantness.
(Above just before midnight. Went off to sleep while writing (a) it (b) “Personae” personae (c) Something that developed into a true dream wh[ich] explained the condition of the Moon. This was once wooded; the lunatic tacticians had to burn it all for fuel. This was due somehow to some war; and I saw the same process starting over here.
12.35 It was a really fair triple dose of earth-aq [Heroin]: I itch marvelous lewdly, and to scratch—oh! but for to scratch, it is to scratch! I has been like 13 masturbations, a menstruation-orgie, a five-man buggery competition, sixteen rapes of assorted quadrupeds (including two marsupials, a wooden-legged rattlesnake, and a plain deal table) with a passive affair with a unicorn, a pelican’s pouch, the fistula of George the Fifth, and a pot of marmalade thrown in. (And now my mind has wandered to Stuart X. I recognize some dozen or more ‘mountain-tops’ on the way, and the Unconscious reason for his appearance in my mind)
12.50 A.M. Almost afraid to go to sleep lying down, so short of Ethel [Ether]. God’s curse upon the stupid boy who does everything he can to dodge every simplest bit of work! B is now almost gone—but the cost has been heavy. (Mind off again to Les Noyades—no hill-tops visible. (The reference id to Merdurabo, Alice-won’t-stir Scare-crow-ley) Idea for a poem: peasant fucks [illegible] in despair. Carrier sees it, and with a coarse laugh has them released. This starts things, rather as in Mandragor: but it’s better realism, and would make a good novel. The psychology of a child conceived at such a moment—the girl awakes from her trance to the roars of laughter from the banks—should make an infinitely complex and delicate study. (1) Horror and love of the canaille [?] (2) Extreme terror forgotten in shame, physical pain turning to rapture, and amazement on waking (3) Relief on being reprieved (4) Fear to face emigré father, sent from Paris on special mission and unable to get back in time to die with daughter left at home in supposed safety (N.B. He must not be there disguised like Taras Balba. Then, during gestation, complications after escape with an English lover—oh hell! it would be “The Net” all over again. I should never get that baby weaned!
1.15 Back to ‘Personae’.
1.40 Wheezing notable, but breath easy!
2.50 a.m. Have gone through all W.S. for disguises.
3.35 A.M. Did not lose consciousness, as I deem. Yet managed to swallow a bit of cotton-wool to keep warm the swallowed chunk of “tête de veu Bourjeois” [?]—which ‘woke’ me thoroughly with a start and a cough. The matter is now getting quite simple at last.
A is quickly stopped, or reduced to B (which is not really too great a nuisance, and tends to pass off by itself) by a strong dose of pure earth-aq. A rarely starts of its own accord. I cannot be sure of the cause in such cases. C is instantly transformed into A by earth-aq. But C starts frequently, as an ordinary cough, or when digestion goes wrong. As earth-aq. only transforms, not annihilates it, I should look for a substitute. Neither A nor C seem to have been removed with the inside of my head. We must look further (I think) for deep-seated nervous causes. What about S? [Greek sigma]
4.18. Quite wake [?wide] awake: yet Leah [Leah Hirsig] is sitting at the foot of the bed playing with Astarte Lulu Panthea. She says “Kiss Beast good-morning” which is duly done. The babe then says rather tearfully: I wish I had a little brother. I say: But you have two little brothers—besides the Big Lion [Crowley]. Lulu, rather pathetically: Oh they’re no good: they won’t kiss me! B[ig] L[ion]: That’s all right: by-and-by You’ll say to them “kiss my cunt”: and they’ll have to. So you must be a good girl and grow up quick. Lulu thinks it over very seriously for a minute, and then raps out with an air of great decision “Yes, I will”. Leah and I burst out laughing, and Lulu is bewildered and indignant. So we kiss her—and each other—some more—and then I’m wide wide awake, and scribble this down.
7.45 A.M. Woke at 7.30 into furious C. 2 stiff earth-aq to change it to A which is still fairly bad. Seems that something accumulates during sleep which demands to be expelled, and even disturbs me for the purpose. Note. Even without earth-aq. C tends to turn into A as soon as the phlegm is ejected: this suggests A may be directly due to sudden strain: in fact I have noticed it on walking upstairs too breathlessly, thinking or talking hard during the ascent.
8.0. Posterity will know as little of America as we do of the Huns before they touched civilization. A vast unwieldly savage murderous horde without the smallest notion of Spiritual or Moral values. Greed, callous cruelty, (the most salient of all characteristics. Has the climate—with its nerve-wracking qualities—a great part in this? It was the notorious feature in the noble Red Man; that and black treachery and madness of ‘fire-water’ apart, he was a very fine type of man all round. Note that this C.C. is officially encouraged. On the one hand, lynching, tarring and feathering, Ku Klux Klan methods, Puritanism: on the other, outrageous judicial sentences for trifling offences. E.g. Debs, ‘conchies’, medical heretics. As to the treachery, by the way, U.S.A. is the home of the ‘frame-up’) failure to understand that the planet was not made for their ignorance to ‘boss’ and ‘run’—all this can only end in the cold-blooded assassination of the human race at their hands.
For we have nobody capable of breaking the blow as France did of old—unless, despite her present imbecile moral surrender to niggers and worse, we venture to keep faith in England.
In the above case, the island must be England, and Thelemic policy a strong air force, navy etc., with a determined ‘America est delenda’ attitude, ceaseless, passionless, most witful undermining of the United States, especially the modern tendency there to call for a dictator. Almost any such man, a roisterer like Roosevelt, a megalomaniac like Wilson, a moneylids wage-slave like Harding, or a fanatical lunatic like Coolidge, might at any moment set the hordes sweeping into Canada, and thence across the world. Their present shadow of democracy and their very real pacifism—the coward’s kind—has saved Europe up to now. Prohibition, restriction of immigration, religious anarchy-war-to-the-knife for intolerant domination, book and movie censorship, and many other features, should be very beacons of danger to any statesman with the least knowledge of History, Spiritual energies, and the accursed continent.
8.30 A.M. Dashing off above seems to have cleared up C, A and even B almost completely.
9.15 A.M. Quite comfortable now. No narcotic effect. But I must find another way to stop C: for even three day’s use of solid aq. has begun to spoil my virginity, and C needs 3 times the dose it did (at least, it seems so to me.)
10.30 What remains of Grimaldi, who made the whole world laugh for years? Just one poor anecdote—the demonstration of his helpless misery!
11.30 A.M. The solid aq. has kept me rather over half awake, reading the Chi[cago Tribune] and pottering with odd notes. (Am taking the Belladonna regularly, since Friday A.M. No effect perceptible, so far.)
12.20 P.M. How skillfully I avoided education! ! By dodging authority, by acquiring the trick of passing examinations etc, despite the enormous sums lavished on the attempt to teach me something. And how glorious the result. A single term of weakness or vacillation on my part, and I should be by now—had I survived!—the most deplorable pedant in Europe!
12.40 Compare France under Louis XV and XVI with the U.S.A. to-day as to the multiplicity of conflicting laws, jurisdictions, privileges, authorities etc. 4 quite separate kinds of justice—royal, noble, ecclesiastic (official) and municipal. 13 Parliaments. Customary rights v. written (Roman) Law Limits uncertain.
1.15 Q[uer]y Is the “White Flag” of surrender originally an insult to France (of the Bourbons)? My knowledge fails me badly, but it doesn’t seem likely. However, I got a vision of an Anglican clergyman, very full and stout, with a brown beard which swept the ground, industriously wagging a WiF, bigger than himself. He appeared in answer to a joking question: should we, as friends of France, set up a violent agitation to change this symbol? He was the kind of person whose activities would be ended: that was (I think) the main idea.
1.45. J.C. and his objection (alleged) to the prayer of ‘vain repetitions, as do the heathen’. He can only have been thinking of Roman Catholics. For Mantra-repetition is by no means ‘vain’, and anyhow it isn’t a prayer. (I had prayed—under Ethel [Ether]—for the first time in x plus y years. It was to Aiwass to let me know what I need to know just now. I was instantly conscious—directly—of his presence: and knew that “the Perfume and the Vision” are for the weaker Brethren.)
Observe, there are simple human needs; and they are genuinely sublime; if it’s only “Make Bobby a good boy”—what heartbreak in that! So there is a need for the whole hierarchy (as in AL) and a busy crowd it must be! And one understands clearly the wisdom of Their sending just what is really needed and no more. More would corrupt—all same troppo tiffin!
1.55 Strong reaction—just before above—against O.P.V. He has no right to send me vile threatening letters like his last, and disturbing my mind for two days. He has no real courage, will, or resource. He is indeed the basest and grossest of all types of men I have ever seen.
And yet—how many noble qualities! I have so far failed to find the root of either set of attributes. But there is no doubt that he is personally loathsome: on that point extreme disgust has never had a qualm. I feel at present that I cannot bear close association with him. I ought, I really think, to communicate only via Lea [Hirsig]—who seems not to mind so much. She loves putrefaction: that is her real title to be the Scarlet Woman. (What a vast Cup she must have to hold so much abomination as just that one lump of rotten meat!)
The above is by no means to be taken as indicating any lack on my part of great affection and respect for Frater O.P.V. So I suppose I can save him too, by beating him into some sort of shape. (It’s the horribly amorphous mollusk in Mudd which gives him the Nightmare quality which appalls so irresistibly. “Hog-like abortion” is rather rough on the hogs and the abortions. They have organic form, at their worst. Muss is “a nearly liquid mass of loathsome of detestable putrescence”—but oh that “nearly”. He won’t flow; he is a clammy poultice of sour war-bread. He clings, he clogs, he chokes. ------ The English language fails! To subjects less unwholesome!
4.12 P.M. Well, despite the long interval since above, the wheel comes full circle. One must love this putrefaction and so impose on it the beginning of form and so the beginning of Beauty.
4.15. What can I do for P.E.T. [Paris Evening Telegram]. (a) Humourous daily column (a la Line o’ type, but better) (b) Medical column daily (c) Weekly literary essay. (d) On occasion: book reviews. (e) On occasion leaders. (f) Paragraphs 200-500 words (a la Daily Mail) on all sorts of odd subjects. (g) Theatres, music-halls, cabarets, boxing, golf, athletics. (Originality: e.g. prize-fight reported by jeune fille bien elevee. “He struck him such a cruel blow that I really thought he would fall down; but he planted him a snosher on the map, and uncorker a bottle of Bordeaux. And so I asked Mamma --- etc (h) Big causerie weekly de omnibus et quibus dum aliis. (i) Correspondence column, both genuine and faked. (j) Art criticism (k) Sunday sermonette (l) High-class interviewing (m) Now and then—Comis Guide to Paris and other places. E.g. Maxim’s: so-called because the greatest philosophers of antiquity used to utter maxims of wisdom to their disciples during symposia there—One may still see young men being taught, in the severest school, the most important truths of life. Develop this.
Rue de Rivoli. French corruption of ravioli, because the first Metro-tube was built along its course.
Place de la Bastille—she was a girl, who after receiving many life-long aristocratic lovers, fell through admitting the populace. Others claim it should be Bas-style, from the elegant stockings worn by the fair ladies of the quarter etc.
If I do all these as well as they can be done, the P.E.T. will deserve its name. (No! I do not know any French.) Sample joke for humouto us column.
5.0. P.M. Aimée Gouraud has just called. I am naif enough to be surprised. Ass I am! She is too stupid to realize how vile other people think her! (Or, she wants to bluff right along, and has some ulterior motive for calling.)
Oh, Mr. Coleman, where’s your soul, man?
5.40
“Our Government has failed—darned nuisance Dictatorship’s the only plan” Ah! why not try the Institutions And manners called—Republican?
(Epigram against Mr. Oscar W. Coleman who writes to the Chicago Tribune to the effect of the first two lines above.)
5.0. P.M. cont[inue]. I gave no hint of my ideas on this point. That fox may do me a bit of good yet—in future Hercules will change his lion’s skin for a silver-fox-mantle. I may yet make a meal off that obese old hen! I’ll ask her to show me O.P.V.’s letter: I want to know just what he does when I’m sick in bed, half delirious. Doubtless he means well—but that’s the worst thing there is.
7.30 P.M. A long introspection with Ethel [Ether]. Enthralling, marvellous—somehow vain (One point: à la Magdalen Blair, rigor mortis invented wonderful Baudelaire [Charles Baudelaire]—immobile cities etc; then came putrefaction and the cities crumbled into ruins; smitten by wars or volcano, and I was always one of the doomed inhabitants. I go on: Well, what of after putrefaction? This is just A.C.-ese for my father’s “What after death?” Various answers come: “I don’t know” for one. AL I.58 contradicts this. “I trust Aiwass” is another. Next question: is Aiwass Jesus? AL excludes this again by III 51 and so on and so forth. The Judge himself (in the Cavern where I am brought back “to meet some minor charges—“I’m almost ashamed to take up your time with anything so trivial—the worst penalty involved is only a few trillion years in and out of boiling oil, marriage, and journalism” smiles the Judge) is only a figment of my brain. Then what when the brain is disintegrated? The answer, easy now, was impossible then. But I got a giant Brocken-spectre of myself overhanging myself and saying like Shelley’s “doppelganger” Siete datisfatto! I wonder: is this an omen of imminent death? That brings the true answer—not—the silly philosophical stuff of my waking self, the ‘easy’ reply—like a flash “I mean to live some more and do my work”. (I put it better than that in the Vision; but that’s the idea.) At this the Judge smiled cordially, and waved me to upper air. Query: does all this mean that I have in some way or other passed through some frightful and fantastic ordeal, with the result that people will flock to the Banner of the Law of Thelema? Curious, certainly, Sylvia calling yesterday and Aimée to-day; also the news from Mrs Clark, Montg Evans 2nd [Montgomery Evans], McCourt [?], Crawford and others, also meeting Hope Johnstone. It is as if a totally new crowd were coming toward me: and up to me not to mess things up, as I have always done hitherto! My policy of the moment? as arranged. Masterly inactivity: formal grabbing at each opportunity but wholly without lust of result: and—“it is I that wait at last” --- “This now I know, O my beloved, and we are stretched at our ease among the vines”. There hath indeed been granted unto me “The Knowledge and Conversation of Mine Holy Guardian Angel”—and Liber Cordis Cincti Serpente, last year so laboriously commented, suddenly lives and loves in a great outburst of boundless [?] and borneless Light! Yea, verily, my Lord! How does that Chapter end? O thou beloved One! is there not an End? Nay, but the re is an end. Awake! arise! gird up thy limbs, thou runner; bear thou the Word unto the mighty cities; yea, unto the mighty bear thou the Word unto the mighty cities; yea, unto the mighty cities”. So that then will Indo forthwith ----- The next chapter begins “Verily and Amen! I have passed through the deep sea, and by the rivers of running water that abound therein, and I came unto the Land of No Desire” ----
I can’t copy the whole book, as I shall have to do if I would express my Truth --- for every word of it “is as life to a new Aeon: no God has read the whole. But THou and I, O God, have written it page by page”.
9.0 P.M. Note that I thought, on waking, that the whole of my Vision (the above is a minute fraction) had been “somehow vain”. The most vital thing I’ve had in years! It leaves me calmer and more confident than I have ever yet been in my life. It is simply absurd from me, who have always sneered at prophecy; but I know positively that everything has been arranged for me to do my work without delay. (The method doesn’t matter: I might get shot, or run over, or go mad. The trick is turned. So let us wait and work and watch “Nature accommodates herself to the statement of the Magus”?)
9.50 P.M. Went out to dine: instead, talked 93 to Hope Johnstone. We agree remarkably on most points, even to astonishingly small details, e.g. making almost identical jokes on Women’s Suffrage and Democracy. We discussed Gurdjieff at some length—also with much agreement. He began: “What do you think of etc.” I retorted: “How do you know I know anything about it?” He seems to have taken it for granted that I should know. No doubt at all that the Gods sent me there—in the one three-day period when my health allowed any such excursion. It is therefore important. Question: can I work with them at all, to complete them, as I proposed to myself, by taking on all those who will not fit in to his very artificial scheme. I shall ask the Yi for definite counsel about H[ope] J[ohnstone]. “Who is he? How can he help? How shall I deal with him?” et cetera: the usual compendious question. I had better adopt a regular simple formula for such cases: e.g. “Concerning Hope Johnstone?” Sol/Sol XXX Li No: my thought moved while I manipulated the sticks. It will be far better to ask an Oracle of Thelema. O do so. My right thumb, after the battery 1-3-3-3-1, pierces to the word “purple” in VII. 4.50. “I see them on the yellow sand, all clothed in Tyrian purple”. These “foolish folk” are perceived by me “yonder”, immediately I have attained to the Knowledge and Conversation of mine Holy Guardian Angel (vv 48.49) They worship the God John; “They draw their shining God unto the land in nets” He is manifestly Sol, and the water is Cancer. Also, “they build a fire to the Lord of Fire” also, “they cry unhallowed words” which are a curse against the Life, and the Right Way of Death, of ----? We are not told. I then say to mine Angel—or He to me?—that “These are evil folk”; and we “pass on to the Otherworld”. Before this, though: “Then do they cook the shining god and gulp him whole”. We appear thus (a) He as Nuit, I as “a little red worm on a hook”, but “thou and I will catch our fish alike”; whence (b) I become “a shining fish with golden back and silver belly”, but He Atu 0, described as a ‘man of the West’ (This may be vice versa) This whole symbolism is Solar, with divers adornments of Mercury, Fire, Venus, Pisces, and Taurus. The end of all is the Kiss of the Angel and myself, after due sacrifice and crucifixion, which atones “for the wrong of the Beginning”. H.J. seems to be the gorgeous apparel worn by the people engaged in this operation of Magick.
The Opus is: to destroy by Solar and Fiery means those who resist the energy of Sol and Fire. The folk are ‘evil’, as restricted by the terrestrial character of this Work; 93-418 and 666 must leave them to their world, that we may perform our own special Work of Magick to ‘atone’ etc. But these folk attract, adapt, and assimilate their God Sol, using Fire to this end.
H.J. may thus perhaps be fitted to present the terrene aspect of the joint Work of 93-418 and 666 in its richest, and most noble and royal form. He and his associates in this Work attain the full enjoyment of the Solar essence by destroying the irreconcilable elements of society. He does this unsuspected by them, thanks to the splendor of his camouflage. This interpretation fits well enough with his natural faculties; note the “nets” (v.51) of snaring words (?) His intervention leaves 93-418 and 666 free to proceed to the purely celestial Formula of Saving Mankind.
I may perhaps suggest this to him
as his immediate task: he might write a novel, or essays, on Thelema, presenting its perfection in language or imperial
Beauty.
His proper magical gesture is to get a first-rate job, insure himself properly, and kill himself, without arousing suspicion, “that the prophecies may be fulfilled”. (His own idea of Jesus Christ’s motives! He should first marry Leah, that she may be adulterous, and to make his insuring himself seem natural, and her inheriting the Insurance money less liable to question. (In view of Fougnet’s fatal ‘plan of defence’ I had better explain that all the above is ‘writ sarcastic’) (See VII. 3.18, the “lord” being Lampada Tradam [Victor B. Neuburg], the Jew, ruling caste in England) So, you see, two can play at that game.
“a hog-like abortion named Mudd Was like a one-eyed rotten spud His one chance to clean His person obscene Is to wash himself out in his blood”
11.24 P.M. Notes for conference with Mr. Lorimer Hammond 5. P.M. Monday.
1. Psychanalyse his drink. Get him to promise to limit the daily amount, and confine ‘sacred lusts’ to once a fortnight.
2. Burton Rascoe is the C.T. man who knows my work.
3. Propose partnership—to raise him above money-making by his present painful method. His main work:
(a) to boost me (1) Sale of Serial Rights ‘Hag’ [The Confessions of Aleister Crowley] (2) Get C.T. to give me contract for (1) Literary Essays (b) Topical articles (c) Reminiscences of Great Men I have known (d) Paragraphs a la Daily Mail. (e) Sermonettes (f) Causerie (h) Stories and poems for Magazine
(B) to collaborate with me in writing (1) Stories for “Adventure” (The wild bees etc) (A.C. to be a new Buffalo Bill) (2) The new Abbey of Thelema plans. (3) A.C. to be presented to Col. McC as “the man who won’t fit in”. (4) L[orimer] H[ammond] to be trained thoroughly to be a first-rate man at any job in the world. (5) Q[uer]y Philip Goodman’s address in Paris?
11.40 P.M. Tired and bored with all this: I do it mechanically on the new principle of action formulated somewhere above in this Record.
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