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Aleister Crowley Diary Entry Thursday, 27 March 1924
die Jupiter.
1.11 A.M. Hail unto Kheph Ra! Note. Difficulty about 1/4d damages. It may seem a cowardly attempt to induce the S.E. [Sunday Express] not to bother to defend the case seriously.
3.45 A.M. Woke from rather quiet pleasant dreams—I can't remember them. C not quite intolerably severe.
9.40 Slept better than usual and woke not so very sick. Better than if Ethel [Ether], I think she is really a low bitch—to be cut out exc[ept] in real emergencies. This A.M. Love-music in Court!
11.40 A.M. "If you condemn me, you will be deceived as grossly as the Greeks and Trojans, warring ten years for a shadowy Helen, while the real woman was living in peace and innocence far from the theatre of strife, or as the Pharisees and the [illegible] who, as the Moslems and Pelasgians (Q[uer]y this: look it up) hold, nailed to the cross the bodiless phantom of the Saviour of the World".
12.35 My secretiveness—on the contrary, I am foolishly frank. E.g. in my training people for superior tasks, I should have kept my methods most secret. But I said: that would look as if I had a guilty conscience; and as there is nothing illegal, however unconventional, in them, I shall make no attempt to conceal what I am doing.
12.40 Precaution. Don't tell Betty May, or Bickers [Horace Sheridan-Bickers], or Mary Butts; but insist they put their informants in the box.
1.11 P.M. Going out to see LH [Lorimer Hammond], F.H. [Frank Harris] and Bourjeois.
4.18 P.M. Letter from F.H. Cohen has swindled him!
4.40 Quote Mrs. Emery's prophecy in opening speech.
6.0. Have been Aethyling—like Edgar?—how d'ye spell him?
Lots and lots of lovely results: and not one dam thing to record. All too ethereal. This is Nature's way of relieving my frightful fatigue—I suppose. In fact, I begin to wonder, after all, whether I am able to stand the situation. I have a very strong hunch that unless Dr. Chaussegros makes good, I may collapse very badly indeed, for all my brave words. Dropping with sleep: to shut the eyes evokes endless visions which I am too tired to transcribe though many of them would be A.1. in other cir[cumstance]s.
I feel the fiends gathering round the carcase. There is no help, no hope, save only in the Exalted One! I am chosen to do the Work of the Secret Chiefs; Perdurabo.
7.10. A couple of small doses of aq. [Heroin] restore me somewhat for the time: but there is oh! so little left in case of a frontal attack all along the line. Anyhow, I am certainly suffering from chronic starvation, extending over weeks of "economy". Also, my resistance has been worn down not a little by the strain of voluntary reduction a month ago (is it? the record says) and the whole nervous system—not the moral being, as O.P.V. [Norman Mudd] thought possible—is under drum-fire of the new great Crisis. I accepted gladly O.P.V.'s demonstration that the Gods were forcing us to proclaim the Law in this drastic way. I believe I am honest with every inmost fibre of myself when I say that I rejoice. Even the elements of dread seem glad at the idea of getting it all over; defeat and death better than ignominous escape. But the P.E.T. [Paris Evening Telegram] catastrophe is certainly a blow. Frank Harris' dauntless courage must be my model. It is his face that haunts me most, not my own loss of a possible line of retreat: the Gods did well to leave me no way out! Once again, and once and for all: P E R D U R A B O. "Therefore had I faith unto the end of all: yea, unto the end of all".
11.40 Am light-headed, semi-somnolent, already, from lack of aq., though it is not quite all gone. Dr Chaussegros will evidently desert me. Wonder of specialist would be any good.
Alostrael [Leah Hirsig] wires she'll arrive Saturday A.M. I must last till then, somehow. And perhaps she may have had the sense to bring some—I hope to God she will.
12.15! Chaussegros has sent me 5 tablets ? 1 grain—should keep me going till to-morrow, easily. (Probably 1 e.g. in each tablet = 1/6 gr. approx.)
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