Aleister Crowley Diary Entry

Tuesday, 9 September 1930

Tues[day] 9.

.35%^[1] [albumin]. 7 P.M.

First cloudy morning; rain-clouds over East.

To Lisbon [Portugal]: lunch with 4000 scudos. Met Leal [Raul Leal]: don’t like him. There’s something very definitely wrong about him. At night Initiation.

 22^[2] p[er] v[as] n[efandum]^[3] to start אמת [emet]^[4] (So).

1—Crowley carried with himself a device to test the level of albumin in his blood, probably through urine. Other similar annotations from this point on show that he was testing the level of albumin almost on a daily basis, comparing it with his general physical condition. Normal levels of albumin in blood range from 3.5 to 5 g/dL.

2—The symbol “” indicates sexual magical operations, which Crowley differentiates from normal sexual intercourse. The progressive numbering indicates the number of times the operation has been conducted with a particular partner. This means that Crowley had already performed sexual magic twenty-two times with Hanni Jaeger before.

3—Latin: “Through the foul vessel.” This indicates a sexual magical operation carried out through anal intercourse.

4—Hebrew: “truth.”

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