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Aleister Crowley Diary Entry Tuesday, 16 September 1930
Tues[day] 16.
.3% [albumin][1] after worry.
Began the Great Op[eratio]n—very well indeed.
Her [Hanni Jaeger] fits of melancholy are usually connected with the wish to make a mystery of some nothing-in-particular. They are capricious as sea-fog, and as dense. It is almost as hard to get through to her as it is to a genuine melancholic. They seem harmless, but are not; for if the habit grows, it might become truly morbid if it coincided with serious depression at time of stress.
Sun very hot in A.M. and we stayed later than usual. She had a fit of worry which developed into a general hysterical attack—very severe. The whole hotel in turmoil.
Note her pathological fear and lying. For latter, all her “magic” stories. For former, her locking her suit-case a dozen times in a couple of hours, though she doesn’t leave the room, and there is nothing of value in it. But she has lived in the underworld too long.
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.
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