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John Symonds Diary Entry Friday, 3 May 1946
. . . so I made on 3 May 1946 the journey to Hastings, taking Rupert Gleadow with me.
Word went up to his room that we had arrived.
I heard his slow footsteps on the stairs and down the passage. As he was about to enter the room, I drew back to take the full impact of him.
He was of medium height, slightly bent, and clad in an old-style plus-four suit with silver buckles below the knee. In his eyes was a puzzled, pained look. He had a thin, goatee beard and a mustache , and his head, in spite of tufts of hair on the sides, seemed no more than a skull. The Logos of the Aeon of Ra-Hoor-Khuit had shrunk into his clothes, and all the fleshiness had vanished from his face.
‘Do what thou wilt, shall be the whole of the Law,’ he intoned in a nasal, fussy tone of voice.
The Wickedest Man in the World looked rather exhausted—whether from wickedness, or from old age, I did not then know.
A large seal ring engraved with Ankh-f-n-Khonsu ('His life is in Khonsu,' the moon god of Thebes), in hieroglyphics, was on his finger, and a brooch with the image of Thoth was on his silk tie. . . .
It was a rather awkward meeting, taking place as it did in such ordinary circumstances; the Brocken would have been a more suitable place. As soon as Crowley realised that my companion was Rupert Gleadow, the astrologer, we plunged straight away into the subject of the stars and their influence.
'I think that there is only a fraction of one per cent truth in astrology,' said Crowley.
I found this opinion, from a man who had been casting horoscopes all his life, rather unexpected.
'There's more to it than that,' replied Gleadow.
I began to feel there was something a little strange about Crowley; it was difficult to say what exactly. Apart from the ring and the brooch, and his peculiar sweetish smell, he could be considered, I thought, an ordinary man with upward turning eyebrows; and yet there was a quality of remoteness about him that made him different. I can best describe this quality by saying that it suggested that he cared very little for the usual preoccupations of mankind. But he had one failing common to the generality of men: he was vain and did not want to depart without leaving as great a mark upon the earth as possible.
The sweet odour was due to his use of the holy consecrating oil of Abramelin, the oil which was said to have run down Aaron's beard.
I introduced a subject which went to the heart of the matter.
'It's a pity magic's fallen into disuse these days,' I said.
Crowley did not agree that it had, and he mentioned the name of a man who lived in north-west London. 'He fell out with an associate—they quarrelled, I think, over a woman.' For a moment Crowley stared grimly at the worn carpet. 'Well, he raised a malignant current,' he said in his slow but emphatic voice, 'and his friend's house caught fire and burnt down.'
I asked him how it was done. 'He could have made a wax doll in the shape of his hated rival and thrown it in the fire,' he replied. 'That method has worked before; there is no observable causality but the two events—the burning down of the house and the burning of the image—happened during the same night. It's black magic or grey at least; I don't know what he did.
He invited us to luncheon but excused himself; he always ate in his room, he said, but he would see us afterwards. I wondered what concoction he was going to consume privately; later I discovered that it was nothing more involved than a boiled egg and an injection of heroin.
Luncheon for Gleadow and me was served in the adjoining dining-room. Pinned to the wall were the 'House Rules':
These sentiments were not in Crowley's style and it was not, anyhow, his boarding-house: they were presumably the efforts of the eccentric proprietor, a little man with a beard. It was not surprising that Crowley had come to stay there.
After luncheon, we went for a walk in the garden; I looked up at a bay window surrounded by ivy on the first floor, behind which, I supposed, our warlock was having a nap.
He soon reappeared; he was carrying a bottle of brandy and some glasses. As he poured out the brandy, he said that it had cost him £10 on the black market. Then he produced a cigar case and offered us Coronas. I was glad to think that, although he was not living in opulence, he had been able to supply himself with a few basic luxuries.
We began talking about the end of the world, a subject which seemed to fascinate him. His expression grew thoughtful and he said in a low voice, 'History enlightens us. The ancient Hebrews believed that the end of the world would come after seven thousand years from the creation.' He paused, sipped his brandy. 'Next, we have the Gospel prophecies; Christ was to return within the lifetime of one or more of his disciples and reign on earth for a thousand years.' Another sip of brandy. This, obviously, was a subject he had at his finger-tips. 'The death of the last Apostle, St. John of Patmos, threw matters into some confusion.' When Crowley spoke again, it was with irony. 'The next thing that comes to my mind is the belief that the end of the world would arrive in one thousand years AD, and this belief was so widely spread as to affect the course of secular history. When this prediction failed, there was again confusion.'
He continued in this vein for some while mentioning several False Prophets, such as Joanna Southcott, Charles Piazzi Smyth, the Astronomer-Royal for Scotland, who decided, after measuring the proportions of the Great Pyramid, that the millennium would arrive in 1882, Anna Kingsford, and Nostradamus.
'Nostradamus', he said, 'computed that the end of the world would arrive in 1999.'
He was not impressed by this prediction. 'As a matter of fact,' he said, coming at last to the point, 'the world was destroyed by fire on March the 20th, 1904.
'But we are still here,' I murmured.
'That is, according to the Initiated Doctrine.'
I asked him if there was any literature on the subject. He replied that there was, and before we left he gave each of us a pamphlet in a stiff blue paper cover entitled The Book of the Law, 'Issued by the CHURCH OF THELEMA, 1003, S. Orange Grove Ave, PASADENA, CALIF.'
I promised Crowley to come again and read the proofs, when they arrived from the printer, of his forthcoming anthology of poems, Olla.
'Do you play chess?' he asked me as he saw us to the door.
'No, I don't,' I replied, and unthinkingly added, 'but I know how to.'
'I wish I did,' he said drily; 'I've been trying to learn for the last sixty years.'
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