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Jane Wolfe Diary Entry Friday, 23 July 1920
as narrated by
Jane arrived at the Hotel des Palmes in Palermo, Sicily on the morning of July 23. She was shown to a sitting room on the second floor. There she waited, exhausted, eyes closed, head resting on her palm. She was roused by a voice saying: "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. I am Alostrael". Standing before her was Leah Hirsig, her face unwashed, her hair wispy and uncombed, nails long and black with charcoal dust. She wore a black dress with a large grease stain in which dust had settled. Jane was shocked to her core. She thought, "How could Crowley send such a person to greet her?" Then, as she was quite psychic she immediately saw after this flash of thought, a large pond—of filth, pussy-looking filth. Her mind automatically said; "Filth personified". With this an impenetrable wall was formed between Leah and herself which took many months to remove; except that when Leah was unhappy it disappeared entirely.
Leah took Jane downstairs to meet Crowley. When Jane raised her eyes she saw several aspects of this man and qualified them thus:
a) The outer man; the hat, the striped suit, walking stick, the bracelets.
b) The man who had appeared to her in a vision in California, his eyes looking at her through the spokes of a wheel.
c) A large city house, carefully shuttered up so that by no key-hole or even a cranny could one contact the inside.
d) Outdoors, slightly left of center, a far stretch of beautiful landscape and blue sky. Then directly in front of her, slightly to the right, there was a stretch of rocks, not grey granite, she noticed, but more like the California smooth old rocks, not high like the Sierras, but low-lying, two or three times her height. Quickly she noted at the base of the rocks a bird with plumage such a brilliant black it was iridescent, where it could be seen. Mud was splattered over the back; the chest was caked with mud; its feet imbedded in a small puddle of mire, the bird meantime flapping impotent wings and struggling for release. She gazed in horror at the bird, which then cocked its head on one side and looked her straight in the eye. She froze.
Crowley remarked: "God-damn your eyes!"
But with this vision all doors were closed to Crowley for many months. Jane was horrified as she hardly expected such a result to her journey. She was to regret terribly in later years that she never wrote this vision in her diary. If she had, what a difference it would have made!
At this meeting, Jane learned that Crowley had sent a message to the American liner to come to Cefalu but this message had not reached her.
That afternoon Crowley and Leah spent the time at the Cathedrale Montreale on the hill above Palermo. Jane could not bring herself to go along and made the pretext of needing a rest. In the evening the three dined in an open square and went to a movie afterwards. Jane was speechless due to her vision, unfortunately.
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