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A Sick Man's Fancies
During a period of ill health Crowley reflected that he wrote his successful short story The Stratagem when he was very ill and Norman Mudd suggested that he should note down any 'sick man's fancies' as a literary project. Crowley numbered these sketches for ideas with the highest being reported as #19. References to these sketches and some of the actual sketches themselves are found for the most part in Crowley's diaries for 1924.
No. 2. (Copied from Crowley MSS.)
The mind of a sick man runs free, but so dark is the future that it can only pierce the mists of the past—in the twilight!
I see no more than just a wilderness of thought, peopled with wandering phantoms of my dead desires.
I should have cut me channels of well ordered ideas, and flooded them from the springs of sorrow and love, and planted seeds of True Will. Then, by the grace of the Sun of Heaven it should have blossomed with flowers of Beauty, flowed with (hint) (tint) (limit) of Work worth doing and well done. All in His Light!
Oh that the mists would clear! I have so often dreamed that I achieved all this. But did I? I can only wait and wonder—and watch for the dawn.
Saturday, 8 March 1924 No. 3. I am haunted by Nietzsche. Yes, the herd is noble enough: but what is the alternative? To be the big blond beast—the beast of prey! No:
"I find this black mark impinge [?] the man That he believes in just the vile of life".
His image is false: we are not a mere menagerie of assorted brutes.
"Like a mighty army Moves the Church of God"
should be our vision of the Race. Then—even the stupidest private is a hero. The leaders are hidden and lonely but not in ambush: they are the Secret Staff, the true philosophers, the Hermits "who give only of their Light unto Men". Lying here sick and starving, let me find Light, and shed it for their sake!
Sunday, 9 March 1924 No. 4 The Moon bothers me badly. I can believe at a pinch in life of some kind—and how superb a kind! in the Sun but in that frozen mass of earth-bubbles, no! Then is there somewhere some place truly void of Energy, really exempt from Change? I can't believe that either. And the alternative is that the physical universe as known by our senses is no more than this meditation itself—a sick man's fancy.
Wednesday, 12 March 1924 9.30 P.M. A good day on the whole Goldsmith and Jane Chéron called; but not B H as promised. O.P.V.'s letter, on mature consideration is the limit. He tells me how to write 'Sick Man's Fancies' and ARS pats me on the back that my "No 2 is IT". I invoke [illegible] Hall by the ancient Rune: "and now I go upstairs, go up stairs, kyind fryiends, give me yer prayers! Give me your bloody prayers, damn yer eyes!"
Saturday, 15 March 1924 10.10 P.M. Wrote No. 12 S[ick] M[an']s F[ancies].
Sunday, 16 March 1924 4.0. Wrote Nos. 13 and 14 S[ick] M[an']s F[ancies].
Wednesday, 26 March 1924 die Mercury. Hail unto Kheph Ra! I went out on astral to do this, and got a S[ick] M[an's] F[ancies] (No. 18) Also. I saw myself as a Cell, and integral but indistinguishable item of the Body of Nuit, absorbing nourishment all round, but only linked with the rest actively by means of my one long hypertrophy, a sort of tentacle doing duty for all functions: my prophetic (literary) genius. I saw myself physically like this, a sort of sprouting onion. ? fennel (is it?) very shining white with palest tints of green.
Tuesday, 8 April 1924 5.55. Thought earlier this P.M. of subject for a Sick Man's Fancy. It is an examination. The problem is a dilemma in hospitality. A is being thrown out of his hotel. He argues indignantly "But I made this hotel what it is! When I came here it was little better than a house of assignation. I lent it my cachet of respectability. The proprietor had the good sense to act up to his chance. He reformed his ways, he shut the door to women of ill repute, he -------. There the examiner broke in. "Exactly! and on that principle he prospered, and is now throwing you out!" A is dumbfounded ---- "Back you go!" pronounces the examiner "you must solve that antimony before you can be allowed to practice." The point of horror is the being kept back from incarnation until one has shown one's right to a diploma to carry out one's ideas in the actual world.
Tuesday, 20 May 1924 A Sick Man's Fancy I am at Chelles, upon the Marne—
Invoke the omen!
But as I lie upon the banks in the May sunlight, hemmed in a net of thunderclouds, the waters send me back the image of my mind. Dull, sluggish, interminable: between one senseless eddy and the next a lapse of unconsciousness—black grey-green stagnations, as of some primal pool before creation. It is so long—so long—so long—before the next thought creeps somehow towards the sea to lose itself for ever in that balanced swell of purifying peace, won by the virtue of obedience to the sun and moon, instead of to the hungry pull of the earth. And, while it flows, there may be battle given and victory won, upon its banks. A.C.
Wednesday, 21 May 1924 A Sick Man's Fancy. Xantl, high-priest of Xocatuahl in Xacantuatl, was entrusted with the duty of causing the sun to rise. One night he overslept himself, and woke with golden rays streaming on his face. His first motion was of abject terror. Some other wizard, equally powerful, had been at work. But his good sense came to his aid; and by the aid of a favourite and ingenious assistant priest a great Law of Nature was discovered: that on doing a thing regularly, if only you do it often enough, it gets the habit, and will work with only an occasional intervention. So thereafter good old Xantl slept in peace, until the favourite and intelligent youth (who had taken it upon himself to perform the rites in his stead) revealed the state of the case to Quetzcohunihuatl and his ministers. And after that he slept in greater peace. MORAL. It will get on quite well without you; but you had better get up and work to keep the Universe in motion after all.
The fancies of the night. A simple device.
[At this point there is a rough pencil-sketch of a man, seated, against a line A B C]
A. A sheet of iron firmly fixed at all 4 corners. B. A wire snare fastened by a button through A to hold the scrotum of G[eorge] C[ecil] J[ones] or other suitable person. C. Fuel. The victim is left absolutely free save for B; and the observer should not know how much fuel is being put on at one time or another.
A Sick Man's Fancy. The assistant priest of Xantl was both intelligent and inglorious therefore hath his name endured unto this day and it was Xuman B'Gaatl. Now Xuman was old and well stricken in years; and he bethought him of the fate of Xantl. So he discovered a new Law of Nature, by which the rising of the Sun depended on the life of the High Priest. And Xuman died full of years and honours; and the people were apalled. For the Sun rose, and man wist not why; and one bold and evil cried openly that Xuman had been a liar. But Bngum his most favourite and intelligent assistant, becoming inspired, declared that the spirit of the high priest had passed into him, and bade the people stone that bold and evil man with stones. And this being done, the land had peace, and the Sun rose daily, and Bgnum reigned in the stead of Xuman.
A Sick Man's Fancy. And it came to pass in the fullness of years that sickness fell about the land of Xacantuatl, and many of the priests died, so that none better could be found to wear the Tiara of King's Eyes than Quaerqws who was little better than a fool. And when he came to be high priest, he caused the rites which make the sun to rise to be performed askew, and maimed, and in reverse. And he said in himself that the rising of the Sun had nothing to do with those rites. Then Qwstm and Qouttu, his assistants, took counsel together, and fell upon Quaerqws unaware and slew him, and proclaimed that the Sun indeed would continue to rise daily by virtue of the mighty magic of the high priests of Antiquity (be Their Names whispered with awe!) provided always that the ancient customs were observed duly. But there arose debate between Qwstm and Qouttu as to wherein lay the true succession to the Tiara of King's Eyes.
A Sick Man's Fancy. The bottom of this old boat is hard: but I didn't make it, and I won't complain. Now, what must I do? I might count the cats that go over the bridge. (Two have passed in the last hour and a half.) I might listen to the church clock of Gormay striking. I might think out plans for attacking the old toll-house at the other end of the bridge: it guards the hostile department of Seine-et-Oise. I might wonder what the man (invisible) is doing that he hammers now and again. (There goes another cat, strange!) Or I might think Whether or no to fix up a card somewhere, saying This is my busy morning and: Do it now. and: Time is money. And all that lot. After all, the river is there to attend to personally-conducted tours of rubbish. No: the bottom of this old boat is too hard: to arms, and look for a softer spot!
A Sick Man's Fancy. There came a vision. All life was vegetable life. Man's thirst and hunger—as he sprouted—awoke in him all energies, devices, what not—all he thinks his own. We are obedient to the rays that kindle, and beget, and heal, and bring to growth, and wean, and slay. So in the vision was no place for any I—until that I was the conscious life of the whole. Them what is this that I have thought of 'all my life'—as "I"? A tree, whose immortality is in its seeds. And thus my thoughts of Wisdom, comprehension, kindness, energy, beauty—all these may take root and flourish in distant soil when my primal stem is withered and dead. So even the England that we loved and have lost survives—though unrecognizably—in her colonies.
Friday, 30 May 1924 A Sick Man's Fancy. I dreamt that I was born as a tiny helpless human baby; but presently I grew up to be a man and loved and worked. Later still I grew old and fell sick and died. What a strange dream!
Maxims for Kings. A man's personal affairs matter nothing—least of all to himself.
Undated. From the Warburg Institute. The Voice of my Higher Soul said unto me: Let me enter the path of darkness; peradventure thus may I attain the Light.
And I was not disobedient, but entered the abyss of the Perfect Formlessness.
And the Phantoms gathered around me; yea, they leered upon me and cried hateful things.
The fine gold was tarnished with foul mire and the slime glittered as glittereth the moon in harvest.
I sank into the pit; it seemed to me that no hand held me. For I was blinded by the Opposites in the Plane of the Nephesch.
Yea, I became as one of them; in my turn I laughed and gibbered upon them.
Also I swayed with their swaying; I was like unto a ship that is tossed by divers winds.
The horror got hold upon me.
Yet the Light of the Kerux went ever before me, though I knew it not.
And the Hand of the Hegemon drew me ever onwards and upwards, though I seemed to be falling. Also as the Lords of Darkness boiled up about me he girt me with an invisible cincture, a ring of defence.
I was the Great God Asar in his voyage through Amennti—and I knew it not.
Also I heard not the Voice of Ages that answered unto my soul and said "Verily, the Light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehendeth it not." For I also comprehended it not.
I took the hand of the Hegemon for the false truth of a siren; Anubis the Kerux seemed unto me but as a dog-faced one to seduce and enslave me. Yet he bore the emblems of the Warder of the Threshold, even as the Hegemon was armed with the Sword and Balances of Truth—
So I came out into the Light.
Undated. From the Warburg Institute. My mind wanders back through long years to a very brilliant talented girl that I once knew. One of her pet sayings was "Give your best to the world and the world will give its best back to you". She was not a finished artist and she did not get all she wanted from giving what she thought her best. But the world applauded her third best and so she tried to sell it her sixth best. The result was that the world gave her pretty well its worst. The poor old world, vampire that she is, is starving for the life blood of a man which must be squeezed out with suffering, distilled and quintessentialised, and when that is done, she is no niggard of reward.
(with the compliments of Professor Freud.)
The women who like to wear precious stones do so in a spirit of emulation. They are envious of their reputation for hardness. [400]
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