The Greatest Works of Aleister Crowley. Aleister CrowleyЧитать онлайн книгу.
if that's a delusion ? How can I tell ? They do act funnily. I'm unsettled. How can one be sure of anything ? One can't. The more one thinks of it, the more one sees it must be so.
Look how Feccles let us down. For all I know, there may be some motive at the back of even a really nice woman like Gretel-or Mabel Black. I'm really suspicious of myself. I think that's it.
I must go home. I hope to God Cockie's found some somewhere !
I met Mabel Black coming out of the Burlington Arcade. She looked fine, all over smiles, a very short, white skirt and a new pair of patent leather boots almost up to her knees. She must find them frightfully hot. She rushed me into a tea place, awfully smart with rose-shaded lights reflected up to a blue ceiling the combination made a most marvellous purple.
We got an alcove shut off by canary-coloured curtains and a set of the loveliest cushions I ever saw. Two big basket chairs and a low table. They have the most delightful tea in egg-shell china and Dolly cigarettes with rose leaves.
Mabel talked a hundred miles a minute. She has struck the biggest kind of oil-a romantic boy of sixty-five. He had bought her a riding crop with a carved ivory handle ; the head of a race horse with ruby eyes and a gold collar.
I asked her laughingly if it was to keep him in order. But what she was really keen on was H. She had got a whole bottle and gave me quite a lot in an envelope.
The first go, oh, what joy ! And then-how strange we all are ! The minute I had it in my bag-in my blood-my mind began to work freely. The irritating stupefaction passed off like waking from a nightmare
-a nightmare of suffocation-and it came to me with the force of a blow that the effect was not due to the H. at all, or hardly at all. When we got it again in Naples, it didn't do us much good.
Why was I translated into heaven this afternoon ? Why had I found my wings ?
The answer came as quick as the question. It's he atmosphere of Mabel and the relief of my worry. With that came a rational fear of the drug. I asked her if she hadn't had any troubles from taking it.
" You can't sleep without it," she said, but not as if it mattered much, " and it rather gets on one's nerves now and then."
She bad to rush off to meet her beau for dinner. I went back to our dirty little den, brimming over with joy. I found Cockie sprawling on the bed in the depth of dejection. He did not move when I came in. I ran to him and covered him with kisses. His eyes were heavy and swollen and his nose was running.
I gave him my handkerchief and pulled him up. His clothes were all rumpled and of course he hadn't shaved. I couldn't resist the temptation of teasing my darling. My love had come back in flood. I tingled with the pain of feeling that he did not respond. I hugged the pain to my heart. My blood beat hard with the joy of power. I held him in my hand. One dainty act, and he was mine. I hadn't the strength to enjoy myself to the full. Pity and tenderness brought the tears to my eyes. I shook out a dose of the dull white wizardry.
He sniffed it up with stupid lethargy like a man who has lost hope of life, yet still takes his medicine as a routine. He came up gradually, but was hardly himself till after the third dose.
I took one, too, to keep him company, not because I needed it. I sent him out to get shaved and buy clean linen.
I take a curious delight in writing this diary. I know now why it is and it has rather startled me. It's just that chance phrase of King Lamus: " Your magical diary."
I have flirted a lot with Lamus, but it was mostly swank. I dislike the man in many ways.
By Jove, I know why that is, too. It's because I feel that he despises me intellectually, and because I respect him. Despite my dislike, I am eager to show him that I am not such a rotter after all.
One of his fads is to make his pupils keep these magical diaries. I feel that I've gone in for a competition; that I have to produce something more interesting than,anything they do, whoever they are.
Here comes Peter Pan. He hasn't grown old after all....
We had a gorgeous feed at the dear old cafe. King Lamus came up to our table but he only said a few words.
" So you got it, I see."
Cockie gave him one back.
" I hate to injure your reputation as a prophet, Mr.
Lamus, but it isn't stopping when you have to stop. I've got it, as you say, and now, with your kind permission, I'm going to show you that we can stop."
Lamus changed his manner like a flash. His contemptuous smile became like sunrise in spring.
" That's talking," he said. " I'm glad you've got the idea. Don't think I'm trying to put you off, but if you should find it more difficult than you imagine, don't be too proud to come to me ! I really do know some fairly good tips."
I was glad that Peter took it in good part. Being in good form, he realised, I suppose, that it was a serious business. We might strike a snag.
August 23 The night has been a miracle !
We went on taking H. pretty steadily. I think the C. spoils it. Our love bloomed afresh as if it was a new creation. We were lapsed in boundless bliss !
" Awake, for ever awake! Awake as one never is
While sleep is a possible end, Awake in the void, the abyss."
But not in the unutterable anguish of which the poet was writing. It is a formless calm. But love I We had never loved like this before. We had defiled love with the grossness of the body.
The body is an instrument of infinite pleasure; but excitement and desire sully its sublimity. We were conscious of every nerve to the tiniest filament ; and for this one must be ineffably aloof from movement.
H. makes one want to scratch, and scratching is infinite pleasure. But that is only a relic of animal appetite.
After a little while, one is able to enjoy the feeling that makes one want to scratch in itself. It is an impersonal bliss perfectly indescribable and indescribably perfect.
I cannot measure the majesty of my consciousness; but I can indicate the change in the whole character of my consciousness.
I am writing this in the mood of the recording angel. I am living in eternity, and temporal things have become tedious and stupid symbols. My words are veils of my truth. But I experience quite definite delight in this diary.
King Lamus is always at the root of my brain. He is Jupiter and I have sprung from his thought ; Minerva, Goddess of Wisdom !
The most tremendous events of life are unworthy trifles. The sublimity of my conceptions sweeps onward from nowhere to nowhere. Behind my articulate anthem is a stainless silence.
I am not writing for any reason, not even for myself to read ; the action is automatic.
I am the first-born child of King Lamus without a mother. I am the emanation of his essence.
I lay all night without moving a muscle. The nearness of my husband completed the magnetic field of our intimacy. Act, word, and thought were equally abolished. The elements of my consciousness did not represent me at all. They were sparks struck off from our Selves. Those Selves were one Self which was whole. Any positive expression of it was of necessity partial, incomplete, inadequate. The Stars are imperfection of Night ; but at least these thoughts are immeasurably faster and clearer than anything I have thought all my life.
If I were ever to wake up-it seems impossible that I ever should-this entry will probably be quite un-intelligible to me. It is not written with the purpose of being intelligible or any other purpose. The idea of having a purpose at all is beneath contempt. It is the sort of thing a human being would have.
How can a supreme being inhabiting eternity have a purpose ? The absolute, the all, cannot change; how then could it wish to change ? It acts in accordance with its nature ; but all such action is without effect. It is essentially illusion ; and the deeper one enters into one's self the less one is influenced