Aleister Crowley - The Greatest Works of Aleister Crowley

" I tell you what's been wrong," he said in the morning. " Who the hell could expect to be right in a place like this ? I've got right on to the ropes. We need never run short any more. We'll go down to Barley Grange and have another honeymoon. You're my honeysuckle, and I'm your bee."

He went and flung open the door and shouted for the woman to pack our things while we went out to breakfast, and have the bill ready.

" What infernal fools we are," he cried as we went sailing down the street to the Wisteria where you can get real French coffee and real Englil bacon.

We looked at ourselves in the long mirror. We could see how ill we had been, but all that was gone.

Decision and self-confidence had come back; and love had come back with them. I could feel love mingling its turbulent torrent with my blood like the junction of the Rhone and the Arve in Geneva.

We walked into a shop and bought a car on the spot, and took it away then and there. There was one at the Grange, but we wanted a racer.

We drove back to Greek Street in a flood of delight. It was a bright, fresh autumn morning; everything had recovered its tone. Winter could never come. There was no night except as a background for the moon and the stars, and to furnish the scenery of our heavenly hell.

September 17

The Grange is certainly the finest house in the world. There is only one drawback. We didn't want callers. County society is all right in its way ; but tigers don't hunt in packs, especially on the honeymoon. So we had to send the word around that the precarious state of my health made it impossible for us to receive. Rather an obvious lie, motoring the way we were. The 'plane had come back from Deal, but we didn't do any flying.

Cockie gave various reasons; but they were un-convincing. We roared with laughter at their absurdity.

The truth was that he was nervous.

It didn't make us ashamed. After what he had done, he could rest on his oars. It was only temporary, of course. We'd made ourselves rottenly ill in that gaga place in Greek Street. We couldn't expect to get back to the top of our form in a week.

Besides, we didn't want that kind of excitement. We had enough in other ways. We found we could see things. That ass, Basil, was always talking about the danger of magic, and precaution, and scientific methods and all that bunk. We were seeing more spirits and demons every day than he ever saw in ten years. They are nothing to be afraid of. I should like to see the old Boy himself. I'd

Sefitember 18

We found a book in the library one rainy afternoon. It told us how to make the Devil appear.

Cockie's grandfather was great on that stuff. There's a room in the north tower where he did his stunts.

We went up after dinner. Everything had been left more or less the way it was. Uncle Mortimer never troubled to alter anything.

There was a legend about this room too. For one thing, grandfather was a friend of Bulwer Lytton's. We found a first edition of A Strange Story, with an inscription.

Lytton had taken him for the model of Sir Philip Derval, the white magician who gets murdered. Lytton said so in this copy.

It was all very weird and exciting. The room was full of the strangest objects. There was a table painted with mysterious designs and characters and a huge cross-hilted sword ; two silver crescents separated by two copper spheres and a third for the pommel. The blade was two-edged, engraved with Arabic or some-thing.

Cockie began to swing it about. We thought flashes of light came from the point, and there was a buzzing, crackling sound.

" Take this," said Cockie, " there's something devilish rum about it."

I took it out of his hand. Of course, it was only my fancy; but it seemed to weigh nothing at all, and it gave a most curious thrill in one's hand and arm.

Then there was a golden cup with rubies round the brim. And always more inscriptions.

And there was a little wand of ebony with a twisted flame at the top ; three tongues, gold, silver, and some metal we'd never seen before.

And there were rows and rows of old books, mostly Latin, Greek, and Hebrew.

There was a big alabaster statue of Ganesha, the elephant god.

" This is the place," I said, " to get hold of the devil."

" That's all right," said Cockie, " but what about a little she-devil for me ? "

" Oh," I said, " if I'm not satisfactory, you'd better give me a week's salary in lieu of notice."

We laughed like mad.

Something in the room made our heads swim. We began kissing and wrestling.

It's all very well to laugh at magic, but after all certain ideas do belong to certain things ; and you can get an idea going, if you're reminded of it by a place like this....

(Lady Pendyagon's Diary is interrupted by a note written on some later occasion in the handwriting of Mr. Basil King Lamus. Ed.)

Lou means all right, bless her! She makes me think of Anatole France-La Rotisserie de la Reine Pedauque

-old Coignard has been warned by the Rosicrucian not to Pronounce the word Agla, and the moment he does so, a wheel comes off his carriage, with the result that he gets murdered by Moses.

Then, again, all the Rosicrucian's Predictions come true ; and he himself goes up in aflame like the Salamander he has been invoking. He looks upon his own death as the crown of his career-the climax towards which he has been working.

Anatole France is, in fact, compelled to write as if the Rosicrucian theories were correct, although his conscious self is busily exposing the absurdity of magic.

It looks as if the artist's true self were convinced of the actuality of magic, and insisted on expressing itself despite every effort of the sceptical intellect to turn the whole thing into ridicule. There are numerous other examples in literature of the same conflict between the genius and the mind which is its imperfect medium. For instance-at the other end of the scale-Mr. W. S. Maugham, in " The Magician," does his malignant utmost to make the " villain " objectionable in every way, an object of contempt, and a failure. Yet in the very moment when his enemies succeed in murdering him and destroying his life's work, they are obliged to admit that he has " Accomplished the Great Work "-of creating Living Beings ! " Every man and every woman is a star."-B. K. L.

I don't like that room. I said nothing about it to Peter ; but the old man was there walking about as large as life. You have to be specially prepared to see these things.

Cockie was never spiritually minded.

September 18

An alarm of burglars last night. We roused the house-but no traces could be found. The servants here are frightfully stupid. They irritate me all the time.

One can't sleep in this house. It's too old. The wood cracks all the time. just as one is on the verge of sleep some noise makes one more wide-awake than ever.

I can't bear the idea of being touched. My skin is very sensitive. It's part of the spiritualising of my life, I suppose.

I'm glad, though, that the new honeymoon didn't last more than three or four days.

It is irritating to one's vanity. But that is merely a memory. How can vanity co-exist with the spiritual life ?

I saw the Spirit of heroin to-day when I went up to the magic room. It is tremendously tall and thin, with tattered rags fluttering round it, and these turn into little birds that fly off it, that come and burrow in one's skin !

I just feel the prick of the beak, and then it disappears. They were messengers from the other world. There is a little nest of them in my liver. It is very curious to hear them chirping when they want food. I don't know what they'll do so far away from their mother.

It is horrible not being able to sleep. That, too, must be a preparation for the new life.