Aleister Crowley - The Psychology of Hashish

If only, therefore, I could reduce the necessary period to a few hours!

Moreover, I could persuade other people that mysticism was not all folly without insisting on their devoting a lifetime to studying under me; and if only I could convince a few competent observers — in such a matter I distrust even myself — Science would be bound to follow and to investigate, clear up the matter once for all, and, as I believed, and believe, arm itself with a new weapon ten thousand times more potent than the balance and the microscope.

Imagine me, therefore, if you please, selecting these few facts from the millions of others in the armoury of my brain, dovetailing them, and at last formulating an hypothesis verifiable by experiment.

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“But I evolve all these mysteries in the profound abyss of Mind.”

— ZOROASTER.

This was my hypothesis:

“Perhaps hashish is the drug which ‘loosens the girders of the soul,’ but is in itself neither good nor bad. Perhaps, as Baudelaire thinks, it merely exaggerates and distorts the natural man and his mood of the moment.” The whole of Ludlow’s wonderful introspection seemed to me to fortify this suggestion.

“Well, then, let me see whether by first exalting myself mystically and continuing my invocations while the drug dissolved the matrix of the diamond soul, that diamond might not manifest limpid and sparkling, a radiance ‘not of the Sun, nor of the Moon, nor of the Stars’;” and then, of course, I remembered that this ceremonial intoxication constitutes the supreme ritual of all religions.

First, however, it was necessary to determine the normal action of the drug upon my particular organisation. There are various preparations of Cannabis indica , all alike in this, that their action is so uncertain as to be not easily or surely standardised. It is not even a question of reasonable limits: of two samples apparently alike one may be fifty times stronger than the other. A sample may apparently degenerate 50 per cent. in strength within a few days. Some samples may be totally inert.

This fact has led to the almost total abandonment of the use of the drug in medicine.

Further, the personal equation counts for much. Allan Bennett in Chancery Lane had on one occasion taken sufficient Conium (hemlock) to kill forty men without the smallest result of any kind.

In Kandy I had (for the first time in my life) taken two hundred and twenty-five drops of Laudanum in five hours, also with no more result than would have been produced by ten drops upon the average man.

Our equation was therefore composed exclusively of variables, and wide variables at that! Nothing for it, then, but rule-of-thumb! The old Chancery Lane rule: begin with half the minimum dose of the Pharmacopoeia, and if nothing happens within the expected time, double the dose. If you go on long enough, something is nearly sure to happen!

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“The Mind of the Father said, Into Three! and immediately all things were so divided.”

— ZOROASTER

Let my readers be good enough to remember, then, that what follows concerns myself only. This must excuse the use of the first person, highly improper in a scientific essay, were it not that the personality of the experimenter is perhaps an essential. I cannot assert that my results would be achieved by another. Yet I have the strong conviction that I have eliminated many sources of error, and that my observations may possess a more absolute value in psychology than those of Ludlow or even of my great master Baudelaire. The few on whom I have been able to test the drug have in large measure confirmed, and in no way contradicted, my results.

In the first place, I make an absolute distinction between three effects of hashish, which may be, and I think probably are — so distinct they appear — due to three separate substances.

Possibly a simple stimulus-curve may account for it, but I do not think so.

1. The volatile aromatic effect (A).

This, the first evanescent symptom, gives the “thrill” described by Ludlow, as of a new pulse of power pervading one. Psychologically, the result is that one is thrown into an absolutely perfect state of introspection. One perceives one’s thoughts and nothing but one’s thoughts, and it is as thoughts that one perceives them. Material objects are only perceived as thoughts; in other words, in this respect, one possesses the direct consciousness of Berkeleyan idealism. The Ego and the Will are not involved; there is introspection of an almost if not quite purely impersonal type; that, and nothing more.

I am not to be understood as asserting that the results of this introspection are psychologically valid.

2. The toxic hallucinative effect (B).

With a sufficiently large dose — for it is possible to get effect ( A) only as a transient phenomenon — the images of thought pass more rapidly through the brain, at last vertiginously fast. They are no longer recognized as thoughts, but imagined as exterior. The Will and the Ego become alarmed, and may be attacked and overwhelmed. This constitutes the main horror of the drug; it is to be combated by a highly — may I say magically? — trained will.

I trust my readers will concede that the practice of ceremonial magic and meditation, all occult theories apart, do lead the mind to immense power over its own imaginations.

The fear of being swept away in the tide of relentless images is a terrible experience. Woe to who yields!

3. The narcotic effect (C).

One simply goes off to sleep. This is not necessarily due to the brain-fatigue induced by ( A) and ( B); for with one sample of Cannabis , I found it to occur independently.

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“For this Paternal Intellect, which comprehendeth the Intelligibles and adorneth things ineffable, hath sowed symbols through the World... Comprehending that Intelligible with extended Mind; for the Intelligible is the flower of Mind... A similar fire flashingly extending through the rushings of air, or a Fire formless whence cometh the Image of a Voice, or even a flashing Light abounding, revolving, whirling forth, crying aloud. Also there is the vision of the fire-flashing Courser of Light, or also a Child, borne aloft on the shoulders of the Celestial Steed, fiery, or clothed with gold, or naked, or shooting with the bow shafts of Light and standing on the shoulders of the horse; then if thy meditation prolongeth itself, thou shalt unite all these symbols into the Form of a Lion.”

— ZOROASTER.

The most important of the psychological results of my experiments seem to me to lie in ( A). I devoted much pains to obtaining this effect alone by taking only the minutest doses, by preparing myself physically and mentally for the experiment, and by seeking in every possible way to intensify and prolong the effect.

Simple impressions in normal consciousness are resolved by hashish into a concatenation of hieroglyphs of a purely symbolic type.

Just as we represent a horse by the five letters h-o-r-s-e, none of which has in itself the smallest relation to a horse, so an even simpler concept such as the letter A seems resolved into a set of pictures, a fairly large number, possibly a constant number, of them. These glyphs are perceived together, just as the skilled reader reads h-o-r-s-e as a single word, not letter by letter. These pictorial glyphs, letters as it were of the word which we call a thought, seem to stand at a definite distance in space behind the thought, the thought being farther from the perceiving soul. Looking at each glyph, one perceives, too, that itself is made up of other glyphs yet nearer to the Self, these glyphs, however, being formless and nameless; they are not truly perceived, but one is somehow aware of them.