Diary of a Drug Fiend

by Aleister Crowley

  Of course! It was Cyril, with Brother Onofrio and Sister Clara all the time – how stupid she had been!

  But for all that the toads were a nuisance with their eternal chatter and laughter; and they wore their jewels much too conspicuously and profusely.

  And then she perceived that Cyril and his two companions formed but one triangle, out of uncounted thousands; and each triangle was at a knot upon the web of an enormous spider. At each knot was such a group of three, and every one was different. There must have been millions of such gods, each with its pair of worshippers; every race and clime and period was represented. There were the gods of Mexico and of Peru, of Syria and Babylon, of Greece and Rome, of obscure swamps of Ethiopia, of deserts and mountains. And upon each thread of the web, from knot to knot, danced incredible insects, and strange animals, and hideous reptiles. They danced, sang, and whirled frantically, so that the entire web was a mere bewilderment of motion. Her head swam dizzily. But she was now full of a curious anger; her thought was that the Old Lady had betrayed her. She found it quite impossible to approach the triangle, for one thing: she was furious that it should be Sister Clara herself who had led her into this Sabbath, for another; and she was infinitely disgusted at the whole vile revel. Now she noticed that each pair of worshippers had newborn children in their arms; and they offered these to their god, who threw them instantly towards the centre of the web. Following up those cruel meshes, she beheld the spider itself, with its six legs. Its head and body formed one black sphere, covered with moving eyes that darted rays of darkness in every direction, and mouths that sucked up its prey without remorse or cessation, and cast it out once more in the form of fresh strands of that vibrating web.

  lliel shuddered with the horror of the vision; it was to her a dread unspeakable, yet she was hypnotised and helpless. She felt in herself that one day she too must become the prey of that most dire and demoniac power of darkness.

  As she gazed, she saw that even the gods and their worshippers were morsels for its mouths. Ever and anon she beheld one of the legs crooked round a triangle and draw it, god, shrine, and worshippers, into the blackness of the spider’s bloated belly. Then they were thrown out violently again, in some slightly altered form, to repeat the same uncanny ritual.

  With a strong shudder she broke away from that infernal contemplation. Where was the kindly earth, with all its light and beauty? In God’s name, why had she left Lavinia King to explore these dreadful realms – of illusion? of imagination? of darker and deadlier reality than life? It mattered little which; the one thing needful was to turn again to humanity, to the simple sensible life that she had always lived. It was not noble, not wonderful; but it was better than this nightmare of phantoms, cruel and malignant and hideous, this phantasmagoria of damnation.

  She wrenched herself away; for a moment she lost consciousness completely; then she found herself in her bed at the Villa. With feverish energy she sprang from the couch, and ran to the wardrobe to put on her travelling dress. It would be easy to drop from the wall of the terrace into the lane; in an hour she would be safe in Naples. And then she discovered that the dress would have to be altered before she could wear it. With vehemence she set instantly to work – and just as she was finishing, the door opened, and Sister Clara stood beside her.

  “Come, Iliel,” she said, “it is the moment to salute May Morn!”

  The indignant girl recoiled in anger and disgust; but Sister Clara stood smiling gently and tenderly. Iliel looked at her, almost despite herself; and she could not but see the radiance of her whole being, a physical aura of light playing about her, and the fire of her eyes transcendent with seraph happiness.

  “They are waiting for us in the garden,” she said, taking Iliel by the arm, like a nurse with an invalid. And she drew over her shoulders the great lunar mantle of blue velvet with its broidered silver crescents, its talismans of the moon, and its heavy hanging tassels of seed pearls; and upon her head she set the tiara of moon-stones.

  “Come, they are waiting.”

  So lliel suffered herself to be led once more into the garden. In the east the first rays of the sun gilded the crest of Posilippo, and tinged the pale blue of the firmament with rosy fingers. The whole company was gathered together, an ordered phalanx, to salute the Lord of Life and Light.

  lliel could not join in that choir of adoration. In her heart was blackness and hate, and nausea in her mouth. What vileness lay beneath this fair semblance! Well, let it be; she would be gone.

  Cyril came to her with Brother Onofrio, as the last movement of their majestic chant died away upon the echoing air. He took her in his arms. “Come! I have much to tell you.” He led her to a marble seat, and made her sit down. Brother Onofrio and Sister Clara followed them, and sat upon the base of a great statue, a copy of the Marsyas and Olympas in green bronze, hard by.

  “Child!” said Cyril, very gravely and gently, “look at the eastern slope of Posilippo! And look at the stars, how brightly they shine! And look at that shoal of gleaming fish, that swim so deep beneath the waters of the bay! And look at your left ear! What shapeliness! What delicate pink!”

  She was too angry even to tell him not to be an idiot. She only smiled disdainfully.

  He continued. “But those things are there. You cannot see them because the conditions are not right. But there are other things that your eye sees indeed, but you, not; because you have not been trained to see them for what they are. See Capri in the morning sun! How do you know it is an island, not a dream, or a cloud, or a sea-monster? Only by comparison with previous knowledge and experience. You can only see things that are already in your own mind – or things so like them that you can adjust yourself to the small percentage of difference. But you cannot observe or apprehend things that are utterly unfamiliar except by training and experience. How does the alphabet look to you when you first learn it? Don’t you confuse the letters? Arabic looks ‘fantastic’ to you, as the Roman script does to the Arab; you can memorise one at a glance, white you plod painfully over the other, letter by letter, and probably copy it wrong after all. That’s what happened to you last night. I know you were there; and, knowing you were not an initiate, I can guess pretty well what you must have seen. You saw things ‘accurately’, so far as you could see them; that is, you saw a projection into your own mind of something really in being. How right such vision can be, and yet how wrong! Watch my hand!” He suddenly raised his right hand. With the other he held a book between it and her eyes.

  “I can’t see it!” she cried petulantly.

  “Look at its shadow on the wall!”

  “It’s the head of the devil!”

  “Yet I am only making the gesture of benediction.” He lowered the book. She recognised at once the correctness of his statement.

  She looked at him with open mouth and eyes. He was always stupefying her by the picturesqueness of his allegories, and his trick of presenting them dramatically.

  “What then?”

  “This is what really happened last night – only there’s no such thing as time. This is what you should have seen, and what you will see one day, if you cling to the highest in you.”

  He drew a note-book of white vellum from his pocket, and began to read.

  “The whirlwind of the Eagle and the Lion!

  The Tree upon the Mountain that is Zion!

  The marriage of the Starbeam and the Clod!

  The mystic Sabbath of the Saints of God!

  Bestride the Broomstick that is God-in-man!

  Spur the rough Goat whose secret name is Pan!

  Before that Rod Heaven knows itself unjust;

  Beneath those hoofs the stars are puffs of dust.

  Rise up, my soul! One stride, and space is spanned;

  Time, like a poppy, crushed in thy left hand,

  While with thy right thou reachest out to grip

  Th
e Graal of God, and tilt it to thy lip?

  Lo! all the whirring shafts of Light, a web

  Wherein the Tides of Being flow and ebb,

  One heart-beat, pulsing the Eternal stress,

  Extremes that cancel out in Nothingness.

  Light thrills through Light, the spindle of desire,

  Cross upon Cross of elemental Fire;

  Life circles Life, the Rose all flowers above,

  And in their intermarriage they are Love.

  Lo! on each spear of Splendour burns a world

  Revolving, whirling, crying aloud; and curled

  About each cosmos, bounding in its course,

  The sacred Snake, the father of its force,

  Energised, energizing, self-sustained,

  Man-hearted, Eagle-pinioned, Lion-maned.

  Exulting in its splendour as it lashes

  Its Phoenix plumage to immortal ashes

  Whereof one fleck, a seed of spirit spun,

  Whirls itself onward, and creates a sun.

  Light interfused with Light, a sparkling spasm

  Of rainbow radiance, spans the cosmic chasm;

  Light crystallised in Life, Life coruscating

  In Light, their mood of magick consummating

  The miracle of Love, and all the awe

  Of Need made one with Liberty’s one law;

  A fourfold flower of Godhead, leaf and fruit

  And seed and blossom of one radiant root,

  Resolving all the being of its bloom

  Into the rapture of its own perfume.

  Star-clustered dew each fibre of that light

  Wherein all being flashes to its flight!

  All things that live, a cohort and a choir,

  Laugh with the leapings of that fervid fire;

  Motes in that sunlight, they are drunken of

  The wine of their own energy of love.

  Nothing so small, so base, so incomplete,

  But here goes dancing on diviner feet;

  And where Light crosses Light, all loves combine

  Behold the God, the worshippers, the shrine,

  Each comprehensive of its single soul

  Yet each the centre and fountain of the whole;

  Each one made perfect in its passionate part,

  Each the circumference, and each the heart!

  Always the Three in One are interwoven,

  Always the One in Three sublimely cloven,

  Their essence to the Central Spirit hurled

  And so flung forth, an uncorrupted world,

  By That which, comprehending in one whole

  The universal rapture of Its soul,

  Abides beyond Its own illumination,

  Withdrawn from Its imperishable station,

  Upholding all, an arm whose falchion flings

  With every flash a new-fledged Soul of Things;

  Beholding all, with eyes whose flashes flood

  The veins of their own universe with blood;

  Absorbing all, each myriad mouth aflame

  To utter the unutterable Name

  That calls all souls, the greatest and the least,

  To the unimaginable marriage-feast;

  And, in the self-same sacrament, is stirred

  To recreate their essence with a Word;

  This All, this Sire and Lord of All, abides

  Behind the unbounded torrent of Its tides,

  In silence of all deed, or word, or thought,

  So that we name It not, or name It Naught.

  This is the Truth behind the lie called God;

  This blots the heavens, and indwells the clod.

  This is the centre of all spheres, the flame

  In men and stars, the Soul behind the name,

  The spring of Life, the axle of the Wheel,

  All-mover, yet the One Thing immobile.

  Adore It not, for It adoreth thee,

  The shadow-shape of Its eternity.

  Lift up thyself! be strong to burst thy bars!

  For lo! thy stature shall surpass the stars.”

  Cyril put away his book. “Language,” said he, “has been developed from its most primitive sources by persons so passionately concentrated upon the Ideal of selling cheese without verbal infelicity that some other points have necessarily been neglected. One cannot put mystic experience into words. One can at best describe phenomena with a sort of cold and wooden accuracy, or suggest ecstasy by very vagueness. You know that line ‘O windy star blown sideways up the sky!’ It means nothing, if you analyse it; but it gives the idea of something, though one could never say what. What you saw, my beloved lliel, bears about the same ratio to what I have said as what I have said does to what Sister Clara saw: or, rather, was. Moral: when Sister turns we all turn. I have now apologised, though inadequately, for inflicting my bad verses upon you; which will conclude the entertainment for this morning. Brother Onofrio will now take up the collection. He that giveth to the poor lendeth to the Lord; details of rate of interest and security on application to the bartender. The liberal soul shall be made fat; but I am Banting, as the hart banteth after the water brooks. He that watereth shall be watered also himself: I will take a cold shower before the plunge. The Mother’s Meeting will be held as usual at 8.30 on Thursday evening. Those who are not yet Mothers, but who wish to become so, kindly apply to me in the Vestry at the conclusion of the service. Sister Clara, please play the people out quickly!”

  Cyril babbled out this nonsense in the tones of the Sweet Young Thing type of Curate; it was his way of restoring the superficial atmosphere.

  Iliel took his arm, and went smiling to breakfast; but her soul was yet ill at ease. She asked him about the identification of Sister Clara and her Old Lady.

  “Yes,” he said, “it was best to have her on the watch outside – on the Astral Plane – to keep you from getting into too great mischief. But you can never come to any real harm so long as you keep your vow and stay inside the circle. That’s the one important point.”

  She was quite satisfied in her upper conscious self, which was usually her better self, because of its rationality, and its advantage of surface training, which saved her from obeying her impulses on every occasion. She was glad, she was proud, of her partnership with the adepts. Yet there was a subconscious weakness in her which hated them and envied them the more because of their superiority to her. She knew only too well that the price of their attainment had been the suppression of just such darknesses of animal instinct and savage superstition as were her chief delight. The poet speaks of “the infinite rage of fishes to have wings”; but when you explain to the fish that it will have to give up pumping water through its gills, it is apt to compromise for a few million generations; though the word may rankle if you call it a flying-fish, when swimming-bird is evidently a properer and politer name.

  She was permanently annoyed with Sister Clara; her motive for making excursions on that path had been to get rid of the idea of Cyril and his magick; and he had not even come himself to welcome her, but set this woman to disguise herself and spy upon her thoughts! It was disgusting.

  Cyril had certainly done his best to put the matter in the proper light. He had even told her a story. “A charming lady, wife of a friend of Bowling’s, whom her physical and mental characteristics induce me to introduce as Mrs. Dough-Nut, was once left lorn in the desert island of Manhattan, while her husband was on a spook-shikar with Lord Antony in this very Naples, which you see before you. (Slightly to the left, child!) Mrs. Dough-Nut was as virtuous as American women sometimes are, when denied opportunity to be otherwise; and the poor lady was far from attractive. But in the world of spirits, it appears, the same standards are not current as in Peacock Alley or Times Square; and she was soon supplied with a regular re
giment of ‘spirit lovers’. They told her what to do, and how to do it; eating, drinking, reading, music, whatever she did, all must be done under spirit control; and one day they told her that they had a great and wonderful work for her to do – the regeneration of humanity and so forth, I think it was; anyhow, something perfectly dotty. She was now quite without power to criticise her actions by reason or good sense; the voice of the ‘Spirits’ was for her the voice of God. So they sent her to the Bank for money, and to the Steamship office for a passage to Europe; and when she got to Liverpool they sent her to London, from London to Paris, from Paris to Genoa. And when she came to Genoa they told her which hotel to choose; and then they sent her out to buy a revolver and some cartridges; and then they told her to cock it and put the muzzle to her forehead; and then to pull the trigger. The bullet made little impression on that armour-plate of solid bone; and she escaped to tell her story. She had not even sense enough to tell it different. But that, my child, is why it is better to have a kind friend to look after you when you start a flirtation with the gay if treacherous Lotharios of the Astral World.”

  “I hope you don’t think I’m a woman like that!”

  “All women are like that.”

  She bit her lips; but her good sense showed her that his main principle was right. If she had only been able to stifle the formless promptings which were so alluring and so dangerous! But as she could not live wholly on the heights of aspiration, so also she could not live on the safe plains of earth-life. The voices of the swamp and the cavern called to her continuously.

  And so the external reconciliation had no deep root. For a few weeks she was better and healthier in body and mind. Then she slipped back into her sulks, and went “fairy-tale-ing” as she called it, with a very determined mind to be on guard against the interference of Sister Clara. She had begun to familiarise herself with the laws of this other world, and could distinguish symbols and their meanings to some extent; she could even summon certain forms, or banish them. And she set a mighty bar between herself and Sister Clara. She kept herself to the definite creations of her own impulses, would not let herself go except upon some such chosen lines.