Confessions of Aleister Crowley

213 I had studied Ceremonial Magick and had obtained remarkable success. My gods were those of Egypt, interpreted on lines closely akin to those of Greece. In philosophy I was a realist of the Cabbalistic school. In 1900 I left England for Mexico, and later the Far East, Ceylon, India, Burma, Baltistan, Egypt and France. It is idle there to detail the corresponding progress of my thought; and passing through a stage of Hinduism, I had discarded all deities as unimportant, and in philosophy was an uncompromising nominalist. I had arrived at what I may describe as the position of an orthodox Buddhist; but with the following reservations. 1. I cannot deny that certain phenomena do accompany the use of {357} certain rituals; I only deny the usefulness of such methods to the White Adept. 2. I consider Hindu methods of meditation as possibly useful to the beginner and should not therefore recommend them to be discarded at once. With regard to my advancement, the redemption of the cosmos, etc. etc. I leave for ever the "Blossom and Fruit" theory and appear in the character of an inquirer on strictly scientific lines. This is unhappily calculated to damp the enthusiasm; but as I so carefully of old, for the Magical Path, excluded from my life all other interests, that life has now no particular meaning; and the path of Research, on the only lines I can now approve of, remains the one Path possible for me to tread. (By the Blossom and Fruit theory, I mean the existence of a body of initiates pledged to devote themselves to the redemption of mankind.) It sounds as if I had become a bit of a prig. I expect a good deal of my attitude was due to exhausted vitality. Chogo Ri was perhaps still taking his revenge. I had picked out Boleskine for its loneliness. Lord Lovat and Mrs. Fraser-Tyler, my nearest neighbours, were eight miles away, while Grant of Glenmoriston was on the other side of Loch Ness. Besides, Boleskine was already the centre of a thousand legends. Even before I came there there was a fine crop of the regular Highland superstitions. The howl of a bulldog, exactly like the crying of a child, is heard far off. GEORGE. All right. It's only that damned dog of M'Alister's. He does it every night. FENELLA. He sees the ghost of old Lord Lovat. GEORGE. Old Lord Lovat? FENELLA. Yes; they beheaded him after the '45. He rolls his head up and down the corridors. GEORGE Pleasant pastime! FENELLA. What else is a man to do? GEORGE. What's that tapping? (He stops to listen.) FENELLA. Go on! It's only the old woman.