Confessions of Aleister Crowley

3 THE SPIRIT OF SOLITUDE An Autohagiography Subsequently re-Antichristened THE CONFESSIONS OF ALEISTER CROWLEY (For reference, the Symonds and Grant page numbers are in {} at the bottom of each text page) To Three Friends J. W. N. SULLIVAN who suggested this booklet AUGUSTUS JOHN who first gave practical assistance P. R. STEPHENSEN who saw the point And To Three Immortal Memories RICHARD FRANCIS BURTON the perfect pioneer of spiritual and physical adventure OSCAR ECKENSTEIN who trained me to follow the trail ALLAN BENNETT who did what he could P A R T O N E TOWARDS THE GOLDEN DAWN. PRELUDE "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law." Not only to this autohagiography --- as he amusedly insists on calling it --- of Aleister Crowley, but to every form of biography, biology, even chemistry, these words are key. "Every man and every woman is a star." What can we know about a star? By the telescope, a faint phantasm of its optical value. By the spectroscope, a hint of its composition. By the telescope, and our mathematics, its course. In this last case we may legitimately argue from the known to the unknown: by our measure of the brief visible curve, we can calculate whence it has come and whither it will go. Experience justifies our assumptions. Considerations of this sort are essential to any serious attempt at biography. An infant is not --- as our grandmothers thought --- an arbitrary jest flung into the world by a cynical deity, to be saved or damned as predestination or freewill required. We know now that "that, that is, is", as the old hermit of Prague that never saw pen and ink very wittily said to a niece of King Gorboduc. Nothing can ever be created or destroyed; and therefore the "life" of any individual must be comparable to that brief visible curve, and the object of writing it to divine by the proper measurements the remainder of its career.