Confessions of Aleister Crowley

394 found dead and nothing is every heard again of Eyre or his mistress. "The Violinist" is about a girl who invokes, by means of her music, a demon belonging to one of the Elemental Watch Towers. She become his mistress. {629} One day her husband returns to the house. He kisses her and falls dead. The demon has conferred this power upon her lips. Excuse the digression: back to Bartzabel! In the Triangle was Frater Omnia Vincam, to serve as a material basis through which the spirit might manifest. Here was a startling innovation in tradition. I wrote, moreover, a ritual on entirely new principles. I retained the Cabbalistic names and formulae, but wrote most of the invocation in poetry. The idea was to work up the magical enthusiasm through the exhilaration induced by music. I obtained a great deal of valuable knowledge from the spirit, but the most interesting item is this: Marston, remembering his official duty, asked "Will nation rise up against nation?", followed by more detailed inquiries on receiving an affirmative answer. We thus learnt that within five years from that date there would be two wars; the storm centre of the first would be Turkey, and that of the second would be Germany, and the result would be the destruction of these two nations. I only rememberd this after reaching New York at the end of 1914. Luckily I had the ritual with question and answer written down at the time, and an account of these predictions, precisely fulfilled, appeared in the New York World. I may here remark that I have always been able to foretell the future by various methods of divination. Some give more satisfactory results than others, some are better suited to one class of inquiry, some to another. In all cases, constant practice, constant checking up of one's results, critical study of the conditions, elimination of one's personal bias, and so on, increase one's accuracy. I am always experimenting and have taught myself to get absolutely reliable results from several methods, especially the Yi King. Incidentally, I have interpreted and corrected the traditional methods themselves, thereby excluding sources of error which in the past have disheartened students; but there is some sort of curse on me as there was on Cassandra. I can foretell the issue of any given situation, and feel the utmost confidence in the correctness of my conclusion, but though I can and do act on these indications, when they concern my own conduct I cannot use my power to benefit myself in any of the obvious ways. That is, I cannot leave my work even for a couple of days in order to make a fortune in stocks. To give an idea of the detailed accuracy of my divinations, let me quote one recent case. I asked the Yi King in May of 1922 what would happen to me in England, whither I was bound. I got the 21st Hexagram, which means the open manifestation of one's purpose. I was, in fact, able to re- enter public life after years of seclusion. It means "union by gnawing", which I understood as bidding me to expect to spend my time in persevering efforts to establish relations with various people who could be useful to me, but not to expect to drop into success or to find the obstacles insuperable. This, too, came true. The comment in the Yi King promises successful progress and advises {630} recourse to law. My progress was beyond my utmost hopes and I found myself forced to begin several lawsuits. The further comment describes the successive phases of the affair. The first phase shows its subject fettered and without resource. During my first month in England I was penniless, without proper clothes to wear, and obliged to walk miles to save the cost of a telephone call or an omnibus. In the second phase one suddenly finds everything easy. All one's plans succeed. This, too, occurred. The third phase shows a man getting to grips with the real problems; he meets some rebuffs, has some disappointments, but makes no mistakes. The third stage of my campaign could not be better described. In phase four one gets down to work at one's task, aided by financial advances and contracts to do work of the kind one wants. This was fulfilled by my being commissioned to write The Diary of a Drug Fiend and the present book, as well as several things for the English Review. The fifth phase shows the man getting on with his work and obtaining renown and profit thereby, but it warns the inquirer that his position is perilous and bids him to be on his guard while not swerving from his course. From this I understood that the publication of my novel