Confessions of Aleister Crowley

524 reduced to such a fine art. My own salary was twenty dollars per week, which was, at that time, little more than the wage of an unskilled stenographer, and it was a Titan task to extract as much as ten dollars or the price of a lunch for a long article or story by a well-known writer. They expected me to get a cover design by a first-rate artist for five dollars and would try to cheat him or her out of it at that. I was horribly ashamed of having to cadge contributions in this way, but very proud to remember that many brilliant people seemed only too glad to give their work. They felt it an honour to support a magazine with such high standards as I introduced. One little fact illustrates the position with lurid light. Having got my article free, the least I could do was to have half a dozen copies of the number in which it appeared sent to the authors. The proprietor would countermand such instructions behind my back, not because of the cost of the paper, for there were always ample "returns", but to save the postage. The upshot of all this was that I wrote the bulk of the paper myself, camouflaging the fact by the use of pseudonyms. After eight months I had so improved the reputation of the paper that it had become a valuable property, and it was accordingly sold to a man who was so stupid as not to know that its sole asset was myself, and so fat-headed that he thought he could run it himself. He would not even accept a contribution from me, though I offered him one out of pure kindness. He pretended to be a great friend of mine and I had not realized the dirtiness of the intrigues against me. Well, he had his way and got out just one number. As soon as people found my name absent they would not buy it. Its sudden destruction was the greatest compliment I had ever received. During the three Chokmah days of my control of the paper I devoted every energy to proclaiming the Law of Thelma in its pages both directly and indirectly. My first important step in this direction, the thin end of the wedge, was an article "The Revival of Magick" which ran serially, ending in November. The last paragraph, a mere coxcombical flourish, though written with the quite serious idea of indicating to some person of adequate intelligence, the direction in which to seek for a Master, provided an element in an incident of the utmost complexity. I propose to recount this in great detail, because it gives an idea of the extraordinary strength and subtlety of the proof that I am in communication with some intelligence possessing knowledge and power altogether superior to anything that we can reasonably ascribe to any human being. This paragraph runs as follows: {827} Herein is wisdom; let him that hath understanding count the number of The Beast; for it is the number of a man; and his number is six hundred and three score and six. I must now return to the feature of my initiation: for the other conditions of the incident in question are connected therewith. After only one Chokmah day I was obliged to get rid of my faithful Anubis. She had been a fine friend, but her manners were such that I could not really have her about the camp. Besides this, such a journey as I was now about to undertake required an animal of greater strength and size than the dog. To take me to the oasis I required a camel; and at the beginning of the next Chokmah day I found an admirable Mehari at the door of my tent. It is to be noticed that in this part of the initiation I was in no perplexity. I understood the proper function of the officer in charge of my progress and wasted no time in discussing right relations. In January 1918, I published a revised version of the "Message of the Master Therion" and also of the "Law of Liberty", a pamphlet in which I uttered a panegyric upon the Law as the key to freedom and delight. (To get rid of the subject I had better mention here the other magical essays which appeared in The International: "Cocaine", "The Ouija Board", "Concerning Death", "Pax", "Hominibus Bonae Voluntatis", "Geomancy", "Absinthe", "De Thaumaturgia", "Ecclesiae Gnosticae Canon Missae". Of these, Liber XV, its scope and purpose, I have already described at length.) The point which I wish to bring out is that despite the constraint imposed upon me by the requirements of public