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Page 1 of 91929 · PDF PAGE 565
…e tried. I was to make a fictitious sale of the stock to another man, and he, having taken them away, could transfer them to me. When he called he was assailed in the most intemperate language and the delivery refused. The second idea was to get my tailor to obtain judgment against me for the few hundreds I owed him, to be executed by seizing the stock. But the sheriff received the same treatment as everyone else. Warner started at once to heap insults upon, and hurl defiance at, the representatives of the law. What interests me most in all thi…
1929 · PDF PAGE 9
9 up the very moment of death; but once the saints had been called up, the day of grace was finally over. Various alarums and excursions would take place as per the Apocalypse, and then would come the millennium, when Satan would be chained for a thousand years and Christ reign for that period over the Jews regathered in Jerusalem. The position of these Jews is not quite clear. They were not saved in the same sense as Christians had been, yet they were not damned. The millennium seems to have been thought of as a fulfilment of god's promise to …
1929 · PDF PAGE 145
145 Homage is paid to this relic every year at a ceremony called the Perahera. I was not impressed by the sanctity of the proceedings; but as a spectacle it is certainly gorgeous. The very wildness and lack of appropriateness add to its charm. The processions to which we are accustomed in Europe and America are all so cleverly though out that the effect is merely to irritate. The Perahera is a gigantic jollification; they bring out all their elephants, dancers, monks, officials, drums, horns, torches --- anything that makes a blaze of a noise, …
1929 · PDF PAGE 20
20 He lived in London, in what was then called Thistle Grove. The name has since been changed to Drayton Gardens, despite a petition enthusiastically supported by Bishop; the objection was that a public house in the neighbourhood was called the Drayton Arms. This is typical of my uncle's attitude to life. His sense of humour. When I called him "Uncle", he would {55} snigger, "Oh my prophetic soul, my uncle!" But the time came when I knew most of Hamlet by heart, and when he next shot off his "joke", I continued the quotation, replying sternly, …
1929 · PDF PAGE 29
…ere. My uncle saw clearly that I was being brutally illtreated; and he made {69} an application to the courts which resulted in my being called to see Mr. Justice Stirling in chambers. I have always been intensely loyal even to my enemies, and (for all I knew) the judge might send my mother and her brother to prison. So I lied like a little man and pretended that I was perfectly happy at the school. I do not think that he was entirely fooled by my protestations; and although I was not made a ward in Chancery, a promise was exacted that I should…
1929 · PDF PAGE 343
…I am coming back to you!1 This year was indeed my annus mirabilis in poetry. It began with Clouds Without Water, to which I have already called attention in the matter of its {555} 1. Crowley made a sound recording of this poem. It is widely extant. technique. The question of its inspiration is not less interesting. At Coulsdon, at the very moment when my conjugal cloudburst was impending, I had met one of the most exquisitely beautiful young girls, by English standards, that ever breathed and blushed. She did not appeal to me only as a man; sh…
1929 · PDF PAGE 564
…me a little over ten pounds. They had written several times to urge me to remove the stock, alleging lack of space in their warehouse. I called and renewed my friendly acquaintance with Jacobi who agreed to hold the books till the end of May, to give me time to arrange for their removal. He furnished me with a complete set of the books as samples. {890} I had approached Heinemann's with a scheme to dispose of the stock. They were to publish every month for a year a small volume of selections, lyrics, religious verses, essays, stories, plays, et…
1929 · PDF PAGE 501
501 Early in January, I received a visit from the lady hereafter called the Ape of Thoth and her elder sister. The chain of circumstances antecedent is strangely tenuous. I had brought a letter of introduction, from England, to Hereward Carrington from my friend the Hon. Everard Feilding. Through Carrington, it came about that I was asked to lecture under the auspices of a particularly transparent charlatan named Christiansen, who worked the sealed letter swindle with a crudity that paid a very poor compliment to his audience. Among my hearers …
1929 · PDF PAGE 349
…variable rendered so blind by malice that they give themselves away and make themselves ridiculous. There is an institution at Cambridge called "Ciccu", Cambridge Intercollegiate Christian Union. It is a bestial thing, compact of hypocrisy and secret vice. Now my connection with the Pan Society was of the slightest. I have merely been invited to read parers, I think altogether three times, on mysticism or kindred subjects. Nothing more harmless can be imagined, but the Ciccu went out of its mind. I am compelled to remark at this point that one …
1929 · PDF PAGE 423
…of the state of being, at that time wholly beyond my imagination to conceive, make it a most astonishing document. LIBER X. This book is called "The Gate of Light". It explains how those who have attained initiation, taking pity upon the darkness and minuteness of the earth, send forth a messenger to men. The message follows. It is an appeal to those who, being developed beyond the average of their fellows, see fit to take up the Great Work. This Work is then described in general terms with a few hints of its conditions. LIBER XI is a paraphras…
1929 · PDF PAGE 26
…g that I might go, they hurried off themselves and told him how that wicked Crowley had tried to lead them away from Jesus. Worse, I had called Page I a pharisee. That was true; I had said it. Dreadful of me! And Page I, who "walked very close to Jesus", of course went and told. Yes, they all walked very close to Jesus --- as close as Judas did. 4. A boy named Barton was sentenced to one hundred and twenty strokes of the cane on his bare shoulders, for some petty theft of which he was presumably innocent. Superb was the process of trial. It beg…
1929 · PDF PAGE 233
…is one of the numerous honorifics common in Asia.) I had no conscious magical intention in doing so. (Let me here mention that I usually called my wife Ouarda, one of the many Arabic words from Rose.) As to my study of Islam, I got a sheikh to teach me Arabic and the practices of ablution, prayer and so on, so that at some future time I might pass for a Moslem among themselves. I had it in my mind to repeat Burton's journey to Mecca sooner or later. I learnt a number of chapters of the Koran by heart. I never went to Mecca, it seemed rather vie…
1929 · PDF PAGE 141
…before leaving Colombo, I had heard the astral bell, to which so much factitious importance has been given. I had also purified what are called the Nadi. My complexion {245} became strangely clear; my voice had lost the harsh timbre natural to it; my appearance had become calm; my eyes unusually bright; and I was constantly conscious of what is called the Nada, which is a sound the character of which varies considerably, but in my case most frequently resembled the twittering of nightingales. Pranayama produced, firstly, a peculiar kind of pers…
1929 · PDF PAGE 13
… his father moved from Leamington to Redhill, Surrey. There was some reason connected with a gravel soil and country life. The house was called The Grange. It stood in a large long garden ending in woods which overhung the road between Redhill and Merstham; about a mile, perhaps a little more, from Redhill. Alick lived here until 1886 and his memory of this period is of perpetual happiness. He remembers with the utmost clearness innumerable incidents and it becomes hard to select those which possess significance. He was taught by tutors; but th…
1929 · PDF PAGE 99
…ed to me to proceed from a man sitting in the east, a man I had not seen before, but whom I knew must be Very Honoured Frater Iehi Aour, called among men Allan Bennett. The fame of this man as a Magician was already immense. He was esteemed second only to Mathers himself; and was, perhaps, even more feared. After the ceremony we went into the outer room to unrobe. I was secretly anxious to be introduced to this formidable Chief. To my amazement he came straight to me, looked into my eyes, and said in penetrating and, as it seemed, almost menaci…
1929 · PDF PAGE 488
…e machine. Its artistic and cultured side shares the deadness of the rest. It compares with New York rather as Manchester with London. I called on Narnet Munroe, described in the charge sheet as a poetess. She edits a periodical called Poetry. I am still not sure if she knew my name and my work, but she showed no interest whatever! She was loaded to the gunwhale with a cargo of conceit. She was the standard of perfection by which Milton and Keats might be measured in terms of their inferiority to her. Incidentally these two were bracketed zero.…
1929 · PDF PAGE 526
…e fetid, noxious and malignant spectres once more to prey upon my mind. {830} So much for the profane. For the aspirant I wrote the book called De Lege Libellum, otherwise called The Sandal, in which I analysed the Law as the source of light, life, love and liberty, and pronounced a panegyric upon it in each of these respects successively. For sustained sublimity of prose this book perhaps ranks next to those in which my pen was definitely and authentically inspired. (The criterion of such inspiration, by the way, is that in the case of an insp…
1929 · PDF PAGE 493
…is wife in bed one night, they having found a bond of common sympathy in their contempt and loathing for "The Worm" as we had familiarly called him. She told me at once, and I have every reason to believe that the letter I wrote to Putnam's is treasured in the archives of the firm as the last word in savage contempt. So ended my adventures with these fascinating freaks. I must now run back to New Orleans. {776} 78 New Orleans and San Antonio are said to be the only two towns in the United States which possess souls of their own. That of New Orl…
1929 · PDF PAGE 356
… five centimes. We then went to our respective hotels to bed and the reaction began. He was in bed the whole of the next day, and when I called on him the morning of the day after that I found nothing had been done to cast a veil over the natural results of his indiscretion. But that was Neuburg all over. He was physically the filthiest animal that I have ever known. His gifts were supernatural. I remember giving him a saucer to clean: it had a very small quantity of yellow oil pint in it, left over from painting some talisman. He was a long wh…
1929 · PDF PAGE 152
… and whose virtuous lives vindicated their good faith. He had gone to Akyab on the western coast of Burma, and was living in a monastery called Lamma Sayadaw Kyoung. I thought I would drop in on him and pass the time of day; and proposed to combine with this act of fraternity the adventure of crossing the Arakan hills, the range which forms the watershed between the valley of the Irrawaddy and the sea. This journey, very short in measured miles, is reputed so deadly that it has only been accomplished by very few men. These left most of their pa…