Diary of a Drug Fiend

by Aleister Crowley

  Sister Athena acquiesced.

  “Yes, this place is kill or cure,” she admitted, with a laugh. “But I’m glad to say that it’s cure for most people. The two I was telling you about only failed because their vanity and selfishness was so extreme. They interpreted everything wrong, and expected the world to fall down and worship them for being wastrels. And at every turn they found the Big Lion in the way, to bring them back to reality. But the truth was too bitter medicine for them. If they had accepted the facts, they could have altered the facts; and learnt to do something worthwhile. But they preferred to cherish delusions of persecution. They persuaded themselves that they were being crucified when they were only having their faces washed. But the paint of self-esteem had been put on too thick; so away they went, and said how badly they’d been treated. Well, they had asked for the treatment themselves; and it will do them some good yet when they see the thing in perspective and discover that the adulation of their silly little clique of cranks in Soho is not really so good for their souls as the accurate abuse of their friends in this Abbey.”

  “Yes, I see that all right,” said Lou, “and I know Basil too well to make that kind of fool of myself. But I’m still a little worried about this horrid efficiency of yours. Whatever am I to do with myself? Don’t you understand that it was really boredom or the dread of it that drove me to heroin to pass away the time?”

  “That’s just it,” said Athena very seriously, “This is all kinds of a place for driving a fellow to drink. And that’s why the Big Lion insists on our going through the mill. But it takes us a very short time to realise that there is not enough heroin in the world to tide us over a single day in such a ghastly place, so we quit.”

  Here was another of Basil’s paradoxes in full working order. But they came quite differently from the lips of a steady-going serious-minded person of this kind. The personality of the Big Lion is his greatest asset in one way, but in another it handicaps him frightfully. His cynical manner, his habitual irony, the sensation he produces that he is making fun of one; all these make one inclined to dismiss everything that he says as “mere paradox” without investigation. Lamus is too clever by half; but Sister Athena spoke with such simple earnestness and directness that although she too had a sense of humour of her own, Basil’s ideas were very much more effective when they had passed through the machinery of her mind than when they frothed fresh from his. I had always been inclined to distrust King Lamus. It was impossible to distrust this woman who trusted him, or to doubt that she was right to trust him.

  He never seemed able even to take himself seriously, perhaps because he was afraid of appearing pompous or a prig; but she had taken him seriously and got the best out of him.

  “Well, Sister Athena,” said Lou, “if even heroin’s no good, what is?”

  “I’m afraid I’ll have to treat you to another paradox,” she said, lighting a cigarette. “I’m afraid that at first sight you’ll think there must be something wrong. It’s really such a revolutionary reversal of what seems obvious. But I’ve been through it myself, and the plain fact is this: finding ourselves here with so much more time on our hands than we ever had in our lives, we get desperate. In a big city, if we’re bored, we simply look around for some diversion, and there are plenty of them. But here, there’s no alleviation or the possibility of it. We must either go under completely or decide to swim. Here’s another case where the Big Lion, who must certainly be Satan himself, economises time. One has to be very stupid not to discover within forty-eight hours that there is no possibility of amusing oneself in any of the ordinary ways. In London one could waste one’s life before bringing one’s mind to the point where Big Lion wants it. So one finds oneself immediately up against the fact that one has got to find something to do. Well, we go and ask Big Lion; and Big Lion says: ‘Do what thou wilt.’ ‘But, yes,’ we say, ‘what is that?’ He replies rudely, ‘Find out.’ We ask how to find out; and he says, ‘How do you know what is the good of a motorcar?’ Well, we think a bit; and then we tell him that we find out the use of a motorcar by examining it, looking at its various parts, comparing it and them with similar machines whose use we already know, such as the bullock wagon and the steam engine. We make up our minds that an automobile is constructed in order to travel along the high road. ‘Very good,’ says Big Lion, ‘go up top. Examine yourself, your faculties and tendencies, the trend of your mind, and the aspirations of your soul. Allow me to assure you that you will find this investigation leaves you very little time to wonder what in the devil to do with yourself.’ ‘Thank you very much,’ we say, ‘but suppose our judgment is wrong, suppose that what we have decided is an automobile intended to go, is in reality a coffin intended to contain a corpse?’ ‘Quite so,’ says Big Lion, ‘you have to test your judgment; and you don’t do that by asking the opinion of people who are probably more ignorant than yourself; you get into the beastly thing and press the proper button, and if it goes it’s an automobile, and you’ve made no mistake. Didn’t you read what it says in the Book of the Law: “Success is your proof”? And allow me again to assure you that when you’ve got yourself going, doing your True Will, you won’t find you have any time to get bored.’”

  She threw away her cigarette after lighting another from the butt. She seemed to be brooding, as if much deeper thoughts were passing through her mind than even those to which she was giving such airy expression.

  We watched her intently. The heroin had calmed and intensified our thought, which was intensely stimulated by her explanation. We had no wish to interrupt. We wished she could have gone on talking for ever.

  Her self-absorption became still more marked. After a very long pause she went on slowly talking, so it seemed, to herself more than to us and with the intention to giving form to her own idea, that of instructing us.

  “I suppose that must be the idea,” she said.

  She had a curious mouth, with square-cut lips like one sees in some old Egyptian statues, and a twist at the corners in which lurked incalculable possibilities of self-expression. Her eyes were deep-set and calm. It was a square face with a very peculiar jaw expressing terrific determination. I have never seen a face in which courage was so strongly marked.

  “Yes, I think I see it now. He forces one to come to what I might call the point of death. The whole of life is reviewed in perspective, and its meaning seized. But instead of being snatched away to face the unknown, as in the case of death, one has the opportunity and the necessity to take up the old life from the point at which one left off, with a clear apprehension of the past which determines the future. That is the meaning of what he calls initiation. I understand ‘Thou hast no right but to do thy will.’ That is why the old hierophants shut up the candidate in silence and darkness. He had the choice between going mad or knowing himself. And when he was brought out into light and life, restored to love and liberty, he was in very truth a Neophyte, a man new-born. Big Lion puts us through it without our knowing what he’s doing. Though I’ve been through it myself, I didn’t know in this clear way what had really happened until I tried to explain it to you.”

  The sense of being enchanted came over me again very strongly. I looked across at Lou, and I could see in her eyes that she felt the same. But she was trembling with excitement and eagerness. Her eyes were fixed on the face of Sister Athena with devouring ardour. She was looking forward to undergoing this terrific experience. My own mood was slightly different.

  Already my past life surged up before me in a series of pulsating pictures. I was revolted by the incoherence and fatuity of the past. The achievements of which I was proudest had lost their savour because they pointed to nowhere in particular. The words of Lewis Carroll came into my mind:

  “A wise fish never goes anywhere without a porpoise.” And quite inconsequentially my brain took up the tune:

  “Will you, won’t you, will you, won’t you,

  Won’t you join th
e dance?”

  When I woke it was, I suppose, about midnight. Rugs had been thrown over me where I lay. I was quite warm, despite the breeze that came in through the open door. It struck me as very strange that it should be open. The country was notoriously infested with brigands.

  King Lamus was sitting at his desk writing by the light of a lamp. I watched him idly, feeling very comfortable and disinclined to move.

  Presently I heard the deep booming of a bell in the far-off cathedral. It was twelve o’ clock.

  He immediately rose and went to the doorway, down the steps and on to the moonlit terrace. He faced the north. In a deep solemn voice he recited what was apparently an invocation.

  “Hail unto thee who art Ra in thy silence, even unto thee who art Kephra the beetle, that travellest under the heavens in thy bark in the midnight hour of the sun. Tahuti standeth in his splendour at the prow, and Ra-Hoor abideth at the helm. Hail unto thee from the abodes of evening!”

  He accompanied the speech with a complicated series of gestures. When he had finished he returned and noticed that I was awake.

  “Well, did you have a good sleep?” he said softly, standing over my mattress.

  “I never had a better one.”

  It would be impossible to give the details of even one day at Telepylus. Life there has all the fullness of the heroin life with none of its disillusions. I must simply select such incidents as bear directly on our Purgatorio. I dropped off to sleep again after a short chat with Basil about indifferent affairs, and woke in the morning very much refreshed, and yet overpowered by the conviction that it was impossible to get up without heroin.

  But the bright spring sun, his rays falling so freshly on the crags green-grey and dun opposite, reminded me that I had come to Telepylus to renew my youth. I held back my hand. Little by little, strength came back to me; but as it did so the feeling of helplessness in the absence of heroin was replaced by the presence of craving for it.

  I dragged myself from the mattress and got unsteadily to my feet. Lou was still sleeping, and she looked so lovely in the pure pale light that filtered into the room that I took a firmer resolve to break off the habit that had destroyed our love. It was only in sleep that she was beautiful at all in these last months. Waking, the expression of tenseness and wretchedness, the nervous twitching of her face and the destruction of her complexion by the inability of the liver to throw off the toxic effects of the drug, made her look not only twice her age but ugly, with that ugliness of vice and illness which is so much more repulsive than any merely aesthetic errors of nature.

  Lou, more than any girl I ever knew, depended for her beauty upon her spiritual state. The influence of an idea would transform her in a moment from Venus to Echidna or the reverse.

  It was deep spiritual satisfaction that made her so lovely this morning. But even as I stood and looked, the horrible restlessness of the heroin craving nearly drove me to take the stuff without my body telling me what it was doing. But I detected the movement in time.

  I thought a brisk walk might help me to pass through the critical moment. Just as I got out of the house, I was met by Sister Athena.

  “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law,” she said.

  It was the regular morning greeting at the Abbey. Accustomed as I was to the phrase, it still took me rather aback.

  “Good morning,” I said in a rather embarrassed way.

  “The answer is ‘Love is the law, love under will,’ “she smiled. “We exchange this greeting so as to make sure that the sight of our friends doesn’t distract us from the Great Work. Now we can talk about whatever we like. Oh, no, we can’t, I must first inspect your yesterday’s chart.”

  I brought it out, and we sat down at the table together. Of course, there was only the one cross. She assumed a very severe look.

  “This is extremely irregular, brother,” she said. “You haven’t filled in column two.”

  I discovered later that it was part of the system of the Abbey to pretend to be very severe about any infraction of the rules, and then to show by some pleasant remark that it wasn’t meant in anger. The object was to fix in one’s mind that the offence was really grave, so that the pretended scolding had all the effect of the genuine article.

  Not knowing this, I was surprised when she continued: “That’s all right, Cockie, we know you’re a new chum.”

  But her finger pointed sternly to column two. It was headed “Reason for taking the dose.”

  Well, Dionysus had shown me the way out of that, so I turned impudently around and said:

  “Enough of Because, be he damned for a dog!”

  The effect was electric. We both broke into a duet of low musical laughter that seemed to me in exquisite harmony with the beauty of the April morning.

  “The devil can quote scripture,” she retorted, “that business about Because refers to something entirely different. The point about this (she was very serious now) is that we want you to know what is going on in your own mind. We all do so many stupid things, for bad reason or no reason at all. ‘Forgive them, Father, they know not what they do’ applies to nine-tenths of our actions. We get so much work done in this Abbey because we have learnt to watch our minds and prevent ourselves wasting a moment on what is worthless, or cancelling out one course of action by another, and so getting nowhere. In the case of this experiment of yours, in learning to master a drug so powerful that hardly one man in ten thousand stands a dog’s chance of coming out, it’s especially important because, as I’m afraid you will find out, I mean, as I hope you will find out very soon, your brain has developed certain morbid tendencies. You are liable to think crooked. Big Lion has told me already how you got to the stage where you took one dose to sleep and another to wake up again, and where you would try to conceal the amount you were taking from the very person with whom you were taking it openly. Another point is that privation always upsets the mental balance. A man who lacks food or money finds very queer thoughts come into his mind, and does things, not necessarily connected with his necessity, obsessing though that be, which are entirely out of keeping with his character.”

  I took a pencil, and wrote at once against the cross in column two “In order to make the most of Sister Athena’s illuminating discourse.”

  She laughed, merrily.

  “You see, it’s Adam and Eve all over again! You’re trying to shift the blame on to me. By the way, I see your body is nervous at this moment. If you don’t want to take heroin, as you don’t, else you wouldn’t have let yourself get as shaky as you are, you’d better take a white tablet. It won’t put you to sleep, as you’ve had a night’s rest, and the poor little thing won’t have anything to do but run around your solar plexus and stroke all your little pussycat nerves the right way.”

  I took the advice and felt much better. At that moment King Lamus appeared, and challenged Sister Athena to a set of Thelema. I brought Lou out; and we sat in the courtyard and watched them play.

  Thelema is so called because of the variety of strokes.

  It is a sort of Fives played with an association football, but there are no side walls, only a low wall at the back over which, if the ball goes, it is out of play, as also if it strikes outside the vertical lines painted on the wall or below a ledge about a foot from the ground. The ball may be struck with any part of the body so long as it is struck clean, and the game is bewilderingly fast to watch.

  After two games, the players were perspiring violently. The score was kept somewhat as in tennis, but each point had a monosyllabic name to economise time. It also had a certain startling implication – with the object of familiarising the mind with ideas which normally excited.

  The whole system of King Lamus was to enable people to take no notice, that is, no emotional notice, of anything soever in life. A great deal of the fascination of drugs arises from the fuss that is made about them; the fo
cusing of the attention upon them. Absinthe, forbidden in France, Switzerland, and Italy, is still sold freely in England, and no one ever met an English absinthe fiend. If any one took it into his head to start a newspaper campaign against absinthe, it would become a public danger in very short order.

  King Lamus emancipated people’s minds by adopting the contrary formula. He had all sorts of dodges for compelling people to accept the most startling sights and sounds as commonplace. The very children were confronted with the most terrifying ideas while they were still too young to have acquired settled phobias.

  Hermes, at the age of five, was already accustomed to witness surgical operations and such things, to face the dangers of drowning and falling from cliffs, with the results that he had completely lost his fear of such things.

  The intense activity and lightheartedness of everybody amazed us. We were asked to join in the game and our incompetence was a keen source of annoyance. We were too enfeebled by our indulgence in drugs to hold our own; and the result was to inspire us with a passionate determination to emancipate ourselves from the thraldom.

  But the tribulations of the morning had only begun. It was the custom of the Abbey to celebrate the arrival of newcomers by a picnic at the top of the rock. From the Abbey, a path leads through a patch of trees to a rough narrow track between two walls. At the end of this is an aqueduct across the road, and both Lou and I were too nervous to walk along the narrow causeway. We had to go around, feeling more and more ashamed of ourselves with every incident.

  On the other side, the hill rises steeply. A tongue of grass leads to a gully which is filled by the wall of the old city which crowned the rock two thousand years or more ago, when the world was less arid and the population could depend on rainfall instead of having to cluster in the neighbourhood of springs and streams for its water.