The Greatest Works of Aleister Crowley. Aleister Crowley

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      We went to tea with Mabel Black. Every one was talking about drugs. Every one seemed to want them; yet Lord Landsend had just come back from Germany and he said you could buy it quite easily there, but nobody seemed to want to.

      Then is the whole German people in a silent conspiracy to destroy us ? I never took much stock in all those stories about the infernal cunning of the Hun.

      We heard a lot about the underground traffic, though, and I think we ought to be able to get it pretty easily....

      I don't know what's the matter with us both. It made us a bit better to meet the old crowd, and we thought we'd celebrate.

      It didn't come off.

      We had a wonderful dinner ; and then a horrible thing happened, the most horrible thing in my life. Cockie wanted to go to a show! You might have hit me on the head with a poker. I don't attract him any more; and I love him so much !

      He went to the box office to see about tickets, and while he was gone-this was the really horrible thingI found I was simply telling myself " I love him so much."

      Love is dead. And yet that's not true. I do love him with all my heart and soul; and yet, somehow, I can't. I want to be able to love until I get back. Oh, what's the good of talking about it !

      I know I love him, and yet I know I can't love any one.

      I took a whole lot of cocaine. It dulled what I felt. I was able to fancy I loved him.

      We went to the show. It was awfully stupid. I was thinking all the time how I wanted to love, and how I wanted dope, and how I wanted to stop dope so that the dope might do me some good.

      I couldn't really feel. It was a dull, blind sense of discomfort. I was awfully nervous, too. I felt as if I were somehow caught in a trap ; as if I had got into the wrong house by mistake and couldn't get out again. I didn't know what might be behind all those doors ; and I was quite alone. Cockie was there; but he couldn't do a thing to help me. I couldn't call to him. The link between us was broken.

      And yet apart from all the fear I had for myself, there was an even deeper fear on his account. There is something in me that loves him, something deeper than life ; but it won't talk to me.

      I sat through the show like being in a nightmare. I was clinging desperately to him; and he didn't seem to understand me and my need. We were strangers.

      I think he was feeling rather good. He talked in a charming, light, familiar way; but every smile was an insult, every caress was a stab.

      We got back to the Savoy, utterly worn out and wretched. We kept on taking H. and C. all night ; we couldn't sleep, we talked about the drugs. It was just a long argument about how to take them. We felt we were somehow doing it wrong.

      I had been so proud of his medical knowledge, and yet it didn't seem to throw any light.

      It seems that in the medical books, they speak of what they call " Drug virginity." The thing was to get it back ; and according to the books the only way to do it is to take nothing for a long time.

      He said it was really just the same as any other appetite. If you have a big lunch you can't expect to be hungry at tea-time.

      But then, what is one to do in the meanwhile ?

      August 18

      We lay in bed very late. I didn't seem to miss my sleep ; but I was too weak to get out of bed.

      We had to buck ourselves up in the usual way, and manage to get downstairs for lunch.

      London is quite empty and terribly dull. We met Mabel Black by accident walking in Bond Street. She is looking frightfully ill. I can see she dopes too hard. Of course, the trouble with her is she hasn't got a man. She has a lot of men round her. She could marry any day she liked.

      We talked about it a bit. She hasn't got the energy, she said, and the idea of men disgusts her.

      She wears the most wonderful boots. She has a new pair almost every day, and hardly ever puts the same pair on twice. I think she's a little bit crazy.. * *

      London seems different somehow. I used to be interested in every funny little detail. I want to get back to myself. Drugs help me to get almost there; but there is always one little corner to turn and they never take one round....

      August 19

       We got back from Bond Street bored and stupefied. We went off unexpectedly to sleep; and when we woke it was this morning. I can't understand why a long sleep like that doesn't refresh one. We're both absolutely fagged.

      Cockie said a meal would put us right, and he rang down for breakfast in bed. But when it came, we couldn't either of us eat it.

      I remember what Haide' said about the spiritual life. We were being prepared to take our places in the new order of Humanity. It's perfectly right that one should have to undergo a certain amount of discomfort. You couldn't expect anything else. It's nature's way....

      We picked ourselves up with five or six goes of heroin. It's no use taking cocaine unless you're feeling pretty good already....

      The supply is really awfully small. Confound this silly holiday habit. It really isn't fair of Gretel to let us down like this.

      We went to the cafe' Wisteria. Somebody introduced us to somebody that said he could get all he wanted.

      But now there was a new nuisance. The police find it troublesome and dangerous to attend to the crime wave. Besides they're too busy enforcing regulations. England's altogether different since the war. You never know where you are. Nobody takes any interest in politics in the way they used to, and nobody bothers any more about the big ideas.

      I was taught about Magna Charta and the liberty of the individual, and freedom slowly broadening down from precedent to precedent, and so on and so forth.

      All sorts of stupid interference with the rights of the citizen gets passed under our noses without our knowing what it is. For all I know, it may be a crime to wear a green hat with a pink dress.

      Well, it would be a crime ; but I don't think it's the business of the police.

      I read in a paper the other day that a committee of people in Philadelphia had decided that a skirt must be not less than seven and a half inches from the ground-or not more. I don't know which and I don't know why. Anyhow, the net result is that the price of cocaine has gone up from a pound an ounce to anything you like to pay. So of course everybody wants it whether they want it or not, and anybody but a member of parliament would know that if you offer a man twenty or thirty times what a thing is worth in itself, he'll go to a lot of trouble to make you want to buy it....

      Well, we found this man was a fraud. He tried to sell us packets of snow in the dark. He tried to prevent Cockie examining the stuff by pretending to be afraid of the police.

      But as it happened, Cockie's long suit was chemistry. He was the wrong man to try to sell powdered borax to at a guinea a sniff. He told the man he'd rather have Beecham's Pills.

      What I love about Cockie is the witty way he talks. But somehow or other, the flashes don't come like they did-not so often, I mean. Besides which, he seems to be making his jokes to himself.

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