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other kinds of specific excitement? Morphine makes men holy and happy in a negative way; why 
should there not be some drug which will produce the positive equivalent? 
The mystic gasps with horror, but we really can't worry about him. It is he that is blaspheming 
nature by postulating discontinuity in her processes. Admit that Samadhi is sui generis and back 
come the whole discarded humbug of the supernatural. I was back at the old bench exploring the 
pharmacopoeia for the means of grace, as I had done with Allan long ago; but I had come back to 
the problem armed in the panopy of the positive natural philosophy of modern science. Huxley had 
vindicated the alchemists. There was nothing impossible or immoral about the Stone of the Wise 
and the Elixir of Life. Maudsley --- rather to my surprise --- agreed with all these propositions, but 
could not suggest any plausible line of research. 
I have made rather a point of mentioning these conversations, because they show that in February 
1904, I was an absolutely sceptical rationalistic thinker. The point is that the events of March and 
April were not in the normal course of the life of a consistent mystic and magician. There was no 
tendency on my part to accept "divine" interference in my affairs. There was, on the contrary, the 
bitterest opposition from me. I even went so far as to make unintelligible and false additions to my 
diary, with the deliberate 
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intention of confusing the record, and perhaps even of making people think me untrustworthy in 
this stupendous circumstance. 
But the gods beat me all round. They took care that the event should not depend on my goodwill; 
should be beyond the power of my ill-will to thwart. More yet; they have made it evident that they 
purposely smashed my career as mystic and Magician in the very hour of my success, when the world 
was at my feet, in order that they might the more utterly demonstrate their power to use me for 
their own purposes. 
We landed at Port Said on Monday, February the eighth, and went to Cairo on the following day. It 
was part of the plan of the gods that my romantic passion and pride, the intoxicated infatuation of 
my hymeneal happiness, should have induced me to play a puerile part on the world's stage. I had 
called myself Count Svareff and Aleister MacGregor fro quite definite and legitimate reasons; but I 
had never made a deliberate fool of myself by assuming an absurd alias. I was not for a moment 
deceived by my own pretext that I wanted to study Mohammedism, and in particular the mysticism 
of the fakir, the Darwesh and the Sufi, from within, when I proposed to pass myself off in Egypt for 
a Persian prince with a beautiful English wife. I wanted to swagger about in a turban with a 
diamond aigrette and sweeping silken robes or a coat of cloth of gold, with a jewelled talwar by my 
side ant two gorgeous runners to clear the way for my carriage through the streets of Cairo. 
There was no doubt a certain brooding of the Holy Spirit of Magick upon the still waters of my soul; 
but there is little evidence of its operation. I have never lost sight of the fact that I was in some 
sense or other The Beast 666. There is a mocking reference to it in "Ascension Day", lines 98 to 111. 
The Sword of Song bears the sub-title "called by Christians the Book of the Beast". The wrapper of 
the original edition has on the front a square of nine sixes and the back another square of sixteen 
Hebrew letters, being a (very clumsy) transliteration of my name so that its numerical value should 
be 666. When I went to Russia to learn the language for the Diplomatic Service, my mother half 
believed that I had "gone to see God and Magog" (who were supposed to be Russian giants) in order 
to arrange the date of the Battle of Armageddon. 
In a way, my mother was insane, in the sense that all people are who have watertight 
compartments to the brain, and hold with equal passion incompatible ideas, and hold them apart 
lest their meeting should destroy both. One might say that we are all insane in this sense; for, 
ultimately, any tow ideas are incompatible. Nay, more, any one idea is incompatible with itself, for 
it contains in itself its own contradiction. (The proof of this thesis will be given in the proper place.) 
But my mother believed that I was actually Anti-christ of the Apocalypse