Confessions of Aleister Crowley

278 I had fired without aim, in pitch blackness; I could not even see the white robes of the men who held me. In the lightning moment of the flash I saw only that whitnesses were falling backwards away from me, as if I had upset a screen by accident. The blackness which followed the flash was Cimmerian. My eyes are naturally very slow to accommodate themselves to change of illumination --- I have never met any man equally helpless in case of sudden diminution of light. I had no thought soever as to whether my shot might have hit anybody. There was not the faintest sound; but the alley seemed somehow empty. I do not know whether I stepped over fallen bodies or not. (I was facing the archway when I fired.) I thought: I will get out of this alley at once. Those people may be lying in ambush in the archway, especially as I do not know whether there are doors opening out of it or not. I will keep my forefinger on the trigger and {455} at the same time light a match to make sure of the archway. When I get out into the open street, I will walk away very quickly and very quietly, and go straight to the Dharamtolla road and take a gharry, and drive to Edward thornton and tell him what has happened. I carried out this programme to the letter. And now comes a curious circumstance. Me experiments in Mexico City in "making myself invisible" have been recorded with considerable detail; and it will be remembered that I was far from satisfied with the results. I had reached the "flickering" condition, but I had never succeeded in "putting myself out" completely. But on this occasion --- when my unconscious self seems to have had me in hand throughout --- I made myself invisible right enought. The report of the pistol, the screams (for all I know!) of the wounded or frightened men, and the alarm given by the fugitives, had aroused the entire district. An European was a rare bird in that quarter at that time of night; and no native would be likely to have such a gun. No doubt, too, the whole assault had been watched from the beginning; and I must have been denounced descriptively. I remember clearly enough noting with a type of amusement which I must really admit to having something "devilish" in its composition, that the streets through which I passed were filled with wildly excited crowds, all looking for me. "But he, passing through the midst of them, went his way." I am aware that this sounds like a fish story. But as a matter of fact people who lived with me for the last three years or so have noticed that I make myself invisible quite frequently, and that (apparently) when I am not aware that I am doing so. There is a peculiar type of self-absorption which makes it impossible for people to be aware of one. In these recent cases, the observer who could see me quite plainly because in sympathy with me, could also see that the other people in the street --- or wherever it was --- could not see me at all. My theory is that the mental state in question distracts people's attention from one automatically, as a conjurer does deliberately. I can transfer this property of invisibility, however, even to inanimate objects. For instance, a police officer recently came to my house in search of a certain thing which he named. I admitted that I possessed it; I showed it to him; I insisted on his seeing, smelling, tasting and touching it; but he left the house and reported that he had been unable to find it. In this particular instance I knew what I was doing. I deliberately overwhelmed his mind with my earnestness in helping him and other objects of thought. I cut the connecting link between his senses and his mind. But we digress. I enjoyed lazily the splendour of the drowsy night as I jogged along with lighted pipe --- never tobacco tasted better --- in the broken-down old gharry up to Thornton's. {456}