Confessions of Aleister Crowley

413 Like wolves at the killing, Moaning and shrilling And clear as the throb in the throat ...........of a thrush. During the journey I wrote "The Pilgrim", "Return" and "On the Edge of the Desert", lyrics inspired by the idea of getting back to my inamorata in London. In Paris I wrote "The Ordeal of Ida Pendragon". The hero, Edgar Rolles, meets a girl at the Taverne Panthéon (where I wrote the story) and takes her to a fight between a white man and a Negro, the latter suggested by Joe Jeannette, whom I had just seen and much admired for his physical beauty. He takes her to his studio and recognizes her as a member of the order. He proposes to put her through the ordeal of crossing the Abyss. She fails and they part. Ida meets the Negro, who loves her. Rolles and Ninon (Nina Olivier already mentioned) lunch with them. Ida takes pleasure in torturing the Negro and begs him to "respect her modesty" --- which she has not got. The Negro suddenly understands that she is heartless and sinks his teeth in her throat. Rolles kills him with a kick. He then consults one of the Secret Chiefs, who advises him to take Ida away. He tells Rolles that she has passed through the Abyss after all. The formula is that perfect love is perfect understanding. He marries her and a year later she dies in childbirth, saying that she has given herself three times, once to the brute, once to the man and now to God. Her previous failure had been to surrender herself. She wanted to get everything and give nothing. This story marks a stage in my own understanding of the formula of initiation. I began to see that one might become a Master of the Temple without necessarily knowing any technical Magick or mysticism at all. It is merely a matter of convenience to be able to represent any expression as x + Y = 0. The equation may be solved without words. Many people may go through the ordeals and attain the degrees of the A.'. A.'. without ever hearing that such an Order exists. The universe is, in fact, busy with nothing else, for the relation of the Order to it is that of the man of science to his subject. He writes CaCl2 + H2SO4 = CaSO4 + 2HCl for his own convenience and that of others, but the operation was always in progress independently. {657} Arrived in England, my Pegasus continued its tameless spurt. One after the other I wrote "The Electric Silence", a fairy-story summary of my magical career; "The Earth", a short essay on her, both as planet and as element, in which I express my filial and conjugal relation with her. It is an ecstatic dithyramb. Finally I wrote "Snowstorm". This is a play in three acts, but once again I have tried to introduce a new artistic form. Leila Waddell was to play the part of the heroine, but as she was incapable of speaking on the stage, I had to write her part as a series of violin solos. The current of creative ecstasy stopped as suddenly as it had begun and I went on from Eastbourne to London. I found everything in confusion. I did not realize that the esprit de corps which is the essence of such books as The Three Musketeers was as dead as duelling. The men who had clustered round me enthusiastically when I seemed successful had dispersed like the disciples when they found that the Pharisee meant business. They all knew perfectly well that the attacks on me were malicious nonsense, that Jones's fiasco was a mere accident due to over-confidence; but they were all, with very few exceptions, cowards to the bone. They were as afraid of nothing as so many babies in the dark, expecting to see the bogey man come down the chimney. I suppose the proper thing would have been to have "rallied my desperate followers", but the fact is that I am congenitally incapable of beating the big drum. Most leaders induce their followers to fight in haste and leave them to repent at leisure. I always feel that this sort of thing is somehow unfair and in the long run useless. I am content to wait until people back me up wholeheartedly without the press gang or the revival meeting. I carried on imperturbably, exactly as if nothing