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Seplember 23

I Don't remember what happened. I know why. Basil told me long ago that the mind only kept count of material things. So these spiritual events are recorded in a higher kind of mind of which we are not conscious until we get accustomed to spiritual life. So all I can put down is that we had a complete success.

The Devil, of course, needs a human interpreter if he is to communicate with this world, and so he took possession of Peter. He has been preparing Peter to represent him. He will make Peter pope, and I am to be in the Vatican disguised, to help him because he can't do without me.

My own spiritual guide is named Keletiel. She is a wonderful being, wears peacock blues and greens. She has white wings like a swan, and carries a sheaf of many-coloured flowers. She has long, loose, black curling hair down to her waist. There is a golden band round her forehead, studded with sapphires, with her name on it. I can always tell her by this.

There has to be a token, because she changes her size so much. Sometimes she is a tiny thing, not up to my knee, and sometimes she is two or three times as high as the North Tower.

Peter and I are covered with blood. We came out of the circle before the Devil had gone, and he scratched us all to pieces. Luckily we got back before he killed us, but we lost consciousness and woke up a long while later. That's why we can't remember what happened.

I have some idea that I had a terrible quarrel with Peter, but I can't remember any details.

I think he does, though, but he won't tell me.

I don't know why he should act like that. The only thing I can think is that Gretel Webster may have come down to see him perhaps in her astral body, and put him against me somehow....

He was lying on the sofa in his pyjamas. I wanted to be kissed, and went over to him with some cocaine. But he didn't move. He looked at me with wide open eyes. There was some dreadful fear in them, and he said,

" Black, the plague of the pit, Her pustules visibly fester."

Of course, I knew he didn't mean it, but I was hurt. I gave him the cocaine.

It roused him. He sat up and then he held me by the shoulders and looked straight at my face and said

" Dragon of lure and dread, Tiger of fury and lust,

The quick in chains to the dead, The slime alive in the dust, Brazen shame like a flame An orgy of pregnant pollution With hate beyond aim or nameOrgasm, death, dissolution! "

And then he began shrieking, and ran out of the house down to the lake and dived right in. He swam a few strokes and then came out and walked slowly up to the house.

I found some towels in the linen chest. I was afraid of his catching a chill, so I rubbed him hard all over. He seemed to have forgotten everything. He was quite nice and normal but just a little scared.

I can't make out what's the matter with him. He acts as if he had learnt some terrible secret which he had to keep from me. He always seems afraid of being spied on or overheard.

I went up to the magic room to-night. Peter was sitting in the old man's chair writing in a book. I couldn't understand it at first. I had come straight up, and he was fast asleep downstairs! Then, of course, the whole mystery became clear.

While he's asleep, his astral double comes up and does magic. I knew it was very dangerous to disturb any one's astral double, so I tiptoed out of the room ; but the double followed me noiselessly. Every time I looked over my shoulder he was there, though he was very quick at dodging back round the corner or into a doorway....

Peter has been very preoccupied for some time. He writes out telegrams on forms, and then tears them up ; and then he seems to think that isn't safe, and picks the pieces up and burns them. I asked him about it ; but he would say nothing, and got very angry.

I think I know what it is, though. I found a sheet of paper which he had forgotten to destroy-a letter to the War Office, warning them against German plots, and telling some things that have happened down here. I could hardly read it ; his handwriting is absolutely gaga.

He talks a great deal to himself. I overheard some of it. He thinks there may be a German spy in the War Office and is afraid to trust the post or telegraph.

He kept on saying, " I'm at my wits' end." Then he went off into muttering about the plots against him.

I am sure I could help him out if he would only trust me. I wonder if it's all delusion on his part. He certainly has some funny ideas.

For one thing, he pretends to see spiritual guides, which is impossible, because he is not pure enough. Besides, the things he says he sees are all horrible and disgusting.

But he says nothing at all now, any more. He begins to speak to me and checks himself....

It is very dark to-night. Rain is falling. Peter has gone down to the lake with his gun.

I have taken this book from its hiding place. I am horribly frightened.

I had no appetite at lunch, and Peter wouldn't eat. He burst out in a hysterical appeal to me, reminded me of our love, and said he couldn't believe it was all a sham. Why had I gone into the plot to drive him to death ? He doesn't eat, because he thinks the food is poisoned; and when he saw that I wasn't eating, it convinced him that I was in the plot against him.

I tried to tell him this was all nonsense. I told him that I was not in any plot against him. It didn't set his mind at ease. I had to tell him my great secret that I am the woman clothed with the sun in the Book of Revelations, and that he must protect me.

I proved to him that this was the only explanation. The reason why he couldn't live with me as my husband was that my angel had told me that I was going to bring the Messiah into the world.

We went into a heated argument. I don't remember what happened ; but as usual, it turned into a quarrel.

One must be concentrated on the spiritual life, so the slightest interruption from the senses, if it's only the wind in the trees, is a terribly irritating thing.

" Satan is the prince of the power of the air," it says in the Bible, so he sends these noises in the air to disturb my mind.

How can I give birth to the Messiah if I am not caught up into the Seventh Heaven, and unconscious of material things ?

The world, the flesh, and the Devil. One in three and three in one. This evil trinity must be abolished. It knows that ; and that's why it tries to interrupt me either by means of Peter or the pains of the body, or the sights and sounds of nature.

Nature is under a curse because of sex, and so this world is in the power of the Evil One. But I am chosen to redeem it, and the Holy Spirit overshadows me and sends angels to guard me. That is how we got rid of the servants.

Peter suddenly attacked me. He got me down, and put his knee on my chest, and tried to strangle me. But the angel smote him suddenly, and all his muscles relaxed and he rolled over.

His eyes were wide open, but I could only see the whites. That is a sign that he is possessed by the Devil, and that the angels are protecting me.

He has fired two or three times, and now I see him coming up from the lake. I must hide this book, and then I will go to the garage, and hide till the morning.

Keletiel tells me that this is the critical night. I will get into the big car under the sheet. He won't look for me there, and the angels will be on the watch....

It came out all right. I slept on the seat of the car. I had a dreadful nightmare, and woke sweating all over. Then I went to sleep again. I was with six angels who carried me through the air to a place which I mustn't describe. It is a great and wonderful mystery.

It is awful and miraculously wonderful to be the woman clothed with the sun. The sublimity of it would have frightened me only a few weeks ago. I have been gently and wisely prepared for my exalted position.

This vision initiated me into the most marvellous secrets.

When I woke Keletiel came and told me that the crisis was over. I was shivering with cold, and went into the house for some heroin. That's the only thing that keeps one warm however hot the weather is. This is because what keeps the body warm is the rush of animal life, and when one has got to the stage where one becomes wholly spiritual, the body becomes cold like a corpse....

A dreadful thing has happened. We have used up all the heroin, and there is hardly any cocaine. I remembered what I had sewn away in my white frock, and went to get it. It was on the floor in a comer of the drawing-room.

It was all shrunk and rumpled and dirty, and it was still quite wet. I suppose I must have gone a long walk in the rain, though I don't remember anything about it.

All the heroin was washed away. There wasn't a grain left. Peter came in and found me crying. He understood at once what had happened. All he said was :

" You'll have to go back to McCall."

I couldn't even be angry. Men are too grossly animal to understand. How could I do such a thing, seeing who I was ?

He wanted some H. badly; finding it gone, made him want it insanely.

He took one of the packets and began to chew it. " Thank God," he said, " it's quite bitter. There must be a lot in the dress."

I was shivering and faint. I got another packet, and put it in my mouth. He went wild and clutched me by the hair, and forced open my jaws with his fingerandthumb. I struggled and kicked and scratched; but he was too strong. He got it out and put it in his own mouth. Then he hit me in the face as I sat. I went flat and limp, and began to howl. He picked up the dress and the packets, and started to go. I caught at his ankles desperately; but he kicked himself free, and went out of the room with the dress.

I was too weak and hurt to go after him, and my nose was bleeding.

But I had got some H., and I remembered who I was. This was all part of the ordeal. At any moment I might manifest my glory, and he would fall down at my feet and worship me. After all, he has a wonderful destiny himself ; like St. Joseph-or else perhaps he may be the Dragon that will try to destroy me and the Messiah.

In my position the actual H. isn't really necessary any more than food is. The spiritual idea is sufficient. That I suppose is the lesson I had to learn. I had been relying on the stuff itself. It says in the Bible " Angels came and ministered unto him." My angels will bring me the manna that cometh down from heaven.

I am perfectly happy. It is sublime not to be dependent any more on earthly things. Keletiel came and told me to go and prophesy to Peter, so I will hide away the diary. I must think of a new place every time, else Peter will find out where I keep it, or the old man may be hunting around in his astral body and take it away. I have been very careful what I wrote ; but he might discover some of the secrets and ruin everything.

There's another trouble. I can only remember spiritual things clearly. The material world is fading out. It would be disaster if I forgot where I hid it.

Basil would never forgive me.

I will hide it in the chimney, then I can always look up where I put it....

What is dreadful is the length of time. With H. or C. or both, there is never a dull moment ; without them the hours, the very minutes, drag. It's difficult to read or write. My eyes won't focus properly. They have been open to the spiritual world, they can't see anything else. It's hard, too, to control the hands. I can't form the letters properly.

This waiting is hellish. Waiting for something to happen! I can think of nothing but H. Everything in the body is wrong. It aches intolerably. Even a single dose would put everything right.

It makes me forget who I am, and the wonderful work to be done. I have become quite blind to the spiritual world. Keletiel never comes. I must wait, wait, wait for the Holy Spirit; but that's a memory so far, far off !

There are times when I almost doubt it, yet my faith is the only thing that prevents my going insane. I can't endure without H.

The sympathy of suffering has brought Peter closer. We lie about and look at each other ; but we can't touch, the skin is too painful. We are both restless as it is impossible to describe. It irritates us to see each other like this, and we can't do anything ; we constantly get up with the idea of doing something, but we sit down again immediately. Then we can't sit, we have to lie down. But lying down doesn't rest us; it irritates us more, so we get up again, and so on for ever. One can't smoke a cigarette ; after two or three puffs it drops from one's fingers. The only respite I have is this diary. It relieves me to write of my sufferings; and besides, it is important for the spiritual life. Basil must have the record to read.

I can't remember dates, though. I don't even know what year it is. The leaves in the park tell me it is autumn, and the nights are getting longer. The night is better than the day ; there is less to irritate. We don't sleep, of course, we fall into a torpor. Basil told me about it once. He called it the dark night of the soul. One has to go through it on the way to the Great Light.

The light of day is torture. Every sense is an instrument of the most devilish pain. There is no flesh on our bones.

This perpetual craving for H ! Our minds are utterly empty of everything else. Rushing into the void come tumbling the words of that abominable poem:

" A bitten and burning snake Striking its venom within it, As if it might serve to slake

The pain for the tithe of a minute."

It is like vitriol being thrown in one's face. We have no expression of our own. We cannot think. The need is filled by these words....

The impact of light itself is a bodily pain.

" When the sun is a living devil Vomiting vats of evil,

And the moon and the night but mock The wretch on his barren rock, And the dome of heaven high-arched Like his mouth is and and parched, And the caves of his heart high-spanned Are choked with alkali sand ! "

We are living on water. It seems for the moment to quench the thirst, at least part of it. Peter's nervous state is very alarming. I feel sure he has delusions.

He got up and staggered to the mantelpiece and leant against it with his arms stretched out. He cried in a hoarse, dry voice

" Thirst !

Not the thirst of the throat,

Though that be the wildest and worst Of physical pangs that smote

Alone to the heart of Christ,

Wringing the one wild cry

'I thirst' from His agony,

While the soldiers drank and diced."

He thought he was Jesus on the Cross instead of the Dragon, as he really is. It makes me very nervous about him.

When he had finished reciting, his strength suddenly failed him, and he collapsed. The clatter of the fire-irons was the most hideous noise that I had ever heard....

When I can summon up enough strength to write in my diary, the pain leaves me. I see that there are two people here. I, myself, am the Woman clothed with the Sun, writing down my experiences. The other is Lou Pendragon, an animal dying in agony from thirst.

I said the last word aloud, and Peter caught it up. He crawled away from the grate towards me croaking out

" Not the thirst benign

That calls the worker to wine;

Not the bodily thirst

(Though that be frenzy accurst)

When the mouth is full of sand,

And the eyes are gummed up, and the ears Trick the soul till it hears

Water, water at hand,

When a man will dig his nails

In his breast, and drink the blood

Already that clots and stales Ere his tongue can tip its flood."

His mind had gone back to infancy. He thought that I was his mother, and came to me to be nursed.

But when he came near, he recognised me and crawled away again, hurriedly, like a wounded animal trying to escape from the hunter....

Most of the time, when we have energy to talk at all, we discuss how to get more H. and C. The C. has been finished long ago. It's no good without the H. We could go to Germany and get it ; or even to London, but something keeps us from decision.

I, of course, know what it is. It is necessary for me to undergo these torments that I may be purified completely from the flesh.

But Peter doesn't understand at all. He blames me bitterly. We go over the whole thing again and again. Every incident since we met is taken in turn as the cause of our misery.

Sometimes his brutal lust revives in his mind. He thinks I am a vampire sent from Hell to destroy him; and he gloats over the idea. I cannot make him understand that I am the woman clothed with the sun.

When he gets those ideas, they arouse similar thoughts in me. But they are only thoughts.

I am afraid of him. He might shoot me in a mad fit. He has got a target pistol, a very old one with long, thin bullets, and carries it about all the time. He never mentions the Germans now. He talks about a gang of hypnotists that have got hold of him, and put evil thoughts in his mind. He says that if he could shoot one of them it would break the spell. He tells me not to look at him as I do ; but I have to be on the watch lest he should attack me.

Then he mixes up my hypnotic gaze with ideas of passion. He keeps on repeating:

" Steadily stares and squarely, Nor needs to fondle and wheedle Her slave agasp for a kiss,

Hers whose horror is his That knows that viper womb, Speckled and barred with black On its rusty amber scales, Is his tomb The straining, groaning rack On which he wails-he wails! "

He takes an acute delight in the intensity of his suffering. He is wildly proud to think that he has been singled out to undergo more atrocious torments than had ever been conceived of before.

He sees me as the principal instrument of the torture, and loves me with perverse diabolical lust for that reason, yet the whole thing is a delusion on his part, or else it is a necessary consequence of his changing into the Dragon.

It is only natural that there should be strange incidents in a case of that sort, especially as it never happened before. It is wonderful and terrible to be unique. But, of course, he is not really unique in the way that I am....

We have lighted a huge fire in the billiard-room. We sleep there so far as we sleep at all. We got the waiter to bring down blankets and quilts from the bedroom, and he leaves the food on the table.

But fires are no good. The cold comes from inside us. We sit in front of the blaze, roasting our hands and faces; but it makes no difference. We shiver.

We try to sing like soldiers round a camp fire, but the only words that come are the appropriate ones. That poem has obsessed us. It fills our souls to the exclusion of everything else except the thirst.

" Every separate bone

Cold, an incarnate groan Distilled from the icy sperm Of Hell's implacable worm."

We repeated them over and over....

I don't know how one thing ever turns into another. We are living in an eternity of damnation. It is a mystery how we ever get from the fire to the table or the two big Chesterfields. Every action is a separate agony rising to a climax which never comes. There is no possibility of accomplishment or of peace. " Every separate nerve

Awake and alert, on a curve Whose asymptote's name is 'never' In a hyperbolic 'for ever ! ' "

I don't know what some of the words mean. But there is a fascination about them. They give the idea of something without limit. Death has become impossible, because death is definite. Nothing can really ever happen. I am in a perpetual state of pain. Everything is equally anguish. I suppose one state changes into another to prevent the edge being taken off the suffering. It would be incredibly blissful if one could experience something new, however abominable. The man that wrote that poem has left out nothing. Everything that comes into my mind is no more than an echo of his groans.

" Body and soul alike

Traitors turned black-hearted, Seeking a place to strike In a victim already attuned To one vast chord of wound."

The rhythm of the poem, apart from the words, suggests this moto Perbetuo vibration. Yet the nervous irritability tends to exhaust itself as such. It is so unendurable ; the only escape seems to be if one could transform it into action. The poison filters through into the blood. I am itching to do something horrible and insane.

" Every drop of the river

Of blood aflame and a-quiver With poison secret and sourWith a sudden twitch at the last Like certain jagged daggers."

When Peter crosses the room, I see him

" With blood-shot eyes dull-glassed The screaming Malay staggers Through his village aghast."

It is natural and inevitable that he should murder me. I wish he were not so weak. Anything to end it all.

The medical books said that if one didn't die outright from abstention, the craving would slowly wear off. I think Peter is already a little stronger. But I am so young to die ! He complains constantly of vermin under his skin. He says he could bear that ; but the idea of being driven mad by the hypnotists is more than any man can be expected to stand....

I felt I should scream if I went on a moment longer; and by scream I don't mean just an ordinary scream, I mean that I should scream and scream and scream and never stop.

The wind is howling like that. The summer has died suddenly-without a warning, and the world is screaming in agony. It is only the echo of the waffing for my own lost soul. The angels never come to me now. Have I forfeited my position ? I am conscious of nothing but this tearing, stabbing, gnawing pain, this restless raging trembling of the body, this malignant groping of a mad surgeon in the open wound of my Soul.

I am so bitter, bitter cold. Yet I can't stand the room. Peter is lying helplessly on the couch. He follows me about with his eyes. He seems to be afraid that he will be caught out in something. It's like it was when we had dope. Though we knew we were taking it, offering it to each other openly, yet whenever we took it ourselves, we were afraid lest the other should know.

I think he has something that he wants to hide away, and is trying to get me out of the room so that I shan't know where he has put it.

Well, I don't care, I'm not interested in his private affairs. I'll go out and give him a chance. I'll hide this book in the magic room, if I have strength to get there. The old man might be able to give me some elixir. I wouldn't mind if it killed my body; if my spirit were free I could fulfil my destiny....

Just as I closed the book I heard an answering shot. It must have been the door, for the old man has come in. He has a marvellous light in his eyes, and he radiates rainbow colours throughout the world. I understand that my ordeal is over. He stands smiling and points downwards. I think he wants me to go back to the billiard-room. Perhaps there is some one waiting for me ; some one to take me away to fulfil my destiny. I know now what it was that I thought was a shot, or a door closing. It was really both of these things in a mystical sense; for I know now who the old man is, and that he is the father of the Messiah....