An extract from Crowley’s diaries (1921 – Cefalù)
11:40 P.M. I feel easier, but over excited. Gauguin literally torments me; I feel as if by my own choice of exile rather than toleration of the bourgeois, I am invoking him, and this painting of my house seems a sort of religious-magical rite, like the Egyptian embalmers’, but of necromancy. I would he might come forth “his pleasure on the earth to do among the living”.
I gladly offer my body to his Manes, if he need a vehicle of flesh for new expression. I could never have done quite that for any other spirit – I have been faithful to my own Genius.
It is maddening to think that I might have known him in the flesh; he died in 1903, May 8, eleven months before the First day of the Writing of the book of the Law. Just six months after I had met Rodin.
I feel very specially that I should consecrate my house to him, not to Beardsley, a quite inferior type deriving from pifflers like Burne-Jones, and the over-elaborate school of Japanese, while he snivelled and recanted disgustingly when his health gave way.
So, by the Power and Authority invested in Me, I Baphomet 729 ordain the insertion of the name of
PAUL GAUGUIN
among the More Memorable Saints in the Gnostic Mass.
[eleven-fold cross] Baphomet XI° O.T.O.
I.I. et O.B.
Original Publication Date: 1999
