Familiar Spirit

And then she broke off, and looked very mysterious. And when I pressed her she hedged and seemed reluctant. At last she said that I had stumbled upon a very important principle without understanding it, out of my own need. But that she knew someone who— Again, she stopped as if she had said too much. Finally she told me that she would bring me some books to read, and that afterwards we could discuss them. I am eaten up with curiosity.

February 22

I have been reading and thinking these past few days; nothing but reading and thinking. At first I was disappointed by the books Yolanda brought to me. They were books about Magic! Superstition, I thought. It was all crazy. Skimming through them did not change my mind. But I believe that Yolanda is too intelligent to be taken in by nonsense, so there must be something to this. So I set myself to reading without preconceptions. And now I wonder . . . it seems mad, but there is something more to it. The things hinted at make my skin prickle with anticipation.

February 23

Yolanda knows Crowley, the one they call The Great Beast. She met him in Paris. And she understands his writings because she has seen what he writes about! Oh, the things Yolanda knows . . . the things she has done . . . are much stranger than anyone in Austin could imagine! It is another world entirely that she belongs to. And yet within my grasp. I reread Crowley with new attention. Much of what he writes is deliberately obscure, as a challenge and a caution.

He proclaims in his writings and his self the power of the directed human will. “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.” Want something strongly and purely enough, and it will come to pass.

How much more exhilarating that is than the tame, weary advice to forget, to adjust to reality! To take the world, and shape it closer to the heart’s desire!

March 1

A whole new life stretches before me; a whole new world. Yes, it is within my grasp! Yolanda has told me so much, deciding that I can be trusted, now, to understand the truth. She has told me of certain things she has done, rituals she has taken part in with others, how she accomplished things that would normally be considered impossible. She showed me certain proofs which I should not write about, not even here. But it is true, I know. I have glimpsed the Truth.

Yolanda has told me about a man she says is even greater than Crowley, a powerful magician who is her lover; who is here in Austin even now. Crowley has the popular fame, but this man has the real power, she says. He has put into practice things Crowley scarcely dares hint at. He has achieved the ultimate. He can dissociate his soul from his body and send it travelling—in other forms, or disincarnate. He leads more than the one life we are normally allotted. I fell into a kind of a dream as she told me about him. I envisioned him changing bodies like suits of clothes, dispossessing the previous owners and then discarding their husks. He is the Superman Nietzsche dreamed of, beyond questions of Good and Evil. I must meet this man, and I tremble at the thought. He could help me, teach me, as he has Yolanda, or he could as easily destroy me.

March 6

Today I met him, the man Yolanda told me about; the great magus who calls himself “Jade.”

Never before have I been so struck by the sheer force of a personality. It is as if he has a great fire burning inside him, whereas the rest of us are only matches, easily extinguished by any passing breeze, or even by his breath.

Physically, he is rather small, muscular but small-boned. His eyes are strange. They are brown with golden flecks in them, like bits of flame. His hair is short and dark, his hands manicured, his dress quiet but fashionable. I took him for a Yankee by his speech—his voice is soft and easy, but every word is absolutely precise.

Describing him physically does not describe him. I was aware of his power as soon as I entered the room, even before I actually saw him. I felt him, his will, his attention turned towards me, like a great heat, like a force of nature. I concentrated on details, clinging to solid reality, afraid that otherwise I would be swept away.

“Jade is my magical name,” he told me, smiling, when I made the faux pas of addressing him as “Mr. Jade.”

“It is a name with a special meaning for me, the name I chose for myself,” he said. “You must have a magical name, too, now that you have joined us.”