Liber XVIII - The Fountain of Hyacinth

This is a first-person diary excerpt by Aleister Crowley (writing under his magical name "Baphomet 666"), documenting his self-directed attempt to withdraw from a two-year heroin and cocaine habit in February 1922, likely written at a rural retreat in France. The text records, in near-real-time entries, the physical and psychological torments of withdrawal — what Crowley calls the "Storm Fiend" — including insomnia, bronchial distress, emotional numbness, compulsive drug-taking, and an inability to concentrate or feel motivated. His main argument is that heroin addiction is a physical affliction requiring a methodical reduction regimen (he proposes a "Close Season / Open Season" tapering schedule), while cocaine dependency is fundamentally a moral weakness that willpower alone should overcome — a distinction he insists on even as his entries repeatedly show him failing to resist either drug. The most distinctive feature is the collision between Crowley's grandiose self-image — he calls himself "the foremost living psychologist" and frames the experiment in occult and Nietzschean terms — and the humbling, candid record of his actual behavior, compulsive doses taken for reasons he admits he cannot explain. The writing oscillates between clinical self-observation, philosophical musing, and frank intoxicated rambling, making it simultaneously a document of addiction medicine history, a window into Crowley's mystical worldview, and an unintentionally comic portrait of self-delusion under the influence.

Liber XVIII - The Fountain of Hyacinth

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