The Drug and Other Stories Quotes

“Do not imagine that art or anything else is other than high magic! - is a system of holy hieroglyph. The artist, the initiate, thus frames his mysteries. The rest of the world scoff, or seek to understand, or pretend to understand; some few obtain the truth.”
― Aleister Crowley, The Drug and Other Stories

“The Victrola, the Movies, a lecture: such are the three American alternatives to Silence, Scandal and Squabble.
Or else, get drunk. America knows no other devices to enable its inhabitants to endure either their own company or that of their fellow-creatures.”
― Aleister Crowley, The Drug and Other Stories

“This time I saw. In a blue heaven was coiled an infinite snake of gold and green, with four eyes of fire, black fire and red, that darted rays in every direction; held within its coils was a great multitude of laughing children. And even as I looked, all this was blotted out. Crawling rivers of blood spread over the heaven, of blood purulent with nameless forms - mangy dogs with their bowels dragging behind them; creatures half elephant, half beetle; things that were but a ghastly bloodshot eye, set about with leathery tentacles; women whose skins heaved and bubbled like boiling sulphur, giving off clouds that condensed into a thousand other shapes, more hideous than their mother; these were the least of the denizens of these hateful rivers.”
― Aleister Crowley, The Drug and Other Stories