The Abramelin Diaries. Ramsey Dukes

and three-quarter hours this morning! Go for it tyger! I'm warming to them, trying to follow K's system of doing them all on Sunday and thirty a day during the rest of the week (with one day of blessed relief!). No church, for SD might come at any time.

      What an ordeal! Non-stop barrage of esoteric conversation. I think that those interrogators who place a tin bucket over the prisoner's head and hammer it for hours on end are struggling to achieve a similar effect.

      Dreams recalled: some conversation with Hon K, who came to visit. Also, there were two mice in my helmet. I was rather revolted and tried to chuck them out. Finnegan ate one, the other turned into a book I cannot remember.

       Monday 2 May

      Dream in which I was explaining why, though clever, I did not do well in Maths Tripos.

      Fed up with bumbling thoughts, so I expelled them and felt ecstatic this morning. But it was all in my head and it was an exertion to maintain the belly bit. Felt randy later as I read the Aurora.¹⁴ For me the subtlest pornography is to read theological rants of flesh and lust.

      Vast washing dominated the day. A lot of it was old stuff cleared from old bedroom. I now have curtains in my bedroom.

      Wracked by lust today; this has not happened for a long time. It can't have been due to sunbathing because that had been much earlier in the day. Hard to believe it could be Boehme, though I do associate him with sex phantasies, e.g. while reading the Bible it rested on my crotch and I longed to wrap its soft pages round my prick and jack off. (Ideally, a whole class of sexually precocious kids should do it uncontrollably as the Victorian spinsterish Sunday school mistress swoons with horror.) Writing the idea down has not totally earthed it…don't tell me I've got to actually do it!

      During evenmed, the gentle pattering of rain sounded lovely on my “felt” roof. It reminded me of Easter Sunday.

      It is now 9.20 pm and I have that burnt-out pelvis feeling that I associate with resisted lust. I found the following to be the best method of control: when the vision of sexy flesh came to mind, I accelerated time (Saturn on skates) and saw the flesh age and wrinkle, then decay with maggots and then fall stinking from the bones. I'm not kinky enough to get a kick out of that!

       Tuesday 3 May

      I don't seem able to crack the 5.30 am getting-up barrier yet. I'll have to try guerrilla tactics, e.g. a thermos of hot drink by the bedside.

      It is terrible how malignant thoughts flourish in me. It is as though there was some grain of truth in the psychologist's claptrap when they say that the outwardly meek tend to be inwardly spiky.

      As I meditate, a corny range of attractive thoughts assail me: (a) sheer pleasure (e.g. dreams of nice possessions); then, more subtly, (b) dutiful thoughts (e.g. plans for the day—but why make them now?); and (c) observation of the process itself—either comparing my attempts with the written word, or else the preparation of “lecture notes” for teaching other people.

      It was such a dreary day that I was reduced to letter writing, tidying correspondence, papers and magazines, and other such indoor jobs. So awful are such jobs that I felt a joyous righteous ebullient feeling which is hardly justified. Chatted with N to cheer him up—that's my excuse.