Chemistry was Crowley’s favourite physical science. He frequently uses chemical operations as analogies in his writing. It is the only science with which he had a practical, experimental or theoretical, acquaintance, compared to others such as biology, geology, physics or astronomy. His interest in the subject dates to his early teens (Confessions, pp. 62-63; see also pp. 83-84 for the 1891 Guy Fawkes mishap that left him in a coma for four days and with bandaged eyes for seven weeks).
I don’t quite understand one of his statements; maybe somebody with a better knowledge of chemistry or physics can shed light on it (my emphasis).
“Talking of theory, I came to the conclusion, which at the time was a damnable heresy and a dangerous delusion, that all the elements were modifications of one substance. My main argument was that the atomic weights of cobalt and nickel were practically identical and the characteristic colours of their salts suggested to me that they were geometrical isomers like dextrose and laevulose. This is all obvious enough today, but I still think that it was not bad for a boy in his ‘teens in the early ‘nineties, whoe only source of information was ‘Little Roscoe’*“(Confessions p. 63)
The question is below the following, contrasting quote:
“All elements must at one time have been separate – that would be the case with great heat. Now, when atoms get to the sun, we get that immense, extreme heat, and all the elements are themselves again. Imagine that each atom of each element possesses the memory of all his adventures in combination. .. One can then see a reason for any element deciding to go through this series of incarnations, because so, and only so, can he go… Therefore you have an infinite number of gods, individual and equal though diverse, each one supreme and utterly indestructible. .. This is something the same as mystic monism, but the objection to that theory is that God has to create things which are all parts of himself, so that their interplay is false. If we presuppose many elements, their interplay is natural.”
(Diary entry from May 14, 1919, quoted in New Comment to I,3 and elsewhere)
I have a couple of questions that I hope others may be able to answer or at least speculate on.
The first is, what does he mean by “This is all obvious enough today” in the first quote? Is he referring to the theory that “all the elements are modifications of one substance”, or that cobalt and nickel are geometrical isomers? In the first instance, he cannot be referring, in 1923, to theories of stellar nucleosynthesis, which is how most of the elements are formed in stars from Hydrogen and Helium, since this theory was not, even if proposed by then, accepted by physicists, much less common knowledge. And neither could it be “Big Bang Nucleosynthesis”, which produced the first Hydrogen and Helium, since this theory didn’t arise until the 1940s, and was a very theoretical suggestion. If it is the second, then I don’t know if, by the time he wrote that passage, things like cobalt and nickel were considered “geometrical isomers”. Anybody know what he is referring to by “this is all obvious enough today”?
The second question is whether the second passage, a very important one to Crowley since he quotes it four times in his published writings (the New Comment on I,3; Magick chapter XVIII, footnote near the end; Magick Without Tears, letter 5; Book of Thoth, pp. 15-16), contradicts the first. Namely, that each of the “elements” is “supreme and utterly indestructible” (second passage), or each is simply a modification or isomer of “one substance” (first passage). The idea that elements are pure, unique and indestructible is important to Crowley because it is part of his main metaphor for the Khabs or True Self, a Star. But if they are all modifications of one substance, then their “interplay” is, as he suggests, “false”.
His earlier boyhood intuition seems nearer the mark, since all the elements really are produced from Hydrogen 1 or Protium, and since what powers stars, the cause of their “great heat”, is nuclear fusion. He could have known neither of these things, of course, but I would like to understand what he might have been thinking at the time.
(*The “little Roscoe” Crowley refers to must be Henry Enfield Roscoe’s Lessons in Elementary Chemistry, with six editions between 1866 to 1892. This book mentions the highly explosive nature of chloride of nitrogen that Crowley writes of earlier as having learned in the “little Roscoe”. There is even a “littler” Roscoe, a primer simply titled Chemistry, but this concise little book does not so much as mention chloride of nitrogen.
“As soon as I heard of chemistry, I realized that it dealt with reality as I understood the word. So I soon had the ‘Little Roscoe’ practically by heart, though it was not a school subject... Roscoe told me that chloride of nitrogen was the most powerful and sensitive explosive known. ”
Confessions p. 62
(first page number is 1893 edition, which may be too late for Crowley’s account; the bracketed pages and passages are from the 1882 edition)
P. 47 (Pp. 41-42) -
“Nitrogen is also formed when a current of chlorine is passed through an excess of a solution of ammonia; nitrogen gas is evolved, and sal-ammoniac remains behind in solution. If the chlorine be present in excess, a most dangerous and explosive compound is formed.”
Pp. 108-109 (Pp. 96-97) –
“COMPOUND OF CHLORINE AND NITROGEN.
“Chlorine combines with nitrogen, though only indirectly, to form a very remarkable compound, which has the composition NCl3. (the composition of which has not as yet been determined). If chlorine gas be passed into a solution of ammonia, nitrogen, as we have seen, is liberated; if an excess of chlorine be employed, drops of an oily liquid are seen to form, which, on being touched, explode with fearful violence, so that the greatest caution must be used in manipulating even traces of this body. The explosive nature of this compound arises from the fact that its constituent elements are feebly (very loosely) combined, and separate into the elementary gases with sudden violence.”)
1.
“Talking of theory, I came to the conclusion, which at the time was a damnable heresy and a dangerous delusion, that all the elements were modifications of one substance.
2.
“All elements must at one time have been separate – that would be the case with great heat. Now, when atoms get to the sun, we get that immense, extreme heat, and all the elements are themselves again. Imagine that each atom of each element possesses the memory of all his adventures in combination. .. One can then see a reason for any element deciding to go through this series of incarnations, because so, and only so, can he go… Therefore you have an infinite number of gods, individual and equal though diverse, each one supreme and utterly indestructible
But if they are all modifications of one substance, then their “interplay” is, as he suggests, “false”.
Even though I have a degree in biochemistry, I really wouldn't dig that deep into the technicalities, but to focus on the point that Crowley is trying to make.
These two quotes are a bit off-context in relation to each other in my opinion: the first one describing the state and condition of the supernals (above the abyss), while the second one describes the state "below the abyss" - elements immersed in the journey.
In the suns they remember, and in the planets they forget.
“Talking of theory, I came to the conclusion, which at the time was a damnable heresy and a dangerous delusion, that all the elements were modifications of one substance. My main argument was that the atomic weights of cobalt and nickel were practically identical and the characteristic colours of their salts suggested to me that they were geometrical isomers like dextrose and laevulose. This is all obvious enough today, but I still think that it was not bad for a boy in his ‘teens in the early ‘nineties, whoe only source of information was ‘Little Roscoe’*“(Confessions p. 63)
The question is below the following, contrasting quote:
“All elements must at one time have been separate – that would be the case with great heat. Now, when atoms get to the sun, we get that immense, extreme heat, and all the elements are themselves again. Imagine that each atom of each element possesses the memory of all his adventures in combination. .. One can then see a reason for any element deciding to go through this series of incarnations, because so, and only so, can he go… Therefore you have an infinite number of gods, individual and equal though diverse, each one supreme and utterly indestructible. .. This is something the same as mystic monism, but the objection to that theory is that God has to create things which are all parts of himself, so that their interplay is false. If we presuppose many elements, their interplay is natural.”
(Diary entry from May 14, 1919, quoted in New Comment to I,3 and elsewhere)
I have a couple of questions that I hope others may be able to answer or at least speculate on.
The first is, what does he mean by “This is all obvious enough today” in the first quote?
"Geometric isomers" are compounds that have the same molecular structure, meaning the same atoms, but arranged in a different geometric configuration, meaning the atoms are spaced differently; I can understand Crowley's line of thinking based on those definitions.
The second question is whether the second passage, a very important one to Crowley since he quotes it four times in his published writings (the New Comment on I,3; Magick chapter XVIII, footnote near the end; Magick Without Tears, letter 5; Book of Thoth, pp. 15-16), contradicts the first. Namely, that each of the “elements” is “supreme and utterly indestructible” (second passage), or each is simply a modification or isomer of “one substance” (first passage). The idea that elements are pure, unique and indestructible is important to Crowley because it is part of his main metaphor for the Khabs or True Self, a Star. But if they are all modifications of one substance, then their “interplay” is, as he suggests, “false”.
Crowley only considers the interplay of the elements false if they were created by "God" as opposed to being natural.
“This is something the same as mystic monism, but the objection to that theory is that God has to create things which are all parts of himself, so that their interplay is false.” (New Comment, I,3)
“This is something the same as Mystic Monotheism, but the objection to that theory is that God has to create things which are all parts of himself, so that their interplay is false.” (Magick, chapter XVIII, footnote; Magick Without Tears, letter 5, end; Book of Thoth, pp. 15-16)
The second quotation in the OP lands us squarely in an almost model text-critical problem – is “mystic monism” or “mystic monotheism” the original reading? The majority of witnesses, three, say “mystic monotheism,” while one witness says “mystic monism.” It is also classic in the sense that the variant readings have no bearing on the sense, so it is a purely formal issue – which is the original reading, the “urtext,” of Crowley’s diary? But the problem is only “almost model” because, unlike New Testament text critical comparisons, for example, both variants in our case are from the author himself, although we do not have the autograph or original diary entry.
The majority reading is “mystic monotheism.” But the singular reading “mystic monism” has a trump – it is probably the earliest witness to the presumably (for our purposes) lost original text, perhaps quoted in the New Commentary within a year of its composition in 1919, and the New Commentary version is also the only one to bear a date and time from the diary, which further reinforces the sense of its nearness to the urtext. Equally important in the New Comment version is his comment, before quoting the diary, that he is quoting it “with one or two elucidatory insertions.” These “elucidatory insertions” were dropped in all of his subsequent quotations of the passage, but his liberties with the text in the New Comment show that he was still close enough to the mood of its composition that he considered it to still be “in flux”, and was willing to make insertions. That is, all indications in the New Comment point to its priority.
As I noted, there is no difference in the sense of the passage whatever the reading, and one would be correct to argue that Crowley clearly preferred “monotheism,” even if he had originally written “monism.” In either case, the meaning is that the One has to create everything “out of himself”, so that the appearance of the interplay of the plurality of forms is an illusion – God or the One is merely playing with himself under an infinity of disguises. Both “monism” and “monotheism” are appropriate for the point Crowley is trying to make.
So one way to look at the problem is the appropriateness of the qualifier “mystic” for each of them. Since Monism is a mystical doctrine inherently, it would seem unnecessary to add “mystic” to it. There is a plurality of forms, but the monist knows they are one, by definition. Monotheism, on the other hand, in its orthodox formulations, is a doctrine of the transcendence or non-identification of the One God with his creation. The creator stands apart from and above his creation, which he makes out of nothing (ex nihilo). A monotheist who fully identifies the One with his creation is a de facto mystic, a pantheist (and therefore a heretic). Thus, if “monotheism” were the original reading, Crowley would be constrained to qualify it with “mystic” in order to indicate that he is speaking of pantheism and not orthodox monotheism.
Thus the weight of the sense of the qualifier “mystic” as solving the problem of the implications of the word “monotheism” tends to support “monotheism” as the original reading.
This simple analysis satisfies me, but we are left with the problem of the existence of the variant reading. It could be a typo stemming from the typescript upon which all printed versions of the New Comment are based, but I am not informed enough about the textual sources or transmission of this commentary to say with certainty. The other possibility is that Crowley himself wrote “monism” in error when writing the commentary, even if, as it seems, he had the diary in front of him. It might have gone something like – he read “mystic monotheism” in the diary, but in his mind he thought “monism”, and he wrote “mystic monism”.
Addendum –
Google search under “mystic monism”, minus “Crowley” (i.e. in the form “-crowley”) yields 274 results, not all pertinent (e.g. some read “mystic’s monism” or “… mystic, monism…”).
“mystic monotheism” yields 199 results, with similar uneven pertinence.
So they are about equally attested, with “mystic monism” a little more.