Neuburg's Vision
Bou-Saâda · the same night
Crowley was inside the circle, speaking in a voice that called itself Choronzon. Neuburg was outside, in a white robe, with his notebook. He took down every word. But Neuburg had his own vision. It did not match Crowley's.
what the scribe saw
sixteen years later he lost his reason
— 6 December 1909, before sunset
We came to Bou-Saâda. Crowley bought three white doves from a Bedouin. I was carrying our robes and the ritual knife. He had not spoken to me since morning. Only once he looked at me and said: "Today you will see what no one ought to see."
I nodded. I did not know what to answer.
I was afraid. I was ready.
— the same evening, at sunset
Crowley drew the circle with a stick in the sand. His hand was steady. Mine was not. When I handed him the pencil for the second inscription, he noticed and said: "Victor, if you tremble now, what will you do when he comes?"
I did not answer. I could not speak. I thought then: perhaps I should not be here.
But I stayed. Crowley is my teacher. Where else am I to go but where he leads me?
— night had come
When the invocations had been spoken, nothing happened. A minute. Five minutes. I thought we would sit here till morning and nothing would come. I even felt a faint disappointment — and a shame at that disappointment.
Then Crowley spoke.
But it was not his voice.
— the first speaking
I wrote. I wrote everything.
The voice said: "I am I. From nothing I came; to nothing I return." Crowley would have said it otherwise. Crowley loved long sentences. This voice loved no sentences. It loved broken-off lines.
I looked at Crowley inside the circle. His face was Crowley's face. But it was not not him.
— an hour later, maybe two
The voice began to speak in my voice. It was repeating my own words — words I had never said to it, words I had only thought that evening. Words from my diary.
"Victor. Victor. Put down the pencil. Come closer."
I did not put down the pencil. I did not come closer. But I thought — what if the voice is right? What if the right thing is to come closer?
— I do not remember the hour
Crowley — Choronzon — whoever it was — grabbed a handful of sand from the triangle and threw it into the circle. A grain of sand touched the edge. I saw the line of the circle shudder, as if it were real.
Then I understood: the protection had always been an illusion. Not because Crowley had drawn it badly. Because between us and what was in the triangle there was no real boundary. The boundary was in our heads.
— the moment I will never forget
And then Crowley — Crowley, not Choronzon, I am sure it was Crowley, I am sure I am sure — he laughed.
It was his laugh. The one he laughed when we drank tea in Cairo, when he told jokes at dinner. The same laugh. But he was not laughing his own laugh. He was laughing at me.
Then I grabbed the knife and ran towards him.
— I did not know what I was doing
I did not know whom I was about to strike. Crowley? Choronzon? The air? I was striking the air. I shouted the names of God. I just shouted I shouted.
Crowley — or what was in Crowley — looked at me and said: "Victor. You are striking yourself."
I stopped. I looked at my own hand with the knife. I did not know — was he right or not.
— before dawn
The voice was gone. Crowley sat on the sand inside his circle and was silent for a long time. I was silent too. I sat outside, ten metres away. Between us lay the notebook — eighteen pages of what I had managed to write down.
When the sun rose, Crowley stood up and said: "Victor, it is time to go back to Algiers." His voice was ordinary. The one I know. The one by which I knew this was Crowley.
But I was no longer sure whether I had been sure.
— January 1910, London
Crowley published my record in "Liber 418". He calls it the Great Vision. He says he conversed with the Dweller in the Abyss himself and defeated him. He laughs at his old fears. He is perfectly well.
I no longer sleep at night.
When I close my eyes, I hear his laugh. The one in Bou-Saâda.
— many years later
Crowley maintained all his life that on that night he had spoken with Choronzon. I never contested it. I only wish to set down, for myself, the one question that remained with me after Bou-Saâda.
I will never know. I wrote down the words. I do not know who spoke them.
Victor Neuburg broke with Aleister Crowley in 1914. By 1925 he had suffered his first nervous breakdown. He lived alone, wrote poetry, founded a small press. He died in 1940. He never returned to magic.
The Bou-Saâda notebook — the same one, eighteen pages — is all we have of that night.
— Victor Neuburg's diary, reconstructed