Mary Butts Diary Entry

Saturday, 3 September 1921

Astrals yesterday.

Determined to 'rise on the planes'.

Struggled a long time to get up. Came to a wooded place, and could not rise above it. Put on a God-form. Thoth, and mounted easily, then as I began 'to expand on an ocean of light' (I had come to the plane of symbolic forms) I fell back to the path (Salterne) from which I had risen.

2nd—extremely realistic—a field leading to a cliff above the sea—[illegible] green water, rather shallow, rocks and sand. A high cliff in the right, and so low as almost to [illegible] it an indigo cloud with a brilliant sun making a gold rim round it. Demons were [illegible] dancing on the cliffs edge. I went to the edge, dropped over. On the beach was a cave, and terrible and strange things were lying about the sea-shore.

1 piece of red-painted wood, [illegible[ like the support of a chair-back rose out of the wrack, and jabbed me on the thigh. I knew that it was the shape the adept in the dark dress had taken according to the plane. He meant me to rise. I recognised him, and did so (as Thoth.)

Saw a golden sea beach, with level, still, small rollers, and [illegible] dancing at the edge. I was at the mouth of a dark cave. I meant to go down to the water—I saw that they were important and when they forbade me, I said I was willing to undergo initiation. Immediately there opened a pit with a huge grey headed snake before me—I fought my way across it, and turning round (as I usually do in fighting my way across) I saw that the dark cave was the pine-wood at Salterne, and the pit I had crossed, and the yellow sands I tried the open, dived up fields they look onto.

Then, since I had done what I wished, I came home—But was this incursion perpetually of Salterne in itself an astral leak?

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