I believe there comes a point in reading and research on a subject you love where you need to feel closer with the artist. What motivated me to purchase The Diaries is the same thing that motivates me to buy books about the lives of musicians if their music has deeply influenced me. Basically, that 'human' side of the artist that you don't get to experience in their artistry, often even if you exhaustively listen to the records or read the books.
I feel like it's easy to miss that human touch in Crowley. You're concentrating so hard on his qabbalistic and other such writings sometimes that he seems more an enigmatic teacher than a real person who actually experienced the kind of troubles he did. This book is a wonderful break from, say 777 or Magick in Theory because you get to experience the 'human' side of Crowley.
I agree whole-heartedly that these diaries were written when Crowley was at a major down slope. At the same time, I felt like I understood him more by reading this book, and that really grasping his writings may not be such a task. If you hold Crowley as a God, you're going to see him in an entirely different light here, and you shouldn't purchase this book. His nasty health problems are graphically discussed in the book, so if references to diarrhea are a problem for you, then skip this one. At the same time, such little romantic, even tragic nuances about people (e.g., Crowley's grief over the loss of his child) endear them even more to me. I found that type of endearment in the Magical Diaries.
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