Blue Abyss of Wine: A Twelfth Night Hermeneutic

Manara Tarot, The Hermit

Dear friends, beautiful and happy people,

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.

I spent the day voluptuously lounging while perusing the poetic œuvre of Jacques d’Adelswärd-Fersen, and I feel decadent-neoclassical right down to my fingertips!

I know full well that most people prefer to label my work “gonzo” or “luciferian,” but that’s because they haven’t the faintest idea what “decadent-neoclassical” actually means.

I would be better understood by saying that I did not find decadent-neoclassical at all the email from Frater Sicariōn — in which he reproached me for balking yesterday at interpreting Soror Neferusobek’s dream according to the strict modalities of the PaRDèS system of qabalistic exegesis.

“What part of ‘He must teach’ do you not understand, Sir?!!!”

He urges me to publicly repair this failing by treating, for him, according to this method, the excipit of verse 28 of chapter 5 of The Book of the Heart Girt with a Serpent, on which he is completely stumped, although he drew it eight times in a row during a bibliomancy session concerning the year that begins (or his impending engagement, I can’t remember which)…

Well, I don’t believe I’m getting a galette des rois with frangipane tonight… Might as well fill this Twelfth Night with holy hermeneutic elaborations.

So: “thou shalt transmute the earth into a blue abyss of wine.”

Pshat: Let him come through the first ordeal, & it will be to him as silver. — AL III:64

Let us set the context: 

The Holy Guardian Angel of the Prophet gives him a series of meticulous instructions, at once extremely precise (almost halakhic) and totally obscure, including the formal injunction to “transmute the earth into a blue abyss of wine.”

Clearly, “blue abyss of wine” would be a fantastic name for an elegant, hyper-sweet cocktail based on Curaçao and Dom Pérignon! — Typically the kind of thing one savours alone at the bar of some hedonistic palace around four in the morning, drowning one’s spleen to a lounge backdrop, cool jazz at a pinch.

Thus I remember one evening when, utterly depressed, I rushed down to the Hôtel de Crillon in a panic, took my beloved Bernstein suite, then proceeded to get systematically drunk alone at the hotel bar (mostly Champagne Flips, actually, and Looping Papayes)…

The barman at the time was the dazzling Ludovic — Paganini of molecular mixology, Solomon of Bartender Wisdom.

Well! Upon waking the next morning, I was already Sir Shumule the Joyful again! — Sir Shumule the Radiant! — Sir Shumule the King of Viscounts! — And I had only to tumble the pretty chambermaid who brought my breakfast to permanently reintegrate my usual state of maximalist euphoria!

For yes! luxury recharges — in the exact telephone sense of the term — and I tell this anecdote every time I comment on the 4 of Cups.

Remez: Through the second, gold. — AL III:65

Indeed, this is the very principle of the Thelemite Path: to transmute base earthly contingencies and the weltschmerz they bring (= spleen) into elegant, heady cocktails. — The old serpent, Hadit our Master, prescribes, in substance, as our exclusive way of life: party all day, love all night (AL II:42–43).

This is where I measure how profoundly right my answers once were to the formidable  “Totem Test”!

When Cathy, my orthodox-Freudian shrink friend — the very type of frigid beauty — asked me: “What does the high sea evoke for you?” (a question supposedly designed to unconsciously elicit a response revealing the subject’s vision of Life), I answered: “When a friend invited me on a cruise in Indonesia on his boat… We fished for shark, we had a great time…”

Then, seeing Cathy’s horrified look, I corrected myself: “Alright. Let’s say: me reclining in a deckchair on the deck of a zillionaire’s gigayacht, right hand in the champagne cooler, left hand on Rihanna’s arse.”

Today I understand how perfectly right I was: this is how the “awful Sea” (Cordis III:44) becomes the “Delightful Ocean” (Cordis IV:49); this is how the earth (= incarnate life), becoming high sea + champagne cooler, becomes “blue abyss of wine”!

Derash: Through the third, stones of precious water. — AL III:66

I realise that the formula “blue abyss of wine” has the gematria 397, which is that of AVR PNIMI, the Inner Light.

Impossible not to think of Ramses the Great, “entirely confident in his Inner Light” during the decisive battle where the enemies of Khem, fleeing at the mere sight of the Sovereign, screamed in utmost panic: “He is not human!!!”

In fact, AVR PNIMI is a Title of Kether — It is therefore a matter of transmuting Malkuth (“earth”) into Kether (“blue abyss of wine” = 397 = AVR PNIMI, i.e. Kether) — 397 being an elaboration of 19 (since 3+9+7), thus a reference to the Mystery of the Will common to Eve and Job: recovering the Lost Paradise.

It is the very Idea whose glyph is 397: the 9 secretly contained in 37.

For 37 is HBL, the “vanity” of Ecclesiastes — i.e. the reading of existence that contemplation of the Demiurge’s work inspires in Qohelet — and what is the point, indeed, of living under the tyranny of the Grand Vizier, where “vanity of vanities and all is vanity”?

Yet within the “mist” (literal meaning of HBL) of the Grand Vizier’s Decrees, 9 — the Holy Grail — is hidden (compare with the Hymn of the Pearl by Saint Bardesanes of Edessa).

In plain terms, the “cattle-men,” who appeared in the Garden of Delights “exactly like maggots on an apple” (cf. The Paris Working), slaves of the Demiurge, unworthy to serve Babalon, but having made the demon Choronzon (Restriction be upon him) their repulsive idol, undertook to transform Eden into Old Grey Land: “They have lowered everything that was great!” complains Thoth to Ra in the Coffin Texts, “They have proceeded to imprisonments!”

But technically, they only covered Paradise with gulags and watchtowers: the verse tells us: raze the watchtowers and you logically find yourself back in Eden — It has never been otherwise — This is the meaning of passing “beyond the bars of the prison that the old Slime of Khem set up in the Gates of Amennti” (Cordis V:44).

Sod: Through the fourth, ultimate sparks of the intimate fire. — AL III:67

It is written: “There are deep secrets in these songs. It is not enough to hear the bird; to enjoy song he must be the bird.” (LLL VI:14)

The hidden, esoteric and mysterious meaning of the Holy Books reveals itself only to him who does not content himself with spiritual nourishment from the connection to the Divine that hermeneutics allows, but applies Thelema to himself, in practice, in his own personal life situation.

This is what we call the Principle of Sucker Punch: considering every occurrence according to its eternal implications, according to the divine stakes it contains.

We incarnate only because the Holy Grail is hidden within the mists of the Old Grey Land of Desolation: the goal, in terms of “wine,” is to find the Grail without getting lost in the fog.

The Blue Abyss of Wine is therefore not a heady cocktail, but a bitter serum of truth — And we must, like Socrates — or Jacques d’Adelswärd-Fersen! — drink it “by the eight and ninety rules of art” (AL II:70), joyfully, to the dregs!

‘TRINC unto Nu.’ — Leptopoecile Sophiae

Meditate upon this, dear friends, and go your gorgeous ways under the protection of that spiritual sphere whose centre is everywhere and circumference nowhere, and which we call GOD.

Warm kisses from the Bahamas.

Love is the law, love under will.

— ☉ in 15° ♑︎ : ☽ in 21° ♌︎ : ☽ : Vxi.

𓄿𓎛𓂧 𓇋𓈖𓏌

Crikey! What a Subconscious! or The Altar of Babalon

Dear friends, beautiful and happy people,

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.

The humour of the gods, sometimes truly sexy, arranged that a letter from Soror Neferusobek — one of those confidantes I wish upon everyone who loves truly hyper-beautiful confidantes — was delivered to me this evening precisely as I finished adoring Tum!

The Sistah informed me, in essence, that the previous night she had had a rather traumatizing dream:

She saw herself hosting a grand elegant dinner in her duplex in the Sixteenth Arrondissement, to which I had brought none other than Kim Kardashian herself, but by ruse:

Kim’s actual mission was to take Neferusobek’s father-in-law — a big fan of KUWTK — on a tour of Paris, so that I might have free rein to ravish N.’s MOTHER (who is the archetype of the Irresistible MILF — you know Bela Bajaria, the Netflix boss? — Well! Exactly the same, but with bigger breasts!)

N. confides that at the end of her dream, Kim suddenly burst back from her “walk,” outraged by the father-in-law’s pathetic advances, and lectured him thus: “Don’t talk nonsense, Hubert! Your wife is very fine! She has an ass that doesn’t go unnoticed!”

At that precise moment, I was in the process of unloading into the aforementioned wife, bent over the table — which made Kim laugh, as she added, for Hubert’s benefit: “My David doesn’t make that mistake!”

N. notes that my “growl” at the moment of orgasm “sounded like a bellowing,” and says that I then turned to her unfortunate father-in-law — who was (I quote) “pale and petrified” — and declared, by way of apology: “Sorry, Hubert… One doesn’t always control one’s baser instincts…”

“After which,” writes N., “Kim and you left laughing… I add that you had ejaculated at least a litre into Mum and that it was dripping from her onto my pretty tablecloth, and also that Kim K. said to you as you left: ‘You must be happy! All this time she’s been making you hard, that one!’”

Crikey! What a subconscious!

“I FORBID you to creampie Mum on the dining-room table!” concludes Soror Neferusobek, who insists that I subject this dream to an exhaustive analysis following the strict modalities of the PaRDèS system of qabalistic exegesis. 

It may be a touch too much to improvise tonight, in the context of my Bahamas holiday… All I can say for now, on the level of Pshat — apart, once again, from “Crikey! What a subconscious indeed!” — is that this dream nostalgically sends me back to a multitude of personal anecdotes, real-life events and autobiographical incidents to which, curiously, it makes me think…

No one is unaware, for example, that my very first awareness of the Divine came precisely through the intercession of an ‘Irresistible MILF’ — the mother of my girlfriend at the time (I was 15):

I had spent the night in the very beautiful home of her parents — a provincial doctor and a housewife of the big-breasted mature beauty type — and, attempting at dawn to slip away (since the parents were unaware of my presence in their daughter’s room), I was intercepted by the aforementioned mature beauty — who, after a half-serious, half-playful reprimand, insisted on proving she was still “in the race” by sucking me off right in the living room (her husband was sleeping just above): at the instant when my virility, rendered furiously turgid by the situation, was taken in mouth by this woman, I murmured, in an astonished breath: “There is a God…”

Also well known, alas! to most of the Paris social register of the early 2000s is the scandalous misadventure that earned me, for a time, the nickname “Hands-Free” — when, during an elegant soirée, I was suddenly seized by premature ejaculation and exploded in my white trousers at the mere sight of Mariah Carey’s ‘Loverboy’ music video playing on a giant screen, under the (perplexed) gaze of my girlfriend at the time AND my rival for her, who burst out laughing: “Wow! Your guy! Hands-free!!!!!”

Perhaps it is less known, however, that I made love to my wife nine times in a row after watching, for the first time, Fergie’s ‘MILF’ music video (which also features Kim Kardashian, by the way) — but the vibe is the same: the passion unleashed by the MILF and her devastating impact on the trajectory of anyone who suffers its consequences!

In Soror Neferusobek’s dream, the collateral victim of this passion is, of course, the unfortunate Hubert.

In the first autobiographical anecdote reported above, it is me — since I make it my First Mystical Crisis — the spiritual trigger that will ultimately make me the ‘helluvah holy guru’ that is known and, therefore, lead me to prison!

In the second anecdote, the victim is my Social Persona (“Ah! Ah! Ah! How ridiculous!” was the only comment from my cousin Abigaïl when she was told of the incident.)

In the third anecdote, finally, the victim is the cervix of my wife, forced to endure endless furious assaults to extinguish the fire that another had lit.

See? All victims of oedipal fury, that is to say: all sacrificed on the Altar of Babalon.

Meditate upon this, dear friends, and go your gorgeous ways under the protection of that spiritual sphere whose centre is everywhere and circumference nowhere, and which we call GOD.

Warm kisses from the Bahamas.

Love is the law, love under will.

— ☉ in 15° ♑︎ : ☽ in 21° ♌︎ : ☽ : Vxi.

Spiritual Catfight : An Epistle to Soror Sinthea

Bastet, by Milo Manara

Dear friends, beautiful and happy people,

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.

The Ancient Egyptians, our masters in all things, had a marvellous way of exalting the quality of words.

Tahuti, Sage among Sages, who never errs, said: “He who speaks well is beautiful and good.”

On this subject, I must pay public homage to the most formidable punchline artist of our Sect — the dear Soror Sinthea — whom I call Soror Sin just to annoy her — who has just reported to me that she has had, online, a rather mortifying spat.

Last month already, a post of mine in which I praised, on the one hand, Sinthea by name, and on the other, female sodomy, earned her a comment calling her an “abominable fucked-up bitch” — But it came from a Heathen, whom she immediately crushed under a contemptuous heel, while comparing me to the Marquis de Sade in the Bastille, which proves the broad-mindedness of our Sister, or at least, so as not to cause confusion, her sense of humour.

Today’s affair is very different, since the barrage of insults comes from a Thelemite lady — a Thelemite lady of the “Pagan” persuasion, certainly, but a Thelemite lady nonetheless.

The disputation — what am I saying? the brawl! — what am I saying? the doctrinal catfight that apparently took place would obviously have been less painful — and finished much more quickly! — had it been against a Wiccan spinster.

(I have always hated Wicca, even back when it wasn’t woke: It just so happens that I prefer listening to Paganini’s Caprices or to an Offenbach opéra-bouffe to debating the historical nuances of Goddess worship; I prefer reading Noh theatre or Swords and Sorcery comics to reading a treatise on lithotherapy; and I would still rather — instead of approaching any spiritual subject with some adept of that cheap paganism intended for munters, social misfits, vegetarians and the poor, known as Wicca — I would still rather, I say, watch a page of adverts or an RnB music video: at least the girls are sexy.)

Precisely: Sin had published an admirable in-depth text on our basic postulate: Life is a Noh theatre play — and concluded, from my famous commentary on Liber Porta Lucis sub figurâ X verses 1-4 — quite rightly entitled Deliciously Obscure — that every Christmas romcom starring Lacey Chabert has the value of an initiatory tale in the Pythagorean, or Orphic, sense of the term.

It was grandiose!!!

Alas! A Thelemite ‘Pagan’ lady, particularly appalled by my Open Letter to Judge Aurélie Mahé, and even more (if possible) by my Responses to the Proust Questionnaire — felt she had to address a stinging remonstrance to Sin — lambasting even my way of reading Tarot and calling my post Pilgrimage to Cythera “clearly problematic”.

Sin is struggling to handle this conflict, and asks me how “As brothers fight ye” (AL III:59) applies in this case…

Answer: It is very easy.

My late mentor in Thelema — the most authentic Hermit of Hadit who ever trod the globe, whom we now designate, since the events you know, under the “Posthumous Magical Nickname” of Leptopoecile Sophiae (all this is narrated with sparkling pen in my tribute post, soberly entitled To Karl Germer in Esterwegen: My Lamp Is a Dead Aristocrat in Impeccable Shoes) — my late mentor, I say, deduced, through learned exegesis of the verse “Say you so? Fool! If he be a King thou canst not hurt him” (AL II:59), the following Principle:

When two Thelemites quarrel, it necessarily means that one of the two is not doing his True Will.

Consequently, the one who suffers from the collision caused by the other’s departure from orbit actually has the inertia of the entire universe assisting him.

By virtue of which, the matter, however trying it may have been at the time, cannot, in any way, harm him in the long term (i.e. include itself in Time).

Meditate upon this, Beloved Sister, and go your gorgeous ways under the protection of that spiritual sphere whose centre is everywhere and circumference nowhere, and which we call GOD.

Warm kisses from the Bahamas.

Love is the law, love under will.

— ☉ in 14° ♑︎ : ☽ in 7° ♌︎ : ☉ : Vxi.

Anti-Christmas : The Thelemic Solstice Sermon Smuggled from Prison (Now served Ice-Cold in January)

Manara Tarot, The Sun

Dear friends, beautiful and happy people,

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.

My detractors claim that the only truly ritual activity our Sect can boast of is the metronomic frequency with which its members smuggle iPhones into my cell.

This is false.

My Beloved Disciples also smuggle in Grey Goose vodka, Red Bull, my favorite weed strain (Isla OG), and cocaine so authentically Peruvian that it sings Isabela Merced in a poncho on a llama!

Their diligence earned me, as you know, being placed in total isolation for several weeks last June — during which I nonetheless managed to fulfill the Hierophantic task by delivering, on the occasion of the Solstice, a brief (but dense) Edifying Address from the prison phone booth to all our Brothers and Sisters gathered on a conference call by Soror K.

Now the same Soror K. has just told me that she kept and translated the text of that Speech into English, and wishes me to publish it at once!

“But come on, Sis!” I exclaimed, “we’re not going to broadcast a Midsummer Solstice homily in January! It’s the spiritual equivalent of wearing mink in Botswana! Or, more precisely, strolling the ice floe in a swimsuit!”

But she would not be swayed — even going so far as to declare (I quote) “funny” (sic) the idea of meditating on Summer at Christmas…

So here, dear friends, in the most diametrically untimely fashion, is the legendary Discourse delivered by Sir Shumule to his Zugers from his land of Exile and Captivity on the occasion of the Summer Solstice of the Year 121 (Vxi) of the Æon of Horus:

Dear friends,

Today is the Holy Day of the Summer Solstice, the orgasmic peak of the year and the feast of the times which (therefore) the Old Serpent of the City of Edfu, Hadit our Master, enjoins us to celebrate above all (AL II:36).

I personally have a horror of summer, that democratic season — Of course, everything born under the sign of Cancer is execrable in itself, but when, in addition, it is Dutch, in shorts, in sandals, and licking an ice cream, it goes far beyond everything — In fact, the June Solstice exists cosmically only to indicate the precise moment when one should stop going to Saint-Tropez.

Inertia (= supreme ambition of the proletarian), oppressive heat (= egalitarianism in dress), long days (= petty energy savings), plebeian agglutinations (= full satisfaction of the gregarious instinct), are ideals of slaves — of men of the people — and we Thelemites are “against the people” (AL II:25).

Moreover, it is symbolically the very formula of this season: the Summer Solstice is the Anti-Christmas: it is the moment when the aptly named sign of Cancer, in hatred of light, harmony and joy, stabs the carefree and radiant sun which, at the height of happiness, laughs with all its heart like a beautiful blond child running freely — or, to paraphrase saint Friedrich Nietzsche (may his merits protect us): the Conspiracy of the Unwelcome finally, through that relentless hatred which is the mark of base souls, overthrows the one who walks his path with a light heart.

In plain terms, the Winter Solstice told us six months ago: “The wicked have only sham triumphs”; today the Summer Solstice replies: “Perhaps… But good times never last!”

Contemplate Atu VII of the Tarot — “The Chariot” — which functions as the pictorial synthesis of this Mystery.

See: a Knight has communed with the Holy Grail and, completely ecstatic, thrones on the Chariot of Triumphs — forgetting, in his intoxication, that according to the Ancient Code of Chivalry, any knight who rides in a chariot is instantly deprived of his rank.

In other words: The gigastar, having reached the pinnacle of his ambitions and acclaimed by a delirious crowd of stans, still ignores, in the limo, that he has ipso facto become an ordinary taxpayer again.

Ah! It is not very surprising that the Summer Solstice is the par excellence paternal moment: who says orgasmic peak says insemination, and who says insemination says progeny: one falls asleep with a wild mistress and wakes up with responsibilities.

But still: if women native to Cancer are invariably hyper seductive (a zodiac sign that successively produces Michelle Rodriguez, Sofia Vergara, Ariana Grande and Selena Gomez cannot be completely bad), it is to reply to us, with a mischievous little air: “It all depends on what the wild mistress in question looks like…”

I mean: Icarus approached the Sun to the maximum of what was technically possible and, certainly! his wings melted: but how many of those who criticize his joyful lightness and his negligence of the paternal warning secretly envy him for having been able, for a moment, to approach the Sun?…

Do not forget: for one kinky moment in the hands of Morgan la Fay, the holy enchanter Merlin (may his merits protect us) accepts with transports to be entirely destroyed — and all the most ardent detractors of Mexican immigration in the US willingly admit, in petto, that the curve of Becky G.’s hips and Salma Hayek’s décolleté are worth the destruction and economic ruin of a few major cities.

The Old Serpent, Hadit our Master, says: “breathe not so deep — die!” (AL II:68), that is to say: Passionately accept the fate of Holofernes, if it is the price of a night in the arms of Judith.*

— Sir Shumule, 21 June 121 a.n./2025 e.v.

Meditate upon this, dear friends, and go your gorgeous ways under the protection of that spiritual sphere whose centre is everywhere and circumference nowhere, and which we call GOD.

Warm kisses from the Bahamas.

Love is the law, love under will. 

— ☉ in 13° ♑︎ : ☽ in 21° ♋︎ : ♄ : Vxi.

* Cathy, my orthodox Freudian shrink friend — the very type of appallingly inflexible frigid beauty — once told me: “You are such a textbook case of the Icarus Complex that I wouldn’t be surprised to learn you are the reincarnation of Holofernes… ”

Spirit of Ecstasy : How to Be Sir Shumule in Prison (Even If You’re Planning to Assassinate Him)

I have decided to make Regrets and Remorse the two Rs on the grille of my Rolls-Royce, so that the Spirit of Ecstasy constantly treads them underfoot. — Sir Shumule

Dear friends, beautiful and happy people,

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.

I hope your Christmas was entirely strewn with fabulous gifts!

As for me — while you were feasting and making merry — I was being bitterly reprimanded by a female officer of the Prison Brigade, who physically was precisely a synthesis of Sigourney Weaver as Ellen Ripley and Michelle Rodriguez as Trudy Chacon — and that is EXACTLY what I had asked Santa for!

My New Year, however, was more peaceful (I failed to determine WHICH infraction to commit to ensure that Ellen Chacon aka Trudy Ripley would give me another dressing-down), though particularly epistolary…

For example, I received from an assiduous correspondent (I do not know whether he is a Thelemite or not — and therefore whether I should love him with a burning heart or treat him as a filthy tramp) a rather amusing letter in which he declares, among other things:

“I am one of your many Mark Chapmans, Sir, and I want to know, before assassinating you, very precisely how to follow your Threefold Protocol on a daily basis, so as to be totally you when I am in prison (like you!) for that assassination.”

My friend, it is very simple:

I. Fin’Amor

Spiritually — since we must be Hadit and Hadit calls Nuit “my bride” — the trick is to consider your praxis as though every day were the day of your (sumptuous) marriage to your soul-mate.

Every Ritual must be performed with the same punctuality, the same solemnity, the same sense of the sacred as if you were pronouncing vows to your blushing bride before the Altar, your family, and all your friends.

Every day must be lived as though it were the ultra-jetset Kardashian-esque garden-party of your Big Day.

Every night as though it were your wedding night (following an arduous period of abstinence).

And every mental projection toward the future must envision it only as though it contained nothing but an idyllic and perpetual honeymoon in Saint-Barth.

II. The Cruel Tutelage of Hadit 

Problem, you will say: every day is NOT, in objective reality, the day of my wedding: I do not meet only friends rejoicing in my happiness, but plenty of mediocrities and wicked people who hate me for it.

The future does not hold a marvellous honeymoon, but rather bills, old age, and death…

This is where existential doubts intervene: my daily social life was not planned to the millimetre by a wedding planner agency, and I am constantly forced — on the ethical, philosophical, psycho-affective, etc., planes — to make heart-rending choices…

This is why Hadit is the Master.

We start from the principle that all possible questions to the Ruach (the human soul), without exception, have been settled by the Old Serpent in the Second Chapter of The Book of the Law.

You therefore possess an unbeatable vade mecum: at every dilemma, scrutinise this text, find the opinion Hadit gives on the subject that concerns you, and submit to that opinion perinde ac cadaver (as a yogi apprentice submits to his guru, a Hasidic Jew to his rebbe, a Jesuit to his superior, Béatrix Kiddo to her kung-fu master).

Examples:

A. When, after an orgiastic night and a sybaritic lie-in, I drag myself through an atrociously painful hangover that no amount of Paracetamol seems willing to cure, and I am tempted to revolt against the cruelty of my fate, I remember that “existence is pure joy; that all the sorrows are but as shadows; they pass & are done” (AL II:9) — and I take my suffering patiently.

B. When, sprawled on my shrink’s couch, I wonder about the irresistible effect that prison wardresses of the Ellen Ripley type have on my libido, and I cry out to myself: “Why, oh why this rage for the Amazon, when loving big-breasted blonde bimbos involves so much less physical risk?!” — I remember that Hadit describes his Hermits as lovers of “beasts of women with large limbs” (AL II:24) and I feel deliciously flattered in my kinks.

C. When a fit of spleen makes me contemplate a Sardanapalian suicide — a hip, chic, and vogue autolysis — some dazzling farewell party to life to close in orgasmic fashion the furious journey that has been mine on this beautiful and interesting planet — I remember that Hadit said: “Death is forbidden, o man, unto thee” (AL II:73) — declaring suicide clearly illicit — and I renounce my event.

III. Bloodbath in Paradise  

Another problem: life is not only made up of ethical and existential doubts — earthly contingencies take precedence, and we are constantly constrained by matter.

We have already seen that, as regards the Temporal, your sole duty is to promulgate the Law of Thelema and always take the side of the Garden of Delights against that of the Old Grey Land of Desolation.

From that moment on, every one of your choices in this domain — whether frivolous questions (which presidential candidate should I support in the elections?) or grave ones (which red Bordeaux should I serve with a tournedos Rossini?) — becomes a vote, a militant act — what am I saying? a military act! — for or against the Æon of Horus.

By systematically opting for the Garden of Delights and against the Albanian kolkhoze, even your shopping becomes Promulgation: that is the meaning of “From gold forge steel” (AL III:32).

You go to bed each evening with the certainty of having made the world a tiny bit more Edenic than you found it in the morning, and you can surrender to your systematic fevered wedding night without fearing that any Abrahamic poison substrate will spoil it with puritan scruples, your uncompromising spiritual Master having prescribed: “lust, enjoy all things of sense and rapture: fear not that any God shall deny thee for this!” (AL II:22).

Meditate upon this, dear friends, and go your gorgeous ways under the protection of that spiritual sphere whose centre is everywhere and circumference nowhere, and which we call GOD.

Warm kisses from the Bahamas.

Love is the law, love under will.

— ☉ in 11° ♑︎ : ☽ in 22° ♊︎ : ♃ : Vxi.

Ecce Homo : Sir Shumule’s answers to the Proust Questionnaire

1. What is your idea of perfect happiness? 

An eternal wedding night with Nuit where the honeymoon never ends, the champagne never warms, the lovers never tire, and the only thing that expires is the statute of limitations.

2. What is your greatest fear? 

Waking up one morning and finding I have become… tolerable.

3. What is the trait you most deplore in yourself? 

The faint, unforgivable flicker of mercy I occasionally show to people who clearly do not deserve my contempt.

4. What is the trait you most deplore in others? 

The grotesque habit of being born without sufficient beauty, breeding, or the good sense to apologise for it.

5. Which living person do you most admire? 

The reflection in my mirror at 3 a.m., after a night that would make Baudelaire blush and Sir Aleister Crowley take notes.

6. What is your greatest extravagance? 

I treat time the way a Roman emperor treated virgins: I deflower it, exhaust it, and discard it without the slightest twinge of conscience.

7. What is your current state of mind?

A cocktail of predatory radiance, aristocratic disdain, and the faint, delicious scent of impending scandal.

8. What do you consider the most overrated virtue? 

Humility. It is the cosmetic the ugly apply so the rest of us won’t notice how much they resent our superiority.

9. On what occasion do you lie? 

Whenever the truth would be an insult to my intelligence, an inconvenience to my beauty, or simply too boring to utter.

10. What is the quality you most like in a man? 

The rare, erotic audacity to look me in the eye and say, “I know exactly who you are… and I’m not leaving.”

11. What is the quality you most like in a woman? 

The divine, apocalyptic insolence to make gods jealous, men obsolete, and the universe rearrange its furniture around her hips.

12. Which words or phrases do you most overuse? 

“Darling,” “obviously,” “insufferable,” “93,” and “you simply must try harder next time.”

13. Which talent would you most like to have? 

The ability to make French magistrates spontaneously combust by merely arching an eyebrow and whispering “93.”

14. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be? 

Nothing. To improve upon perfection would be vulgar, and vulgarity is the one sin I refuse to commit.

15. What do you consider your greatest achievement? 

Surviving every attempt by the universe, the judiciary, and several ex-lovers to teach me even the slightest trace of humility.

16. If you were to die and come back as a person or a thing, what would it be? 

A deliciously unverifiable rumour about myself.

17. Where would you most like to live? 

In a jurisdiction where the First Amendment is ironclad, the rum is ancient, the women are athletic, and the extradition treaty is written in invisible ink.

18. What is your most treasured possession? 

A private archive of memories that would make a convent burn its own library and a brothel demand a refund.

19. What is your favourite occupation? 

The ritualised, sacramental contemplation and possession of bodies in love—preferably in quantities that would make lesser men faint and greater gods envious.

20. What is your most marked characteristic? 

An aristocratic nonchalance so absolute that it causes parvenus to spontaneously organise revolutions just to feel something.

21. What is the quality you most like in a lover? 

The exquisite ability to be at once my bride, my temple, my altar, my war-engine, and the reason I occasionally forget my own name.

22. What do you most value in your friends? 

That they are beautiful enough to be dangerous, dangerous enough to be interesting, and interesting enough to never require the tedium of small talk.

23. Who are your favourite writers? 

Aleister Crowley (blessing & worship to him), Baudelaire, Nietzsche, and my biographers.

24. Who is your favourite hero of fiction? 

The version of myself that exists in the fever-dreams of people who have never had the privilege of meeting me.

25. Who are your heroes in real life?

Karl Germer (who kept the flame alive reciting Holy Books backwards in a Nazi camp), Ankh-af-na-khonsu (who understood discretion), and every Scarlet Woman who has ever made a man forget both his name and his country.

26. What are your favourite names? 

Babalon. Hadit. Shumule.

27. What is it that you most dislike? 

Grey—in skies, in suits, in souls, in governments, in conversations.

28. What is your greatest regret? 

Not discovering Thelema at birth, so I could have devoted even more decades to consecrated, unrepentant, world-class debauchery.

29. How would you like to die? 

In the grand tradition of the Regent: epectasis, mid-orgasm, mid-sentence, with my final words being “…a greater feast…” and a satisfied smirk.

30. What is your motto? 

“Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.” (Unofficial addendum: “And do it with such exquisite taste that even the prudes will secretly envy you.”)

— ☉︎ in 10° ♑︎ : ☽︎ in 10° ♊︎ : ♃︎ : Ⅴⅹⅰ.

How to Decide Anything in Three Questions (Even from a French Prison Cell)

The Sphinx, Fernand Khnopff

Dear friends, beautiful and happy people,

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.

Soror Jezebel has just delivered a triumphant reply to some Caliphal O.T.O. member who asked her whether, once my current Great Magical Retirement at the Detention Center of Moulins-Yzeure comes to an end, I might possibly “come visit the United States”:

“Of course Sir Shumule wants to go to the States! You have the First Amendment! You have Michelle Rodriguez!”

Meanwhile, I have just received a rather convoluted letter from the indispensable Frater Y., who, among other things, asks me:

“Ankh-af-na-khonsu ordered that Thelemites decide ‘questions of the Law’ ‘each for himself’, but it’s not always obvious… Is there a systematic method you use when you face a dilemma, a crisis of conscience, etc., and need to settle a delicate question of the type: ‘Is this permitted by the Law / Is this forbidden by the Law?’”

Answer: Yes. I have one!

The method that (for myself! — I insist! — Let’s not risk becoming a centre of pestilence on top of everything else; I already have quite enough trouble as it is!), my method, I repeat, is the following:

Honeymoon, Serpent, Paradise : The Chioa Khan’s Threefold Protocol.

1. Spiritual or religious question → Nuit. 

The very first formal Commandment of the Law is to be Hadit (AL I:6). 

Now Hadit invariably calls Nuit “my bride” — not “my wife”, not “my spouse”, but “my bride”. 

Therefore, when I make a spiritual decision, I simply ask myself: would this mindset be appropriate on a wedding night and during a honeymoon? 

If the answer is no, I abstain. 

2. Ethical or philosophical question → Hadit. 

Hadit is < the Master > (AL II:65). 

I therefore silently recite Chapter II of The Book of the Law, look for where the old serpent has already settled the matter that is bothering me, and I obey blindly, perinde ac cadaver.

3. Practical or political question → Ra-Hoor-Khuit. 

Our duty toward the Lord of the Æon is to promulgate the Law, as it is written: < Raise the spell of Ra-Hoor-Khuit > (AL III:2). 

So I ask myself: will the action I am contemplating turn the world a little more into the radiant land of Thelema — a Garden of Delights filled with “Order and Beauty, Luxury, Calm and Voluptuousness” — or, on the contrary, into an Old Grey Land of Desolation of the non-smoking Albanian collective-farm variety? 

And I choose the Garden of Delights. 

Easy!

Meditate upon this, dear friends, and go your gorgeous ways under the protection of that spiritual sphere whose centre is everywhere and circumference nowhere, and which we call GOD.

Warm kisses from the Bahamas.

Love is the law, love under will.

— ☉︎ in 17° ♐︎ : ☽︎ in 14° ♌︎ : ☽︎ : Ⅴⅹⅰ.

Pilgrimage to Cythera : How I Became a Thelemite Without Giving Up a Single Orgasm

Pilgrimage to Cythera, Antoine Watteau

Dear friends, beautiful and happy people,

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.

My excellent post of yesterday (magnificent text; I wrote it, so I’m allowed to say it: it’s bloody good) has earned me an avalanche of mail; extremely gratifying, though almost entirely lacking in marriage proposals or jailbreak plans. 

From this flood, one question rises above all others from my Anglophone readers, the same tireless, stubborn, eternal query:

“How did you become a Thelemite?”

Well, I must have told the story on this blog roughly 11,892 times already (in French, admittedly…), so I certainly won’t deprive you of the 11,893rd telling!

It’s very simple, really:

In my youth, I maintained that nothing had any value except the voluptuous pleasure of the senses in the contemplation and possession of the bodies of women in love.

I hoped to die the death of the Duc d’Orléans, the Regent (epectasis: death by orgasm), and that my last words would be: “What a pity…”

Then came the extraordinary privilege of reading the Prophet To Mega Thêrion (blessing & worship to him), and Liber DCCCXXXVII (The Law of Liberty) was my road to Damascus:

“This is the only point to bear in mind, that every act must be a ritual, an act of worship, a sacrament. Live as the kings and princes, crowned and uncrowned, of this world, have always lived, as masters always live; but let it not be self-indulgence; make your self-indulgence your religion.”

Make your self-indulgence your religion!

In that moment I understood why the divine sense of humour had arranged for the Regent’s death to be called epectasis, and why Babalon — the very goddess who dispenses “the voluptuous pleasure of the senses in the contemplation and possession of the bodies of women in love” — bears a name that literally means “Gate of God” (Bāb-ili(m)).

Nothing, therefore, has changed in my fundamental philosophy, except that my dying words will now be: “…a greater feast…”

Meditate upon this, dear friends, and go your gorgeous ways under the protection of that spiritual sphere whose centre is everywhere and circumference nowhere, and which we call GOD.

Warm kisses from the Bahamas.

Love is the law, love under will.

— ☉︎ in 16° ♐︎ : ☽︎ in 0° ♌︎ : ☉︎ : Ⅴⅹⅰ.

To Karl Germer in Esterwegen: My Lamp Is a Dead Aristocrat in Impeccable Shoes

Portrait of Sir Shumule aka David van Horn, by HIH Princess Clothilde-Naama

To Karl Germer.

Dear friends, beautiful and happy people,

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.

About yesterday’s post, Soror K. wrote to me: 

‘Vintage Shumule: equal parts Thelemic sermon, decadent gossip, and sly tarot exegesis delivered with the languid arrogance of a man who knows he will never have to queue at the post office… Frankly, so rosy it could double as a tourism brochure for the New Aeon.’

That said, she is genuinely wondering about the source of my “superhuman capacity for resilience,” which she rates as “at least equal to [my] Bachic resistance.”

Easy! Besides being a textbook case of Peter Pan syndrome, I am a servant of the god Heru-ra-ha, the Crowned & Conquering Child. And resilience is the specific superpower of childhood.

But it’s a good question: It is written < there be times of darkness, and this as a lamp therein > (Liber Magi, 6) — What is your own personal portable lamp? What happy memory contains, for you, enough light that, no matter the circumstances, the < darkness and terror > around you systematically turn into < light and joy > (Liber Tzaddi, 17)?

What is it that — like Saturnus, OHO Karl Johannes Germer, who silently recited the Holy Books of Thelema to himself “from first to last and from last to first” in order to “keep in shape” during his detention in the Nazi concentration camp at Esterwegen (where reading had been forbidden him) — what, I ask, allows you to remain connected to the gods in the midst of trial?

Most prisoners think of their mother. Why not? Mom was the archetype of the bossy MILF châtelaine, and on the Freudian level that’s comforting.

Personally, though, whenever I feel a touch of the blues I think with all my strength about my late mentor in Thelema (whom, by the way, I now refer to only by the “posthumous magical pseudonym that is an inside joke”: ‘Leptopoecile Sophiæ’ (LS). His real name was dragged through quite enough mud — during the investigation and the first-instance hearing of my trial before the tribunal de grande instance of Cusset — by what passes for the judiciary in France, who painted him as the exact equivalent of the evil old wizard whom Ariana Grande hurls into a lava crater at the end of the “Break Free” video).

I would never call him my “master,” because he constantly repeated: “AL II:65 makes it clear that the ancient serpent Hadit is our Master, our guru, our rebbe, our duca, segnore e maestro, to the exclusion of all others — each of us is a disciple whom Hadit has accepted, meaning each of us is Hadit’s Holy Chosen One.”

Just evoking LS’s physical appearance, the care he took with his grooming, the degree to which his every gesture carried that effortless nonchalance that the parvenu hates in the aristocrat so much he’ll burn down the Bastille over it — that alone is enough to put me overjoyed.

Frater N. (who was also his pupil) once invited me to reflect on the fact that while our late mentor remains, for us and a few others, an invigorating memory, the Aurum Solis and the Ordo Astrum Sophiae consider him the arch-traitor to be hated above all (because he cold-bloodedly ditched them the moment he became a Thelemite), and most “hermeticists” who have mentioned him in print (especially the Martinists and the butthurt clowns of AMORC) simply report that he was ultra-authoritarian and cruel in his teaching, that he physically mistreated and punished his students, humiliated them the moment they arrived, and was particularly merciless if he detected the slightest hint of defiance.

It is true that LS invariably suspected anyone who approached him in an initiatory context of suffering from morbid masochism… :)

Why am I telling you all this?

Because Soror Sinthea — whom I call Soror Sin just to annoy her — asked me earlier today what hermeneutic meaning should be given, respectively, to the different pronouns (ye, you, thou) by which the gods address humanity in The Book of the Law.

LS once entrusted me with this Key:

‘Ye’ designates the < company of heaven > (AL I:2), i.e. the totality of all incarnate gods who constitute humanity proper — whether they are consciously Thelemites or not — as opposed to “the people” (= them), who are troglodyte monkeys (who appeared on Earth “exactly like maggots in an apple,” cf. The Paris Working), worshippers of the Blind Creature of the Slime, and dedicated to turning this marvellous Garden of Delights that is the World into the Old Grey Land of Desolation for the benefit of that Creature.

 (N.B.: In my opinion, no one has ever illustrated this essential Arcanum better than the group Telepopmusik in the music video for their track “Breathe.”)

The Ye — gods temporarily disguised as men and imprisoned in animal bodies — have the exactly opposite mission: to restore the Earthly Paradise, to destroy the Old Grey Land by promulgating (consciously or unconsciously) the Law of Thelema.

(Soror Jezebel has a brilliant formula for the concept of the “unconscious Thelemite”: “All Kim Kardashian lacks is renouncing the Armenian Apostolic Church to fulfil absolutely every condition of the ideal Scarlet Woman as described in Chapter III of Liber AL.”)

Come, O ye gods, and let us feast! — LLL 6:46 

Ye are against the people, O my chosen! — AL II:34.

‘You’ designates conscious Thelemites (those who have accepted the Law, recognised Ra-Hoor-Khuit as Lord of the Æon, and hold that The Book of the Law is the letter of Truth). 

But you who have defied the law; you who have conquered by subtlety or force; you will I take unto me, even I will take you unto me. — Tzaddi, 19. 

I will give you a war-engine. — AL III:7.

‘Thou’ designates the true being of the individual, the one the Ancient Egyptians called “the Defunct” — “Thou,” LS said, “is very precisely the one who appears before the Scales of Maat for the Weighing of the Heart — when, on the threshold of his eternal destiny it is no longer possible for him to escape who he really is through lies, psychodramas, or fallacious reasoning.” 

Therefore thou art wholly pure before Me. — Liber Cordis Cincti Serpente V:10.

thou hast no right but to do thy will. — AL I:42.

Meditating upon which, go forth, dear friends, under the protection of that spiritual sphere whose centre is everywhere and circumference nowhere, and which we call GOD.

Warm kisses from the Bahamas.

Love is the law, love under will.

— ☉︎ in 15° ♐︎ : ☽︎ in 16° ♋︎ : ♄︎ : Ⅴⅹⅰ.

The Minute of the Ibis: A Little Tarot for a Change

The Ibis, Gustave Moreau

Dear friends, beautiful and happy people,

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.

Soror K. just forwarded me – in an email that was sexy, though slightly peremptory – a humble request for clarification that Frater Amenhotep had addressed to her. 

He is currently very worried about a Tarot reading done for him by “an old Parisian Countess who’s completely mad in the head” on the very day he was definitively admitted into our Sect (October 11).

Frater Amenhotep? — Remember him: the young mathematician-scholar who used to sign “F” and who, on the 12th of August last, wrote his Application for Affiliation in these terms:

“I know who you are, Sir. You are a monster: debauched, lustful, mystical… A ‘perverse seducer who loves athletic women, flashy luxury, and sadistic violence’… A ‘lazy country squire with maximum alcoholic ancestry and suspiciously high inbreeding’… A ‘sadomasochistic Cheshire cat’… Yet, for a reason known only to the gods, the clandestine sect founded by your disciples has recognized (i.e., conferred upon) you the Beasthood… You are the legitimate Hierophant and therefore bound to teach, as it is written: ‘he must teach’ (AL I:38)…”

So, on the day he (and his companion Soror Astarté) officially became one of us, the author of that exordium consulted the Oracle of Thoth about his future within our ranks…

Now, the Celtic Cross spread done for him on that occasion (XIX . XII . XXI . III . [X]) has recently been giving our brother a whole heap of retrospective anxiety.

There is really no reason for it!

1. You see: In a Celtic Cross, the First Card shows the heart of the matter for the keen, proud, royal and lofty Thelemite. 

2. The Second Card shows how the troglodyte heathen apes of the old grey land – agents of chaos against the divine order of things, the “conspiracy of the unwelcome against him who walks his path with a light heart” – plot to obstruct the Thelemite’s Will. 

3. The Third Card shows the Decree rendered in the divine sphere by the Mighty Immortals concerning the matter. 

4. The Fourth Card shows the outcome that this Decree will have in the earthly sphere, as shaped by the Opposition between the Thelemite’s Will and the heathen undermining. 

5. The Fifth Card – obtained by theosophical reduction – gives the Counsel of the Prophet to meditate upon and put into practice during this confrontation. 

Here, then, is what we have:

1. [XIX, The Sun] What will Amenhotep’s life be like in the radiant land of Thelema? 

2. [XII, The Hanged Man] Alas! The prince to whom Amenhotep has just sworn Allegiance is currently held captive in Old Grey Land! 

3. [XXI, The Universe] Fortunately, the lord Sobek, Dweller in the Nile, great exterminator of abyssal creatures, takes up Amenhotep’s cause at the Council of the Mighty, 

4. [III, The Empress] which will result, for the latter, in a return to the Garden of Delights: “Order and Beauty, Luxury, Calm and Voluptuousness.” 

5. [X, Fortune] Word of the Prophet To Mega Thêrion 666: “Follow thy Fortune, careless where it lead thee. The axle moveth not: attain thou that.” 

I see nothing in all this but the most encouraging signs.

Meditating upon which, go forth, dear friends, under the protection of that spiritual sphere whose centre is everywhere and circumference nowhere, and which we call GOD.

Warm kisses from the Bahamas.

Love is the law, love under will.

— ☉︎ in 14° ♐︎ : ☽︎ in 29° ♊︎ : ♀︎ : Ⅴⅹⅰ.

Sir Shumule’s Legendary 2023 Letter To Judge Aurélie Mahé, President Judge of the Cusset Criminal Court

Note: At the general request, here is the English translation of the legendary letter I sent (with recorded delivery) from Moulins-Yzeure prison to Judge Aurélie Mahé in 2023 ev, shortly after my first-instance hearing and while awaiting her verdict.

Open Letter from Sir Shumule to Madame Judge Mahé, Presiding Judge of the Cusset Criminal Court

Bora-Bora, 11 July 2023 e.v.

Madame le Juge,

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.

This is to formally express my gratitude for having invited me last Thursday to such a truly fabulous hearing.

It was a resounding success.

Being charged with “glorification of cocaine” is ultra-cool and sexy — regardless of the fact that your services didn’t even bother to put a single text of mine actually glorifying cocaine into the case file: the wording of the charge itself is furiously funky, and that’s all that matters in my eyes.

Of course, one might regret that you felt obliged to try to give some substance to this (therefore) non-case by digging up four of my former disciples — rejected by me and now seeking the revenge of dismissed lackeys — and dressing them up as “civil parties”.

(Just for the record:

The unfortunate Adriano “Jinx” Angeletti, a bewildered homeless man to whom I would gladly have tossed a few coins had my status as a detainee not prevented me — alas!

The unfortunate Aurélien “Walking Blowjob” Brunon, a whining, boring dwarf who physically started sobbing, bent over the bar with his arse in the air — and as you are well aware, Madame le Juge, body language speaks louder than any words.

The unfortunate Anne-Sophie Dos Santos, a welfare case who defected from her native trailer park and now works as a “care assistant for the elderly” — I’ve no doubt Anne-Sophie is far better suited to that job than to hermeneutics, and I wish her interesting bedpans to wipe.

The unfortunate Pauline “Used Kleenex” Brunon, who ought rather to sue whoever did her hair like that on Thursday.

You must admit, Madame le Juge, that this was hardly a dazzling cast, and for my part I had flushed these people down the toilet long ago…)

But enough of these substitutes! Let us rise above it all.

I owe you, Madame le Juge, the chance to once again behold, for a few precious hours, the sublime person of my divine wife Chloé — and since she is the most beautiful woman in the world, nothing else matters: I declare myself your eternal debtor.

(What am I saying? I even forgive Maître Falco for attacking me after having sworn on her life to Maître Szpiega that she would say nothing against me: Maître Falco is a nasty little liar, as the length of her nose already suggested. #Pinocchio)

Yes, you have my full gratitude, whatever your verdict may be, for allowing me to breathe for a moment near the one who holds my heart. Freedom without my wife means nothing to me — as I had the honour of declaring to Mr Miraoui (a third-world Cheeto in human form who played at being our investigating magistrate) and to Mrs Simon (the militant Catholic OCRVP officer — a bargain-basement Kamala Harris who looks like she works the checkout at a Vierzon supermarket — who pursued us with her sectarian hatred).

A thousand thanks, therefore!!!

And forgive me for not really knowing how to answer your vulgar question about my (I quote) “future sources of income” — it’s a question I have never asked myself. I know nothing about money: I simply throw it out the window and watch it fall.*

As for what comes next… 

Well! Not one of your remarks during the hearing was anything other than violently prosecutorial and completely biased — I don’t see why that would change on August 3. Go ahead — have fun!

Love is the law, love under will.

– Sir Shumule

*Yes, my students support me financially… For once, it’s not the taxpayers footing the bill. A man has his pride…