Cinepimastia (Karma Is A Titjob)

Atu VIII, Adjustment, Thoth Tarot

I must have truly been King Sardanapalus in a previous incarnation —Hence the hatred that eunuchs and slaves invariably bear toward me in this present life: no doubt they were sacrificed back then during my suicide. — Sir Shumule 

Dear friends, beautiful and happy people, 

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

It is the 14th day of the Thelemic Holy Season, during which we traditionally meditate on the Qabalistic Mystery of the Path of Lamed, that is, the VIIIth Tarot Trump, attributed to the zodiac sign of Libra and called “Adjustment.” 

For someone whom a Heathen court sentenced to five years in prison because of his religious beliefs (read: Thelema), I am surprisingly fond of Atu VIII. I’m not one to hold grudges. It’s in my nature. And, by the great goddess Ma’at, daughter of Ahathoor! as a good Thelemite, I spontaneously tend to experience incarceration as a Great Magical Retirement. 

Note that I generally pretend to enjoy losing myself in contemplation of this card only because many of the coolest beings to have ever walked the soil of our beautiful and interesting planet are, or were, Libra natives (e.g., HIH Prince Aleister, my beloved son; Sir Aleister Crowley, may his merits protect us; Saint Friedrich Nietzsche, may his merits protect us; Rimbaud, Wilde, and Snoop Dogg — and don’t get me started on Kim Kardashian, my most irrepressible celebrity crush after the goddess Nuit!) — But my shrink, as for her, suspects, under the pretext that my wife is Spanish, that the quite obvious graphic allusion made by the card to the delights of cinepimastia (i.e., titjob) is the only real reason why this Atu makes me so pensively meditative. 

Be that as it may, Sir Aleister Crowley (may his merits protect us) is quite clear: Atu VIII represents Karma. 

So, it occurred to me to translate into English, on this occasion, the very first considerations I once jotted down in my Diary about metempsychosis and karmic retribution. 

Since this text dates back to 2009 e.v. (I was so frivolous back then…), I shared it with Frater Y., who declared, after reading it, that “my references to swinger clubs and (I quote) ‘Spanish Butts’” were “dated.” 

That’s not very nice. 

It’s true that before accepting the Law of Thelema, Frater Y. was vegan. That’s frightening. Those people have no sense of humor. 

Anyway, here’s the text, you can judge for yourselves: 

The Miaule 

Contrary to what everyone believes, my life isn’t just about getting dressed up, gorging on cocaine, and getting blown by housemaids. I do sometimes engage in serious activities. 

For example, I’ve just finished reading a treatise on karmic astrology by Irène Andrieu, which really got me thinking. I drew a whole bunch of personal reflections from it, which will seem completely silly to experts, and I hope to learn more. 

Karma is a law as unsentimental as gravity. 

For instance, its compensation is such in the universe that I believe I owe the general happiness of my life to a thousand little annoyances. 

Maybe that’s how I’ve escaped so many dangers and am doing so well. 

Here’s the list of my little misfortunes. 

When I lose at poker in a private game, I pay cash on the nail. When I win, people owe me. When I vouch for someone, they don’t pay: sweaty Lebanese guys stomp around at my gate and annoy my pitbulls. 

When I set up marquees in the castle park for an outdoor lunch, when I go jogging, when I host a hunt on our lands, when I have an outdoor appointment, it rains.

When I order a taxi, they mess up and send it to someone else.

When I ask someone to pick up my roadster from the mechanic for an important appointment, like Spanish butt and huge tits, everyone’s sick or on leave, and if by some miracle we still have a domestic worker, they say I didn’t ask them. 

If I manage to get out anyway, the street I take is blocked by a move, a delivery, roadwork, a protest, an accident. I spend two hours in a symphony of honks and am permanently burned with the butt in question. 

When it’s cold, all the ice patches are for me, never for anyone else. 

When it’s hot, I’ve gone out in my three-quarter-length Boss cashmere coat and a big scarf. 

When I settle into the elegant bar of a grand hotel to write, my laptop has 1% battery left. 

When I write at home, the circuit breaker trips; I yell: no one comes. If I want to finish my text with a pen, all my Montblancs are empty. 

When I give a stock tip to a friend, the market crashes. When I invest for myself, it goes up: the friend is furious and tells everyone I screwed him over on purpose. 

When I want to be alone and have something interesting to do, I hear my door, hermetically sealed every morning, being besieged, and the fear of missing out (Cindy Crawford, stranded in front of my house begging for help, or Gina Carano showing up at the wrong address) makes me get up. I open it. Who is it? The most boring guy in Paris who “was just passing by.” 

Unless I’m alone at a shooting hunt, in which case I break every imaginable record with no one to see it, I’m always the one who kills the least, though I’m one of the best shots in France. Fifty boars come from right and left up to my post and then duck into the woods between me and the two neighbors I see unloading hellfire. All the beaters drive the game crookedly to where I am. I kill a fine piece: the others bag five next to me. Never a fox, a pheasant, a woodcock. All that goes to my neighbors too. They pity me, they switch: my spot becomes excellent. 

The hunt starts at seven. Afraid of being late, I wake up two hours early: I left the headlights on, my battery’s dead – I get a flat tire or manage to end up in a ditch. 

After a fox hunt, a polo match, or a poker tournament, someone else always gets congratulated for things I did. 

Dad wants to see me. His secretary gives me the wrong time. He waits around in a brasserie and eats alone – he’s long gone by the time I arrive, and he calls me a slacker on the phone. 

I’m greedy. I casually serve myself the best piece. My neighbor asks for it in a way I can’t refuse. 

Big party. A total bombshell gives me an inviting look: just as I’m about to join her, some loser asks her to dance. I’m bored to death.

At a swinger club, the friend of the guy eyeing my date is an ex with whom things ended really badly – If he’s with one of those sublime mature beauties that, thank the gods, French libertinism still occasionally produces, she treats me like a kid – “Come on, don’t tell me you’re getting hard for an old hag like me…” 

I kindly warn our handyman that the cousin who’s arriving is the snobbiest, most uptight, prim thing ever, so he won’t take offense. A month later, I learn he banged her non-stop in the shed throughout her stay. 

If I’m about to hook up with a guest at my most prudish aunt’s house, she always bursts in at the critical moment. 

When I fall head over heels for a woman, she’s a lesbian. When I’m happy with another, she sees me only as a well-hung stud, funny and decorative – when I think I’m just sleeping with a good friend after a fun night, she thinks I’m about to propose. 

In Limousin, they say “tape ta miaule!” to acknowledge this kind of phenomenon – well! Is it this miaule that I owe my life, which perfectly matches Baudelaire’s injunction – order, beauty, luxury, calm, and voluptuousness – or is it this life that I owe to this miaule? 

I’d love Mrs. Andrieu’s opinion on that. 

— Sir Shumule, November 8, 2009 e.v. 

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

Warm kisses from the Bahamas.

Love is the law, love under will.

Death of Sardanapalus, Eugène Delacroix

— ☉︎ in 12° ♈︎ : ☽︎ in 7° ♊︎ : ☿︎ : Ⅴⅹⅰ.

Confessions of a Hermit of Hadit

Atu IX, The Hermit, Thoth Tarot

To Saint Louis II of Bavaria and to Saint Wolfgang von Goethe.

To Francis I, "the Insatiable Bull," and to Louis XIV, "the Sun King."
To Cardinals Dubois and de Richelieu.
To François-René de Chateaubriand and to Antonin Artaud.
To Stu Ungar.
To Karl Lagerfeld.
To Milo Manara.
To Michael Jackson, Freddie Mercury, Amy Winehouse, and Queen Beyoncé Knowles.
And above all, of course, to Charlie Sheen.

Dear friends, beautiful and happy people, 

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

It is the 13th day of the Thelemic Holy Season, during which we traditionally meditate on the Qabalistic Mystery of the Path of Iod, that is, the IXth Tarot Trump, attributed to the zodiac sign of Virgo and called “The Hermit.”

And indeed, we observe on this card a genuine old-school hermit—a sort of Nicholas of Flüe (which was a direct ancestor, did you know, of the Great Royal Spouse Hypatia-Chloé, and thus of my beloved children, HIH Prince Aleister and HIH Princess Clothilde, may the gods grant them a good and long life), a sort, I say, of Nicholas of Flüe coming face-to-face, in the middle of a wheat field, with the nāḥāš Hadit, our Master, great god of the cities of Behedet, Damanhour in the Delta, and Edfu in Upper Egypt! 

This brings to mind the memory of a grand gathering, held in the spring of 2018 e.v. by an old friend of mine who was celebrating the conclusion of a sale of fake antiques to some oil-rich fool. 

An insufferable ultra-snob had cornered me, declared that he had just read the Book of the Law, and asked with a glint of unsettling strangeness (unheimliche) in his eyes: “Sir, WHO is Hadit?…” 

I had casually replied: “Well, if we base ourselves solely on the Discourse of this god, recorded in the Second Chapter of the Book—outside of any doctrinal or ideological framework—then the nāḥāš Hadit, our Master, is a sort of sadomasochistic Cheshire Cat who loves athletic women, ostentatious luxury, and sadistic violence—well… a Cheshire Cat who would be a serpent…” 

Now, the specific peculiarity of Thelema is that the first Commandment of our Law (AL 1, 6) enjoins us not to worship Hadit, but to be Hadit. 

That’s why I only believe in someone’s Thelemism if they end up incarcerated at the Moulins-Yzeure Detention Center, charged with Incitement to Drug Use and Exploitation of Vulnerable Persons in a State of Psychological Weakness. 

From all this, we deduce, of course, that the IXth Tarot Trump shows the nāḥāš Hadit, our Master, at the very moment when he’s posing to Nicholas of Flüe the question that Sir Aleister Crowley (may his merits protect us) asserts, in his Confessions, is the only one of any interest: “WHO ART THOU?” 

And indeed, “Who am I?” was the first question that the priest of the princes, Ankh-af-na-khonsu (blessing and worship to him), asked our august Queen, the beauteous goddess Nuit, when he was admitted into her august presence, as it is written (AL 1, 26). 

And it’s a difficult question. 

In my case, perhaps a bit particular, I would answer that what characterizes me first and foremost is what my friend Guy de la H. calls “the surreal aura conferred upon [me] by the Babylonian incest of [my] personal genealogy” (as none of my old gangsta readers are unaware, Mom was also my great-aunt. No, seriously.) 

In my youth, I was generally defined as a “spoiled rich kid with maximum alcoholic heredity and a suspicious level of inbreeding.”  

Since then, I’ve led the life of a dandy adventurer, involving a multitude of stamps in my passport, fleeting liaisons, bloody brawls, and sobering-up cells. You’d need three lifetimes to even approach the number of rumors about me. 

I’ve also witnessed a heap of strange things, in nearly every circle where the arts of mysticism and magic are practiced—things at the sight of which a bourgeois, a skeptic, or a materialist would instantly take refuge in the certainty that they were suffering from mental alienation. 

Me, a simple idling nobleman, it never occurred to me to doubt my senses—the result: I’ve been able to build myself up while marveling. 

A pure product of Old France, that is, a well-groomed young man who learned early that children don’t speak at the table, I’ve rubbed shoulders with more thieves and murderers than if I’d been born a social case, and shared the bed of more women than if I’d become a porn star—a vocation that my family’s prudishness thwarted at the last moment. 

I’ve traveled a lot. Religious, philosophical, or political convictions are worthless unless validated by direct experience—not to mention that, when it comes to women, I love to deliver abroad. 

But I feel myself becoming sedentary—For a truly contemplative man, isn’t it enough to occasionally rearrange his cushions? 

“But Sir,” you’ll ask, “what are you seeking in the end?!” 

“Friend, I’ve already answered that—I said: ‘I’m just looking for an angel with mismatched eyes,’ and everyone thought I was on psilocybin.” 

Mind you, I was on psilocybin.  

But that doesn’t mean I was wrong. 

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

Warm kisses from the Bahamas.  

Love is the law, love under will. 

— ☉︎ in 11° ♈︎ : ☽︎ in 23° ♉︎ : ♂︎ : Ⅴⅹⅰ.

To Excess

Atu X, Fortune, Thoth Tarot

"Sir Shumule is a being like few others one encounters, whether on the web or in life, of that breed of strange, indefinable fellows, great nobles endowed with dazzling superiority: culture, perfidy, excess, power, destructive humor—in a word, genius." — Alain Gobla 

Dear friends, beautiful and happy people, 

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

It is the 12th day of the Thelemic Holy Season, during which we traditionally meditate on the Qabalistic Mystery of the Path of Kaph, that is, the Xth Tarot card, attributed to the planet Jupiter and called “Fortune.” 

For a seasoned poker man like your old Sir, this Arcana, which heralds Luck, the good trend, the rush, the towering stacks of chips in a perpetually growing phase, is to be regarded only with a respect tinged with superstitious awe—and just as I gave the Atu XVIII (“The Moon”) the elegant nickname of Blue Allure, I usually designate the Atu X with one even more Gaga-esque: Poker Face. 

On this subject, Soror Neferusobek recently asked me on what occasion the idea of Thelema Hold’em (or Zug Hold’em)—the most exhilarating and utterly ruinous poker variant ever invented, and one that’s all the rage in our Sect—came to us. 

It was, dear friends, in 2009 e.v., during a Poker Marathon we completed in Divonne-les-Bains.

I was so unserious back then… 

In my Diary from that time, I sketched with a frivolous pen a detailed account of that stay—I share it with you tonight in confidence: even if you’re not particularly keen on poker, this read should be, for you, a relatively painless way to learn a thing or two about the Ups and Downs of life. 

À Outrance: The Seven Days of Divonne

Among all the spa towns where no one ever goes for a cure, I have a marked fondness for Divonne-les-Bains, a pleasant French enclave in Switzerland, essentially dedicated to gambling and tax evasion. 

I just spent seven days of pure delight there, reveling, in the rare moments when I oxygenated myself, in the countless benefits of its alpine air—I feel brand new :) 

A week, then, entirely devoted to Texas Hold’em—€500 table—Net profit: €19,906—If I were married, I’d be in trouble… 

My love for this hamlet of rentiers, where the square meter is the most expensive in France, doesn’t just come from the fact that you rarely encounter poor people there—it stems from a youthful romance, my passion for a sublime Divonnaise girl, a student at Ferney-Voltaire, whom I’d meet every weekend, and with whom, over a few months, I exhausted all the possibilities human eroticism offers in terms of locations, innovations, positions, aids, and perversions. 

I’m pretty sure we hold several world records. 

At any rate, to my knowledge, there’s nothing we didn’t do: the most seasoned tantrics look like Amish husbands by comparison, and every Marc Dorcel film like a sweet little romance. 

Then, one fine morning, my partner informed me that, having explored with me all that lust had to offer, she was happy to proceed, without regret, to the Catholic marriage she’d longed for with a boy she met at World Youth Day—and that I could take my leave; I was left sheepish, with the not-so-flattering feeling of having been, for six months, a living dildo. 

Those were the good old days :) 

Sunday. First night: table as usual—a mix: a few naive youngsters who think they’re Matt Damon because they know the odds, weathered fifty-somethings almost instantly on tilt, and, of course, poor suckers whose game mostly consists of poses copied from Gus Hansen. 

I clean them out. Absolutely everything. To the point that, when I go to cash out, the pit boss, despite himself, has his face askew and his hips twisted. 

I glide through the night. Making love to an Englishwoman is just masturbation. 

Monday. Second night: a beautiful slowplay with A-A. The runt I bust out stares at me like I’m raping his grandmother. 

I suppose it’s the first poker hand he’s ever witnessed, the democratization of the game having established, in all-public circles, a kind of tacit convention to play nothing but randomly, which, in its vagueness, allows one to accuse the other of insolent luck when they win through skill, and to boast of extraordinary psychological subtlety when winning on pure chance… 

These people deserve to be fleeced.

Tuesday. Sloth, sloth, sloth… 

Fix tells me he met Jennifer Lopez in a Paris club and exchanged two words with her, under the gaze of a bodyguard with an extraordinarily hostile, furrowed face. 

— “I wouldn’t like that…” 

— “Eh… He’s just doing his gorilla job…” 

— “No. I wouldn’t like to meet JLo.” 

— “???” 

— “You know that weird feeling when you run into someone intimidating with whom, the night before, you dreamed you were making love?... It’s strange, it inhibits you… Everyone’s had that experience at least once, like being questioned by the English teacher you were taking doggy-style in a dream a few hours earlier…” 

— “Very true, it’s inhibiting…”  

—“So imagine what it must be like to make small talk in 2009 with the person you’ve been jerking off to since 1999!!! No, it’s a lost cause…” 

Third night: after hours of dead calm, a fine bit of acting on my part. I’ve got K-K. I limp in. A slimy, shifty fatso with the sly, servile grin of a weasel raises me. 

Everyone folds. I call. 

Flop: K-K-10. 

Ouch. I’m first to act. How do I force this sneaky filth, named Jean-Luc, to hand over the stacks of chips behind which, thanks to his scoliosis, he’s barely visible?

I check. He does too. 

Turn: J. 

I check again, hoping he’s chasing the straight. 

Bingo, he bets huge. 

I pretend to deliberate endlessly. Then call with all the timidity I can muster. 

River: a worthless 7. 

Terrible moment… I can’t risk checking in ambush and wasting my four kings… 

So I go all-in: after once again seeming to wrestle with dreadful dilemmas for an abnormally long time, I fake a tilt, shouting, “Oh, screw it! All-in!”—and I shove my box forward with bitterness, stand up, start buttoning my jacket, gathering my things… 

Slowly… slowly… the ersatz makes up his mind and pushes his stack in with muffled care…

LOL :) Stu Ungar, the greatest poker player of all time, said there’s nothing more thrilling than the look on a mediocre player who thinks he’s an expert when he realizes he’s been had. I confirm! :) 

Jean-Luc, seeing my hand, instantly morphed into an extra from an Elie Wiesel film and physically shrank by a good three centimeters. Maybe five. 

After re-buying, it took him another solid hour to regain a human appearance and say to me, with veiled threats in his voice: “I’ll remember this, sir… I’ll remember this…” 

Wednesday. Fourth night: Blackout. I play tight while sipping. 

Thursday. Charlot has me try a rum-based cocktail that completely blows me away. A few neurons short and a few chromosomes extra, I mock the rolls of an American tourist’s wife a bit too loudly; her husband, utterly elephantine, demands an explanation, and I pretend not to understand his gibberish while continuing my lousy jabs. 

I’d learn the next day that I owe my physical integrity to the cool-headedness of my companions, who dragged me out of the bar while the staff held the line. 

Fifth night: Not in any state to play. Plus, Charlot’s found himself a girl with one of the finest asses I’ve ever seen in my life. 

When I compliment him on it, adding, quite accurately, that she “really gives me a raging hard-on” (sic), he darkens and tells me it’s not a girlfriend but his little sister. I go to bed. 

Personal note: If, by some miracle, these lines fall under the eyes of the very beautiful auburn-haired young lady, clearly from an excellent family, to whom, last Friday, the tiny Malagasy waiter at the Baccara brasserie in Divonne-les-Bains held the door as she left, saying “Thank you, miss!”—and who replied to this humble employee, “Thank you for what, monkey?”—may she kindly leave me a message, and consider that the tall gentleman having breakfast seated at the back left already has the honor of asking for her hand. 

We spend the afternoon playing Thelema Hold’em, the chicest game of the moment: get yourself a deck of the Tarot painted by Lady Frieda Harris under Aleister Crowley’s direction; keep only the Minor Arcana and Honors; then play, as if it were a regular deck, an alternation of Pineapple and 2-7 Lowball, in No Limit. 

You’ll tell me how it goes :) 

Sixth night: my toughest session. 

Not technically, since the hands I played posed no strategic issues, but because of a smug, fat idiot, dumb as a tenor, who had total luck that night. 

At the penultimate hand, I found myself heads-up with this boor, who’d been utterly invincible for six hours and chip leader beyond belief. 

I had suited A-Q, and the board showed Q-10-8-9 rainbow—giving me top pair with the best kicker possible but leaving me losing, whatever the river, if, as I suspected, this flabby moron had come in with a jack. 

He raises hard. 

I hesitate and choose (I must have been tilting!!!) to call. 

Then comes an Irish Coffee, ordered by the fatso at my suggestion. 

“Oumphhhh!!! It’s super-good!!!!” he exclaims. 

“Isn’t it?” I smile, eyes glued to the dealer’s hands. 

River: 3 of spades. He shoves all-in. 

I think, then laugh and say: “Good hand or not?” 

He replies, “Super-good!” (his word of the night :)), with tons of conviction. 

But you don’t fool old Shumule: the tone he used for the Irish Coffee (sincere) had nothing to do with the one he used for his hand. 

The downside of a limited vocabulary: I knew instantly he was bluffing. 

— “Call.” 

And the ex-chip leader pales, showing a pitiful A-K—a famous hand but, in this case, crushed by my pair of queens. 

Saturday. Colossal ruckus at the restaurant. 

Face-to-face with an ex, stunningly beautiful but who, at the time of our breakup, had loudly proclaimed everywhere her firm intent to gut me.

She makes a visible (oh, so visible) grimace when she sees me roll in. 

Me, old-school boxer style, I rise to the challenge—I sit next to her and launch into my grand charm offensive. The ice melts fast. 

Soon we’re best buddies, giggling like two old party pals—Alas! with the wine’s help, she moves to personal digs, then reprimands, and, despite the pleas of all the guests, to a full-blown scene.

Soon, she’s all you can hear, berating me in this poor restaurant… 

The waiter steps in… She tells him to buzz off… He insists… She elbows him!!!... Here we go!... “Get lost, jackass!!!” LOL… 

He tries again: “Call me the manager!!!” she screams… 

The poor waiter turns green—but what choice does he have? The whole place heard, manager included, who rushes over, all honey: “I’m sorry, miss, I’ll send another waiter…” 

She calms down a bit. We have dessert and coffee in relative peace. 

Sadly, as we’re leaving, the waiter who’d so annoyed my friend dares to reappear between her and the coatroom, asking her to intervene with the manager on his behalf… “He fired me because of you, miss…” 

“Oh, you!!! You’re starting to piss me off!!!” she starts yelling again.  

The manager rushes back, offers us a digestif, says to his ex-waiter, “You’re still here?” and smooths things over… 

Fifteen minutes later, in the cool alleys, my friend walks in silence, lost in thought. 

Then, snapping out of her reverie, she says: “Well, in the end, that waiter took the fall for you… He got sacked, and it serves you right!” 

Seventh night: poker being life in miniature, the cards you’re dealt are just a matter of luck or, if you will, karma. 

The difference between winning and losing, as everyone knows, lies in reading the opponent. But even then, there’s always someone more perceptive than you. 

The real secret is magical thinking. 

Take this Saturday night, for example: in the ultimate heads-up, I’m second in chips, just barely, and the chip leader, an excellent player, has just re-raised me for my entire stack. 

I’ve got J-J, and the board shows K-10-A-A-5. 

It’s obvious I should fold. 

But I’m so invested in the hand that I waver. 

My opponent gives nothing away. 

I’m about to fold when I notice, around his neck, a pendant with the Chinese ideogram for the lunar sign of the Pig. And the answer dawns on me, clear as day: “I’m a lunar Rat (yes… I know… it’s been much remarked upon…), the one that follows the Pig in the cycle of years and thus supplants it… It’s an omen: I have to win…” 

Stupid, you say? Yet I shove my stack in, and the showdown reveals he had only suited Q-10…

So there you have the gist of my stay in Divonne, which isn’t quite over yet, since I’m writing these lines from my room at the Grand Hôtel-Domaine de Divonne.

Vacations are like poker games, and like life itself: we’ve had ups and downs… we’ve had to put up with fools, mediocrities, and villains… but, all in all, we had a blast, and we’re sorry when it ends. 

— Sir Shumule, August 2009 e.v. 

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

Warm kisses from the Bahamas. 

Love is the law, love under will. 

— ☉︎ in 10° ♈︎ : ☽︎ in 8° ♉︎ : ☽︎ : Ⅴⅹⅰ.

Hetaera

Atu XI, Lust, Thoth Tarot

The goddess Babalon is, according to the Gnostic Creed, the mother of all men. Yet, the goddess Babalon is, by her own admission, a prostitute. Each of us is therefore, consequently, both a god and an SOB. – Sir Shumule 

Women, machines of immodesty, are born for immodesty, and those who refuse it are made only to languish in contempt. – Marquis de Sade (quoted by Sir Shumule in commentary on AL 3, 55: < let all chaste women be utterly despised among you >) 

Dear friends, beautiful and happy people, 

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

It is the 11th day of the Thelemic Holy Season, during which we traditionally meditate on the Qabalistic Mystery of the Path of Teth, that is, the XIth Tarot card, attributed to the zodiac sign of Leo and called “Lust.” 

I recall, on this subject, that one of my female readers — an unrepentant fashionista type, yet passionate about literature — once asked me: "Sir, you write fabulously well – where did you get that style?" 

I replied: "It was long ago, dear friend… I must have been four years old… The governess who taught me to write had an enormous bosom. Every time I traced my letters correctly, she praised me effusively, tenderly pressing me against her. My young mind made the connection: If I write well, I get to touch big boobs. There you have it." 

Oh! Seven times blessed, terrifying, and sublime feminine energy! That of Atu XI, that of Babalon! 

In truth, this goddess — whom the Heathen call "Nature," hoping to turn her into Something instead of Someone so they can tame her — the goddess Babalon, I say, reigns supreme over the things of this world. 

Only that which amuses, serves, or delights the Scarlet Woman succeeds here below — and that which amuses, serves, or delights the Scarlet Woman unfailingly succeeds. 

[Would you like a bit of Holy Qabalah? I recently realized that the word Lust, the title of Atu XI of the Tarot, on which Babalon is depicted, is said in Hebrew as אתרוג (etrog), with a numerical value of 610, which is the same as the English word There, recurring in the Book of the Law — And it is written < There is success > (AL 3, 69), which we can thus read as: "Atu XI = success"!] 

Each of your failures, dear Friends, has come from your ignorance of the planet in the hands of an arch-maximalist version of Kim Kardashian, appointed Global Dictatrix — commanding, on the magical plane, all the forces of Matter — invested, on the political plane, with full autocratic powers over all the Nations of the world — freely disposing, as an individual, of all the wealth circulating on Earth — perpetually drunk, perpetually lustful, perpetually in PMS — and assured, as far as her person is concerned, of absolute impunity… 

Now, everything becomes clear! — and the tsunami that kills hundreds of thousands of innocent people is much more amusing when viewed from this angle :) 

Babalon preaches the freedom of passions — She knows no taboos, and even less so crimes… 

Question: But what becomes of Morality, Goodness, and Democratic Values with a goddess like that?!? 

Answer: Morality, Goodness, and Democratic Values are for the people — And we, Thelemites, are against the people (AL 2, 25) — Babalon, for her part, is a courtesan: she calls Pimps, Gigolos, and Johns what we name Initiates, Heroes, and ordinary People (or, in Thelemic terms: Hermits, Lovers, and Men of Earth (cf. AL 1, 40)) — meaning she is of an extreme, outrageous, obscene elitism — downright pornographic, even (the Heathen clumsily tried to grasp this Mystery by creating the concept of "natural selection"). 

Moreover, being (thus) a courtesan — and by courtesan, I mean: high-flying hetaera — Babalon is necessarily young, hot, and cunning (if the Divine Marquis had made the heroine of Juliette, specifically Babalonian, an old, ugly, stupid, and repulsive woman, the work would hold no interest whatsoever) — she is a concentrate of privileges. 

I tried, during my appearance before the Riom Court of Appeal, to explain this by quoting Machiavelli: "It is better to be impetuous than circumspect, for nature is a woman who can only be overcome by tormenting her."

– "So," asked President Vignon, "you admit to tormenting women?" 

– "Not at all," I replied, "I only torment those I wish to overcome: the beautiful, the charming, the interesting — I swear to you that the ugly, unpleasant, and boring ones have nothing to fear from me!" 

He told me I should "be ashamed" (sic). 

The goddess Babalon, our Mother to all — or, more precisely, our MILF to all — teaches in essence: We are on Earth to enjoy life — everything else is either trying to sell you something or the attempt of a diseased organism to contaminate healthy ones. 

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

Warm kisses from the Bahamas,

Love is the law, love under will.

 

Goddess Babalon

—☉︎ in 9° ♈︎ : ☽︎ in 23° ♈︎ : ☉︎ : Ⅴⅹⅰ.

Gigayacht

Atu XII, The Hanged Man, Thoth Tarot

The Christian sees life as a vast ocean of darkness and despair. The Thelemite charters a zillionaire’s gigayacht.

Dear friends, beautiful and happy people, 

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

It is the 10th day of the Thelemic Holy Season, during which we traditionally meditate on the Qabalistic Mystery of the Path of Mem, that is, the XIIth Tarot card, attributed to the planet Neptune and called “The Hanged Man.” 

In divination, this card heralds Misfortune, in the least funky sense of the term, and, symbolically, sums up incarnate existence as a kind of endless and calamitous sea voyage, quite comparable to the one endured by the holy king of Ithaca, Odysseus of a thousand wiles (may his merits protect us). 

Ah! < the awful Sea >, as it is written in our Holy Books (Liber Cordis Cincti Serpente 3, 44).

You are not unaware that, in the Jungian “Totem Test,” the question by which the psychologist prompts the patient to reveal their vision of Life is: “What does the high sea evoke for you?” 

When Cathy, my uncompromising psychoanalyst friend— the very archetype of frigid beauty— once subjected me to this Test, I knew nothing of its significance. And to the question: “What does the high sea evoke for you?” I replied: “When a friend invited me to go cruising in Indonesia on his boat—we fished for sharks, we had a great laugh…” 

Then, seeing the dismayed look on my interlocutor’s face, I quickly added: “Alright, let’s say: me, in a deckchair, on the deck of a zillionaire’s gigayacht, right hand in the champagne cooler, left hand on Rihanna’s backside.”

Indeed, for someone who was sentenced to five years in prison for their philosophical and religious beliefs, I worry astonishingly little about the concept of Adversity… 

It’s true that, religiously, I am devoted to the gods of Thelema—that, philosophically, I am a disciple of the Gnostic Saints—and that, in practice, my unwavering code of conduct is, in all circumstances: There are two rules for living happily: the first is to give no importance to minor worries; the second is that all worries are minor. 

In short: Our gods are cooler than yours, and they are my playmates on this beautiful and interesting planet. 

Generally speaking, all my actions are for our august lady, the beauteous goddess Nuit—“Hail the Space Queen,” as our friend Corentin says—and my personal religion boils down to this: once I understood that life is a courtly love affair between me and a Cleopatra raised to the power of a thousand, everything became clear—I feel far more akin to a Beyoncé, Britney Spears, or Selena Gomez fan in their devotion to their “queen” than to 99.9999% of the global occult community. 

When Misfortune strikes me, it’s because Nuit is in Gal Gadot-as-the-Evil-Queen mode, the Hunter has upset her, and I’m the one taking the fall for it—When Happiness comes my way, it’s because she’s in Nefertiti mode, pleased with my service, and has ordered me to be showered with gold—In both cases, it’s super sexy! 

Did you know that, in ancient Israel, they used to give the condemned, just before putting them to death (following King Solomon’s recommendation: “Give strong liquors to the one who is perishing, and wine to those in bitter distress; let them drink and forget their poverty and remember their misery no more” (Proverbs 31:6-7)), a cup of very strong wine mixed with a strange herb like datura?—We can logically deduce that the condemned would depart like a barfly thinking they were a witch flying off on a broomstick. And that carrying out the execution after that was pure cruelty: the poor soul was already punished enough by having to drink Near Eastern wine! 

If I were to perish on the scaffold, a Château Latour 1st Grand Cru Classé 1945 would do, and replace the datura with some robust gaperon. 

Of course, that wouldn’t be enough to intoxicate a drunkard of my caliber to the point of forgetting that Macron rejected my plea for clemency—which isn’t very nice after all the good I’ve said about his wife—It’d probably take following Solomon’s injunction of strong liquors, and while an Adios Motherfucker cocktail seems fitting under the circumstances, I’d probably opt for a Looping-Papaye instead, thanks to its marvelous quality of intoxication that would—here we go again—make me feel like I’m heading to the guillotine on a yacht.

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

Warm kisses from the Bahamas.

Love is the law, love under will.

— ☉︎ in 8° ♈︎ : ☽︎ in 8° ♈︎ : ♄︎ : Ⅴⅹⅰ.

Epectasy

Atu XIII, Death, Thoth Tarot

Sardanapalus, son of Anakyndaraxes, built Anchialus and Tarsus in a single day; stranger, eat, drink, and make love, for all else is vanity. — Epitaph of King Sardanapalus  

Dear friends, beautiful and happy people,

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

Today is the 9th day of the Thelemic Holy Season, during which we traditionally meditate on the Qabalistic Mystery of the Path of Nun—that is, the 13th Tarot card, attributed to the zodiacal sign of Scorpio and called "Death." 

Now that’s a catchy topic! 

My dear friend Prudence—who looks like a customized absinthe leaf when she’s in shrew mode—my dear friend Prudence, I say, queen of the "Proust Questionnaire," tells me that no matter how witty the people she subjects to this Questionnaire are, they always show signs of unease when faced with the question: "How would you like to die?" 

 

"Generally," she says, "the subject escapes with a nervous laugh, a quip, or a platitude, all while squirming… Funny…" 

Don’t you find it odd that meditating on death is so disagreeable to us, even though our final passing is the only absolute certainty we have down here? (Which is why I never turn down an adventure, no matter how risky… I’m not afraid it’ll end badly since, either way, we all end badly…) 

I can’t take "the Grim Reaper" seriously… To me, she has nothing of the Thirteenth Tarot Card: she’s not eerie—nor swamp-like—nor a badly dressed skeleton lugging around farming tools—In our religion, death is a party (AL 2, 41), and trust me, my funeral will be a hip, chic, and vogue affair. 

The only thing that fascinates me about famous deaths is their "last words." 

I suspect some of them wrote their final words in advance… so I set out to craft my own—but to no avail: I’m so unmorbid that inspiration has abandoned me… I considered the cheesy pun "I’m just passing through," but I was told it’s already taken… not to mention that a "last word" requires a bourgeois, cozy death… It’s harder to grab your entourage’s attention during a plane crash… at best, I might whisper to the flight attendant as the plane plummets: "You must really regret not giving in to my advances earlier…" 

Camus said that, of all philosophical questions, suicide was the only one that held any interest—and it’s quite irritating to think that Camus, from his final resting place, might find what I write uninteresting, even though, in this case, it’s also what I think of his work—Anyway, it’s Scorpio Day: let’s talk suicide. 

It won’t be easy. I might be the least funereal person alive—but still, life is mortal, and I don’t want to run into Camus in the afterlife without being able to say: "So, Albert?... With your chauffeur’s name… Huh?... And now?... Not calmed down?..."

The scorpion is the only animal that kills itself when surrounded by flames—a rather beautiful lesson, which essentially says: suicide is always admirable because it means remaining, against all odds, the master of one’s fate. 

Personally, I find life far too marvelous to consider ending it—but I claim I’d rather be crushed by a Rolls than a thirty-eight-ton truck, and I have no objections to the dandyism of certain suicides—Perhaps, in the end, those Hollywood actresses who killed themselves to never age achieved the highest form of voluntary death… Either way, in our religion, life is a party too, and the thing about parties is they don’t last—reason enough not to rush the exit. 

The last time someone asked me, "How would you like to die?" I replied: I want to die of epectasy (as we call in France a sudden heart attack at the moment of orgasm)—Or die of old age at 120, tenderly cared for by my loved ones—Or die of epectasy at 120 because one of my loved ones cared for me a bit too tenderly.  

Broadly speaking, understand qabalistically where the conflict lies: 

When facing a serial killer eager to add you to his tally, your Nephesh (the animal part of your soul) cries, "Mercy, no, don’t kill me just yet!" while your Ruach (the psycho-affective part of your soul) says, "Go ahead, old man, this farce of an existence has dragged on too long…" But all the while, your Neshamah (the divine part of your soul) keeps repeating: "Life is a river of ambrosia that one sails down in a nacre boat." (cf. Liber Cordis Cincti Serpente 1, 39). 

That’s the whole tragedy—funky, punchy, sexy, but a tragedy nonetheless—of the human condition. 

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

Warm kisses from the Bahamas.

Love is the law, love under will.

— ☉︎ in 7° ♈︎ : ☽︎ in 23° ♓︎ : ♀︎ : Ⅴⅹⅰ.