Vigorously Tumbling the Young Widow: The Ultimate LVX Mnemonic

Dear friends, beautiful and happy people,

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

I was just asked to explain the L.V.X. signs, which reminded me of some quite edifying anecdot:

There was a time — in the days of our blessed Abbey of Thelema —when Frater Y, although he could recite in five languages — hell, in gang signs if necessary — everything the Prophet (blessing & worship to him) had ever written about L.V.X., still did not understand this Formula in the deep, Binah sense of the word. 

As a result, his Dawn Resh had a distinctly stiff and awkward quality.

So I told him:

“Look: L — the Sign of Isis Mourning: Imagine the barely thirty-year-old widow of a recently deceased filthy-rich old codger. One of those widows that only Marc Dorcel really knows how to stage — the type played by Anissa Kate (of course you know who Anissa Kate is…). She wears the black veil and, more generally, the full mourning outfit à la Madeleine Scopello.

V — the Sign of Apophis: Suddenly appears a young employee of the deceased, toward whom the old man had been particularly kind and benevolent during his lifetime. He is a very handsome boy, but sneaky, vicious, utterly unscrupulous — a little monster of ingratitude. The mere sight of the sexy widow ignites in him an irresistible Oedipal rut. Since he is clever, since he is rock-hard, since she has been sexually starved for years, and since the proximity of death makes people both lubricious and expeditious, she yields to his arguments. That very night, during the funeral vigil, he vigorously bangs the grieving widow.

X — the Sign of Osiris Risen: The little scoundrel has a very big cock and an excellent hip thrust, so the (now thoroughly consoled) widow places him at the head of the deceased’s financial empire. The usurper has just saved himself twenty years of psychoanalysis and can now simply enjoy the power and Anissa Kate while wallowing in luxury. Hence the name of the Formula.”

“Vigorously tumbling the young widow” became Frater Y’s personal mnemonic, and his morning Resh has been much more fluid ever since.

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 24° ♈︎ : ☽︎ in 13° ♓︎ : ♂︎ : Ⅴⅹⅰⅰ.

𓄿𓎛𓂧 𓇋𓈖𓏌

Tell Them Sir Shumule Is Here

Dear friends, beautiful and happy people,

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

Last Sunday was May 3rd, and it occurs to me that the password for the Gnostic Mass I celebrated on this same date, in the Year Vvii (2021 e.v.), was Tell Them Sir Shumule Is Here.

I also remember that the Agape following the ceremony was somewhat chaotic, because a wonderful woman named Caroline (my existence is littered with Carolines) saw fit to remind everyone at the table, in front of the whole gathering, of the amusing circumstances of our first meeting.

This had taken place a few years earlier at a party where I was simultaneously flirting with two superb girls, one at each end of the room. 

The back-and-forth eventually became exhausting, so I finally brought them together, slipped an arm around each of their waists, and exclaimed: “I want to be with both of you!” To which Caroline replied: “But… we’re sisters!”

Those were the good times.

Dear friends, last Sunday’s Holy Reading was Liber LXV: Liber Cordis Cincti Serpente sub figurâ אדני, Chapter 5, verse 65, and Liber Liberi vel Lapidis Lazuli Adumbratio Kabbalæ Ægyptiorum sub figurâ VII, Prologue, verses 1 to 3.

65. So also is the end of the book, and the Lord Adonai is about it on all sides like a Thunderbolt, and a Pylon, and a Snake, and a Phallus, and in the midst thereof he is like the Woman that jetteth out the milk of the stars from her paps; yea, the milk of the stars from her paps.

Commentary: This enumeration of threatening phallic symbols, followed by the image of a woman in her symbolically “masculine” function (powerful jets of white milk), curiously refers to the invariable and ritual cross-dressing of the hyper-virile hero found in all Traditions: in the North, Thor at the court of King Thrym; in Greece, Achilles among the daughters of Lycomedes (or Heracles with Queen Omphale); in Japan, Yamato Takeru among the Kumasō, etc.

The Arcane is that which is personified by Týr in the Edda: rigor encloses energy in order to transform, through channeling, the vain outpouring of Chesed into vigorous martiality. 

Military discipline and ascetic discipline are the most obvious illustrations of this Mystery — which is also why geniuses only marry bitches and Sir Shumule only crushes on Cancer natives.

(During the blessed hours of our dear Abbey of Thelema, a Frater who was pestering me to receive one of his childhood friends who was “astrologically challenged” asked me what the “special cases” were that, according to our Rule, justified an exception to the prohibition on receiving a Cancer native. I replied: “Sofia Vergara, Margot Robbie, Michelle Rodriguez, Selena Gomez and Ariana Grande.”)

Finally, let us not forget: The Prophet (blessing & worship to him) identifies the Woman-with-the-Triumphant-Breast spoken of in this verse with our august Queen Nuit.

Now, it is our august Queen Nuit who is designated by the first Hé ה of the Holy Tetragrammaton.

The letter Hé ה rules, on the Tree of Life, the Path of Aquarius ♒︎, which connects Chokhmah to Tiphereth.

This Path is, in the runic plane, signed by Berkano ᛒ.

The Book of the Heart Girt with a Serpent thus ends on a fundamental Shumulism:

“Berkano = Boobs”

Amen.

***

Prologue of the Unborn

1. Into my loneliness comes —

Commentary: Of this verse, the Prophet (blessing & worship to him) says: 

“‘loneliness’, i.e. of the Babe of the Abyss.”

Now, the Babe of the Abyss is the spiritual level corresponding to Da’at and the sign of Cancer, which brings us back to:

1. Bitches with arrogant boobs.  

2. Da’at Darling. 

3. The fact that, Cancer being the feminine sign absolutely, “into my loneliness comes” can be heard in many ways… #CumIntoMyLoneliness 

Note that Frater Alion (aka Frater 273) interprets “loneliness” as an allusion to the Hermit, which is complementary: the absolutely seminal.

The initiatic Grade corresponding to Virgo is Ipsissimus: the Babe, image of the One (ipseity, i.e. loneliness), is found everywhere present, even to the furthest confines of the low end (♋︎). 

The verse can then be read in the other direction: Jonah, in the whale, at the height of anguish and restriction, intoning his hymn: “In my distress I called upon the Lord, He answered me; from the belly of Sheol I cried out, You heard my voice,” etc.

But that is not a very Thelemic attitude — and to all the “servants of the Star & the Snake” (AL II, 21), I say this: if you find yourself in the belly of the whale, like Jonah or Pinocchio, stand up through its blowhole as if it were the sunroof of a limousine, raise your arms and shout: “Wahoooouuuuuuuuuuhhh!!!!”

2. The sound of a flute in dim groves that haunt the uttermost hills.

Commentary: In Hebrew, flute is חליל, gematria 78, which is the number of cards in the Tarot and the numerical value of Mezla, the direct Connection of man to GOD, the Influence of the Superconsciousness on Consciousness via the Path of the Priestess.

‘The Piper’s calling you to join him!’

3. Even from the brave river they reach to the edge of the wilderness.

Commentary: If we interpret the symbol of the river as psychologists interpret it in children’s drawings (river = social norm: the interest lies in how the drawer places it), we observe that, oddly enough, we can synthesize everything we have learned from these first three verses by quoting Lao-Tzu, first among the Magi, who renounced social norms and took refuge in the wilderness:

“I seem like a newborn who has not yet smiled at his mother. I am detached from everything, as if I do not know where to go.

The men of the multitude have abundance; I alone am like a man who has lost everything.

I am a man of limited mind, I am devoid of knowledge.

The men of the multitude are full of light; I alone am as if plunged into darkness.

The men of the world are gifted with penetration; I alone have a troubled and confused mind.

I am vague like the sea; I drift as if I knew not where to stop. 

The men of the multitude all have capacity; I alone am stupid; I resemble a rustic man.

I alone differ from other men because I revere the Mother who nourishes all beings.”

If you are a Thelemite — that is to say, above all, a Lover of Nuit — and you do not feel the very clear impression that these words were written for you — what am I saying? BY you! — then you are doing it wrong.

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 12° ♉︎ : ☽︎ in 1° ♐︎ : ☉︎ : Ⅴⅹⅰⅰ.

𓄿𓎛𓂧 𓇋𓈖𓏌

Satyrs Wear Gaultier

Dearest friends, beautiful and happy people,

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

The Holy Reading for this Tuesday is Liber Liberi vel Lapidis Lazuli Adumbratio Kabbalæ Ægyptiorum sub figurâ VII, Prologue, verses 8 to 11 — and I am rereading with delight the notes I jotted down in 2009 e.v. on this pericope in my Magical Journal — the only manuscript of mine that the entity which serves as France’s judicial power was unable to seize and confiscate during the auto-da-fé of 2022 e.v.

Behold:

8. To me only the distant flute, the abiding vision of Pan. 

Commentary: « The piper’s calling you to join him », that is, to become once again a carefree young horned god.

It reminds me of the recurring dream I’ve been having lately:

A radiant young girl, all freshness and graceful charms, comes gambolling down a street in my 16th arrondissement. Little by little, satyrs in the utmost degree of lust begin to follow her. Frightened, she starts running, now pursued by a horde of these satyrs, and she takes refuge in a tree. Unfortunately for her, the tree is full of satyrs.

Ah, the satyr… charming little goat, all appetite and no tailoring. 

But I transcended the species long ago: I am what happens when a satyr reads Sir Aleister Crowley, discovers silk shirts, and learns how to make the nymphs beg.

9. On all sides Pan to the eye, to the ear; 

Commentary: It sounds like a torrid and ultra-spectacular RnB show (I saw Destiny’s Child in 2001 in Holland and I haven’t gone soft since).

That said, the gods do not show — they manifest. 

The difference is the same as between any woman and my wife Chloé: one performs, the other simply is the Manifestation of Nuit.

Addendum 2026 e.v.: That is my religion.

Now, this morning, while rereading the New Comment, I noted this remark by the Prophet (blessing & worship to him) : “For the people, our religion is a cult of the Sun.”

The important part here is “for the people” — that is, for the Heathen, for the “honest but mediocre savers” mentioned by Soror Abigaïl Awân in her immortal statement to the investigators of the Commission Against Cultic Deviances during the Troubles of the Year Vviii:

“Don’t bother. My parents are honest but mediocre savers. Anyone reproaching Sir Shumule for having ‘alienated me from them’ makes me laugh out loud. Sir Shumule, now he’s got class!” — Soror Abigaïl Awân, April 2022 e.v.

Thelema is absolutely not a cult of the Sun. It is the exclusive cult of the Goddess Nuit — that is, of She whom the Qabalists call the blessed Ain Soph, and whom Saint Wolfgang von Goethe (may his merits protect us) calls “the Eternal Feminine [that] draws us upward.”

In that case, why the hermeneutics?

For nothing. For the pleasure. For the lulz.

Books serve only as means. They are useless to those who do not know Nuit — and, of course, useless to those who already know Her.

This brings us to the recent note addressed to me by Soror Jezebel: 

“I just had a huge fight with my girlfriend. If ‘God is conjugal harmony’ [cf. Passionate Peace], then I just took a cautionary trip to hell, like Pinocchio in the whale or Sir Shumule at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting.”

Indeed, one must grasp and penetrate this Mystery of the Feminine — that is, of the Negative — which, in its high form, is the sexiness of the packaging that gives access to the Infinite, and in its low form, is the song of the sirens that draws the saint king of Ithaca, Odysseus of a thousand wiles (may his merits protect us), onto the reefs.

One of my party companions — officially a cardiologist, though he remains a carabin for life — once told me, by way of illustration:

“When I prescribe heavy medication to a patient, the first thing he does when he gets home is read the leaflet, but only to check the ‘side effects,’ out of pure morbid masochism… He can’t wait to find out how the remedy might harm him…”

Of course, the meaning of his remark was: the medical order didn’t bother burning all the midwives just so they wouldn’t be obeyed blindly today — and since a seriously ill man is quick to swallow everything he’s prescribed, what does it matter whether he knows the “side effects” or not?

In my opinion, this specifically “white” taste for “side effects” dates back to the Sixties, like the fuzz pedal: it was precisely for their side effects that our Boomer parents took LSD and antiparkinsonian vasodilators.

That said, the system eventually bites its own tail: current appetite suppressants have such deforming and irreversible side effects on the bodies of the women who take them to lose weight that they might as well stay fat — in any case, no man will ever want to see them naked again.

But enough! The Path of War פ is the First Step: it leads to the Path of Desire ט, which leads to the Garden of Delights ד, as any native Cancer bitch making a loud scene over maximum sexual tension knows full well.

10. The perfume of Pan pervading, the taste of him utterly filling my mouth, so that the tongue breaks forth into a weird and monstrous speech.

Commentary: Perfume is the invisible signature of the gods upon the flesh. Mine is composed of oud, night-blooming jasmine, and the faint, expensive musk of sin committed with impeccable manners. 

[Note 2026 e.v.: I have been wearing Le Mâle by Gaultier since 1998 e.v., but I do not recall whether this paragraph was a direct allusion to that wonderful fragrance.]

11. The embrace of him intense on every centre of pain and pleasure. 

Commentary: Pain and Pleasure are not opposites, they are lovers — and rather badly behaved ones. 

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 14° ♉︎ : ☽︎ in 25° ♐︎ : ♂︎ : Ⅴⅹⅰi.

𓄿𓎛𓂧 𓇋𓈖𓏌

Pan Eternal

Dearest friends, beautiful and happy people,

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

I have received from a reader — visibly a Martinist and a “spiritualist” Freemason — a rather long list of questions concerning (I quote) “the place of the god Pan in the Thelemic pantheon.” I suppose he is unaware that I am a student of the late Leptopœcile Sophiæ, whom people of his obedience — and now, like all the judges of France — consider and portray as the traitor to be hated above all others, the exact equivalent of the old evil wizard whom Ariana Grande hurls into a lava crater at the end of the “Break Free” video.

Well, there is no such thing as an illegitimate question… But where to begin?

Well then! At the beginning:

As you know, we do not celebrate a “New Year” on January 1st (since the Thelemic year begins on March 20th), but we dedicate this day to celebrating the great Pan — mischievous, lascivious, unpredictable Arcadian protector of shepherds, of the unheimliche, and of sensual pleasure — whom the Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica has made not only a saint, but an italicized saint (a major one).

This is of very good omen, even in the dreadful context of a post-New Year’s Eve hangover. The great Pan represents the Divine Itself manifesting in Incarnation. He is the One made manifest: the All (Πάν/Pan) that objectifies divine Unicity — which, being eternally unknowable, ineffable, inconceivable, incomprehensible, etc. — equates, in our human consciousness, to Zero, the symbol of our august Queen Nuit, the blessed Infinite, that is to say Nothingness, as it is written: “let it be ever thus; that men speak not of Thee as One but as None” (AL I:27). Thus the supreme spiritual realization (attainment) is called the “Night of Pan.”

Technically, Magick teaches that when Divine Energy manifests in a person on the spiritual plane, it produces Hirat (the “sacred Terror”); when it manifests on the psycho-affective plane, it produces laughter; and when it manifests on the physical plane, it produces the sexual impulse. This is why the great Pan is he who triggers panic fear — he whose appearance makes the inhabitants of Olympus laugh — and he whose rut is perpetual: “the lust of the goat is the bounty of God,” as it is said (Saint William Blake, Proverbs of Hell).

Under the reign of Tiberius (i.e., at the opening of the Christian parenthesis), an Egyptian pilot sailing off Paxos heard, as everyone knows, a mysterious voice ordering him to announce “the death of the Great Pan.” This was because the entire Christian project was to deny divine Immanence, to separate the High from the Low, and to evacuate God into the heavens.

In 1904 e.v. (i.e., at the closing of the Christian parenthesis), the poet — that is, the prophet — Jacques d’Adelswärd-Fersen landed in Sicily, at the foot of the Villa Tiberius, and, seized by trance while contemplating the Beauty of the place, cried out: “Not only is the great Pan not dead, but I now know that he will never die!”

I. Born Naked, Died Faun (Panic At The Disco)

Of course, the idea of designating an amoral and libidinous molester of nymphs as the patron saint of supreme spiritual attainment may seem vaguely embarrassing in this full post-#MeToo era…

And yet! Thelemites recoil before nothing, and this is indeed the case. We generally justify it scripturally as follows:

It is written:

“Behold! the Abyss of the Great Deep. Therein is a mighty dolphin, lashing his sides with the force of the waves. There is also an harper of gold, playing infinite tunes. 

Then the dolphin delighted therein, and put off his body, and became a bird. The harper also laid aside his harp, and played infinite tunes upon the Pan-pipe. Then the bird desired exceedingly this bliss, and laying down its wings became a faun of the forest. The harper also laid down his Pan-pipe, and with the human voice sang his infinite tunes. Then the faun was enraptured, and followed far; at last the harper was silent, and the faun became Pan in the midst of the primal forest of Eternity.” — Liber Cordis Cincti Serpente, 2:37-43. 

Now, the dolphin that becomes a bird that becomes a faun that becomes Pan, being an initiatic sequence, designates by obvious analogy different categories of individuals and the different levels of consciousness of each of these individuals.

II. I Am Every God

The dolphin that frequents the abyssal depths is the profane personality — corresponding to the “Ye” which, in the Holy Books, 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, 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.

The bird designates the consecrated personality — Frater So-and-So — corresponding to the “You” which, in the Holy Books, 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).

The faun is the true being of the individual, the one the Ancient Egyptians called “the Defunct” — corresponding to the “Thou” which, in the Holy Books, designates “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” (Leptopœcile Sophiæ).

The great Pan, finally, is the divine ipseity of the individual, corresponding, in the Holy Books, to the “We” by which the gods speak of themselves — since Pan was thus named in homage to the totality of the gods.

III. Deep in the Primal Forest

Note that this nomenclature corresponds, on the hermeneutic plane, to the four levels of exegesis:

The dolphin studies from the abyssal depths: this is Pshat, the literal sense of the text, which deals only with the sensible world.

The bird studies “from on high”: this is Remez, the figurative, allusive, or symbolic sense.

The faun studies from the forest, the domain of the mighty god Therion, “he for whom the trees bloom and the flowers are moved,” the king of faerie, master of the winding paths in the deep woods: this is Dirash, the sense revealed by exegesis.

The great Pan studies from “the midst of the primal forest of Eternity”: this is Sod, the magical, mystical, or secret sense — at once the heart (midst) and the root (primal) of the Arcane (Eternity) that the Holy Text conceals (forest).

IV. Queen Nuit Stole Everything (Including My Virginity)

Moreover, the word “Eternity” has a gematria of 298, which in Hebrew is the numerical value of BRALHIN, the state of Son of the Gods, and an elaboration of 19 (2+9+8), that is to say the Will common to Eve (ChVH = 19) and to Job (AIVB = 19): to recover the Lost Paradise.

It is the nostalgia for the Garden of Eden that is the distant flute sound which awakens our irrepressible desire for the violent penetration of the seductive mysteries and the intimacy of our Queen.

Hence the Tragic (literally, “Song of the Goat”) of our existences, which invariably takes the form of the Devastation of Happiness.

When the Old Serpent of the City of Edfu, Hadit our Master, who is the Exorcist par excellence (AL II:7), makes all the Treasures, Palaces, and Wonders that His Spells had procured for us disappear in the blink of an eye, it is at the express request of our august Queen Nuit: the Goddess steals from us everything that steals us from Her.

There you have it, my Martinist friend — I have treated the matter well above your level, but it was to humiliate you :) — I quite enjoy humiliating the pretentious ignoramuses who fancy themselves “esotericists” :) It is because I have absolutely no respect for non-Thelemites and, as soon as they speak of spirituality, I always feel like asking them: “What business is it of yours?!”

Warm kisses from the Bahamas.

Love is the law, love under will.

— ☉︎ in 13° ♉︎ : ☽︎ in 13° ♐︎ : ☽︎ : Ⅴⅹⅰⅰ.

𓄿𓎛𓂧 𓇋𓈖𓏌

Like an Oyster

Note: Out of curiosity, I went looking to see which of the (admirable) texts joyfully scattered across this (very good) blog has been, across all periods, the most consulted of all.

It turns out to be a Commentary on the Book of Lapis-Lazuli, entitled “Like an Oyster” (Comme une Huître), published in 2021 e.v. during the blessed hours of our dear Abbey of Thelema.

Since this text has only ever appeared in French, and the overwhelming majority of visitors to this blog are now English-speaking, I am posting today its English version.

Tell me if, like any true French nectar (I was born in Bordeaux), the thing has aged well.

Like An Oyster

Commentary on Liber Liberi vel Lapidis Lazuli Adumbratio Kabbalæ Ægyptiorum sub figurâ VII, Chapter 3, verses 8 to 11

Written in the Abbey of Thelema in Vippiacus,

☉︎ in 18° ♊︎ : ☽︎ in 7° ♊︎ : ☿︎ : Ⅴⅴⅰⅰ (June 9, 2021 e.v.)

Dear friends, beautiful and happy people,

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

It is the fortieth of the Beautiful Days and Tia has just asked me: "How come your reader fanbase is still so fiercely devoted???... When you troll, fair enough, it's funny... But Thelema is a niche, very serious subject!... The other Thelemite content creators would have a fit if they read your mail: this is straight-up idolatry!"

My secret is that the internet — especially the part devoted to occult sciences — is full of people who draw their energy from their audience, whereas I invert the ratio. It is you who come here for your fix. When you finish reading me, you will feel young, lithe, invincible, and invulnerable. The ladies will deem themselves eminently desirable, and all the gentlemen will feel like the quintessential example of sexual perfection. Small children will inexplicably stop crying as you pass, and disobedient pets will spontaneously offer you their paw to request your instructions. And that's when I write sober. Imagine what awaits you on the days I write truly drunk!

Dear friends, this Wednesday's Reading is from Liber Liberi vel Lapidis Lazuli Adumbratio Kabbalæ Ægyptiorum sub figurâ VII, Chapter 3, verses 8 to 11.

8. Terraces of ilex, and tiers of onyx and opal and sardonyx leading up to the cool green porch of malachite.

Commentary: We are visibly still in the palace of the sumptuous Baalkis (cf. Sir Shumule and the Queen of Sheba), or else in the Land of Thelema — and for your shrink, it's the same thing.

On this subject, our dinner debate last night concerned the question: Who is more authentically Babalonian, Cleopatra or Makeda (the Queen of Sheba)?

As for me, I remain faithful to my fixation on Jingū Kōgō, which is probably a sign of a masochistic streak, since Japan largely moved on from female reigns after that of Shōtoku Tennō, whose lover-guru, the monk Dōkyō, nearly overthrew the Throne as well.

Erotic haiku are full of allusions to the monstrous enormity of Dōkyō’s cock (while paying homage to the dignity of the Celestial Sovereign, who, lexically speaking, let nothing slip even in the heat of passion — since, at the moment of orgasmic peak, the licentious poems claim that Her Imperial Majesty would cry "We are passing away! We are passing away!" instead of "I am dying! I am dying!"). And in the category of "how to destroy a multi-millennial supremacy with my dick," Ray J is perhaps simply a gilgul (reincarnation) of the monk Dōkyō. Such is the glory of Priapus spoken of in the next verse.

9. Within is a crystal shell, shaped like an oyster — O glory of Priapus! O beatitude of the Great Goddess!

Commentary: All commentators on this verse delightedly repeat that the oyster is a symbol of the Yoni, which tends to explain why, to the traditional prohibition on eating live animals, an exception can be made for oysters. 

It also explains why we do not salt oysters, which, like women, are naturally salty, though in varying proportions. 

The best ones, as everyone knows, are invariably the saltiest. The Queen of Sheba must have been hyper-salty; Michelle Rodriguez must be hyper-hyper-salty; and I am working on my karma to reincarnate as Gina Carano’s girlfriend.

10. Therein is a pearl.

Commentary: "Pearl" in Hebrew is פְּנִינָה (peninah), gematria 195, which equals חפצי בה ("my delight is in her"), an allusion to Zion ציון (gematria 156), which is the numerical value of BABALON.

And since we are in the kingdom of Sheba, let us recall that Solomon, that supreme gynolater, says that "a valiant woman is more precious than pearls" — i.e., the alpha amazon, the badass chick, the Queen of the South is worth more than Jerusalem and Babylon combined. 

"My delight is in her" thus sounds very different, and the allusion to pearls confirms it: what you want to find in the "oyster" is a lot of salt.

So: to the mines! — Work! as Kelly Rowland said, herself quite a fine specimen of a Queen of Sheba.

11. O Pearl! thou hast come from the majesty of dread Ammon-Ra.

Commentary: The pearl sprung from the fearsome engine of divine Amon, as we know, through the intermediary of a mysterious priest, inseminated the sacred hetaira Olympias, and from there came Alexander the Great — the pearl indeed, the most prodigious being the Earth has ever borne, as I once wrote: My idols have always been people like Alexander, Napoleon, and the guy who invented the panini.

Did you know that Alexander’s Empire extended all the way to Bactria and Sogdiana, regions that sound like typos but border China?

Now, China in the 4th century BCE was in the late Zhou dynasty. If Alexander had died later and pushed further, he would have met Lao-Tzu.

This is once again the Teaching of Priapus, of Amon, of Dōkyō, of Ray J: it’s not that Lao-Tzu isn’t there — it’s that you have to push far enough and not finish too soon. 

Or: it’s not that your wife doesn’t love you — she cheats because your dick is too small and you come too fast.

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

Beautiful day to all.

Love is the law, love under will.

— ☉︎ in 18° ♊︎ : ☽︎ in 7° ♊︎ : ☿︎ : Ⅴⅴⅰⅰ.

𓄿𓎛𓂧 𓇋𓈖𓏌 

Divine Tease: The Slowplay of the Gods

Dear friends, beautiful and happy people,

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

This evening, right after having adored Tum, I received a delightful letter from dear Lionel — the all-talented very handsome young man who, during the blessed years of our Abbey of Thelema (August 2019 – April 2022 e.v.), had proclaimed himself my “valet, driver, and bodyguard,” while always refusing, for his own part, to accept the Law, out of respect for the memory of his late mother, a devout Roman Catholic.

What happy memories!…

I can still see dear Lionel, during our first meeting, advising me to surround myself with security agents after he had read the daily flood of hate mail I received.

I had replied: “If one day I do take on bodyguards, I insist on two karateka dwarves — for the imagery and the personal validation: when you have just performed a Liber Reguli and, still adorned with your magical regalia, you look out the window and see two dwarves standing guard in front of the gates of your castle, you know you’re not working for an insurance company…”

He therefore took matters into his own hands and did an admirable job.

I remember how, in 2019, he physically carried me out of Campo Alegre (Le Mirage) in Curaçao — where I had just spent fifteen non-stop days of unbridled 24/7 debauchery and was no longer in any state to walk — all the way to the airport where our flight back to Paris was waiting. Not for a single second did he lose his lofty dignity or his beautiful, grave vigilance. I felt like Whitney Houston in the arms of Kevin Costner.

Among other excellent news, Lionel informs me (hold on to your hats!) that he has just engaged — he who runs away like a startled rabbit at the mere word “divination”! — in his first session of bibliomancy with the Holy Books of Thelema!

He drew verse 56 of Chapter 2 of The Book of the Heart Girt with a Serpent and asks me to explain its meaning, etc.

Normally, one is not really permitted to speak of the Mysteries to a non-Thelemite — but it goes without saying that dear Lionel is granted an exception.

So we read:

“Nay, Lord! but I am come to Thee. It is I that wait at last.” — Cordis 2, 56.

I. The Sovereign Art of Slowplay 

An interesting verse to meditate upon in prison, as well as at a poker table: the all-powerfulness of the slowplay.

Besides, outside of my ritual praxis, I too spend my time waiting for Divine Intervention.

No, of course not the decision of the Judge for the Application of Sentences — that would be rather infantile on my part — but the intervention of my divine wife Chloé. 

I know perfectly well that she is going to burst in here like Trudy Chacon, massacre most of the prison guards, and fly me out by helicopter.

I know it. So I wait.

II. Cathy’s Exasperated Verdict 

That said, to help Lionel, I called Cathy, my terrifyingly inflexible psychologist friend, and told her the whole context of the verse, pretending it was a dream I had had the night before.

“Cathy, I dreamed I was a single grape that a white Doric girl, who was languishing with her lover in the moonlight, crushed upon her tongue — and that, as a result, I was relieved of any need to seek God anymore, relieved to have nothing left to do but wait for God to find me… What does this dream mean?”

After an exasperated sigh, Cathy replied: “Well, this dream confirms what I’ve always told you, David: you’re a masochistic dilettante, a family parasite, a petty hedonist… Nothing new there…”

But I do sense that this explanation will not be enough for Lionel.

III. Listen to the Numbers & the Words 

Let us see! 

The Old Serpent of the City of Edfu, Hadit our Master, has said: “listen to the numbers & the words” (AL 2, 75).

Now “Nay,” the first word of the verse, is obviously a temurah of Ain, with a gematria value of 61.

Our august Queen Nuit has augustly said that she attributes Ain rather to the numbers 8, 80 and/or 418, as it is written: “Nothing is a secret key of this law. Sixty-one the Jews call it; I call it eight, eighty, four hundred & eighteen” (AL 1, 46).

8 is the Tangible Zero. 

80 is the value of Pé, Atu XVI of the Tarot, the “House of God.” 

418 is the Great Work accomplished.

From this we deduce:

IV. The Empty House of God

‘Lord’ is a formula meant to make apprehensible GOD, whose House is in fact Nothing: behind the Celestial Layer where Nuit and Hadit celebrate, in ecstasy, their eternal wedding night, the Ultimate Holy of Holies is entirely Empty.

In plain terms, GOD is the perpetual synchronous cosmic orgasm by which the universe is entirely recreated from zero at every nanosecond.

“Therefore unto Hadit and unto Nuit be the glory in the End and the Beginning; yea, in the End and the Beginning.” — Liber Cheth, 22.

Warm kisses from the Bahamas.

Love is the law, love under will.

— ☉︎ in 11° ♉︎ : ☽︎ in 19° ♏︎ : ♄︎ : Ⅴⅹⅰⅰ. 

𓄿𓎛𓂧 𓇋𓈖𓏌

Exile Chic : 1217 Days in Prison and Still Shining Like a Star

An Essay in Thelemic Resilience

Dear friends, beautiful and happy people,

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

I am often asked how I manage to remain so imperturbably radiant and prodigiously cheerful amid the splendours of Exile and Detention.

Some people, I am told, would have long since succumbed to spleen and discouragement. After all — 1,217 days pacing the corridors of this prison, and I still haven’t found the bar!

Not to mention that ALL my attempts to have crates of Dom Pérignon delivered and Panamanian escorts smuggled in have lamentably failed, and that the judges politely but sepulchrally refuse to allow me even the most rudimentary basic survival equipment in my cell (an indoor zen fountain, a bevelled mirror, an electromagnetic field detector to spot ghosts, etc.).

The truth is that I am a disciple of the Old Serpent, Hadit our Master, and the Beḥedite philosophy set forth in the Second Chapter of The Book of the Law absolutely forbids any access to the blues: “They shall rejoice, our chosen: who sorroweth is not of us,” as it is written (AL II, 19).

Never forget: “Oh rejoice! rejoice!” (LLL 7, 24) — that is the whole of Thelema; everything else is merely commentary. (We have recently expanded on this.)

Regarding Hadit, Frater Y asked me in a rather introspective letter (Frater Y is increasingly writing like Lord Byron on a morning of epic hangover and crushing homesickness) what we should conclude from the difference between the way the Old Serpent, our Master, describes His physical appearance in The Book of the Law (“Blue am I and gold in the light of my bride: but the red gleam is in my eyes; & my spangles are purple & green” — AL II, 50) and in Liber Cordis Cincti Serpente (“My head is jewelled with twelve stars; My body is white as milk of the stars; it is bright with the blue of the abyss of stars invisible” —Cordis I, 28).

It is an excellent question.

I. Only the Beautiful Deserve Our Love 

By virtue of the Magical Theory of Signatures, the physical appearance of a being reveals absolutely everything about its inner formula and its function in the universe.

That is why the Lord of all the gods commands us to labour “for beauty’s sake and love’s” (AL III, 56). 

By naming beauty before love, He clearly enjoins us to love only the Beautiful.

(Frater N once remarked of a “hideous old Heathen of the bunny-boiler type” that “the Prophet would probably have put her under his microscope as an interesting entomological case”, but that “Leptopoecile Sophiae [our common Thelemic mentor] would, upon seeing her, have immediately thrown her down a well.”)

Thelema is the cult of Beauty, since it is the cult of the goddess Nuit, and the goddess Nuit is first and foremost “the beauteous one,” as it is written (AL I, 26).

II. My Wife Looks Like the Vampire Chick from Fright Night II (And That’s Magick) 

Beauty is Magick. 

Someone once told me that a man’s wife always physically resembles the woman who first aroused his truly frenzied transports of love when he was an adolescent.

In fact, it is indisputable: my Beloved Spouse Chloé is indeed the perfect double of Julie Carmen as Régine Dandridge in Fright Night II — minus the yellow eyes and vampire teeth, of course. There is no absolute rule, except “Do what thou wilt” (AL III, 60).

Dear friends, I had the fulminating golden youth of the typical high-born libertine; I am now an old hermit imprisoned in the mists of the Grey Land of Desolation — and I know from experience that I would have avoided ABSOLUTELY ALL the Great Misses of my life, without exception, had I always followed the Precepts set down in The Book of the Law.

Everything is there.

III. The Cruel Tutelage of Hadit: Why Your Fuck-ups Are Secretly Lessons from the Old Serpent  

But let us return to the verse: 

“My head is jewelled with twelve stars; My body is white as milk of the stars; it is bright with the blue of the abyss of stars invisible.”

The joke is that in Hebrew, the words meaning “suffering” (AGM), “captivity” (GVLH), “blood” (DM), and “horror” (ChVL) — a rather good summary of the atmosphere at Moulins-Yzeure prison — all have a gematria value of 44, whose Mystical Value is 990.

Now, 990 is 330 (the gematria of “stars”) multiplied by 3, that is, by the number of times “stars” appears in our verse.

And 330, in Hebrew, is the gematria of “restriction” (MTzR), “hurricane” (SOR), and “error” (ShL).

Since our tripartite verse is logically a description of Hadit on the three planes (spiritual, philosophical, and physical), we deduce that our sufferings, caused by our errors, are in reality different parts of the Teaching that Hadit imparts to His chosen ones, to His “stars.”

In plain terms: our spiritual, relational, and practical faults are secretly orchestrated by the Old Serpent so that the terrible readjustments they trigger may form us. 

Such is the Cruel Tutelage of Hadit.

IV. Love Nuit, Serve Ra-Hoor-Khuit, Talk Like a God 

What does this “mystical” description of the Old Serpent in the verse reveal to us, and — since we are commanded to BE Hadit (AL I, 6) — what does it order us to do?

On the plane of Thought: “My head is jewelled with twelve stars” — to have nothing but Nuit in one’s mind. Majnun-level devotion to my Queen. 

On the plane of Action: “My body is white as milk of the stars” — the body is exclusively a vehicle for transmitting the spiritual nourishment that proceeds from the gods — i.e., its sole purpose is to Promulgate the Law. Seven lives for Ra-Hoor-Khuit. 

On the plane of Speech: “it is bright with the blue of the abyss of stars invisible” — the goal of every conversation is to bring the other person to do what they will. To speak only on the frequency that connects the “Ye,” that is, the Thelemites, temporarily incarnated in Old Grey Land, who are seeking to rediscover the Earthly Paradise there, their only true homeland, the “garden of immortal kisses” (Cordis IV, 9). 

As for the divine “blue abyss,” drop everything and reread my Twelfth Night Hermeneutic.

No, seriously. Put down whatever you are doing and reread that indispensable text.

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 7° ♏︎ : ♀︎ : Ⅴⅹⅰⅰ.

𓄿𓎛𓂧 𓇋𓈖𓏌

My Only Talent Is My Cock : French Thelema Explained

Dear friends, beautiful and happy people,

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

Today, I am hyper happy, because my “fascinating and brilliantly messy” qabalistic explorations (I am to Israel Regardie what Jimmy Page is to Al Di Meola) concerning the number 220 (cf. Diamond Digger), have sparked heated doctrinal disputes within the Community on topics that are objectively as cool as:

“Would the optimal Thelemic couple actually be George Bryan Brummell and Red Sonja?… From a Thelemic point of view, would the ideal romcom really be a love story between Des Esseintes and Wonder Woman?… ”

All of this is very encouraging.

I am French, dear friends, and therefore very sensitive to the things of love.

Love has always been the law in our latitudes, and it is not very surprising that Saint François Rabelais, of blessed memory, located the Abbey of Thélème on the banks of the Loire.

What, a priori, characterizes a French Thelemite is that, being entirely devoid of any Puritan heritage, Thelema has never had, for him — born as he is in the land of Laclos and de Sade — anything truly transgressive about it.

On the contrary, Thelema offers us the opportunity to grasp and apprehend the Transcendence and Depth of our ideal of “Order and Beauty, Luxury, Calm and Voluptuousness” — but I have already recounted all of that at length in relation to my personal journey (cf. Pilgrimage to Cythera: How I Became a Thelemite Without Giving Up a Single Orgasm).

Unfortunately, my tireless old leitmotif (“My only talent is my cock,” cf. Idle Dandy in a Snow Leopard Winter), combined with my considerations on the Gnostic Saints (among whom figure the great Pan, the great Khem [Min], and the great Priapus), allowed, during the Troubles of the Year Vviii, the Inquisition of Old Grey Land to claim the opposite — that for me, Thelema was nothing but a Rasputinian “intellectual pretext” for libertinism.

Nothing could be further from the truth: I am a spiritual person, which is to say, the very opposite of an intellectual.

The man who rationalizes endlessly can neither get hard, nor laugh, nor invoke the gods: deport the intellectuals!

On the theoretical level, the foundation (if I may say so) of all Sex Magick is the following:

Beyond the psycho-affective aspect, the Qabalah attributes the Sphere of Yesod (= the sexual organs of man + his subconscious) to the Moon — that is, to the maddening and ghostly reflection, in the heart of darkness, of the light of the Sun (Sphere of Tiphareth = the heart of man + his consciousness), which itself is the contraction of the infinite Divine Light (Sphere of Kether = the fontanelle of man + his superconsciousness). 

In plain terms: a man’s libido reveals his ipseity — and therefore his divinity — under a mask.

Now, it is as in Nō theater: the more powerful the divinity, the more impressive the mask. 

Hence the axiom: to exceptional people, exceptional morals.

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 10° ♉︎ : ☽︎ in 24° ♎︎ : ♃︎ : Ⅴⅹⅰⅰ.

𓄿𓎛𓂧 𓇋𓈖𓏌