Epstein Died For You

Dear friends, beautiful and happy people,

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

This morning, the ultra-butch, scarletissime, supremely badass Soror K. asked me what one should conclude from the Epstein Affair — “Not,” she specified, “your opinion as a degenerate old inbred aristocrat obsessed with breasts (who, in other times, would not have gotten off with a mere five years in prison, but would have been broken on the wheel a hundred times over). Rather, the opinion of the ideal Thelemite as described by Rabelais in Gargantua — the kind of postulant worthy of the Abbey of Thélème presided over by Brother John of the Funnels.”

It is a good question: What would the ideal candidate for the Abbey of Brother Jean des Entomeurs think of Jeffrey Epstein?

Dear friends, we shall seek the answer in the Study of the Holy Books of the radiant land of Thelema — specifically in The Book of the Heart Girt with a Serpent, Chapter 1, verses 37 to 40.

Let us read:

37. So they will reproach thy servant, saying: Who hath set thee to save us? 

38. He will be sore distressed. 

39. All they understand not that thou and I are fashioning a boat of mother-of-pearl. We will sail down the river of Amrit even to the yew-groves of Yama, where we may rejoice exceedingly. 

40. The joy of men shall be our silver gleam, their woe our blue gleam—all in the mother-of-pearl.  

I. Pshat

First, let us lightly sketch the context of this pericope with a frivolous chisel:

The Prophet is planning a long and luxurious cruise, but one that will force him to sail through heathen lands.

His Holy Guardian Angel warns him that the natives will probably be hostile and will demand to know by what right he is cruising on their river waters. 

The Angel also detects in the Prophet a regrettable tendency to take such things too much to heart… So he comforts him: The heathens, he explains, simply cannot conceive that life could consist of a long and wonderful cruise aboard an unbelievably luxurious boat, sailing up a sacred river to a paradisiacal island where everything is delight and perpetual feasting! 

Their primitive brains simply cannot process such information! 

Therefore, why worry about it? 

Whether the indigenous tribes are pleased or displeased, happy or unhappy, rich or poor, is, for the star guests of the cruise, from the deck of the gigayacht, at most a nuance in the panorama…

Indeed, I remember driving through a rather working-class neighbourhood, sprawled on the back seat of a purple Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud, and receiving from the bystanders crowded on the pavements looks that clearly said “head of the Princess de Lamballe on a pike”…

But hey! What is the point of being in a Rolls if not to piss off the poor? —Especially since I did not share the Prophet’s scruples and systematically flipped the bird to anyone who shot me hateful glances…

It is also true that, alas, I was not on my way to Jeffrey Epstein’s island — and that our pericope sheds light on the unhealthy jubilation of the heathens at the announcement of his death…

In the same vein, the martyrdom of Harvey Weinstein — the Grand Pontiff of the enchanted isle of La-La-Land — only became possible thanks to this phenomenon of troglodyte resentment.

The Prophet’s extreme psycho-emotional sensitivity to “the conspiracy of the unwelcome against the one who goes his way with a light heart” is somewhat surprising… 

He, better than anyone, should know that the people are evil — The people are the Devil — The people are luciphobic like a wagonload of Cancer natives! What can one expect from them except hatred of Happiness in all its forms?!

II. Remez

The Great Paradox, of course, is that the Mephistophelian formula of the aptly named sign of Cancer is represented in the Tarot by the very solar and triumphant Atu of The Chariot, whereas its antithesis, Atu XV, is called “The Devil”…

I mean: the other two cardinal points of the year are perfectly coherent. The Emperor of Atu IV is, in body language and morphopsychology, a classic Aries type — and Atu VIII literally contains a pair of scales (in addition to the goddess Ma’at — inseparable from the idea of Fatal Balance — whom the Coffin Texts teach us is in reality Tefnut, the own mother of our august Queen Nuit, and consequently the wife of Shu, god of Twilight: one cannot get more radically Autumn Equinox than the Atu VIII of the Tarot!)

Why this “symbolic inversion” of the Solstices?

(There is admittedly a goat on Atu XV and a crab on Atu VII, but the thematic content of these two arcana seems precisely reversed — We call “Devil” the Triumphal Arcana of Accomplished Ambitions and the Procession of the Great Pan — and “Chariot of Triumph” the one depicting the assassination of the Sun and the blood of martyrs poured into the Holy Grail…)

It is because the feasts of the December Solstice may well contain Christmas itself, yet Winter remains cold and has a bad reputation… 

Consider two emblematic Capricorns such as Saint Frederick of Hohenstaufen (may his merits protect us) and Saint Roderic Borgia, Pope Alexander VI (may his merits protect us)… Were there ever more perfect examples of Nietzschean Supermen? Well! The first was excommunicated twice and nicknamed “the Antichrist” — while the Marquis de Sade (a fellow not easily impressed) wrote of the second that “it suffices to name him to arouse against him the indignation and horror of all who have any idea of his history”…

Conversely: Selena Gomez and Sofia Vergara — typical Cancer natives — could turn out to be the most unbearable bitches in the entire universe, yet one could not help but love them anyway… 

This is the Arcana illustrated by one of my exes who philosophically replied to every reproach I made: “Whatever… I have boobs.”

III. Derash

The opinion of the common people is therefore, as we see, a sort of “South compass” — Why should the Thelemite be moved or “sore distressed” by the reproaches of people whose very reproaches are compliments?!

A curious fact: avidly scrutinizing our pericope, I noticed that the first letters of each verse together form the acronym S.H.A.T., which can be counted as Sh(300) + A(1) + T(9) = 310.

Now, 310 is the gematria of DVSh, which means “to trample on” and “to conquer” — literally the attitude that the High Lord Ra-Hoor-Khuit commands us to adopt toward the heathens, as it is written: “Trample down the Heathen” and “I forbid argument: Conquer! That is enough” (AL III, 11).

It is as if the Holy Books were sending an encrypted message, in the form of an ultra-coded acrostic, to soothe our reticence regarding our relations with the Trogs, by reminding us of the august injunctions of the Lord of the Aeon concerning these people.

In accordance with the principle that every question of Law must be decided by reference to the writings of Ankh-af-na-khonsu (blessing & worship to him), Liber AL is explained and clarified by the other twelve Holy Books — and it is in Liber Tzaddi that Ra-Hoor-Khuit defines in great detail the attitude of a Thelemite in heathen lands: “My disciples are proud and beautiful; they are strong and swift; they rule their way like mighty conquerors” (Tzaddi, 24).

IV. Sod

The Book of Lapis Lazuli teaches us that no one can know the Secret Sense of the Holy Books unless he applies the verses of those Books to himself and to his precise situation in the world (LLL 6, 14).

Everyone agrees that it is being proud, beautiful, strong and swift that earned me Exile and Captivity.

I am therefore in a position to certify that nothing hurts Old Grey Land more than someone who sees life as a cruise aboard a gigayacht, with no contribution whatsoever to heathen society — a society he regards as a picturesque curiosity, vaguely glimpsed during his Quest for the Earthly Paradise.

I have been treated more harshly by what passes for potentates among these apes than a terrorist or a serial killer — and ultimately it is these persecutions, striking at my aristocratic pride and my dandy aesthetic, that have galvanized my legendary moral strength, my old duellist’s reactivity, and my impregnable arrogance — confirming me, strengthening me, radicalizing me forever in my True Will. 

From lover of Nuit I have become Majnun of the Goddess; from pupil of Hadit I have become Disciple of the Old Serpent; from faithful of Ra-Hoor-Khuit I have become Vassal of the Hawk-Headed Mystical Lord — And, by virtue of the principle of “Exceed,” the heart of the Behédite Philosophy (AL II, 71), I hope to accentuate this tendency every day a little more — to become every day more desperate in my love for Nuit, to strive every day to be a little more Hadit, to make myself every day a little more fanatical in my service to Ra-Hoor-Khuit.

Thus, Jeffrey Epstein will not have died in vain.

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 23° ♈︎ : ☽︎ in 0° ♓︎ : ☽︎ : Ⅴⅹⅰⅰ.

𓄿𓎛𓂧 𓇋𓈖𓏌

House of the Beloved : How Babalon Crashed My Cousin’s Wedding

Dear friends, beautiful and happy people, 

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law 

Some time ago, Frater Sicariōn asked me about verses 30 to 33 of Chapter 4 of The Book of the Heart Girt with a Serpent — These verses completely freak him out in relation to his soon-to-be-celebrated marriage, but I believe he’s mostly looking for excuses…

My word! I may well be “a mixture of Hannibal Lecter, Rasputin, and Dracula” (as graciously declared in 2023 by Judge Vignon, President of the Court of Appeal of Riom), but I am a mixture of Hannibal Lecter, Rasputin, and Dracula who does NOT leave his students moaning in doubt and suspense — So I read:

30. I came to the house of the Beloved, and the wine was like fire that flieth with green wings through the world of waters. 

31. I felt the red lips of nature and the black lips of perfection. Like sisters they fondled me their little brother; they decked me out as a bride; they mounted me for Thy bridal chamber. 

32. They fled away at Thy coming; I was alone before Thee. 

33. I trembled at Thy coming, O my God, for Thy messenger was more terrible than the Death-star. 

I. Pshat

This reminds me of the following: the context of this pericope once suggested to me — on a day in August 1995 when I had to go to Bordeaux to attend a grand ultra-traditionalist wedding — the idea of taking verses 30 and 31 as a mantra for the entire journey, so that the day would not be completely wasted on the mystical plane.

I had chanted them non-stop throughout the trip, much to the dismay of my immediate entourage — And it was precisely at that wedding that the groom — my unfortunate cousin H. (a Saint-Cyrien, perhaps a tad psychorigid) — was shamefully betrayed, deceived, and mocked by his young wife (the now very dignified matriarch A-M) : Right after the religious ceremony in Latin, she got herself thoroughly fucked by her ex (who had the physique of a late-90s boy-band member) in a sacristy corridor, without even taking off her dress!...

Note that H., noticing his wife’s sudden disappearance at the time of the photos on the church steps, had sent us out looking for her in all directions — And it was I who found her, getting properly railed against a typical Romanesque dressed-stone wall.

Of course, I should have energetically interrupted the adulterous lovebirds — but alas! I was very young, the scene was really hot, and I preferred to watch discreetly from a distance while furiously masturbating, then go back outside and tell H. that I hadn’t seen anyone, all while laughing up my sleeve (he never suspected a thing about the affair, despite our heavy, mocking insinuations) — Those were the good times — But really: after that, how could anyone doubt the Magical Power of the Holy Verses!

II. Remez

The more I think back on this incident — which an astrologer would call a collision between the 5th House and the 7th House — the more I find a profound meaning in this Erotic Rite where the Leo emerging from the past ruins the Work of Libra with great thrusts of the Sacred Phallus. 

This meaning is, of course, also found in the flamboyant epistle powerfully sprung from the fevered pen of Sir Shumule addressed to Judge Aurélie Mahé, and it constitutes a Universal Symbolism: that old, super-strong desire that the great summer holidays (St-Tropez, the sea, the girls, etc.) should never give way to the start of the school year…

May Babalon ride the Lion, but may Maat (whom the Coffin Texts teach us is, in reality, Tefnut) never again become an irascible lioness in the eastern desert of Nubia!

May our summer loves know no September!

May no Karma punish our dear Days of Carefreeness: on the contrary, may our dear Days of Carefreeness punish Karma! (This desire was doubtless unconsciously expressed by the permutation of Atu VIII and XI in the old Golden Dawn system.)

III. Derash

It is the Mystery expressed by the confrontation of “Beloved” and “Death-star”, the two words each bearing an incongruous capital letter at either end of our pericope.

I take this very personally, since David literally means “Beloved” — and David (Beloved in Hebrew) has a gematria of 14, which is 1+4 = 5 = 1+2+2 = 122 = B(2)+e(5)+l(30)+o(70)+v(6)+e(5)+d(4) = Beloved.

And since “Death-star” has a gematria of 294, which is ChVRP, “autumnal”, we once again have the bizarre meeting of the 5th and 7th Houses, of Leo and Libra, through that of David, the Lion of Judah, and the September Equinox.

Now, since Leo is Teth (9) and Libra is Lamed (30), this bizarre meeting is 39, the proclamation of Divine Unity (IHVH AChD) and a temurah of 93 — i.e., the mirror reflection of THELEMA — so true is it that the only man who is “the image and likeness of GOD” is the Thelemite. 

This brings us back to the immortal words of Marcello Ramos Motta (of blessed memory): “We have not come to save men. We are the men. Outside of us there are only apes and the Blind Creature of the Mire.”

IV. Sod

The magical verses therefore provoke the union of impossible lovers beyond any logical or moral consideration: the reconciliation of the Carefreeness of the 5th House (loves, childhood, games…) and the Karmic Rigor of the 7th House (Legality), in spite of the 6th House (Discipline) that stands in the way.

The qabalistic exegesis reveals, as we have seen, that this scandalous union manifests Divine Unity (39), of which the Thelemite is the image on Earth (93). 

GOD is therefore the ultra-passionate union of two Thelemite soul-mates, as it is written: “there is no other God than me, and my lord Hadit” (AL I, 21).

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 23° ♈︎ : ☽︎ in 0° ♓︎ : ☽︎ : Ⅴⅹⅰⅰ.

𓄿𓎛𓂧 𓇋𓈖𓏌

Holy Season Is Over : Camouflage Your Rolls as a Hearse

« At the top of the mountain we are all snow leopards. » — Hunter S. Thompson

Dear friends, beautiful and happy people,

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

Today marks the ninety-fifth anniversary of the death of Dame Mary d’Este Sturges, the flamboyant, ultra-mundane founder of Desti Beauty Products — She was the best friend of Isadora Duncan and became the second Scarlet Woman of Thelema: Soror Virakam the Seer, who orchestrated the Abuldiz Working and, consequently, the writing of Liber ABA — and nobody knows what “Virakam” actually means!!!

Dear friends, this Sunday’s Holy Reading is Liber LXV: Liber Cordis Cincti Serpente sub figurâ אדני, Chapter 4, verses 54 to 57.

54. This heart of mine is girt about with the serpent that devoureth his own coils.

Commentary: Strangely, the Prophet (blessing & worship to him), commenting on this verse, does not see in this serpent the simple green Ouroboros that encircles the sensible world and separates it from chaos — Instead, he sees the principle of perpetual descent and progressive Restriction that governs the phenomenal universe.

Marcello Ramos Motta (of blessèd memory) sees in it the image of Death.

As for me — who considers my incarnation within the human species in the same way Stanley regarded his expeditions among the primitives, and who is tempted, whenever I detect noble qualities (eclecticism, dignity, talent, excellent education, etc.) in my interlocutor, to say to him: “Doctor Livingstone, I presume...” — I find, by merging these two readings, the essential Precept concealed in the arcane of the “garment as he will” (AL 2:58), which I have too often neglected in this world: among the Troglodytes, disguise your Rolls-Royce as a hearse.

55. When shall there be an end, O my darling, O when shall the Universe and the Lord thereof be utterly swallowed up?

Commentary: The Prophet (blessing & worship to him) says of this verse: “[The Adept] extends his aspiration from the personal problem of his own sorrow to the contemplation of the Universal Sorrow.”

Indeed, every annoyance is sent to you by the gods only to educate you about the user manual of this planet.

The problem is that the empirical method advocated by Saint Francis Bacon, Lord Verulam (may his merits protect us), requires five coincidences to verify a hypothesis.

Result: while you have always instinctively known that an individual born under a sign called “Cancer” (sic!) was not good news and should under no circumstances be integrated into your system, you have to endure at least five of these nuisances on your path before you can confirm what astrology — a science as old as the world — has always taught: yes, Cancer natives are quite literally incarnate excrement that must be deported, stuffed with mRNA vaccine, and finished off with Baygon.

But: never take any mishap personally. The gods put insects on the stage of your microscope so that you may study them, not so that you develop a morbid entomophobia.

56. Nay! who shall devour the Infinite? who shall undo the Wrong of the Beginning?

Commentary: Of this verse, the Prophet (blessing & worship to him) says: “[the Adept] has now understood the doctrine that the beginning (Berashith) is necessarily of the nature of error. Any separateness, any sense of finitude represents imperfection. It is a matter of plain logic that it should be so.”

Speaking of Berashith, I have long wondered why Mosheh the Magus, in his Genesis, says “He saw that it was very good” only after man and woman were created — despite the fact that man, perpetually at the crossroads, has a soul “of God and beast,” as it is written (AL 3:34), meaning a good (royal) and a bad (servile) inclination — whereas in all other cases the biblical text says only “He saw that it was good.”

Does this mean that his “beast” side improves the human being?!

Indeed, if we observe the customs of Old Grey Land and the various little tribes classified there in the category “human,” we must conclude: without his bestial stupidity of a chest-thumping ape, no Heathen slave would be stupid enough to pursue a career, get married, and beget children — And in that case, how would we Thelemic gods incarnate in the terrestrial sphere? — This is what King Solomon says about the Trogs: “I observed that the labor of man and all his efforts to succeed are driven by the envy he harbors against his neighbor.” (Ecclesiastes 4:4).

57. Thou criest like a white cat upon the roof of the Universe; there is none to answer Thee.

Commentary: When I read “white cat upon the roof of the universe,” I think snow leopard on Mount Everest (but I have already sufficiently developed the meaning of my totemic attachment to this prodigious feline).

Why does the Holy Book speak of a white cat and not a Himalayan panther?

Because the white cat is superior in that, having chosen domestic life, it can be — at its pleasure — a superb predator without ever having poachers from the third world show up: among the Troglodytes, disguise your snow leopard as a silver chinchilla Persian.

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 22° ♈︎ : ☽︎ in 17° ♒︎ : ☉︎ : Ⅴⅹⅰⅰ.

𓄿𓎛𓂧 𓇋𓈖𓏌

There is success

To my beloved son, HIH Crown Prince Aleister.

Dear friends, beautiful and happy people,

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

Today is the Third Day of the writing of the Book of the Law, dedicated to the august Rescript of our august Sovereign, the High Lord Ra-Hoor-Khuit, the Crowned and Conquering Child — that is, the Chapter of Liber AL which generally succeeds in convincing people, once and for all, to follow the counsel of Ankh-af-na-khonsu (blessing & worship to him) and to burn this Book.

My personal relationship with Ra-Hoor-Khuit is prodigiously simple and can be summed up in the solemn Vow I formulated on the occasion of the Solar New Year — a Vow which I joyfully renew this evening, at the closing of the Holy Season:

I intend to have, toward the Lord of the Æon, the relationship that, in his Hagakure, Yamamoto Jocho prescribes for the Samurai toward his Daimyo, but more fanatical.

To make myself methodically, each day, a little more fanatical in my Promulgation.

This is the infallible remedy against the “lust of result” (AL I, 44): to know that the Path of Ra-Hoor-Khuit brings only “danger & trouble” (AL III, 11) and to not give a damn about it — to be conscious solely of the Reverence due to the High Lord (AL III, 62) — and of the fact that the “success” of which He deigns augustly to speak (AL III, 69) consists precisely in expecting none.

I mean: what exceptional being has ever been considered “successful” from the point of view of the common people?

Let us take — for example — the 75 most admirable men who have ever trodden this globe — the very assembly of the Saints themselves — and let us observe what their respective trajectories were upon this beautiful and interesting planet…

Tell me WHICH of these paths the mob of mediocre savers would not qualify as an EPIC FAIL?

Lao-tze, that elusive sage of the veiled Tao, fled into the western wilderness upon an ox of sorrow, his final words a whispered lament that the world’s blind clamor had already devoured the Way he alone could name.

Siddhârtha, the golden prince who renounced a kingdom of silk and song, watched his own son and wife dissolve into the dust of renunciation while his body wasted upon the Middle Path, a starving witness to impermanence that even the Enlightened could not escape.

Krishna, the divine charioteer of cosmic war, beheld the slaughter of his own kinsmen upon the field of Kurukshetra and, in the end, was slain by a hunter’s arrow through the heel—god made mortal, betrayed by the very wheel he turned.

Tahuti, the ibis-headed scribe of the gods, whose tongue weighs every soul in the Hall of Judgment, is himself condemned to eternal record-keeping while the hearts he judges rise or fall without him ever tasting the feather’s mercy.

Mosheh, the stammering lawgiver who parted the sea for his people, died alone upon the mountain he was forbidden to enter, gazing upon the Promised Land he would never tread, his own folk murmuring rebellion even as he ascended.

Dionysus, the twice-born god of ecstatic wine, was torn limb from limb by the Titans in his infant fury, his heart devoured and his resurrection forever stained by the memory of maternal murder and paternal exile.

Mohammed, the unlettered prophet who united the desert tribes, fled in the Hijra pursued by assassins, his beloved wife Khadijah and uncle dead, his followers slaughtered at Uhud, a messenger forever haunted by the sword at his throat.

To Mega Thêrion, the Beast 666 who shattered every chain of his age, endured the blackest scandals, the betrayal of lovers and disciples, the bankruptcy of body and purse, dying in a Hastings boarding-house with only a nurse to mark the passing of the New Aeon’s prophet.

Hermês, the thrice-great messenger who stole fire from heaven and bartered souls across the Styx, wandered eternally between realms, never belonging to Olympus nor to the mortal dust he thrice ascended from.

Pan, the goat-footed lord of wild panic, so hated by the Christians that they gave to their definition of the devil his very physical features.

Priapus, the grotesque guardian of gardens and lust, was mocked and mutilated by the gods for his monstrous member, forever erect yet forever impotent against the laughter that withered his groves.

Osiris, the green-skinned king of the dead, was hacked into fourteen pieces by his jealous brother Set, his phallus devoured by fish, his resurrection forever incomplete in the cold embrace of the Nile.

Melchizedek, the king-priest without father or mother or genealogy, offered bread and wine to Abraham yet vanished into legend, an eternal stranger whose own kingdom was never named nor claimed.

Khem, the ithyphallic ram of generation, was castrated in the cosmic war of the gods, his fertile potency forever shadowed by the knife of Set’s vengeance.

Amoun, the hidden one who spoke from the wind, was eclipsed by newer deities and forgotten in his own temples, the “king of the gods” reduced to a whisper in the desert sands.

Mentu, the falcon-headed war-god of Thebes, saw his martial glory usurped by gentler cults, his bull-strength reduced to a footnote while his worshippers turned to softer saviors.

Hêraclês, the lion-skinned hero who strangled serpents in his cradle, was driven mad by Hera, slaughtered his own children, and died screaming in a poisoned shirt of Nessus, his apotheosis bought with unbearable agony.

Orpheus, the lyre-strumming poet who charmed the stones, descended into Hades for his Eurydice only to lose her again by a backward glance, then torn to bloody shreds by the Maenads whose frenzy he could no longer soothe.

Odysseus, the cunning wanderer who outwitted gods and monsters, returned home to find his palace overrun, his wife besieged, and his faithful dog dying at his feet, victory tasting of ten years’ salt and sorrow.

Vergilius, the Mantuan bard who sang the founding of empires, died before completing his Aeneid and begged that the unfinished epic be burned, his final breath a plea for oblivion.

Catullus, the tender poet of Lesbia’s kisses, was devoured by love turned to venom, his verses dripping with the bile of betrayal while consumption wasted his Roman youth.

Martialis, the epigrammatic wit who flayed the vices of Rome, lived as a client to the powerful yet died in provincial exile, his barbed tongue finally silenced by poverty and obscurity.

Rabelais, the laughing monk who Gargantua’d the world with giants and bawdy wisdom, was hounded by the Sorbonne, his books condemned, his final words a jest upon the comedy of his own persecution.

Swinburne, the flamelike poet who hymned the pagan gods, was broken by alcoholism and the whip of Victorian scandal, his genius flickering out in the quiet rooms of Putney.

Apollonius Tyanaeus, the wandering sage who raised the dead and vanished from prison, was imprisoned by Domitian, accused of sorcery, and vanished into legend while his disciples were scattered like chaff.

Simon Magus, the Samaritan sorcerer who flew above Rome by demonic wings, crashed to earth in apostolic disgrace, his body broken and his gnosis branded as the first heresy.

Manes, the Persian prophet of Light and Darkness, was flayed alive by the Persian king, his skin stuffed with straw and hung upon the city gate as a warning to all dualists.

Pythagoras, the master of numbers and beans, was hunted from Croton, his school burned, and he perished in a temple besieged by fire, refusing to cross a field of beans to escape.

Basilides, the Alexandrian Gnostic who taught the unknowable Father, saw his subtle doctrines twisted into monstrous heresies by later scribes, his name surviving only in the anathemas of the orthodox.

Valentinus, the brilliant Gnostic whose Pleroma shone with aeons, was passed over for bishop of Rome, his celestial system condemned to the flames of ecclesiastical fury.

Bardesanes, the Syrian poet of the cosmic dance, was exiled and his hymns suppressed, his elegant gnosis reduced to fragments while the Church rewrote the stars he once sang.

Hippolytus, the anti-pope chronicler of heresies, was exiled to Sardinia, condemned by his own Church, and died a martyr to the very orthodoxy he had attacked.

Merlin, the enchanter of Arthur’s court, was imprisoned by his own pupil Nimue within a tree of crystal, his prophecies echoing unheard through the ages of forgetting.

Arthur, the once and future king who pulled the sword from stone, was mortally wounded at Camlann by his own treacherous son, his body borne to Avalon while Britain fell into the long night.

Kamuret, the Grail-knight father of Parzival, perished in the East seeking the Stone, his quest unfinished and his son left fatherless in the wilderness of destiny.

Parzival, the pure fool who healed the Fisher King, wandered mad and broken after failing the Grail castle, his innocence shattered by the very wound he was born to mend.

Carolus Magnus, the iron-crowned emperor who forged Europe, wept alone in old age as his sons rebelled and his empire crumbled before the grave claimed him.

William of Schyren, that tireless ambassador of Francis I who wove the subtle webs of French diplomacy across the courts of Europe with sword and quill alike, saw his body wasted by the relentless Italian fevers and the crushing burden of ceaseless embassies, expiring at the age of fifty-one in the very hour of his greatest service, his unfinished histories and unheeded warnings to the throne scattered like autumn leaves upon the indifferent winds of royal ingratitude.

Frederick of Hohenstaufen, the Wonder of the World who defied popes and sailed to Jerusalem, perished of fever once there, his corpse pickled for return while his Sicilian dream dissolved.

Roger Bacon, the Doctor Mirabilis who foresaw flying machines, was imprisoned for 11 years by his own Franciscan order, his instruments smashed and his genius chained in monastic darkness.

Jacobus Burgundus Molensis the Martyr, the last Templar Grand Master, was roasted alive upon a Paris island, his final curse upon the king and pope still ringing across seven centuries.

Christian Rosencreutz, the founder of the Rosy Cross, died unknown and was buried in a secret vault, his brethren scattered and his manifesto mocked for generations.

Ulrich von Hutten, the knight-poet of the Reformation, died in poverty and leprosy upon an island of exile, his body refused Christian burial by the very Church he had helped shatter.

Paracelsus, the bombastic healer who defied Galen, was driven from city after city, poisoned by rivals, and died in a Salzburg tavern, his alchemical gold turned to leaden regret.

Michael Maier, the Rosicrucian alchemist who sought the phoenix, perished in obscurity and debt, his musical mysteries unheard amid the Thirty Years’ War.

Roderic Borgia, Pope Alexander the Sixth, the magnificent pontiff who “failed to crown the Renaissance” and whose last words (“The dream dissolves…”) have always moved me to tears. was poisoned by the cantarella he ordinarily used himself to dispose of nuisances.

Jacob Boehme, the cobbler-seer of Görlitz, was hounded by Lutheran pastors, his books burned, and died in poverty while his visions of the divine Sophia were branded demonic.

Francis Bacon, Lord Verulam, the father of scientific method, fell from Chancellor to debtor’s prison, ruined by his own bribery scandal, dying in disgrace while science marched on without him.

Andrea, the supposed author of the Rosicrucian manifestos, watched his utopian dream dissolve into hoax and ridicule, his life ending in quiet provincial obscurity.

Robertus de Fluctibus, the occult physician who mapped the macrocosm, was ridiculed by contemporaries, his hermetic syntheses dismissed as fantasy while plague claimed his London practice.

Giordano Bruno, the Nolan heretic who danced with infinite worlds, was gagged and burned alive in the Campo de’ Fiori, his tongue silenced by the iron of the Inquisition yet his cosmos still expanding in defiant flame.

Johannes Dee, the magus who conversed with angels, lost his library to mob arson, his wife to scandal, and died in poverty at Mortlake while the Crown he served forgot him.

Sir Edward Kelly, the scryer who forged the Enochian tablets, was imprisoned in a Bohemian tower, forced to leap from the walls to escape, and perished broken in body and reputation.

Thomas Vaughan, the alchemical twin of the poet Henry, lost his wife Rebecca to plague, his laboratory to fire, and died in alchemical fumes while seeking the Stone.

Elias Ashmole, the antiquary who preserved the Rosicrucian flame, was widowed thrice and bankrupted by lawsuits, his great museum reduced to dust by time’s indifferent hand.

Molinos, the Spanish mystic of Quietism, was imprisoned for life by the Inquisition, his soul-silence condemned as heresy while he rotted in the Castel Sant’Angelo.

Adam Weishaupt, the Illuminatus who sought to enlighten princes, was hunted across Europe, his order dissolved, and died in exile as a broken schoolmaster.

Wolfgang von Goethe, the universal genius who gave us Faust, outlived every friend and lover, watching his beloved Weimar crumble while the Romantic age he birthed turned against him.

William Blake, the visionary engraver who walked with angels in Lambeth, starved in poverty while the Royal Academy mocked his “mad” drawings, dying unrecognized save by a handful of disciples.

Ludovicus Rex Bavariae, the Swan King who built fairytale castles, was declared mad by his ministers, drowned in the Starnberger See (or was he?), his dream of beauty murdered by accountants and alienists.

Richard Wagner, the Ring-master of Bayreuth, fled creditors and revolutions, his health shattered by exile and scandal, dying in Venice while the leitmotifs of his own tragic operas still echoed.

Alphonse Louis Constant (Eliphas Levi), the failed priest who summoned Baphomet, was ruined by debts and romantic betrayal, his occult genius flowering only after his body had already begun to fail.

Friedrich Nietzsche, the hammer of the old gods, collapsed into syphilitic madness in Turin, writing postcards signed “Dionysus” while his sister edited his legacy into fascist poison.

Hargrave Jennings, the phallic mystic who unveiled the Rosy Cross, died in poverty and obscurity, his secret doctrines buried beneath the weight of Victorian prudery.

Dr. Paschal Beverly Randolph, the mulatto sex-magician of the Rosicrucians, was driven to suicide by scandal and betrayal, his body found with a pistol and a final note of defiant despair.

Carl Kellner, the industrialist who funded the O.T.O., died suddenly before his great work could bloom, his chemical empire unable to purchase the one elixir he truly sought.

Forlong dux, the soldier-scholar who mapped phallic religions across the world, was cashiered and forgotten, his monumental tomes gathering dust while lesser minds claimed the glory.

Sir Richard Payne Knight, the antiquarian who celebrated priapic cults, saw his collection mocked and his reputation ruined by prudish critics, dying amid the laughter of the very society he had scandalized.

Sir Richard Francis Burton, the explorer who penetrated Mecca and the Kama Sutra, was censored, slandered, and died with his wife burning his most dangerous manuscripts, his life’s work half-consumed by Victorian fire.

Paul Gauguin, the stockbroker who fled to Tahiti for the savage sublime, watched his daughter die, his syphilis devour him, and his canvases sell only after he rotted in a Polynesian hut.

Harry Everett Smith, the magickal archivist of the Anthology of American Folk Music, died penniless in a New York welfare hotel, his films and occult collections scattered like leaves in the wind.

Docteur Gérard Encausse (Papus), the Parisian mage who read the cards for Tsar Nicholas, perished of tuberculosis in the trenches of the Great War, his Martinist empire collapsing around his fevered bed.

Doctor Theodor Reuss, the O.T.O. founder who initiated the Beast, was ruined by wartime espionage accusations, his Order splintered and his health broken before he could see the Aeon fully dawn.

Sir Aleister Crowley, the Prophet of the New Aeon who tore the veil of Isis, endured poverty, heroin, ridicule, and the death of his children, passing at Netherwood with only a nurse and the Book of the Law beside him.

Karl Johannes Germer, the Frater Saturnus who guarded the flame through Nazi terror and American exile, died alone in a California bungalow, his ashes scattered while the Order he preserved teetered on extinction.

Grady Louis McMurtry, the Caliph who revived the O.T.O. from ashes, fought in two wars, battled alcoholism and cancer, and passed in a Sacramento hospital, his final act a defiant signature upon the charter of survival.

(Yes, there are 76 names, because the Prophet — blessing & worship to him — was canonized twice. Nothing scandalous about that… I myself systematically refuse to specify my city of birth in the hope that several statues of me will be erected.)

The idea that the gods have of the concept of “success” is therefore, as we see, radically different from that of the average taxpayer. But what does it matter? — “There is success” when one becomes aware that the opinion of the average taxpayer is of no interest whatsoever — what am I saying? That the mere fact that the average taxpayer has an opinion is an insolence toward the gods!

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 21° ♈︎ : ☽︎ in 29° ♑︎ : ♀︎ : Ⅴⅹⅰⅰ.

𓄿𓎛𓂧 𓇋𓈖𓏌

Hadit Made Me Do It

Dear friends, beautiful and happy people,

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

Today is the Second day of the writing of the Book of the Law, dedicated to the Precepts and Teachings of the Old Serpent of the City of Edfu, Hadit our Master, who not only preaches the freedom of the passions, but explicitly enjoins his disciples to "take wine and strange drugs" and to "be drunk thereof", as it is written (AL 2, 22) — which generally makes our April 9ths very successful celebrations.

By the way, it occurs to me that during some sumptuous orgy once held in our Abbey on this holy occasion, a sneaky little scoundrel supported the stupid thesis according to which the Cairo Working had, in reality, taken place on April 1st: the Prophet (blessing & worship to him) would have, according to this imbecile, knowingly falsified the dates of the Reception of the Book of the Law, for fear that people would take the whole thing for a prank.

I had replied to him that it didn’t worry me in the least — and that, from a religious point of view, it was even perfectly consistent, since the Old Serpent, Hadit our Master, is, par excellence, THE Great Mystifier.

Look: Since our arrival on this beautiful and interesting planet, on the day of our birth, we have, in the end, been nothing but this: toys of Hadit’s schemes, prey to his spells, victims of his enchantments...

Our tribulations, our loves, our ordeals? — Mystifications! meant to lead us to interpret as best we can the specific role that falls to us in the great punchy, funky, sexy Show that Hadit and his beauteous bride, our august Queen Nuit, entertain themselves with during their perpetual wedding night — so that we may become so admirable in that role that it deserves to be constantly developed by the production, that it becomes a cult classic and eventually earns us being cast for ever more prestigious parts, ever more in the foreground, and an ever-growing status as gigastar — That is the Cycle of Souls.

Between takes, incarnated existence is our training stay in the House of Hadit, where, under his ruthless tutelage, we alternate between Study of the Divine Sciences and enjoyment of the Delights of this World, according to the principle "Knowledge & Delight" which is the heart of the Behedite asceticism — the Way of the Old Serpent, our Master (AL 2, 65) and our role-model (AL 1, 6; 2, 76): supremely powerful Magician, unrelenting Exorcist, Beloved of Nuit, familiar of the lords of the earth, supremely solitary Hermit — and, therefore, Great Mystifier.  

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 20° ♈︎ : ☽︎ in 16° ♑︎ : ♃︎ : Ⅴⅹⅰⅰ. 

 𓄿𓎛𓂧 𓇋𓈖𓏌

Icarus Complex : An Epistle To Royal Souls

Unto Nu. 

Dear friends, beautiful and happy people, 

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

Soror Astarte just read my Twelfth Night Hermeneutic and thinks I am “brilliant.” 

No, Cara Soror. Giordano Bruno is brilliant. I have merely spent half a century eating like an ogre, drinking like a Templar, smoking like a chimney, playing like a diplomat, fornicating like a satyr and snorting Peruvian coke on strippers’ boobs.

Besides, like Ankh-af-na-khonsu, the priest of the princes (blessing & worship to him), when he was admitted into the presence of our august Queen, the great goddess Nuit (AL I, 26), I immediately ask: Who am I?

What then is this “Me,” dear Sister, that keeps returning in a loop, in an incantatory refrain, in the mysterious formulas and magical allegories recorded in our Holy Books? 

A few years ago, at an ultra-decadent cocktail party given by my friend X. to celebrate the sale of a batch of fake Van Goghs to some oil-rich bougnoule, I was approached by a very beautiful Sciences Po graduate — the extreme Kundera-fan type — dressed in a severe white Chanel suit, who questioned me about my writing work. 

I declared to her: “I am the enfant terrible of a couple of cursed lovers, officially divorced with much noise and fury, but constantly burning with desire for each other: Thelema and Judaism.” 

She replied that she found it “cute” and immediately invited me to an orgy on Avenue du Maréchal-Maunoury. 

Those were the good times. 

But after all — the enfant terrible of Thelema and Judaism: that is to say, of Babylon and Jerusalem, i.e., of Babalon and Sion (ציון), which are one and the same: 

Babalon = B(2) + A(1) + B(2) + A(1) + L(30) + O(70) + N(50) = 156 = Tz(90) + I(10) + U(6) + N(50) = Tziun ציון, Sion 

A furious, passionate embrace, therefore, of Magick and Halakha — I am the child that Xerxes and Queen Esther conceived right after the events reported in the Megillah.  

For yes: Thelema is the crown of the Æon of Horus, just as Buddhism was the crown of the Æon of Osiris, and Judaism that of the Æon of Isis. 

According to Cathy, my official shrink, these are the three fundamental complexes: Icarus, Oedipus, and Hamlet. 

Buddhism, which hates the demiurge-father who turns the wheel of Karma and wants to reintegrate the happy matricial nothingness of Nirvana, suffers from an Oedipus complex.

Judaism, which considers Mother Nature intrinsically evil and wants to “repair” her — that is, to destroy her — in the name of an invisible father, suffers from a Hamlet complex. 

Thelema, which disregards the paternal warning and, proclaiming “Do what thou wilt,” joyfully launches itself toward ever more Light, suffers from an Icarus complex. 

In fact, I listen neither to Daedalus nor to Cathy: < Me doth the Woman of the Mysteries instruct in vain > (Liber Cordis 3, 58) — and I ask once again: who is < Me >? 

Me = M(40) + E(5) = 45 = אדם, Adam, that is to say, Man. 

Now, what is man that Thou art mindful of him? (Psalms 8:5)  

According to the Book of the Law, there are five categories of men:

The Hermit (the exceptional being, the unique model, the off-scale case — my fellow, my brother — paradoxically so, in that we belong to the unclassifiable). 

The Lover (he who, in every circumstance, behaves like a country squire on a fox hunt, or like a young man of excellent family at a 16th-arrondissement ball — the one who dines like a gourmet, dresses like a dandy, and plays with life and money with a casualness that makes the Trogs burn with envious hatred — the cheerful jet-setter who deflowers débutantes and penetrates VIP enclosures, and who has perfectly assimilated the fundamental Shumulism: life is a party and parties do not last). 

The man of Earth (the spiritual gentleman farmer: a noble soul, but still held back by crude material considerations). 

The Heathen [plouc, redneck, bumpkin, etc., generally translated as Troglodyte, abbreviated as Trog] (the average taxpayer, Mr. Everybody, the honest but mediocre saver, whose religion is, depending on the case, one of the crapulous creeds (AL III, 50-54), or football, politics, a singer, etc.).  

The Outcast [unfit, wretched and/or weak] (the unwelcome, the incapable — whether he lives in the slums [wretched] or in his mother’s basement [weak]: he turns up equally as a provincial magistrate, a civil party in the trial of Sir Shumule, or a pathetic little throat-cutter without stature at Moulins-Yzeure Prison — the constant being the unquenchable hatred he feels toward “the one who goes his way with a light heart”). 

This is the capital point: a Hermit may pass himself off as an Outcast (Liber Tau teaches us that the Magister Templi is the Fool of the Tarot), but not the reverse, as it is written: < it may be that yonder beggar is a King. A King may choose his garment as he will : there is no certain test : but a beggar cannot hide his poverty > (AL II, 58). 

Perpetually assailed, as his function requires, by < danger & trouble > (AL III, 11), the prince-priest may have an access of melancholy, as it is written: < I will hide thee in a mask of sorrow : they that see thee shall fear thou art fallen : but I lift thee up > (AL II, 53) — this has no consequence; but nothing and no one will ever make Emmanuel Macron a credible head of state: < There is none that shall be cast down or lifted up : all is ever as it was > (AL II, 58). 

Just as only royal souls — Hermit, Lover, and man of Earth — are capable of accepting the Law of Thelema, so too the first direct Commandment of the Book (AL I, 6) sums up, in the person of the prince-priest, the three modes of service to Ra-Hoor-Khuit: warrior, lord, and Thebes — i.e., direct Action, Promulgation by example, and the Ascesis of the Magician who, in the twilight of his Temple, casts his power of enchantment onto the scales of the cosmic balance. 

Above all, above all, above all, whether one is still <gross>, already < fine >, or belongs to the < lofty chosen ones > (AL I, 50), in all cases and at every level: < let not one know well the other ! > (AL I, 50)

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 19° ♈︎ : ☽︎ in 7° ♑︎ : ☿︎ : Ⅴⅹⅰⅰ. 

𓄿𓎛𓂧 𓇋𓈖𓏌