The Tao of Cleopatra

Dear friends, beautiful and happy people,

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

Today, I am doing better!

Not that I have been suffering in the slightest, mind you…

I am simply, each day, a little better than the day before. It is in my nature.

Apart from that, I am pleased because I am receiving a lot of mail.

Soror K the Scarletest, for example (who is, all by herself, a meeting between Gina Carano and Ronda Rousey, and therefore makes the upcoming encounter on May 16th completely superfluous), has just sent me a delightful letter (butch, yet delightful: that’s so K.!… She is so very machotte…), in which she notably remarks, in her inimitable style:

“Since Liber 65 is the sum of the akashic recollections of Ankh-af-na-khonsu, verse 27 [of Chapter 4] establishes, as a logical consequence, that Alexander VI Borgia was the reincarnation of Cleopatra, and that explains why he couldn’t stand the Romans.”

It is interesting… A bit summary, but interesting.

The verse, to be perfectly precise, contains a flashback to the very moment of the death of the divine Cleopatra:

To-day I am the slave of the little asp of death; and who shall loosen our love? — Liber Cordis Cincti Serpente, 4:27

You know the principle well (we have covered this a billion times):

By virtue of the equation:

GOD = Nuit (the Beauteous Queen) × Hadit (the Deadly Serpent)

the voluntary death of Cleopatra was the Ultimate Apotheosis — the very formulation of GOD Himself.

To my knowledge, in all of recorded human history, no one has better fulfilled the holy precepts of Hadit our Master than the divine Cleopatra: “thy death shall be lovely: whoso seeth it shall be glad. Thy death shall be the seal of our agelong love” (AL II, 66) and “death is the crown of all” (AL II, 72).

Selah.

(This is why I so deeply regret that they ultimately gave up on casting Gal Gadot as Cleopatra: my habit of declaring at every possible opportunity, with no apparent connection to the conversation, that “Gal Gadot is God” would, as soon as the film came out, have been regarded as a Prophetic Access of Enthusiasm instead of being seen as the feverish X-post of a lovesick stan! What a shame.)

Cleopatra’s Apotheosis was, moreover, the dazzling fulfillment of Hadit’s promise: if a man strives ever to more, if he is “truly” a disciple of the Old Serpent, and if he is “ever joyous,” then he deserves a death that is not the obscure conclusion of a phase of decrepitude and decline, but the lovely crowning of what his journey on this earth has been.

I. My Death Will Be a Vogue Happening

For my part, I have always thought that my own death would be a kind of Grand Farewell Party to Life — a hip, chic, and voguish happening to conclude, in a totally orgasmic manner, my cool & sexy trajectory in this world.

(I had really hoped to die before getting old. Missed that one. But growing older has its advantages: for example, no one can possibly be as cool & sexy as I am anymore — I’m too far ahead!)

It is true that, aside from eating like an ogre, drinking like a Templar, smoking like a chimney, gambling like a diplomat, fornicating like a satyr, and doing coke like Tony Montana — which one could, after all, regard as a form of “strive ever to more” — my main accomplishment on this beautiful and interesting planet has been to be sentenced to five years in prison for the crime of being a Thelemite. So I think one can legitimately call me a “truly” disciple of Hadit!

As for the rest, no one would dream of contesting that Sir Shumule the Joyful, Sir Shumule the Radiant, Sir Shumule the King of Viscounts, ticks every box of the “ever joyous,” even when sober!

It would really be too unjust if my death were not hyper-lovely!

II. Perinde Ac Cadaver : The Threefold Protocol 

Here we find again the Threefold Protocol and our Good Resolutions:

The “strive ever to more” consists, for the servant of Ra-Hoor-Khuit, in promulgating the Law in a manner that becomes methodically more fanatical each day.

The “truly mine” consists, for the disciple of Hadit, in observing a Holy Obedience perinde ac cadaver to the precepts of the Old Serpent.

The “ever joyous” consists, for the lover of Nuit, in delighting his Queen, since She, by Her own admission, experiences joy only when She sees a Thelemite rejoicing, as it is written (AL I, 13).

III. My Wife Is How Nuit Says My Name

Obviously, our verse makes a direct allusion (“slave”) to the Holy Obedience toward Hadit.

Now, “asp” has a gematria value of 141, which is the numerical value of the name Mélanie, the birth name of my Beloved Wife, who was, in 2005 e.v., baptized Chloé within the Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica.

(Note in passing that Chloé was baptized by three bishops — among whom was the future Hyperion X — and in the very room where Kenneth Anger had been received into the Caliphate O.T.O. Yes, I know… my wife is more brilliantly cool than yours, in addition to being much, much more beautiful — my wife is more brilliantly cool and much, much more beautiful than everyone else).

Now, Chloé has the gematria Ch(20) + L(30) + O(6) + E(5) = 61.

The link between 141 and 61 is 141 – 61 = 80, which is one of the ways in which Nuit calls 61 (cf. AL I, 46).

From this we deduce that Chloé is the way Nuit calls Mélanie — therefore that the choice of her baptismal name was of authentically divine Inspiration.

Also, since Nuit is None (cf. AL I, 27), that is to say Ain, 61 — and Hadit is likewise None (cf. AL II, 15) — Holy Obedience to the commandments of Nuit, to those of Hadit, or to those of my Wife, are one and the same thing.

The fields of application are different, but it is one and the same Path, one and the same Obedience, and it is the one that leads to Apotheosis and the Crown. 

We shall call this the Tao of Cleopatra.

IV. Everything Is Permitted to Him Who Dares to Die for It — The Tao of Cleopatra

And this Principle sums up the whole of the Law and constitutes the very substance and nature of Thelema, as indicated by the fact that “To-day” (first word in our Verse) = T(9)+O(70)+Da(4)+Y(10) = 93.

You will tell me that the name of Sobek, the crocodile god, also has the gematria S(60)+O(6)+B(2)+E(5)+K(20) = 93  — but To-day = 93 = Sobek should be read as a reminder of the injunction of the Old Serpent, Hadit our Master: “A feast every day” (AL II, 42) — that is to say: life is a feast and feasts do not last.

Or rather, as the divine Cleopatra might have said to us at the moment of her death, looking back on her life: Everything is permitted to him who dares to die for it.

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 4° ♉︎ : ☽︎ in 15° ♌︎ : ♀︎ : Ⅴⅹⅰⅰ.

𓄿𓎛𓂧 𓇋𓈖𓏌

Passions Over Principles (The FTSE Trembled When I Whispered Adonai)

In the final analysis, the Doctrine preached by Babalon can be summed up as this: The important thing is to always put your passions above your principles. 

— Sir Shumule

You are a genius, therefore the world will seek to kill you or bring you down. 

— Leptopœcile Sophiæ to Sir Shumule, 23 September 1998 e.v.

Dear friends, beautiful and happy people,

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

Yet another entire night spent shamelessly rereading (must I, immortal gods, be so retrograde and narcissistic! and the prison be so fucking dull at night!), I have re-re-read, I say, my Magical Diary of 2009 e.v. (cf. Never Liked Moby and The Hangover of the Hierophant).

I drifted back into this deliciously doomed year, when the City still reeked of burnt leverage, hedge-fund boys were quietly liquidating their Mayfair mews houses, BlackBerrys glowed like guilty confessions in every darkened limousine, and Twitter was that fresh, vicious little pet everyone was feeding scraps of scandal to…

The crash had made vice taste even sweeter — because guilt, darling, is the finest aphrodisiac.

Witness the kind of hermeneutics I was practising then — for example, on Liber Cordis Cincti Serpente, Chapter 5, Verses 29 to 32:

29. Ruddy are the gleams of ruby and gold that sparkle therein; one drop shall intoxicate the Lord of the Gods my servant.

Commentary : One single drop of that ruby-gold elixir and even the most swaggering Mayfair hedge-fund prince would set down his BlackBerry mid-trade, sink to his knees in the back of his chauffeur-driven Bentley, and whimper “my Lord” while the FTSE bled quietly in the background.

I slipped it into his glass at a crisis supper in a half-empty Belgravia townhouse that April; his wife had already fled to Mustique, but his mistress stayed… and the markets never quite forgave the way he looked at me afterwards.

30. Also Adonai spake unto V.V.V.V.V. saying: O my little one, my tender one, my little amorous one, my gazelle, my beautiful, my boy, let us fill up the pillar of the Infinite with an infinite kiss!

Commentary : Adonai murmuring like a bonus-deprived sugar daddy still clinging to his last seven figures: “my gazelle, my beautiful…” right before plunging into the Infinite so vigorously that the servers in a Shoreditch warehouse party flickered in ecstasy.

I whispered the very same line to a breathtaking long-legged heiress at one of those candlelit Brick Lane raves last June — her silk stockings whispered against mine, the pillar remained magnificently upright, and the recession suddenly felt like someone else’s problem [PS: and Twitter was still too innocent to capture the way she trembled.]

31. So that the stable was shaken and the unstable became still.

Commentary : The stable shook like a freshly nationalised bank on the verge of another bailout, while the unstable little trust-fund debutantes and bonus-starved bankers’ wives finally learned to hush their pretty mouths and receive enlightenment with proper aristocratic poise.

I drifted into a crisis salon in Belgravia, a few months ago — the remaining hedgies trembled in their still-tailored suits as their exquisite wives quivered beside them, and for one sublime hour the entire room achieved perfect, quivering stillness between their silk-stockinged thighs and mine.

32. They that beheld it cried with a formidable affright: The end of things is come upon us.

Commentary : They glimpsed the ruby-gold flash on my BlackBerry screen and instantly began wailing “The end of civilisation!” like ruined bankers’ wives at one final, desperate orgy before the receivers arrived.

How endearingly theatrical.

I merely straightened my ascot, took another languid sip of 1996 Krug, and purred to the circle of trembling beauties: “Do calm down, darlings — it’s only the end of your things. Mine are just beginning… and already causing delightful little tremors on this wicked Twitter with every sigh you let escape.”

They all refreshed anyway, manicured fingers shaking with fear and forbidden delight.

***

THIS was the year 2009 of the vulgar era, dear friends… crashing hedge funds, long-legged heiresses in silk stockings, desperate bankers’ wives, BlackBerry confessions, half-deserted Mayfair, and that special aristocratic sneer at a world convinced it was ending while Sir Shumule was merely warming up between scented sheets and trembling feminine curves.

Now, it is one thing to do what thou wilt, my loves — but it is an entirely different matter to do it with a BlackBerry buzzing in one hand, sin dripping from the other, and the sweet trembling of feminine surrender as your private symphony.

Anyway! The old Chioa Khan sends his warmest, most scandalously affectionate regards from whichever four-poster he was desecrating with exquisite company during that bankrupt, intoxicating year.

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.

Love is the law, love under will.

— ☉︎ in 3° ♉︎ : ☽︎ in 0° ♌︎ : ♃︎ : Ⅴⅹii.

𓄿𓎛𓂧 𓇋𓈖𓏌

Parzival on MDMA: The Secret of Success in Love, War & Initiation

Dear friends, beautiful and happy people,

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

Last night I dreamed that Dua Lipa was being held prisoner by a repulsive, affection-starved bunny-boiler witch. She managed to send me a message via dragonfly (!) saying that the secret plan to rescue her was hidden in Liber Cordis Cincti Serpente, Chapter 2, verses 52 to 55 — It seems the quality of the weed circulating in that prison has improved dramatically…

Anyway, I’m not abandoning Dua in her hour of need!

So I read:

52. All night they danced and sang; but Thou art the morning, O my darling, my serpent that twinest Thee about this heart. 

53. I am the heart, and Thou the serpent. Wind Thy coils closer about me, so that no light nor bliss may penetrate. 

54. Crush out the blood of me, as a grape upon the tongue of a white Doric girl that languishes with her lover in the moonlight. 

55. Then let the End awake. Long hast thou slept, O great God Terminus! Long ages hast thou waited at the end of the city and the roads thereof. 

Awake Thou! wait no more! 

I. Rave All Night, Annihilate at Dawn: The Literal Vow

To sum up: After a wild night of raving, the Prophet (blessing & worship to him) finds himself at dawn fixated on this thought: “Hadit is the morning.”

According to the First Commandment of the Law — which is not to worship Hadit, but to BE Hadit (AL I, 6) — he then laments that, in his own case, this identification is still quite incomplete. 

He therefore makes the vow that it should become so total, so final, that nothing — neither spiritual light, nor psycho-affective gratification, nor even ethnic determinism — can ever divert him from it again.

In short, he clearly aspires to a complete, beautiful, cruel and voluptuous annihilation of his being, and for what he calls “the End” to come: that Hadit, the Ancient Serpent, who is the very goal of his quest — and who seems to have fallen asleep from waiting so long — should awaken…

On the other hand, the Prophet (blessing & worship to him) understands that Hadit is already within him, not at the end of some geographical journey to be reached. 

Hadit has been secretly coiled inside him since the very day he set out. 

There is no need to seek Him in distant lands or by complicated routes — in fact, there is no need to wait at all… It is enough for the “old god” — “the Snake that giveth Knowledge & Delight” (AL II, 22) — to awaken within him.

This forcefully reminds me of my Good Resolutions for the year 2026 e.v.:

“I already see existence as a training stay in Hadit’s House — exactly as Beatrix Kiddo sees her training stay in Pai Mei’s house. But it is not enough.

This year, I want to achieve a total psychological transference onto Hadit, to achieve the total annihilation of my personality, so as to see the world only through the eyes of the Old Serpent.”

II. The Most Oedipal Religion on Earth

Cathy, my terrifyingly inflexible psychoanalyst friend, the very archetype of frigid beauty, sees Thelema (I quote) as “the most Oedipal of all religions.”

It’s true that Cathy is an orthodox Freudian of the strictest observance, and that stories involving serpents tend to make her raise an eyebrow…

“This idea of becoming the father (Hadit) and constantly seeking union with the mother (Nuit) is even staggeringly frank: it is not a regressive Oedipal religion (like Buddhism, for example), but aggressive Oedipus turned into a religion!”

Of course, reducing Thelema to the notion of “fucking the Old Man’s MILF while he sleeps” is tempting… but it runs counter to the idea of the Awakening of Hadit, which seems very much to be the project here — and would put us, in this case, exactly in the position of Bilbo caught red-handed by Smaug…

III. The Gematria That Kills God’s Enemies

Moreover, the verb “To Awake,” being applied both to “Thou” (which designates Hadit) and to “the End,” teaches us that the Awakening of Hadit is simultaneously the seminal impulse and the terminal phase — as it is written: “I am Life, and the giver of Life, yet therefore is the knowledge of me the knowledge of death” (AL II, 6).

Now, “End” has a gematria of 59, which is the same as GVIM (Heathen), and that is the whole point: the Awakening of Hadit puts an end to the Heathen.

There is no more “Terminus” than there is a Beginning, since the Awakening of Hadit is both the End and the Beginning, and Hadit is “Not” (AL II, 15).

Therefore The End is not “at the end of the city and the roads thereof.” 

The End — the true objective — is the end of the Heathen, because The End is the Awakening of Hadit, and the Awakening of Hadit puts an end to the Heathen.

IV. How to Exterminate a Million Bunny-Boilers Like a Passionate Dilettante

Now the End, like Hadit, is perfect when it is Not — i.e., in order to accomplish one’s True Will, one must have absolutely no consideration for the End, no “lust of result,” as it is written (AL I, 44).

If one worries about the outcome of the enterprise, one misses the synchronicity, one hesitates, one temporizes, one looks at the matter from a shopkeeper’s point of view, and one ends up, of course, turning back and returning to the “old sweetnesses” (AL III, 43).

Yet the whole trick — in love, in war, and in the initiatic process — is never to turn back for anyone (AL III, 46): even if one were faced with a million enemies, rational objections, or extremely ugly and determined bunny-boilers, one must decide to exterminate them all, one after the other, like Parzival the Pure with the giants.

That is how one “avails” — that is how one may perhaps arrive where “There is success” (AL III, 69).

Always act, on all planes, as a passionate dilettante.

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 2° ♉︎ : ☽︎ in 17° ♋︎ : ☿︎ : Ⅴⅹⅰⅰ.

𓄿𓎛𓂧 𓇋𓈖𓏌

I'd Rather Die Under Kim Kardashian’s Wheels

I claim that I would rather be run over by Kim Kardashian at the wheel of her Rolls-Royce than by a hard-working average taxpayer in his sixteen-wheeler. — Sir Shumule

Dear friends, beautiful and happy people,

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

This Tuesday’s Holy Reading is Liber LXV: Liber Cordis Cincti Serpente sub figurâ אדני, Chapter 5, verses 21 to 24.

21. But thou shalt heed none of this. Thou shalt be ever the heart, and I the serpent will coil close about thee. My coil shall never relax throughout the æons. Neither change nor sorrow nor unsubstantiality shall have thee; for thou art passed beyond all these.

Commentary: Tia once remarked to me how much the Old Serpent of the City of Edfu, our Master Hadit, speaks to the Prophet here like a maternally possessive and intrusive wife: “It’s like Sharon Osbourne at the end of the ‘Under the Graveyard’ video saying ‘I would never give up on him,’ etc.”

Indeed, the Restriction (from which Nuit, “She-who-protects”, safeguards us) that falls upon the Thelemite who does anything other than his True Will is not the “punishment” for a “fault” committed against the personal hysteria of a deity that is “a mix of Big Brother, prison guard, and Ubu” (as I like to define the demiurge called “Because,” i.e., the god of Nooks and Crannies worshipped by the crapulous creeds of Abrahamism). 

Rather, it is the consequence of our august sovereign Nuit looking at that Thelemite with the eyes of a queen who has just learned that the king her husband has installed yet another concubine in the secondary harem.

In response to a question once asked about the “status of woman,” let us recall that woman is, ultimately, scarlet — that is, an avatar of Babalon. 

Now, Babalon is the Sacred Hetaira. 

Woman therefore possesses, “vertically” (i.e., religiously), — as the perfect support for the contemplation of the Divine and the physical means of connection to Him (this is the “Sacred” part), — a supreme spiritual authority.

It is not Sir Shumule who says this, but Nuit: “in his woman called the Scarlet Woman is all power given” (AL I, 15). 

Nevertheless, “horizontally” (i.e., politically), she must have the legal status of material property (this is the “Hetaira” part). 

Again, it is not Sir Shumule who says this, but Nuit: “Ye shall gather goods and store of women and spices” (AL I, 61).

As a supporter of Integral Gynarchy, I deplore the latter point — and this mash-up of “God Is A Woman” and “I’m A Slave 4U” sounds a bit strange coming from the august mouth of the Supreme Goddess — Sexy, certainly! — But strange.

Be that as it may, my Queen has spoken: it would be rather ridiculous — what am I saying? downright blasphemous! — to claim to be more feminist than Nuit, that is, than the Eternal Feminine in person!!!

22. Even as the diamond shall glow red for the rose, and green for the rose-leaf; so shalt thou abide apart from the Impressions.

Commentary: The Prophet (blessing & worship to him) says of this verse: 

“The Magister Templi reacts with perfect elasticity to all impacts, appearing to be wholly passive to all alike, yet really uninfluenced in the slightest degree by any.”

This is a notion I have developed at length in my Doctrine of the Dinosaur and the Chameleon. 

I once wrote: 

“It is the first principle of ethnobiology that the capacity to survive proceeds neither from strength nor from intelligence, but from responsiveness to change. 

‘Natural selection’ is exclusively a matter of updating: however intransigently ethno-separatist he may be, the psychorigid individual is an outcast, a scoriac sub-creature doomed to extinction.”

To which an internet user replied with the following question:

“What does this imply concretely, and should limits be placed on adaptation?”

It is true that the word “adaptation,” which carries a nuance of resigned self-leveling, is not the most exact equivalent one can give to responsiveness…

“Reactivity,” perhaps?… but a reactivity devoid of rebuff… Or else: “good reaction”… “adjustment”…

I added: 

Famous cases of non-responsiveness:

1. The dinosaurs — tough customers in their way, but non-viable outside the Mesozoic.

2. The shark — epitome of over-predation, which dies as soon as it is taken out of the water.

3. Anyone who clings like a drowning man — religiously, morally or politically — to the formulas of the Old Aeon — “the rituals of the old time are black” (AL II, 5). 

“The Universe is Change,” says the Prophet (blessing & worship to him), commenting on Atu XIII. 

Consequently, the Chameleon is our daily guide — hence the name of the Yi-King (literally: “the Weave of the Chameleon”).

23. I am thou, and the Pillar is 'stablished in the void.

Commentary: “I am thou” always reminds me that מֹשֶׁה (Mosheh) is the exact mirror of השם (Hachem).

Now, Hachem השם (litt : ‘The Name’) is the word by which Jews designate the Holy Tetragrammaton in a profane context.

From this we deduce that the Magus, that is, the Sage, is the Divine plunged into a profane context (cf. Deliciously Obscure), hence the Holy Sorcerer Merlin disguised as a psychotic beggar living deep in the woods (cf. AL II, 58). 

Incarnation itself is — biologically, I would say — the Way of the Chameleon.

24. Also thou art beyond the stabilities of Being and of Consciousness and of Bliss; for I am thou, and the Pillar is 'stablished in the void.

Commentary: Of ‘the void’, Lao Tzu, first among the Magi, says:

Thirty spokes converge at the hub of the wheel, but it is the empty center of the wheel that makes the chariot go. 

One shapes clay to make vessels, but it is the empty interior of the vessel that allows its use. 

A house is pierced with doors and windows; it is still the empty space that allows habitation. Being gives possibilities; it is through Non-Being that one makes use of them.

I would gladly draw still more violently gynarchic conclusions from this — but I fear I might weary you. 

The truth is that there is no other God than Nuit, and her lord Hadit (AL I, 21), and that (therefore) if Cleopatra had married Lao-Tzu, we would be paddling about in the Golden Age.

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 1° ♉︎ : ☽︎ in 3° ♋︎ : ♂︎ : Ⅴⅹⅰⅰ.

𓄿𓎛𓂧 𓇋𓈖𓏌

The Hangover of the Hierophant: A Thelemic Love Letter from the Golden Ruins

Dear friends, beautiful and happy people,

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

I have spent the entire day, quite shamelessly, immersed in rereading my Magical Record from July–August 2009 e.v., which Soror Jezebel recently sent to me in my cell (Cf. Never Liked Moby).

It is one of the extremely rare manuscripts of mine that the so-called “judicial power” (sic) in Old Grey Land was unable to physically seize during the Great Troubles of the Year Vviii, and it will therefore be monstrously valuable later on.

I am, by the way, quite pleased that such a beautiful volume chronicling our Hours of High Light managed to escape the tentacles of those mutants.

They have no sense of humour whatsoever.

I mean: when I declared, during my appearance in First Instance at the Correctional Court of Cusset, that “It was while fisting Judge Anthony ‘Abu’ Miraoui that Gutenberg got the idea of inventing the hand puppet,” I was not guaranteeing the literal historicity of the event — I was JOKING. The unfortunate Miraoui nevertheless actually sued me for defamation over that quip :)

Dear friends, allow me to share with you (so that we may measure the contrast, admire the chiaroscuro between two eras separated by only seventeen years, and thus lament together the notion of Impermanence, which is the favourite wickedness of the demiurge ‘Because’, sworn enemy of the Old Serpent of the City of Edfu, Hadit our Master, patron of “that which remains” (AL 2, 9)), allow me, I say, to share with you a few playful pages from this Grimoire…

For example — this entry from August 3rd (At the time I had the habit, every morning, of systematically drawing, in a bibliomantic spirit, a verse from our Books upon waking, whatever the hour or circumstances):

I drew this — but I must confess I had to read it three times through the champagne haze and the delightful ache in every noble limb before the letters stopped dancing the cha-cha:

“He is like a man of thirty, whose eyes are the eyes of a youth, and whose skin is the skin of a child; and he is arrayed in a robe of gold and scarlet, and he hath upon his forehead a golden mitre, and in his hand is a sceptre.”

Ah, the Hierophant!!!

How perfectly he mocks me this morning. For here I sit — Sir Shumule, pure product of Old France, idle nobleman and occasional Mage — in the ruins of what can only be described as a night that would have made even the Emperor Commodus blush and take notes.

That day I was on the Coast, and I was being very descriptive, far less elliptical than usual (special dedication to the Misanthropic Thelemite, who is a fan of Balzac and therefore of endless descriptions):

The mansion (a discreet little palazzo on the edge of the lagoon, borrowed from a friend who owes me several favours and one rather compromising video) looks as though Babalon herself had thrown a tantrum in it.

Silken robes, lace underthings, and several strategic pieces of expensive lingerie are draped over chandeliers like victory flags.

Empty bottles of Veuve Clicquot and a suspicious number of half-melted candles form a chaotic altar to the goddess of Excess.

In the pool outside, three or four of last night’s goddesses are still floating lazily on inflatable unicorns, wearing nothing but suntan oil and satisfied smiles.

The air smells of jasmine, sweat, patchouli, and the unmistakable musk of thoroughly accomplished Sex Magick.

I remember that day very clearly — even though I had taken a whole load of really terrible stuff for the memory the night before!

I woke — or rather, was gently extracted from unconsciousness — by the soft laughter of at least seven young women (I counted; the eighth was making coffee, bless her).

One of them, a breathtaking creature with eyes like Nuit and hips that could launch a thousand ships (or at least sink several yachts), kissed my forehead and whispered, “Good morning, David.”

Another handed me a glass of fresh orange juice spiked with just enough hair of the dog to make the room stop spinning.

A third was already planning the afternoon’s continuation: more music, more bodies, more champagne, and — she insisted — a yacht this time, “because last night you promised us the sea.”

I was so unserious back then! — But already firm in my principles and faithful to my Magical Oaths:

I have, once and for all, chosen the Way of the dandy adventurer. Yet even I must admit that last night’s working surpassed my usual standards.

We began with the Nu-Sphere Ritual, naturally, then Liber V, but once the Temple was fully open, the ceremony… shall we say… devolved gloriously into pure, unfiltered, multi-partner gnosis.

I played the central role with the gravity and enthusiasm of a true Hierophant — mitre optional, sceptre very much engaged.The girls (all of them initiates or natural-born priestesses of Nuit, I assure you) took turns objectifying me with such joyful, athletic precision that I felt like [illegible]: the mansion, the pool, the luxury, the half-naked beauties attending to every whim — except in this version, I was the one being worshipped, devoured, and occasionally passed around like the sacred Host at a particularly enthusiastic Gnostic Mass.

“Swift as a trodden serpent turn and strike!” (AL 3, 42) — The serpent, I am pleased to report, performed admirably — though this morning it is reminding me, with a certain tender soreness, that even divine weapons need occasional maintenance.

And yet, amid the glorious wreckage, a tiny voice of aristocratic self-deprecation whispers: “Really, Shumule? Again?”

For here I am, a thirty-something nobleman with a hangover that feels like the combined wrath of the Qliphoth and a mild case of divine retribution, preparing for another full day of non-stop revelry.

The schedule, as relayed to me by my charming general staff of priestesses, includes: sunrise yoga (naked), brunch (with more champagne), a boat excursion, several hours of aquatic frolic, dinner, and then — they assure me — “whatever happens after dark.”

I shall, of course, rise to the occasion. One does not become Sir Shumule by declining invitations from the Goddess.

The Hierophant may have a hangover, but his sceptre remains undaunted, his mitre (metaphorical) still askew in the most becoming fashion, and his True Will as ironclad as ever.

Let the day unfold as it will — more bodies, more laughter, more ecstatic resorption of the Many into the One (and then back again, repeatedly).

And it was then, historically I believe, the very first time I resorted to my Legendary Mantra:

Whatever happens, it will be glorious, for I am Sir Shumule and even my disasters are divine.

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 0° ♉︎ : ☽︎ in 18° ♊︎ : ☽︎ : Ⅴⅹⅰⅰ.

 𓄿𓎛𓂧 𓇋𓈖𓏌

Diamond in the Glass (Karmic Glitch)

To Cleopatra VII Thea Philopator
To Jingū Kōgō
To Helen of Troy

Dear friends, beautiful and happy people,

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

This day’s Holy Reading includes the following Verse: 

“Thou shalt dwell among the people as a precious diamond among cloudy diamonds, and crystals, and pieces of glass. Only the eye of the just merchant shall behold thee, and plunging in his hand shall single thee out and glorify thee before men.” (Liber Cordis Cincti Serpente, 5:20)

— Which, obviously, by a highly subjective association of ideas, sends me back to my present situation and to the considerations that follow:   

I am being reproached these days for systematically beginning my posts with an inventory of the letters I receive. 

This apparently gives the blog the tone of a “letters to the editor column” (sic), which clashes with the high spiritual standard that the Serious Thelemite has come to expect in these parts.

That’s quite fair…

But, dear friends, it cannot have escaped your notice that I am currently in PRISON: here, the distribution of mail is the most thrilling, the most hard-core, the most charged with breathless suspense of the entire twenty-four hours of the day!

Boredom is the tutelary deity of Houses of Detention — it is diametrically opposed to my religion and, as one can imagine, particularly trying in my personal case…

As everyone knows, 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 have also witnessed a heap of strange things in nearly every circle where the arts of mysticism and magick 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 had been born a social case, and shared the bed of more women than if I had 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. (See Confessions of a Hermit of Hadit)

Well then! Prison is as boring as Romania and as sophisticated as the Congo — I can speak of both: I HAVE been to Romania (a rather unexciting country where I was researching Vlad Tepes — I visited an Orthodox Christian monastery there: the superior brother had eyes that would fuck you from twenty paces) — and I HAVE been to the Congo (where I devoted my stay to putting the main voodoo psychotropics through their paces: Belangwa, Bombambo, Kongolamba, Misosoli, Yombela Nkasa, etc. I’ll tell you about that another day…)

It remains for me to explore my past lives — in order to try to understand the origin of the absurd karmic glitch that has landed me here, bored out of my mind…

The most plausible hypothesis, in my opinion, is that I was King Sardanapalus — hence the invariable hatred that eunuchs and slaves bear me in this present life: they were doubtless sacrificed during my suicide back then…

But that is pure speculation: apart from that, the Visions procured by my attempts at karmic recollection always look far too much like they were produced by Marc Dorcel, scripted by Eli Cross, and directed by Michael Ninn to be considered entirely reliable — not to mention that they invariably end in the arms of Helen of Troy, the Empress Himiko (Jingū Kōgō), or Cleopatra herself, and that it all borders on a running gag.

Anyway! I have equaled Beau Brummell in the art of throwing feasts in prison — and all in all, I’ve had it easy: Brummell, at least, didn’t have drones!

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 29° ♈︎ : ☽︎ in 3° ♊︎ : ☉︎ : Ⅴⅹⅰⅰ.   

𓄿𓎛𓂧 𓇋𓈖𓏌

Cosmic Cock Shock

Unto Nu.

Dear friends, beautiful and happy people,

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

I have just received a very pleasant letter from a boy I once knew — a strict “Yellow Hat” Buddhist, which is admittedly less boring than being Canadian, but still not exactly what you’d call funky…

At the time, I had spent two hours chatting online with him. He found The Book of the Law “violent” (sic). I eventually replied:

“The legitimate Dalai Lama is Tommy Mottola: any man who deserved to marry first Mariah Carey and then Thalía must necessarily have been at least Siddhārtha Gautama in a previous life.”

Dear friends, this Sunday’s Holy Reading is Liber LXV: Liber Cordis Cincti Serpente sub figurâ אדני, Chapter 5, verses 13 to 16.

13. They shall change in their destruction, even as two dark stars that crash together in the abyss, and blaze up in an infinite burning.

Commentary: This is the very principle of the Hymen.

The Heathen do not suspect that everything is holy (that is to say, that everything is Sex Magick), including the domestic scene with terrifying screams and broken crockery.

The only thing that really matters is sexual activity — “they” therefore tend to surround it with aberrant conventions, all of which serve to pasteurize the libido.

To quote the late, dear Sally (may the gods grant her the accomplishment of her True Will; yea, the accomplishment of her True Will): “The most beautiful of compliments is premature ejaculation.” 

What I mean is: if Hispanic women are so prodigiously arousing, it is because they have fully understood the following Arcane:

To charm the Serpent, one must be Nuit; to tame the Beast, one must be Babalon. Let woman therefore be like the Universe and Nature herself: simultaneously hyper-attractive and hyper-terrifying.

14. All this while did Adonai pierce my being with his sword that hath four blades; the blade of the thunderbolt, the blade of the Pylon, the blade of the serpent, the blade of the Phallus.

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

“Adonai: Aleph is the swastika or Thunderbolt by shape; Daleth means Door or Pylon; Nun refers to Scorpio, the Serpent; Yod is the Phallus (Yod of Tetragrammaton — considered as the inmost and simplest idea).”

From this I deduce (like Lao-Tzu, first among the Magi): Return is the movement of the Divine.

My Ipseity — secret as the Hermit’s Lamp, the royalty of Merlin disguised as a beggar (cf. AL II, 58), the furia erotica of the fierce virgin, the vital principle in the grain of wheat, etc. — manifests in my raging libido that surges “Swift as a trodden serpent” (AL III, 42), provoking a cock shock of cosmic dimension!

Thus my rutting Pylon forces, not without difficulty, a passage through the narrow Gate of the Empress, and I attain the One — that is, the orgasmic illumination of the resorption of the Two into the Zero.

That is the Direction of Life; that is, the inverse of the return to the Origin (the literal meaning of תשובה), which is אֲדֹנָי — an obvious liturgical analogy (cf. Liber XV). And since Hebrew is read from right to left…

15. Also he taught me the holy unutterable word Ararita, so that I melted the sixfold gold into a single invisible point, whereof naught may be spoken.

Commentary: Resolution of the Great Paradox stated in the previous verse: אראריתא, notarikon of Achad Rosh Achdotho Rosh Ichudo Temurato Achad, which means “The One is Thy Root, the One is Thy Ipseity, Thy Permutation is the One” (cf. Liber Ararita, 1 : 0).

16. For the Magistry of this Opus is a secret magistry; and the sign of the master thereof is a certain ring of lapis-lazuli with the name of my master, who am I, and the Eye in the Midst thereof.

Commentary: The Prophet (blessing & worship to him) gives, regarding this verse, a great many instructions concerning the Ring of Nuit, from which we deduce that VVVVV (“By the power of truth I have conquered the universe in my lifetime”) is the Magical Motto of the Archetypal Master.

Now, if we consider once again Lao-Tzu, of blessed memory, as the Archetypal Master in question, we observe that, having reached the pinnacle of Wisdom, he left China, devoted himself to wandering — so as not to witness the decadence of the Zhou — and ended up alone and misunderstood. 

And this, once again, constitutes an illustration of the Great Paradox stated in verse 14.

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 29° ♈︎ : ☽︎ in 25° ♉︎ : ☉︎ : Ⅴⅹⅰⅰ.

𓄿𓎛𓂧 𓇋𓈖𓏌

Never Liked Moby

Dear friends, beautiful and happy people,

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

Jez has just sent me, from our HQ in Ramatuelle, my Magical Journal from July–August 2009 e.v., accompanied by a charming letter that contains this funny note: 

« It’s a good thing you don’t like blondes (see the entry of August 12th). You are, as we know, so narcissistic that if you were going out with Margot Robbie, while you were making love, you’d close your eyes and imagine you were jerking off. Frankly, it would be a waste. »

What a JOY to reconnect with those Days of Great Light! 

I have the blood of Des Esseintes and Sardanapalus running through my veins, and the splendour of this book with its precious violet leather binding, embossed with the Mark of the Beast in pure gold, bears ample witness to the fact. 

The unheard-of refinement of the object, the perfumed Japanese washi paper, the scarlet silk bookmarks, all exude an aura of unbridled luxury to which I am particularly sensitive.

But what a terrifying aging effect this re-reading of the Diary has just dealt me!

There is not a single entry in the entire Journal that a person under fifty could possibly understand!

I read:

Yesterday, an absolutely delightful day, beneath the feudal towers of the family castle. 

From Paris I brought back, along with a slight weariness of multiculturalism, an old friend, Charles-André W (a.k.a. Charlot), — an extraordinary Thelemite, — and we spent the whole afternoon as if projected into a painting by Gustave Moreau — reclining on deckchairs, contemplating from the terrace the deities playing in the splendour of the park. 

We gorged ourselves on idleness, Singapore Slings, and silence.

It must be said that the fresh morning, devoted to shooting practice, had on the contrary been extremely active, dry, and thunderous.

Behind the outbuildings we have an old orchard that resembles a secret Venetian courtyard, and whose door I suspect to be inter-dimensional: a shot from a .44 AMP Automag pistol, which the twenty-six hectares of park would normally echo for fifty kilometres around, is mysteriously muffled there, and reaches the ears of the local peasants (who honour me with their esteem, and whom I would not wish to spoil their leisure for anything in the world) like the plik of an air rifle, or those of the nearby flabby, pink Dutch invaders (whose existence I would be delighted to ruin enough to make them return — that heap of lobster-coloured lard — to mope in their Low Countries, but who have the annoying habit of bothering our gendarmes at the slightest noise coming from the château). It is therefore there, quite naturally, that I have set up my shooting range.

By the immortal gods! Who still uses a .44 AMP Automag pistol?!

And this too:

I have my habits in a certain internet café… 

For some time now, the manageress has been irritating me prodigiously with her pinched way of trying to act “Parisian”, and especially with her excessive displays of prudery: when she catches sight, over a customer’s shoulder, of a daring image or a somewhat spicy clip, she makes a point of showing her disapproval, and the slightest swaying choreography earns you a prudish little look, bordering on hostile…

I hate the neo-Puritanism of this post-9/11 era with all the force of my soul.

Who still remembers what internet cafés were?!

I continue:

What characterises Old Grey Land is the proscription of eroticism and its confinement to dark, shameful corners… 

The Christian vermin (to the lions!) have made a “sin” of the impulse that gives us life; the communists hunted “lustful vipers”… 

Today man must choose his destiny: it is Saint Alexander VI or Savonarola… There is no other option… 

Personally, I have chosen… And it is not Savonarola… 

Beauty, joy, freedom — which are the necessary adjuvants to eroticism — are contrary to Abrahamism itself: the only true rampart against Old Grey Land is la Voile Rouge…

Who still remembers (weep, my eyes!) what la Voile Rouge was?!?

And this again:

A little while ago, at the Internet Café, I was wandering on YouTube… 

I stumble upon Kylie Minogue… Can’t Get You Out of My Head. This video gives me an immediate, maximal, painful erection…  

What to do?… 

Impossible to walk to the exit, or else at goose-step pace, and even then: people will think I’m trying to steal an umbrella or something… Yet I keep getting harder, and I feel on the verge of tissue necrosis… 

Only one solution: a quick stroke of the wrist, unseen and unknown, in my pocket — and, as they say, everything for the dry-cleaner… 

Right. I replay the clip and begin the operation with the discretion required in an overcrowded cybercafé…  

Only, here’s the thing: the rising orgasm announces itself as enormous… devastating… un-be-liev-able… In short, I am preparing, still impassive, to take the ride of my life… all while dreading that the violence of the thing might punch a hole through my trousers… then sweep the entire clientele of the café away like a giant Kärcher pressure washer… then knock down the pylons and bus shelters in the street… 

The “annunciatory apnoea” kicks in… the pressure rises… rises… prodigious… and, at the precise instant of the orgasmic peak — I insist: at the precise instant I touch bliss — the clip ends, the playlist continues, and Moby suddenly appears on my screen. :/

And I have NEVER liked Moby!

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 27° ♈︎ : ☽︎ in 4° ♉︎ : ♀︎ : Ⅴⅹⅰⅰ.

𓄿𓎛𓂧 𓇋𓈖𓏌