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

Temptation, Gustave Moreau

Dear friends, beautiful and happy people,

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

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

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

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

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

Answer: Yes. I have one!

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

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

1. Spiritual or religious question → Nuit. 

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

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

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

If the answer is no, I abstain. 

2. Ethical or philosophical question → Hadit. 

Hadit is < the Master > (AL II:65). 

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

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

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

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

And I choose the Garden of Delights. 

Easy!

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

Warm kisses from the Bahamas.

Love is the law, love under will.

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

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

Pilgrimage to Cythera, Antoine Watteau

Dear friends, beautiful and happy people,

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

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

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

“How did you become a Thelemite?”

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

It’s very simple, really:

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

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

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

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

Make your self-indulgence your religion!

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

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

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

Warm kisses from the Bahamas.

Love is the law, love under will.

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

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

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

To Karl Germer.

Dear friends, beautiful and happy people,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why am I telling you all this?

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

LS once entrusted me with this Key:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Warm kisses from the Bahamas.

Love is the law, love under will.

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

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

The Ibis, Gustave Moreau

Dear friends, beautiful and happy people,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There is really no reason for it!

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

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

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

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

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

Here, then, is what we have:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Warm kisses from the Bahamas.

Love is the law, love under will.

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

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

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

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

Bora-Bora, 11 July 2023 e.v.

Madame le Juge,

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

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

It was a resounding success.

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

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

(Just for the record:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A thousand thanks, therefore!!!

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

As for what comes next… 

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

Love is the law, love under will.

– Sir Shumule

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

In Memoriam Sir Aleister Crowley

Dear Friends, beautiful and happy people,

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

The echo of the Magical Bell, when, in the equivocal sweetness of twilight, the Mass of the Phoenix is celebrated (333, 55555, 333), bears witness to the impermanence of all things : even the gods’ < lofty chosen ones > (AL 1, 50) shall be swept away, < dust lost in dust > (Cheth, 15)…

Thus, no one is unaware that the Prophet’s very last words were: “I am perplexed.”

Now, I have noticed that the English word perplexed is rendered in Hebrew as נָבוֹךְ (navokh), which has the numerical value 78 — exactly the same as the word מזלא (mezla), the direct influence from Kether.

To me, this sums up everything about Sir Aleister:

For the Heathen, who stop at the mere bark of the tree, he was a man whose life journey contained enough to make him — retrospectively — ashamed, perplexed, on his deathbed.

But for those who have the intelligence of the Mysteries, he was the Word of the Most High.

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

And blessing & worship to the prophet of the lovely Star.

Love is the law, love under will.

— ☉ in 9° ♐︎ : ☽ in 14° ♈︎ : ☉ : Vxi.

The Day of Be-with-Us : When the Deep-Sea Fish Judge the Snow Leopard

Dear friends, beautiful and happy people,

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

I just was asked what we, Thelemites, exactly mean by « the Day of Be-with-Us », and it is an excellent question!

Well — It is written in the Holy Books of Thelema : 

But certain men heard and understood, and through them shall this Knowledge be made known : The least therefore of them, the servant of them all, writeth this book. (Liber Porta Lucis sub figurâ X, 6-7)

Here is how I interpret it: 

In a normally pyramidal society, the higher one climbs, the more one becomes—paradoxically—a servant. 

The servant of servants is Pharaoh, because every second of his day (nay, every one of his thoughts, every word, every gesture) irreversibly affects the destiny of the Land — His entire being and all his time are consecrated (in the religious sense of the word) to the common good.

Which, of course, amounts to saying: the Sun has, in the ecosystem, a more obvious, more immediately universal usefulness than the woodlouse.

The < Day of Be-with-Us > (Cheth, 12 ; A’ash, 6) —whether you call it Ragnarök, Armageddon, or Greta Thunberg—is when the pyramid is turned upside down, and the deep-sea fish presume to rule over the snow leopard (e.g. the French Republic putting Sir Shumule in prison).

(I had written, I think in 2010 e.v., on this very principle, a truly remarkable post titled Des Civilisations, of which a fabulous internet user who signed himself Betave T.—I never found out who he was—took the initiative, in 2012 e.v., to make a very creative, very gothic, very cool & sexy video.)

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

Warm kisses from the Bahamas. 

Love is the law, love under will. 

— ☉︎ in 7° ♐︎ : ☽︎ in 28° ♓︎ : ♄︎ : Ⅴⅹⅰ.

Deliciously Obscure

Dear friends, beautiful and happy people, 

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

Frater Y. writes to me that he is “completely stumped” on today’s Holy Reading (Liber Porta Lucis sub figurâ X, verses 1 to 4).  

And it is, indeed, a deliciously obscure pericope :

1. I behold a small dark orb, wheeling in an abyss of infinite space. It is minute among a myriad vast ones, dark amid a myriad bright ones.  

2. I who comprehend in myself all the vast and the minute, all the bright and the dark, have mitigated the brilliance of mine unutterable splendour, sending forth V.V.V.V.V. as a ray of my light, as a messenger unto that small dark orb. 

3. Then V.V.V.V.V. taketh up the word, and sayeth: 

4. Men and women of the Earth, to you am I come from the Ages beyond the Ages, from the Space beyond your vision; and I bring to you these words. 

This, combined with the approach and imminence of Christmas, once inspired in me the following reflections:

We bring into our homes a Fir Tree, — the eternally green symbol of the immovable Divine Order of things, — during the endless nights of the Solstice, so as never to forget that this Divine Order decrees that the rebirth of the Light — Noël, as we call Christmas in France, literally means “New Sun” — must follow immediately after the deepest plunge into Matter.

Thus the Hermit takes his Staff and leaves his winter retreat to go forth, Lamp in hand, into the < great sad city > (LLL 6, 26), to see whether there may not be found there a few Thelemite gods who have lost their way or are held prisoner by the troglodyte Heathen apes of the old < grey land of desolation> (LLL 3, 20).

Thus, in the dark hours, when the inertia of earthly things threatens to cut the world off from its nourishment from the gods, a Sage is sent with a mission to reconnect worthy humanity to Divinity.

The darker the times, the greater the Sage: a Master is not measured by the height of the lights he can reach, but by the depth of darkness into which he is able to bring down light — that’s what our august Queen, the great goddess Nuit, augustly calls < the Hierophantic task > (AL 1, 50).

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

Warm kisses from the Bahamas.

Love is the law, love under will.

— ☉︎ in 6° ♐︎ : ☽︎ in 15° ♓︎ : ♀︎ : Ⅴⅹⅰ.

Everything that happens is a play of Nuit and she likes Noh theater

To Soror Sinthea.

Dear friends, beautiful and happy people,

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

In the beginning: nothing.

In the end: nothing. 

< Then, if with no goal, why this eternal journey? > (Liber Cordis 2, 23)

Existence is like a Noh theater play.

The stage is empty at first. Completely empty. 

Little by little, it fills with all sorts of creatures — splendid deities, lovers with cruel fates, ghosts and shaggy monsters — who love passionately, hate intensely, struggle heroically, suffer horribly, and finally die, in a strange mixture of tragedy, gag, and formal beauty. 

Then everyone leaves the stage, which remains empty. Completely empty.

< we are none. > (AL 2, 66)

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

Warm kisses from the Bahamas.

Love is the law, love under will. 

— ☉︎ in 6° ♐︎ : ☽︎ in 4° ♓︎ : ♃︎ : Ⅴⅹⅰ.

Gypsy Violins and Thelemic Tangles : Sir Shumule is not very ska

Don’t take all this too seriously. If I were truly the most powerful of Magicians, half of you would already be transformed into girls and the other half into bottles of Dom Pérignon. — Sir Shumule 

I wish to be reborn seven times in this life of mine, to ridicule even more enemies of Ra-hoor-khuit. — Sir Shumule 

Whenever you go out, we pick up the party where we left off. — Soror Jezebel, Letter to Sir Shumule, August 2024 e.v. 

Dear friends, beautiful and happy people, 

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

The friendly jest about the Romani people slipped into my previous post (“All that’s missing is a soundtrack of plaintive gypsy violins to complete the scene, and it’s not like there’s a shortage of Gypsies in this prison!”) has earned me accusations of (I quote) “outdated problematic stereotypes, in contradiction with the universalism of Thelema.” 

By the Holy Stèle! 

To accuse me of hostility toward the Romani community! 

Me, who hit puberty watching Julia Migenes in the role of Carmen and who considers Aleister Crowley’s La Gitana to be the most beautiful poem ever written in the English language! 

Not to mention that the music video for Shakira’s Gypsy never fails to incredibly stir my senses (though one might prefer Can’t Remember to Forget You…). 

Personally, I have only fond memories of the encounters I’ve had with the Romani community in this life… 

For example, I recall the Autumn of 2013 e.v.: 

A very good friend, a great aesthete and collector, had left me the keys to his villa in Grasse, which I occupied alone for a couple of weeks. 

The day before his return, as I was reading the Letters of Baron von Pollnitz over lunch, there were repeated rings at the gate… 

I checked the surveillance screen and was quite surprised to see Julia Migenes Johnson in her Carmen costume… 

I mean: a perfect lookalike, but for real, and barely in her twenties: ultra-Romani, ultra-attractive, ultra-obviously hot… 

I went to open the gate and noticed it was even more striking in person than on the screen… 

So, she told me she was selling I don’t know what, that her family did chair re-caning, etc. – Did I, by chance, have any chairs to restore? – “Plenty!” I exclaimed on a whim. – Could she see them to give me an estimate? – “Of course! Please, come in!” 

I knew full well (this old trick) that she was likely scoping out the place for a future burglary, and that my unfortunate friend could already say goodbye to his Regency furniture, his precious knick-knacks, and his master paintings!… 

Especially since, quickly achieving my aim, I spent the entire afternoon passionately making love to my bohemian girl in the owner’s bedroom (which I claimed as my own), where the most valuable items were kept… 

What delight!… 

Aleister Crowley, who had two thousand lovers, wrote his most beautiful poem (and the most beautiful poem in the English language of all time, as Kanye would say) to celebrate one night spent with a certain gitana… Mine was so fiery that she left me needing two physiotherapy sessions, roller-derby-girl-level bruises, and a month on Fungizone… what a beautiful adventure… 

Alas! Barely recovered from a final orgasm (which, by the way, I mistook for the onset of a stroke), I heard my visitor say that we were now “promised,” and that her entire family would come to settle in “my” big house… 

She added, in a dark and far-from-reassuring tone, that her brothers and cousins “wouldn’t understand if [I] didn’t take [her] in” after everything I’d done to her that afternoon… 

How did I get out of it? 

In the simplest way possible!… The flood of endorphins gave me a cherubic, innocent look… I murmured sweetly: “Of course, my darling: call them to come for dinner, I’ll go do the shopping for the party – meat or fish? – make yourself at home…” – and I slipped away without a second thought… 

Naturally, I haven’t tried to contact my host since, so I’ve never learned the end of the story… 

Much later, when I recounted these events to my cousin Abigail (who lives on Summit Drive, at the bottom of the hill), she exclaimed: “De-plor-able! For a fan of Can’t Remember to Forget You, you’re not very ska!… You’re not ska at all!!!” 

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

Warm kisses from the Bahamas. 

Love is the law, love under will.

— ☉︎ in 8° ♊︎ : ☽︎ in 17° ♋︎ : ♃︎ : Ⅴⅹⅰ.

From Zug With Love Under Will

Jimmy Page, Kenneth Anger, and Enki Bilal are the three greatest Thelemites produced by the Boomer Generation; Sir Shumule is the greatest Thelemite since Rabelais, across all generations. — Frater Sicariōn, Letter to Soror Jezebel, May 19, 2025 e.v. 

If you find yourself in the belly of the whale, like Jonah or Pinocchio, stand up through its blowhole as if it were the sunroof of a limousine, raise your arms, and shout: "Wahoooouuuuuuuuuuhhh!!!!" — Sir Shumule 

Hadit lies coiled, nestled in all things, even the most subaqueous, the most abyssal, and there is a star hidden in every man and every woman, including Cancer natives or bailiffs. Okay, maybe not bailiffs, but this principle is the first axiom stated in the Book of the Law (AL 1, 3). — Sir Shumule 

Dear friends, beautiful and happy people, 

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

A weekend in prison is no fun in any era or latitude, and if you add the fine drizzle of a meteorologically disastrous May, it can even become downright grim. 

By the Holy Stèle! Why so many gray clouds this morning?! They should only entrust the controls of the HAARP system to aesthetes — If I am the ultra-Narcissus you claim, life is a stage for me — and if life is a stage, I demand better lighting! 

Yes, your old Shumule — Shumule the Playful! Shumule the Radiant! Shumule, king of viscounts! — whose unwavering youthful motto ("you can have fun anywhere") had, until now, never been disproven, has finally found captivity tiresome, and these days, he’s been feeling as spleenful as a homesick decadent-neoclassical poet from the early twentieth century... 

I mean to say: I am a Thelemite despot in exile, Prometheanly chained in the mists of the Old Grey Land — All that’s missing is a soundtrack of plaintive gypsy violins to complete the scene, and it’s not like there’s a shortage of Gypsies in this prison! — Truth be told, I’m monstrously bored — Incarceration is torture by boredom, and I think I’d prefer waterboarding, I who never drink water! 

Indeed, all you meet here are abyssal creatures painted by Hieronymus Bosch on psilocybin! I’m bored, which is rare in front of a Bosch canvas — Nearly two and a half years pacing the corridors of this prison, and I still haven’t found the bar! — Don’t forget, the press describes me as a "mystic debauchee": if I can no longer debauch, all that’s left is the mystic! And a sober mystic! A teetotaling mystic! Almost a Taliban!— Or worse: a Mormon! 

That’s cruel and unusual treatment! Imagine, they even go so far as to forbid me from wearing, in my cell, my Chopard Ice Cube watch, kept hermetically locked in the prison’s locker room safe! 

Yet, the object I cherish most in this world is that watch, given to me by the greatest love of my life. 

In normal times, I tend to the care and security of this treasure with maniacal devotion!!! 

Please do me the honor of believing that, since the end of my romance with the one who gifted it to me, I’ve indulged in every dialect!... I’ve bedded pearl-adorned socialites from great Western families, under the lecherous gaze of candaulist husbands!... I’ve whipped penitents!... I’ve uncorked Lolitas, ravished coke-fueled night owls, Slavic escorts, and fierce tomboys!... 

But nothing has managed to diminish the intensity of the downright religious fervor I devote to this watch and what it represents… 

So I was lamenting last Friday, on the verge of giving in to despair, when a guard, a young, sporty, badass chick type, indescribably hot — provided, of course, you have a taste for young, sporty badass chicks — a taste I personally have to the point of obsession, burst into my cell (which I’ve arranged into a sort of cozy symbolist boudoir). 

I exclaimed upon seeing her: “Why didn’t I marry a prison guard?!” — which wasn’t exactly a display of sharp intellect or penetrating psychology on my part… 

I have NO psychology… 

Yet psychology is a simple thing, resting on two fundamental principles: 

1. When you’re about to spend the night at a club, don’t tell your parents, “See ya, don’t wait up for dinner!” but say: “I’m attending a prayer vigil for Rwanda; it might run late into the night.” 

2. When Anne-Aubépine de Choiseul-Harcourt introduces you to her family on rue de la Pompe, you must tell your future mother-in-law: “I am a member of the Académie Française,” not: “I have a thirty-centimeter dick” — When it’s Nassima Djebbar, a tough-as-nails girl from the northern neighborhoods of Marseille, introducing you to her cousins, it’s the opposite — Woe to you if you get it wrong — In one case, you’ll cast a chill; in the other, they’ll make you eat your bicorne. 

“Why didn’t I marry a prison guard?!” 

Perhaps, indeed, I made the gravest mistake of my life by not marrying a prison guard… But how could I have known?… Can you imagine me announcing, back then, to Maman and Bonne-Maman, who were cousins to Beistegui, that my fiancée is a prison guard?! 

It’s truly regrettable — I imagine the naughty games at home in the evening when she comes back from her shift: 

[Her:] “David, I found the bed unmade again with the breakfast tray on it, cocktail glasses all over the living room, and you snorting coke with your school buddies by the pool instead of studying for your exams… I’ve already given you two warnings: this time, I have to write you up…” 

[Me:] “Oh no, please, Officer! Not a report! It would ruin all my hopes of parole!” 

[Her:] “Sorry. I can’t do anything for you.” 

[Me:] “I beg you! I’ll do anything you want!” 

[Her:] “Really anything?…” etc. 

By the immortal gods! Back then, I would’ve made love to my pretty jailer twelve times in a row after a scene like that (with her keeping her uniform on, naturally)!!!

Young, party-loving dandies from fine families, don’t make the same mistake I did: marry a prison guard while there’s still time; it’ll be wildly unexpected in your entry in the Bottin Mondain! :) 

But I digress. 

Last Friday, an ultra-hot guard (therefore) abruptly brought me, in my cell, a delightful letter from my dear old friend Fix. 

To give you a sense of Fix — a fundamental Zuger* and Thelemite after my own heart — I think the simplest thing is to republish here, as an interlude, the very first article (you’re too young to remember this…) where I mentioned this dear comrade — It’ll give you an idea — It dates back to 2009 e.v.: 

Dazed and Confused in Neuilly sur Seine 

Chronicle of My Sunday 

To Mildred R.  

Among other very personal characteristics, I happen to have as an old schoolmate the clumsiest person in Paris. 

Louis-Marie S., an otherwise perfectly well-bred young man, not only has the laugh of a hysterical parakeet: he seems to be at odds with the most ordinary objects — I mean, a pair of sugar tongs becomes, in his hands, a weapon of mass destruction; every staircase is a trial for him, and usually, the occasion for serious trauma — Furthermore, he has a very particular way of pronouncing the “oi” sound: in his mouth, “quoi,” “toi,” and “joie” sound like “queuâh,” “teuâh,” and “jeuâh,” which makes his conversation extraordinarily tiresome. 

It was thus with mixed feelings that I agreed, last night at eleven, to go with my buddy Fix to spend the night at his place, in preparation for this afternoon’s brunch. “You’ll see, Louis-Marie is going to ruin our weekend out of friendship…” 

François-Xavier, known as Fix, is one of my best mates, ever since the night when, drunk on champagne, I tried to climb the parental villa of a young lady in Royan, and the police caught us while he was giving me a boost. 

I can still see the furious look on the father of my sweetheart, who had forbidden me from approaching his daughter, and hear Fix’s screams as he struggled in the arms of a massive policeman: “Let me go!!! I’ll have you all sacked!!! My father is a consul!!!!” — Later, he admitted that being thrown into a sobering-up cell like a sack of nails by people he was used to seeing stand at attention before his father was a painful reevaluation of reality for him — I know it still bothers him — But anyway, for the night at Louis-Marie’s in Neuilly, he’s game. 

That night, I dream: a radiant young girl, all freshness and graceful charms, skips down a street in my 16th arrondissement; little by little, lecherous satyrs begin to follow her; frightened, she starts running, now pursued by a horde of these satyrs, and she takes refuge in a tree. Unfortunately for her, the tree is full of satyrs. 

I’d love to know what happens next, but Louis-Marie bursts into my room at seven, trips over my Churches, nearly emasculates himself on the corner of a dresser, drags me out of bed to force me to go golfing with him, and does roughly the same to Fix in the next room. 

When I meet Fix, as dazed and confused as I am, in the hallway, I mutter to him: “Wait till you see breakfast, and the coffee spilled on us…” — Wrong! Louis-Marie has already knocked over the coffee pot when we reach the dining room — I grab three croissants before he does something to them — but it’s impossible to enjoy them: Louis-Marie’s obsession this morning is talking about his wooden models — in beuâh — a subject his pronunciation makes unbearable — Fix and I try to stifle our laughter with fake coughing fits, taking care not to meet each other’s eyes — alas! Louis-Marie wraps up his tirade by telling us about a famous model-maker he knows in Bleuâh (Blois), and we lose it — thank the gods, his young wife arrives at that precise moment and distracts our host: he gets up to kiss her, trips over something, maybe his own feet, sprawls on the rug, gets up nearly poking Fix’s eye out with an elbow, lets out his insane laugh, and says he hurt himself really bad. 

At the golf course this morning: wind — Furious wind, not only sending balls off course by about 180° but probably tearing older golfers from their shoes — yet, I have the luck and pull off an albatross!!! The matter seems settled, until Louis-Marie’s cousin joins us, whose demeanor, determined chin, and huntress gaze — Amazonian, warrior-virgin — sporty, dignified, energetic, very serious, very kind, very sincere, but impervious to all humor — in short, exactly matching my ideal erotic archetype, throws me completely off: from that moment, I only hit divots and become the laughingstock of the course. 

Aperitif: Fix tells me to go easy on the Bloody Marys, reminding me of the time when, completely plastered, I called a genuine princess (by marriage, actually the daughter of an Italian industrialist) “Josiane” all through dinner because I found her horribly vulgar — unnecessary precaution: the waiter who mixed my cocktail seems to have swapped the proportions of tomato juice and Tabasco — I run to stuff myself with bread crumbs while letting out a long primal scream. 

As I chew, a pretty woman approaches me, saying, “I have something to ask you…” — a bit tipsy, I reply, “Anything you want, my heart’s an open book…” — a friend passes by at that moment and laughs, saying, “Be careful, with him, the heart drops fast…” 

Lunch: sweltering heat. I have Louis-Marie’s Amazonian cousin to my right, who talks about her volunteering with the mountain infantry (!!!) — I didn’t know that unit accepted women, and, as you can imagine, this conversation drives me wild — I hope to get her tipsy to take advantage of her inebriation, but when I try to pour her wine, she declares she never touches alcohol. Of course. 

Meanwhile, I make desperate efforts not to respond to my vis-à-vis, a ridiculous Polish woman (or perhaps a praying mantis in a suit), who overcompensates with such snobbery that she calls nearly everything “plebeian”: at the 6,587th time, I crack, stare at her nose pointedly, and say with a smile, “Not everyone can be plebeian…” which earns me a basilisk glare. 

Since we have a member of the Nègre family (of the famous Universal Music France president) and a charming young lady named Fromageot at the table, the conversation turns to difficult surnames. I hope this will annoy my vis-à-vis, who missed the start of the topic, but no: she claps her hands and exclaims, “Well, I once knew someone with a name so bad it was suicidal: Fromageot!” 

A legion of angels hovers over the table. 

Never has the phrase “moment of solitude” been better illustrated than by the look on that fool’s face when she realizes her gaffe. 

After lunch, Fix tells me about his misadventure: dripping with sweat, he tried to wipe his brow with his pocket square — But, due to his clumsiness, the square fell right onto his left neighbor’s crotch — Fix was trying to figure out how to extricate himself when, to his horror, he saw his neighbor hurriedly stuff the pocket square into his open fly: the guest had forgotten to zip up and mistook Fix’s square for a shirt tail :) 

Then, Louis-Marie invites everyone for a walk in the beuâh of the park, but I’ve had enough after the morning’s course. I stay behind to raid the bar. Louis’ two young sisters, fourteen and seventeen, beautiful as the day, offer to play billiards with me. I admit I don’t know how to play. They offer to teach me. We play a few games, and, frankly, I don’t feel bad between these two ravishing creatures — until, classic gag, the lady of the house walks in just as the younger sister says to me, “You’re holding your cue wrong. It needs to stay straight.” — The anecdote, endlessly repeated, commented on, and distorted, amuses everyone until evening… 

7:20 p.m.: Back home, slightly dazed. I settle in front of my PC. I’m not crazy about Sundays, actually. 

— Sir Shumule, July 5, 2009 e.v.

Those were the good times!… 

So! The indomitable, valiant, imperishable Fix has just sent me a letter from Switzerland, the essential content of which I now share with you: 

[…]The Egyptians, our masters in all things, had a marvelous way of exalting the quality of words. Tahuti, the Wisest of the Wise, said: “He who speaks well is beautiful and good.” That’s why I quote you systematically. Sorry if I’ve dulled their sharpness, but I’ve found nothing more impeccable than your phrases. […] 

When asked who the goddess Nuit is, I reply: “Sir Shumule, the Hierophant of our Sect, sees her somewhat as the Black woman in the ad for Jean-Paul Gaultier’s Divine perfume… He says, in particular: ‘all my actions are for our august lady, the beauteous goddess Nuit—and my personal religion boils down to this: once I understood that life is a courtly love affair between me and a Cleopatra raised to the power of a thousand, everything became clear—I feel far more akin to a Beyoncé, Britney Spears, or Selena Gomez fan in their devotion to their “queen” than to 99.9999% of the global occult community—When Misfortune strikes me, it’s because Nuit is in Gal Gadot-as-the-Evil-Queen mode, the Hunter has upset her, and I’m the one taking the fall for it—When Happiness comes my way, it’s because she’s in Nefertiti mode, pleased with my service, and has ordered me to be showered with gold—In both cases, it’s super sexy!’ 

When asked who the god Hadit is, I reply: ‘Sir Shumule, the Hierophant of our Sect, says: if we base ourselves solely on the Discourse of this god, recorded in the Second Chapter of the Book—outside of any doctrinal or ideological framework—then the nāḥāš Hadit, our Master, is a perverse seducer who loves athletic women, ostentatious luxury, and sadistic violence.’ 

When asked who the god Ra-Hoor-Khuit is, I reply: ‘Sir Shumule, the Hierophant of our Sect, calls RHK “a paranoid and vengeful god” and describes him as “a totalitarian egomaniac, ambitious, bloodthirsty, and inhuman.”’ 

[On that note], I don’t understand Seth. Why does RHK have as his token gay friend a petty, eunuch Cancer native with the head of an aardvark resembling a bull terrier? 

Why does he tolerate him on the solar barque and not toss him overboard? I know we can’t systematically kill all Cancer natives, but couldn’t we hang one or two as an example?…

These are good questions. 

In fact, Seth, as a servant of Choronzon (Restriction be upon him) — the < Blind Creature of the Slime > (Liber Tzaddi, 37), the < fulminant figure of Evil, the Horror of emptiness, with his ghastly eyes like poisonous well > (Liber Cordis 4, 34), — as, I say, a servant of Choronzon (Restriction be upon him) infiltrated into the divine community, Seth constitutes, so to speak, the “Shadow,” in the Jungian sense, of Horus (RHK) — which makes him painfully indispensable to the Lord of the gods. 

I addressed this Mystery in 2019 e.v. thus: 

Me and Choronzon Blues 

You are a seductive mystery promised to a sublime destiny who, like each of us, has a dark side. 

A part of your psyche growls, drools, and bares its teeth: it is unconscious — it is irrational — it feeds exclusively on ill will, perverse passions, and instinctive fears. 

It’s the piece of the world’s sickness that happens to have fallen onto your plate. 

Choronzon is the name given to this sludge of repressed desires, ego wounds, and naive self-delusions, which you deliberately ignore because it is unflattering and differs, in painful proportions, from what you’d like to believe you are. 

Carl Gustav Jung calls it “the Shadow”; Christians call it the Devil; Jews call it the Yetzer Hara; Hindus call it Apasmārapuruṣa; Buddhists call it Māra; the Ancient Egyptians called it Seth: you can call it your evil twin, your Mephisto, your inner Cancer native. 

Thus, Choronzon is also what the Alchemists transform into gold: not something intrinsically “evil,” but a subordinate that — like all stalkers, all insufferable daddy-issue cases, and all sacked lackeys — becomes, because it is ignored, hysterical in overcompensation: thus, man compulsively, caricaturally turns low-grade to stop suffering. 

If you don’t trample your Iznogoud, your Iznogoud will bite your calf. It will systematically sabotage your efforts unless you strive to aggressively identify and alchemically transmute it: < Refuse none but thou shalt know & destroy the traitors >(AL 3, 42): isn’t it well-known that complaining about others’ failings is to betray your own shortcomings?... 

If you disown an aspect of your character, it will suddenly materialize, at the edge of the woods, in more or less human form, when you least expect it… 

Like Sauron’s Ring, it wants to be found: hence the Freudian slips, the pseudo-accidents, the foolish inhibitions — the dangerously unhinged kinks,  

Me and Choronzon were walking side by side, I’m gonna beat my woman until I get satisfied. 

… the “terrible adventures”, Nietzsche tells us, make us suspect that the one to whom they happen is himself someone terrible. 

See! The dwarf who refuses to admit he’s a dwarf will be thrown (or rather, launched, since it’s a dwarf) onto a basketball court in front of millions of viewers: whoever denies what they dislike about themselves will have their nose rubbed in it. 

So be an Alchemist rather than a YouTuber! Visita Interiora Terrae Rectificando Invenies Occultum Lapidem: “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life, and you will call it fate,” says Carl Jung again — or, in my tireless formula: what you flee is your salvation.  

— Sir Shumule, August 27, 2019 e.v.

All this to say: keep an eye on my morale, send me wildly flattering letters too! And, of course, loads of money — enough, at least, to stock up on cases of Dom Pérignon and Panamanian prostitutes: this prison, in the evenings, is terribly dull! 

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

Warm kisses from the Bahamas. 

Love is the law, love under will. 

— ☉︎ in 4° ♊︎ : ☽︎ in 18° ♉︎ : ☉︎ : Ⅴⅹⅰ.

* We usually nickname our Sect “Zuger”, to distinguish it from the rest of the global Thelemite community, because our first attempt at an Abbey of Thelema was located in Zug (Switzerland).