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.