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| Manara Tarot, The Sun |
Dear friends, beautiful and happy people,
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
My detractors claim that the only truly ritual activity our Sect can boast of is the metronomic frequency with which its members smuggle iPhones into my cell.
This is false.
My Beloved Disciples also smuggle in Grey Goose vodka, Red Bull, my favorite weed strain (Isla OG), and cocaine so authentically Peruvian that it sings Isabela Merced in a poncho on a llama!
Their diligence earned me, as you know, being placed in total isolation for several weeks last June — during which I nonetheless managed to fulfill the Hierophantic task by delivering, on the occasion of the Solstice, a brief (but dense) Edifying Address from the prison phone booth to all our Brothers and Sisters gathered on a conference call by Soror K.
Now the same Soror K. has just told me that she kept and translated the text of that Speech into English, and wishes me to publish it at once!
“But come on, Sis!” I exclaimed, “we’re not going to broadcast a Midsummer Solstice homily in January! It’s the spiritual equivalent of wearing mink in Botswana! Or, more precisely, strolling the ice floe in a swimsuit!”
But she would not be swayed — even going so far as to declare (I quote) “funny” (sic) the idea of meditating on Summer at Christmas…
So here, dear friends, in the most diametrically untimely fashion, is the legendary Discourse delivered by Sir Shumule to his Zugers from his land of Exile and Captivity on the occasion of the Summer Solstice of the Year 121 (Vxi) of the Æon of Horus:
Dear friends,
Today is the Holy Day of the Summer Solstice, the orgasmic peak of the year and the feast of the times which (therefore) the Old Serpent of the City of Edfu, Hadit our Master, enjoins us to celebrate above all (AL II:36).
I personally have a horror of summer, that democratic season — Of course, everything born under the sign of Cancer is execrable in itself, but when, in addition, it is Dutch, in shorts, in sandals, and licking an ice cream, it goes far beyond everything — In fact, the June Solstice exists cosmically only to indicate the precise moment when one should stop going to Saint-Tropez.
Inertia (= supreme ambition of the proletarian), oppressive heat (= egalitarianism in dress), long days (= petty energy savings), plebeian agglutinations (= full satisfaction of the gregarious instinct), are ideals of slaves — of men of the people — and we Thelemites are “against the people” (AL II:25).
Moreover, it is symbolically the very formula of this season: the Summer Solstice is the Anti-Christmas: it is the moment when the aptly named sign of Cancer, in hatred of light, harmony and joy, stabs the carefree and radiant sun which, at the height of happiness, laughs with all its heart like a beautiful blond child running freely — or, to paraphrase saint Friedrich Nietzsche (may his merits protect us): the Conspiracy of the Unwelcome finally, through that relentless hatred which is the mark of base souls, overthrows the one who walks his path with a light heart.
In plain terms, the Winter Solstice told us six months ago: “The wicked have only sham triumphs”; today the Summer Solstice replies: “Perhaps… But good times never last!”
Contemplate Atu VII of the Tarot — “The Chariot” — which functions as the pictorial synthesis of this Mystery.
See: a Knight has communed with the Holy Grail and, completely ecstatic, thrones on the Chariot of Triumphs — forgetting, in his intoxication, that according to the Ancient Code of Chivalry, any knight who rides in a chariot is instantly deprived of his rank.
In other words: The gigastar, having reached the pinnacle of his ambitions and acclaimed by a delirious crowd of stans, still ignores, in the limo, that he has ipso facto become an ordinary taxpayer again.
Ah! It is not very surprising that the Summer Solstice is the par excellence paternal moment: who says orgasmic peak says insemination, and who says insemination says progeny: one falls asleep with a wild mistress and wakes up with responsibilities.
But still: if women native to Cancer are invariably hyper seductive (a zodiac sign that successively produces Michelle Rodriguez, Sofia Vergara, Ariana Grande and Selena Gomez cannot be completely bad), it is to reply to us, with a mischievous little air: “It all depends on what the wild mistress in question looks like…”
I mean: Icarus approached the Sun to the maximum of what was technically possible and, certainly! his wings melted: but how many of those who criticize his joyful lightness and his negligence of the paternal warning secretly envy him for having been able, for a moment, to approach the Sun?…
Do not forget: for one kinky moment in the hands of Morgan la Fay, the holy enchanter Merlin (may his merits protect us) accepts with transports to be entirely destroyed — and all the most ardent detractors of Mexican immigration in the US willingly admit, in petto, that the curve of Becky G.’s hips and Salma Hayek’s décolleté are worth the destruction and economic ruin of a few major cities.
The Old Serpent, Hadit our Master, says: “breathe not so deep — die!” (AL II:68), that is to say: Passionately accept the fate of Holofernes, if it is the price of a night in the arms of Judith.*
— Sir Shumule, 21 June 121 a.n./2025 e.v.
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 13° ♑︎ : ☽ in 21° ♋︎ : ♄ : Vxi.
* Cathy, my orthodox Freudian shrink friend — the very type of appallingly inflexible frigid beauty — once told me: “You are such a textbook case of the Icarus Complex that I wouldn’t be surprised to learn you are the reincarnation of Holofernes… ”
