Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
This morning, the ultra-butch, scarletissime, supremely badass Soror K. asked me what one should conclude from the Epstein Affair — “Not,” she specified, “your opinion as a degenerate old inbred aristocrat obsessed with breasts (who, in other times, would not have gotten off with a mere five years in prison, but would have been broken on the wheel a hundred times over). Rather, the opinion of the ideal Thelemite as described by Rabelais in Gargantua — the kind of postulant worthy of the Abbey of Thélème presided over by Brother John of the Funnels.”
It is a good question: What would the ideal candidate for the Abbey of Brother Jean des Entomeurs think of Jeffrey Epstein?
Dear friends, we shall seek the answer in the Study of the Holy Books of the radiant land of Thelema — specifically in The Book of the Heart Girt with a Serpent, Chapter 1, verses 37 to 40.
Let us read:
37. So they will reproach thy servant, saying: Who hath set thee to save us?
38. He will be sore distressed.
39. All they understand not that thou and I are fashioning a boat of mother-of-pearl. We will sail down the river of Amrit even to the yew-groves of Yama, where we may rejoice exceedingly.
40. The joy of men shall be our silver gleam, their woe our blue gleam—all in the mother-of-pearl.
I. Pshat
First, let us lightly sketch the context of this pericope with a frivolous chisel:
The Prophet is planning a long and luxurious cruise, but one that will force him to sail through heathen lands.
His Holy Guardian Angel warns him that the natives will probably be hostile and will demand to know by what right he is cruising on their river waters.
The Angel also detects in the Prophet a regrettable tendency to take such things too much to heart… So he comforts him: The heathens, he explains, simply cannot conceive that life could consist of a long and wonderful cruise aboard an unbelievably luxurious boat, sailing up a sacred river to a paradisiacal island where everything is delight and perpetual feasting!
Their primitive brains simply cannot process such information!
Therefore, why worry about it?
Whether the indigenous tribes are pleased or displeased, happy or unhappy, rich or poor, is, for the star guests of the cruise, from the deck of the gigayacht, at most a nuance in the panorama…
Indeed, I remember driving through a rather working-class neighbourhood, sprawled on the back seat of a purple Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud, and receiving from the bystanders crowded on the pavements looks that clearly said “head of the Princess de Lamballe on a pike”…
But hey! What is the point of being in a Rolls if not to piss off the poor? —Especially since I did not share the Prophet’s scruples and systematically flipped the bird to anyone who shot me hateful glances…
It is also true that, alas, I was not on my way to Jeffrey Epstein’s island — and that our pericope sheds light on the unhealthy jubilation of the heathens at the announcement of his death…
In the same vein, the martyrdom of Harvey Weinstein — the Grand Pontiff of the enchanted isle of La-La-Land — only became possible thanks to this phenomenon of troglodyte resentment.
The Prophet’s extreme psycho-emotional sensitivity to “the conspiracy of the unwelcome against the one who goes his way with a light heart” is somewhat surprising…
He, better than anyone, should know that the people are evil — The people are the Devil — The people are luciphobic like a wagonload of Cancer natives! What can one expect from them except hatred of Happiness in all its forms?!
II. Remez
The Great Paradox, of course, is that the Mephistophelian formula of the aptly named sign of Cancer is represented in the Tarot by the very solar and triumphant Atu of The Chariot, whereas its antithesis, Atu XV, is called “The Devil”…
I mean: the other two cardinal points of the year are perfectly coherent. The Emperor of Atu IV is, in body language and morphopsychology, a classic Aries type — and Atu VIII literally contains a pair of scales (in addition to the goddess Ma’at — inseparable from the idea of Fatal Balance — whom the Coffin Texts teach us is in reality Tefnut, the own mother of our august Queen Nuit, and consequently the wife of Shu, god of Twilight: one cannot get more radically Autumn Equinox than the Atu VIII of the Tarot!)
Why this “symbolic inversion” of the Solstices?
(There is admittedly a goat on Atu XV and a crab on Atu VII, but the thematic content of these two arcana seems precisely reversed — We call “Devil” the Triumphal Arcana of Accomplished Ambitions and the Procession of the Great Pan — and “Chariot of Triumph” the one depicting the assassination of the Sun and the blood of martyrs poured into the Holy Grail…)
It is because the feasts of the December Solstice may well contain Christmas itself, yet Winter remains cold and has a bad reputation…
Consider two emblematic Capricorns such as Saint Frederick of Hohenstaufen (may his merits protect us) and Saint Roderic Borgia, Pope Alexander VI (may his merits protect us)… Were there ever more perfect examples of Nietzschean Supermen? Well! The first was excommunicated twice and nicknamed “the Antichrist” — while the Marquis de Sade (a fellow not easily impressed) wrote of the second that “it suffices to name him to arouse against him the indignation and horror of all who have any idea of his history”…
Conversely: Selena Gomez and Sofia Vergara — typical Cancer natives — could turn out to be the most unbearable bitches in the entire universe, yet one could not help but love them anyway…
This is the Arcana illustrated by one of my exes who philosophically replied to every reproach I made: “Whatever… I have boobs.”
III. Derash
The opinion of the common people is therefore, as we see, a sort of “South compass” — Why should the Thelemite be moved or “sore distressed” by the reproaches of people whose very reproaches are compliments?!
A curious fact: avidly scrutinizing our pericope, I noticed that the first letters of each verse together form the acronym S.H.A.T., which can be counted as Sh(300) + A(1) + T(9) = 310.
Now, 310 is the gematria of DVSh, which means “to trample on” and “to conquer” — literally the attitude that the High Lord Ra-Hoor-Khuit commands us to adopt toward the heathens, as it is written: “Trample down the Heathen” and “I forbid argument: Conquer! That is enough” (AL III, 11).
It is as if the Holy Books were sending an encrypted message, in the form of an ultra-coded acrostic, to soothe our reticence regarding our relations with the Trogs, by reminding us of the august injunctions of the Lord of the Aeon concerning these people.
In accordance with the principle that every question of Law must be decided by reference to the writings of Ankh-af-na-khonsu (blessing & worship to him), Liber AL is explained and clarified by the other twelve Holy Books — and it is in Liber Tzaddi that Ra-Hoor-Khuit defines in great detail the attitude of a Thelemite in heathen lands: “My disciples are proud and beautiful; they are strong and swift; they rule their way like mighty conquerors” (Tzaddi, 24).
IV. Sod
The Book of Lapis Lazuli teaches us that no one can know the Secret Sense of the Holy Books unless he applies the verses of those Books to himself and to his precise situation in the world (LLL 6, 14).
Everyone agrees that it is being proud, beautiful, strong and swift that earned me Exile and Captivity.
I am therefore in a position to certify that nothing hurts Old Grey Land more than someone who sees life as a cruise aboard a gigayacht, with no contribution whatsoever to heathen society — a society he regards as a picturesque curiosity, vaguely glimpsed during his Quest for the Earthly Paradise.
I have been treated more harshly by what passes for potentates among these apes than a terrorist or a serial killer — and ultimately it is these persecutions, striking at my aristocratic pride and my dandy aesthetic, that have galvanized my legendary moral strength, my old duellist’s reactivity, and my impregnable arrogance — confirming me, strengthening me, radicalizing me forever in my True Will.
From lover of Nuit I have become Majnun of the Goddess; from pupil of Hadit I have become Disciple of the Old Serpent; from faithful of Ra-Hoor-Khuit I have become Vassal of the Hawk-Headed Mystical Lord — And, by virtue of the principle of “Exceed,” the heart of the Behédite Philosophy (AL II, 71), I hope to accentuate this tendency every day a little more — to become every day more desperate in my love for Nuit, to strive every day to be a little more Hadit, to make myself every day a little more fanatical in my service to Ra-Hoor-Khuit.
Thus, Jeffrey Epstein will not have died in vain.
Meditate upon this, dear friends, and go your gorgeous ways under the protection of that spiritual sphere whose centre is everywhere and circumference nowhere, and which we call GOD.
Warm kisses from the Bahamas.
Love is the law, love under will.
— ☉︎ in 23° ♈︎ : ☽︎ in 0° ♓︎ : ☽︎ : Ⅴⅹⅰⅰ.
𓄿𓎛𓂧 𓇋𓈖𓏌
