Dear friends, beautiful and happy people,
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
Today marks the ninety-fifth anniversary of the death of Dame Mary d’Este Sturges, the flamboyant, ultra-mundane founder of Desti Beauty Products — She was the best friend of Isadora Duncan and became the second Scarlet Woman of Thelema: Soror Virakam the Seer, who orchestrated the Abuldiz Working and, consequently, the writing of Liber ABA — and nobody knows what “Virakam” actually means!!!
Dear friends, this Sunday’s Holy Reading is Liber LXV: Liber Cordis Cincti Serpente sub figurâ אדני, Chapter 4, verses 54 to 57.
54. This heart of mine is girt about with the serpent that devoureth his own coils.
Commentary: Strangely, the Prophet (blessing & worship to him), commenting on this verse, does not see in this serpent the simple green Ouroboros that encircles the sensible world and separates it from chaos — Instead, he sees the principle of perpetual descent and progressive Restriction that governs the phenomenal universe.
Marcello Ramos Motta (of blessèd memory) sees in it the image of Death.
As for me — who considers my incarnation within the human species in the same way Stanley regarded his expeditions among the primitives, and who is tempted, whenever I detect noble qualities (eclecticism, dignity, talent, excellent education, etc.) in my interlocutor, to say to him: “Doctor Livingstone, I presume...” — I find, by merging these two readings, the essential Precept concealed in the arcane of the “garment as he will” (AL 2:58), which I have too often neglected in this world: among the Troglodytes, disguise your Rolls-Royce as a hearse.
55. When shall there be an end, O my darling, O when shall the Universe and the Lord thereof be utterly swallowed up?
Commentary: The Prophet (blessing & worship to him) says of this verse: “[The Adept] extends his aspiration from the personal problem of his own sorrow to the contemplation of the Universal Sorrow.”
Indeed, every annoyance is sent to you by the gods only to educate you about the user manual of this planet.
The problem is that the empirical method advocated by Saint Francis Bacon, Lord Verulam (may his merits protect us), requires five coincidences to verify a hypothesis.
Result: while you have always instinctively known that an individual born under a sign called “Cancer” (sic!) was not good news and should under no circumstances be integrated into your system, you have to endure at least five of these nuisances on your path before you can confirm what astrology — a science as old as the world — has always taught: yes, Cancer natives are quite literally incarnate excrement that must be deported, stuffed with mRNA vaccine, and finished off with Baygon.
But: never take any mishap personally. The gods put insects on the stage of your microscope so that you may study them, not so that you develop a morbid entomophobia.
56. Nay! who shall devour the Infinite? who shall undo the Wrong of the Beginning?
Commentary: Of this verse, the Prophet (blessing & worship to him) says: “[the Adept] has now understood the doctrine that the beginning (Berashith) is necessarily of the nature of error. Any separateness, any sense of finitude represents imperfection. It is a matter of plain logic that it should be so.”
Speaking of Berashith, I have long wondered why Mosheh the Magus, in his Genesis, says “He saw that it was very good” only after man and woman were created — despite the fact that man, perpetually at the crossroads, has a soul “of God and beast,” as it is written (AL 3:34), meaning a good (royal) and a bad (servile) inclination — whereas in all other cases the biblical text says only “He saw that it was good.”
Does this mean that his “beast” side improves the human being?!
Indeed, if we observe the customs of Old Grey Land and the various little tribes classified there in the category “human,” we must conclude: without his bestial stupidity of a chest-thumping ape, no Heathen slave would be stupid enough to pursue a career, get married, and beget children — And in that case, how would we Thelemic gods incarnate in the terrestrial sphere? — This is what King Solomon says about the Trogs: “I observed that the labor of man and all his efforts to succeed are driven by the envy he harbors against his neighbor.” (Ecclesiastes 4:4).
57. Thou criest like a white cat upon the roof of the Universe; there is none to answer Thee.
Commentary: When I read “white cat upon the roof of the universe,” I think snow leopard on Mount Everest (but I have already sufficiently developed the meaning of my totemic attachment to this prodigious feline).
Why does the Holy Book speak of a white cat and not a Himalayan panther?
Because the white cat is superior in that, having chosen domestic life, it can be — at its pleasure — a superb predator without ever having poachers from the third world show up: among the Troglodytes, disguise your snow leopard as a silver chinchilla Persian.
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 22° ♈︎ : ☽︎ in 17° ♒︎ : ☉︎ : Ⅴⅹⅰⅰ.
𓄿𓎛𓂧 𓇋𓈖𓏌
