In the final analysis, the Doctrine preached by Babalon can be summed up as this: The important thing is to always put your passions above your principles.
— Sir Shumule
You are a genius, therefore the world will seek to kill you or bring you down.
— Leptopœcile Sophiæ to Sir Shumule, 23 September 1998 e.v.
Dear friends, beautiful and happy people,
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
Yet another entire night spent shamelessly rereading (must I, immortal gods, be so retrograde and narcissistic! and the prison be so fucking dull at night!), I have re-re-read, I say, my Magical Diary of 2009 e.v. (cf. Never Liked Moby and The Hangover of the Hierophant).
I drifted back into this deliciously doomed year, when the City still reeked of burnt leverage, hedge-fund boys were quietly liquidating their Mayfair mews houses, BlackBerrys glowed like guilty confessions in every darkened limousine, and Twitter was that fresh, vicious little pet everyone was feeding scraps of scandal to…
The crash had made vice taste even sweeter — because guilt, darling, is the finest aphrodisiac.
Witness the kind of hermeneutics I was practising then — for example, on Liber Cordis Cincti Serpente, Chapter 5, Verses 29 to 32:
29. Ruddy are the gleams of ruby and gold that sparkle therein; one drop shall intoxicate the Lord of the Gods my servant.
Commentary : One single drop of that ruby-gold elixir and even the most swaggering Mayfair hedge-fund prince would set down his BlackBerry mid-trade, sink to his knees in the back of his chauffeur-driven Bentley, and whimper “my Lord” while the FTSE bled quietly in the background.
I slipped it into his glass at a crisis supper in a half-empty Belgravia townhouse that April; his wife had already fled to Mustique, but his mistress stayed… and the markets never quite forgave the way he looked at me afterwards.
30. Also Adonai spake unto V.V.V.V.V. saying: O my little one, my tender one, my little amorous one, my gazelle, my beautiful, my boy, let us fill up the pillar of the Infinite with an infinite kiss!
Commentary : Adonai murmuring like a bonus-deprived sugar daddy still clinging to his last seven figures: “my gazelle, my beautiful…” right before plunging into the Infinite so vigorously that the servers in a Shoreditch warehouse party flickered in ecstasy.
I whispered the very same line to a breathtaking long-legged heiress at one of those candlelit Brick Lane raves last June — her silk stockings whispered against mine, the pillar remained magnificently upright, and the recession suddenly felt like someone else’s problem [PS: and Twitter was still too innocent to capture the way she trembled.]
31. So that the stable was shaken and the unstable became still.
Commentary : The stable shook like a freshly nationalised bank on the verge of another bailout, while the unstable little trust-fund debutantes and bonus-starved bankers’ wives finally learned to hush their pretty mouths and receive enlightenment with proper aristocratic poise.
I drifted into a crisis salon in Belgravia, a few months ago — the remaining hedgies trembled in their still-tailored suits as their exquisite wives quivered beside them, and for one sublime hour the entire room achieved perfect, quivering stillness between their silk-stockinged thighs and mine.
32. They that beheld it cried with a formidable affright: The end of things is come upon us.
Commentary : They glimpsed the ruby-gold flash on my BlackBerry screen and instantly began wailing “The end of civilisation!” like ruined bankers’ wives at one final, desperate orgy before the receivers arrived.
How endearingly theatrical.
I merely straightened my ascot, took another languid sip of 1996 Krug, and purred to the circle of trembling beauties: “Do calm down, darlings — it’s only the end of your things. Mine are just beginning… and already causing delightful little tremors on this wicked Twitter with every sigh you let escape.”
They all refreshed anyway, manicured fingers shaking with fear and forbidden delight.
***
THIS was the year 2009 of the vulgar era, dear friends… crashing hedge funds, long-legged heiresses in silk stockings, desperate bankers’ wives, BlackBerry confessions, half-deserted Mayfair, and that special aristocratic sneer at a world convinced it was ending while Sir Shumule was merely warming up between scented sheets and trembling feminine curves.
Now, it is one thing to do what thou wilt, my loves — but it is an entirely different matter to do it with a BlackBerry buzzing in one hand, sin dripping from the other, and the sweet trembling of feminine surrender as your private symphony.
Anyway! The old Chioa Khan sends his warmest, most scandalously affectionate regards from whichever four-poster he was desecrating with exquisite company during that bankrupt, intoxicating year.
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.
Love is the law, love under will.
— ☉︎ in 3° ♉︎ : ☽︎ in 0° ♌︎ : ♃︎ : Ⅴⅹii.
𓄿𓎛𓂧 𓇋𓈖𓏌
