Dear All – this week, a rare pause in our assault on Good Books by Bad People. We stay home tonight, and reconvene on the 18th. Anon, anon!

With apologies, I submit to you a piece of SMUT penned by the young Georges Bataille. We have reveled in the Solar Anus, we have ascended to the Summit, and now it is time for Story of the Eye. Please read chapters 1-8 (pages 3-52).

Alternate version, if you have woes with the PDF: https://supervert.com/translations/georges-bataille/story-of-the-eye

The rules are: you’re allowed to quit midway if you feel excessive nausea. We will judge whether to go into the second half based on everyone’s uh sensibilities. Please consider what this text suggests about Bataille’s theory of Evil as Freedom, and bear in mind that YOU WANTED TO READ THIS.

In other news: The Bastards will take a holiday the week of 9/11, and reconvene our council on 9/18.

One from Lil’ Miss Turnip this week: a selection on mysticism from George Bataille’s On Nietzsche. Also heartily endorsed by M. Grangle; a deeply perceptive and honest account of a certain kind of mystical experience. The pages are 29-57 (60-88 in the PDF).

This coming Wednesday: the second half of C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters! That’s Letters 14-31, pages 67-175.

Tomorrow: a hazardous juxtaposition!

At the recommendation of Fra/Sor Hermafetes, please read C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters, from the Preface through Letter 13 (up to page 67).

Visiting Professor LVX NOX VULGARIS appends a painless 5 pages: the opening chapter from Thomas Hardy’s The Return of the Native, pp.3-8.

Turnip here. Next time, let’s look at some of the techniques William S. Burroughs suggests for resisting the Word-God. We’ll read three selections from The Job: “Playback from Eden to Watergate” (pp. 11-20), “The Invisible Generation” (pp. 160-174) and “Electronic Revolution 1970-71” (pp. 174-203). If you’re unfamiliar with the cut-up method, you might also do pp. 27-top of 30. May be that we scramble on the spot if folks want to go there. Stay attentive, graduates of Academy 23.

What happens when you fuck a God? Find out – TONIGHT – with this delightful work of “fiction”(??) by our reviled uncle Aleister Crowley.

The account is titled “Across the Gulf.” You will find it on page 202 of the compendium, The Drug and Other Stories.

Here’s an ill-formatted but compact version, a smaller file in case your computer doesn’t want to load a whole book.

I await you, as the vulture awaits a juicy eyeball!

Your Lover – Lord Grang

This week: our first-ever recommendation from our own Citizen Maxwell: The Invention of Satanism, by Asbjorn Dyrendal, James R. Lewis, and Jasper AA. Petersen. Please read chapter 9, Children of the Black Goat, pages 198-217.

Citizen Maxwell’s comments on the text:

Friends, compas, fellow mutants,
It gives me pleasure to present to you The Invention of Satanism.
A few grains of salt over my shoulder first.
Disclosure: I’m a member of the Church of Satan, my papers are in order.
There is no contradiction between Thelema & LaVey’s systems of magic. LaVey went to great lengths to differentiate his organization from Thelema. They are superficially hella different, but similar in substance if ya squint. One is complex, arcane, British, posh, etc. The other is simple, contemporary, American, middle-class, etc. LaVay was friends for decades with Thelemite, film-maker & author Kenneth Anger. Also friends with Thelemite, song-writer, drug enjoyer, & trans icon Genesis P-Orridge. Both faiths stress individual will & personal accomplishment. Also making oneself a new archetype. There are other similarities, but what’s the fun in making them explicit?
In the 1980s several people tried to attach reactionary, martial politics to the CoS. Politics, philosophy & religion are three different things. Related, but separate. Between that & the Satanic panic, the ‘80s were a dangerous time. The West Memphis 3 are the most high-profile example of that danger. I think individualist anarchism is a better match for the Satanic ethos than the leadership principle & a cult of personality.
The Satanic Temple is currently trying to attach liberalism to Satanism. I don’t wanna knock anyone’s hustle, but TST be using their status as a religious org to not pay taxes on income. Like a proper cult of personality they be dropping local groups. In a couple years they’ll be forgotten.
A constant phrase that ones hears in critical biographies of LaVey is that he was merely a showman. This is echoed for me in a letter to the editor describing the owner of a local bookstore as merely a book peddler. The implication being that one who sells books is illiterate. The association with smut peddler is also present. I feel that a magician and a showman can exist side-by-side within one individual. Further, showmanship is an aspect necessary to be an effective magician.
To brag, I intended to be a book peddler until my injury reordered my priorities. I have approximately 7000 books in storage. I have read approximately 30% of them. The Introduction to all of them, and some the whole book. I take personal umbrage at the implication that book peddlers are equivalent to illiterate people. Similarly, I take umbrage to the idea that a showman and a magician cannot exist within one individual.
LaVey abused big cats by keeping them as pets in SF. Not Tiger King level, but pobody’s nerfect.
I’ve made friends for life & opponents with undeniable accomplishments in the CoS. I attended the 40th anniversary celebration in LA & will attend their 60th anniversary celebration in NY.

SINcerely,
Citizen Maxwell

This week, we continue our study of the Tree of Life with Israel Regardie’s A Garden of Pomegranates. Please read from pages 55 (VI. TIPHARAS) through 91.

Optional supplementation: If you weren’t with us last week, you could look at last week’s text, or read from 37-55 in A Garden of Pomegranates.

Adolphe Franck’s The Kabbalah: The Religious Philosophy of the Hebrews restores some historical and cultural context for us. It is bewildering and wonderful, drawing heavily from the Zohar and the Sepher Yetzirah. You could wander about in it for quite a while. I do not demand that you do so.

However, I request that you ponder with us this excerpt from pages 154-155:

“There are Sefiroth as there are names of God, since the two things are confounded in the mind, and since the Sefiroth are but the ideas and the things expressed by the names. Now, if God could not be named, or if all the names given to Him did not designate a real thing, not only would we not know Him, but He would not exist even for Himself; for without intelligence He could not comprehend Himself, neither could He be wise without wisdom, nor could He act without power.”

Additionally, please continue to employ the SORELY NEEDED DIAGRAMS.

BE JUST AND FEAR NOT!