Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
Long coffee shop notebook dives are most often the gentlest excursions in futility. Page and pen do a laconic dance in between sip, sip, sips for “inspiration”, which comes ambling in, quickly orders a scone to go and in due order quietly walks back out and onto the street. Polite wave, a flashed smile, and then it is gone. Headphones carry on their steady business of telling the Venusian time…
“Death will give us back to God just like the setting Sun.” - Bright Eyes
And which God waits? Cruel hard eyed Chronos is rubbish company on this Saturday morning; I’d rather a Mercurial dalliance, quick and fleeting, so very much otherwise to do. Life’s itinerary slows down for no Death, who in the eye of the rising morning Sun at most lets us out to God on loan. Keph-Ra to Ra, morning back to a scintillating disc gently setting its bulk to rest beneath the horizon west, and round and round we steadily go till we will nevermore.
Little madeleines taunt my fingers, but this is a cruelty of my mouth to displace so much blame. A quick diversion; text to the baker ex I always miss with little little logos sent through the shared aethyr.
Me: “What is a madeleine? Is it a cookie, shortbread, or cake?”
Thee: “It’s none of those things.”
Me: “So a madeleine is just a madeleine? It’s defined in terms of itself.”
Thee: “Yeah, I guess so.”
I knew they were beyond perfect. I never want to eat anything that is not wholly in of itself defined only in terms of itself. Otherwise it should be that, and that is not what I ordered and I say, to no one in particular, that false advertising is not to be suffered lightly. My tongue is a simple organ not fit for ontological quandary. What fool do they take me for at that counter?
“Demons are real, they are standing still.” - Guided By Voices
I sit very still and plot the demise of my not cookie plate pals. They are delicately, even intricately sponge-like without ever feeling moist to the point of damp, unless, by my will and the amount of alchemy I possess, dipped rapidly and precisely into my coffee. They lay motionless on a table on the turning Earth, sure to come again on time’s itinerary of eternal return, unbearably light resting on a razor’s edge between bland and sweet. They give the tongue little ghost wisp sugar kisses without ever turning into the saccharine banshee wail of a cookie. They are most certainly not cake either. But what is not madeleine aside from everything else?
Phone to the side, Deborah will have to wait, the Sun lets me know to do the day’s Tarot pull. Little Debbie asks for just a bite, but I stand firm and leave her hanging, and besides, they are madeleines, and I am not keen to share. Sort shuffle sort, a father insists his boy son must be a shuffler, and now the side stack interlacing of keys on wibble goblin wobble column tables is my speciality.
“It’s true that I lost a year, stumbling from room to room.” - Marissa Nadler
Three years of reading and the cards never mean a thing, but I swear I’m always planning to mean when I let them fall. I have side eyed snuck crept about, in and among their rainbow walls, nudging a red painted drawer open in the Tower’s stationary table, justly dying a thousand and one times to fix the part in the Hanged Man’s ice blond hair. I have even held the whole wide whorling Universe in my steady hands. In and through the rooms I leave a cursive trace of twine for myself to wend my way home again, but the honest truth is I am in this coffee shop hopelessly lost. I am comfortable enough though, and the nice people here feed me for a pantacle or two.
“Mama, here comes midnight with the dead Moon in its jaws, must be the big star about to fall.” - Songs: Ohia
The Sun is not yet high in the sky, though I am taking nothing for granted this morning. A chill passes through my mug, heat escapes in ray traced graphed curls, and the past is ineluctable as the Moon is deconstructable. It is the sandy door of dreams, but I am awake. It is the long low howl across the California canyons, and I hear that and Death’s soft whisper scythe while my eyes are open. I am afraid; Saturn’s rings never say the future. I am alone here in this sunny city by the sea, and I can feel the tug of those low cycling waves roll roll roll over the still warming morning beach.
A nibble of a madeleine and a pull from a colder cup. Saturday is another day for a magician, this is just one more pull of the cards, and that was only the first of three. Noon and night remain, but it is old man years between now and then. And across the distances between me and thee is the aethyr, and the stars big and small will rise and fall. But in my neither cookie nor cake I see the little wiggles of reality’s defining wake, and magick pleases me back to a healed whole one more time.
Magick is real. It is woven into every act, every thought, every feeling, and every thing. It is also in the negation of what I just mentioned. It is neither kind nor cruel, neither good nor evil except as the magician wills it to be and to the degree of alchemy they possess.
“We were in, small cafe, you could hear, the guitars play. It was very nice. Oh honey, it was paradise.” - Lou Reed
Love is the Law, Love under Will.
Frater Logos