Society is an anonymous corporation providing a life of diminished emotions.
          —Péladan¹

                    i. Rite d’entrée

Public opinion is a wholly-
owned subsidiary of mainstream
media and, at all times, should be
disregarded as nothing more than
an inferior product of an

entirely unimaginative
society in full denial
of its eventual decay. Fall’s
curtain call precedes winter’s encore
as night swallows us all, playing for

                    ii. Liturgie de la parole

fools we who, anticipating day,
mistake its dark age for a new way
out of the same old barbarism in-
to which we only ever devolve
again. Jumping off the precipice

of our fortresses’ parapets the
jagged edges of which the jewels
of our decadent purchases blur,
making so lush this wish for death that
pervades and perverts with lack of shame

                    iii. Liturgie de l’Eucharistie

the haze of our haste turning gilded
cages to palaces. Prisons for
kings unfit to rule over a world
adjudged by the bitterness of this
poison’s glittering sting a thing too

worthy of better beings to be
bitten by the fangs of our greed, to
become the fruit we sour, devouring
the nectar of its elixir, juice
of its power, without labour, no

                    iv. Communion

payment for its efforts we take for
granted, make our slaves as we cut our
teeth on exploitation. No other
option, then, than to conquer or be
conquered, frauds offering up on the

altar of the almighty dollar
the body of a god slaughtered by
these egos of ours we refused at
all costs to ever alter. Only
now do we have cause to question our

                    v. Conclusion

actions, to answer those concerns raised
by our sons and daughters, to pose no
longer as benevolent fathers
but confess we are impostors too
petrified of being perceived by

others as what we are that we scar,
so far beyond repair, our true Selves
that you would never tell we were
ever once individuals, for
life’s aim is to never be the same.

__________
¹Joséphin Péladan, “[Chapter] I. The Neophyte” in “Book One[:] The Seven Steps to Exit the Century” of How to Become a Mage: A Fin-de-Siècle French Occult Manifesto: Translated & Annotated by K. K. Albert with Jean-Louis de Biasi: Foreword by John Michael Greer, published at Woodbury, Minnesota by Llewellyn Publications in 2019; page 7.