Quotes

Beware the demagogue with a plausible ideology for your betterment, he is a dangerous throwback, mass murder his weapon.

There seems little point in having a god that doesn’t often do what you want, but merely represents what the tribal elders want of you, plus a generous helping of their own ignorance.

Never believe all of the claims of any sorcerer.

He who dares not grasp the thorn should never crave the rose.

For each person there is a sentence—a series of words—which has the power to destroy them

The fact that millions of people share the same vices does not make these vices virtues, the fact that they share so many errors does not make the errors to be truths, and the fact that millions of people share the same form of mental pathology does not make these people sane.

September 15, 2132 According to a recent study conducted by Harvard University, it is now literally impossible for a student to write an essay pertaining to the themes or symbolism in the popular F. Scott Fitzgerald novel The Great Gatsby without it technically being considered plagiarism. “I’ve had a number of instances where students would ‘accidentally’ plagiarize another piece of work,” says Eugene Smith, an English professor. “Sometimes what they write just happens to be almost identical to what someone else wrote. This was less of a problem earlier in the century, but lately… every essay seems identical to one I’ve already read before.” The study claims that, due to the sheer quantity of papers written on The Great Gatsby, there are “virtually no formations of words pertaining to symbolism and/or theme in The Great Gatsby that have not already been written at least once. Henceforth, any organization of words about the aforementioned novel will, inevitably, bare enough resemblance to at least one, but probably many more, previous writings on the subject, and would therefore technically be considered plagiarism. It’s now linguistically impossible to say anything about The Great Gatsby that has not already been said multiple times, almost verbatim, no matter what.” One English teacher, who wished to remain anonymous, said that he gave up entering students’ essays into plagiarism detecting programs, as they always showed up multiple results, dating back for decades, even when no conscious plagiarism was performed. Teachers are currently debating whether to finally remove The Great Gatsby from the curriculum, as there is now “literally nothing left to say about it.”

Part of Crowley’s ritual creation of the homunculus in the womb of the chosen woman was to steep the woman in the magical influences of the Moon. This was presumably intended to render her more receptive to spiritual impressions. In Moonchild he describes how the woman who is supposedly to bear the homunculus conducts an invocations in the hour of the rising of the moon wearing a crescent-shaped tiara, presumably of silver, in which are set nine moonstones. Another invocation was made at the hour of the setting of the Moon. The woman had lunar poetry read to her, listened to lunar music, ate only lunar foods such as milk, the whites of eggs, venison, crescent cakes, and cheese, and spent most of the day sleeping, during which magic words were chanted into her ears that were intended to induce lunar visions. When the moon was not above the horizon, she spent her time contemplating the waters of the sea.

Hermes I call, whom Fate decrees to dwell in the dire path which leads to deepest hell
O Bacchic [Bakkheios] Hermes, progeny divine of Dionysius [Dionysos], parent of the vine,
And of celestial Venus [Aphrodite] Paphian queen, dark eye-lash’d Goddess of a lovely mien:
Who constant wand’rest thro’ the sacred feats
where hell’s dread empress, Proserpine [Persephone], retreats;
To wretched souls the leader of the way when Fate decrees, to regions void of day:
Thine is the wand which causes sleep to fly, or lulls to slumb’rous rest the weary eye;
For Proserpine [Persephone’s] thro’ Tart’rus dark and wide gave thee forever flowing souls to guide.
Come, blessed pow’r the sacrifice attend, and grant our mystic works a happy end.

But ask yourself: Why is there that knee-jerk rejection of any effort to “overthink” pop culture? Why would you ever be afraid that looking too hard at something will ruin it? If the government built a huge, mysterious device in the middle of your town and immediately surrounded it with a fence that said, “NOTHING TO SEE HERE!” I’m pretty damned sure you wouldn’t rest until you knew what the hell that was — the fact that they don’t want you to know means it can’t be good.

Well, when any idea in your brain defends itself with “Just relax! Don’t look too close!” you should immediately be just as suspicious. It usually means something ugly is hiding there.