The Tell-Tale Heart

You know the Queen of Hearts
Is always your best bet

"Desperado", Eagles (1973)

We have now reached the final chapter in our exploration of the matrix loop — a journey that is, of course, far from exhaustive. With the Archons' favourite celebration just ten days away, we are invited to slow down, truly listen, and protect our energy by setting healthy boundaries. This is, essentially, the message delivered this month by the Queen of Hearts — an archetype of feminine intuition and embodiment of creative energy.

Sense and Sensibility

As you probably know, each face card in French card decks has a unique name inscribed in its corner, the origin and meaning of which, according to Wikipedia, are ‘uncertain’. The Queen of Hearts is therefore called Judith, probably in reference to the eponymous biblical figure who went to the enemy camp of Israel to seduce and behead the general of their armies, and bring back his head as a trophy.

It’s a far cry from the kindness and compassion this card is meant to embody — yet a perfect match for the Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland (named Iracebeth in Tim Burton's film adaptation)  —  a hysterical, castrating figure whose leitmotiv is, precisely, to chop off heads.

© Cristofano Allori

The Queen had only one way of settling all difficulties, great or small. 'Off with his head!' she said, without even looking round.

Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll (1869)

Certainly, the Queen of Hearts' reasons defy her own reason itself. Her untimely cries of ‘Off with their head!’ come straight from an untamed heart (soul) disconnected from its knight (spirit), solely responding to the emotional prompting of the matrix without discernment, and ultimately losing her head in the truest sense of the word. She thus becomes a tyrannical hag, a cruel and inverted caricature of the Sophianic feminine principle so hated by her pseudo-creator.

The Red and the Black

Passion Red versus Rational Black: in the Grand Demiurgic Game, these two colours interact as positive versus negative polarities. The colour red represents emotions (loosh), but above all blood (memories). The colour black stands for death and the absence of light (information) —  in other words, the disconnection from the Spirit.

In astrology, red is associated with Mars (momentum, impulse) and black with Saturn (restraint, inertia). In cartomancy and tarot readings, red suits represent emotional (water/hearts/cups) and material  (earth/diamonds/pentacles) density, while black suits embody mental (air/spades/swords) and spiritual (fire/clubs/wands) planes,  illusions of power and elevation.

The fake alchemy of the matrix is designed to make us believe these two poles are well balanced. Whereas, in reality, they are being pitted against each other: emotions versus reason, matter versus spirit, heart versus head. And in the midst of this colourful duel is the heart — both the stake, the instrument, and the battlefield.

Heartsnatcher

Behind its luminous facade, the heart is one of the most ambivalent symbols in the matrix. It embodies warmth, life and compassion — and is also the primary conduit for the emotional currents that fuel the system. The heart is an interface: a centre of resonance, memory and manipulation.

We were taught to idealise it, to make it the throne of our virtues, the seat of the soul or the gateway to the divine. But this imagery conceals a much more subtle mechanism of capture. For everything that moves or disturbs us, everything that stirs the ‘heart’ sends out an emotional wave — and that wave can be harvested.

Once I had a love and it was divine
Soon found out I was losing my mind
It seemed like the real thing but I was so blind

"Heart of Glass", Blondie (1978)

Behind its most religious representations — a flaming heart, pierced or crowned with thorns — lies the same process of enslavement: subjugating humans through emotion, convincing them that suffering for love is noble, then extracting energy from their devotion and willing sacrifice.

Thus, the exhortation to ‘open one's heart’ is not innocent. In an inverted world, such invitations become protocols for energetic consent: opening one's heart (soul, memory) also means opening the door to everything that wishes to infiltrate it. Entities from the astral plane (or their human relays) can do nothing without this tacit consent. Their strategy of predation relies on seduction, pity, compassion: all emotions originating from the heart, and which they know so well how to mimic.

Under the guise of benevolence, modern spirituality perpetuates this blissful openness: it deludes people into believing in an expansion of consciousness, when in fact it is merely a dissolution of discernment. The heart, then, no longer serves as a seat of life, but rather as a point of access.

The real trick is not to open up, but to create the conditions for mutual respect — the kind that recognises without enslaving, that perceives without allowing itself to be drained.

Castle in the Air

The heart cracks, the mirror shatters: illusions are reflected in the stained glass windows of the matrix castle. The promise of kingdoms — external, magnificent — has always been used to distract us from the only throne that matters: that of embodied consciousness. Every tale, every legend, every dream of a crown rests upon the same spell: to make us believe that sovereignty is to be conquered externally, when in fact it can only be found within.

I'm only a crack in this castle of glass
Hardly anything else I need to be

"Castle of Glass", Linkin Park (2012)

Fairy tales are not just stories for children: they are manuals for reverse enchantment. They teach us that sovereignty is to be gained through love, suffering or virtue, that one must ‘earn one's crown’ through a series of initiation tests that always follow the same pattern: denying self for recognition by others. All of these are subjugation programmes subtly cloaked in morality.

The castle, symbol of security and accomplishment, is often nothing more than a fortress of glass — a spiritual ego masquerading as an inner kingdom. Its ramparts are not guarded by peace but fear: fear of losing, fear of being alone, fear of being nothing without the reflections of the world.  The Red Queen still reigns, under more modern guises: influence, validation, reputation. We continue to sacrifice our heads for an illusory throne.

Meanwhile fairies give out their conditional blessings: beauty, talent, charisma, intuition, fame. But in fairy tales as in the matrix, nothing is offered without something in return. Every ‘gift’ calls for a debt. The supposed white light magic often amounts to nothing more than a covert energy pact, an invisible chain tacitly signed.

The Return of the King

True sovereignty can neither be conquered nor received. It’s found in the silence before every choice, in the lucidity that cuts through false pacts, in the verticality that renders any external authority obsolete. To be sovereign is not to rule over others, but to stop serving any alien kingdom.

I am sovereign,
Breaking my chains
Away from the Matrix
And its fake world

"Âme mnésique", la Pensine Mutine (2025)

Sovereignty is neither a title nor a crown: it is a state of quiet lucidity, that of a heart reconciled with the spirit, which no longer needs to be open in order to radiate.

When the heart regains its natural authority, the game collapses on its own. Ultimately, the final task is no task at all — it’s simply a return to self.

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Kitchen Mishmash

All our words are but crumbs that fall from the feast of our mind.

Khalil Gibran

With Thanksgiving just a few weeks away — ahead or behind depending on whether you live in the United States or in Canada —, what more natural for the patsies of the farce than to give thanks to the cracked pots of the matrix? The faceless cooks who work so eagerly to groom us, pulling out all the stops in order to extract every last drop of the precious nectar from the cornucopia. Loosh cooking is a flourishing business, as illustrated by this month's King of Diamonds: an archetype of strategic ambition and prosperity. However, for us, this card would be an invitation to move forward despite doubts, exhorting us to take action, lest we end up bogged down in inertia, and to stand firm amidst the turmoils of matrix life.

Nightmare in Your Plate

From the Latin coquina, which became cocīna, cooking refers to the preparation of food, while gastronomy, from the Greek gastèr, “belly, stomach,” and nomos, “law,” literally means “the art of regulating the stomach”, combining a certain level of expertise in preparing meals, selecting refined products, and the know-how to savour them.  

Thus, cooking does not necessarily equate with gastronomy, as some dishes rather tend to deregulate the stomach. This is referred to as junk food or, more recently, as “eco-friendly” cuisine. We're no longer just dealing with processed food, GMOs, preservatives, pesticides and other toxic ingredients, but also with synthetic food and insect flour, adding to the long list of slow poisons in our “diet”. Alchemy of death would be a more appropriate term for these deadly concoctions.

The greatest achievement in cooking is to be able to fill stomachs with imagination.

Jose Manuel Fajardo

But all it takes is a little effort — to create a cosy atmosphere, with beautifully laid tables, skillfully arranged dishes and exotic names that trigger taste bud memory — for hyper-vigilant activists to suddenly suffer from selective amnesia and forget about the whole supply chain. Forbid them to eat out and they will forget all about the cricket powder you want them to ingest. Proud as they are to bend the rules, they'll throw caution to the wind and willingly rush off to where you meant them to go.

Who Eats Whom?

The next major pitfall is tricking humans into believing that they are at the top of the food chain, when in fact they are its main resource, while some, driven by ethical considerations, mistakenly think they can escape the cycle of predation with a plant-based diet. 

However, eating fruit and vegetables is also eating “life”. We have no choice but to draw on the energy of other kingdoms (both animal and plant) to sustain ourselves, because that is how we were designed.

Humans and animals are a passageway and conduit for food, hostels of death, conduits of corruption, making a living off the death of others.

Leonardo da Vinci

The only difference between a meat-based and a plant-based diet lies in the presence or absence of blood, and therefore memories that pollute one's subtle bodies and lower their vibration. It is essentially a conscious individual choice: to consume memories — which, in turn, will consume you — or to transmute them. Unfortunately, this choice has become yet another excuse to polarise and divide people.

Restaurant Star Awards and Reality Cooking Shows

Thus, from a basic biological necessity, cooking has become a source of division on several levels: those who go hungry vs. those who overeat; those who “chow” out of necessity vs. those who “savour” for pleasure; those who consume memories vs. those who burn them. 

Most importantly, it has now become an essential cultural feature — a show in its own right, a “boiling business” where egoic appetites take precedence over those of the stomach. We no longer eat our food: we put it on display. We no longer savour the substance: we show it off on Instagram. When cooking turns to entertainment, it's a clear sign that hunger no longer resides on our plates, but in our souls.

Behind the cult of healthy eating is the same control mechanism: creating a need and then artificially fulfilling it. Gastronomy is now just another link in the great food chain — a liturgy of taste that stirs up hunger without ever satiating it.

Just like the military “top brass” or the who's who of Hollywood, Top Chefs also have their stars. Whether pinned to hats or uniforms, or embedded in cement paving, they all point to the same vault: that of the archontic heavens. These stars, touted as badges of excellence, are actually the seals of brilliant enslavement. 

It's no longer about raising but luring consciousness. And no matter how many crumbs we are given, the bill is always steep and the pill bitter to swallow.

The Last Supper

Since everything always seems to revolve around tables, whether forced to spill the beans or encouraged to take careless vows induced by alcohol fumes (which keep you in a state of impaired consciousness), no archontic recipe has ever been more expertly cooked up than that of the Last Supper. Under the guise of communion and sharing, it has never been anything more than a protocol for assimilation. For although blood is a symbol of life, it is first and foremost a carrier of memory.

Saying “this is my blood” is tantamount to offering one’s memories for assimilation and integration. And whoever drinks this blood also consumes the egregore it contains. These are the foundations of the first great karmic cuisine: a vibrational feast where humans, misled into believing they were communing, actually bonded to the archontic intelligence they worshipped via this blood connection.

The wine was merely a code, a signature. Behind the promise of collective salvation was the hive-mind project: one body, one mind, one network. Assimilation was not metaphorical. It was cellular.

If one must laugh or sing in the midst of a feast,
A doctor is then at his wit's end:
A glutton takes all the glory.
Come on, you old fools, go learn how to drink.

Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux

And whilst the guests raise their glasses one more time to what they think is “life”, the archons savour their favourite dish: humanity al dente.

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Witch Hunt

The righteous rise with burning eyes
Of hatred and ill-will
Madmen fed on fear and lies
To beat and burn and kill

"Witch Hunt", Rush (1981)

It's pumpkin season again! What was once turnip season is now only used to refer to bad scripts and cowards in French. Like the 10 of Spades or its tarot card equivalent, showing a character lying face down on the ground, with ten swords stabbed into his back, October is a dark month, often filled with a sense of dread and foreboding. Known in occult circles as Red October, the month of harvest, bloodshed, stagnation and loss of control, ends with masquerades where people pretend to scare each other by dressing up as monsters, ghosts or witches in order to be on the safe side. But number 10 is also a symbol of transition, like a bridge between two worlds, since death, in the true sense, is nothing more than a transfer from one state to another. Furthermore, in the Lenormand Oracle, the 10 of Spades is paired with a ship sailing away towards unknown shores — a possible reference to Charon's boat?¹

Burn the Witch

The myth surrounding witches reflects the abysmal depths of human ignorance, the hypocrisy of religions, and the psychopathic entities they worship. As French historian Michel Pastoureau wrote, “witches are not a phenomenon of the Middle Ages but of the modern era.” Indeed, hatred towards the feminine principle is nothing new, but now seems to be reaching new heights. Simply consider the increasingly violent abuse of transgender propaganda, or extreme religious obscurantism, attempting to impose their rules and views in Western civilisations.

Contrary to popular belief, it was not during the Middle Ages that the greatest number of crimes against ‘witches’ were committed, but during the Renaissance. The women considered as such were generally from the working class and most were healers, midwives or herbalists, holding ancestral know-how that competed with the humanist creed based on science and knowledge (rather than knowing). Their practice was therefore labelled “magical” in order to justify witch hunts.

‘Witches’ posed no threat to men as individuals, but rather to the archontic system, which used institutions (the Church, the justice system, official medicine) to eliminate anything that would slip beyond its control.

They were thus blamed for knowing too much, much more than the established institutions themselves. Their knowledge of lunar cycles and natural correspondences also allowed them to break free from imposed patterns and touch upon the very structure of ‘life’. That's why they were accused of transforming or metamorphosing others, a distorted reflection of their vibratory ability to dissolve existing moulds and what the matrix wants to crystallise — in other words, they showed that matter is energy and that all energy is malleable.

That sly come-hither stare
That strips my conscience bare
It's witchcraft
And I've got no defense for it
The heat is too intense for it
What good would common sense for it do?

"Witchcraft", Frank Sinatra (1957)

A far cry from the archetypal ugly old woman with a wart on her nose, ‘witches’ were guilty of being independent and arousing desire in men. This is certainly the greatest untold truth, as it still pervades certain religions. Many witch trials were, in fact, fuelled by shameful male fantasies. As men were unable to control their urges, the blame was put on women as ‘temptresses’ or ‘friends of the Devil’. Weakness always seeks to blame, and the cognitive dissonance was too overwhelming for the so-called ‘stronger’ sex. To the benefit of the clique of the archons who manipulate human emotions.

Last but not least, as archetypes of the rebellious feminine principle (like Lilith, Adam's first wife, accused of tempting Eve in the guise of a serpent), witches served as a reminder that incarnation in the flesh cannot occur without this fundamental principle. In a world ruled by a jealous patriarchal god, such power is intolerable for it cannot be subdued.

Spells and Charms

And that's where the trap closes in: everything beyond institutional control was rebranded as ‘magic’. But what is magic, if not the soul in action?² A force that manipulates forms, but without any connection to the spirit. However, a soul acting without its spirit always ends up creating its own shackles, as what it attracts through ignorance, it will sooner or later have to pay for.

The word sorceress (sorcière, as used in French) comes from the Latin sortiarius, ‘spell caster’, derived from sors, meaning 'fate' or 'destiny'. Magic is therefore a coded energy and a spell is an expressed intention that can be instantly broken by a supramental frequency (hence the importance of always vibrating at a high frequency). Non-consent will produce a boomerang effect that will not only render any act of magic ineffective, but this energy will have to find a target, and it will be those who emitted it who will suffer the consequences. The spell will thus rebound upon its authors with triple intensity.

Cover up in shade
Fly fast through the airwaves
Meet with pride and truth
Danger is great joy
Dark is bright as fire

"Witches' Song", Marianne Faithfull (1979)

It's worth noting that magic, whether black or white, remains the same, since it is once again a matter of swapping polarities. Polarisation is, moreover, a pernicious trap that must be overcome at all costs. Thus, praying for others is a form of magic, regardless of how noble the intention may be. Hence the well-known but misunderstood saying: “the road to hell is paved with good intentions”.   

Furthermore, sort, the French³ for 'spell', is the same as sortir in the third person, which in this context means 'to step out'. A witch or sorceress is someone who breaks out of moulds and shatters boundaries. In its intransitive form, they stand out from the crowd, from the norm, and the matrix loops; in its transitive form, they expose what's hidden: knowledge, secrets, and invisible forces.

Treats or Tricks

But ‘taking out’ may also mean ‘unwrapping’. The matrix enjoys treating us to its glittering wrappers, promising solace and comfort. And as with Bertie Bott’s Every Flavour Beans, every bite is a gamble: 

“You want to be careful with those,” Ron warned Harry. “When they say every flavour, they mean every flavour — you know, you get all the ordinary ones like chocolate and peppermint and marmalade, but then you can get spinach and liver and tripe. George reckons he had a booger-flavoured one once.”

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, J.K. Rowling (1997)

That's the image of the Matrix: attractive packaging, but unpredictable taste — and more often disgusting than delicious.

And when it comes to booby-trapped treats, narcissists are true master candy-makers. On the outside, they come wrapped in shiny, colourful paper. But inside, it's not chocolate: it's all recycled and repackaged digestive waste. One might think the smell would eventually give away the packaging, but unfortunately, they always manage to convince those around them that it is not them who smell bad, but their victim, whom they torment to breaking point.

These human wrapped candies are not just dysfunctional individuals: they often serve as relays for archons. Their role is to trigger an emotional reaction in the other person and then reverse roles. They provoke, harass and manipulate until the victim breaks down. Then they point the finger: ‘See, HE (or SHE) is the monster.’ And as long as no one dares to unwrap the foil, the ploy continues.

As Above, So Below

From human wrapped candy to the treats of the archons, the basic idea is the same: as practitioners of black magic and trickery, the 'mighty' of this world always wrap their poison in the shiny paper of ‘progress’, 'morality' or ‘inclusivity’. The treats may change, but the bitter taste of political correctness remains as foul as what is humanly abject.

These ruling elites, who act as willing agents of the matrix, occupy positions of power in order to better reverse situations: hypnotising the masses, projecting their guilt onto those who escape their control, and naming the culprits to be burned — yesterday at the stake, today through cancel culture and political or media purges.

And make no mistake about it: witch hunts are not some distant memory from the Dark Ages. In Africa (and other parts of the world), women and children are still being tortured and killed on the pretext of witchcraft, as reported by Amnesty International⁴.

When I look out my window
Many sights to see
And when I look in my window
So many different people to be
That is strange, so strange
You've got to pick up every stitch
Must be the season of the witch

"Season of the Witch", Donovan (1966)

The archons are forever recycling the same scenarios, not so that the trapped souls may learn — what's the point when memories are being erased and manipulated? — but to sustain the cycle which feeds them.

Endnotes

1. ^  In Greek mythology, Charon or Kharon is a psychopomp, the ferryman of the Greek underworld. He carries the souls of those who have been given funeral rites across the rivers Acheron and Styx, which separate the worlds of the living and the dead. In some burials, low-value coins known generically as Charon's obols were placed in, on, or near the mouth of the deceased, as a viaticum for the soul's journey. The dead who could not pay the fee, and those who had received no funeral rites, had to wander the near shores of the Styx for one hundred years before they were allowed to cross the river.
2. ^  In French, 'la magie' (magic) sounds exactly like 'l'âme agit' (the soul acts). As explained in a note below, due to its specific vibration French is the preferred language used by occult societies. Therefore, even if, in this particular instance, the language of birds doesn't work in your language, it still has the same vibratory impact in all the fractal layers of the matrix simulation.
3. ^ Each language has a specific frequency that goes far beyond words. French ranks among the initiatory languages. Historically, it was and still is used in high occult lodges, particularly because of its rich and precise structure, which allows for complex codification of ideas and rituals.  
4. ^ Accused of being a witch, 90-year-old Akua Denteh was lynched and beaten to death in the streets of Mempeasem in July 2020. In some parts of Africa, witches are feared and hunted down. According to Amnesty International in Gambia, several hundred people have been arrested and detained. These people are tortured and forced to drink a hallucinogenic drink, compelling them to confess to witchcraft. 

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Crime Time

Genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains.

A Study in Scarlet, Arthur Conan Doyle (1887)

Back from the land of Uncle Charley, let's make a quick stop in my former adopted country — more specifically in London, at 221B Baker Street, home of the most famous fictional detective of all time. The very same detective who, as suggested by the 9 of Diamonds this month, invites us to be patient and persistent in spite of obstacles and challenges. It also heralds the end of a cycle (represented by a coffin in the Lenormand oracle) and the beginning of a new phase.

Private Eye vs Blind Justice

It is often wrongly assumed that Sherlock Holmes, the legendary character created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in 1887, was the first and original literary detective. Actually that title is held by Auguste Dupin, penned by Edgar Allan Poe in 1841 (in The Murders in the Rue Morgue). The following year saw the release of The Mysteries of Paris by Eugène Sue, in which crime investigation intertwines with the social background, and where the sleuth roams the filthy alleys of the city in an effort to restore justice.

Two opposing archetypes: the cerebral detective introduced by Poe as a logically-minded parlour investigator versus the ‘action’ investigator portrayed by Sue, immersed in the social fabric and the underworld, driven by some humanitarian or moral cause. One of them looks at clues from a rational perspective, while the other digs into the dirt of people's lives.

Poe's character inspired Inspector Lecoq (in The Lerouge Case) by Émile Gaboriau, the ‘father of detective fiction’ who, in turn, influenced Conan Doyle in the creation of Sherlock Holmes.

But if these fictional detectives managed to captivate generations of readers, it is above all because they borrowed from their flesh-and-blood counterparts who, in ‘real’ life, helped solve some of the greatest crimes in human history.

One of them is Eugène François Vidocq, often regarded as the first private eye in history (1833), followed by Allan Pinkerton, who started the first private investigation agency in the US (1850), and William John Burns, known as the ‘American Sherlock Holmes.’

The Hound and the Wolf

But what happens when the detective encounters his perfect opposite? When the bloodhound of the system, with his infallible flair and relentless logic, meets the elusive wolf with his ever-changing mask, acting only on instinct and playing with the law to better circumvent it? This is where Arsène Lupin, Maurice Leblanc's gentleman thief, steps in. Leblanc, whose pen occasionally challenged Conan Doyle's to the extent of reinventing Holmes as Herlock Sholmes (for legal reasons) for a memorable literary duel.

They measured each other with their eyes, now open enemies, avowed and quivering. Lupin, a little irritated, went on: “Several times, sir, I have met you on my way. That is several times too many; and I am tired of wasting my time in foiling the traps which you set for me."

The Blonde Lady, Maurice Leblanc (1908)

Their confrontation continued over time: four years after their first encounter, Lupin provoked the British detective in the press and burgled a hotel despite the presence of the latter, who nevertheless managed to recover the stolen items. Their clash highlights the incompatibility of their methods: faced with Sholmes/Holmes' deduction and relentless logic, Lupin relies entirely on his intuition and improvisational skills. With his casual attitude towards facts, he outsmarts his careful yet rigid analysis.

The dog's nose, however long, points in one direction at a time.

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

Thus, in Leblanc's stories, the English detective is always defeated in the end, not by violence, but by imagination, bravado, and elegant plot twists. Lupin symbolises vivacity of mind, adaptability, and cunning counter-power against rigid order.

A gentleman is simply a patient wolf.

Henriette Tiarks

He embodies the art of free trickery, the proverbial ‘side step’ of someone who moves their pieces around the game board, while Holmes just keeps feeding the loop without ever stepping out of line.

Murder Party

And when it comes to flair and intuition, what could be more natural than extending from literary duels to other playing fields? For whether in fiction or games, crime always follows the same set of rules: a murderer, a motive, and a weapon. Now the next step was to turn it into global entertainment.

So in 1949, nearly half a century later, was created the legendary Cluedo (a play on 'clue' and 'ludo', the Latin word for 'I play'). In the famous British murder mystery game — which has been adapted into a variety of formats (a film, television shows, video games, fiction and non-fiction books, escape games, etc.), the object is to determine who murdered the game's victim, where the crime took place, and which weapon was used.

You see, but you do not observe.

A Scandal in Bohemia, Arthur Conan Doyle (1891)

Nowadays, in an increasingly Orwellian society, the pervasiveness of the figure of the unfailing detective is hardly a surprise. The reason is that the matrix needs to perpetuate the classic narratives of good and evil. For the system, it is not a matter of morality but of survival. And whenever the polarity is reversed, it's all about either redemption or corruption.

It doesn't matter which 'side' you're on, as long as you don't break out of the cycle. Indeed, what would happen if, instead of turning the wheel, the guinea pigs decided to step aside and observe it? 

What do you think they might discover?

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The Lady is a Blues Singer

The lady is a Blues singer
Don't be jealous
She's fond of red wine
The lady is a Blues singer
She's got gospel in her voice
And she's a believer

"Mademoiselle chante le blues", Patricia Kaas (1987)

While still in the land of Uncle Charley, I suggest we leave the excitement of baseball fields behind for the more subdued atmosphere of modern jazz clubs, formerly known as blues bars, barrel houses or juke joints. The ideal place for restoring our balance, as hinted by the 8 of Clubs this month, and tapping into our inner strength in order to perfect our alignment between material reality and spirit. This card certainly does not encourage passivity; rather, it urges us to take action for a chance to break free from old patterns and seize new opportunities. To step out of our comfort zone and embrace the unknown.

The Blues of the Soul

Before jazz, before rock, before soul music… there was the blues.

A term stemming from the abbreviation of the English idiomatic expression ‘blue devils’, meaning dark thoughts.

Blues music originated from lone, raw and often painful voices, bound to the memory of slavery and soul's survival in a world meant to stifle it. It is the music of the uprooted, born in the cotton fields of the southern states of America, and sung by those no one would listen to. A cry encapsulated within a note. The echo of a lament morphed into a rhythmic wave. A way of exorcising pain so it doesn't consume you.

At the end of the 19th century, it migrated from plantations to big cities like Memphis, Chicago, and New Orleans, where it gave birth to jazz, a freer form of blues that is more instrumental, more technical, and more urban.

Then came soul, rock, funk, rap... As African-American writer and poet James Weldon Johnson wrote, “It is from the blues that the most distinctive feature of all that can be called American music derives.”

Blues Players

But initially, there were no mics, no glam, no studios, no producers. Just a raw voice, a guitar, and pain meant to be transmuted, not toned down. Blues isn't about singing; it's about vibrating that suffering so it can find an outlet. A crack. A break in the loop.

Dudes from Mecca, guys from Garonne
Glassblower blowing into a saxophone
Pretty marquise. Mesrine pretty baroness
Thousands of thousands of thousands millions people
Blues players
We are blues players

"Joueurs de Blues", Michel Jonasz (1981)

Prior to radio broadcasting, music was offered for free. Before it became a market, it was given away. And that was something the matrix couldn't tolerate much longer. So it took the blues... and diluted it. Into soul. Into rock. And 'starified' it.

And so, today, singing about pain is meant to be seen, to sell, to be in the limelight. But no longer to align with spirit.

The stage has become an altar. The microphone, a totem. And the pain set to music, a sonic sacrificial offering to the system.

Which raises the question few artists are willing to ask themselves: is singing about your wounds a form of catharsis, or just another way of feeding the system with loosh — an energy derived from human emotions, the harvesting of which is at the core of this deadly simulation?

Everyone suffers at one time or another, to varying degrees, but suffering is invisible and the system is designed so that we embrace this pain as a token of value and a promise of better things to come. A willing sacrifice for crumbs too dearly paid for.

Blues Sisters

Some voices were too real not to crack the mould. 

Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday, Nina Simone... And later, in a rockier or more soulful fashion, Janis Joplin, Amy Winehouse, Aretha Franklin.

If it hadn't been for the blues, I would probably have killed myself.

Janis Joplin

These women were possessed. Carried away. And drained. They were no entertainers, but channels for something greater that the system could not leave untouched.

The voice, when disconnected from Spirit, becomes a discharging channel. And mesmerised audiences applaud... unwittingly witnessing a ritual of bilateral vampirism that sucks everyone dry — except the matrix, which always gets its fill.

Whereas when connected to Spirit, the voice carries a fragment of logos within — the original frequency that makes up worlds. So it is not so much the voice that the matrix fears, but the living word. The logos. And in order to conceal it, it inundates the world with sham sounds — calibrated echoes, so that when the true Word arises, no one can hear it.

Nowadays, we tend to confuse thrills and emotions with vibrations. But logos is not gentle. It cuts deep. It resonates. It doesn't lull the soul to sleep — it rouses it.

Blue Woes

So they are not just artists. They are aerials. Amplifiers. And when the stage is the only outlet left, the overflow always ends up breaking the dam.

That melancholy strain,
That ever haunting refrain
Is like a sweet old sorrow song.
Here comes the very part
That wraps a spell around my heart.
It sets me wild to hear that loving tune again,
The Memphis Blues.

"Memphis Blues", W.C. Handy (1914)

From then on, the matrix just has to set up the ritual. Create ‘stars’ and attract ‘fans’. Build acoustic arenas, temples of performance. And call it ‘sharing emotion’.

But these are no longer offerings. These are inverted devotion.

This is where the well-known commandment from the Old Testament comes in, often quoted but rarely understood: “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness...” (Exodus 20:4).

Or another from the Torah: “You shall not turn to idols…” (Leviticus 19:4).

These are actually vibrational decrees issued by the Demiurge, who does not forbid worship — only worshiping outside his matrix. For as long as it remains within the framework of his system, the energy always flows back to him.

Idols are not people. They are diversion structures intended to drive us away from Spirit.

So every time we give our breath away to someone else, whether it's crying on stage or shouting in the pit or from the stalls, we consent to a vibrational transfer. We are feeding a cycle that keeps pushing us further off balance, briefly uplifting us before plunging us into a state of craving.

Sadly, I can no longer sing the blues like I used to. It is the truth of this music that I miss, which tends to prove that you should never lose your heritage.

James Brown

Initially, singing the blues may have been a way of transmuting the induced suffering, thereby rendering the loosh unusable.

Today, with a few exceptions that will never be glorified in the pantheon of astral shooting stars, it has become a means of Auto-Tuning silence so that no one ever hears what could potentially trigger the switch of consciousness on.

And if the lady sings the blues, perhaps it's be because she was tired of the lendlord and wanted her property back.

© La Pensine Mutine. All rights reserved. Reproduction prohibited.

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Glory Days

I had a friend, was a big baseball player
Back in high school
He could throw that speedball by you
Make you look like a fool, boy.

"Glory Days", Bruce Springsteen (1982)

For the sake of carbon footprint concerns, I'm staying in the land of Uncle Charley (my late great-uncle), swapping my Colt and cowgirl hat for a baseball bat and cap, and off I hit the plate, ready to attempt my home run. A daunting challenge, I admit, but that is precisely what is suggested by the 7 of Diamonds this month — on par with the diamond-shaped field and seven defenders (in addition to the pitcher and catcher) of the opposing team. This card invites us to take a step back and look beyond appearances. Sometimes, what may be considered an issue is actually a blessing in disguise. What if it were an opportunity to make a quantum leap?

The Aces of Base

Well-established in the American landscape for nearly two centuries, baseball is more than just a sport: it is an institution deeply rooted in the culture and history of the country. It is even the Americans' favourite pastime, a tradition passed down from generation to generation. Although, since the 1960s, (American) football has largely taken the lead in the running for the symbolic title of national sport.

For my part, I must admit that my experience lies solely in reading Stephen King's  The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, where a kid lost in the woods copes with all the terrors that come her way by listening to baseball games on her Walkman (the ancestor of MP3 players). Or that iconic scene from the Twilight movie with Muse's "Supermassive Blackhole" playing in the background, where the vampires play baseball in the midst of a storm.

Another peal of thunder began. Esme stopped then; apparently, we'd reached the edge of the field. It looked as if they had formed teams. Edward was far out in left field, Carlisle stood between the first and second bases, and Alice held the ball, positioned on the spot that must be the pitcher's mound.
  Emmett was swinging an aluminum bat; it whistled almost untraceably through the air.
  I waited for him to approach home plate, but then I realized, as he took his stance, that he was already there — farther from the pitcher's mound than I would have thought possible.
  Jasper stood several feet behind him, catching for the other team. Of course, none of them had gloves.
  All right," Esme called in a clear voice, which I knew even Edward would hear, as far out as he was. "Batter up."
  Alice stood straight, deceptively motionless. Her style seemed to be stealth rather than an intimidating windup. She held the ball in both hands at her waist, and then, like the strike of a cobra, her right hand flicked out and the ball smacked into Jasper's hand.
  "Was that a strike?" I whispered to Esme.
  "If they don't hit it, it's a strike," she told me.

Twilight, Stephenie Meyer (2005)

So I did some research to grasp of the basics, which are way more complicated than what Americans call soccer (football in Europe). Do football rules elude you? Wait till I introduce you to baseball rules!

The Four-Corner Game

Two teams of nine players compete against each other. One team attacks (sending one of its players to bat), while the other defends (throwing the ball and trying to eliminate the batters).

The pitcher (defender) throws a ball. The batter (attacker) tries to intercept it by hitting it with a bat. 

If he succeeds, he runs to the first base, then the next ones, hoping to return to his starting point — called home plate — to score a point. Meanwhile, the defending team tries to retrieve the ball and get him out by throwing it to a base ahead of him or touching him with it.

The batters take turns one by one, in a fixed order. But as soon as three batters in a row are out, it is the defenders' turn to attack. They switch roles.

Each player keeps their position: the pitcher stays pitcher, the catcher stays catcher. But everyone takes turns batting when their team is on offence.

Baseball is ninety percent mental and the other half is physical.

Yogi Berra, former professional baseball catcher

The battle between the pitcher and the batter is a key moment in every game, where strategy, skill and psychology combine. The design of the mound on which the pitcher stands is also crucial in this one-on-one situation, influencing the game and providing viewers with great thrills.

The pitcher is the cornerstone of any top-level baseball team. Their ability to surprise and eliminate opposing batters is what may lead their team to victory. Pitchers need to assess each batter and choose which pitches to use based on their opponent's strengths and weaknesses.

The Tick-Tock Tactic

A game is usually composed of nine innings, each consisting of two phases: one where a team is batting and one where it is fielding. If the scores are tied at the end (only the number of points or runs scored is counted, not the number of innings won), extra innings are played until one team takes the lead.

Baseball has no game clock. Innings define the pace, following a logical sequence of repeated cycles. Each team plays, waits, then plays again. Over and over again. There is no 'official' pace of play, just innings to be played. Occasionally, some games may seem to last forever, exceeding 4 hours in duration. Meanwhile cricket games – the British bat-and-ball sport baseball originated from – may extend over several consecutive days in a liturgy of suspended time.

But all this comes at a cost. Ultimate tempo masters, pitchers are subjected to extreme physical strain affecting their arms, shoulders to such extent it may take them several days to recover after a single game. Players may grow exhausted, but the loop goes on.

Foul Role Play

Up along the clouds where the eagles roam,
Joe cracked that ball to whine and moan.
His buddies all laugh as they trot on in:
Joe DiMaggio's done it again."

Joe DiMaggio Done it Again", Billy Bragg (1999) 

The field is called ‘the diamond’, but it is just a 2D projection of the Matrix cube, viewed from a certain angle and run around, one pillar (base) at a time, counter-clockwise. Even when you hit a home run, you're back to square one, the home plate. You may feel like you're making progress, whereas you're merely completing another lap around your cage. 

And all the while, the bat keeps swinging and the field keeps wearing you out. The bat is wielded as an instrument of power, a striking force, and a symbol of decision. But on closer inspection, it was primarily designed to strike within the framework, not to break away from it. It is reminiscent of the stick used to break piñatas open and release the treats. And in traditional puppet shows, it is always the same ‘villain’ who gets beaten with a truncheon.

With each turn, roles are switched: one day you pitch, the next you strike. Always on the same matrix field. Same odd field. Same old scenarios. Panem et circenses. Bread and games. Another variant of the chessboard squares. The Matrix continues to alter, recycle, and recombine, but it never creates. It requires our input to do so.

To paraphrase now-defunct French rock band Téléphone, I'd say that we play our lives just like we play baseball. We win and lose, always hoping to score just one more round before the loop resets. Sometimes, you hold the grip then have to throw the bat away after one hit. Sometimes, you lose your grip and it might even cost you an arm and a leg. Oops!

Bats of Burden

Revolutions happen when baseball bats and golf clubs change hands. The exact dates and litres of blood spilled are matters for historians to argue about.

Anonymous

In the sporting world, same as in the world of the Demiurge, there is this basic idea of hitting that keeps coming back: we hit the ball, we hit the road, we hit records. We beat the band, we beat the odds, we beat time... in excess.

We're also very much on the receiving end of these violent phrases – especially in the French language. Violence – with all the suffering and loosh it creates – appears to be a key part of this predatory world. Even the party is going full swing, as if joy, too, had to pass through the rhythmic prongs of a well-oiled system. And when it gets too obvious, the cards are reshuffled. But the game remains the same.

All cards are marked,
All fates will collide.

"Where Were You Hiding When the Storm Broke?", The Alarm (1983)

The fact is, language knows, even if we no longer listen to it. We are bombarded with the same old stuff, we are led down the same old paths, and meanwhile, we carry the burden... where it hurts.

For there is always something to endure. A burden, a rule, a cycle. Some ground to gain, some base to reach. Again. And again. 

And when you think you've scored a point... the cycle begins again.

© La Pensine Mutine. All rights reserved. Reproduction prohibited.

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Gone West

He plays the harmonica... but he also plays the trigger. 

Cheyenne, Once Upon a Time in the West

Lost in the Caribbean, in pursuit of some phantom ship, the heroine is Calamity Eyael. Narrowly escaping the clutches of Captain Barbossa, she finds herself propelled (by the Doc's DeLorean) into her great uncle Charley's native Kansas¹, on the trail of the Git, the Mad and the Ugly. She can already hear the bullets hissing on Main Street. Better take cover behind the bar, looks like someone's about to bite the dust! Hardly a surprise with that bloody Six of Diamonds heralding unexpected events and change for this month, and calling for caution when socialising. It's therefore best not to upset any of the trigger-happy thugs out there. Especially since the local sheriff strikes me as quite a coward.

The Wild Side of the West

I don't mean to kill the mood, but let me remind you that a cowboy is just a cow herder who tends cattle on ranches in North America. Right now, it sounds a bit less glamourous! According to the online Bible², the historic American cowboy of the late 19th century arose from the vaquero, popular in New Mexico in the 16th and 17th century, but differs in that the latter is not a farm worker. In the 19th century, livestock ranches in the West would supply the whole country. Since there was no railway, cowboys were thus in charge of herding cattle across the southern Great Plains. The seasonal cycle of moving livestock from pasture to pasture, which ended up in the 1890's, certainly gave a distorted image of the free, lonesome nomadic cowboy, which is mostly a far cry from reality.

Quite unlike the myth conveyed by literature, comic strips and the silver screen, cowboys were no heroic marksmen who would keep their guns at the ready to defend the weak and the oppressed from the bloodthirsty Redskins.

First of all, the greatest threat to cow herders was neither Indians nor cattle rustlers, but the cattle themselves. At night, the slightest howl of a coyote or rumble in the sky over the Great Plains might scare the herd into an uncontrollable deadly stampede. Locating the runaway livestock would then sometimes take them over a week.

Crossing rivers was another major challenge, involving the risk of drowning for both people and animals. While at other times, the peril would come from the lack of water. Let alone, rabid skunk bites and wolf attacks.

Once I was shot by John Wayne.
Yeah, it was towards the end.
That one scene's bought me a thousand drinks,
Set me up and I'll tell it for you, friend
Here's to the cowboys, riders in the whirlwind,
Tonight the western stars are shining bright again.

"Western Stars", Bruce Springsteen (2019)

Ultimately, the worst danger wasn't so much the untamed wilderness, but the call of the sirens and demons of ‘civilisation’. The settler towns depicted in western movies actually had a very bad reputation. A journalist visiting Kansas City³, in the 1870's, writes that "after dark, nowhere on civilised earth are such displays of unbridled, shameless debauchery as those found in the dancehalls of border towns".

These are the infamous places, also known as 'Sodoms of the West', where, in a matter of days, lonesome cowboys give in to the short-lived pleasures of urban convenience, gambling away their hard-earned money on poker, prostitutes — and mostly alcohol.

Actually, it's always the same old story. With just a change of scenery. We're going round in circles, but the blind call it 'progress'. Round and round we go until our bodies break.

Clashes at O.K. Car Park

There is no denying that our Western cities are increasingly looking like the Farwest of yesteryear. But not the one portrayed in Lucky Luke cartoons, spaghetti westerns or the Hollywood myth embodied by John Wayne, Gary Cooper, James Stewart and the likes. It's more like a low-cost version of the Cities of Lost Children, often with an immigrant background, apparently uncontrolled but perfectly controllable by the matrix, which feeds mainly on chaos and keeps replaying the same scripts over and over again: urban rodeos, scooter riding ambushes, and score-settling on cracked asphalt.  

The wind blows in Arizona,
A state in America where Harry hung around.
Loony gun-crazed cowboy,
Fond of weapons, horses and bingeing,
With Smith & Wesson,
Colt, Derringer, Winchester & Remington on his tail,
Lonesome and proud, he wanders the lowlands,
Riding his horse mate.

"Nouveau Western", MC Solaar (1994)

The iconic boots are discarded in favour of mofo Nike trainers; junk food restaurants standing for traditional saloons — but the script remains unchanged: edgy, stabby egos, quick to dispense the rough injustice of blind retaliation, are being forced to operate in pitch darkness due to a severe brainpower failure, fumbling their way around in the dim light of the spark plugs of the cars they burn when they're happy (or unhappy), plus a couple of stray bullets as punctuation marks.

It might even sound funny if it were a cartoon from Charlie Hebdo.⁴. Except it isn't. But the offspring of the demiurgic Adam can get used to a lot. Too many scattered pieces, not enough consciousness to pull them all together. What's the point, anyway? 'Life' is much too short to ever expect to complete the puzzle on time. That's why the matrix favours shorter simulation times and and more frequent recycling, even if it means saturating the souls. In other words, dying young reduces the risk of sudden realisations.

Quarter to Midnight Cowboy⁵

The modern-day urban cowboy only rides his collective ego. 

In a lot of places in the United States and certainly even more places around the world, the image of the cowboy has become, for some people, a negative one. The word 'cowboy' implies a strong, stubborn individual whose individualism depends on pulling down other people's individualism.

Viggo Mortensen

He's not lonesome: he travels in packs of preyed-on predators. He poses as loud and unruly, but he's actually a coward of the worst kind — a quiesling unconsciously serving the system, with more control buttons than the dashboard of an airliner.

Except there are so many squares missing on his chessboard, it looks more like a old PacMan (or Minesweeper) on uppers than a game of chess.

I'm a cowboy,
On a steel horse I ride.
I'm wanted dead or alive.

"Dead or Alive", Bon Jovi (1992)

Wanted dead or alive? Who cares! Not even a raider of the lost identity. Just an extra on the set, who thinks he's the star of the movie — the one on a loop.

Spoiler alert: as long as we believe that chaos is outside, we'll stay in the film. And it's rarely ever us who write the final scene.

Wild Wild West

Who remembers the famous 1960's cult series featuring James West and Artemus Gordon, two secret agents operating in the American West circa 1869-77?  Featuring Will Smith, it was resurrected, at the end of the 1990's and modernised into an explosive (and somewhat chaotic) remake, which turned the old-fashioned western into a laboratory for retro-futuristic experimentation. The West became a backdrop for all kinds of technological fantasies and preposterous conspiracies — as if fiction had sensed that this Farwest had never been real, but had already been simulated.

What if that actually was the real 'conspiracy' of the Wild Wild West? A territory already out of reach, populated by myths, overacting cowboys, unlikely machines, and vigilantes with flawless brushing. In short, a mental theatre, ideal for testing narratives of power, control and coded heroism.

Forty seven dead beats 
Living in a back street.
North, east, west, south,
All in the same house,
Sitting in a back room, 
Waiting for the big boom.
I'm in a bedroom,
Waiting for my baby.
She's so mean but I don't care.
I love her eyes and her wild, wild hair.
Dance to the beat that we love best,
Heading for the nineties,
Living in the wild, wild west.

"Wild Wild West", The Escape Club (1988)

Perhaps the West has never existed other than as a backdrop — a backdrop that the matrix can recycle at will. Even today, it is still being projected onto our cities, our screens and our fantaisies of independence.

Same spiral. Same cast. Different scene. No real change on the western front of the demiurgic cube.

As French actor and screenwriter Jean Yanne might have said, had he survived the TikTok era: "We're all cowboys… except we've had our saddles nicked and we're shooting blanks."

Endnotes

1. ^ It's all true: my great-uncle, born at the end of the 1890's, was really called Charley and did come from Kansas. 
2. ^ Wikipedia.
3. ^ Philippe Jacquin, Vers l’ouest : un nouveau monde (Westwards: A New World).
4. ^ Charlie Hebdo is a French satirical weekly magazine, featuring cartoons, reports, polemics, and jokes.
5. ^ A cross-referenced cinematographic hint at John Schlesinger's Midnight Cowboy (1969) featuring Jon Voight, and Jean Yanne's Quarter to Two B.C. (1982) featuring Coluche.

© La Pensine Mutine. All rights reserved. Reproduction prohibited.

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