Crowley Reincarnates in Trenton, N.J.

21^st December 2004 a.v.

New York (Valerius).  This week, after a series of dramatic revelations which shook the world of Thelema to its core, every Thelemite accepted that Peter van der List, a resident of Trenton, New Jersey, is in fact the reincarnation of the Prophet of the New Æon.  Mr. van der List’s gematric proof of his claim was completely incontrovertible.  Everyone agrees that it is marked by the most sublime simplicity, and carries immediate conviction.

Physicists around the globe immediately began analyzing Mr. van der List’s latest weblogs to gain an insight into his profound understanding of the structure of the universe, and already his theory of letters and numbers is everywhere being hailed as the long sought-after “Grand Theory of Everything”.

It was an anonymous post to the “thelema93-l” mailing list which triggered the events that catapulted Mr. van der List from complete and utter obscurity to become the Head of the World.  Scholars at the now-legendary mailing list who first noticed the post, which was entitled “I saw this link the other day”, are now being offered tenure at major universities in Europe and the U.S., with massive research funding being provided to enable deep study of the text of Mr. van der List’s “Key of it All” essay, which is only comprehensible to a handful of the most unemployable Quabballists.

One of the more surprising statements came from the renowned Prof. Stephen Hawking of Cambridge University, who was reported as saying, “This – buggers – me – completely.”

Eager to capitalise on his new-found fame, Mr. van der List convened a press-conference at which, after bravely wrestling his way past the paparazzi, he made his eagerly-anticipated announcement of the Order & Value of the English Alphabet to the assembled press:

He was then bustled to his new private jet: first stop, Cairo.  After being received with obsequious fawning by President Mubarak, a military escort accompanied him to the Egyptian Museum for the presentation of the Stélé of Revealing by Dr. Zahi Hawass, the Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities.  The handover was met with rapturous applause by the adoring crowd.  “Bakhsheesh?”, said Mr. Hawass.

Our intrepid reporter, Dana Bling, was the first to greet Mr. van der List on his exit from the museum, where he had this to say about the momentous events: “After six long months living on my own in a trailer park in New Jersey, with only The Holy Books of Thelema and a calculator for company, I think I ought to take a shower.  Do you have a boyfriend?”

In his home town of Trenton, residents were surprised at the sudden turn of events.  “No-one paid him much attention around here, until he started making weird droning noises late at night.  All I could catch was something like ‘I was the lemur’, and folks around here don’t appreciate foreigners, especially Madagascans.”

Local police remembered Mr. van der List clearly.

Hot on the heels of his triumph at the Egyptian Museum, He-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed distributed copies of his “Fourth Chapter of Liber AL”.  A tall dark man in his thirties, well-knit, active and strong, with the face of a savage king and eyes veiled lest their gaze should destroy what they saw, who had been standing in a corner of the room, said: “What a surprise!  I distinctly remember saying ‘threefold’.”

With his new-found attractiveness to women, Mr. van der List was visibly pleased to find himself surrounded by a bevy of maidens on his arrival in Inverness.  The All-Conquering King has recently purchased an old manor house once owned by Aleister Crowley on the shores of Loch Ness, which will become the seat of the New World Government and a nightclub.

Officials in the town provided a pageant in honour of the Prophet, where the theme was “The History of Thelema”, beginning with a beautifully constructed vignette of Aleister and Rose Crowley in Cairo, and continuing through the decades to the present day.  The later displays, however, seemed to show increasing signs of confusion and bathos.

STOP PRESS:  Pope admits game is up!  (See pages 2, 21, 14 and 11.)