Nothing is true, everything is permitted-- Excerpts from occult novel The Savior at the End of Time

Don't know who took a pic of this wonderful find. #subwaygraffiti #why

Excerpts from Chapter 2 "aurelio zosimo" from The Savior at the End of Time by Dionesia Rapposelli

Zosimo had a plaque on his office door. On it was inscribed a motto adopted by Commons enthusiasts of his brand of sorcery. The plaque read Nothing is true; everything is permitted. Popular lore had it that the 11^th century ascetic Islamic fundamentalist Hassan ibn Sabbah—a mystic and mastermind of an assassin squad—had said it right before he bit the dust at age 90 years, but the saying was actually penned and launched as legend by the 20^th century Commons beat poet and career drug-addict William S. Burroughs, in whom a romanticist fascination with Sabbah developed. Outer Plane Discordians and Chaos mages had cheekily spun lore about Sabbah and his alleged pronouncement into cult fiction, conspiracy, legend, and disinformation.

Those of small mind and little vision regarded the saying as an anarchist war cry. To them, the saying was tinged with hedonism of a kind more crass than the generally misconstrued motto expectorated by the notorious Victorian-era sorcerer-mage Aleister Crowley: “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.” However, in modern parlance among those who adopted the motto Nothing is true; everything is permitted, it was simply an affirmation that all belief was provisional, not absolute. Because belief shaped perception, which modified behavior which modified circumstance, perhaps circumstance could be modified if belief that modified perception and behavior was deliberately fabricated rather than imposed as unquestioned convention.

But what Zosimo’s beliefs actually were or if he had beliefs or was ideologically ambiguous, ambivalent, or paradoxical was unclear. 

. . .  he had a certain method of educating his students about “meaning” in general. He seemed to like to provoke discussion about meaning with new students. Because his reputation preceded him at the Bythos Academy, freshman and other newbie ilk knew not to argue the point with the professor. They tried their damnedest not to be goaded into doing so, but a discussion would come up at least once every semester in which a comment about the need for “belief” in something or other would escape a student’s mouth.

The student would then argue that he or she really didn’t say what was said. Zosimo would be unmoved. He would stop whatever he was doing to begin the single-minded construction of a large and very detailed drawing of the word WHY??? on an old-fashioned easel chalk board before which he usually stood. Before class dismissal, he would interrupt his concentration to instruct the students to write meticulously referenced essays on why (regarding “belief”). The students would have three days to complete the assignment, in which time Zosimo would perfect his chalk-board mural.

Having collected all of the essays, Zosimo would return the tracts that he thought were plagiarized; contrived; or not long enough, original, grammatically correct, or appropriately referenced. Then he would gently place the remaining essays in the trash bin without comment. Those students who had their essays returned were doomed to do-overs. They also were tasked with returning at the end of the day to wash the gorgeous and painstakingly executed mural off the chalkboard.

In the end—despite that the topic was not exactly discussed—when students completed coursework with Zosimo, they knew whether belief was valid or not, and they knew that whatever ideas they had arrived at were okay and had nothing to do with Zosimo’s ideas. And that was the point.