You can't spell 'cheese' without EEE

Nobody was behind me in line, which seemed to be a good reason for her to treat me to a five minute retelling of the identification, rescue, and argument over initial custody of Kit Kat, who was so small they thought when they first heard him crying for help that he was a bird and not a kitten in a tree, and is now fifteen pounds of "pure, sculpted lardass".

And I didn't mind, precisely, I wasn't bored or anything, but around the time she was bringing me up to speed on Kit Kat's current status it occurred to me that this woman is a cashier in a store that primarily sells candy bars and beverages. People must buy Kit Kat bars from her multiple times a day. Does she do this every time there's nobody in line behind the purchaser? Did I just have that I Own Several Cats And Will Enjoy Your Cat Stories look about me? Was it the first time it occurred to her that she sold the brand of candy bar she named her cat after? Was she new to the job of selling Kit Kat bars?

The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, more commonly the Golden Dawn (Aurora Aurea), was a secret society from the Western esoteric tradition, that was heavily based on Rosicrucianism and inspired by Freemasonry, chiefly devoted to the study and practice of occult. Hermeticism and metaphysics during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Known as a magical order, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn was active in Great Britain and focused its practices on theurgy and spiritual development.

Acéphale is the name of a public review created by Georges Bataille (which numbered five issues, from 1936 to 1939) and a secret society formed by Bataille and others who had sworn to keep silent.

Rosicrucianism is a spiritual and cultural movement influenced by Esoteric Christianity and Hermeticism that arose in early modern Europe in the early 17th century after the publication of several texts announcing to the world a new secret society.

one thing they all have in common is that they're secret societies. which goes well with adele's impression of manus vindictae being a secret society.

rosicrucianism has the manifesto of:

"We, the deputies of the principal college of the brethren of the Rosie Cross, have taken up our abode, visible and invisible, in this city, by the grace of the Most High, towards whom are turned the hearts of the just. We show and teach without any books or symbols whatever, and we speak all sorts of languages in the countries wherein we deign to dwell, to draw mankind, our fellows, from error and to save them from death.”

which goes hand in hand with manus' whole thing that i can't put into words because i'm a bit too stupid and too little-read for this sort of thing. to guide arcanists into a future by the grace of the Most High (arcana), who turns to the hearts of those whose ideals are similar to hers. though r1999 is mostly eurocentric, i can take that their goal is for all arcanists, to draw arcanistkind, our fellows from error (the world now) and to save them from death (arcana with her whole mother of resurrection schtick).

what little i've read about acephale also coincides with manus' full embrace of the 'mad' arcanist nature.

"Morality, reason, and restraint – as we have seen, these are precisely what must be left behind. Abandon the world of the civilized and its light, Bataille urges. It is too late to be reasonable and learned. The world of secular modernity remains hopelessly enslaved to the head, forcing us to a life void of ecstasy, a life not worth living."

lady by the lake? the silhouette of the hat reminds me of her.

Fascinated by human sacrifice, he founded a secret society, Acéphale, the symbol of which was a headless man. According to legend, Bataille and the other members of Acéphale each agreed to be the sacrificial victim as an inauguration; none of them would agree to be the executioner. An indemnity was offered for an executioner, but none was found before the dissolution of Acéphale shortly before the war.

From its opening in 1897 until its closing in 1962, it (Théâtre du Grand-Guignol) specialized in horror shows. Its name is often used as a general term for graphic, amoral horror entertainment, a genre popular from Elizabethan and Jacobean theater (for instance Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus, and Webster's The Duchess of Malfi and The White Devil), to today's splatter films.

Jack Jouvin served as director from 1930 to 1937. He shifted the theater's subject matter, focusing performances not on gory horror but psychological drama. Under his leadership, the theater's popularity waned and, after World War II, it was not well-attended.