Stephane The Apostle's Epistle To The Palmyrene - SCP Foundation

Chapter 1

1To Marcius, Archdeacon of the Church in Palmyra, Bishop Caneaous, the elders Myron and Joycelen, most especially my beloved Brother Callista, and all our brethren therein assembled, I write Peace.

2I pray Peace, Love, Absolution, Lust, and Perfection to you, from my travels abroad. 3Brother Lucion, who still travels with me, also sends his Peace, Love, Absolution, and Lust. 4You will see he has grown since our last writing, when he could only pray you the Three. 5Beloved brethren his eyes have been open1 to the Fourth, of the Lust of the river and the Stars. 6I am overjoyed to say that he Lusts boldly for the continuum of the cosmos, and gropes hungrily for the stuffing2 of the millennia. 7He feasts on your prayers to the Stars for Lucion’s journey upwards, and devours your Third3 hearts in hope that he might see the Fifth!

8What now is left is his journey to the Perfect, a journey which we travel together parallel to our substantive journey, down these roads and pathways, speaking the Fifth to all who will listen, and to many who will not, and to some who have already, but not yet.4

Chapter 2

1It is Perfection which causes me to write, as to the fate5 of the heresy in Cappadocia. 2In your own days, I admonish you, do not be like the Cappadocians, who speak untruths about a Singular Perfection. 3I decree that they are no longer our Brethren, and are to be shunned6 and all. 4By my Apostolic heart, I urge you to turn inside out any amongst you who speak their lies on their tongues or in their hearts. 5Turn away from them, again, turn away!7 6Keep focused on the True Perfection, which is open to all, which is becoming of all, and which all are becoming on our paths to the Fifth. Be in perfection as I am in perfection, and I shall be in you as you are in me, my beloved Church. 7As the Prophetess Sinea wrote in the Scriptures, ‘The Fifth is of and with us all. Be perfect until you cannot be more at all.’8

Chapter 3

1But lo, I hear your questions though you have not yet asked them.9 Beloved Apostle, you say, how can I be Perfect if my brother is Perfect? 2Would not one of us be imperfect in the wake of the other? 3And furthermore, if the Starfish is in its Perfection, then must we all, in our diminution, be imperfect?

4Hear these words of I, your Apostle, and engulf them in the flame of your souls until they take their righteous place in your phenomenological landscape, for they are the Truth, and I am in them, and being in them, am in you.10

5It is this simple: one being Perfect does not preclude another from being the same.

6Allow me to speak in parable; I shall use the Fourth to shine light on the Fifth, in honor of Brother Lucion’s upheaval. 7As you are, I am certain, assembled in the holy place11, where our mindsets flee our souls to dance and enshrine the same, I tell you to behold your brother, my beloved Callista. 8I submit that he has a perfect body. 9The type already dreamt of, even before it is seen, and that, once so seen, holds the mind in a constant stranglehold from which thoughts of anything else struggle to escape. 10The type of body that in an instant inspires your beatified Lust to drive you to sickness.

11Behold, and feel everything you are inside trying to heave12 itself out of you, not from revulsion, but rather the carnal opposite, where the mind, heart, soul, spirit, and body look upon another bearing such brilliance, such beauty, such wit, such grace, and yes, such shape, that the stomach of the viewer cannot summon enough ennobled Lust to match the object thereof, and indeed turns in on itself in the attempt to properly digest the perfection it beholds.13

12Now, some of you might be agreeing with me [and to those of you I express my sincere condolences.]14 13Others of you, I can see with my outstretched faculty, are feeling the same, but for another of your brethren. 14And you are certainly saying, as the Cappadocians might say, ‘but Apostle, surely there cannot be two people with perfect bodies, by definition, one must be more perfect than the other?’ 15Unwrap your mind and fathom: when one has seen the perfect sunset, does that mean one can never see the perfect sunrise? 16Certainly not! 17And yet, both of these things are equally perfect! 18Even as holy Lust informs us that the beloved Callista’s possession of the perfect ass does not preclude another possessing a faultless posterior!15

Chapter 4

1The false ulterior culture teaches us, from a young age, that someone or something must be the greatest, the most laudatory. 2I say this is a false perception, the teachings of the false Gods of merit and progress, who live not in our immensity, but their base, noetic hole. 3For I inquisit of you this! 4Is one arm of the Starfish more Perfect than the others? 5Do four arms bow and genuflect towards the one? 6No! They are all five Perfect, because the Starfish is Perfect, and if the Starfish is Perfect, then by nature all parts of It16 must be as well.

7I tell you this as a message of joy! 8For just as the whole of believers is part of the Starfish, therefor must the whole of believers also be Perfect!

9And as the whole is Perfect, so are its five expressions.17 10And as part of our expression, we thereunto must all, each one, possess the prospect of achieving Perfection.

Chapter 5

1Let the fallen brethren of Cappadocia be anathema.18 2I condemn their false gods of progress, merit, selection, competition, and regret! 3Turn only to the truths of Peace, Love, Absolution, Lust, and Perfection. 4Be as an arm of the Starfish. 5A Perfect being amongst Perfect beings, and work together so that the whole of believers might shine forth the light of Perfection for all the world to see.

Footnotes

1. alt. opened

2. or fisting

3. Use of third here implies the church at Palmyra was in the throws of Absolution. This helps date the writing of this epistle to 67-72 A.D.

4. Some codices have can be already, which is the interpretation referenced in Star Signals 6:2v12

5. or nature

6. or undone

7. Possible origin of the Avertat, however predates its use in liturgy by 200 years.

8. 11 Sin. 5:17

9. tense is Present Literal; translates in some codices as I am amongst your questions

10. Tense used is the same Present Literal as 3:1

11. lit. λουτρό, or house of cleansing

12. lit. ρεύομαι, or retch

13. ref. Jerboam 3:17-18

14. Does not appear until later codices, first in the Cretean Codex of 377 A.D., may be transcriber's annotation erroneously included in later copies.

15. lit. posteri, or posters, used incorrectly here. Intent inferred.

16. lit. είναι, or It Is. Imperfect name of the Starfish in common use in the early Anatolian churches. The correct name is substituted here.

17. lit. φράσεις, or phrases. Only Stephanine reference to the Explicatio. If intentional, indicates author was in contact with the Poets of Alexandria, who are not otherwise attested by historians until 157 A.D.

18. Uncharacteristic reiteration of earlier message. Whole chapter does not appear in some codices. Abrupt tonal shift from Apostolic to Homiletic rhetoric implies it may have been added at a later time, to bring the epistle in line with later quinary structures.