Jay-Z

The maxim as apparel — a documented borrowing, and the conspiracy that grew on it.¹²

Documented connection

In the 2009 video for “Run This Town,” Jay-Z wears a Rocawear hooded sweatshirt bearing the phrase “Do What Thou Wilt” — Crowley’s central Thelemic maxim, the dictum of Liber AL vel Legis. The garment on film is the primary. A century after Cairo, the four-idiom through-line’s founding slogan surfaces as streetwear on a pop mogul.

Asserted intent — firewalled

The recurring thesis that Jay-Z and the music industry run a Crowleyan mind-control program on listeners is apocryphal internet and print synthesis with no documented basis. It belongs to its named claimants — Mark Dice (Illuminati in the Music Industry) and the Vigilant Citizen website — and is carried as their claim, never stated here. The honest content is a documented aesthetic borrowing of Crowley’s phrase against a secret-society thesis the record does not carry; the artist’s own silence on the slogan is itself the finding — borrowing without stated doctrine.

Role in the thesis

The reverberation at its latest and most commercial: Crowley’s slogan as a piece of clothing, worn without a word of explanation, and the conspiracy industry that reads a plot into the silence. The borrowing is real; the program is somebody else’s story.

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1. The music video for 'Run This Town' (Jay-Z ft. Rihanna & Kanye West, 2009) — Jay-Z wearing the Rocawear 'Do What Thou Wilt' hooded sweatshirt ↩︎

2. NPR (2009), treating the slogan as aesthetic/occult reference and downplaying secret-society readings ↩︎

Referenced by. Where this entry is cited in the reading — hover any to read it in place.

• A Face in the Crowd — “In the 2009 video for "Run This Town," Jay-Z wears a hooded sweatshirt reading "Do What Thou Wilt" — Crowley's founding maxim, a century out of Cairo, worn as streetwear.”