New 'Map Is Not the Territory' video series

I unfortunately cannot do a separate blog post on every item covered in Michelle Olley's recent newsletter, which you should read if you missed, but here is an offering from someone I have not written about before: A new YouTube video series, "The Map Is Not the Territory," launched by Dolly Rae Star.

These are described as "adventures in awareness" on the website, here is Michelle's description: "Here's a fun thing. Our pilgrim pal Dolly Rae Star has started a RAW-inspired YouTube channel of advice and exercises for the cosmically inclined. It's a charming - and helpful - shot of positivity."

The first video in the series, above, describes how to do a five-minute face stretching exercise. 

Dolly is on Twitter.  You can also check out her book, play stance. 

Eglantyne Books launches

One of the items mentioned in Michelle Olley's recent Mycellium newsletter was the launch of Eglantyne Books. 

Here is what Michelle wrote: "The Sirius Mystery author Robert Temple and his wife Olivia have a new publishing company, Eglantyne Books, specialising in ‘new books and reprints of rare material, in a variety of fields’. Expect to see masterpieces of World Literature, Secret History, Early Modern and Modern History, Original Reprints of English Civil War Pamphlets, Egyptology, Classical Studies, Short Story Anthologies, Poetry in Translation - and more!"

The Sirius Mystery of course is mentioned in Cosmic Trigger. I was curious that the new publishing company would be like, so I went to the website, where I found six titles listed so far, and they do look pretty interesting.

I live in Ohio, and one particular book caught my attention, Red-Headed Woman by Katharine Brush, which has a protagonist from Ohio. Here is part of the publisher's description: 

"Red-Headed Woman was a sensational best-seller, and it is believed that during the height of the Great Depression, the author earned more than a million dollars in royalties from it. It was made into the film Red-Headed Woman (1932) with Jean Harlow playing the role of the anti-heroine Lillian Andrews, who in the book is aged 19 to 21 during the two years, 1929- 1931 when the story is set. (Harlow was aged 21.) F. Scott Fitzgerald and Anita Loos both worked on the screenplay. The resulting film was considered so shocking that it was officially banned in the United Kingdom. Lillian has no heart whatever, she wants money, she wants things, she wants social status. From Ohio to the highest levels of Manhattan society, we follow her relentless trail of ascent, spellbound and unable to avert our eyes. It is the ultimate portrait of an entirely amoral gold-digger. She has such overwhelming sex appeal that no man can resist her, and all the women hate her. Brush writes with a direct style resembling that of Hemingway, never using an unnecessary word."

As Englantyne Books is a British publisher, it might be hard for Americans to find some titles on site such as Amazon. I have had good luck ordering British books from Book Depository, which provides free delivery worldwide. 

An eglantyne, by the way, is an English rose. 

Reminder

 

RAW Semantics comments on Twitter, "WARNING: Directing your anger at *group* categories (includes 'lefties', 'Tories', 'liberals', 'Dems', 'Republicans' etc.) may result in permanent brain damage & likely doesn't improve your IQ."

Hakim Bey has died

Peter Lamborn Wilson (photo from anarchistnews.org)

Peter Lamborn Wilson, who wrote under the pen name of Hakim Bey, has died, according to this report and also reports that I have seen on Twitter the last couple of days. As the Wikipedia bio notes, he was "primarily known for his concept of Temporary Autonomous Zones, short-lived spaces which elude formal structures of control."

Robert Anton Wilson reviewed his book TAZ: The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism for his Trajectories newsletter, and the review is reprinted in RAW's Chaos and Beyond: The Best of Trajectories. 

RAW was particularly impressed with the long essay "The Temporary Autonomous Zone," which makes up the last third of the book, writing, "I regard this long essay, frankly, as the most important contribution to anarchist and/or libertarian thinking since the heyday of Emma Goldman and Benjamin R. Tucker." 

On Twitter, Prop Anon wrote, "Just learned that Peter Lamborn Wilson died a couple of days ago. I was really into his work until I saw all his essays supporting pedophilia. I interviewed him (which I have yet to release) and went off the record to ask him about his NAMBLA support. He didn't wanna talk about it."

New Hilaritas podcast on Eight Circuit Model

The Hilaritas Press podcast series continued Monday with a release might be  relevant to our long-running Prometheus Rising discussion group: For the ninth episode, Mike Gathers interviews Antero Alli, who has written and taught about the Eight Circuit Model.

Here's the show description: "In this episode, we chat with underground film maker, professional astrologer, paratheater ritualist, teacher, writer, forest walker, dreamer and no form engineer Antero Alli on Chapel Perilous, paratheater, and the Eight Circuit model."

As usual, the episode website has useful links for more information. 

The June episode of the podcast -- look for it June 23 -- will feature Jesse Walker. 

Prometheus Rising exercise and discussion group, episode 82, Chapter 15

By Apuleius Charlton
Special guest blogger 

When I was younger and thus different than I am now (and thus beknighted and ignorant according to my current self) I vowed and swore and declared that I would not purposefully manipulate my daughter’s religious viewpoints. I take religion/spirituality/the lack thereof rather seriously and at the time compared raising a child in a religious ideology as a spiritual violation of autonomy. It wasn’t until recently I realized how gravely I had forsook my noble vow and broke my promise time and again. My daughter was playing with a wand. 

Indeed, as I looked over it I had manipulated, corralled and exposed my daughter to everything that I love, my gods, my universe and magic from the youngest age. When she was an infant I surrounded her with fairies and read her The 1001 Nights. I conducted Enochian investigations in the room across from her where she’d come and visit as a toddler. When she was older I took her for long walks telling her stories about The Great God Pan and grey-eyed Athene. I filled her head with ideas about magic and hinted at possibilities outside the realm of the everyday. We made a game/exercise of her grabbing statues or items off my various altars and her asking what they were, as if learning a catechism. I immersed her in my beliefs and she is well on the way to making them her own and eventually something new. 

I can’t say that I regret reworking the terms of my vow- after all, I never blatantly told her what to believe and now she is old enough to debate and consider ideas I bring up on her own. I’m pleased by what she is and might be. Did he smile his work to see?

Yesterday, at a rare family gathering one of my relatives remarked that my daughter acted “exactly” like me and was my “mini-Me.” I could only respond “that’s why I am so fond of her, I like things that resemble myself.” Did he who made the Lamb make thee? 

I have lived most of my adult life in spaces that were consciously designed to suffuse me in my own bullshit. Consequently, I am nigh-neurotic in my preference for meeting with others in my own spaces. It is the same at school; I will always choose to stay in my room and insist that I teach in my room during classes outside the regular day. 

Reading the material in this chapter is imminently familiar as I know it by rote, it is one of the things I digested easily when first reading Wilson, and it made me feel awfully smug about being on the right track as an adolescent. (He even refers to Blake as "The Poet," which tremendously warms the cockles of my heart.) In many ways it is the satisfaction of what one must feel when they hear the letter of their version of Natural Law. I guess I’m still awfully smug, although I am aware that I have become somewhat addicted to my exteriorized world to the point where being in another’s is decently uncomfortable after a short span of time. 

I intend to do the exercises concerning mapping others on the four terrestrial circuits. I believe this is one I have done before and I hope I can find my notes as it would be interesting to see how my impressions have changed. While not listed as an exercise, I will give a brief example by notationally dissecting myself: 

1st Circuit: Strongly oral characteristics with a deep aversion to adversity or pain

2nd Circuit: Primary “I’m not okay, you’re not okay” script coupled with “I’m okay, you’re not okay” paranoiac-leaning subscript 

3rd Circuit: Deeply devoted to their own sense of logic and semantics, very dismissive of contradictory “logics”

4th Circuit: Strong currents of moralism and “ethics” obsession coupled with recalcitrant attitude toward many societal structures and norms

:( With that going for me, I should be able to write a pretty good fundamentalist Christian critique. All in good fun, one hopes!  

Michelle Olley's big news roundup

 

Michelle Olley (the Bobby Campbell remix)

I expect news when I get the Mycellium Newsletter, but the May issue just issued by Michelle Olley is exceptional; it has a ton of events in Britain for Discordians to consider attending, and new products that everyone around the world can access. Much is going on in Liverpool, in London and in Brighton and many projects and new releases are available, so scroll down for all the news. Note that the Liverpool event is Monday, so you need to scramble if you didn't get the memo earlier. Probably a good idea to sign up for the newsletter. Daisy Campbell, by the way, is busy writing something, but Michelle isn't ready to reveal anything yet; "more on this when we get it," she says. 

Some of these announcements deserve a separate blog entry -- well, maybe all of them do, but I will at least cover some in the next couple of days. 

Podcast tips from Joseph Matheny

 From Joseph Matheny on Twitter: "This podcast has quickly become my favorite "Conspiracy" related show. The hosts are amusing and engaging, they research their material and they, most importantly, keep their sense of humor front and center." Here are the episodes for The Nonsense Bazaar. 

Joseph also likes the Fear is the Mind Killer podcast, and the latest episode features the Nonsense Bazaar hosts. 

Your can also read Matheny's Substack newsletter. 

RAW on reality tunnels and the eight circuits

Martin Wagner announces yet another rediscovery, a Robert Anton Wilson piece called "How to Tell Your Friends From the Apes," published in 1985 in Magical Blend. Much of it covers material also covered in Prometheus Rising.

Excerpt:

"It appears that the simple Aristotelian idea that we are either conscious or unconscious (asleep or awake is inadequate. We have seen a whole spectrum of consciousness; it seems clear that each level of consciousness opens many possibilities for reality-tunnels, and that consciousness has evolved, and it is still evolving; we absolutely cannot predict what we might become and what we might know after the next evolutionary leap. In particular, the seemingly net intractable problems of life on this planet—such as injustice, exploitation, crime and, above all, war—seem to be maintained by rigid reality-tunnels which prevent further learning or which “hypnotize” us so that we do not see who were or what we are doing. But such mechanical stupidity or maya, or “sleep-walking” is, in this perspective, an early evolutionary state out of which we are, as individuals and as a species, slowly growing toward higher and higher levels of awareness."

Lots of other material at Robert Anton Fans Germania, both in German and English. 

Thursday links

Facebook deletes huge numbers of posts that don't violate its guidelines. 

Adam Gorightly on the UFO hearing in Congress.  If you missed it, see my review of Adam's excellent UFO book, his most recent title. And here is a report on the hearings. 

@amoebadesign reviews Who Killed the KLF? 

Robert Anton Wilson on "capitalized nouns and other abstractions."

Edison Denisov, Pink Floyd fan. 

 

A May 23 event in Chicago: "Illuminated Brew Works and Weird Studies join forces for the launch of the Weird Studies black IPA!" Ticket information and more info here. 

Weird Studies is a podcast ("A filmmaker and a professor talk art and philosophy at the limits of the thinkable") and there are 122 episodes so far; many of the topics seem likely to interest a RAW fan. Browse available episodes here. 

The brainwaves artist

In his later life, Robert Anton Wilson often tried and wrote about brain machines. Brian Dean at RAW Semantics, who has tried brain machines and written about them, recommends following the Twitter account of Luciana Haill, @BrainAnalyser, a United Kingdom resident who says in her Twitter bio, "artist & lecturer expressing sleep, time & nostalgia in artworks made by recording brainwaves, explored in mixed realities (and sometimes with dreamachines."

The official website says, "Fine artist Luciana Haill has persevered with interaction from brainwave mapping into her Art since the early 1990s. Her work intersects mixed realities, neuroscience, telematics and the unconscious to make mental processes visible (in particular – lucid dreams, meditation and nostalgia)."

Prometheus Rising exercise and discussion group, episode 81, Chapter 15

 A ticket for a RAW event. 

By Eric Wagner
Special guest blogger 

This chapter opens with a quote from Finnegans Wake: “It* is not just a riot of blots and blurs and dislocated jottings linked by spurts of speed…it only looks as like it as damn it.” Bob adds this note: “* Presumably the input (software) or the brain (hardware). Or both (pg. 215).” Part of me says, no, Joyce would likely not use this vocabulary. On the other hand, Joyce might like the way Bob uses the material from Finnegans Wake.  Part of me enters the orthodox Joycean headspace and pooh-pooh Bob’s creative use of Joyce material. Another part of me recalls that a lot of contemporary Joyce criticism echoes ideas that Bob published before anyone else. Of course, orthodox Joyceans rarely give Bob any credit.

Someone said of Alexander Pope’s Homer translations, “It’s a very pretty poem, Mr. Pope, but you must not call it Homer.” (Ezra Pound shorted this to “Very pretty, not Homer.”) Rereading Masks of the Illuminati over the past forty years, I have sometimes thought of this when considering Wilson’s treatment of figures like Joyce and Pound and their works. The first time I read Masks in 1982 I knew very little about Joyce and Pound and had never read either of them. Then my Wilson obsession led me to read Pound and Joyce (and develop Joyce and Pound obsessions as well), and rereading Masks I sometimes found myself thinking, “Very pretty, not Joyce” and/or “Very pretty, not Pound.” Then I lived a bit more as a Cosmic Schmuck, and I read a lot more, and then rereading Masks I found myself thinking, “Well, maybe. These seem like valid insights into these two mysterious men and their works.”

 (It looks like the fellow in the picture on page 216 found a quarter or two.)

On pages 219-220 Bob says, “Assuming you are reading this in your own home, look around the room. Note that everything in your field of vision – furniture, paintings or posters on the walls, stereo set or absence of same, rugs, TV or not TV[1], etc. – is, in a sense, your creation or co-creation.” I find myself reading this in a community college classroom surrounded my computer, books, papers, and the James Joyce tote I got at the 2011 North American James Joyce Conference. I also have a 1988 ticket designed by Steve and Vicky Snow to a Robert Anton Wilson talk which I use as a bookmark.

[1] That “is” the question.