Bobby Campbell has announced plans for Maybe Day 2025. There's a new approach, an emphasis on actual events with face to face interactions, although online stuff is still cool, too. Here's Bobby:
"MAYBE DAY 2025 IS COMING!
"But this time w/ a twist :)))
"MORE INFO HERE: https://maybeday.net."
Follow the link; the festival, below, is what Bobby is hosting. Other folks are encouraged to set up events, too.
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An equipment case for "Eric Clapton group" in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Many of Clapton's band members at one time were based in Tulsa. Of course, I liked the number.
RAW fans, can you name the pop/rock star who advised his fans, "Find out all you can about Buckminster Fuller."
That would be Leon Russell. I am in Tulsa this week, visiting relatives, so I visited the restored Church Studio that Russell owned.
Russell is not well remembered now, but he had a huge career, as this Wikipedia article explains.
I am currently in Tulsa visiting my mother, and yesterday I went to a local art museum, Philbrook, formerly a 1920s period mansion owned by a rich oilman, converted into a museum. The current main exhibit is "SAMURAI: Armor from the Collection of Ann and Gabriel Barbier-Mueller," and the exhibition of samurai armor and weapons includes the time period of Robert Shea's first two "solo" novels, the Shike books.
If you haven't read them, the Shike novels, Shike: Time of the Dragons and Shike: Last of the Zinja, are set in medieval Japan and cover fictionalized versions of two exciting events: A famous Japanese civil war and the Mongol invasion of Japan. As the Wikipedia article explains, secret societies also are part of the plot: "Shike posits a clan of grey-clad warrior monks, the "Zinja", which, it is stated by Abbot Taitaro, is related to several other secret societies throughout history, including specifically the White Lotus Society in China, the Hashishim (assassins) in the Middle East, and the Knights Templar in Europe, among others. Through an aside in All Things Are Lights, the Zinja are therefore linked, however tenuously, to Shea's other writings on secret societies, most notably his work with Robert Anton Wilson in The Illuminatus! Trilogy."
It was cool to see an exhibit that helped bring the Shike books to life.
A naginata, a Japanese pole weapon, and a sword.
Via Nick Helweg-Larsen, I learned that a Portuguese language edition of Illuminatus! has been published in Brazil. Here is the website for the project. It is a limited edition, funded via a crowdsourcing campaign. The site does not accept international orders, but a direct sale may be arranged via the email address contato@editorafnord.com.br. (Shipping is likely to be expensive, blame the Brazilian government, not the publishers). Payment can be accepted via via Wise transfer or PayPal.
Information from the website, via Google Translate:
LIMITED EDITION
Only 1023 copies of this edition were printed.
There are only 323 copies left, which are being made available to the general public.
We will not be reprinting in the future.
Funded on 09/13/24 with 101% of the goal, our campaign on Catarse achieved the publication of the Illuminatus! Trilogy, the masterpiece written by Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea, for the first time in Brazil in a limited, special and unique edition.
The Illuminatus! Trilogy is a revolutionary literary work written by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson. Conceived during the 60s and published in the 70s, it was a pioneer in exploring themes such as conspiracy, secret societies and government manipulation, in a chaotic odyssey full of philosophy, occultism, satire and counterculture. The trilogy was a major milestone in experimental literature for challenging traditional narrative conventions, abusing techniques such as non-linearity, jumping between places, dates and characters without warning, and metafiction, such as moments in which the characters question whether they are just characters in a book.
Its irreverent nature and unique narrative style made it a cult work, considered by many to be one of the most important works of the last century. The idea of "controlled chaos" permeates the work, challenging conventional notions of order and meaning. Influenced by the flourishing of Discordianism, a movement described by its followers as a religion disguised as a joke disguised as a religion, the trilogy addresses complex and sensitive topics without taking them too seriously, but with unparalleled competence. It is up to the reader to take responsibility for their own analysis of the data presented, forming their own view without the influence of chewed-up interpretations.
Although it was initially published as a trilogy, Illuminatus! was written as a single book, later divided by the publishers. The idea was to publish a small part of the text to test the public's reception, which embraced the book and made it an absolute success, leading to the publication of the other two volumes.
I should have mentioned this earlier, but it looks interesting: VOID MACHINES: The Paper Shrines of J. Christian Greer "showcases over seventy-five 'paper shrines,' psychedelic collages created by J. Christian Greer. Printed in full color, this oversized collection provides a whirlwind look at Greer's sublime visions of divine friendship, abject terror, and erotic delight. Offering a panorama of sacred forces, the paper shrines showcased in this book were created with materials taken from manga (including Katsuhiro Otomo’s Akira, Shigeru Mizuki’s Kitaro, and Yoshiyuki Sadamoto’s Neon Genesis Evangelion, etc.); comics (Jack Kirby’s Silver Surfer, Jeff Smith's Bone, etc.), mass-market publications on Persian rugs, precious gems, medieval manuscripts."
More here, see the reviews.
Trinity College Library, Dublin. Photo by Zach Plank on Unsplash
Interesting, in the light of Ireland being a literary hotbed:
"Ireland’s population are the most educated in the world — with 52.4% (1.8million) of the population aged between 25-64 having a bachelor’s degree or higher.
"While, of course, the whole numbers of people with bachelors degrees may be higher in countries with a higher number of people, percentage wise Ireland is the most educated; beating out countries such as Switzerland (46%), Singapore (45%), Belgium (44.1%) and the UK (43.6%) who round out the top five."
Source. Article via this blog post.
Robert Anton Wilson was deeply skeptical of the official account of World War II, and for example in this interview by Lewis Shiner, he said, "I'd also like to write a book about Pearl Harbor. The revisionist historians have been thoroughly slandered and are mostly out of print. I wouldn't be adding much original; I think everything worth saying has been said by Charles Beard and Harry Elmer Barnes and James J. Martin and a few others. But their books are out of print or hard to find. My book would be just one more effort against what Barnes called 'the historical blackout.' One more effort to put the facts on record." (Of course, the book was never written but this Jeff Riggenbach book, which I read years ago, has a similar intent).
RAW would perhaps be interested in Thaddeus Russell, a historian who has made World War II revisionism something of a specialty. Russell has a new Substack newsletter, with pieces such as "Even Hitler Wasn't Hitler" and "The Fate of the Free World Depends Upon You Liking Winston Churchill." All of the pieces so far have been previews -- you have to pay a few dollars to read the whole thing -- but enough is posted for free, you can get the idea.
Here is Jesse Walker's 2011 interview with Russell.
Here is a brief biography. He graduated from Antioch College, the university associated with Simon Moon in Illuminatus! Above is the image for one of his books, A Renegade History of the United States.
As I wrote recently, I recently read the 10th anniversary edition of John Higgs' The KLF: Chaos, Magic and the Band Who Burned a Million Pounds. I guess it counts as a re-read, although the edition I read has thousands of words of footnotes, as John comments on the book in hindsight.
The footnotes make an unusual book even more unusual. As I read it, I noticed some synchronicities with my own life -- for example, Reykjavik, Iceland, figures in the book as a place where the band Echo and the Bunnymen played a concert, and the book is largely about Illuminatus! I recently worked on an Illuminatus-related project with Spookah, who lives in Reykjavik.
And then I came across John's footnote on page 78: "One of the consequences of writing this book is that I am regularly contacted by people who have read it and then been plagued by a storm of synchronicities of their own." This gave me the odd feeling that John was talking to me, as in the incident (mentioned in the book) when RAW is watching "Harvey" on TV and a character suddenly talks to "Mr. Wilson."
I wrote to Spookah to ask if he is an Echo and the Bunnyman fan (I was going to freak out if he said, "Yes, it's my favorite band. Why?"). Spookah has read the book twice, too, and his reply was interessting:
Yes, I have indeed read the book, twice now. The second time around was a couple of years ago, as I grabbed a copy of the tenth anniversary edition signed by John Higgs.
I like his footnotes, I find it interesting to see him thinking out loud, reflecting on his own writing.
Actually, this book originally came to me in what I see as a pretty synchronistic way. I was at the time backpacking around the planet, and had been reading Illuminatus! for the first time while in Hawaii and New Zealand. Then I arrived in Bali, and found a copy of John's book in a second hand bookstore. I picked it up because, browsing it, I saw that RAW was often coming up in it.
John's book really provided me with a most welcome context for Illuminatus, and these two together got me started on all things RAW and Discordianism.
I think John Higgs does an excellent job at presenting RAW's ideas in a fun and clear way to people who might not be familiar with it.
I don't know if I would call myself a 'fan' of Echo & the Bunnymen, but I certainly think they were one the best British rock bands of the 80s, and albums such as Heaven Up Here or Ocean Rain are some of my favorites of that decade. Crocodiles and Porcupine are very good as well.
(the photograph on the cover art of Porcupine is at a waterfall in Iceland that is now amongst the most visited places in the country, it's called Gullfoss)
John Higgs remarks,
Most of the time when people tell me of their synchronicities, they lose something in the telling. What they find meaningfull is pretty personal and hence their stories often sound more like coincidences than anything more. But there is an exception to that - which is the stories that involve rabbits. They often sound far weirder. I think I included in those footnotes the story of a woman who was reading the stuff in the book about Pookahs while her daughter played in the garden - only to come inside and tell her mum she had been playing with a giant invisible rabbit. That freaked her out!
Also, John promises his new book will be announced soon.
Joseph Matheny has a new piece out, "Knives Float on Water," It's largely about "just doing the art you want to do, however you wish. Your art. Your way." It's a really interesting essay, prompted by Matheny's decision to self-produce a movie. I had no idea Joseph had done a limited-edition book that he plans to never reissue.
There are also other interesting bits in his latest Substack newsletter, including about AI and how we should support each other's ventures.
Here's what I read last month. Only three titles, but the Roman history book was very long, so I did do as much reading as usual in May, it just doesn't look like it:
The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald. I was really pleased to read this again after several decades, see my comments.
The New Roman Empire: A History of Byzantium, Anthony Kaldellis. excellent history book, one of the best I've read in awhile. Here is Kaldellis on the Crusades.
Every Tom, Dick & Harry, Elinor Lipman. I always enjoy her romantic comedies, this is her latest.
Posted on Facebook, here is what Mark K. Brown last month. Notice that he read Eric Wagner's book twice, a pretty good recommendation! Also, the Greg Bear really impressed me when I read it years ago:
Blood Music by Greg Bear 5/13
Straight Outta Dublin: James Joyce and Robert Anton Wilson by Eric Wagner (x2) 5/13
This is Your Brain on Music by Daniel J. Levitin 5/17
A Messiah at the End of Time by Michael Moorcock 5/19
Love and Death in the American Novel by Leslie Fiedler 5/22
The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan 5/29
I just finished reading the 10th anniversary edition of John Higgs' The KLF: Chaos, Magic and the Band Who Burned a Million Pounds. This is the edition that has thousands of additional words of footnotes. So, confusingly, I don't know if this counts as reading it or re-reading it, a dilemma appropriate to such an oddball book, which purports to be a band biography but which seems to really be a book about Robert Anton Wilson, Illuminatus! and the effect the book had on the KLF. This may be my favorite Higgs book. I will likely do more than one blog post on the book.
This is a passage which struck me (boldface is mine), page 258:
The corporate music industry was perhaps no place for someone like Drummond, but it did allow him to meet Jimmy Cauty. Drummond and Cauty understood each other, even if nobody else understood them. Cauty was more deeply involved in the actual creation of music than Drummond was. He was also someone you could rely on to get things done. The pairing was a positive feedback loop. With each justifying the other, they would go further together than they would apart. Sometimes all you need is for someone to see what you are planning and not look bemused.
Compare that with what Robert Shea wrote (in a mailing comment to Robert Anton Wilson in his zine in The Golden APA on what happened when he and Robert Anton Wilson met at Playboy magazine:)
I was stunned by your comment [to] Kevin, wherein you say you brooded over why you couldn’t finish a long book and then, collaborating with me, finished one. You see, I’ve been going around telling people that I never completed a book project before writing Illuminatus! and it was my collaboration with you, and your example of joyful productivity that taught me how to write and finish novels. I never realized that Illuminatus! was a breakthrough book for both of us. I guess I sort of assumed that you had never before written a book simply because you hadn’t gotten around to it, whereas I, who had started a number of novels and never finished any, had a “problem.”
Of course, Illuminatus! helped launch two literary careers; almost every Wilson fiction book reads like the narrative in Illuminatus!, and every Wilson nonfiction book resembles the appendices. And the publication of Illuminatus! also helped Shea launch his novel-writing career.
Incidentally, in his book, John often attributes Illuminatus! simply to Robert Anton Wilson, rather than Wilson and Shea. There's a similar imbalance to the treatment of Drummond and Cauty; I learned a lot about Drummond reading the book, but there's little about Cauty.
Barry Longyear (Creative Commons photo, source).
Science fiction writer Barry Longyear has died. He was 82.
Longyear was best known for his 1979 novella "Enemy Mine," which won both the Hugo and Nebula awards and which was made into a movie. He won the Prometheus Award in 2021 for The War Whisperer Book Five: The Hook.
The main idea behind The Hook is that a libertarian society can protect itself through targeted assassination rather than full scale war, an idea possible inspired by Hassan-i-Sabbah and the Assassins in Illuminatus! It's not clear whether Longyear got the idea from there or from another source, see this post.
1. My last post about Pool of Life, the upcoming Liverpool documentary by the Scottish filmmaker Grant McPhee covering the Ken Campbell area, the wave of bands after the Beatles, etc., ended on a bit of a down note, as I quoted the guy writing for the Liverpool Post, ""Sadly, if you want to see Pool of Life, you may have to wait."
But I contacted Mr. McPhee, and he gave me a more upbeat report: "No news at the moment but there may be something more positive in the near future. Thanks for all your support with it, much appreciated. [Pool of Life] needs a sound mix and colour grade. The other two films in the trilogy are nearly finished, and there's going to be an accompanying oral-history book to go into some of the topics in far greater detail." (Note that the project has now grown into a trilogy, as the article referenced in the previous post explains).
2. I am late in noting this, but the British Film Institute published a list of 35 great British horror movies, and Grant's Far from the Apple Tree made the list.
Yesterday, covering Bobby Campbell's latest Substack newsletter, I highlighted the fact that the Kickstarter for Tales of Illuminatus! No. 2 ended today. I also managed to get the cover artist wrong for the new alternate cover for the first issue, so please note that and I apologize to Leosaysays. I had a long day away from the computer Friday, out and about with my sister visiting from Oklahoma, and I was away from the computer, so I'm sorry I didn't fix that earlier.
Update an onward, I hope.
Bobby also had something else interesting I wanted to call attention to:
"I’ve been working on a lot of the big picture, heavy lifting, world building for TOI lately, and entirely delighted with the way the dots are connecting. Super psyched to share my discoveries, but also taking to heart the feedback from issue #1, which suggested folks would rather just enjoy the comic as a finished piece, rather than a constant drip of serialization.
"I’ve got two weeks of teaching left and then we’re off to the races!"
Thinking about it, I think that's how I feel, too, about the "constant drip of serialization"; I want the experience of holding the new comic book in my hands and experiencing it as largely new.
That apparently doesn't preclude Bobby posting bits to show us what's in the works; above is a "quick sneak peak to hold you over for a spell" from Todd Purse's work for the second issue.
Lots of news from Bobby Campbell in the latest Tales of Illuminatus newsletter, including a reminder that the Kickstarter drive for issue No. 2 ends Saturday. Here's Bobby:
"Speaking of our Kickstarter Campaign! We are in the final few days of our pre-order campaign, which ends this upcoming Saturday! We are just short of hitting 200% of our funding goal. Not a bad showing for our scrappy indie production :)))
"We will indeed be accepting late pledges after the campaign ends, right up until we need final numbers to go to press, but the price will jump up a bit.
"So if you want to lock in those pre-order prices, order now!"
Above is Leosaysays's alternate cover for the first issue. This is a correction, see the comments from Bobby and Spookah. Sorry about that!
"Folks ordering Tales of Illuminatus! #1 from our current KS campaign for issue #2 will receive this wonderfully wild new edition :)))," Bobby says.
Karl Hess, center, at the Future of Freedom conference in 1981. Timothy Leary is on the left; I don't know who the person is on the right. Creative Commons photo via Wikipedia, information here. UPDATE: The other guy is Manny Klausner, a former Reason editor who died this year, see this obit.]
A followup to my recent post on Jesse Walker's article about Karl Hess and John McClaughry: Jesse sent me a link to a PDF of a libertarian newsletter, the Summer 1981 issue of the Libertas Review, and it has a passage I thought some of you might be interested in, from an article about a speech by Karl Hess:
After the complimenting the audience many times for their good grasp of libertarian principles, he stressed that they be put into action to form a libertarian community. "Everybody can tell you about liberty," he exclaimed, "now we need a place where we can see the damn thing." In this context, he points out, "A statement of principle should simply be an explanation of the way you live your life."
When asked afterward during the question and answer period if there were any authors that influenced or described his position, he mentioned Robert Anton Wilson. Since he had quoted novelist/philosopher Ayn Rand, saying that reason is the best tool an individual can have, many in the audience were surprised when he quoted Wilson saying, "There is no truth and everything is permissible!" He went on to say that, "Even though there is no truth and everything is permissible, you still must, yourself, say things that you feel to be true, and you must not do things that you feel to be impermissable, and there is no power on earth except the power of your own volition that will lead you in these directions."
Echo and the Bunnymen (photo via band's account on X.com)
Wondering what's happened to Pool of Life, the Grant McPhee documentary, mentioned previously, that documents the creative scene in Liverpool in the 1970s, including Ken Campbell's Illuminatus! play and a wave of various bands, such as Echo and the Bunnymen and The Teardrop Explodes?
There's an update at The Post (of Liverpool), and there's good news and bad news, according to the piece by Laurence Thompson.
The good news: There's a " '95% done' rough cut of Pool of Life, and it already lives up to his previous works — and then some." (The "current plan" is that Pool of Life will be the first of a trilogy of films).
The bad news? "Sadly, if you want to see Pool of Life, you may have to wait. 'Funding has collapsed in the last two years,' McPhee tells me, describing this as an industry-wide phenomenon. If, say, the Liverpool Film Office are looking for something non-crime-related to invest in, great — if not, much of this unique and fascinating material will remain untold, despite the increasing surfeit of excellent memoirs like Simpson’s. And that really wouldn’t be good for the city."
Bing AI image.
The internet is a great way to find the others -- I pretty much know all of the people heavily involved in RAW fandom -- but what about before the net showed up?
My friend Tracy Harms told me that sometime in the 1980s, a libertarian from the East Coast moved to Boulder, Colorado, didn't know anybody and wanted to meet some local people. So he put up "Who Is John Galt?" posters giving a time and place, and it worked. Various local libertarians showed up.
This made me wonder where a "Who is Hagbard Celine?" poster would successfully attract attention. Tracy suggested maybe a science fiction convention. Maybe also a large gathering of libertarians? Or a festival featuring magick?
Finnegans Wake podcasts featuring PQ.
The discovery of life on another planet may not be holding up. Since I made a big deal of the original alleged discovery, I am sharing the follow up.
Jesse Walker on "My Dinner with David Horowitz."
"San Francisco, June 7: Celebrate the cyberculture with Mondo 2000's RU Sirius" and other celebrity guests.
Audio essay on "Blade Runner" from David Thomson. Hat tip, Eric Wagner.
Image from Bing.
I often wonder what Robert Anton Wilson would think about modern developments. In particular, I wish I could ask him, or read his observations, about how ubiquitous the use of AI is becoming, so that for example ordinary people can make images such as the one I made above. Would RAW regard this as he "intelligence increase" part of SMI2LE?
A couple of recent AI stories that caught my eye: If you follow the news, you may have heard about the "summer reading" newspaper insert, which ran in a Chicago newspaper, that had a mostly fictional list of books that were about to come out.
A friend of mine has a son to who works for Eliezer Yudkowski, who has warned about the dangers of AI. Yudkowski and Nate Soares have a new book coming out in September, If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies, which warns about the (alleged) danger, and which is aimed at people like me who aren't experts in the subject. I do plan to read it and to read discussion about the book when it comes out.
Here is the book's thesis:
If any company or group, anywhere on the planet, builds an artificial superintelligence using anything remotely like current techniques, based on anything remotely like the present understanding of AI, then everyone, everywhere on Earth, will die.
We do not mean that as hyperbole. We are not exaggerating for effect. We think that is the most direct extrapolation from the knowledge, evidence, and institutional conduct around artificial intelligence today. In this book, we lay out our case, in the hope of rallying enough key decision-makers and regular people to take AI seriously. The default outcome is lethal, but the situation is not hopeless; machine superintelligence doesn't exist yet, and its creation can yet be prevented.
The authors are asking for people to preorder it to raise the visibility of the book and its issue: "I ask that you preorder nowish instead of waiting, because it affects how many books Hachette prints in their first run; which in turn affects how many books get put through the distributor pipeline; which affects how many books are later sold. It also helps hugely in getting on the bestseller lists if the book is widely preordered; all the preorders count as first-week sales."
Over at Jechidah, the second episode of the Testament online reading group has posted, with a link to the online version of the comic book. The first episode and the first issue of the comic book is still available, if you need to get caught up. The second issue is "Sodom and Gomorrah," and I'll be checking it out this weekend.
Jesse Walker, speaking at a panel discussion about employee ownership (Facebook photo)
I finally got around to reading Jesse Walker's article "The Anarchist and the Republican: How John McClaughry and Karl Hess fought to decentralize power—one from inside the system, one ever further from it." (Karl Hess in fact was both an anarchist AND a Republican in his lifetime, while McClaughry was a Republican with anarchist principles).
Both men had a whiff of Discordianism about them. Here's a bit about Hess' early days:
"Hess' media career began in 1938, when the 15-year-old son of a divorced D.C. switchboard operator decided he'd had enough of classrooms. So he registered at every high school in town and then told each one he was transferring. Having trapped the truancy officers in a bureaucratic strange loop, he went to work for a radio station and a series of local newspapers."
A bit about McClaughry:
"He amused himself by writing politicians absurdist crank letters under assumed names. He had a hobby of hopping freight trains, a pastime that acquired a Coen brothers quality the day a brakeman joined him in the caboose; McClaughry expected to be kicked off, but the fellow instead insisted they sing old minstrel songs together. He built a cabin in the Vermont woods with no plumbing or electricity, then had a more comfortable home erected on the property; in 1967 he became town moderator of Kirby, and he still chairs his community's annual meetings today."
It's a fairly long article, but if you read the whole thing, it may be the most interesting piece you read today.
YouTube video: "Subversion for Fun and Profit: An Evening with Karl Hess and Robert Anton Wilson."
Illustration for 1878 edition of The Scarlet Letter.
Finnegans Wake Reading Groups Global Database
Oz Fritz reads The Scarlet Letter.
Banning lab-grown meat is stupid
My Parents Expected to Be Retired. Instead, They Are Raising My Sister’s Kids.
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A couple of days ago, when the news emerged that former President Joe Biden has prostate cancer that has spread to his bones and is therefore uncurable, you may also have noticed the news that Dilbert cartoon creator Scott Adams has the same cancer.
Adams' case is apparently more advanced, and he said in his podcast that the pain was constant and intolerable and that he expects to live for only a few months (see this New York Times story for more).
Adams of course is a "cancelled nonperson" whose comic strip was dropped a couple of years ago after he made racist remarks. He also has political beliefs that I don't care for.
But I still like his Dilbert comics, which Adams has continued to produce (they can be accessed by paying $3 a month for subscription on X.com). So in still reading the comics, I guess I'm treating Adams roughly the same way that Robert Anton Wilson treated Ezra Pound.
A couple of Adams' comics from this year are above. I haven't gotten permission to reprint them -- I don't know how I would do that, I don't see how Adams would have the ability to respond to an inquiry, particularly now -- but I hope it's understood that I'm drawing attention to his paid subscription offering.
A document that underpins much of the new book, Straight Outta Dublin, has become available.
Eric Wagner's master's thesis, "The influence of Finnegans Wake on Robert Anton Wilson's Masks of the Illuminati," written to help Eric obtain his master's degree in English Composition from the University of California at San Bernardino, is now available online. That 2004 thesis is the basis for the first part of the new book.
One of my favorite novels by Robert Shea is All Things Are Lights, set mostly in medieval France. The hero of the book, a troubadour and knight named Roland, is dragged against his will into two bloody crusades: The attack on the Cathars in southern France, and King Louis' Seventh Crusade, an attack on Egypt. Those two wars, and Roland's complicated love life, are the novel's main plot.
I have been reading The New Roman Empire: A History of Byzantium by Anthony Kaldellis, an American history professor who has become the leading modern scholar of Byzantine history. It's the first long, comprehensive history of the Eastern Roman empire from beginning to end issued in many years. I recently finished the chapter that deals with the Fourth Crusade, i.e. the unprovoked capture and sacking of Constantinople in 1204. Aside from the killings and rapes that accompanied the capture of the city, Kaldellis writes that "Whole chapters of ancient history, art and literature were erased in mere hours," as the city was looted and large sections of it were burned down.
Kaldellis shows the full horror of the attack but also puts it in the context of the crusading movement: After explaining why the attack on Constantinople was an unjustifiable crime, Kaldellis also writes about "the moral rottenness of crusading in general, which not only channeled hatred against perceived enemies of the faith but generated, armed and funded it .... Crusading may have been experienced by many as a pious pilgrimage for the expiation of sin, but it had quickly become a means by which to justify and drum up war against any opponent upon whom a crusade's leaders had set their sights, even for outright wars of conquest and against other Christians."
The Jechidah blog, where Bobby Campbell is posting entries for the Testament comic book series by Douglas Rushkoff and Liam Sharp, will have the second entry of the reading group up on May 22.
I note this in case anybody wants to be caught up as the reading group continues, although if you get a bit behind, it's no big deal. The first blog entry will remain up, and the link to the first issue online will persist, even as a link to the online version of the second comic book becomes live.
Aside from the interest of the comic book itself, I am learning about comic books from Bobby's discussion of the coloring and other issues.
Hilaritas Press has just announced it will republish an early Robert Anton Wilson work, Playboy's Book of Forbidden Words. Here is the official word from Rasa:
"Hilaritas Press will be republishing Playboy's Book of Forbidden Words edited by Robert Anton Wilson. I started on the reformatting two days ago. It's a huge job, but I'm enjoying it immensely. It's time consuming as there's a lot of formatting involved, but since I only previously read a handful of definitions, as I'm reading, I am blown away by the work that was put into this. As usual, I have to read very carefully to make sure it's all correct. We'll have proofreaders check my work when I'm done. No idea of when this will be finished, but I think this will be a very popular offering.
"RAW famously wrote that he was pissed off that the Playboy editors cut out a lot from what he originally submitted, but nonetheless, it's an amazing book, filled with some 700 words and phrases and a ton of obscure references, quotes and RAW's distinct sense of humor. Here's one example that tickled me today…
• • •
B.S.
"An abbreviation of bullshit. According to contemporary folklore, two farmers were discussing the mysterious degrees toward which their sons were working in college. "Can this B.S. mean what it looks like?" one asks. "I suppose," says the other, "but what's M.S.?" "More of the same, I guess." "And this here Ph.D.?" "Piled Higher and Deeper!”
A local book club I belong to, the Omni Book Club, does not follow the usual top-down procedure of other book clubs, with a leader dictating what everyone else will read. Instead, every month we simply take turns discussing what we have read since last time.
Occasionally, we will challenge each other to read a particular title; last year some of us read Elena Ferrante's My Brilliant Friend. (I thought it was pretty good, but I also could not really see what all of the fuss was about). And then at our last meeting, some of us agreed to read or re-read The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. (This year is the 100th anniversary of first publication).
I finished my re-read last night. As it has been decades since I last read it, I did not remember many of the details, and it was almost like reading a book that was new to me. I thought it was very vivid and gripping. I am also fascinated by the 1920s, so reading it played into that.
One of my favorite things that Congress has done in recent years was to finally stop extending copyrights for old books, and as a result, a lot of really fine novels of the 1920s have come into the public domain. I read the Standard Ebooks edition of The Great Gatsby; I still like paper books, but I also like being able to make the type size comfortable for my old eyes, and I can easily do that with a Kindle or a Kindle app or any other reading app for a smartphone.
Standard Ebooks currently offers four books by F. Scott Fitzgerald, five of Sinclair Lewis (my favorite author of that period, a writer RAW read in high school, according to Cosmic Trigger 2), three of Ernest Hemingway, and two of William Faulkner. Of course, more books will become available as copyrights continue to expire.
The book is The Sword of Song: Called by Christians The Book of the Beast, and I am noting it here as I assume some RAW folk might be interested. From the publisher's blurb:
"A fully annotated, deluxe hardcover edition of one of Aleister Crowley’s formative works ... Too inflammatory for English publishers, Aleister Crowley printed The Sword of Song, his first talismanic work, in Paris in 1904, releasing a mere one hundred copies. Deconstructing his encounters with the Golden Dawn, Buddhism, Agnosticism, and Christianity, the book explored Crowley’s magic and spiritual philosophy before he experienced the revelation that led to The Book of the Law. The Sword of Song also contained Crowley’s first manifesto, his first forays into sex magic, his initial embrace of the legendary title of "the Beast," the occult poem "Ascension Day," and mystical essays.
"Now in this fully annotated deluxe hardcover edition, renowned Crowley biographer Richard Kaczynski presents Crowley’s preferred text for The Sword of Song, drawing on all existing draft manuscripts as well as unpublished margin notes from Crowley’s personal copies of the book. Kaczynski clarifies all the significant changes and additions throughout the book’s various iterations and provides explanations for the many occult and popular culture references. He also includes a substantial scholarly introduction, reflecting an intimate knowledge of Crowley and the development of his magical practice."
Not cheap, the hardcover and the Kindle are both more than $60. More information here.
RAW fans will know that "Keep the lasagna flying" is one of the more famous (and odd) sayings from Robert Anton Wilson. Is there a reference to the phrase in Thomas Pynchon's novel Inherent Vice ?
Spookah has been reading the book, and he writes to say he noticed something:
"On page 229 of my Penguin edition we find lyrics for a made-up song called 'Just the Lasagna'. Here's the first verse:
Izzit som U, FO?
(No, no-no!)
Maybe it's--wait, I know! it's
Just the Lasa-gna! [rythm-guitar fill]
Just the La-sa-hah-gna...
(Just-the-La-sa-gna),
Out of the blue, it came,
(Blue, it came)
Nobody knew, its name, just
"The Lasagna"...
Just—"The La-sagna,"
(Just "Th' La--")
"It goes on for two more verses. I found it funny in itself that Pynchon would invent a song about, of all things, lasagna. But the first line wondering if it's a UFO (I was reminded of Superman, "is it a bird? is it a plane?") strongly suggest not just any lasagna, but a flying lasagna!
"Which in turn brought to my mind a picture on page 175 of the 'RAW Memes' book, where we see Olga inside a flying lasagna in outer space!
"Conversely, this fake song about UFO made me think of Jim Sullivan's actual UFO song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gH0l7nIMfw0
"Jim disappeared in such sudden and mysterious circumstances that some even wondered if he had not, in fact, been abducted by aliens and his song was more of a premonition..."
Rasa comments:
"Nice poem! And I wonder about the lasagna connection. I don’t know of anyone who talks about lasagna, especially flying lasagna, more famously than RAW. In his last message on internet before he died he said,
'I don’t see how to take death seriously. I look forward without dogmatic optimism, but without dread. I love you all and I deeply implore you to keep the lasagna flying.'
"All my lasagna references are related to that, and his earlier references to flying lasagna. I think his first mention of it officially was in his book, Reality Is What You Can Get Away With.
"Paul Krassner was kind enough to write an article for us that we published at Hilaritas Press.
"When German film maker Maximilian Netter was working on a documentary about RAW, he interviewed Christina, Marlis and me. I made this short video about the lasagna reference."
James Joyce (the AI version)
In honor of the publication of Straight Outta Dublin, Robert Rabinowitz, a friend of Eric Wagner, has developed an AI-powered Masks of the Illuminati Episode Generator, allowing visitors to generate an episode of a fictional streaming TV series. It's kind of amazing.
The idea is that the novel's three main characters, Albert Einstein, James Joyce and Aleister Crowley, appear in every episode, but people using the site can propose guest characters and an episode theme.
So I tried it, using Igor Stravinsky and Claude Debussy as the guest stars, and "modernist music" as the theme. (The Rite of Spring, Stravinsky's famous ballet piece, debuted in 1912). The site duly generated an episode, "The Unbearable Lightness of Dissonance." When a cursed composition threatens to unravel the fabric of reality, Einstein, Joyce, and Crowley must decode its chaotic melodies.
The website generated images of Stravinsky and Debussy, a story outline, snippets of dialogue and TV commercials, and I was allowed to save my episode. Here is the story outline:
1923, Paris. A new musical composition, purportedly by a deceased composer, sweeps through the city's avant-garde circles. Its influence is unsettling. Musicians experience fits of madness, audiences descend into violent frenzy, and reality itself seems to warp around performances. Stravinsky and Debussy, initially enthralled, find themselves plagued by inexplicable phenomena. Einstein, investigating reports of temporal anomalies coinciding with the music, recruits Joyce (for his linguistic genius) and Crowley (for his occult knowledge). They discover the composition is an encoded summoning ritual, designed to open a gateway to a chaotic dimension. The ritual's key lies in the music's inherently dissonant structure and the emotional energy generated by its listeners. The trio must decipher the score's occult mathematics and disrupt the performance before the gateway opens completely. Their investigation leads them through smoky jazz clubs, bizarre séances, and labyrinthine archives. Ultimately, they confront the composer's obsessive disciple, who is determined to complete the ritual, at the premiere of the cursed symphony. A battle of wits, occult knowledge, and, strangely, synchronized interpretive dance ensues. Using a counter-melody based on Einstein's theories of relativity, Joyce's stream-of-consciousness writing, and Crowley's disruptive magic, the trio neutralizes the composition, averting disaster, but leaving them forever changed by the experience.
The site appears to be a good example of creative use of AI.
Disclaimer: Robert Rabinowitz wants it known that this is a beta site, and it may be down from time to time.
When I posted my interview with Eric Wagner about Straight Outta Dublin, his new book about Robert Anton Wilson and James Joyce, there were a couple of questions about the arresting cover by Rasa, including from Spookah, who asked, "Who's that in the frame on the wall behind Bob's head?"
Spookah's innocent questions sparked a decision by Rasa to make a subtle but interesting change to the cover.
"The original cover had a blurry portrait on the back wall of the pub. I liked that it was blurry and indistinct so that no one would actually know who it was, but then you asked your question, and I thought, 'why not make it someone related to the book?' So, I ended up finding a public domain image of Nora Barnacle, Joyce’s wife and muse. I made that a bit blurry, so it would fit the image, and then ran the change by Eric and Michael… and also the team working on proofing the book. Everyone liked the change, so the other day I uploaded the new cover to our distributors, and then changed all the images on the Hilaritas Press website to reflect the new cover.
"If I make a change to a book, it usually take some time for the new version to propagate online, but that new image, I just noticed today, has replaced the old image at Amazon and all the other sources for the book."
The above is a photo of The Landing, a marijuana dispensary that opened a few days ago in Berea, Ohio. It's a few minutes drive from my house.
Robert Anton Wilson didn't live to see cannabis legalization approved in much of the U.S., as he died in 2007 and the first states to legalize weed, Colorado and Washington, did so in 2012. Legalization in Ohio was approved in a statewide vote in 2023, the first dispensaries opened in 2024, and new ones are still opening in underserved areas. Medical marijuana had been approved in California in 1996, though, so the trend is clear.
I have always been interested in history, and social change fascinates me. Weed legalization is still resisted in many states, but same-sex marriage is now legal everywhere. I have the cell phone number of Jim Obergefell, the plaintiff in the 2015 Supreme Court. I sometimes call him up for newspaper articles. I know a man married to another man, and I suspect many Americans know someone who has taken advantage of the right to same sex marriage.
I've long been interested in history, and the pace of social change fascinates me. When I was a student in college, cheating was of course a thing then, too, but in those days, a person who was cheating would get a human being to write a term paper.
Pope Leo XIV. (Creative Commons photo, source).
Discordians and RAW fans are I presume enjoying the accession of "Pope Bob" from the U.S.
The new pope, Leo XIV, was born in Chicago as Robert Francis Prevost and was known as "Bob" to his friends, according to the Wikipedia bio. He is a fan of the Chicago White Sox baseball team (early reports that he is a Cubs fan turned out to be wrong).
Chicago of course was at the time of the writing of Illuminatus! the home of my two favorite Discordian popes, Bob Shea and Bob Wilson.
I was hoping the new pope would take the name "Pope George Ringo," but I guess you can't have everything.
More celebrity Discordian news: If you missed it, my 2016 post about the "proof" Hillary Clinton is a Discordian.
We have standards here at this blog -- we only cover celebrity news if it has a Discordian connection. Don't look here for the latest amusing "Bill Belichick girlfriend news."
I have been posting what I read in the past month, and I have noticed that another RAW fan, Mark K. Brown, has been posting his monthly reading on Facebook. I always like to know what other people are reading, here is what Mark read last month (I apparently can't figure out how to link to a Facebook post, but it was posted on May 1)
Three Men in a Boat (to Say Nothing of the Dog) by Jerome K. Jerome 4/3
Legends from the End of TIme by Michael Moorcock 4/9
Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature by Richard Rorty 4/13
Bridge of Birds by Barry Hughart 4/17
Wolfwinter by Thomas Burnett Swann 4/22
Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond 4/27
Burning Chrome by William Gibson 4/28
[A posting on X from Jim O'Shaughnessy, in reponse to Rota, who wrote, "One thing I wish I’d learned earlier in life is that there are certain rules in the world that nobody will tell you, cuz they only work as effective rules when they are unstated.
"They exist ~explicitly~ to see if you have the ability to identify them without anyone telling you."
I've posted the illustration O'Shaughnessy used for his essay.
The Management]
Robert Anton Wilson was fascinated by "game rules." His core insight was: much of our social reality, maybe even our personal reality, operates according to unwritten rules – game rules – that we all intuitively follow, even if we've never consciously articulated them.
Think about it like this: we're all players in various overlapping games – the "family game," the "career game," the "political game," the "social status game." Each of these games has objectives, acceptable moves, penalties, and rewards. But crucially, the rulebook isn't handed out at the start. We absorb the rules through observation, through trial and error, through cultural osmosis.
It's like learning the etiquette of a poker game just by playing – you figure out when it's okay to bluff, when to raise, when to fold, not because someone read you a manual, but because you pick up the signals, the patterns, the feel of the game.
In books like Prometheus Rising, Wilson argued that these rules are fundamental components of our "reality tunnels." Each person's perception of reality is shaped by their beliefs, language, experiences – their specific reality tunnel. And within that tunnel, certain actions feel "right" or "wrong," certain goals seem "obvious," certain outcomes appear "inevitable," largely because of these implicit game rules we've internalized.
For example:
The Driving Game: There are official traffic laws, but there are also unwritten rules about letting someone merge, the "thank you wave," how aggressively you tailgate, that vary subtly by region but are generally understood by competent players. Break these unwritten rules, and you might incite road rage, even if you haven't broken a formal law.
The Office Politics Game: Who do you CC on emails? When do you speak up in a meeting? How do you navigate alliances or disagreements? There's no HR manual for much of this, but successful players intuitively grasp the underlying rules of power, influence, and reputation within that specific corporate culture.
The "Being Reasonable" Game: In any given social group, there's an often unspoken consensus on what constitutes a "reasonable" opinion or behavior (Think: The Overton Window.) Stray too far outside that boundary, and you risk being labeled eccentric, difficult, or even crazy – you've broken the implicit rules of acceptable discourse for that particular game.
As Wilson says: "We are living in separate realities. That is why communication fails so often, and misunderstandings and resentments are so common. I say "meow" and you say "Bow-wow," and each of us is convinced the other is a bit dumb.” By really understanding the Game Rules, you might improve your ability to communicate and get along better with the other players.
Finally, these Game Rules aren't deterministic laws of physics; they're more like heuristics or strong tendencies within a complex system. Recognizing them allows you to make better bets, to understand the likely reactions to certain moves, and to avoid being blindly pushed around by social forces you don't perceive.
Wilson believed understanding the games you're playing, and the rules governing them (both explicit and implicit), is a crucial step toward self-mastery and navigating reality more consciously. It's about seeing the matrix, so to speak – not necessarily to escape it, but to operate within it with more awareness and, therefore, more agency. It’s a powerful lens for looking at everything from personal relationships to market dynamics.
--- Jim O'Shaughnessy
"Perhaps we debated the libertarians too vigorously, and too well. Now I find myself wishing we had them back." (Noah Smith).
Tyler Cowen defends online life. This hits home for me, it was through the Internet I met other RAW fanatics and also other Epicureans.
Bryan Caplan wonders why leftists hate Charles Koch as much as they hate Trump. Excerpt: "In starkest contrast, whatever you think about Trump’s ideas, he is obviously an absolute pig of a human being. To paraphrase Tolkien’s Treebeard, 'There is no curse in Elvish, Entish, or the tongues of Men' to describe how loathsome the man is. The way he talks! The way he treats people! If a family of staunch Trump supporters contained a person who acted like Trump, he wouldn’t even be allowed to come to Thanksgiving."
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