An obituary for a lady named Annabelle “Joanne” Bates, 98, a resident of Norfolk News in Virginia, captures my attention with this line:
"In 1987, Joanne hosted author Robert Anton Wilson during his visit to the area, who loved her crab cakes."
Perhaps that is another sign that Wilson has not been forgotten since his death in 2007?
Just a reminder that Maybe Day, e.g. July 23, is drawing near, and Bobby Campbell is inviting everyone to post something cool and perhaps host or attend a public event. Bobby will be holding an exhibition of his own artwork in Wilmington, Delaware. Bobby also is planning a 24-hour broadcast.
Here is my previous post, and here is Bobby's Maybe Day website.
I am planning a couple of special articles, I hope some of you will like them. I am planning on posting them that day.
Photo from Unsplash
While cannabis legalization has been an ongoing trend in the United States, there has also been a backlash -- voters in Massachusetts apparently will be asked this fall whether to roll back legalization.
So it caught my eye when Scott Sumner, one of my favorite Substack bloggers, argued in favor of legalization (some of this may be behind a paywall):
"The partial legalization of pot has been a big success. We should embrace that success by doing further pot legalization in other states and at the federal level."
His piece (second item) begins,
"I cannot prove this, but I strongly suspect that drug addiction in America is on the way down. Here are my claims; you tell me if I’m mistaken:
1. There is less alcoholism than in the past
2. Smoking is declining fairly dramatically
3. Opioid drug abuse is declining
4. Marijuana abuse is increasing
'Now I’d like you to consider two different social science hypotheses and tell me which one better fits the data:
1. Pot is a “gateway drug”, which leads to even more harmful forms of drug abuse.
2. Pot is a substitute for other types of drugs, and legalizing pot would tend to reduce other (more serious) forms of drug abuse."
He also writes, "Before pot was legalized, we were told that two things would happen. It was claimed that pot use among teenagers would increase. It was claimed that legalizing pot would lead to increased crime. Neither of those things happened."
There's more, but I don't want to quote too much behind the paywall.
Sumner's piece brings up something that's been bothering me. I keep reading scare stories about cannabis in outlets such as the New York Times and the Washington Post, feeding the backlash.
Obviously, cannabis has its drawbacks from a health standpoint. But still (1) there is a difference between moderate use and being stoned 24-7, every day, and (2) the anti-weed pieces never put the issue in perspective by discussing other substances, such as alcohol, which by itself kills about 178,000 people in the U.S. every year.
Joseph Haydn in England in 1791 (John Hoppner painting)
The Classical Style: Part II – THE CLASSICAL STYLE
1.The Coherence of the Musical Language
By ERIC WAGNER
Special guest blogger
McKenzie-McHarg, an Austalian historian, researches the history of the term "conspiracy theory" and related terms. But Jesse adds, "But this book is also about what we mean by such terms, and how those different meanings have intersected with one another."
As Jesse writes, McKenzie-McHarg finds an actual Illuminati double agent. "Convinced that the secret society was still active in the 1790s—or, at the very least, convinced that it was useful to have people believe the Illuminati were still active—Grolman decided to form a secret 'counter-association' against that 'devilish union.' "
The book also has a chapter on Carl Oglesby, the historian discussed by Robert Anton Wilson who discussed recent American history as a battle between competing conspiracies, the Yankees and the Cowboys.
And I have a bonus link: LitHub has just published McKenzie-McHarg's chapter on Carl Oglesby from the book! Or at least an article adapted from the book. So if you've read what RAW wrote about Oglesby, you can read an interesting article. Carl Oglesby's son pops up in the comments.
Jesse's own book, The United States of Paranoia: A Conspiracy Theory, remains available.
Mr. McKenzie-McHarg's internet biographies are (perhaps appropriately) confusing, but the just-published Lit Hub article says he is at the "Bibliotheca Hertziana–Max Planck Institute for Art History in Rome."
Footnote: Jesse Walker says the LitHub piece is "was based on the chapter but is far from the whole thing."
I recently finished reading The Moon and Serpent Bumper Book of Magic by Alan Moore and Steve Moore. It's a kind of compendium on magic, with chapters on Kabbalah, the tarot, "Lives of the Great Enchanters," and so on. It is so copiously illustrated it seems almost like an art book. The list price is $50, but it's currently half that at Amazon.
I might do 1-2 other blog posts on the book, but for now, I wanted to note what the book says about Illuminatus!
An essay toward the back of the book, "The Soul," describes how in 1994 or 1995 (page 302), Steve Moore introduced Alan Moore to Illuminatus!, "offering the younger Moore a toehold on a field about which he had previously entertained strong doubts."
On page 300, the book says, "The significance of Shea and Wilson's book to the development of magic thought lies in its presentation of a new way of regarding occult ideas, an approach which embraced contemporary knowledge and which did without the humourless and ritual-bound mental encumbrances of the traditional occult societies. Essentially, the trilogy afforded rational and reasonable people a way to engage with magical ideas that did not entail blind belief or the restricting dogmas of religion, nor subservience to the doctrines of a questionable living or dead guru. In Illuminatus! and in Wilson's subsequent essays and fictions, a window was opened onto magic through which a great number of sensibly sceptical, discriminating and creative people gained their entry to a conceptual landscape which stretched far beyond the necessarily dogmatic confines of religious or even scientific thinking. In this way was magic greatly enriched and extended."
Orson Welles working on "The Magnificent Ambersons" in 1942 (public domain photo).
Orson Welles died in 1985, but one more of his movies may be on the way.
"The Spanish, French, and Italian film archives and the Filmmuseum Münchner are promoting the reconstruction of Don Quixote, the film adaptation of Cervantes' novel that Orson Welles began in 1957 and left unfinished upon his death in 1985."
Everything Is Under Control: Conspiracies, Cults, and Cover-ups by Robert Anton Wilson is on sale again as a $3 ebook on Amazon. Note that you can use the Kindle app to read it on your smartphone -- you don't have to have a Kindle.
Back in 2016, I mentioned that German public radio was working on a documentary piece on Robert Anton Wilson. I never found out about the final product.
The documentary is available on the Internet Archive.
I heard about it from Rasa, who writes, "It’s available to listen to at the Internet Archive, and what made me think of it was that Max created segments of a radio play version of Masks of the Illuminati. It’s all in German, but I found the production quite good. At about 1:50 into the broadcast, they cut to an audio play version of a scene from Masks of the Illuminati. During the doc they go back to the play a few times. I like the ambient sound and the voice actors."
Mike Gathers, interviewed for the the new book The Occult Timothy Leary: The Tarot, Magickal States, and Post-Terrestrial Evolution, in turn interviews the author, Joseph L. Flatley, for the latest Hilaritas Press podcast. Links available at the official website, and you should be able to find the podcast at many of the usual places and apps.
The latest John Higgs newsletter has a scoop about my favorite small press:
"I’ve always loved The Trials of Arthur, C.J. Stone’s 2003 account of the biker who believes he is King Arthur. It’s a funny but profound account of his journey from squaddie to environmental campaigner, and it’s about to be republished by the good people over at Hilaritas Press. Give it a try, you won’t regret it."
I've provide full coverage when Hilaritas puts it out.
See John's newsletter for more news. There's still time to get his book of short pieces if you sign up for the paid version of his newsletter, and he appears in a new podcast episode with "lots of talk about David Lynch and Robert Anton Wilson."
I appeared yesterday on Gerry Fialka's interview show on YouTube, "I'm Probably Wrong About Everything." I was on for about 90 minutes. We talked quite a bit about Frank Zappa, I got to talk about my Robert Shea book, and we covered many other topics. When I admitted I collect radios, Gerry told me he dumpster dives for radios and explained which ones he prefers!
Many members of the "RAW community" have appeared on Gerry's show, among them, Oz Fritz in 2024, Eric Wagner two months ago, and also last year, with Bobby Campbell in 2021, Peter Quadrino in 2016, Gerry asked me for some interview suggestions and I gave him some names. UPDATE: Here is an interview with Mike Gathers. And here is the Steve "Fly" Pratt interview.
Gerry Fialka is an experimental filmmaker and writer, has interviewed hundreds of people, and worked for Frank Zappa for ten years. Here is the official website. He led a book group that spent 28 years reading Finnegans Wake. (From the Guardian article in the last link: "My phone interview with him [Fialka] lasted one hour and eight minutes, and its zigs, zags and sheer velocity were unmatched in my nearly 20-year journalism career. Was I writing about Finnegans Wake, or was I suddenly inside it?"
Music trivia note: You may have heard of the musical artist Stormin' Norman and Suzy. The "Suzy" is Suzy Williams, who is married to Mr. Fialka.
Michael Johnson and Oz Fritz have both posted new reviews of The Occult Timothy Leary, the new book by Joseph L. Flatley that I've written about on this blog.
Both of them give the book and close reading, and both recommend it. In his review at his Substack newsletter, Michael writes, "Joseph L. Flatley’s invigorating research and lucid style in The Occult Timothy Leary has much to recommend it, beyond my own elaborations and predilections."
On his blog, Oz writes, "All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed the book and commend the author, a true Evolutionary Agent, for all the hard work and time he devoted to help bring the work of Timothy Leary to a wider and perhaps younger audience."
I agree with Brian's comment to Michael's review that Michael has "a fantastic reviewing style that would fit easily into a scholarly journal or a 'serious' newspaper such as The Guardian, but with a more knowledgeable and insightful take than one usually finds in such reviews."
Oz's review is full of fascinating details. He argues to my satisfaction that Gurdjieff also was a big influence on Leary, and points us to a movie about Leary, "Timothy Leary's Dead," currently available free on Tubi.
In the comments to Michael's review, Oz modestly writes that Michael's review is "much better." While I also have pointed out that Michael is good with book reviews (see my comment here), I think both reviews are very good, I disagree with Oz, you should read both.
If you missed it, I posted an interview with Flatley.
The above is Gerry Fialka's recent interview of Eric Wagner. I watched the whole thing a few days ago, quite entertaining. As I was watching it, I noticed that Eric was wearing a t-shirt for Miskatonic University, although if Gerry spotted that, he didn't mention it.
Miskatonic University, located in Arkham, Massachusetts, is featured in the work of H.P. Lovecraft. And as Illuminatus! makes use of Lovecraft's "Cthulhu mythos," there are references to the school in the text. "Miskatonic University, in Arkham, Massachusetts, is not a well-known campus by any means, and the few scholarly visitors who come there are an odd lot, drawn usually by the strange collection of occult books given to the Miskatonic Library by the late Dr. Henry Armitage."
I couldn't see Eric's shirt well enough to see what it depicted, but for many years, there have been quite realistic MU sweatshirts and t-shirts that look like the merch put out by more ordinary schools.
When I went to the University of Oklahoma in the 1970s, an old friend of mine, once quite active in science fiction fandom but now gafiated, would wear an authentic-looking Miskanonic University sweatshirt around campus. When he showed up one day to economics class wearing it, there was a dialogue along these lines:
Professor: Miskatonic University? Where is that?
Old friend: It's a small liberal arts school in Massachusetts.
Professor: Huh, I thought I knew the name of just about every college in the U.S.
I should mention that when I texted my friend a couple of days ago to remind him of the incident, he had forgotten it. But I remember him quite well describing it at the time.
Art from the second link.
Prop Anon Bloomsday post. "In Chapel Perilous: The Life & Thought Crimes of Robert Anton Wilson I argue that Wilson presaged the future epistemic confusion of our current algorithmic maelstrom. However, Wilson would counter such an audacious, yet accurate, claim that James Joyce was the guy. He was the one who saw where it was going and then went blind." Scroll down on the piece for other links and articles.
Part Two of the new RAW Semantics piece on "Right Men, Natural Law & Platonic Free Markets" that I blogged about a few days ago.
The Billionaire-Fueled Lobbying Group Behind the State Bills to Ban Basic Income Experiments. A link pointed out by Brian from RAW Semantics, who writes, "Some US libertarians are pro-UBI, but many seem hostile. FGA, a billionaire-funded group behind bills to ban Basic Income pilots, has a lot of donors (incl. usual Scaife, Koch, etc - small sum from Koch. Cato's Robert Levy served on FGA board)."
Cat interrupts sad scene in "Romeo and Juliet" ballet.
Leaders and followers. Includes reference to Aleister Crowley. "A decisive moment for these movements comes when the Teacher dies. While the truth of the teachings is the ultimate proof of longevity of any school of thought, efficient organization, as in the case of Scientology, may also hold a key." Via Jesse Walker.
Above, new cartoon from Bobby Campbell. (Well, I think it's new).
Bobby tells me this comes from a quote from the Book of the SubGenius, ""Don't just eat that hamburger, eat the HELL out of it!" But it also comes from this Eric Wagner anecdote (pages 85-86, Straight Outta Dublin):
In 1988 a group of us brought Bob Wilson to Arizona to give a talk and a workshop. I wanted to make Thursday a Finn day, so we took him to see the new film of The Dead, which he loved because it reminded him so much of Dublin. We went to a vegetarian restaurant that night which one of our group recommended, but afterwards Bob asked me to take him back to the hamburger joint we had enjoyed the day before. That night Bob came over to my house and we had a raucous Finn session enhanced by Guinness Stout.
Also, Bobby has responded on Bluesky to my post from the other day, reminding everyone that the Kickstarter for Tales of Illuminatus! #3 expires on June 22. Bobby says, "Hoping to get those contributor numbers up :))) If you have $3 and want to see the series continue, do please hit us up!"
UPDATE: Also, happy Bloomsday to my readers.
Mr. Campbell noticed, too, and posted an early drawing on Bluesky:
Bobby says, "HAPPY BLOOMSDAY!
"He proves by algebra that Hamlet's grandson is Shakespeare's grandfather and that he himself is the ghost of his own father.”
"(My first Joyce based artwork circa 2005)"
If you click on the drawing on Bluesky, you get a secret message! Bobby is too clever for me, I don't even know how to do secret messages on this blog.
Jeff Riggenbach
Reason magazine has a 1977 interview with Timothy Leary. It was carried out by Jeff Riggenbach, a libertarian who was interested in some of the same revisionist historians that interested Robert Anton Wilson (see this earlier post.)
This is from the period when Leary was claiming that Bob Dylan is a pernicious influence on the nation's youth, and it's interesting to see how Leary responds when Riggenbach presses him:
LEARY: Well, sure that's a metaphor. And anytime I use a metaphor, it's a risky operation. Metaphors are like forward passes. Anytime I say anything in terms of symbols I expect I'm wrong half the time, or wait long enough and I'll be right, or if you're right now you'll be wrong or left tomorrow—maybe left. So I won't defend that metaphor. But it got you thinking.
REASON: It certainly did.
LEARY: And I see ideas not as heavy, static concepts, but as electric charges and if someone can prove me wrong I'm the first one to be delighted because that means some signal I sent out got whacked back and jolted me. That's what I want you to do.
Here is my Riggenbach obituary.
I want to take a moment to remind everyone that the Kickstarter for the Bobby Campbell-Todd Purse comic book opus Tales of Illuminatus #3 will end on June 22. Bobby says, "The Kickstarter campaign officially ends on June 22nd, at which point the discounted pre-order prices will no longer be available, but we'll take late pledges right up until the book goes to press in the Summer :)))"
So yeah, you can still buy it after the Kickstarter campaign ends, but the bargain packages will be gone. For example, the $42 "MGMT SPECIAL!" I opted for provides the comic book, a trade paperback of the first three issues, a Michael Johnson zine discussing the series, three separate music releases, a video game and a PDF of Michael's zine. (If $42 is too much, packages and offers start at $3).
Pale Fire, Vladimir Nabokov's 1962 novel, is an unusual work that consists largely of footnotes to a long poem. We did an online reading group for the book back in 2018, partially because of the influence the book had on Robert Anton Wilson's novel, The Widow's Son, which makes extensive use of footnotes. (Scroll down the right side of this page for the reading group.)
The Boing Boing website has a piece by Ellsworth Toohey reporting that a new paper says that Nabokov was ahead of his time:
"Rowberry maps 504 explicit links inside the novel — notes pointing to other notes, an index pointing only to notes — and finds Kinbote's vain cross-references uncannily modern. His self-serving self-indexing, Rowberry writes, resembles 'Search Engine Optimization and inserting unnecessary keywords into an index.' Nabokov built some of the web's worst habits decades before the web."
While I knew that Robert Anton Wilson had a New York Times obituary, after he died in 2007, I only recently learned about the obituary penned by Ken Layne that appeared on the Wonkette website.
As you can see, it focuses on Wilson's brand on libertarianism. Layne certainly seems familiar with RAW: "Wilson was a cult writer's cult writer with the kind of fans who re-read his Cosmic Trigger and Illuminatus! series as annual ritual."
I wouldn't say every year for me, but "often" would fit!
An illustration of Osiris from the Wikipedia article. The caption says, "Osiris was sometimes depicted with black skin, symbolizing the underworld deities and fertility of the Nile floodplain." Creative Commons illustration by Eternal Space. Source.
One of the most mysterious sentences (at least to me) sentences in Illuminatus! is this one: "Anybody who wants to go to the trouble can find out, for instance, that the 'secret' of the Eleusinian Mysteries was the words whispered to the novice after he got the magic mushroom, 'Osiris is a black god!' "
In his latest Substack newsletter, Overweening Generalist, Michael Johnson writes about the phrase, sharing his considerable research into Robert Anton Wilson's work. He convinces me that, at least in part, the phrase traces back to an Aleister Crowley passage.
Jesse Walker has been making good use of the lists feature at his Letterboxd, listing his favorite movies, the best movies for various decades, "Acid Noir" movies and a Robert Altman ranking. Now he turns his attention to "The Absurdist Conspiracy Canon," a list that will interest Illuminatus! fans.
One of his top-rated movies, The President's Analyst, was a favorite of mine when I was young. He also includes a filming of Wilhelm Reich in Hell, although he has to admit he hasn't seen it yet.
If Jessse is taking requests from the peanut gallery, I'd like to see a ranking for science fiction movies.
The RAW Semantics blog returns with a new post, "Right Men, Natural Law & Platonic Free Markets – part 1." There's discussion of the concepts in both The New Inquisition and Natural Law.
I have trouble sometimes finding a couple of sentences that will summarize an entire post, and indeed at one point Brian worries that "God, I hope that doesn’t get quoted out of context, making me sound like some weirdo Youtube influencer!"
But I will quote the paragraph that starts things off: "Robert Anton Wilson’s take on everyday hypnosis – that we drift from 'direct' experience into what we call the 'Real' World, a learned abstraction – emphasises the objectivity we attribute to this 'Platonically Real' realm. Thus we filter out what doesn’t conform to the abstraction as 'subjective', 'mere appearance', hallucination, illusion, dream, fiction, error, lies, etc."
Part Two is promised soon.
As usual, Brian has some really good artwork with his piece, sample above.
Billed as "the last interview I will do for at least a few years," Joseph Matheny appears above on the Why Files podcast.
Here is the blurb:
"Joseph Matheny invented something in 1989 that nobody had a name for yet. He called it a story. The internet called it the first alternate reality game. The Navy called him to ask how he did it. He turned them down.
"Tonight he’s in the basement explaining how he built an early AI, game-mastered Robert Anton Wilson at Esalen, and why QAnon looks so familiar to him.
"Some things are better understood when you know how the trick works."
Mr. Matheny says, "Interviews have lost their appeal for me, and, frankly, you already have plenty of examples of me going on at length."
Meanwhile, free release of Ong's Hat: COMPLEAT continues as a podcast series details here.
His new book, The Occult Timothy Leary: The Tarot, Magical States, and Post-Terrestrial Evolution, discusses Leary's Eight Circuit model and SMI2LE ideas and argues that Leary's system can be applied to tarot readings. It is available as a paperback and ebook from all of the usual online outlets, such as Barnes and Noble. You can also check out his publisher's author page.
Another book, New Age Grifter: The True Story of Gabriel of Urantia and his Cosmic Family was released by Feral House and his pieces have appeared in various publications, such as Please Kill Me, Postindustrial, The Verge, Pando, and CounterPunch.
I wanted to learn more about this interesting book, which I devoured quickly, so I requested an interview. It lasted for almost a half hour, and the bulk of it is transcribed here; I only deleted a few unnecessary bits, such as some kind remarks he made about my blog.
RAWILLUMINATION: As somebody who reads a lot of books, there are certain books, I hear about it or I see a description and I've just gotta read it. And your book was one of those. But as a writer who's trying to market your book, who do you see as your audience? Who were the "I have to have it" readers out there? Who do you think would run out and buy your book if they just happened to hear about it on a blog or somewhere on the Internet or from a friend or whatever?
JOSEPH L. FLATLEY: You know, it's kind of a challenge writing a book about a historical figure, especially one that's been written about pretty extensively over decades at this point. I was very well aware as a reader, not only of Leary and Wilson and that whole cohort, but all the websites and newsletters and things over the years that have kind of kept the flame alive, so to speak. I was very aware that there is an audience for this book and also that I wanted to approach the topic differently, even down to the language of circuits and the vocabulary that we kinda use in this field of endeavor. I see a lot of people kinda slipping into the same language, the same descriptions. And, you know, Norman Mailer said that -- because Norman Mailer is famous for kinda changing up his writing style with every book -- when asked about it, he said that when you write in a different style or a different voice, you're attacking the subject matter from a different angle.
So I wanted at the word level, I wanted to approach the subject differently from all the other great books that have written about Tim and Robert Anton Wilson, precisely because I think people fall into these cliches of thought. You talk about the circuits for 20 years, you stop thinking about it, you just kinda regurgitate what you're hearing.
So my book is, it's both like a primer for new Leary readers, call it a "Timothy Leary for Dummies" type book. But also I think it's great for people who are already familiar with this stuff precisely because I took efforts to write a book in a different style or different angle than all the other ones. So anybody interested in the subject matter, obviously, but also there's this large untapped, and I barely touch upon it, I feel, but there's a large untapped populace of practicing occult occultists and ceremonial magicians who might be able to benefit from looking at the circuits from that angle.
RAWILLUMINATION: Can you give me kind of a little short biography of yourself to kind of introduce yourself? I know you're a writer and I think I saw in your Substack you're a private investigator.
FLATLEY: Yeah, I'm a investigative journalist and a private investigator. At least at my level being a PI, it's not nearly as interesting as some might think it would be.
I make movies but my main focus is writing books. I've written several novellas and have had two nonfiction books published in the last few years, and I'm working on another one.
Joseph L. Flatley (Linked in photo).
RAWILLUMINATION: Do you wanna say anything about where you live?
FLATLEY: Oh yeah, I'm in Pittsburgh. Love Pittsburgh. I'm based here primarily because it's one of those places that the cost of living hasn't climbed so high yet that I can do these weird jobs like PI work and journalism and keep a roof over my head.
RAWILLUMINATION: Well, we're kind of neighbors then, because I live in the Cleveland area. And, by coincidence, I have a friend who lives in West Virginia, not super far from Pittsburgh, and I've been planning to buy him a copy of your book, so that's awesome.
FLATLEY: That's interesting. Yeah, I actually grew up in Erie, so I know Cleveland pretty well.
RAWILLUMINATION: And I've been to Erie, Pennsylvania, as you might guess.
Your dedication implies that you met Robert Anton Wilson and talked to him. Can you talk a little bit about that? [The dedication says, "For Robert Anton Wilson, who once told me he doesn't fear death. And for Antero Alli, who agreed with him."]
FLATLEY: I took the first Maybe Logic [Academy] class that he taught way back in, whenever that was, '98 or '97 and one day we hadn't heard from him for I can't remember how long, but a notable period of time.
And then when he finally got back on, he said he had fallen in in his bedroom or his bathroom and couldn't get help and he sat there for like a day, and finally I think his daughter found him. And he told the class. "Guys, the good thing to come out of this is I realized that I don't fear death," and I always kinda kept that with me.
And then years later Antero Alli announced that he had cancer and that he wasn't gonna get treated and he was going to die too. And we were emailing back and forth and I mentioned that, and he said, "Yeah, I don't think I fear death, either." And I was like, well, that's nice to know.
RAWILLUMINATION: That's a great anecdote.
Did you ever meet Timothy Leary?
FLATLEY: No, no, that was just a little before my time. I've talked to Zach Leary quite a bit, but I never met Tim.
RAWILLUMINATION: It's funny how that works out. I met Robert Shea once, but I never met Robert Anton Wilson or even took a class from him. And now I wound up doing this blog.
Your book is dedicated to Wilson and to Antero Alli. And I noticed you referenced The Starseed Signals quite a bit. Obviously that was a book that was not published until many years after Wilson's death. But do you see that as kind of a key book among Wilson's books?
FLATLEY: So that was a great gift really, that while I was writing this book that came out. Because if it wasn't for that -- I was doing a lot of time tracking down old issues of Green Egg and you know, all these little magic newsletters that Wilson had contributed to as a freelancer. The Buckland Witchcraft Museum, I'm sure you're familiar with that in Cleveland, they have a collection of those in their archives. So I've talked to Steven [Intermill] quite a bit, the director, and he was helping me out, but when The Starseed Signals came out, I was like, wow, it's all here. I can see why it wasn't published or why it wasn't going to be published by a major publisher unless there was some serious editing because it's very much a first draft.
But talk about a first draft of history. It's, you know, it's like really Wilson's man on the scene description of precisely him and Tim working through these ideas. And it was invaluable.
RAWILLUMINATION: Kind of the way I would describe it is that in a sense it's sort of a first draft for Cosmic Trigger. But it has enough interesting material that at least for a serious Wilson fan, it really kind of stands on its own.
FLATLEY: Yeah. absolutely. You know it is a first draft in a lot of ways for Cosmic Trigger and also, for The Game of Life, Timothy Leary's book.
There's kind of this question of why Leary stopped talking about magic so soon. I just really feel like he was always on the move. He was going so fast. He had 76 years on this planet, and in 1993, he's not gonna waste his time talking about what happened in 1973. So I totally understand, but I don't feel like any of it was disavowed. And that was the project of this book, kinda go through everything, everything I could get my hands on. See how Western esotericism as well as Eastern practices influenced Leary in the subtle ways that often didn't get pointed out just because Tim really didn't footnote it. He was putting that these fabulous ideas together. He wasn't really, I don't think, so concerned about a meticulous cataloging of where they came from.
RAWILLUMINATION: The structure of your book, I thought was kind of interesting. I read every word from start to finish, but I kinda have the impression that chapters one through eight were meant to be read and that chapters 9 and 10 were really sort of like a reference section. Do you think it's a fair description of the book or do you want to modify that?
FLATLEY: I certainly think some people will use the book that way, which is totally understandable and totally valid. The way I was able to sell it was precisely because Inner Traditions is an occult publisher. It's actually Destiny Books, an imprint of Inner Traditions. They're an occult publisher. Your readers are occultists. I know you've already done several Timothy Leary books, but this one's about tarot cards.
RAWILLUMINATION: The cover is credited to Adam Scott Miller. I don't know the artist, but it's kind of a witty cover with Timothy Leary as Aleister Crowley. Were you happy with the cover?
FLATLEY: Yeah. You know, I'm really curious. I keep forgetting to ask my editor, but either that image or a very similar image was used in, I'm blanking on the name of the magazine, but John Higgs, the author of I Have America Surrounded, before he wrote that biography of Leary, he had done a feature article about Leary and mysticism and Crowley and I know that that was the cover art for that going back, what, 20 years. And that was the magazine art.
So I don't know, it's the same guy that did the cover or if they got permission or what, but I think it's pretty clever. I really like it.
RAWILLUMINATION: Yeah, I thought it was too.
So are you a long time tarot reader and if so, how did your research for this book influence how you do readings? Did it influence you a great deal?
FLATLEY: I'm a long term tarot dabbler. I'm not gonna be able to sit down with nothing but a deck of cards and a burning question and be able to tell the thing, tell what they're saying. But I can read a reference book. And partially I wanted to see if we examined the tarot cards, not in like the traditional A.E. Waite descriptions, but a Learian take. I wanted to see if it would still kind of give good, valid readings. And I have to say, it does. I think that what Leary discussed as far as the tarot goes doesn't replace anything, but it's a really good complement to anybody's tarot practice.
Leary always talked about the transaction, dimensionalizing to use that word, even though I don't really think that's a word. Dimensions of things like a single unit isn't very meaningful. But once you and I start talking and we can have an interaction, that's where you start to see the true nature of the individual. And that's how I approach tarot readings.
I do a kinda idiosyncratic method where I pull one Major Arcana card and I have a deck that I made myself that's like Leary's Trumps, because he added two tarot Trumps to the deck. So I use that. I draw that and then I draw a Minor Arcana card. It's not like each card has a message, but what is the interaction between these two cards? What is that message?And then also, Brian Barritt taught John Higgs, how Tim read tarot cards and he had his own weird way of reading tarot cards. He wrote about it in his book and I emailed him for some clarifications and then explained that in my book as well.
RAWILLUMINATION: John's really a great guy. He's very kind, the way he interacts with people and he seems like he's pretty busy since he's become more of a major author, but he's always been nice to me.
FLATLEY: Me too. I'm so grateful when people who have busy lives and are doing interesting things will take the time to talk to me. I reached out to quite a few people who knew Tim or had some expertise and a lot of people, I'm not naming names, I don't blame them, but a lot of people just, like, would not talk. I think it was like, 'I've been talking about Timothy Leary for 50 years. Leave me alone.' But, you know, who am I? Some guy they never heard of. But I am very grateful to the people who did talk to me. R. U. Sirius. Richard Metzger. Douglas Rushkoff. Liz Elliott, Brian Barritt's partner. They're all in the book. I thank them all in the acknowledgments. It's been a real gift to be able to do this book and to be able to talk to so many cool people about a subject I'm so fascinated by.
RAWILLUMINATION: I did a blog post on your Psychedelic Press interview, which I thought was quite interesting. And I quoted a paragraph from that about the mission of the book.
You said Leary was very well educated and understood science, but his project wasn't scientific, even if it used the language of science. It was pseudoscience. "And I mean that the best possible way." Can you kinda clarify what you mean by "pseudoscience in the best possible way?"
FLATLEY: When you approach something using the scientific method, using the various tools of research in science that we've kind of developed over the years to come to theories that seem to answer some very big questions, that's science. When you take a bunch of drugs and think and have great thoughts and write them down, even if you're a brilliant man like Leary, who is a systems thinker who's able to rigorously think through these ideas and put pen to paper and create a very fascinating world view out of it, one that holds up to scrutiny, you don't actually have proof of any of it, that's not science, it's just not.
Tim writes very convincingly about humankind eventually not only getting off this planet, but going to the cosmic center, engaging in some sort of communion with the black hole there and becoming part of the cosmic consciousness. OK! What the hell's that? I mean, it's great, but I don't think any of us are gonna be around to see that happen. I'm not entirely convinced that entering a black hole would be good for anybody. That's science, right?
RAWILLUMINATION: It seemed to be pretty clear to me that you probably read all the available Leary biographies or books about Leary that you could get your hands on. I've read some of them, but I'm probably not as up to speed as you are. Do you have a favorite Leary biography or a favorite book about Leary that you thought was especially good?
FLATLEY: You know, they all have their value. Like Robert Greenfield wrote the kinda the big standard tome that's just called Timothy Leary: A Biography. It's the size of a phone book. And Greenfield's one of these writers that it's like, I've read a few of his books and he doesn't seem to really like or appreciate anybody he's writing about. And I know for a fact that Tim's family was pissed off by that book. And I understand why because you read it and there's kind of impeccable research, but he always spins everything in the worst possible light. That was probably the most valuable book for me precisely because it had all the sources.
But if somebody's hoping to get into Timothy Leary for the first time or just because they find him fascinating, that's probably not the best book. John Higgs' book, I Have America Surrounded, it's fast, it's fun. He's a great writer. He had some great access.
There's a journalist, John Bryan, Whatever Happened to Timothy Leary? This book came out, this is a amazing book. It came out in 1980. John Bryan was a journalist who ran an alternative press syndicate, underground press guy on the West Coast of the 70s and was like one of the big movers there. And he covered Tim in real time and he put out a book in 1980. Someone that was in there in the thick of it, it's really invaluable. But he also seemed to like misunderstand or dislike Leary.
So they all have their virtues. I would definitely urge the reader to buy my book.
RAWILLUMINATION: Well, it's actually quite a nice biography of Leary among its other virtues. You kind of covered the high points and kind of cover his evolution.
FLATLEY: It's easy to write something 30 years after somebody dies. My point in delving into this was like, really, what are the footprints? You know, what are the bread crumbs of Leary's occult interests? So when I read Flashbacks and he's recounting talking to his grandfather in the 1930s or whatever, I'm looking at that. I'm like, what's the esoteric angle? Is there an esoteric angle? And so I don't know if you would call what I wrote revisionism or just like following bread crumbs, but I strongly feel that he had an esoteric evolutionary perspective from the very beginning, even if he didn't realize it or didn't have the words for it. Because you know what 14 year old does?
RAWILLUMINATION: His explanation of how he was the reincarnation of Crowley is hilarious in your book. I love that particular anecdote.
I only have a couple more questions. I feel like I've gotten a lot out of you. I kind of wondered if you had like an origin story, if you wanted to explain how you got interested in Leary or Wilson or the Eight Circuit model in the first place, if there was a particular instance or a particular book that turned you on on.
FLATLEY: In 1989. I was like an eigth grader on computer bulletin board systems interacting with all these weirdos. This was like pre Internet and one of my friends was bought Neuropolitique from Loompanics, the old underground publisher and book seller and he was like, You gotta read this. So I read the hell out of it and I was in the eighth grade. I didn't understand any of it, but I did have a sense like all the writing about the Eight Circuit model, which I don't think he even used that term, but you know about circuits and psychological, different states of consciousness. It really resonated with me. I was like, I think this is how the world works, even at that early age. And I've always seen that is how the world works. So it's like it was either a privilege to discover that stuff at such an early age or maybe it was a curse. I don't know. But it's been with me kind of my whole life.
RAWILLUMINATION: BBS is such a fascinating thing, kind of a really early decentralized Internet. I loved dialing into them exploring them it's kind of a lost culture and I wonder how many people remember that anymore.
FLATLEY: Oh, I know At the time it seemed very annoying, but now looking back, there was so something so wonderful about all the things in our technology that made us stop and wait. Like, yeah, yeah.
A lot of these BBS's were, it was like their home phone during the day, but you could call at night between like 10 p.m. and 8 a.m. or something. Not all of them had dedicated phone lines.
Bobby Campbell, perennial Maybe Day organizer, has announced the plans for the July 23 celebration this year. As always, Bobby encourages everyone else to also have a project and/or organize an event, too.
Bobby will hold an art show for his art in Wilmington, Delaware, and he plans a 24-hour broadcast. He also invites everyone who does something to email him so he can publicize it.
Here's what Bobby has to say:
"MAYBE DAY 2026 is our 7th annual celebration of the lives and ideas of Robert Anton Wilson and the spirit of Maybe Logic! This year we are continuing our incursion into real world spaces with a pop up bc art show (LOCAL) and adding a new twist to our maybe logical information distribution with an experimental 24 hour multimedia broadcast! (GLOBAL)
"And as always, in the spirit of Discordians sticking apart, do please feel free and encouraged to create Maybe Day happenings, whether online or offline, using your own ways and means. A decentralized and self-organizing Maybe Day would be just the thing to keep the lasagna flying onward and upward to ever greater glory.
"The idea is simple: Do something cool on July 23rd • Include other people • Enjoy the day!
"If you are planning a public event, and/or have a link/artwork you'd like to share, please feel free to send over the details, so we can feature it! Send Maybe Day celebrations to weirdoverse@gmail.com
"Also! Make sure to check out the brand new Maybe Day infinite scroll! We have accumulated an incredible bounty of novelties and curiosities over the years, a bottomless rabbit hole that cascades endlessly through idea space, mind your hats going in!"
[See for yourself, if you scroll down on the page, you can check out past celebrations.]
What Mark Brown read (reads and re-reads):
The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen 5/8
The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Leguin 5/10
The Citadel of the Autarch by Gene Wolfe 5/22
Reflections by Walter Benjamin 5/25
The Book of Forbidden Words by Robert Anton Wilson 5/29
Wyst: Alastor 1716 by Jack Vance
Here's what I read (reads and re-reads)
The Infinite Mistress, D. Scott Apel
When the Sacred Ginmill Closes, Lawrence Block
Mary, Vladimir Nabokov
Ghost Town, Tom Perrotta
The Occult Timothy Leary: The Tarot, Magical States, and Post-Terrestrial Evolution, Joseph Flatley
Epicureanism, Tim O'Keefe
As usual, everyone else is invited to report what they read in May in the comments.
Week 2: Preface to the First Edition, A New Preface, Acknowledgments, Bibliographic Note, Note on the Music Examples.
By ERIC WAGNER
Special guest blogger
Welcome back my friends to the show that never ends. I laughed out loud on pg. xviii when Rosen wrote, “But we know that performers of weak moral principles did not observe all written repeats.”
Some of you have expressed concerns about not understanding this text. I hope you will enjoy the book anyway. I don’t understand everything that Rosen writes, but I think I understand some of it, and I enjoy it immensely. It seems to me that playing the music provides the greatest tool for understanding it. I don’t play piano much anymore, and I never played that well. I feel lucky that I got to play Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven works while playing bass in student orchestras. However, I disagree with Rosen sometimes, and with other musicians who can actually play this music. We all experience the music in our own way.
Listening to the music provides the second best way to experience and learn about this music. Hearing it live seems a wonderful tool, but listening to records or watching recordings also help us understand the music. Reading about it also helps. I remember hearing Andre Previn talk about the privilege of conducting music “that is greater than we are”. Now, spiritually, I don’t know if I fully agree with this, but I love the line from the Upanishads Bob Wilson quoted in Masks of the Illuminati, ”Remove infinity from it and infinity still remains.” I keep coming back to late Beethoven, week after week, year after year, decade after decade, and it keeps bringing new delights.
This brings up the question of opera. Some people go to the opera regularly. James Joyce, Charles Rosen, and Stendhal went to opera regularly, and this experience seems central to understanding their works. I have not attended an opera in person since hearing Die Fledermaus in Vienna in 1985 from the highest, cheapest seats. (Or did I stand? I think I sat. Memory fails me.) Mozart’s great operas play a significant role in this book. I highly recommend Bergman’s film of The Magic Flute. Because of watching that film over and over again over the past 41 years, as well as listening to various recordings and getting to teach that film in various classes, I know that opera pretty well. In the mid-1980s I expressed my yearning to own more opera cd’s to a friend who kindly said they would pay for half of a three cd opera recording for me if I would pay the balance, so I got Solti’s recording of The Marriage of Figaro which I have listened to a ton over the decades. I feel familiar with the music of that opera, but I don’t understand the plot very well. I have started watching a YouTube recording of the opera, but I don’t have much appetite for watching opera on TV, alas.
White tells the story in The Amazing Editorials, a collection of the editorials White wrote while editor of Amazing, a science fiction magazine. I bought the book and began reading it after I heard of White's death.
White explains that in a 1965 visit to see Dick, he showed Dick a photo of himself that made him look a little like Dick. Dick asked for a copy of the photo, explaining that as a joke, he wanted to send it to his agent to fulfill a request for an author photo for the British Penguin edition of High Castle.
Both authors then forgot about the matter, but in 1966, White thought to bring it up, and Dick said that yes, the photo had been used, and he gave White a copy of the book.
There is other Dick material in White's book, including a plug for Confessions of a Crap Artist, the first publication of a mainstream Dick novel. It was published by David Hartwell, the famous science fiction editor who went on to edit some of Robert Anton Wilson's work. (And if you follow that link, here is part two of that interview.)
Ansible Editions is the catchall name for all books published by David Langford; some are free as ebook downloads, some (like the Ted White book) cost money, at least some are available as paperbacks. The titles are worth a look if you are into fandom or science fiction.
