Recommendations for Tim Leary on his Eight Circuit model

In the course of working on a Maybe Day article, I had a question about the Leary-Wilson Eight C'ircuit model of consciousness. It's obvious which RAW book one should read to learn about the model, e.g. Prometheus Rising,  but which Timothy Leary title should one read? I posed the question to a couple of people who had done a lot of research on the model, and I'm sharing their answers here.

Joseph L. Flatley is the author of a new book, The Occult Timothy Leary: The Tarot, Magical States, and Post-Terrestrial Evolution. (See this interview).  When I asked him to suggest a Leary title on the model, he replied:

"Obviously the best introduction to the 8 circuit model is Prometheus Rising. As for Leary's work, I would recommend Neuropolitique, which is a collection of articles written around the time of his release from prison. A lot of them refer to the eight circuit model and are very readable. Even the articles that don't refer to the circuits provide a great introduction to the Leary worldview. His two major reference books on the 8th circuit model, Infopsychology and The Game of Life are really hard to get through and I wouldn't necessarily recommend them to beginners."

Many of you know Mike Gathers from the Hilaritas Press podcast, and he is busy working on an article on the Eight Circuit model, about which more below, but first, here is Mike's answer:

"Good question.  Info-/Exo-psychology is weird.  Like Bucky Fuller on Freud and LSD.  Game of Life is just... super weird. Not my thing.  Flatley led me to appreciate it, but not my thing.  You can find PDFs of Neurologic out there pretty easily. There are two different versions that appear to be two different 1973 printings of the same 'edition.'   It runs 40-60 pages depending on the printing.  Higgs felt it was Leary's best presentation of the model."

"The 44 page version of Neurologic can be found here:

https://www.scribd.com/doc/2350894/NeuroLogic-by-Timothy-Leary

https://www.scribd.com/doc/17278486/NeuroLogic-by-Timothy-Leary

https://mirror.explodie.org/Timothy%20Leary%20-%20Neurologic.pdf 

"I have a 74ish page version that I think is the original, full printing, but I don't see it up on the interent anyway for public access."

As for Mike's upcoming article: "The 8 Circuit Ascencion people are putting together an anthology.  So I have a 4-8000 word chapter that will be a "Then and Now."  Half history of the model and half bringing it up to 2026.   I'm thinking I will do a Leary vlog/pod that goes into more detail.   We'll see what follows.  I seem to have found some motivation on the whole thing and am basically retired (or on a one year sabbatical, depending on my mood) and doing what I want.  The deadline for the chapter is 10/31. "

(Footnote to the above: Despite a similarity in titles, Neurologic and Neuropolitique are separate Leary titles. Neuropolitique is actually a revision of an earlier book,  Neuropolitics: The Sociobiology of Human Metamorphosis.

Also, I have been trying to post fewer links to Amazon -- not an anti-Amazon jihad, just a preference to promote actual bricks and mortar bookstores -- but I could not find a Barnes and Noble link to Neuropolitique and opted to post a useful link. I just bought the ebook of Neuropolitique.)

New 'High Weirdness' available soon

While I was researching an article  for Maybe Day, I noticed that High Weirdness: Drugs, Esoterica, and Visionary Experience in the Seventies by Erik Davis (focusing on Terence McKenna, Robert Anton Wilson, and Philip K. Dick) appeared to be out of print. On Amazon, the hardcover and the paperback are both listed for about $125.

Well, don't buy it! A new edition is coming soon.

From Erik Davis, after I wrote to him about the matter: "It is currently out of print BUT a new edition (with new afterword and appendixes) will be out this fall from Strange Attractor Press."

I'll try to pay attention when it comes out. 

'The Classical Style' reading group, week eight

 

Joseph Haydn around 1770 (source). 

Part III 

HAYDN FROM 1770 TO THE DEATH OF MOZART 

1  String Quartet 

By ERIC WAGNER
Special guest blogger

Mozart died December 5, 1791, age 35. 

On pg. 118, Rosen says of Haydn’s Op. 33 string quartets, “Transitional figures and phrases are almost completely eliminated.” I find this interesting because when Ezra Pound edited T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, he mostly eliminated transitional material, seeing it as unnecessary. Before Pound and Eliot, the notion of the three unities of time, place, and action played a big role in Western literature even though writers like Shakespeare rarely followed the unities. Shakespeare’s The Tempest provides a rare exception: the play takes place in one location on one afternoon. Robert Anton Wilson noticed that films prepared audiences for radical jumps in space and time. D. W. Griffith influenced both Pound and Joyce. Later films like 2001: A Space Odyssey and The Fifth Element would jump thousands of years from one scene to the next. James Bond films would jump all over the world from scene to scene.  

Literature before Pound and Eliot tended to have transitional material. Pound used radical jump cuts across space and time in The Cantos, and he encouraged Eliot to abandon transitional material in The Waste Land. Rosen illustrates a similar process in Haydn.  

I love Rosen’s writing, but one sentence on page 140 bothers me: “Op. 64 no. 3 in B flat major is one of the great comic masterpieces: the listener who can hear the last movement without laughing aloud knows nothing of Haydn.” I don’t like how he puts the reader on the spot here. The first time I listened to this movement in response to this passage, I did laugh aloud, but I wondered if I found myself nervously laughing because of my fear Rosen would think I knew “nothing of Haydn.” I just listened to it again, and I had a similar experience, laughing insecurely but enjoying the music nonetheless. Cannabis users might experiment with this movement and the quartet as a whole.

Late pledges still taken for 'Tales of Illuminatus No. 3'

Although the Kickstarter for issue number three of Tales of Illuminatus is over and the initial pledges have been paid,  late pledges are still being taken at the Kickstarter site.  It will still help with the project and Bobby Campbell would still appreciate your support. A wide variety of rewards remain available. The planned first trade paperback will have bonus material if the Kickstarter can hit $5,000. 

Update: See Bobby's comment,  below. 

Saturday links

 George Washington crossing the Delaware (to attack the British army's German soldiers). 

Bobby Campbell and Gabriel Kennedy on the Wetwired podcast.   The podcast also has a collection of RAW episodes. 

Arden Leigh in podcast discussing AI. Bobby recommends this. 

The ebook of John Higgs' bio of Timothy Leary is currently $3 on Amazon.  Also, Jesse Walker's The United States of Paranoia also is on sale again. 

Dementia is declining. 

Solar power is gaining. 

Neal Stephenson on "The Sting in the National Anthem's Tail." 

Was the American Revolution good or bad? Ilya Somin thinks it was good but he provides arguments for both sides. 

2026 Prometheus Awards announced

[Again, the relevance to this blog is that Illuminatus! won the Prometheus Hall of Fame Award, Robert Shea was involved with the Prometheus Award and I am currently one of the judges -- The Management.]

J. Kenton Pierce wins Best Novel for A Kiss for Damocles

Aldous Huxley novel Brave New World to be inducted into Hall of Fame

The Libertarian Futurist Society (www.lfs.org), a nonprofit all-volunteer international organization of freedom-loving science fiction fans, has announced Prometheus Award Best Novel and Best Classic Fiction winners.

The 46th annual Prometheus Awards ceremony

The 46th annual Prometheus Awards will be presented online Sunday afternoon Aug. 16, 2026, in a zoom awards ceremony open to the public.

This year’s hourlong ceremony, tentatively scheduled for 2-3 p.m. Eastern time and emceed by LFS President William H. Stoddard, will feature a guest speaker: Lifelong science-fiction fan Ilya Somin (George Mason University law professor, Cato Institute scholar and author), who will present the Hall of Fame award.

Updates will be posted on the Prometheus Blog over the next several weeks about additional speakers and the ceremony line-up.

The Prometheus Award for Best Novel

A Kiss for Damocles, by J. Kenton Pierce, won the 2026 Prometheus award for best novel for novels published in 2025.

The science fiction novel, published by Raconteur Press and launching Pierce’s Tales From the Long Night series, illuminates the ethics and efficacy of free trade and self-defense as a proper foundation for civilization.

Pierce’s novel is set on a remote planet where humans in towns and homesteading communities are struggling to recover centuries after a catastrophic attack and volcanic cataclysm that set back and severely limits their use of advanced technology. At the story’s heart is Shai, a young homesteader facing harsh frontier conditions, corrupt Townie politicians, dangerous native species, and sinister forces amid still-functional A.I.-powered orbiting war machines.

Pierce celebrates the self-reliance and resilience of self-regulating frontier communities that survive and evolve based on the hard-won realities of voluntarism, mutual respect and cooperation. But this is also a cautionary tale about the deceptive ideals of a command-and-control politics and the perennial tendency toward abuse of power, reflected in the Townies’ push for higher taxation, fiat money and state takeover of education to indoctrinate new generations.

Narrating from her wry but hopeful perspective, Shai becomes a leader in her community’s struggles to defend their freedom, preserve their heritage and restore their world.

Visit the Prometheus blog for a full review of A Kiss for Damocles that illuminates how it fits the distinctive dual focus of the Prometheus Award on quality and liberty.

The other 2025 Best Novel finalists were Storm-Dragon, by Dave Freer (Raconteur Press); War by Other Means, by Karl K. Gallagher (Kelt Haven Press); No Man’s Land, by Sarah Hoyt (Goldport Press); and Powerless, by Harry Turtledove (CAEZIK SF & Fantasy.)

The Prometheus Hall of Fame for Best Classic Fiction

Brave New World, a 1932 novel (Chatto & Windus) by Aldous Huxley, won the 2026 Best Classic Fiction award and will be inducted into the Prometheus Hall of Fame.

This dystopian classic offers a still-timely cautionary tale of collectivist soft tyranny under seemingly benevolent world government and technocratic central planning.

Critiquing his era’s rise of collectivism and scientism, Huxley warned about behavioral/biochemical conditioning, propaganda, censorship and manipulation of artificial wombs limiting intelligence and initiative to create and control different castes.

At a time when the intellectual and artistic elite saw most forms of authoritarian collectivism as the inevitable and positive wave of the future, Huxley foresaw the dark side of utopia. The novel explicitly dramatizes how such trends deny individuality, liberty, reason, romantic love, the family, history, and literature (including Shakespeare, which inspired the novel’s title).

Visit the Prometheus blog for a full review of Brave New World that illuminates how it fits the distinctive dual focus of the Prometheus Award on quality and liberty.

The other Hall of Fame finalists were The Star Dwellers, a 1961 novel (Faber and Faber; Avon Books) by James Blish; That Hideous Strength, a 1945 novel (Scribner) by C.S. Lewis; Salt, a 2000 novel (Gollancz) by Adam Roberts; and Singularity Sky, a 2003 novel (Ace) by Charles Stross.

Prometheus Awards History

The Prometheus Awards, sponsored by the Libertarian Futurist Society (LFS), were first presented in 1979, making it one of the most enduring awards after the Nebula and Hugo awards, and one of the oldest fan-based awards currently in sf.

For more than four decades, the Prometheus Awards have recognized outstanding works of science fiction and fantasy that dramatize the perennial conflict between liberty and power, favor cooperation over coercion, expose the abuses and excesses of coercive government, and/or critique or satirize authoritarian systems, ideologies and assumptions.

Above all, the Prometheus Awards strive to recognize speculative fiction that champions individual rights, based on the moral/legal principle of non-aggression as the ethical and practical foundation for peace, prosperity, progress, justice, tolerance, mutual respect, civility and civilization itself.

All LFS members have the right to nominate eligible works for all categories of the Prometheus Awards, while publishers and authors are welcome to submit potentially eligible works for consideration using the form linked from the LFS website’s main page at www.lfs.org

While the Best Novel category is limited to novels published in English for the first time during the previous calendar year, Hall of Fame nominees — which must have been published, performed, broadcast or released at least 20 years ago — may be in any narrative or dramatic form, including novels, novellas, stories, films, television series or episodes, plays, musicals, graphic novels, song lyrics, or narrative or dramatic verse.

The Best Novel winner receives a plaque with a gold coin, and the Hall of Fame winner, a plaque with a smaller gold coin.

Michael Johnson on RAW's memorable trips

A belladonna plant (Creative Commons photo, source). 

Michael Johnson has a new Substack issue out, "Robert Anton Wilson: Two Formative Drug Trips," with the usual careful research you expect when Michael writes about RAW. Here is a good observation:

"There seems something paradoxical about drug writing: reading about Bad Trips often seems more interesting than reading about Good Trips. Hey, I want all of your trips to be good ones: emotional breakthroughs, sudden realizations that change your life for the better, the feeling of being connected with everyone, every living thing, the biosphere, and the universe, all that really Good Stuff. But it’s at times not gripping reading. Bad trips very often, I find, make for a cracking good read. I read and I think of a line from DFW: well…here’s a supposedly fun thing I’ll never have to do. (He said “never do again” but ya know?)"

As I remark in the comments, the link Michael provides to an R.U. Sirius bad trip has some pretty memorable lines, e.g. when the hospital authorities look at his fake IDs: "Since the admission authorities knew I wasn't Ho Chi Minh, they figured the other ID must be the correct one. I was admitted as Frank Zappa." Also: "The arrival of the ambulance got the attention of my parents."

Lost Leary-Wilson book now available

 

Using the Timothy Leary archives at the New York Public Library, Bobby Campbell has made available a lost book, The Periodic Table of Energy, by Timothy Leary and Robert Anton Wilson. 

A download of the PDF and Bobby's explanation of how he recovered the document and made it available can be found at Bobby's post at the Only Maybe blog. Note that it's a hefty file, 158 MB. The cover, which I show above, was created by Bobby.

Discussing the manuscript, Bobby writes, "I haven't done a detailed comparison yet, but from a decent skimming of these pages and my memory of The Game of Life and Info-Psychology, I would say The Periodic Table of Energy represents a distinct formulation of Leary's ideas, though clearly early drafts of concepts that he would revisit, and further develop, in later works."

In the first comment, quackenbush writes, "This is definitely a proto version of the Game of Life, an occult transmission, and not a proto-Exo-psychology, which is more of 'scientific' presentation. Curiously, he lists other books, and it appears that 'Interstellar Neurogenetics' is the proto-Exo-Psychology."

More information here. 

A Grateful Dead history

 

The Grateful Dead in 1970. Public domain publicity photo, source. 

Despite getting a strong recommendation from Tracey Harms to check it out, it took me awhile to get to the "Dark Star" by the Grateful Dead episode in Andrew Hickey's  A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs podcast. In podcast form, it's four hours and 39 minutes long. I saved myself considerable time by reading the transcript, available at the link.

Tracey mentioned that it would give me background on the California  milieu of Robert Anton Wilson, and in fact Wilson is mentioned in the podcast. While the song "Dark Star" is duly covered, the podcast in fact is a long history of the band.

I am not particularly a Grateful Dead fan -- I did the bulk of my listening to the Dead when I was in high school and college, before 1980, because I had friends who listened to the records -- but I thought the podcast was very interesting, and I read the whole thing. Some fine research. I had no idea, for example, that two members of the band, Phil Lesh and Tom Constanten, had ties to modern classical music and knew Steve Reich. Even as a transcript it took quite a bit of time to get through the podcast, but I read it eagerly. 

Before offering another theory on why Silicon Valley became such a technology powerhouse -- because so much defense spending was focused there -- host Andrew Hickey offers this:

"Many people who were influential on the Californian ideology, like the postmodernist science fiction writer Robert Anton Wilson, would argue that if you plotted a timeline of the most innovative people in human history, that timeline would slowly move west and slightly north, accelerating over the centuries, as the most radical thinkers followed the Sun, so in the last few centuries the greatest innovations had come from Greece, then Italy, then France, then England, then New York, and then finally the West Coast of the USA. According to Wilson and his friends like Timothy Leary, now that wave had finally reached the Pacific there was only one place left to go, and so humanity would fulfill its manifest destiny and head up into the stars."

Jerry Garcia was only 53 when he died after years of neglecting his health. The story is very sad. The band should have let him stop touring and get his life together. I plan to check out more episodes of the ongoing podcast and if you get interested in it, you can get bonus episodes by supporting Andrew Hickey on his Patreon. 

'The Classical Style' reading group, week seven

 

II  THE CLASSICAL STYLE 

2.  Structure and Ornament 

By ERIC WAGNER
Special guest blogger

The references to Rossini on page 101 makes me think of the popularity of his “The Barber of Seville” in the mid-twentieth century from Bugs Bunny in “The Rabbit of Seville” to Alfalfa of the Little Rascals singing “Figaro, Figaro, Figaro”. Joseph Kerman has written about how people have complained about the “death” of classical music for over a hundred years. Kerman notes that classical music survives, but often not in the way some people wish it would. In his wonderful (non-technical) book  Opera and the Morbidity of Music Kerman notes the surprising revival of the popularity of opera in the 1990’s and the popularity of the Three Tenors and the CD Chant. 

The discussion of ornamentation in this chapter makes me think about popular music in the last forty years, especially post-Mariah Carey, post-Whitney Houston singing, where singers typically add more ornamentation than in the music of the seventies and eighties. Watching American Idol in the 2000’s I noticed how young singers tended to add way more ornamentation than I tended to like. I think about changing performance styles of “The Star-Spangled Banner”.  

I love the Heisenbergian tone of pg. 104, with Rosen’s uncertainty about how to find an accurate interpretation of music especially when it comes to knowing what kind of ornamentation Mozart would have liked in the slow movements of his piano concerti. 

The first 108 pages of this book have laid the groundwork for appreciating the classical style. We have  reached the top of the roller coaster. Enjoy the ride!  

Erik Satie, surrealist composer?

A portrait of Erik Satie by the artist Santiago Rusiñol.

When I recently read The Moon and Serpent Bumper Book of Magic by Alan Moore and Steve Moore, I was pleased but a bit surprised to see Erik Satie as practically the only composer who gets much attention in the book. Satie is described as a Surrealist composer and his music is recommended for one of the magical workings the authors describe.

Erik Satie (1866-1922), is a kind of ambiguous figure in the history of classical music. On the one hand, he isn't terribly famous. He doesn't get a huge amount of airplay on classical music radio. He is not an international superstar composer in the way that French contemporaries such as Debussy and Ravel were.

On the other hand, it is hard to exaggerate how influential he is on modern classical music. The Wikipedia bio gives some sense of this, but there is a good explanation in Virtual Music, a book that the modern American composer William Duckworth (1943-2012) gave to me years ago. Duckworth explains that Satie was a big influence on John Cage, who in turn influenced many other composers (such as Duckworth). 

Satie, for example, invented "furniture  music," music to be played in the background, rather like Brian Eno's ambient music. It was written for the two intermission of a play, and when members of the audience stopped talking and began to listen, Satie ran around saying, "Talk, keep on talking. And move around. Whatever you do, don't listen!"

Satie's titles for his music included "Desiccated Embryos," "Veritable Flabby Preludes (for a Dog)" and "Three Pieces in the Form of a Pear," the latter written after  his buddy Debussy told him his music lacked shape. Duckworth doesn't mention this, but doesn't that sound like the kinds of titles Frank Zappa has for much of his music?

Duckworth also relates that Satie wrote a short piano piece called "Vexations"  and directed it be played 840 times. John Cage organized the first concert to carry that out, in 1963; it took more than 18 hours. There have been other such concerts  since then, see this Alex Ross piece. 

Satie is mostly known for his piano music,  but he also also wrote a ballet called "Parade," which featured sets and costumes designed by Picasso. I saw a video clip when I attended a Picasso exhibition a few months ago at the Cleveland Museum of Art, and the absurd costumes did give the performance a Surrealist air.

Bonus link: My new Substack piece on "Five modern composers you should know."  I mention Duckworth, and if you don't know what the "angel music" is that was used to comfort dying AIDS patients, you might want to read my article. 

A Picasso costume from "Parade"

Schism in the Catholic Church

Saint-Nicolas-du-Chardonnet, Paris, occupied by the SSPX since 1977, Wikipedia says (public domain photo).

If you follow the news, you have have noticed that the Catholic Church has excommunicated six bishops in the ultra-conservative Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX), e.g. the "Latin mass folks." 

Eric Wagner, the author of An Insider's Guide to Robert Anton Wilson and Straight Outta Dublin: James Joyce and Robert Anton Wilson (the latter with Michael Johnson) wrote to me and suggested I mention the news:

"Bob wrote a ton about challenges within the Catholic Church in the 1970's surrounding the P2 conspiracy and the death of Pope John Paul I. The SSPX schixm, which goes back to the 1960's and Vatican II, makes me think about the whole history of the Catholic Church during our lifetimes. Also, the conservative group Opus Dei got some press when the Da Vinci Code movie came out, and it seems like Dan Brown read Bob Wilson. I don't know how all these puzzle pieces fit together." 

What we read last month

A Hilaritas Press book, information here. 

Mark K. Brown's reads and re-reads in June:

Elevated: Cannabis as a Tool for Mind Enhancement by Sebastian Marincolo  6/6 
The Neutronium Alchemist, Part 2: Conflict  by Peter F. Hamilton  6/13   
Mount Analogue by Rene Daumal  6/16   
Writing on Drugs by Sadie Plant  6/17   
Out of the Dead City by Samuel R. Delany  6/21   
The Duchess of Malfi by John Webster   6/24

What I read (or re-read) last month:

The Amazing Editorials, Ted White
Roman Conquests: Britain, Simon  Elliott
The Moon and Serpent Bumper Book of Magic, Alan Moore and Steve  Moore
New Hampshire, Robert Frost

Feel free to share in the comments what you read  in June. 

An obituary mentions RAW

Annabelle "Joanne" Bates

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? 

Maybe Day is drawing near

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. 

Scott Sumner on cannabis legalization

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. 

'The Classical Style' reading group, week six

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

This chapter title makes think of how Aristotle and Aquinas’s ideas of coherence influenced Stephen Dedalus in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. 

Foreshadowing: In the last chapter of this book Rosen discusses a piece by Schumann that alludes to the final song in Beethoven’s “An Die Ferne Geliebte”, “Nimm sie hin denn, diese Lieder”. I plan to listen to his song a few times a week for the next hundred days so that I can hopefully recognize the allusion when we reach the final chapter. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsgS3I1NORY&list=RDRsgS3I1NORY&start_radio=1 

For anyone struggling a bit with this text, I suspect it will get easier when we get to the Haydn chapters. In these early chapters, Rosen deals with a wide variety of music from the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries discussing topics like ”The Coherence of the Style”. When he focuses on one set of pieces by one composer, I think things will make more sense. I think books like this reward rereading because they cover such large topics, and I think Rosen covers them very well.  

Pg. 68: Rosen says of the classical style that “a single movement longer than twenty minutes is beyond its reach,” but the fourth movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony tends to run over 24 minutes. 

July 4, 2026, marks the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Pg. 94 mentions “the ferment that followed the American Revolution.” I feel this book suits the troubled times of 2026, I feel grateful for the people reading along with us. 

An Australian historian on conspiracy theory -- and Carl Oglesby

 Perhaps this might be of interest to Illuminatus! fans? Jesse Walker, an expert on the subject himself, pens a review of The Hidden History of Conspiracy Theory by Andrew McKenzie-McHarg. declaring the book " the most original study of the subject to come along in years."

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. 

More here. 

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."

Alan Moore and Steve Moore on 'Illuminatus!'

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."  

A 'new' Orson Welles movie?

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."

More here. Via Tyler Cowen's often-interesting blog 

RAW ebook is cheap again

 

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. 

A German radio documentary on RAW

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."

New Hilaritas podcast: Flatley on 'The Occult Timothy Leary'

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 Classical Style' reading group, Week Five

 Domenico Scarlatti

 3. The Origins of the Style 

By ERIC WAGNER
Special guest blogger

Pg. 47 –  Johann Sebastian Bach: born March 31, 1685, died July 28, 1750.  

George Frideric Handel: born March 5, 1685, died April 13, 1759.  

Giuseppe Domenico Scarlatti: born October 26, 1685, died July 23, 1757. 

Haydn composed his Op. 33 String Quartets in 1781.  

This chapter outlines the musical world of Robert Anton Wilson’s The Earth Will Shake and The Widow’s Son: continuing influence of Scarlatti, Bach, and Handel; a very young Mozart; and Haydn toiling away in relative obscurity in Esterhazy in the Austro-Hungarian Empire.  

Rosen writes: 

The idea of a Form striving to define itself, to become flesh in all these different ways, is attractive, but even as a metaphor it sets a trap. It leads one to assume that there was such a thing as ‘sonata form’ in the late eighteenth century, and that the composers knew what it was, whereas  nothing we know about the situation would lead us to suppose anything of the kind. The feeling for any form, even the minuet, was much more fluid. 

                                                - pg. 52 

This passage helps to address Oz Fritz’s comment, “I don't know why Rosen calls the sonata a texture and not a form. Perhaps he will explain that as we move along.” 

(It does bother me that Rosen always uses male pronouns when refering to generic composers or artists.) 

    In Sonata Forms Rosen writes: 

    In the eighteenth century, consequently, there was no notion of an isolated  sonata form as such: all that existed was a gradually evolving conception of     the composition of instrumental music – a pure instrumental style untroubled  by the exigencies of concerto, dance music, or opera overture, unhampered  by the old-fashioned procedures of fugue and variations. It is significant that     eighteenth-century accounts of sonata form are all description of     instrumental compostion in general. 

- pg. 14-15 

Hilaritas Press news -- from John Higgs!

 

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."

Gerry Fialka interviews me

 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. 

'The Occult Timothy Leary': Two new reviews

 

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. 

Proud Miskatonic University alums

 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. 

Wednesday links

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.

A joke at the old RAWilson.com site.

Bobby Campbell news update [UPDATED]

 

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. 

'The Classical Style' reading group, week four

 Frédéric Chopin

2. Theories of Form 

By ERIC WAGNER
Special guest blogger

This parenthetical passage on page 34 really intrigued me when I first read The Classical Style in 1991:  

 (The greater the composer, the larger the terms of his control over the significance of his ideas, even when the range of his conception is deliberately narrowed: that is why Chopin must be considered in the company of the greatest in spite of the limitations of genre and medium that he imposed upon  himself.) 

I started playing string bass in fourth grade, and I tended to value composers who composed orchestral music since I got to play their music in orchestras. I started playing piano in third grade, but bass quickly became my main instrument, and I never played any Chopin on piano. 

In 1995 Charles Rosen’s The Romantic Generation came out, and it floored me. I remember that one sentence from The Classical Style, and roughly one third of Rosen’s large new book made clear why he considered Chopin “in the company of the greatest.” Since 1995 I have learned to love Chopin’s music, and I have come to completely agree with Mr. Rosen. 

Rosen frequently mentions Donald Francis Tovey (1875-1940) and Heinrich Schenker (1868-1935). I had heard music major friends mention Schenker in the 1980’s, but I don’t think I heard of Tovey until I read Kerman’s The Beethoven Quartets. Kerman and Rosen both had a ton of respect for Tovey’s writings on music. Kerman wrote a wonderful tribute “Tovey’s Beethoven” available in Kerman’s Write All These Down. Tovey has become less popular with younger musicologists. As Rosen mentions in this chapter, the arguments can get very nasty. Ethan Iverson quoted Sayre’s Law that “"Academic politics is the most vicious and bitter form of politics, because the stakes are so low." Despite Kerman’s love of Tovey’s writing, he included a famous nasty attack on Tovey in his Norton Critical Score of Mozart’s Piano Concerto in C major, K. 503 (#25) along with a famous Tovey essay on that concerto. 

I enjoyed Jan Swafford biography of Beethoven, but something seemed missing to me. About halfway through I noticed that, although he frequently mentioned Kerman and Rosen, Tovey did not appear in the bibliography or the index. Swafford only mentions Tovey once in a dismissive footnote. The decline in Tovey’s reputation seems to have happened because post-Rosen musicologists tend to overemphasize the similarities between different motives in a piece of music (in my opinion). Tovey emphasized caution in this regard (as do Rosen and Kerman). In Tovey’s long analysis of the Hammerklavier Piano Sonata, he writes: 

The movements of this Sonata, and of Op. 110, show a subtle and elusive relation in their main themes. Such subtleties ought not to be imputed to classical sonatas without very cogent evidence; when people see more than is there they will be very unlikely to see all that is there. But the evidence, both         internal and external, is quite adequate here. 

                    - A Companion to Beethoven’s Pianoforte Sonatas, pg. 221 

Jeff Riggenbach interviews Timothy Leary

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. 

'Tales of Illuminatus' Kickstarter ends soon

 

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).

More here. 

Is 'Pale Fire' a 'lost father' of hypertext documents?

 

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."

More here. 

RAW, the 'Wonkette' obituary

 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!

'Osiris is a black god!'

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.