'Modern Occultist' interviews me about Robert Shea

 

Modern Occultist, which recently interviewed Eric Wagner, has posted an interview with me about Robert Shea. 

Here is one of the questions and answers:

MODERN OCCULTIST: John Higgs observed that one of the great paradoxes of Illuminatus! is that its cult following transferred itself almost entirely to Robert AntonWilson, leaving Roberts Shea’s enormous contributions and later solo work at genuine risk of being forgotten. You spent a decade assembling this collection to correct that imbalance. What do you think produced that asymmetry in the first place—and what does Shea’s work offer that Wilson’s, for all its brilliance, doesn’t? And also, is that something that you can directly address as the editor and chief webmaster for the RAWIllumination.net official blog?

TOM JACKSON: I suspect that part of it is that after Illuminatus! was published in 1975, Robert Anton Wilson went on to fairly quickly publish  a series of other brilliant books that continued some of the same themes as Illuminatus!,  e.g. Cosmic Trigger in 1977, the Schrödinger's Cat Trilogy (1979-1981), The Illuminati Papers (1980) and so on, with more new books coming out in the 1980s.  Robert Shea's first novel, Time of the Dragons (the first of the two Shike novels), came out in June 1981. six years after Illuminatus!, and the connections to Illuminatus! are more subtle than in Wilson's work. 

Shea's solo novels are all historical novels, many of them set in the Middle Ages, and will appeal to anyone who likes a good story and wants a vivid sense of what life might have been like in those days. When I began my RAWIllumination.net blog back in 2010, it was almost exclusively devoted to Robert Anton Wilson and to RAW's many interests. As I read more of Shea's novels, though, I began to realize he was a very interesting writer in his own right, and I gradually shifted to more posts about Shea. I now have both "Robert Anton Wilson Resources" and "Robert Shea Resources" areas on my home page.

More here. 

Here is the official page for Every Day Is a GOOD Day, the anthology of Robert Shea's writings I put together.  And here is the Hilaritas Press page. 

'The Classical Style' reading group, Week 13

A performance of Don Giovanni in Vienna

3.Comic Opera 

By ERIC WAGNER
Special guest blogger          

 On page 296 Rosen writes that the listener "must have an educated ear to know what to listen for, educated in the stylistic language and not just in the superficial formalities." I hope this study group helps us all develop educated ears.  

One might see Don Giovanni, which deals with a man who sleeps with over a thousand women, as a meditation on the Manosphere. Joseph Kerman discusses dealing with problems of this opera in an essay in "Write All These Down".  

I like the discussion of Mozart as subversive and dangerous on page 325. 

I came to Don Giovanni backwards. I didn't know the opera at all when I read Rosen's The Romantic Generation when it came out in 1995. In that book he discussed Franz Liszt's Reminiscences of Don Juan, a piano fantasy based on Don Giovanni. In 1995 a CD by Rosen came out also called The Romantic Generation which included that piano piece. Rosen had quoted with approval George Bernard Shaw who said that the best way to appreciate the Liszt piece was to memorize the opera and then to forget it. Instead I fell in love with the piano version, and over the past 31 years I have slowly gotten to know the opera. One might see Liszt as the first rock star. He travelled around Europe performing piano recitals. Women would make bracelets out of his broken piano strings. He had a reputation as a Don Juan, so he plays with his own myth in his piano fantasy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlBYflI8dLM&list=RDjlBYflI8dLM&start_radio=1 

Author John Crowley has died

John  Crowley (Creative Commons photo, source). 

Author John Crowley, the author of Little, Big, and other works has died. Here is the obituary in Locus.  And you can read the entry in the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. 

Now that I have gotten around to reading a couple of novels by Thomas Pynchon, John Crowley is probably the writer that I've meant to read for the longest time, without having gotten around to it. I read dozens of books a year, but there's always someone I should have gotten to by now. I suspect that for many other serious readers, there are authors you've always meant to read. As author Kim Stanley Robinson remarked when I interviewed him years ago, the culture is really vast.

Jesse Walker called Crowley "one of the best" and wrote, "He wrote one of my very favorite novels (THE SOLITUDES) and several more I admire enormously (BEASTS, ENGINE SUMMER, LITTLE BIG, LOVE & SLEEP, DAEMONOMANIA). His words open one of my own books."

Literary award show will feature Aldous Huxley's grandchildren

 

Aldous Huxley in 1954

Somebunall of you I have noticed are interested in Aldous Huxley, so I thought I would mention there will be an online broadcast tomorrow of an awards show for the Prometheus Awards that will feature two of Huxley's adult grandchildren.

The event is 1 p.m. Sunday, Eastern time, and will feature awards being given to three books: The Prometheus Hall of Fame Award, for Brave New World; a Prometheus Award for A Kiss for Damocles by J. Kenton Pierce, and a Special Award for Young Adult Fiction for Storm-Dragon by Dave Freer. 

The various speakers planned tomorrow include two Huxley grandchildren, Tessa and Trev Huxley, and writer-editor Jack Miles,  co-trustee of the Aldous and Laura Huxley Literary Estate.

More details and a Zoom link here. 

Some disclosures: I am a judge for the Prometheus Awards, hence my interest; Robert Shea used to be involved with the awards, and a Prometheus Hall of Fame Award was given to Illuminatus!, hence possible interest from some of you. 

Leopold Bloom's journey across Dublin, mapped

A James Joyce drawing of Leopold Bloom. Source. 

When he taught James Joyce's Ulysses at Cornell, Vladimir Nabokov used to draw a map of Dublin to show Leopold Bloom's journey,  explaining that knowing some Dublin geography was useful to understanding what was going on. 

A website I read about a few days ago maps that journey, along with other fictional journeys. The website in question is Reading Maps, and it maps travels in Moby Dick, Ulysses and other fictional works.

Mark Frauenfelder, writing for the latest issue of the invaluable newsletter Recomendo, explains:

"Reading Maps plots the routes characters travel in novels and films — you can trace the Pequod’s ocean path as it chases Moby Dick, or Victor Frankenstein’s pursuit of his monster from Geneva to the Arctic. Hundreds of journeys are mapped so far, sortable by setting (Sea, Overland, River, Rail, Survival, and more), and each one breaks the story into stops you can follow one at a time: where a ship or train left from, and what happened there. Since the stops follow the plot, the site will happily spoil the ending if you haven’t finished the book."

Pretty cool!

'Tales of Illuminatus' No. 3 out soon

Here is Bobby Campbell's update for the Tales of Illumnatus comic book project. For your convenience, I'll just reproduce the announcement here:

Hey everyone!

Quick update just to confirm that everything is proceeding as planned :)))

Todd and I will be finishing up our pages over the next couple of weeks and fulfillment will begin before the end of the month.

The KS campaign is officially concluded and we will not be taking any further orders.

You should have received a notification to confirm your shipping address, if applicable:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/bobbycampbell/tales-of-illuminatus-3-opus-chao/backing/redeem?ref=creator_share

Just a quick reminder of our fulfillment schedule, so you know what to expect and when:

Summer shipments:

Issues 1, 2, and 3 (Print and Digital)

Music Collections (Digital)

Video Game (Digital)

Poster (Print)

Fall shipments:

The First Trip - Collection (Print and Digital)

Skeleton Key Zine (Print and Digital)

Jukebox Musical Cassette Tape (Physical)

Thank you so much for your support, I can't wait for you to see what we've built!

<3<3<3

bc

'Modern Occultist' on RAW

This is a Maybe Day piece I had missed, but Modern Occultist published a good-sized article on RAW on July 23, discussing Wilson and several of his books. There is also discussion of Eric Wagner's An Insider's Guide to Robert Anton Wilson. Here is the intro:

On July 23, 1973, a former Playboy editor turned novelist sat in California running himself through a battery of yogic breathing exercises and ceremonial magic techniques he'd adapted from Aleister Crowley, trying to see what would happen if he took his own skepticism and set it down for a while.

Somewhere in the archive of human letters there is a category of writer who cannot be summarized. You can describe their books, chart their influences, document their controversies, quote their more memorable lines—and still the essential thing will have slipped away, grinning at you from behind the nearest conspiracy theory. Robert Anton Wilson (1932–2007) was that kind of writer. He was a novelist, a philosopher, a stand-up comedian, a chaos magician by temperament if not always by practice, and—in the formulation he most favored for himself in his last years—“a Damned Old Crank.” He was also, by any honest reckoning, one of the most genuinely liberating thinkers of the twentieth century, a man who devoted his entire career to the single project of helping people think more carefully about how little they actually know.

More  here. 

'Modern Occultist' interviews Eric Wagner

Eric Wagner, ready for action when he was a bit younger (Facebook photo).

 Modern Occultist has just published a new interview with Eric Wagner, I thought it was pretty substantial. The interview is by C.M. Kushins, Here is one of the questions and answers:

MO: You document Wilson’s lifelong devotion to Ezra Pound’s Cantos—the phrase “hilaritas et amor” from the Paradiso section even became Wilson’s email signature. Yet Pound is a deeply problematic figure—which both you and Wilson acknowledged. How did Wilson square that particular tension, and how do you square it as someone who has spent decades in both men’s work?

EW: Bob did a very good job of separating the dancer from the dance, as Yeats put it. He would learn from people despite their more problematical aspects, as one can see from his discussions of Pound and Crowley, etc. I started reading Pound in 1982, and I would to read a bunch of Pound, become disgusted, and leave him alone for a while. Then I would read a bit of Pound, go “Wow!”, learn a lot, read a bunch more by and about Pound, get disgusted, and leave him alone for a while. As with Crowley, Pound has influenced me very profoundly, more so than with Crowley. I have also had the good fortune to teach number of Pound’s books in high school and community college classes.

In the 1990’s Bob invited me to participate in a discussion of Pound online at the Zero City Amphitheater. In our discussions there Bob compared me to St. Paul because he found me too judgmental of Uncle Ezra. 

More here. There's been other items of interest in Modern Occultist News, which I'll cover in a follow-up blog post. 

The biography of Mr. Kushins is interesting: "C. M. Kushins is the author of Nothing’s Bad Luck: The Lives of Warren Zevon (2019), Beast: John Bonham and the Rise of Led Zeppelin (2021), and Cooler Than Cool: The Life and Work of Elmore Leonard (2025). He has been a freelance journalist for over twenty years and his work has appeared in High Times and The Daily Beast, among others. His love of esoteric history began with both Tibetan and Zen Buddhism, as well as Western Hermeticism, which he lectured on in Berlin."

'The Classical Style' reading group, week twelve

A 1789 miniature of Mozart (public domain). 

2. String Quintet 

By ERIC WAGNER
Special guest blogger

One Christmas in the 1990's my grandmother asked what I would like for Christmas. Inspired by this book, I asked for a CD of Mozart string quintets. The record store didn't have one, so she got me a terrific CD of Mozart string quartets instead. In the 2010's Rafi recommended the recordings of the Mozart quintets by the Griller Quartet with William Primrose playing the extra viola part. I bought that two CD set and loved it, but I haven't listened to these works for as many years as I have some of the other works discussed in this book. Media and economics help shape the music we listen to and appreciate.  

Joseph Kerman wrote: 

Years ago I floated an idea about Western music history, that it might be  viewed as falling into millennium-long phases: initially an oral tradition, with people performing music from memory; then a period of literacy (a term Leo Treitler was using at the time), predicated on scores and partbooks to sing and play from; and now a new model determined by sound recording and the activity (or passivity) of listening.  - Opera and the Morbidity of Music, pg. 85 

As a musician in the 1980's I felt guilty about reading about music. Pianist Gary Graffman called his memoir I Really Should Be Practicing. Musicians sometimes looked down their noses at reading about music. Most of my professional musician friends have next to no interest in writers like Rosen and Kerman.  

When I started taking ballet classes in 1990, my teachers explicitly told us not to practice ballet at home so that we would not practice wrong, since we really knew next to nothing about ballet at the time. Ballet class did reawaken my interest in classical music, so I reread Erich Leinsdorf's The Composer's Advocate in which he recommended Kerman's The Beethoven Quartets. I read that book and loved it and proceeded to read all of Kerman. Kerman raved about The Classical Style, so I read that, loved it, and read all of Rosen's books and listened to a bunch of Rosen's CD's.  

 

Two Maybe Day articles, Oz and Michael

Oz Fritz and Michael Johnson both published new pieces within a few days of Maybe Day, July 23.

Oz' piece is "Crowley, Joyce, Lewis Carroll and the Night of Pan," published on his blog, The Oz Mix. I did not realize that Lewis Carroll was so influential on other authors until I saw Oz' piece. Oz' thesis that Joyce and Crowley could have met in Paris seems reasonable to me.

Michael's article is "On the Decadent Pleasure of Reading Difficult Books."  Michael remarks, "It’s kinda my thing to not be a part of Idiot Culture, so those of us - the sorts that read the OG - seem to be part of a cyclical monastic life of readers."

In the comments on Michael's piece, Spookah wrote, "I do not know if this post was inspired in part by Oz' recent 'Crowley, Joyce, Lewis Carroll and the Night of Pan', but I find that they complement each other nicely." Michael replied, "Oz’s recent post on Carroll, Crowley, Joyce and the Night of Pan was definitely one of the spurs for me here: good catch!"

Michael got a lot of comments for his piece, and I weighed in, too. 

Saturday links

 

PQ on Finnegans Wake and the Pluribus TV show (also the movie Dance First). 

John Higgs newsletter with lots of recommendations. 

My dog would be a better president than Trump. 

Neal Stephenson: Writing by hand is good for your brain. 

Totally automated classic rock radio station. 

Update on 'Chapel Perilous' audiobook Kickstarter

 Gabriel Kennedy/Prop Anon has posted a sample of the upcoming audiobook of the RAW biography Chapel Perilous: The Life & Thought Crimes of Robert Anton Wilson. 

Production is being funded by a Kickstarter campaign, which as in other Kickstarter campaigns offers a tier of rewards for people willing to help.  The deadline is September 3 for reaching the goal, so if you are interested, get on board sooner rather than later. 

Ezra Pound's daughter has died

 Brunnenburg castle, where Ezra Pound's daughter lived. (Creative Commons photo, details here). 

A fascinating New York Times obituary records the death, at age 101, of Mary de Rachewiltz, "Ezra Pound's daughter and defender," as the obituary puts it. 

My link gets  you behind the paywall, and you should read the obit by Trip Gabriel, as it has a lot of fascinating details, both about her and her famous dad.  The obit gives fill details on Pound's fascist tendencies and his neglectful parenting style. A couple of sentences: "In 1958, Pound won his release through the intervention of Eliot, Robert Frost and other poets. On his return to Italy, he gave a fascist salute to reporters."

Kickstarter launches for 'Chapel Perilous' audiobook

Gabriel Kennedy/Prop Anon has launched his Kickstarter to fund the audiobook version of his RAW biography, Chapel Perilous: The Life & Thought Crimes of Robert Anton Wilson. 

Details at the Kickstarter page, which lists the levels of support and the goodies you'll receive for various pledges. The goal is to raise $3,500. Bobby Campbell has announced his support. 

Steve Fly's tribal tale

When I did my Maybe Day article, "Reading about Robert Anton Wilson: Biographies, criticism and more," I listed three books under the "Critical Studies" heading -- Eric Wagner's two books, and Steve "Fly" Pratt's Fly On The Tale Of The Tribe: A Rollercoaster Ride With Robert Anton Wilson. And as I mentioned in my recent post on what I read last month, I finally read Steve's whole book last month. Here are a few notes.

At the end of Robert Anton Wilson's TSOG: The Thing that Ate the Constitution and Other Everyday Monsters, there's an outline for a planned RAW book called Tale of the Tribe. Steve's book is a collection of essays about (or related to) RAW, usually on topics or figures mentioned in the outline. 

I enjoyed the book. As you might expect with Steve, there's a lot of ideas and inspired notions. There are pieces on John Sinclair, Ezra Pound, James Joyce, Claude Shannon, Alan Moore's Jerusalem, plus excerpots from Steve's email exchanges and interviews of RAW.  There are many references to Finnegan's Wake. Here is a bit Steve wrote about FW, comparing it to the more experimental work of Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Sun Ra: "Now we can better constructively criticize their arts based on a lifetime of output and analysis of the evolution of their artform over time, we can now see and share a deeper coherence in their music."

Oz Fritz liked the book. Here is his review, written in 2019. 

A note on availability. While paperbacks of the book remain available in several places, including Walmart,  the inexpensive ebook I bought from Amazon and read last month (about $4) is no longer offered. Steve says he is working on a revised version of the book. Here is most of his email to me when I asked about the matter:

"Yes, I removed almost all my Kindle books, and some paperback in a fit of disgust at Amazon, Bezos and the nazi cia Mossad US led broligarchy. Fuck them! I hope I may find a real publisher some day and some interested entities in my work. 

"I have a completely rewritten edition, but things change so fast I can't get happy with it all. I have several introductions now." 

'The Classical Style' reading group, week eleven

 

Fortepiano by Johann Andreas Stein (Augsburg, 1775) – Berlin Musical Instrument Museum.
Creative Commons photo by Gérard Janot. Source. 

V  MOZART 

 1. The Concerto 

By ERIC WAGNER
Special guest blogger

On page 251 Rosen begins discussing K. 503, Concerto No. 25, my favorite. Joseph Kerman edited the Norton critical score of this concerto. I saw that book in a Tower Records in the 1990's, but I couldn't afford it. I later got the book from the library and loved it, and I have a special affection for that concerto.  

The footnote on page 255 deals with changes in pianos over time. When Mozart composed this concerto the piano had fewer keys than the standard 88 key piano of the last two hundred years. Pianists sometimes ask what they think Mozart would have wanted to hear on the longer keyboard. Would he have wanted to hear notes not possible to play on the keyboard for which he originally conceived the piece? 

These last eleven piano concertos, number 17 to 27, seem to me among the greatest creations of humanity. If you find yourself struggling with Rosen's analysis in this book, I recommend just putting the book aside and listening to the music. I think this marks my sixth time reading this book. It covers so much music, I get lost sometimes, but I feel grateful that I get to return to the music, and I feel grateful that you have chosen to join me on this voyage. 

In 1985 I went to London for the first time. Most nights I went to a play, but the theaters closed on Sundays, so I went to hear a concert with Andre Previn playing and conducting a Mozart concerto (I don't remember which one) and conducting the Brahms Requiem. I had read articles condemning pianists conducting from the keyboard, so I found myself most looking forward to the Brahms, but the Mozart performance ended up blowing me away. A few weeks later I found myself in Ingolstadt, Bavaria, on July 23 where I heard the original German version of Falco's song "Amadeus" in a nightclub called Wonderland. The next night in Munich I saw Berman's film of The Magic Flute. 

What we read last month

 

Here is what Mark K. Brown read last month:

Neuromancer by William Gibson 7/23 
Slow Learner by Thomas Pynchon  7/26   
Anti-Sartre, with an Essay on Camus by Colin Wilson  7/27  

Mark is traveling, so he has less reading time. He also is plugging away on Charles Rosen's The Classical Style.

Here's what I read in July:

The Warlord of Greenline Town, J. Kenton Pierce.
The Story of Russia, Orlando Figes.
Kakistocracy: Why Populism Ends in Disaster, Richard Hanania.
Fly On The Tale Of The Tribe: A Rollercoaster Ride With Robert Anton Wilson, Steven James Pratt.
Master Alvin, Orson Scott Card. 

Starting in July, I am trying each month to read at least two books nominated for next year's Prometheus Award (I am a judge), hence the Pierce and the Card.

So, what did you read last month? 

New ebook version of 'Neurologic'

After I tried (and failed) to make an epub version of  Neurologic by Timothy Leary and Joanna Harcourt-Smith, the short book on the Eight Circuit model that is not in print but available on the Internet (see this post for background), Mike Gathers tackled the job. At this link, you can download the original PDF file, or a zipped epub file, which quickly unzips into a working epub file. I have tested the epub on my smartphone and it seemed to be fine. 

This seems worth mentioning in a blog post because an epub of the book seems more convenient to me. You can much more easily read an epub file on your phone than a PDF; I use a well-reviewed app called Readera but there are many others. (Here is a guide to reading apps.) Also, you can use the send-to-Kindle feature to read the book on your Kindle, or  your Kindle app.

Here is a Wikipedia article about Neurologic. Apparently the book dates to when there were seven circuits, not 8. 

I need to look more closely at the book just recovered by Bobby Campbell, The Periodic Table of Energy, would it work as an epub, too? 

Thanks, Mike! 

Don Dulchinos on 'All Things Are Lights'

When I posted my two new articles for Maybe Day, "Reading about Robert Anton Wilson: Biographies, criticism and more," and "Robert Shea: A reader's guide,'  I was not surprised that the RAW essay did get more comments. 

But I was pleased that Don Dulchinos did take a moment to post a comment on the Shea article. He wrote, "For my money, All Things are Lights and The Saracen are a worthwhile explication of how bureaucratic Christianity exterminated personal gnosis, at least for a few centuries."

The late writer and author Patricia Monaghan, Shea's widow, told me in an email that All Things Are Lights was her favorite of Shea's works. 

She wrote (in a 2011 email), "I'm glad you like All Things, which is such a terrific book.  You are right in the 'prequel' idea in that Bob's interest in secret societies and such folded over from Ill! to All Things, but there was not a direct connection.  What drove Bob as an historical novelist was an interest in the underdogs of history, the people who were 'lost' from a historical point of view.  (I keep thinking that Saracen should be made into a movie, now, with the rise in interest in the Islamic world--but of course Bob's Muslim characters weren't terrorists!  Well...they were...sort of....)  The Cathars were persecuted in what was really a land-grab by the French against the Spanish--in Languedoc today, you can still see, in bars, maps of France before and after the 'Albigensian crusade,' which make very clear that France exploded in size after grabbing that land.  Bob's last published book, Shaman, looked at the Black Hawk War from the Indian side.  That was his way--always to focus on the 'other' in any historical situation."

Don Dulchinos is the author of several books, including Neurosphere: The Convergence of Evolution, Group Mind, and the Internet, Forbidden Sacraments The Survival of Shamanism in Western Civilization, Pioneer of Inner Space; The Life of Fitz Hugh Ludlow and The Collected Works of Fitz Hugh Ludlow. (Here is the Wikipedia bio for Ludlow). More information about these books at the official Don Dulchinos website. 

You can also read Dulchino's review of Terra II…A Way Out by Timothy Leary, published by Hilaritas in 2024, with links to related articles. 

RAW on politics as a cause of pessimism

 

With politics lately seeming so bad, not just in the U.S. but in much of the world, I thought the above might be of interest. Via Klaster Chaosmos on Bluesky (worth a follow if you are a RAW fan there!). Klaster responded when I replied "I hope he's right," saying "Whether right or wrong, to me it serves as a stark reminder of the backwards and mostly reactionary nature of government and politics in general .. with Bob's trademark cosmic wink of an incorrigible optimist, of course ... as for relevancy: context matters." 

Klaster also shared the source with me after a bit of research and said the source is The Prism Lecture, 1982. "At some point, Bob discusses economics & politics from an angle of primate psychology & territorial behaviour. The quote comes on after he quotes Timothy Leary:

"The only intelligent way
to discuss politics
is on all fours."

Lots of relevant stuff throughout."

Possibly related: In a recent Substack newsletter, Scott Sumner reviews Richard Hanania's new book Kakistocracy: Why Populism Ends in Disaster and then suggests:

"So how depressed should we be by the rise of anti-elite populism? Consider these three claims:

1. Politics is getting worse.

2. Voters are becoming less well informed.

3. The world is getting better.

Are all three claims true? I believe the answer is yes. There’s more to life than politics." (More at the link.)

Also possibly related: A Fareed Zakaria piece in the Washington Post, "A revolution is unfolding. Voters everywhere are furious." He suggests this is what's going on: "The larger explanation is that we are living through one of history’s great technological revolutions. And these transformations always produce deep anxiety and fear."

He adds, "The last technological transformation on this scale came between roughly 1880 and 1920. Electricity, the telephone, railroads, the automobile and movies overturned entire industries and ways of life. Millions left farms for cities. Global trade disrupted local economies. New fortunes appeared overnight, while old occupations disappeared. In this turmoil, frustration and anger found political pathways. The left turned to communism, the right to fascism. What followed were new mass movements, cultural upheavals and world war." (The claim that technological changes helped give rise to the right wing populism of Trump, Bolsonaro, etc. also is a key claim of Hanania's book.)

I found the piece via Tyler Cowen, who writes, "You can be a victim of these processes, or keep your wits about you.  The choice is yours."

A copy of 'Neurologic' for you

Timothy Leary in 1970 (public  domain photo). 

 I recently wrote a blog post in which I asked Mike Gathers and Joseph L. Flatley which Timothy Leary title to read to get Leary's take on the Eight Circuit model, and I got two recommendations. Lenny suggest Neuropolitique, which is in print and remains available from New Falcon. Mike Gathers suggested Neurologic and suggested a couple of links where it can be downloaded. 

Mike has now made a link available for a cleaned-up version of Neurologic. It is a PDF file and you can download it here. I have myself downloaded a copy. 

I thought it might be helpful to have an epub version, as that's the standard platform used by ebook readers and apps across platforms, so I tried to convert Mike's PDF file, but the book reader on my smartphone would not recognize it as a legitimate file. Has anyone else tried to do that? 

Scott Alexander on an interesting magic mushroom

 

Lanmaoa asiatica. Creative Commons photo, source. 

[Given that many of you are interested in psychedelic mushrooms, I thought I would share an excerpt  from Scott Alexander's recent Substack issue, "Links For July 2026 (Part 1)."  Each link has a few sentences with the link. Here is what Scott posted about an edible mushroom, Lanmaoa asiatica. A lot of the other links are pretty interesting, too, so check them out -- The Management.]

Overdoses of the edible mushroom Lanmaoa asiatica have only two side effects: stomach upset, and seeing hallucinatory gnomes and elves for the next ~week. As far as anyone can tell, the mushroom isn’t psychoactive in any way besides the gnome hallucinations (ie users are still completely lucid, and understand that what they’re seeing isn’t real). It’s not culture-bound or placebo, because the mushroom grows in China (Yunnan) and the Philippines, and both places have independently noticed this, apparently without any contact or discussion with one another. I went down this rabbit hole a little; answers to some obvious questions:

• We have no idea what chemical is involved; state-of-the-art in analyzing the mushroom’s pharmacology is this extremely boring and result-free paper.

• There’s no way to get this mushroom outside of China or the Philippines; all attempts to turn up online vendors have failed.

• Even within those places, it’s not really distinguished from several other similar-looking mushrooms, and your chances of locating it without being a Chinese-speaking mushroom expert are low.

• There is no good information about what constitutes a normal dose, what constitutes a hallucinogenic overdose, and whether there is some even worse level of overdose that will actually hurt you (nobody has described the latter, and it seems unlikely within the bounds of normal Chinese cooking failures, but it might be a different situation if a Westerner who knew nothing about this mushroom took a random amount trying to overdose on purpose).

• The elves and gnomes are described as “mischievous” and are capable of interacting with objects in the environment, eg climbing tables.

• The hallucinations seem similar to other gnomeogenic conditions like Charles Bonnet syndrome, but it’s unclear why this should be true, since the latter usually involves visual injury rather than psychoactive chemicals.

'The Classical Style' reading group, week ten

Ludwig van Beethoven, about the time the Hammerklavier was written. (Source). 

Part IV  SERIOUS OPERA 

By ERIC WAGNER
Special guest blogger

On page 180 Rosen writes, “Tovey has remarked that Beethoven was not insufficiently dramatic but rather too dramatic for the stage: his music compresses into ten minutes the complexity of a three-act opera." This reminds of the equation Pound quotes “Dictung = condensare”, which Basil Bunting found in a German/Italian dictionary, poetry = condensation. Pound thought a short poem could compress the action of a novel. One can see this in something like Robert Browning’s “Fra Lippo Lippi”.  

I find it interesting that The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, and The Magic Flute have remained in the repertoire continuously since their premieres, never needed to get revived. Some of Shakespeare’s contemporaries criticized his blending of genres: his comedies contained serious depths and his tragedies contained farcical humor. I found it odd that the 2006 Will Ferrell film Stranger than Fiction insisted on a rather narrow separation of tragedy from comedy. I like how Rosen shows how Mozart took elements of opera seria and incorporated them into the opera buffa traditions to create his masterpieces.  

This chapter serves as a transition from the world of Haydn to the world of Mozart, with a preview of the world of Beethoven. Rosen sees them all working within the world of the classical style, with Beethoven stretching that style into undreamt of territories. In some ways I see this study group as part of our upcoming Schroedinger’s Cat study group. A character in that novel invites a number of concert pianists to a party so she can talk with them about Beethoven’s Hammerklavier Sonata. I like to think of Charles Rosen attending that party and sharing some of the ideas in this book with the host and the other guests, listening the other pianists' notions about the Hammerklavier and having spirited discussions with them.

Joseph L. Flatley's Maybe Day essay

 

Joseph Flatley (illustration "borrowed" from his newsletter). 

Joseph L. Flatley has a new Substack newsletter up, "Sirius, Osiris, and Isis — oh my!," which discusses Maybe Day, Robert Anton Wilson and his own recent experiences with a dream journal and a Crowleyan rite he performed that produced some interesting synchronicities. It's well worth a read.

Lenny also has a new book out, The Occult Timothy Leary: The Tarot, Magical States, and Post-Terrestrial Evolution. You can read my interview with him.  Oz Fritz wrote a review. Michael Johnson wrote one, too. 

The one-day Bobby Campbell art show

I was unfortunately not able to hit the road to view the pop up exhibition of Bobby Campbell art at the Create Magic Art Shop in Wilmington, Delaware. Bobby has now posted photos on Bluesky to show what it was like, and I reproduce them here. For prints and comics, see Bobby's Weirdoverse Gift Shop. 

Hilaritas Press releases new edition of 'The Trials of Arthur'

Yesterday, amid all of the other Maybe Day excitement, Hilaritas Press released a new edition of The Trials of Arthur: The Biker Who Would Be King by C.J. Stone and Arthur Pendragon. Above is the podcast, also released yesterday, of Mike Gathers interviewing Arthur. 

"Hilaritas Press was contacted by the authors of this astounding book to see if we would republish the book, with additional material and color photographs throughout. After reading the book, we were enthusiastic," Rasa explains.

A blurb explains, "Raised Druid King of Britain by five Druid orders on the King’s Stone in Kingston upon Thames in 1998 (where seven English monarchs had previously been crowned), this is the real life story of an outlaw biker who changed his name to Arthur Pendragon, became a Druid, then a King, who took on the British establishment and won!"

The author,  Christopher James Stone, has a new essay up, "Myth, Maybe and the Matter of Britain," that explains the book. 

Happy Maybe Day!

 

Bobby's full list of contributions is here. 

Check out the streaming live broadcast. You can see the playlist. 

My contributions are "Reading about Robert Anton Wilson: Biographies, criticism and more" and "Robert Shea: A reader's guide." 

News: 'Chapel Perilous' audiobook, Boing Boing covers the lost Leary-RAW book

In his Substack newsletter, Gabriel Kennedy/Prop Anon announces a Kickstarter campaign will begin soon for an audiobook of his RAW bio, Chapel Perilous: The Life & Thought Crimes of Robert Anton Wilson. He built his  own recording studio and saw his computer die when he started recording, but it's on the way. Details here. And as for the Kickstarter, here is the link.

Meanwhile, the folks at Boing Boing, specifically Ellsworth Toohey, have taken note of Bobby Campbell's recovery of the lost Timothy Leary-Robert Anton Wilson book, The Periodic Table of Energy. It is good to see the publicity, although a brief mention that Maybe Day is tomorrow and that Bobby is organizing the celebration would have been nice. Here is my coverage of the book.  And you can also get Bobby's original announcement. 

New articles for Maybe Day

Maybe Day is Thursday, but some of us have been posting articles so that we can create links to be included in Bobby Campbell's Maybe Day Roundup.

Below are my two contributions, "Reading about Robert Anton Wilson: Biographies, criticism and more," my attempt to point to books about RAW, and "Robert Shea: A reader's guide," about all of Shea's fiction. 

On his blog, Oz Fritz has posted "Crowley, Joyce, Lewis Carroll and the Night of Pan."

I don't know if it's meant as a Maybe Day piece, but Michael Johnson has a new piece up, "Swamp Gas, Ball Lightning, Anal Probes and the Stench of Disinformation."

Reading about Robert Anton Wilson: Biographies, criticism and more

By TOM JACKSON
Blogger at RAWIllumination.net 

Robert Anton Wilson is credited with more than 30 books. The official website maintained by the Robert Anton Wilson Trust lists 33 titles as of July 2026, and more are on the way. 

But what if you want to read about Wilson or read books that engage with some of his most interesting ideas and topics? This article aims to help with such explorations. I hope the suggestions in this piece will be useful. I am sure there are some really good books I have missed and I welcome suggestions. 

The vast majority of the authors mentioned here have author pages, home pages for individual book titles, newsletters on platforms such as Substack, social media accounts at various locations, etc. etc. I have not attempted to provide links to all of those supplementary sources, but if you look around you should be able to find them -- there's an "official page" for Robert Anton Wilson, Gabriel Kennedy/Prop Anon and Erik Davis have Substack newsletters, and so on. If you are into podcasts, you will want to know that Kennedy/Prop and Eric Wagner have both done many hours of podcasts, and Hilaritas Press has a monthly podcast series focusing on its RAW titles. 

I have in some cases provided a link, particularly when I noticed a bargain or think the book might be hard to find, or when there is a link to an official Hilaritas Press edition, as the latter is the publishing imprint of the Robert Anton Wilson Trust. But in many cases, where a book is generally available, I did not see the need to put up a link or dictate which bookstore or website you should use to acquire a title. 

I am sure I have missed some interesting and worthwhile books, so please post your suggestions in the comments. 

Biographies and Memoirs

Chapel Perilous: The Life & Thought Crimes of Robert Anton Wilson by Gabriel Kennedy, released in 2024, is the only book length biography of Robert Anton Wilson that's been published so far. Self published by Kennedy/Prop Anon, is is deeply researched. See this link for "Where to buy" links. Available as a hardcover, paperback and an ebook. The author has appeared on many podcasts.

Cosmic Trigger 1: The Final Secret of the Illuminati, Robert Anton Wilson. This is RAW's memoir of the period in his life in the 1970s when he was experimenting with the occult and LSD and thought he might have been contacted by entities from the Sirius star system. One of his most popular books. The definitive edition is available from Hilaritas. 

Cosmic Trigger 2: Down to Earth. Robert Anton Wilson. This book also is (mostly) a memoir, and it covers RAW's life from birth to his marriage to his wife, Arlen. Also available from Hilaritas, with supplementary pieces from Christina Pearson and myself. (There's also a Cosmic Trigger 3, also worth reading. It has some biographical information, too, but seems less like a memoir to me.)

High Weirdness: Drugs, Esoterica, and Visionary Experience in the Seventies, Erik Davis. A book about Terence McKenna, Robert Anton Wilson, and Philip K. Dick, and their weird experiences in the 1970s. An interesting book, probably of particular interest to Dick fans and people who enjoyed the first Cosmic Trigger.  Important note from Mr. Davis: "It is currently out of print BUT a new edition (with new afterword and appendixes) will be out this fall from Strange Attractor Press." 

Beyond Chaos and Beyond, Robert Anton Wilson, edited by D. Scott Apel. This is an anthology, mostly of material that originally appeared in the Trajectories newsletter put out by RAW and by Scott. It does have a lot of good material, but I mention it here because it includes a 30,000-word piece by Apel on his long friendship with RAW. Hilaritas Press link. 

Critical studies

An Insider's Guide to Robert Anton Wilson, Eric Wagner. A useful guide, which I keep on my phone when I want more information about some aspect of RAW's career. Note that the Kindle version is only $5.  Pay attention also to the fact that this book has been published in three editions; you will want the third edition that came out in 2020.

Straight Outta Dublin, Eric Wagner (with R. Michael Johnson). Another critical study, this one focuses on the influence of James Joyce on RAW. While the main text is by Eric, the book also  features a long essay by Michael Johnson. Available from Hilaritas. 

Fly On The Tale Of The Tribe: A Rollercoaster Ride With Robert Anton Wilson, Steven James Pratt. A collection of short pieces discussing Robert Anton Wilson's work by Mr. Pratt, a British writer, musician and James Joyce scholar. It's inspired by the outline for Wilson's planned but not completed Tale of the Tribe book at the end of Wilson's TSOG: The Thing that Ate the Constitution and Other Everyday Monsters. The paperback remains available for about $11 at various locations, such as Amazon, but Steve, who is working on a revised version, has withdrawn the ebook. 

Books on the Eight Circuit model

There have been many books on the Eight Circuit Model of Consciousness invented by Timothy Leary and modified and popularized by Robert Anton Wilson.

The definitive RAW book on the model is of course Prometheus Rising, but which Timothy Leary book should the reader focus on? I recently posed that question to Mike Gathers and Joseph L. Flatley. You can read their full answers on my blog, but the gist is that Mike pointed me to Neurologic while Flatley suggested Neuropolitique.  Neuropolitique is available from New Falcon.  The ebook is only $4 on Amazon. I have lately been trying to avoid linking to Amazon on my blog, but this title is not listed in any edition on the Barnes and Noble website. As for Neurologic, is is out of print as far as I can tell, but available on the Internet. 

Probably  the latest book to explore the Eight Circuit model is Joseph L. Flatley's The Occult Timothy Leary, which applies the Eight Circuits to tarot but also discusses many of Leary's other ideas.

The late Antero Alli was probably one of the better-known figures who has written about the Eight Circuit model. His books on the subject include Angel Tech: A Modern Shaman’s Guide to Reality Selection and also The Eight-Circuit Brain: Navigational Strategies for the Energetic Body.

According to Flatley's book, The New Hermetics by Jason Augustus Newcomb "incorporates techniques like neuro-liguistic programming (NLP) and hypnosis into ceremonial magick for a system of initiation designed to instill 'complete awareness and control of all your eight circuits'.” 

Flatley's book also mentions The Shamanic Path to Quantum Consciousness by Laurent Huguelit as a book that incorporates the model. 

Other books on the model: 8-Circuit Ascension: A Guide to Metaprogramming the Multidimensional Self by Douglas Wingate and Rachel Turetzky and Nonlocal Nature: The Eight Circuits of Consciousness by James A. Heffernan. 

Adaptations

It is always interesting to see a work written in one medium adapted in another.

The Illuminatus! trilogy is currently being adapted as a series of comic books by Bobby Campbell. As I write this (July 2026) Tales of Illuminatus No. 3 is scheduled to appear later this year. Please see the official website for more information. 

Daisy Eris Campbell produced a theater adaptation in Britain of Robert Anton Wilson's first Cosmic Trigger book. Many of us Americans did not get an opportunity to see it but Hilaritas Press published a book, Cosmic Trigger the Play, with photographs to give the reader an idea of how it was staged. 

Other  useful books

For anyone who shares Robert Anton Wilson's interest in quantum mechanics, there are probably many books that deserve mention, although out of ignorance I will only mention two: How the Hippies Saved Physics: Science, Counterculture, and the Quantum Revival by David Kaiser profiles scientists RAW knew such as Nick Herbert, Jack Sarfatti and  Saul-Paul Sirag. I enjoyed the book. Herbert has a book, Quantum Reality, that I haven't read yet. 

RAW liked to listen to classical music, and Beethoven was the composer he mentioned the most in his writings. There are many books about Beethoven, but a 2014 biography, Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph by Jan Swafford is useful if you want to know about Beethoven's connections to the Illuminati. 

If you are interested in the use of conspiracy theories in Illuminatus!, you might be interested in The United States of The United States of Paranoia by Jesse Walker, which shows the role of conspiracy theories in U.S. history. The book includes a chapter that discusses Discordianism and Robert Anton Wilson. 

The KLF: Chaos, magic and the band who burned a million pounds by John Higgs discusses the music duo influenced by Robert Anton Wilson and also RAW himself. It's a great read. Note  that there's now a tenth anniversary edition with new footnotes by John. Also, there are many biographies of Timothy Leary, a big influence on RAW. I suspect many of you would enjoy the John Higgs one, I Have America Surrounded: The Life of Timothy Leary. 

Every Day Is a GOOD Day is a collection of short pieces by Robert Shea that I edited for Hilaritas Press. It offers insight into  the co-author of Illuminatus! 

The Moon and Serpent Bumper Book of Magic by Alan Moore and Steve Moore is a kind of encyclopedia of magick and would seem to be useful as a primer on many topics that interested RAW. The book has a primer on the Kabbalah, for example. 

Lazy Person's Guide to Framing: Decoding the News Media, Brian Dean. A popularization of George Lakoff's work on framing, but also about RAW's reality tunnels concept. Here is my review, which links to Brian's own explanation of the book. Currently 99 cents on Amazon as an ebook, so grab it now. 

The "Books" area of the Robert Anton Wilson website, has a list of books that influenced RAW's thinking, "Not the 'best' or even my favorites exactly: just the bare minimum of what everybody really needs to chew and digest before they can converse intelligently about the 21st Century." You'll see books listed there that are cited in RAW's writing, such as Ulysses by James Joyce, the Cantos of Ezra Pound and Science and Sanity, by Alfred Korzybski. If you aren't ready for Korzybski's big, difficult tome, Michael Johnson has a blog post from 2016 that discusses popularizations of the book. 

I am not enough of a Joyce scholar to be able to recommend which books about him you should read. I'll just note that much if not all of James Joyce's work is in the public domain (Finnegans Wake appears to be the exception), and you can find ebooks at sites such as Standard Ebooks and Project Gutenberg. I happen to be a fan of Standard Ebooks and it's my preferred site for public domain books. 

If you are a RAW fan, you should regularly browse the Hilaritas Press website, both for new editions of many RAW works and for books  that might interest many RAW fans. 

A few blogs 

While I have attempted to stick mostly to books in this article, there are a few blogs I should mention for people who like to read about Robert Anton Wilson. RAW Semantics  publishes many essays on RAW. Michael Johnson writes about RAW a lot at his Overweening Generalist Substack newsletter.  My own RAWIllumination.net has daily postings, usually connected in some fashion to Robert Anton Wilson, Robert Shea or both of them. The Oz Mix by Oz Fritz is also a great resource. 

Robert Shea: A reader's guide

By TOM JACKSON
Blogger at RAWIllumination.net

When I began my RAWIllumination.net blog, it was pretty much focused on Robert Anton Wilson, although by that time I had realized that Robert Shea was an interesting writer in his own right, and not just as the co-writer of Illuminatus! While I write more often about Wilson at the blog, I also often write about Shea.

I have now read all of Shea's books (with the exception of an anomalous work, From No Man's Land to Plaza Del Lago, a short history book. Plaza Del Lago is a shopping center in Wilmette, Illinois.) So I thought it might be useful to write a short guide to all of the titles.

These books are available free or cheaply as ebooks and inexpensively as used books, although most are out of print. Mike Shea, Robert Shea's son and literary executor, has chosen to privilege making Shea's work available over trying to squeeze every last nickle of royalties and has released all of Shea's novels (except Illuminatus!)  under a Creative Commons license; if you want to make a movie out of one of them you must pay for the rights, but if you just want to read the book you are free to do  so at no cost with Mike's blessing.

I have not chosen to provide links for individual titles, but here are some ways to get both ebooks and paper books.

For ebooks, once you have decided which title you want to try, look at the Project Gutenberg Robert Shea titles (I suggest skipping his early short stories, which aren't very good), checking out the links at the official Robert Shea page, or searching for Shea at the Internet Archive (which seems to have all of his fiction titles.) Or just Google the title. Some titles also are available as properly formatted Kindles at a reasonable price on Amazon. I did buy the Kindle titles for Shike and All Things Are Lights. 

For paper copies, there are many places to look for used books. I recommend BookFinder.com as a good place to find reasonably-priced used books. 

If you only know Shea from Illuminatus!, I should explain that  his solo  novels are straightforward historical novels  with clear prose and little of the literary experimentation of Illuminatus!, which, while a genuine collaboration between Wilson and Shea, owes most of its style and experimentation in form to Wilson. There are connections, however, between Illuminatus! and Shea's solo novels. Most of them feature Illuminati-style secret societies  that have links to secret societies in other parts of the world, and explore many of the ideas featured in Illuminatus! I have written about All Things Are Lights, for example, as a kind of "thematic prequel" to Illuminatus!

Most of Shea's historical novels are set in the Middle Ages in a variety of locales, although his last published novel, Shaman, took him into a new artistic direction as it is set in the United States in the early 19th century and features a Native American hero. Shea was still busy writing historical  novels when he died of cancer in 1994 at age 61. 

Shea's first books, the two Shike novels, were his best sellers. They did really well. The rest of his career could be described as an attempt to repeat that success. His agent, Al Zuckerman, was very oriented toward helping his clients write blockbusters see also this,  and perhaps if Shea had lived longer, he could have come up with another big hit. That said, I enjoy all of Shea's novels. 

OK, here are the books, in chronological order of when they are published:

Shike. A novel set in medieval Japan at the time of the two attempted Mongol  invasions of the island, e.g. the thirteen century. It was Shea's most commercially successful book and sold really well. The books were published as two separate novels in 1981, Time of the Dragons and Last of the Zinja, before eventually being published as one book. 

All Things Are Lights. Following the success of Shike, Shea did not publish another work until 1986, when All Things Are Lights came out. Also taking place in the 13th century albeit in a different area of the globe, and set mostly in France during the reign of Louis IX, it includes descriptions of the war against the Cathars, including the 1243-1244 siege of the Cathar stronghold of Montségur  and the Seventh Crusade ((1248–1254).

All Things Are Lights is the novel which has the most connections to Illuminatus! (there's even a hint that the main hero's sister is an ancestor of Hagbard Celine). I have written about Lights as a "thematic prequel" to Illuminatus!

Here is a blog post with a detailed discussion of All Things Are Lights. 

The Saracen. Following All Things Are Lights, Shea returned to the Shike formula of writing one fictional work in the form of two volumes. So although The Saracen is really one story, it was published in two volumes in 1989, Land of the Infidel and The Holy War. Our hero this time is a Muslim warrior and spy, and the "land of the infidel" is medieval Italy in the 13th century, some years after the events of All Things Are Lights. The Wikipedia article says it "enjoys a strong cult following," and I did enjoy it. The Order of the Assassins are featured, and one of the characters is the son of the main characters in All Things Are Lights.

The Shaman. Shea's last published novel is something of a departure, as it is set on the American frontier in the early 19th century. The hero becomes a Sauk shaman and Native Americans are depicted sympathetically. I like this less well than Shea's other novels, but Mike Shea thinks it may have been his Dad's favorite novel.

 Every Day is a GOOD Day: Robert Shea on Illuminatus! Writing and Anarchism, is a collection of short pieces by Shea. It also includes two long interviews of Shea. I edited the book, which was published by Hilaritas Press in 2025, 50 years after Illuminatus! was first published. You can also get more information here.