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Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea. Blog, Internet resources, online reading groups, articles and interviews, Illuminatus! info.

Sunday, October 13, 2024

Discordian 'Illuminatus' postings


First volume of British paperback of Illuminatus! Source. 

On X.com, Grouchogandhi, KRP (@Grouchogandhi) continues to post a great many Discoridian documents. Here are some Illuminatus! related documents that recently caught my eye. They are part of the Discordian Archives.


"Prunella Gee as Eris in the 1977 the Science Fiction Theatre of Liverpool's stage adaptation of ILLUMINATUS!" Source. 


"Poster for the Science Fiction Theatre of Liverpool's 1976 stage production of ILLUMINATUS!" Source.


"Discordian Robert Shea as Josh the Dill... Guerrilla Ontology advert for the release of The Illuminatus! Trilogy." Source.





Saturday, October 12, 2024

Podcasting news



This will be a bit bare bones, as I am sick waiting for the doctor, trying to do this on my phone. Sorry it's late.


And here is Joseph Matheny on "Bending Reality With Art." 

Friday, October 11, 2024

Free ebooks from Iain Spence


Iain Spence, mentioned in this recent blog post, has announced that all three of his currently available ebooks are being made available free Saturday and Sunday. 

"All three titles will be free over the weekend, worldwide. No restrictions. I'm not sure if they'll appear by way of east coast or west coast time in the USA. I do know that they (Amazon) go by US time and not UK when it comes to Kindle Direct, but I don't know which zone," he reports.

Links (for the U.S. Amazon, listed in order of publication): 

The Hare Hypothesis: The Quest for Wholeness Within Atavistic Pop Culture; blurb: "The Hare Hypothesis invites us to view pop cultural trends in relation to the four Life Positions of Optimistic Weakness, Pessimistic Weakness, Optimistic Strength and Pessimistic Strength. The study views pop cultural trends as atavistic symbols.

"An exploration of Timothy Leary's Interpersonal Diagnosis of Personality with special emphasis on pop cultural trends of a symbolic nature. The book also includes essays on the origins of the four Life Positions in folklore, children's stories and in the four classical humours. It ends with an analysis of quaternities which crop up in modern literature." 

Dreams of the Hare. Blurb: "Essays on The Hare Hypothesis, the current fuss over gender fluidity, the cult of celebrity, quaternary symbolism in mythology and the works of Robert Anton Wilson."

The Breath of the Hare. Blurb: "A series of essays by Iain Spence."




Thursday, October 10, 2024

'Tales' update: The hurricanes are slowing things down a bit


 

In the latest Tales of Illuminatus newsletter update, Bobby Campbell reports that hurricanes are delaying the delivery the paper version of the first issue:

"Just a quick update on a slight delay for our grand plans of world illumination...

"Ka-Blam Printing, the company handling both the printing and shipping for Tales of Illuminatus! #1, just so happens to be located in Orlando, Florida, which has been hit with back to back massive hurricanes over the past couple weeks.

"They seem confident that they'll be back in the office by the end of the week, and it's possible there won't even be a noticeable delay, but it seemed worth mentioning!

"I'll let you know when, in true jumpin' jack flash fashion, our humble little periodical is birthed from the hurricane crossfire and successfully on its way to your doorsteps :)))"

Bobby also provides a review of the new RAW biography, Chapel Perilous by Gabriel Kennedy, that is out on Oct. 22:

"It now appears safe to say the book I was gushing about last week is indeed Gabriel Kennedy’s RAW biography CHAPEL PERILOUS: The Life & Thought Crimes of Robert Anton Wilson. An absolutely spellbinding trip through the lives and ideas of Robert Anton Wilson, a book about RAW that is just as fun as reading a book by RAW, and an instant classic of Discordian lore. Highest possible recommendation!"


Wednesday, October 9, 2024

'The Sex Magicians' reading group has begun

 


Michelle Olley illustration by Bobby Campbell. 

The online book discussion of The Sex Magicians has begun, so head on over to the first posting at the Jechidah blog. 

This is a good description of what Michelle Olley does in her introduction to the Hilaritas Press edition of the book:

"Michelle Olley contextualizes and absolves The Sex Magicians. Olley is in a unique position of being a pioneer in sexual expression and one who has come out on top of the game. As far as I know, Olley hasn't declared any extraordinarily ugly sentiments about any groups, peccadillos or ways of being. Instead, she applies her myriad and extraordinary experiences to a multi-fold (multi-folderol?) interpretation, framed in empathy and understanding. Having Olley as our barker and initial interloper with the raw material of Wilson's first published novel is a very good thing, and very apropos, for our clarity-by-convolution century."

Tuesday, October 8, 2024

Iain Spence on Grant Morrison


 Illuminatus!
led to The Invisibles, and that led to The Matrix, right? It is a sequence of events that has been suggested to me, and perhaps you have read it, too.

Iain Spence has his doubts, at least about the Invisibles to Matrix connection. He has a new piece up, "Invisible Influences in The Matrix: Debunking Grant Morrison‘s claim that The Matrix wouldn’t exist without his fiction."  It's on Medium, but Iain has removed the firewall so that everyone can read it.

Iain also contends that Morrison has misunderstood Iain's own work:

"Grant Morrison has stated in the past that The Matrix was part of a late 1990s emergence of Hostile Strength celebration within pop culture. He said this in relation to The Sekhmet Hypothesis.¹ As the author of the book, I disagree. The Matrix was a movie, not a raw celebration involving atavistic behaviour within pop culture."

Iain's books are available as Kindles on Amazon at quite reasonable prices. 

Sunday, October 6, 2024

Saturday, October 5, 2024

RAW 'politics book' has taken shape

 


An illustration for the Guns and Dope Party website. 

Rasa, the gentleman who runs day to day operations for Hilaritas Press, is careful not to make promises for when a Robert Anton Wilson book will come out; there can always be a last-minute hitch, and a book isn't released until it's done. But I'm pleased to be able to report that the upcoming Wilson anthology of writing about political subjects appears to be quite far along. Rasa has penned an essay on the Guns and Dope Party for the book, and other details are available. Here's the official update from Rasa:

"It’s still a ways off. We seem to have decided on the some 25 essays that span RAW’s career that will be included in the book, and Jesse Walker has written a great introduction,  but since many of the essays are scans of articles, there is still a lot of OCR and editing work to be done."

And here is an update on a recent blog post, where I mentioned that Rasa was looking for the source of an alleged RAW quote, for his Guns and Dope essay: “The Right's view of government and the Left's view of big business are both correct.”  Rasa asked his "council of advisors" by email for the source, and at the link, I posted the puzzle.

I have possibly solved the mystery, while doing research on another matter. I flipped through the pages of my copy of Rasa's RAW Memes book, and I found this quote from RAW: "Conservatives say it is dangerous to give any group too much political power. Liberals say it is dangerous to give any group too much economic power. Both are right." It's attributed to The Illuminati Papers. There's still no source for the alleged exact quote, but the one I found seems pretty close.

Of course, it's amusing that I cited Rasa's book to solve Rasa's problem. There are many RAW experts out there -- Michael Johnson seems to carry the complete works in his head and Eric Wagner wrote the book -- but Rasa can truly claim he's forgotten more about RAW than most people know! 

See the Hilaritas Press website to see which new and reprinted titles have been released so far. It's an impressive list, and there might be a good one you've missed. 


Friday, October 4, 2024

New RAW biography to be published on Oct. 22

 


The new, long-awaited Robert Anton Wilson biography by Gabriel Kennedy will be published on Oct. 22, according to a listing for the book on Amazon.  The publication information says it is 473 pages long and has forewords by Grant Morrison and Douglas Rushkoff. Mr. Kennedy also performs and writes as Prop Anon. It is listed as a $9.99 Kindle; I will provide information about a paper edition as it comes to my attention. There is every reason to expect that a great deal of research went into the book.

Here is the blurb for the book provided by Joseph Matheny: "Writing a comprehensive, human, inclusive, biography for someone as complex as Robert Anton Wilson is a big bite for a writer to attempt. Thankfully, Gabriel Kennedy did not bite off more than he could chew. This biography made me laugh, cry, and sit silently in contemplation while I experienced the feelings, memories, and nostalgia it evoked. Chapel Perilous showed me points of view about RAW that I had not considered and informed me about aspects of my late friend’s life that I was unaware of. This book is an invaluable source of information about one of the greatest artists and thinkers of our time. It keeps the lasagna flying!”

Blurbs from Jeffrey Mishlove, Richard Metzger and David J. Brown also are available at the Amazon page. 


Thursday, October 3, 2024

Latest 'Tales' news: New RAW book on the way

 


The latest Tales of Illuminatus newsletter came out today, and Bobby Campbell reports that a new RAW book apparently will be out soon, although he doesn't provide details:

"I will hastily end things here, because I am desperate to get back to reading my advance copy of that very most anticipated RAW book, which I’d say the name, but I’m not sure if I’m supposed to yet! Suffice to say it is EXCELLENT!"

I've known for awhile that a new RAW anthology or two is on the way from Hilaritas Press. When more details become available, I will share. 

Also, Bobby had to change publishers for the European edition of the first issue, although apparently it is not a big deal:

"A small change in plans for our European readers, though ultimately of negligible importance, but Mixam UK, after nearly 2 weeks of hemming and hawing, decided that the job of illuminating the old continent was just too darn tough, and bailed on our order, which was immediately picked up by Ka-Blam, so the wheels remain in motion, albeit different wheels than originally reported."


 


Wednesday, October 2, 2024

Harold Bloom on why we read


Harold Bloom with some reading material (public  domain photo). 

After yesterday's blog post, I wanted to share a more positive quote about reading, this time from famed literary critic Harold Bloom (1930-2019).  (I discovered Bloom back in college, when I became infatuated with Percy Bysshe Shelley's poetry and bought a Shelley anthology edited by Bloom.)

Here's the quote (source):

"The great poems, plays, novels and stories teach us how to go on living, even when submerged under  forty fathoms of bother and distress. If you live 90 years you will be a battered survivor. Your own mistakes, accidents, and failures at otherness beat you down. Rise up at dawn and read something that matters as soon as you can." 





Tuesday, October 1, 2024

Is this really the way it is now?

 


I was struck by this quote from an article from The Atlantic magazine, "The Elite College Students Who Can't Read Books." 

"This development puzzled [Columbia University course teacher on great books Nicholas] Dames until one day during the fall 2022 semester, when a first-year student came to his office hours to share how challenging she had found the early assignments. Lit Hum often requires students to read a book, sometimes a very long and dense one, in just a week or two. But the student told Dames that, at her public high school, she had never been required to read an entire book. She had been assigned excerpts, poetry, and news articles, but not a single book cover to cover."