RAW's letters to Green Egg

Many of Robert Anton Wilson's most pungent thoughts came not from books, or articles, or interviews, but from letters he wrote to various publications.

Martin Wagner has performed a useful service by gathering together thirteen letters RAW wrote to Green Egg. (Some of the texts have appeared on this blog, some at the Robert Anton Wilson Fans website, but some are available only because of Martin's efforts). Read a few of the letters and you'll see what I mean. This is good stuff, as alive as your current favorite Substack newsletter. Good for you, Martin.

Probably a good book could be compiled from RAW's letters.

Robert Shea obituary in 'Green Egg'

While I was visiting Apuleius Charlton recently, we went to the local "metaphysical/Wicca" shop, where I picked up a copy of Green Egg magazine with an uncredited but useful obituary for Robert Shea in it (Vol. 27, No. 105, Summer 1994). This blog is about Robert Shea as well as Robert Anton Wilson; see the "Robert Shea Resources" at the right side of this page. The Management]

Bob Shea (February 14, 1933 -- March 10, 1994)

Bob Shea, co-author of the germinal Illuminatus! trilogy and author of many other historical and heretical writings, died of cancer in the arms of friends and his loving wife, Patricia Monaghan, after a sudden dramatic decline in his health. His last words before sinking onto a coma were, "Love is everywhere."

Robert Joseph Shea attended Manhattan Prep, Manhattan College and Rutgers University and worked as a magazine editor in New York and Los Angeles. In the 60's he edited the Playboy Forum where he met Robert Anton Wilson, with whom he collaborated on Illuminatus! After publishing Illuminatus!, Bob left Playboy to become a full time novelist. His novels include: 

• Shike, set in medieval Japan.

• All Things Are Lights, a story that entwines the fate of the Cathars of southern France with the occult traditions of Courtly Love and the troubadours.

• The Saracen, describing the intricate politics of medieval Italy.

• Shaman, tracing the fate of the survivors of the Black Hawk War in 19th century Illinois. 

• Lady Yang, a tragic story of an idealistic empress of medieval China (forthcoming).

A celebratory reading of Bob's works took place on March 26 in Winnetka, Illinois. More than a hundred people attended and many, including Bob's collaborator and dear friend, Robert Anton Wilson, spoke during the meditative interlude of Bob's friendliness and curiosity, cheerfulness and courage.

Patricia thanks everyone for their support, especially those who participated in Pray for Shea Day (Feb. 14, 1994). She assures us that, "It may seem like the prayers of hundreds of well-wishers went for naught. Certainly I had hoped for a dramatic improvement in Bob's health as a result of prayer day ... Yet curiously I believe our prayers may have been answered, for Bob's death was a quiet one and he was very happy in the days before it."

In the next few years, several more of Bob Shea's works will be published, including a collection of essays. Patricia requests that anyone having copies of Bob's work from magazines or other publications, or having letters from him which might be publishable, to please send copies to her at 1625 West 101st St., Chicago IL 60643.

Memorial contributions may be made to the Cancer Wellness Center, 5150 Gulf Road, Skokie IL 60077.

Green Egg: The most important intellectual event of the 20th Century

[Latest in a series of letters from Robert Anton Wilson to Green Egg. I've included the reply from Tim Zell, Green Egg honcho and the founder of the Church of All Worlds -- Tom]

Green Egg Forum, (1974 or so)

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.

Genea Steinberg's article on Wil Peigh (GE63) was damn good. Western science went down the wrong trail in ignoring Giordano Bruno's dialectical vision and settling for Newtonian mechanism. The return to Bruno's erotic cosmology in Reich and Timothy Leary is the most important intellectual event of the 20th Century, even if it was so shocking to orthodoxy that both Dr. Reich and Dr. Leary landed in prison.

I don't like Lance Christie's schemata of "revealed," "Taoistic" and "Pagan" religions. (This does not mean that I dislike Mr. Christie and Mr. Zell, and I hope it doesn't mean that they will begin disliking me.) I think the problem is that virtually all the major religions -- I mean the religions with millions of followers, i.e. Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism -- have gone through so many evolutionary changes that they now evade categorization. Islam, for instance, has its authoritarian factions and dogmatists, its philosophical and liberal wing, its ecstatic and "pagan" (magick) division, and various blends and combinations of these. Christianity has been the most murderously psychotic of all religions, but Francis of Assisi was a Christian (and a Sufi). The people who excommunicated Spinoza for thinking and the people who brought Sufic sex-magick, science and tolerance to the Occidental world were all Jews. Most Buddhists are atheists but some Buddhists have more gods than the Hindus. In short, we can categorize individuals (although that, too, is fraught with peril) but we cannot categorize religions that include millions of individuals over thousands of years of history.

Lao-Tse, Meister Eckhart, Rumi, al-Ghazali, Dogen Zengi, William Blake and Aleister Crowley all belonged to the same religion, although they are usually classified as a Taoist, a Christian, two Moslems, a Zen Buddhist and two unclassifiable visionaries.

I vote for continuing the interminable letter (or column, or whatever it is) of Steve Erdmann, for a variety of reasons. One, terminating him has an aspect, possibly, of fear, and "fear is failure and the forerunner of failure." Two, cutting him off in mid-stream or mid-diatribe seems somehow spiteful, vengeful, or otherwise angry-embittered-sulky, and it is good training to resist all compulsive emotions and see what the nervous system produces next when simple robotic patterns are rejected. Three, I personally find him entertaining: I keep wondering what new assaults on logic he will produce next. Four, the skilled dialecticians among our readership can practice their debating skills on him better than on one another, since he represents a real, rather than a superficial, difference with most of us. Five, a spectrum is more amusing than a monochrome.

In this connection, I note that Mr. Erdmann's exercise in logic takes the form (reduced to basics), "Communists and Nazis commit atrocities," "Communists and Nazis are pagans," "Therefore, pagans commit atrocities." This syllogism has the same defect (I forget its technical name) as "X and Y are red-heads," "X and Y commit sodomy every Thursday," "Therefore, red-heads commit sodomy every Thursday." Translated into Boolean algebra, Mr. Erdmann's fallacy would be even more glaringly obvious. Even on a vulgar level, he got his effect by simply ignoring the fact that "Pagan" in GE terminology includes various groups and excludes others; especially, it excludes Communists and Nazis. By using a different meaning of "pagan" -- one more or less invented by himself -- he made the word include Communists and Nazis. Any freshman debating team can get the same results by taking one of Mr. Erdmann's terms, re-defining it to suit themselves, and then holding him to blame for the result. For instance, he "justifies" his odd use of pagan by quoting one philosopher, Berdyaeu. He also calls himself "a member of the human race." Quoting one philosopher, Clarence Darrow, who described "the human race" as "the worst sons-of-bitches in the galaxy," I can now "prove" that Mr. Erdmann is a son-of-a-bitch. But this is children's games; anybody can score such points by taking the words of the opponent and changing their meaning. Philosophical debate begins when one eschews such tricks and argues with what the opponent is actually saying. It is more taxing intellectual work than word-games are, but it leads to light instead of heat.

As for the debate between Mr. Erdmann and various others as to whether the Gnostics were Christian or Pagan, any reading of Gnostic literature should clarify that. Some Gnostics were Christian and some Gnostics were Pagan, just as some alchemists were Christian and some were Pagan.

Incidentally, Mr. Erdmann's citation of Communism and Nazism does make a valid point: namely, that Christianity is not today the most murderous cult in the world. Up until 50 years ago, this was not true, and any believer in humanism, tolerance and liberty was justified in regarding Christianity as the main enemy of progress. Now we know that Christianity is only one of several forms that militant intolerance can take, and this is an important lesson. In the final analysis, my opposition to banning Mr. Erdmann from GE is that such a gesture, at least symbolically, suggests the manifestation of such intolerance in our own ranks.
                Love is the law, love under will.
                Robert Anton Wilson
                Discordian Society
                2035 Channing Way
                Berkeley, CA 94704

(Bob -- the reasons you gave for keeping Erdmann around are precisely the reasons we HAVE kept him around as long as we have -- his dissenting articles and opinions have appeared in virtually every issue of GE since #50 -- and, 14 issues later, are just as irrelevant and off-track as when he first began. After 2 years, we have all grown tired of his inane diatribes, and have decided, belatedly, many feel, to consign him to the oblivion they so richly deserve. "Enough IS enough!" -- TZ)

Green Egg letter: "the emotional-glandular circuits are appropriate only for emergencies"

Green Egg, No. 63

Forum

Dear Green Eggers,

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.

As usual, the Forum in GE 62 seems to consist about half-and-half of (a) people who want to bicker, slander and call names among themselves and (b) people who think Crafters shouldn't bicker and slander and call names. Thus the Hodge and the Podge remain in permanent unbalance, which is good.

I was moved by Margot Adler's letter recounting how the Lady spoke to her and said that all this bickering is good because it keeps the Craft decentralized. This confirms the vision of Malaclypse the Younger, who invoked the Lady in Her Erisian aspect (156=Chaos=Babalon) in 1958 and was told, "We Discordians must stick apart."

Following this logic, all Discordians are Popes and we have all mutually excommunicated one another. Furthermore, we have incorporated the Opposition by recognizing them as Accordians and thus part of the eternal unbalance with us. (In more technical theological language, they are aneristic and we are eristic, whereby it can clearly be seen that neither side would have a reason to exist unless the other existed to be resisted.)

This is in keeping with Crowley's great equation 0=2, which defines the universe as the non-existent resultant (0) of the imaginary conflict of two (2) unreal  forces. If this Holy Wisdom were more generally understood all the amusing quarrels could continue merrily without people getting themselves all tired out by it. After all, as Leary shows so brilliantly in Interpersonal Diagnosis of Personality and Neurologic, the emotional-glandular  circuits are appropriate only for emergencies, like being bitten by a bear. Running on the emotional circuits chronically is living in full-time neurological-glandular emergency imprints and wears down the gut and other important organs something awful. This is  why neurotics are always tired and the happiest people are those who have forgotten most (and own least).

Crafters might find much profit in those Sufi exercises based on alternating concentrations of impassioned emotional identification and meditative detachment. This quickly gives some idea of what Crowley means by that 0=2 hype. Everything that exists (for you) is that which you have passionately identified into existence: the Void always underlies it all. Below all the emotional and intellectual and emotional imprints, the mind remains unblemished and pristine as those Zen jokers say.

There is no need to drop out entirely into Buddhist bliss and just wallow in the void, of course. Rather, the Discordian unbalance suggests the advisability of including both attachment and detachment, thereby unbalancing the last possible threat of balance and stagnation.

In re: Lady Persephone's musings about "white" and "black" magick (and curse this racist terminology) -- normal consciousness is the most statistically prevalent form of magick. Other forms of black magick merely heighten one or more of  the basic perversities of this normal consciousness (dualism). Similarly, the normal ego, based on infantile-to-adolescent imprinting of emotional-glandular and muscular-spatial circuits, is the most prevalent form of demonic possession. (The great demon Choronzon always begins his appearance with the typical ego-centered cry, "I am I!" His nastiness is based on the terror underlying any ego: the recognition that I am only I temporarily and accidentally.) A close and unsentimental examination of Jesus Freaks, Krishna Freaks, Scientologists and ordinary people during the 8 hours a day of working for wages (doing the Will of others) shows the mechanisms of black magic and demonic possession to be quite simple and dreadfully ubiquitous. Or just examine any of the quarrels in Wiccadom or elsewhere to see this process advance from germ to monstrosity.

The art of quarreling without delusion (identification) is explained in the Bhagavad Gita in symbolic-allegorical terms and in Korzybski's Science and Sanity in precise neurological terms. In general, any conflict in which it seems to you important that you win is a temporary bout of insanity and obsession. Discordians know that whatever happens is all part of Her great plan, or Her great lack of plan (play) and merely say when Chaos manifests again, "Hail Eris! All Hail Discordia! Kallisti!"
                      Love is the law, love under will.
                                                    Theophobia the Elder
                                                    House of Apostles of Eris
                                                    c/o Wilson, 535 Taylor #104
                                                    San Francisco CA 94102

Letter to Green Egg: 'Christianity is only degenerate Eleusiniasm'

Green Egg Forum, Vol. VII, No. 62, Beltrane AA14

Dear Forum:

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.

Jefferson Clitlick is not quite precise in writing that "the step from materialism to pantheism is wholly emotional." In my own case (and judging by the literature, in the case of most pantheists) the step was intuitive, in the Jungian (and Sufi) sense of "intuition," or as in mathematical discovery. (Creating a new Gestalt, while not a rational process, is not "emotional," either.)

Rev. Clitlick is more persuasive in challenging Tim Zell's dichotomy of "Pagan religions" and "philosophical religions." Every dichotomy of that sort creates more confusion than light, which is why the Cabalists warn us against "the accursed dyad." Any classification schemata which finds itself compelled to lump Buddhism and Confucianism together with Christianity on one side of a fence and Eleusinian and Hopi systems on the other side is Choronzonian. Christianity is only degenerate Eleusianism: on the occasion when it has come alive it was, briefly, revived Eleusiniasm, e.g. France 1100-1300. As for Tantra, which ends up on the "Pagan" side of Tim's fence, this may very likely be a Buddhism invention and could just as well go on the other side. (I am aware of the evidence that Tantra may also possibly be a Hindu, Gnostic or Egyptian invention.)

If one must build such schemata, it is wise to have at least three categories — four, or more, is better. Such systems might not be more true than dualisms, but they are always less false...

Frankly, I tend toward "philosophical" religions for the same reason I tend toward philosophy in general. We could all use the light of philosophical debate more and the smokey fumes of feud and name-calling less. On the other hand, logic is only one circuit of the human nervous system, as Dr. Leary has shown with such brilliance in his Neurologic, and we need to use the other (lower and  higher) circuits also, which is why I am also a Pagan. Buddha, Lao-Tse, Catullus, Rabelais and Adam Weishaupt are among the Pagan philosophers invoked in Crowley's Gnostic Mass and nobody who studies them can fail to become both more Pagan and more philosophical.

I am currently teaching a class on "Scientific and Experimental Magick" for Orpheus Free University. I suppose the miscegenation of those adjectives with that noun will disturb even more people than Clitlick's amalgamation of philosophy and Paganism ... But Paracelsus, Vaughan, Bruno  and Crowley (among others) were scientific magicians, just as more recently Carl Jung, Tim Leary and John Lilly are magical scientists. We lose nothing by our inclusions; we lose much by our exclusions.

In fact, the expressions of Christian piety in the writings of Thomas Vaughan are so frequent and eloquent that I find it hard to believe they are just inserted to mislead the Inquisition or the Star Chamber. Vaughan, evidently, was a Pagan (magician-alchemist), a scientist, a philosopher, and a Christian all at once. I see no reason to despite the Christian element in this soup; obviously, if there had been more Christians like Vaughan, there would have been no burning ...

The only trouble with the Self-centered philosophy of Ayn Rand and her disciples is that they haven't taken the trouble to find out what and where the true Self is.

         Love is the law, love under will.
                       Wrong Rev. Mordecai Malignatus
                       High Priest, head temple
                       Ancient Illuminated Seers of Bavaria
                        c/o Wilson, 535 Taylor, Apt. 104
                       San Francisco CA 94102
               

Letter to Green Egg: 'It is a serious business to be conscious in this universe'

[Continuing a series of RAW letters to Green Egg, shared with me by Mike Gathers -- Tom.]

Forum, Green Egg, Volume 7, No. 61

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.

Somebody should write a new biography of Victoria Woodhull from a Wiccan (or at least occult) viewpoint. The first woman to address the U.S. Congress, the first female to run for president of the US, the first female stock-broker on Wall Street, the most radical of all the 19th Century feminists, the boldest of all free love advocates, etc. etc. Victoria Woodhull was also the first President of the National Association of Spiritualists. Spiritualism meant many things in the 19th Century -- more than it means today. Victoria practised "magnetic healing" in the manner of Mesmer. She based her metaphysics on the system of correspondences of the medieval hermeticists. She tried to popularize a form of Christian Tantrism, saying Genesis was an allegory, the human body was the Garden of Eden, and humanity could evolve to a higher level by directing the sex energies properly. In many ways, she anticipated not only Blavatski but Crowley. She was in constant communication with various disembodied Intelligences and it is even alleged that she raised a child from the dead on one occasion. She was also a clairvoyant. Radicals remember her for advocating socialism and accepting a black ex-slave as her running-mate in the 1872 election, women liberationists remember her as the forerunner of the pro-sex wing of feminism ("I have an inalienable constitutional and natural right to love whom I may, to love as long or as short a period as I can, to change that love every day if I please!" was her battle-cry) and it's time occultists realized she was one of our prophets, too. Radical historians generally apologize for her "superstitions."

Dr. Timothy Leary is the latest to report possible communication with extra-terrestrial intelligences. His new book, Terra II, explains in detail how, by using the methods of Dr. Dee and Edward Kelley, he received 21 transmissions from a Higher Intelligence which appears interstellar. Dr. Leary suggests that Dee also recognized the cosmic source of his own Enochian transmissions but called them "angelic" because Giordano Bruno had been burned at the stake a few  years before for speculating too boldly about intelligent life in outer space.

I find Dr. Leary's transmissions especially interesting because Mr. Kenneth Grant, current Outer Head of the Ordo Templi Orientis, has lately been describing Crowley's guardian angel as "extra-mundane or extra-terrestrial." It is also noteworthy that Dr. John Lilly — neuroanatomist, cyberneticist, dolphinologist, psychoanalyst, etc. — describes several encounters with possible extra-terrestrial beings in his book, The Center of the Cyclone. Like Dr. Leary, Dr. Lilly carefully specifies that his contacts might be hallucinations: he also suggests that they could be superior humans living on earth in the present or the future.

Dr. Andrei Pujarish, whose work with clairvoyant Peter Hurkos and the psychedelic mushroom, amanita muscara, is described in his book, The Sacred Mushroom, recently was quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle saying that ESP seems to have an extra-terrestrial basis. He didn't explain what he meant and the dumb reporter didn't ask him, alas.

The kind of work on the heart chakra used in Sufic or Tantric training seems especially needed by Occidental magicians and mystics. Paranoia, intolerance, hostility and milder forms of glandular fear-rage activation syndromes seem to afflict Occidentals in general, not just the Christians. Indeed,  those who complain loudest of Christian chauvinism seem most inclined to replace it with Neo-Pagan chauvinism. It is a serious business to be conscious in this universe and those who fritter it away on bickering, backbiting and bellicosity are occluding their own Light.

Love is the law, love under will.
                                Mordecai the Foul
                                Bavarian Illuminati
                                c/o Robert Anton Wilson
                                535 Taylor, Apt. 104
                                San Francisco CA 94102

Letter to Green Egg: 'my forthcoming book on Crowley'

[Editor's note: I have always enjoyed reading Robert Anton Wilson's letters to various publications; they contain some of his most pungent sentences. Beginning today, I am running a series of letters to Green Egg, the pagan magazine, that were written in the 1970s. Photocopies of the letters were supplied to me by Mike Gathers, and so I am passing them on to you. This letter includes the startling fact that Wilson was working on a book about Aleister Crowley, Lion of Light. Does anyone else have more information? -- Tom]

Letter to the Forum of Green Egg
From Vol. 6, No. 60, Oimelc AA13 Feb 1, 1974

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.

I see that debate still continues about how much of the Wicca tradition goes back to the Stone Age and how much was created by Gerald Gardner (with the help of Aleister Crowley). After researching that question for about seven years now, I am more confused and less certain than ever. To increase the confusion (and lessen the certainty) of others, let me call attention to Idries Shah's book, The Sufis (not to be confused with his other book, The Way of the Sufis, which does not contain the same information.)

Mr. Shah's evidence leaves no doubt that some at least of the Wicca tradition is neither of European neolithic origin nor of Gardner's personal invention but came into Europe via the Sufis in the late middle ages. Anyone who has remaining doubts can simply attend a Sufi dance and a Wicca festival in rapid succession, whereby it will appear obvious to the senses that the same basic rituals are being used for the same basic purposes.

I hope nobody thinks that I am asserting that Witchcraft is "only" a Europeanized offshoot of Sufism. It could equally well be argued (and has been argued) that Sufism is "only" an Arabized offshoot of Gnosticism.

Dr. Martello is textually correct in asserting that the Gardnerian "be seed and root and stem and bud" etc. can be found in Crowley before it appeared in Gardner; so can the phrase "nor do I demand  aught in sacrifice." Of course, Crowley's sensitive psyche could have picked these expressions up by ESP from Witch covens active around him; or (see Francis King's Rites of Modern Occult Magic), he might have had contact decades before he met Gardner ...

A careful reading of the preface to From Ritual to Romance by Dr. Jesse Weston might indicate that she was in contact with a proto-Gardnerian coven circa 1900-1910. The same hints, however, can also be taken to refer to either the Golden Dawn or the Ordo Templi Orientis.

Attempts to be historically and scientifically accurate about the history of European Wiccadom (which have been rare, Goddess knows!) have mostly run aground by looking only at those events which were given the label of "Witchcraft" by those whose words were recorded. If we widen our lens and look at the subject of "Christian heresies" and "non-Christian heresies" and "Secret societies" etc., if we compare alchemical texts with Rosicrucian pamphlets and early Masonic charters, etc. a great deal begins to come into focus, as I hope to show in my forthcoming book on Crowley, Lion of Light. The fact that there are Masonic elements in Gardnerian covens does not mean that Gardner necessarily put them there.

Various "Pagan" elements, it appears, survived the official Christianization of the West and the Moslemization of the Near East. Sometimes, traditions were preserved within families or other groupings for many centuries. Sometimes, somebody discovered an "olde booke" and recreated what had been persecuted out of existence. Sometimes, somebody wandered as far as several thousand miles in search of wisdom, found it, and came home to establish as a new school something that had already existed there as a tradition only a few generations earlier. Many other permutations and combinations are possible, and probable, considering the ferocity of persecution and the need for secrecy.

In the 19th Century, after burnings at the stake were no longer legal, fearing only the more modern forms of persecution by slander and harassment, the black American adept, P.B. Randolph, very carefully hid the sexual side of his methods even from his own official disciples and passed them only sub rosa to the Ordo Templi Orientis. Many learned tomes arguing about whether the OTO traces back to the Templars or just to Karl Kellner's contact with an Arabic (Sufi?) magician are vitiated by neglecting the Voodoo tradition via Randolph. Similarly, attempts to understand, say, Elizabethan Witchcraft by looking only at what was called "witchcraft" a few centuries earlier might be equally vitiated by ignoring Giordano Bruno and the Rosicrucian lodges in England at the time.

In short, we will learn more by examining the practices of various groups than by centering on what they called themselves, or what their enemies called them.

               Love is the law, law under will,
                                  Mordecai the Foul
                                  (Robert Anton Wilson)
                                  Bavarian Illuminati
                                  535 Taylor
                                  San Francisco, CA 94102