Timothy Leary's speech on the radio

I recently finished Jesse Walker's excellent Rebels on the Air, his alternative history of radio broadcasting in America, which devotes a great deal of space to community radio stations, a "third way" instead of commercial stations and government stations such as NPR. One of the stations he discusses is KRAB, formerly (1962-1984) a community station in Seattle.

Jesse forwarded me a recent email listing additions to the online KRAB archive, and one of them is a recording of a 1963 speech by Timothy Leary, "Beating the Game."  You can listen online. Here is part of the blurb:

"Timothy Leary speaking at the 2nd Annual Symposium on American Values at Central Washington State College, Ellensburg. His subject is the "Individual In The College Community - His Commitments and His Work". This was recorded just before Leary was fired from Harvard, and well before his Mexican misadventure. The slightly edited speech was later published in The Politics of Ecstasy, where it was retitled American Education as an Addictive Process and Its Cure.

"This recording was incredibly popular on KRAB, played at least eight times between 1963 and 1979, after which it disappeared. There was so much interest that someone at KRAB transcribed it and made copies available for $1.00 each."

A quick look at the archives reveals material from Alan Watts, more Leary, Allen Ginsberg, Tom Robbins, Thich Nhat Hanh and other persons of possible interest.

Did RAW ever appear on any community radio stations, and are there relevant archives?

Robert Anton Wilson's personal tech ecosystem

I am interested in how people use technology, so I enjoyed reading Tyler Cowen's recent blog post, "My personal tech ecosystem, updated." He hates texting, carries his iPad wherever he goes, doesn't use his smartphone very much.

Robert Anton Wilson working on his 2000 Orange Jelly iMac. Photo courtesy Rasa. 

This naturally made me wonder what RAW's personal tech ecosystem was in the last few years of his life, so I made inquiries. Here is what I learned.

From Rasa:

Bob was very enthusiastic about new technology. He loved the idea and potential of Internet. Sadly, he never had enough money to really explore new tech products. His computer from 2000 on was a 2000 Orange Jelly iMac. I don’t remember what he had before that, but it was also a Mac. I remember one day visiting Bob and Arlen in their Brommer St apartment in Capitola in 1995. I think Bob had just gotten his first email account, but he was having trouble getting it to work. I checked his email settings, and they seemed okay. The next day I got this email from him:

Dear Rasa,

This is just a test. If they don't send it back, then I finally
got your email address right and I'll send a letter that
has gotten rejected for wrong address twice now...

the mgt
Hide quoted text

As a reply, I sent him a list of famous people’s answers to "Why did the chicken cross the road?” Bob was one of the famous people in the list which was diverse to say the least. Some of the other famous people were: Machiavelli, H.P. Lovecraft, Douglas Adams, Aleister Crowley, Carl Jung, Buddha and Werner Heisenberg. The entry someone wrote for Bob was not very inspired:

Because agents of the Ancient Illuminated Roosters
of Cooperia were controlling it with their Orbital
Mind-Control Lasers as part of their master plan to
take over the world's egg production.

Maybe Bob liked it, but in any case, instead of offering his response to the question, he sent the following email:


From mgt Mon Mar  6 15:09:17 1995
Subject: Re: Mrs Hahn
To: the mgt
Date: Mon, 6 Mar 95 15:09:10 PST
From: the mgt
Cc: rasa@hamp.hampshire.com
In-Reply-To: ; from "the mgt" at Mar 6, 95 2:18 pm
X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.3 PL0]


Dear Rasa:

Thanks for the chicken jokes. A few more I thought of:

Thomas Jefferson: All hens are endowed by Nature and Nature's God
with certain unalienable rights, and among these are life,
liberty and the pursuit of the other side.

James Joyce: An ova eggspressed! Mrs. Hahn, Cock's wife,
flapped up a stormin drang (one louve, one fear) and, like
any tennis son, charged like a lewd brigade, clucking
and clacking like a horsenfifer, nobirdy avair soar
anywing like that load allmarshey.

Bart Simpson: I will not use the school chicken as a frisbee.
I will not use the school chicken as

Oscar Wilde: This chicken problem has many depths,
but all of them are equally shallow.

Weekly World News: Nostradamus predicted chicken/UFO horror!

Charles Fort: Of course, I have heard of the "fourth dimension" but
whatever is wrong with me has not advanced to the point where I will
offer it as an explanation in a case like this. Maybe the damned
chicken just wanted to see the other side.
Maybe.

Hannibal Lecter: I ate her liver. With fava beans.
And a fresh cranberry sauce.

the mgt
Hide quoted text

Bob took very quickly to email, and his list of a little more than 20 friends expanded to about 40. That group became known as the GroupMind. I’m not sure who coined the name, perhaps Dr. Foo. 

Before the iPhone, probably at the end of 2002, I got a Palm Tungsten T5 where you could write out text by hand. It wouldn’t be translated into editable text, but at that time seeing your handwriting on your Palm device was pretty cool. In this photo I was showing Bob the new Palm and he was delighted to see his handwriting on the screen. 

"Here’s Bob’s second to last computer, the 2000 Orange Jelly iMac, now sitting in my office." Photo courtesy Rasa. 

"As far as video, Bob had a TV, a cable box and a VCR. This is a photo of the wall across from his couch in his Park Ave, Capitola apartment." Photo courtesy Rasa.

"Here’s a photo of Bob’s video shelf, turned sideways so you can more easily read the titles. Not the best photo. This one and the one above were used when we set up the auction some years ago." Photo courtesy Rasa.

When Bob became very weak, and Doug Rushkoff asked Bob’s fans to help him out financially, some of the money went to getting Bob a new laptop, a 17in Macbook Pro. It was a bit of a monster in Bob’s lap as he sat up in bed to use it. He didn’t do a lot on that machine, aside from surfing, he used it to send out his last few messages to family, friends and the world. Bob’s son Graham ended up getting that computer.

Apparently, he never had a cell phone. From Rasa, again:

As far as I know he did not have a cell phone. I think he really didn’t need one, and in the last months he was not going anywhere. In any case, a new bill arriving each month was probably not an option. I hate to paint such a sad picture concerning his finances. After Arlen died, he lost a lot of interest in the mundane aspects of life, like paying bills and taxes. Getting such a crappy deal from New Falcon Publications certainly didn’t help. He could get grumpy in the face of it all, but Christina once told me that at one point Bob had a realization. He saw himself being grumpy, and also saw his health declining. He told Christina, "Why would anyone want to help me if I’m being an ass?” He made a conscious decision to change his attitude. I’m sure he had many moments of deep sadness after the loss of Arlen, but with his friends he let his magnificent intelligence and generosity of spirit shine brightly.

Eric Wagner weighs in:

I only visited Bob's home once, an apartment in Southern California in 1989. My cousin CJ and I picked up Bob and we had lunch. I planned to visit Dublin in a few months, and Bob drew a map of Dublin for me and made some suggestions about things to do on my trip. Bob had a computer then, but he felt scared of email because of potential viruses. He did enjoy playing sound clips - Monty Python, etc. - on his PC. He switched to Apple products a few years later and he said he preferred them.

I remember the wonderful emails Bob would send out to the Groupmind. Reading the Tail of the Tribe document reawakened those memories. Man, Bob would send out multiple emails every day. I remember when the Maybe Logic Academy started Bob said he would cut down on his emails. I mentioned to him how much I would miss them, so he arranged for me to take one of his Maybe Logic classes for free.

I remember Bob had an AOL email account, but he got blocked for something he posted. They said they would reactivate his account, but he felt censored and switched email accounts. I remember he had at least one fake email - Mark Chan. He would use it to make comments at alt.fan.rawilson and on our online Quantum Psychology group read.


I enjoyed rereading Bob's comments on the Cantos in The Tail of the Tribe. It brought back memories of typing in each Canto to mail out to our reading group, which included Bob Wilson and Mike Johnson.

RAW's desert island recordings

Iron Butterfly in 1969 

Eric Wagner once asked Robert Anton Wilson to write down his 10 favorite musical recordings. He couldn't lay hands on it when I asked to see it, but Michael Johnson tracked down his copy, so sharing it with you is a team effort.

1. Beethoven's 9th
2, Beethoven's 7th
3. Vivaldi: Four Seasons
4. Carmina Burana
5. Brandenburg Concertos
6. Goldberg Variations
7. Mozart's Piano Concerti
8. Beethoven's Piano Concerti
9. Joplin's rags on harpsichord
10. Iron Butterfly

I did not know there were recordings available of Scott Joplin's music on harpsichord; that sounds interesting.  I wish I could ask RAW what his favorite Mozart piano concertos were; I like #20, #21 and #24. I like Beethoven's Seventh Symphony a lot.

I'm going to say that Iron Butterfly is the surprise on this list.

More from Michael:

In Trajectories #12, Spring 1993, RAW mentions how great Gould's Goldberg Variations sounded as used in Silence of the Lambs.

In notes for MLA Sept/Oct 2004 someone asked RAW about his favorite music and he listed Beethoven's 9th, the Emperor Concerto, Four Seasons and Goldberg Variations.

New Libertarian, Sept 5, 1976: RAW writes, "Beethoven's 9th and his last quartets, Bach, Bizet, Orff, Vivaldi, the less popular and more experimental stuff by Stravinsky."

In the Dr. Jeffrey Eliot interview: jazz as American contribution to world music: "I think the Modern Jazz Quartet will some day be looked back at in the same way we look back at Vivaldi."

In Chaos and Beyone, p.166 RAW mentions listening to Bach and Ravel while testing out mind machines.

I asked him if he listens to his favorite music when he writes, and he said he'll have on the "light classical" station that he got through his TV package, but that his favorite stuff is too engrossing; it compels him to quit writing and listen.

In Everything Is Under Control, RAW writes he thinks West Irish music sounds African (p.355). In a letter to Kurt Smith RAW writes about West Irish music, genes, schizophrenia and music.

In TSOG, RAW quotes Nietzsche: "How good bad music and bad reasons sound when one marches against the enemy!" - Dawn, 1881

There's a lot more, or course. I think RAW's most articulate writing on music in in the Historical Illuminatus Trilogy, and I really love his phenomenological approach, almost always Siggy's nervous system speaking to us.

Also, as you both know, there are a handful of lines scattered throughout his books on jazz and pot. In addition to MJQ, he's mentioned Bird and Monk.

In Masks, p.108, use of "voodoo drums" adds to tone of Sir John Babcock's paranoid state, and I always think this bit was related to a film both RAW and I love: I Walked With A Zombie.

From Eric Wagner:

When Bob gave a talk in Phoenix in 1988 he came to my house for our Thursday Finnegans Wake reading group. He asked me to play Beethoven's Emperor Concerto and then Beethoven's Triple Concerto, but at the time I didn't have a CD of the Triple Concerto. Then for a change of pace he asked me to put on the Goldberg Variations. Over at rawilsonfans they have a list I asked Bob to make of his ten favorite CD's.

Rasa weighs in:

I heard him talk more about Beethoven than any other artist. He did like jazz but was curious about anything that might tickle his senses. We regularly gave Bob our new Starseed CDs, and I know he liked it when I brought my sitar and Marlis brought her tamboura over to his house. I don’t know how much he listened to our CDs, but he did write a wonderful near-Haiku about our peculiar sound,

"This music - intricate yet melodic as Bach,
 austere as a Zen shrine, sensory as a massage
 - seems like aural eroticism to me."

In the piece "Credo," in Right Where You Are Sitting Now, Wilson writes, "I believe in Bach, the creator of heaven and earth, and in Mozart, his only begotten son, and in Beethoven the mediator and comforter; and inasmuch as their gods have manifested also in Vivaldi and Ravel and Stravinsky and many another, I  believe in the communion of saints, the forgiveness of error and mind everlasting."

News from Poland: Finnegans Wake adaptation, George Dorn Screams

FIRST WE FEEL THEN WE FALL teaser #1 from jakub wroblewski on Vimeo.

It's always a pleasure to get an unexpected email from an interesting part of the world, but particularly so when the email has interesting news.

Adam Zulawski, consultant managing editor for the English section of Culture.pl, "the biggest and most comprehensive source of knowledge about Polish culture," wrote to me to call my attention to "First We Feel Then We Fall: Finnegans Wake On-screen," by Mikolaj Glinski. It tells the story of the adaptation of Joyce's Finnegans Wake by Polish visual artist Jakub Wróblewski and scholar Katarzyna Bazarnik. After you read Glinski's article, check out the trippy interactive film online. 

Zulawski, a RAW fan, writes, "The author who wrote this Joyce piece, Mikolaj Glinski, has written several about Joyce for the site in the past - it seems Poles have a deep appreciation for the book, trying to approach it in various ways, so our editorial office has tried to cover what we can. Mikolaj also wrote about freemasons after there was a large exhibition of freemason art last year in Warsaw. Apparently, he started receiving very strange paranoid rants from people over social media about it, and still does every so often. Fnord."

Culture.pl has a lot of other interesting stuff. See, for example, Glinski's piece on "11 Great Polish Books You Have to Read."  (I've read one, the science fiction novel Solaris by Stanislaw Lem.) Poland also has more than its share of interesting modern composers, such as Lutoslawski, so I find Polish music interesting.

George Dorn Screams

Speaking of Polish music, the rock band George Dorn Screams, which apparently takes its name from phrase in Illuminatus!, has just released a new album, Spacja kosmiczna. It, and the band's other albums, are available for streaming on Spotify. (I've been listening to it; it sounds good.)

John Higgs on the best nonfiction books about psychedelics

John Higgs 

While searching for something completely different, I stumbled upon a John Higgs article I had never seen before, from back in 2006, a piece for the Guardian on his "top ten" (actually 11) nonfiction books about psychedelics. 

Cosmic Trigger Vol. 1 by Robert Anton Wilson comes in at No. 8, and Higgs includes this sentence: "Anti-drug campaigners should distribute this book in schools, and ask children if they could handle that much madness."

Cosmic Trigger online reading group, Week 21

Horus Errand cover art

By Charles Faris Cosmic Trigger reading group guest blogger 

Welcome to week 20 of the RAWIllumination Cosmic Trigger Reading Group. This week we are covering the final three chapters of PART ONE: The Sirius Connection, including The Horus Hawk and Uri Geller, The Mothman Prophecies, and Doggiez from Sirius. All of this wonderfulness begins on page 172 (Hilaritas Press).

The Horus Hawk and Uri Geller

In my current view, I see Wilson as both guerrilla ontologist and gonzo journalist. Cosmic Trigger, then, tells the story of a particular strain of energy that ran through the time period centered on the 1960’s all the way to the mid-seventies, all told through the nervous system of one Robert Anton Wilson, Brooklyn born iconoclast and autodidact. This particular strain of energy seems connected to the Gnosis and begs the question: “why does the gnosis always get busted?”  Which begs another question: how to avoid the gnosis-busters!

Tim Leary as Prometheus — Note similarity to Prometheus Rising cover

In Bob’s telling, Timothy Leary represents the living embodiment of the Gnosis, busted in public and punished in private, hidden away in cell after cell before being labeled a snitch (Gnosis is a Snitch!), and then belittled in public and quietly kicked out onto the street in dis-grace.

Because he’s RAWsome, Bob also continually introduces us to myriad other hard working, dedicated, passionate dealers in gnosis including Saul-Paul Sirag, Uri Geller, and Dr. Andrija Puharich. Interesting that Bob spends three pages detailing the political struggles that plagued Timothy Leary, before finally transitioning into the Horus Hawk via Saul-Paul Sirag and Uri Geller. There are some fun fireworks when Saul-Paul interacts with Uri Geller, as well as quite a few synchronicities of distinction. I’ve included lots of visual media today to help deepen the experiences of the synchronicities.

Inevitably, Bob has Saul-Paul and Uri toss the topic in the general direction of Aleister Crowley, who performs commendably, allowing Bob to slip in a hypothesis about the cattle mutilations which began in 1968, as well as an awesome Illustration of Nuit framing an image of Ra-Hoor-Khuit sitting in a mystic/symbolic setting, courtesy of the inestimable John Thompson.

Shadow of the Hawk poster 

The notion of sacrifice pervades this chapter, from the dark dealings involved in getting Dr. Leary out of prison, to the sacrifice of cattle, which Bob handily connects to “many shamanic traditions throughout history.”

If you are at all interested in the story of the Persecution and Character Assassination of Timothy Leary as Performed by the Guardians of the American Legal System under the direction of Richard M. Nixon, investigate I Have America Surrounded, a bio by John Higgs, who was first introduced to Bob while researching that book, and happened to write the introduction to the Hilaritas Press edition of this book! I also recommend Jail Notes by Timothy Leary, which gives you an insider’s view of Dr. Leary’s time in prison.

The Mothman Prophecies

John Keel 

As befits a chapter with such a title, The Mothman Prophecies is high weirdness full of cattle mutilations, UFO’s, “extraterrestrial” contact, poltergeist activity, and of course, The Mothman (“a monster with giant red eyes, a human form, and huge moth-like wings”). To top it off we get Men In Black—the sinister spooks who >>SPOILER ALERT<< wear black suits and drive black Cadillacs, identifying themselves as government agents, while giving the impression of being something far scarier. Bob is relying on John Keel for the story here, which involves UFO’s, Contactees, and Three Prophecies, which are just true enough as well as false enough to bring Keel to the conclusion that the “ultra-terrestrials” as he calls them seem “malicious and vicious.”

Firesign Theatre cover

Doggiez from Sirius

Harvey

And so we come to the final chapter of PART ONE: The Sirius Connection, in which our intrepid Author follows the advice of T.S. Eliot and gets back to where he started, with Sirius, only to discover a shaggy dog story full of accurate psychics, LSD-fueled trips to Gaelic fairy-land, an enormous invisible white-rabbit-resembling pookah who communicates through telepathy and synchronicity, and the aforementioned doggiez from Sirius, as well as the solution to the mystery of Joe Malik’s disappearing dogs from Illuminatus!  Whew!

And then connecting it all together with Sirius, of course.

Language and Music of the Wolves 

Alright! We’ve made an awesome journey from Sirius to Sirius with Sideshow Bob as our guide. Please take some time to offer your thoughts regarding this weeks journey, as well as ant commentary you might have regarding the entirety of Cosmic Trigger thus far. Remember, it is your participation that makes this group reading a valuable resource for generations to come!

Next week we dive into PART I: Models and Metaphors (185) through The Sirius Evidence. Until then, enjoy some time with your own personal Sirius, and tell us all about your theories, observations, and experiences.

Robert Anton Wilson on optimism during serious illness

Eric Wagner, author of An Insider's Guide to Robert Anton Wilson, kindly shared this email written by Robert Anton Wilson, dated August 31, 2006:

Dear. dear friends,

First of all, I want to thank you for the love & support you have 
given me over the past months.

Lately, however, I have been getting a lot of advice about how I 
should live & how I should face the dying process. I am asking, with 
great love, that my friends no longer share with me their insights 
about my health or when I might die. I have my own instincts about my 
capacity to bounce back and about which activities feed my soul. These 
feelings are very positive, & I don't want my positive gut-feeling 
dampened and confused by the projections of others.

If those who believe I am at death's door are proven to be 
correct, indeed, they can claim a prize at my funeral. Otherwise, I apologize.

Your beloved friend,

Robert Anton Wilson

DON'T PRAY IN OUR SCHOOLS AND WE
WON'T THINK IN YOUR CHURCHES

Wilson died on Jan. 11, 2007.

Richard Rasa comments, "I remember this email. When I was with him, he would often talk about the doctor’s theories, often with disdain. I would often tell him that we all would really be better off if he stuck around for as long as possible. He liked hearing optimistic wishes and projections, especially because the doctors were so often wrong, or bull-headed. Seeing this old email reminds of how much I loved that guy!"

John Markoff's computer history

Alan Kay in 2008 (Creative Commons photo by Marcin Wichary)

Recently, intrigued by the journey that Timothy Leary (and many others) made from being interested in psychedelics to be interested in personal computers, I finally got around to reading  What the Dormouse Said by John Markoff, on "How the 60s Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry." 

It was very interesting. The "stars" of the book are Doug Engelbart, whose group invented the computer mouse and made other breakthroughs, and Alan Kay, whose team essentially invented the modern personal computer for Xerox, including an improved mouse and graphical user interface.

Here's is an interesting passage on how Alan Kay dreamed up the idea of a laptop and tablet: 

Kay became a brilliant synthesizer of ideas. Additionally, he was the first person to approach the design of computers from the point of view of an artist rather than that of an engineer. Coupled with an early and profound understanding of the implication of the scaling principle [i.e., the insight the that the rapid growth in the power of processors would make personal computers possible], he also took an important step beyond Engelbart's notion of personal-computer-as-vehicle. He conceived of personal computing as an entire new medium. In thinking about the computer in this way, he remembered reading about the insight of Aldus Manutius, who some forty years after the invention of the printing press established the dimensions of the modern book by understanding that it must be small enough to fit into a saddlebag. The obvious twentieth-century analogy was that a modern computer should be no larger than a notebook. (Pages 229-230). 

It's an interesting book. One irony of my reading decision is that while Markoff documents LSD use in the area and by some of the computer scientists, he doesn't quite convince me that LSD had anything to do with the development of the personal computer in the Stanford area; there were a lot of computer nerds in the area, due to Stanford, the nascent electronics industry in Silicon Valley and defense contractors. In the end, I had the impression that the personal computer developed there because it was where Xerox set up a laboratory, and it was where Doug Engelhart and Alan Kay chose to live and work.

Chad Nelson on anarchism and RAW

Chad Nelson 

Chad Nelson — anarchist, attorney, Robert Anton Wilson scholar, vegan, Pearl Jam fanatic, animal rights activist and senior fellow at the Center for a Stateless Society — is featured in an interview at the Secret Transmissions blog, where Chad holds forth on anarchism.

There are two sections in the interview that mention Robert Anton Wilson; here is one:

What’s the relationship between C4SS and the late Discordian author, Robert Anton Wilson? 

I wish I could find the source, but I remember at one time reading that if RAW were alive today he'd probably most closely align with C4SS politically. I've got to imagine, based on everything I've read from the man, that it's fairly accurate. I think even his non-political thinking contains a lot of overlap with C4SS philosophy. 

I've tried during my time affiliated with C4SS to dial up the amount of RAW exposure. I created a "Robert Anton Wilson Collection" there – which contains "sombunall" of C4SS's references to RAW's work. In almost everything I've written at C4SS, I've given a nod to him, if not outright parroted his ideas, often intentionally. 

I tied RAW to the C4SS in this blog post. 

Chad offers some examples of anarchist principles in action. How about science fiction conventions? They exist as voluntary organizations.

By the way, I'm not an anarchist myself; I self define as "more of a libertarian than anything else." I'm fine voting for Gary Johnson, even if I don't aline perfectly with him. He is "open" to the idea of a basic income and is better on the peace issue than many libertarians give him credit for.

Currencies that are an alternative to money

Tokyo Ramen. Photo released under GNU Free Documentation License. 

At Reason magazine, Jesse Walker posts an article about a topic that RAW was interested in: Alternative currencies.

After noting a piece by Elizabeth Nolan Brown about ramen noodles catching on as a currency, Walker notes six other alternate currencies that Reason has mentioned in articles: T-shirts, cell phone minutes, cans of fish, opium, cocaine and even urine.

My interview with Ian 'Cat' Vincent

Ian "Cat" Vincent. (Credit: Photographer Robin LeBlanc, plus Deep Dream.)

I am pleased to present an interview with Ian "Cat" Vincent, a British mage, writer and student of Robert Anton Wilson. Here, Cat holds forth of RAW, Festival 23, Brexit and other subjects. And there's news — Festival 23 will return in two years!

Cat sent me his official bio, but a couple of additional notes: If you like this interview, please see the very interesting one with Dubious Monk; I tried to avoid overlap with it. Trivia about Mr. Vincent (from the Internet Movie Database): "Was the basis of the character 'Romanov' in Diana Wynne Jones' novel 'The Merlin Conspiracy' (2003)."

And now we hear from the man himself:

My current bio:

Ian "Cat" Vincent is a lifelong student of the occult, and a former paranormal protection consultant.

In recent years he has turned his attention to Fortean journalism, with a focus on examining the rise of "hyper­rea"' (fiction­-inspired) belief systems and other pop­ culture manifestations of the occult. He was one of the earliest journalists to write in depth on the Slenderman phenomenon.

His writing has appeared in Fortean Times, the American college text Apocalyptic Imaginary, a monthly column at Spiral Nature and the Darklore anthologies, and he is a a contributing editor at The Daily Grail.

He has lectured on subjects including Slenderman, the life and works of Robert Anton Wilson, the fictional roots of modern paganism and the Westernisation of Eastern beliefs at a range of venues including the Senate House Library, the University of Leicester and the Royal College of Art.

His first book, New Gods and Monsters, on the evolution of pop culture belief systems, will be published in 2017 by Daily Grail Publishing.

Ian is a Fellow of The Institute of Atemporal Studies. He blogs at catvincent.com and he can be found on Twitter @catvincent.

A resume of Ian’s writing and lectures to date can be found here: http://www.catvincent.com/?page_id=1309


RAWILLUMINATION: For those of us who couldn't afford to come from the U.S. to Festival 23, can you describe what the highlights were like? How did your own appearance go?

CAT VINCENT: Very hard to describe! (Here’s my latest newsletter where I try to approach summing the event up...).

Quickest possible summary: in a field of at­ peak 500 people, I did not encounter a single arsehole. I got at least three magical upgrades. People I’d never met before became pals; people I already knew became close; people I loved became immortal. The music was varied and excellent, the art fascinating, the spoken­ word and other performances magnetic. The spirits of both Bob Wilson and Ken Campbell were properly venerated. Possibly the best weekend of my life. And ... they’re doing it again in two years time.

My appearances ... well, I was scheduled to do two, ended up doing five. They seemed to be well­received ...  even the bit where I had the temerity to use Alan Moore’s words to impersonate Glycon!

Cat Vincent with his hand puppet at Festival 23. I don't know the identity of the other other gentlemen. 

RAWILLUMINATION: How did you get interested in Robert Anton Wilson? At this stage in your life, is there a book or books by RAW you particularly like?

CAT VINCENT:  I was a weird kid even before I got to reading Bob: something of a prodigy (but not having anything I was especially good at, other than Being Weird and reading a lot), the local library gave me adult tickets once I’d read all the kid’s books ...  then closed shelf access once I’d read all the adult ones. I had access to literally any book I could think of. I was reading Crowley, Tim Leary, De Sade and such by the age of ten. So I was well-primed for finding a second­hand copy of Illuminatus! in the local bookshop ... but it was Cosmic Trigger (back then there was only the one) which did the job. I was around 13 and it was barely in print. Between that and the other Wilson ­ Colin (especially The Occult and A Criminal History of Mankind) I was immediately upgraded, and somewhat prepared for a life of magic. Emphasis on the ‘somewhat.’

I always return to Cosmic Trigger and Quantum Psychology. Of the fiction, Masks of the Illuminati and the Historical Illuminatus Chronicles (especially Nature’s God) stand out.

(And now, Cosmic Trigger 1 is back in print, with a new introduction by John Higgs ... and I’m mentioned in it. 13 year old me would be astonished.)

RAWILLUMINATION: Can you please say something about the book you are working on, New Gods and Monsters?

CAT VINCENT: New Gods is in part an expansion of my thoughts on the concept of "hyperreal religion" ­ those belief systems whose adherents freely admit that their source material is entirely fictional ­ as first examined in print by me in my Darklore piece ‘Believing In Fiction.’ It’s also shaping up to be probably the closest thing to autobiography I’ll ever do: my relationship to fiction and magic is, like any spirituality, intensely personal ­ so it’s the only way to both do the subject justice and contextualise it to a possibly skeptical reader.

RAWILLUMINATION: Aren't you interested in science fiction and fantasy? Who are your favorite authors?

CAT VINCENT: Hugely: SF was my first love as a child, even before the occult. (Here’s a piece I
wrote about my early hyperreal love of classic Star Trek a while back.)

Fantasy was, oddly, less so ­ though the appearance of what’s now called Urban Fantasy shifted my viewpoint: I like my fantasy to be almost like my actual life ...  none of that Second World stuff, generally!

Some of my top writers:

Alan Moore, Grant Morrison, Warren Ellis, Diana Wynne Jones, Neil Gaiman, Philip K Dick, William Gibson, Fritz Leiber, Iain (M) Banks, Clive Barker, Neal Stephenson, Charles Stross, Kameron Hurley, Kate Griffin (aka Claire North), Richard Kadrey, Ales Kot, J. Michael Straczynski, The Robinsons ­ Kim Stanley and Spider.

A special place for the extraordinary Andrew Vachss: read his bio, then his books.

RAWILLUMINATION: Can you recommend one or two books of magick to provide a solid grounding for those of us who don't know very much about it?

CAT VINCENT: A tricky one, as my education was hundreds of books and thousands of hours of experimentation!

As a primer to modern approaches, you can’t go far wrong with Grant Morrison’s Pop Magic. I also recommend Ramsey Dukes' SSOTBME! as a solid, skeptical intro to chaos magic approaches. The most fascinating new book on magic for me is The Cunning Man’s Handbook by Jim Baker, which is a revolution (and huge!). Best advice on books for the new mage: read widely, doubt heavily, double check your sources, test them personally. There’s a wealth of information out there, especially since the likes of Jake Stratton­-Kent have both transmitted and contextualised many old grimoires.

RAWILLUMINATION: How has RAW influenced your ideas about magick? Which opinion of his on magick do you think is spot on, and what did he say about magick that you disagree with?

CAT VINCENT: In a word: completely.

As a very young mage with no physical peer group, RAW’s multi­model approach was a revelation. By showing me the multi­model approach (around the same time as this idea was being explored with the originators of the Chaos magic movement) it allowed me to combine disparate elements into my slowly evolving praxis, and it’s never failed me yet.

The part I disagree with? His position of total disbelief. Despite my best efforts over some 40 years, there’s still stuff I believe in. I believe in magic: a Something that sometimes allows altering of perceived reality through indirect means ­ maps being used to change the territory. One might see this as an experiment in choosing one’s belief system ... I must therefore note that in 45 years of praxis, it has rarely let me down.

RAWILLUMINATION: You have kind of a unique perspective on Brexit — if I understand correctly, you shut down your combat magick consulting company because you were afraid of running afoul of EU regulations. Do you plan to restart your business in the wake of the Brexit vote?

CAT VINCENT: I truly did not see this question coming.

I voted Remain in the Referendum. I also got one of the oldest pieces of figurative art in England ­ the Uffington White Horse ­ tattooed on my arm right before I voted (23 June!) because whichever way the vote went, I wanted a piece of Old Albion on my skin ... and my Albion is and will ever be (as Eddie Izzard once put it) a Mongrel Nation.  (See also here and here.)

I also note that a pro­immigration seated member of Parliament was assassinated  by a white supremacist just before the vote ... and the Leave side won. I do not think it’s a huge step to say that was a blood sacrifice on behalf of some very bad magic.

I’m hardly a fan of the EU generally, or politics at all. But I am a xenophile, and I treasure what other cultures have brought to my land. (I am old enough to remember what British food was like before the influx of Ugandan Asians to our shores in the 1970s... *shudder*.) And not only are there no justifiable political or economic reasons for Brexit outside of a nostalgia for a non­existent Imperial golden age, the degree of racial and xenophobic brutality since the Referendum horrifies and disgusts me.

That said ...  no, I won’t be restarting Athanor Consulting. Mostly because, as Danny Glover once said, I’m too old for this shit.

Tuesday links

A black woman won the Hugo for best novel. I haven't read it yet but it goes on the ever-expanding reading list. 

Greg Hill's Emperor Norton poster.

Keeping a synchronicity journal while reading Cosmic Trigger. 

Book 'Discordian Problems' released.

Hugo Awards announced; the "puppies" did not do well.  The best novel winner, N.K. Jemisin, has some thoughts. 

Paul McCartney in Cleveland, with a setlist.

Cosmic Trigger online reading group, Week 20!

Welcome to week 20 of the RAWIllumination.net Cosmic Trigger Reading Group. This week we are covering a couple of pivotal chapters — Mystery Babalon and Leary emerges from darkness and Sirius rises again, located beginning on page 161 Hilaritas. Many thanks to Adam Gorightly for going above and beyond the call of duty last week offering us a deeper look into the slow mental unravelling that can happen whilst wandering about in Chapel Perilous. The contrast between Kerry Thornley and RAW is invaluable for anyone considering a study of magick, the occult, the Illuminati, etc.

Before diving into this weeks reading, I want to replay a few choice quotes from Ishtar’s Walk, which can serve as a time-lapse of our Author hitting bottom and then emerging from the depths.

“Pity assaulted me; I wept.”
“Pity tour at me with claws.”
“Pity and horror.”
“It is an easy step from pity to self-pity.”
“At sunset, The fool got up and went out on the porch and watched the song sinking in the west, doing the Sufi heart chakra exercise, forcing myself to love all beings. I came back to life.”
“I reached a depths of despair and deliberately decided to love the world instead of pitying myself; and, afterwards, I was no longer afraid of anything.”
“Sufism had vindicated that self: the heart chakra exercise works. Perfect love cast out fear. I was beginning to emerge on the other side of chapel perilous.”

And now for our regularly scheduled broadcast.

Mystery Babalon finds our Author on October 12, 1974, hosting a Crowleymas party involving “weird and eldritch festivities” as well as nearly 100 local wizards and mystics. That must have been quite a scene. Our intrepid Author and erstwhile Shaman gets things started pretty quickly, invoking the notion of paranoia, and then flexing his new-found “emerging from chapel perilous” muscles, first by spending 20 minutes on the phone helping one Dr. H (not his real initial!) turn around a bad acid trip, and then spending 3 hours “practicing psychotherapy without a license” while helping another alias (Tom) grok that “he was the programmer of his own computer, and that it had only been a hallucination that made him think the computer was starting to program him.”

 Jacques Vallee

“And then Jacques Vallee arrived.” Bob immediately kidnaps him into “a room which the other party-goers were not informed about,” accompanied by Grady and Phyllis McMurtry, a couple of young magicians from Los Angeles, and Alias Tom. There ensues a conversation regarding alien intelligences, UFO’s, and extraterrestrials which brings to mind the Sufi tale of “The Elephant in a Dark Room.”

“Jacques said that the evidence emerging suggested to him that the UFO’s weren't extraterrestrial at all,” and that they “always strive to give the impression that they are something the society they are visiting can understand."

Grady McMurtry

Bob asks Grady McMurtry about the extraterrestrial nature of alien intelligences—"Some of the things Aleister said to me," Grady replied carefully, "could be interpreted as hints pointing that way,” although he himself thought the theory of higher dimensions made more sense to him than the theory of actual extraterrestrials.

Bob himself states that he “was inclined to believe the Higher Intelligences were extraterrestrial.”

Alias Tom, a witch as well as a computer programmer (note how Bob used the computer analogy to talk him out of his earlier crisis) said that the Higher Intelligences are “imbedded in our language and numbers.”

There ensues talk of a War in Heaven, Secret Chiefs, and “beings we cannot understand,” which brings to mind the oft-quoted remark by Arthur C. Clarke that “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magick.” Pay no attention to that Secret Chief behind the curtain!

The Author then dives into a story about Dr. H (from earlier in the chapter), auras, and Energy from the Sky resulting in a sort of ecstatic chest-pain and/or asthma, in which he ties together Anton Mesmer, Baron Reichenbach, Alexander Gurvich, and Wilhelm Reich as discoverers of “animal magnetism,” “OD,” “the mitogenic ray,” and “orgone energy,” and details a trail of magickal adepts who developed chest pain and asthma after experiencing this energy and/or the “beings we cannot understand”—including MacGregor Mathers, Alan Bennett, Aleister Crowley, and Israel Regardie, who was cured of his condition after undergoing bio-energetic therapy from Dr. Wilhelm Reich. Whew!

Interestingly enough, just at the time Cosmic Trigger was published, Reiki energy, the most popularized form of “energy work,” was just beginning to spread beyond small groups of practitioners in Japan and Hawaii on its way to becoming as commonplace and many other freaky ideas Bob was talking about way back then—yoga, meditation, etc. The Author then finishes the chapter with a Crowley quote which is a bit too enthusiastic perhaps in its prediction of a scientific understanding (and acceptance) of these energies. The energy work itself, however, is vibrant today…

Leary emerges from the darkness and Sirius rises again

William Grimstad's Six Million Reconsidered 

The Author herein introduces the Reader to Timothy Leary’s SMI2LE scenario, Space Migration, Intelligence Increase, & Life Extension, as “the three obvious steps that a reasonable educated God takes.” He then proceeds to mash-up some recent communications from Leary with a series of communications from one W.N. Grimstad, which included an elaborate theory which Bob describes alternately as “Cabalistic Numerological magick” and “rigamarole.” Interesting to note that the title of the chapter partially derives from a tape created by the aforementioned Mr. Grimstad titled Sirius Rising, and that over the past week, Sirius has indeed been rising, after spending 40 days “behind” our sun. Mr. Grimstad, by the way, is an apparent “Holocaust denier” and potential anti-semite, if Mr. Google is to be trusted, something our Author may or may not have suspected back in those pre-internet days.

The finale of this chapter gives the Reader an awesome example of “meaning” (“in the Jungian sense”), tying together Bob, Tim, Grimstad, the San Francisco Phoenix, the S.L.A., and Patty Hearst. Interestingly enough, the birth of Cosmic Trigger The Play involves another beautiful example of Jungian “meaning,” which John Higgs recounts in the introduction to the Hilaritas Press edition of Cosmic Trigger, and which Cat Vincent wrote about in March 2014.

That’s it for this week—please dive in with your own tales of Higher Intelligences, Jungian “meaning,” elephants in dark rooms, etc. Next week we will be examining The Horus Hawk and Uri Geller, The Motorman Prophesies, and Doggiez from Sirius, beginning on page 172, and finishing up Part I.