Prometheus Rising discussion/exercise group, Week Seven

 

Prometheus Rising: Introduction by Israel Regardie

By Apuleius Charlton
Special guest blogger 

“Darling Alice, You really are a contemptible bitch!” -Israel Regardie to Aleister Crowley, 1937

A prime example of my hubris is that I am particularly proud of the authors who have influenced me; that I have, amongst all the race, have been blessed by Plan or chance to have been taught  by the greatest minds across the gulf of time. In my blinding pride, I often forget many of the ever-looming teachers who also held sway over my development. 

In many ways, I think of Regardie as someone who is a corollary to Crowley and Wilson rather than an influence in his own right. However, that is partially based on Regardie own subtle ingenuity: he appears at times to be an, admittedly invaluable, interpreter of the generally murky philosophies of the Ceremonial Magic, Thelema, and Reichian therapy. Thus he stands in the shadows, as a consigliere for these illustrious ideologies for young students. However, Regardie innovations in magic are as important to my development as any of the more “original” authors. 

I muddled through his One Year Manual in my dorm room in rural WV which was decorated solely by an Austin Osman Spare print and his A Garden of Pomegranates is the textbook on Qabalah that clear up many of my uncertainties and helped me understand the perfection of the scheme. The Tree of Life, The Middle Pillar, Roll Away the Stone, How to Make and Use Talismans have all been housed on my bookshelves across many moves. His The Golden Dawn and Gems From The Equinox preserved and made available teachings that otherwise could have easily been forgotten. (Although his criteria for what went into Gems can be bizarre in certain instances, to say the least.)  His biography of Crowley notably cottoned Wilson to the ideas of Uncle Al and he would later write an introduction for that book. One of Regardie’s most influential ideas is one of the most essential; before undertaking the serious study and practice of magic one should go through therapy.

This is all without mentioning the direct influence he had on the modern occult scene that, for better or worse, propelled and legitimized Grady McMurtry, Lon Milo Duquette, Wilson, Parfitt, and various other writers I am forgetting to their luminary status. So Regardie was a great man who seemed content to, instead of striking out further into the shadow realm of the occult like Kenneth Grant, stayed behind to guide the next generation. 

Regardie’s talent is on full display as in the first three paragraphs of his introduction he makes you fall in love with Wilson all over again as he notes the breadth and depth of his mighty philosophy and his bubbling humor. I have been lucky to have such teachers. He manages to weave in some of his personal philosophical hobby-horses such as his extrapolation of Wilson’s “Third Mind” into the Qabalistic theory of balance, centered on the triad of Geburah, Chesed, and Tiphareth and eloquently ruminates over the unmatched metaphor of Indra’s Net. 

His incredulity toward Wilson’s optimism makes him look all the wiser as we read the book decades after its initial publication. (I do wonder though if anyone, like myself, was swept up by Wilson’s hopes and words to the point that when they read Prometheus Rising the first time, and also almost believed in Utopia.) Regardie also says the only wise thing to say about Wilson’s Utopia: “However, I sincerely hope that Wilson is right in this case.” Regardie also notes that transformative periods in society are rarely, if ever, peaceable. Like birth, there is always implicit trauma. I know I have a tendency to bemoan the state of our world, but at least I’m honest. I hope that the turmoil that seems to be set up against the 2020s like a bowling ball against pins leads to some better arrangement. We shall see, I guess. Like the monk in the Zen vignette that Wilson relates in The Starseed Signals, perhaps the best thing is to take everything with a placid “is that so?” 

So we proceed gently into the realm of "The Thinker and The Prover" which I’ll discuss in my next entry. I would suggest taking this time as we engage with Chapter One of PR to revisit Regardie’s writing. We are all lucky that he is one of the teachers in this book. 

The story behind 'Citizen Kane'

Famous screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz, only 55 when he died of alcoholism in 1953 (public domain photo.)

Herman Mankiewicz came up with the idea of making a movie about William Randolph Hearst and won an Oscar for co-writing the script  of "Citizen Kane" with Orson Welles, although he had to fight to get any credit at all. An article at the New Yorker discusses Mankiewicz' role in the film, and a new movie, "Mank," about the writer's Hollywood years. The piece also quotes part of a telegram Mankiewicz sent to Ben Hecht to lure Hecht to Hollywood: “Millions are to be grabbed out here and your only competition is idiots. Don’t let this get around.”

The piece by Richard Brody is called "Herman Mankiewicz, Pauline Kael, and the Battle Over
'Citizen Kane'." All of you Orson Welles fans should read it. 

Thanks to John Merritt for calling my attention to the piece. 

New book on psychedelics and religion

 A new book, The Immortality Key by Brian C. Muraresku, revives the theory that psychedelics played a large role in early religion, including the Eleusinian mysteries in ancient Greece and even the early days of Christianity. 

Andrew Sullivan wrote a piece about the book, highly recommending it. There is also discussion from the skeptic Jason Colavito. 

'Rock stars to undertakers' KLF movie out now

 

A new movie is out (and available for rental online) about how the KLF folks, Bill Drummond & Jimmy Cauty, have made a comeback as undertakers. More information here.

Joanna Harcourt-Smith documentary to air soon

 

The New York Times  finally publishes its obituary for Joanna Harcourt-Smith, and it has a bit of news that I had not seen anywhere else. After mentioning her memoir Tripping the Bardo with Timothy Leary, it says, "A documentary based on her book is scheduled to air on Nov. 29 on Showtime. The film is by Errol Morris, acclaimed for “The Thin Blue Line” (1988) and “The Fog of War” (2003)."

Here is information about the film, "My Psychedelic Love Story," including a trailer you can watch. Of course, Joanna (as "Joanna Leary") is mentioned repeatedly in The Starseed Signals, so I've put a tag for the book on this blog post. 

Oz Fritz read Tripping the Bardo with Timothy Leary when it came out and his long review is available at his blog. 

Rasa talks about editing 'Starseed' and other 'lost' RAW titles

When I had finished reading The Starseed Signals, I wondered about other books that RAW apparently worked on at the time but never published. I also wanted to learn more about the work that was done in putting the book together. (I could tell it took a lot of work, but I was curious about the specifics of reconstructing the manuscript.) Hilaritas Press editor Rasa, with his usual generosity of spirit, agreed to take my questions about the matter, so here are my questions and his answers. -- The Management. 

RAWIllumination: The Starseed Signals apparently is not the only "lost" RAW book. The text and the supplementary correspondence make it clear that RAW at about the same time as he worked on The Starseed Signals was working on a couple of other books, one about Aleister Crowley and the other about the science of trying to obtain life extension. Do we know how far he got, and are there any traces of these manuscripts?

Are there any other "lost" books known to exist, and does Hilaritas have any other "lost" RAW books in preparation, as opposed to putting together new collections of all of the various short pieces he published over the years?

Rasa: Sadly, as we’ve noted, RAW was not very good in keeping his papers intact. Add to that that the family moved some 20 times, and we are afraid that a lot may have been lost. There are no traces of any other books other than The Tale of the Tribe. In looking through RAW’s last computer, I found a manuscript for Tribe that RAW had started, but he didn’t get very far. We assembled a small team of experts to pore over the document and try to figure out if it is worth publishing. We are still working on that project, but I’m afraid that there is not a lot to work with. Finding The Starseed Signals was a case of lucky coincidances. In my dream list of future coincidances, I would love to find books four and five of the Historical Illuminatus Chronicles – if I had a choice in what serendipity may hold. We are not holding our breaths on that. We are relatively certain those books never got written.

RAWIllumination.net: I want books four and five of Historical Illuminatus!  too, but my particular obsession is the years of "lost" correspondence  between RAW and Robert Shea. RAW even wrote in CT3 that he'd like to see it collected in a book someday, but (as far as I can tell) neither man actually bothered to save it in a  useful way. 

Rasa: Yeah, that’s what I get from Christina. What we’ve got now is what we’ve got.

RAWIllumination: In your "A note from the publisher" in The Starseed Signals, you mention a discovery that RVP, which earlier was supposed to be the publisher of the book, left out parts that were "too hard to decipher." In what way did the manuscript have parts that were hard to decipher? And were there any parts that even Hilaritas Press could not decipher?

Rasa: There were a couple of sections of The Starseed Signals that were simply too hard to read without a LOT of effort. In one case, we simply put the effort in and were able to figure out the entire passage. In another case, we found a section that was very hard to read (In these cases, RVP simply put in the book, “Original text indecipherable”), but after some research, we figured out those couple of paragraphs were used in Cosmic Trigger, nearly verbatim. That was the only place in the book where RAW didn’t totally rewrite a passage that later found its way into Cosmic Trigger. We were really lucky that passage, largely impossible to fully read in the type written manuscript, seemed largely the same in Cosmic Trigger. In a couple of other places, RAW had put articles into the book from other sources, and a couple of those were simply left out because RAW’s photocopies were too hard to read. With a bit of research, we were able to track down the original articles. In other cases, RVP simply pasted in the poor photocopies. We transcribed all the articles so they would be easy to read.

RAWIllumination.net: How were RAW's original drawings redone to make them legible? Did you do the tables yourself, Rasa?

Rasa: All of the charts and drawings were done by RAW by hand, and so they mostly looked very rough, and even a bit hard to read. What I called the “Kether” chart, had a nice flow to its spiral line, and I thought that rough drawing would still work. I did replace much of the text in that drawing, but I used a font that was similar to the typewriter font RAW originally used, so the whole chart, now easy to read, looks a lot like RAW’s original. I redesigned all the other tables and charts. I’m fairly certain that was RAW’s practice – to draw what he wanted and then have his publisher reconstruct it so it would be legible. 

I think what is simultaneously both satisfying and mildly frustrating is that we are finally able to create versions of RAW’s books that we think he would have loved. We are even taking any typos readers may still find, and updating our editions, so that we can finally clean up those tiny, but irritating issues that RAW often complained about. He even wrote in the Fore-word for Quantum Psychology about how “amusing” it was to have a name in one of his books continually misspelled. In The New Inquisition, New Falcon changed the name of philosopher/physicist Mario Bunge, to “Munge” – throughout the entire book! RAW claims it may have been his mistake, but we are guessing he was being polite in not publicly blaming New Falcon. One of our amazingly well-educated proofreaders, Alfonso Montuori, in this case, discovered that error, and I later found that interview where RAW joked about it – using it as an example of chaos getting the better of him. He was amused by that, but we know from personal conversations that he hated any errors in his books, and that was one of his major complaints about his previous publishers – that those corrections were seldom, if at all, fixed in edition after edition. We are thrilled to take the time necessary to make these new editions RAW-worthy, but we are mildly frustrated that RAW never got to see what he so often desired. 

Lots of other Starseed coverage here. 

Adam Gorightly's 'Lost' afterword to the (formerly) lost RAW book

Adam Gorightly has a new blog post up on his "lost" afterword to what was going to be the edition of The Starseed Signals published under his supervision. (It was never published and Hilaritas Press took over the project.)

I've had a lot of blog posts about The Starseed Signals. I've created a page to archive many of them; you can see it at the top right of this page. 

Prometheus Rising discussion/exercise group, Week Six

A photo taken 21 years ago of today's special guest blogger, Eric Wagner, with Jeopardy! host Alex Trebek, who died on Nov. 8. Eric was the champion on the episode of the game show and used his winnings to take his wife to Paris.  (Photo posted on Facebook.)

By Eric Wagner
Special guest blogger 

On the morning of October 31, 2020, I found a quarter in the drive through of a Sonic Drive-In before they opened. Later that day I had to take my beloved dog Pookie to an emergency center, and we had to put him to sleep. He would have turned fifteen on November 26. On November 1 I found two quarters at a Taco Bell drive through. An hour and a half later I found my final quarter in that same drive through. I find it an interesting coincidence that I found these quarters in rapid succession after two months of unsuccessful searching at the same time I lost Pookie. In terms of the Thinker and the Prover, before Pookie started throwing up and I took him to the emergency vet, I thought that his health seemed OK. I considered spending a lot of time with him this year a great blessing, a positive side effect of working from home. When people talked about wanted to jump forward in time to the end of the pandemic, I thought that I wanted to treasure each day, because I feared Pookie would not outlive the pandemic. (What the Thinker thinks….) After talking with the vet, I could see how much Pookie was struggling. Before that night I modeled his behavior as normal for an aging dog. Holding him that night I could see his labored breathing and feel how slender he had become, and I could feel his suffering. 

After having found the quarters the next day, I decided to continue with creating my own similar experiments. I decided to see if I could flip a coin three times in a row and get heads each time. It took me 19 flips to get three heads in a row. I explained that by selective attention and tried to get three heads in a row again. This time it took ten flips. I explained that by mind over matter and tried again. This time it took 29 flips to get three in a row. 

Next I decided to lose a pound. It took me one day. I explained that to myself as selective attention. I tried to lose another pound. Once again it took a day. This time I explained it as mind over matter, and I decided to lose another pound. This time it took me two days. I do not draw any strong conclusions from the quarter or weight loss exercises. My data set seems too small. 

After rereading the chapter I confronted the party exercises. Well, during this pandemic I don’t plan to attend any parties, so I decided to use Zoom meetings. At the first one I considered myself ugly, unattractive and boring. I thought of the exercise a number of times during the meeting. I held myself back from making jokes. I did make one joke, and it got a good laugh. Perhaps I usually share weak jokes, but because I thought of myself as boring during this exercise, I held my tongue until I had a strong joke to share. 

“Life is just a party, and parties weren’t meant to last.” – Prince, “1999”. 

This morning I tried the next party exercise. I didn’t have a particularly strong experience. I will try the exercise again, perhaps at an actual party. 

I have observed the Thinker and the Prover in two close friends. I hope to get into discussions with some relative strangers in the near future and observe their Thinkers and Provers. I don’t talk much with relative strangers during the pandemic. 

Well, thanks to Zoom I got to talk with a few relative strangers and observe their Thinkers and Provers as well as to observe my own Thinker and Prover. I contemplated my expectations of this Prometheus Rising group. I think I’ve given these exercises a pretty good try over the past 35 years, and I think I’ve gleaned the main lessons from them, but I also think I may have missed the point sometimes, and these exercises may have a lot more to teach me. My Prover sort of has the next 22 months planned out, but it also may prove that I have missed the point and that I can reach new perceptions. Hopefully I will have an even more positive experience with these exercises than I anticipate. We will see. I found the moments when I found those quarters after months of unsuccessful searching very charged.

Two of Eric's dogs. Pookie is on the left. The other dog is Maggie, who died two years ago. 
 

 

Starseed and Gold Bug

If you are familiar with DNA, you know that it consists of four different biochemical building blocks, two kinds of bonded pairs: Adenine always pairs with thymine, and cytosine with guanine. This is analogous with the sexual pairing of men with women, as RAW remarks in Chapter 14 of  The Starseed Signals: 

Wands -- adenine
Cups -- thymine
Swords -- cytosine
Discs -- guanine

These four amino acids serve as bonds for the DNA helix. These chemical bonds are analogs of the sexual bonds at higher levels. (Here is some of the analogical, non-linear, non-Aristotelian right-lobe thinking we warned about earlier.) The pyrimidines are "male analogs," so adenine and cytosine are Wands and Swords respectively. The purines are "female analogs" so Cups and Discs are thymine and guanine. The lovely thing about this analog is that the phallic-vaginal symbolism (wands to cups, swords to discs) describes exactly the bonding system (adenine to thymine, cytosine to guanine) that actually does hold the DNA helix together. 

RAW has a footnote to this passage, remarking, "It is perhaps safe to mention in a footnote that this concept was received by both the present author, in California, and by poet Brian Barritt, in Switzerland, the same week, one reason for believing in a central Starseed Transmission facility." 

I was quite started by this passage. Two bonded pairs of DNA chemicals as an analogy for two mating couples is a good one-sentence description of the plot of The Gold Bug Variations by Richard Powers, a 1991 novel that is one of my all-time favorite works of fiction. The two main plot strands are a romance in the 1950s between two biologists, Stuart Ressler and Jeanette Koss, and a romance in the 1980s between librarian Jan O'Deigh and computer programmer Franklin Todd. Todd and Ressler work together in the 1980s sections of the novel, so the two couples are intertwined. 

A central conceit of the novel is that information and codes are behind everything; the title alludes both to Bach's Goldberg Variations and to Edgar Allen Poe's story, "The Gold-Bug," in which cryptography is an important plot element. If you've already read The Starseed Signals, you can't help but compare that to the Leary-Wilson emphasis on the importance of the DNA code. 

 According to Wikipedia, the famous American cryptographer William F. Friedman became interested in cryptography when he read "The Gold-Bug" as a child.  One of the characters in Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon, another one of my all-time favorite novels, is based upon Friedman. 

Powers, 63, won the Pulitzer Prize for his novel The Overstory and the National Book Award for another novel, The Echo Maker, so if you follow literary news you likely have at least heard his name. The Gold Bug Variations also attracted quite a bit of attention. 

Powers, like RAW (and myself), is a huge classical music fan, and his novel Orfeo  also connects music to the genetic code.  Powers' short novel Genie involves the discovery of code apparently written by intelligent life billions of years ago and inserted into Earth DNA. I re-read it Saturday night; it also connects music to the genetic code. 

You can read my 2014 interview with Powers, in which he remarks, "Self-replicating molecules have set every living thing in motion, and that pattern-making impulse, at the inanimate level, is, in some profoundly mysterious way, the mother of all animate pattern-making and pattern-seeking urges." And he also remarked, "Meditation on our molecular roots is tremendously inspiring, and thinking about the journey from the first self-replicating molecules to the pinnacles of human achievement is the deepest kind of spiritual reflection."

RAW and baseball

New York Yankees great Lou Gehrig

Timothy Leary apparently liked baseball, but I don't remember seeing Robert Anton Wilson talk much about the sport until I read The Starseed Signals, where a search reveals the word "baseball" is mentioned nine times. (It's mentioned six times in Cosmic Trigger.) Chapter Four of The Starseed Signals has particularly interesting discussion from Leary about baseball, but it's clear that RAW also understands the basics of the game. 

That made me wonder if RAW ever showed any interest in baseball, so I asked a couple of people who knew him well, Eric Wagner and Scott Apel. 

Eric Wagner: "At the time of Bob Wilson’s birth in 1932, baseball had a huge popularity as the national pasttime. I never heard him talk about baseball, but I think it formed part of his culture. I only recall him talking about sports once. In 1988 I told him one of my English professors called Ezra Pound a failed poet. Bob said, “Calling Ezra Pound a failed poet is like calling Joe Lewis a failed boxer.”

Scott Apel: "As far as RAW and baseball, I can't recall ever discussing that or any other sport with Bob. I'm not a sports fan, and neither was he. Might be a holdover from his childhood days -- when you live in NYC, you have the Yankees, and growing up as he did in the '40s, baseball and radio were about all there was for entertainment (and movies, of course, and comic books and literature). I theorize this because I was a baseball fan as a child living near Chicago in the '50s, and went to many Cubs and White Sox games with my dad and grandfather. Once we moved to California in 1960, however, I lost all interest -- gotta be one of the most boring sports ever. (I used to suggest that they play two games simultaneously, on two adjacent fields, so while nothing was happening during one game, you could look over and watch the other.) Last ballgame I ever went to was the Giants at Candlestick Park in 1963. So, sorry, but I can't be of any help with details about RAW's interest."

I noticed that both of them pointed out a child growing up in New York City could hardly be unaware of the New York Yankees, the most dominant team in baseball. 

Friday links

Mug shot for Arthur Simon Flegenheimer, better known under another name. 

RAW Semantics on Trump conspiracy theories. 

Farm distillery  once operated during Prohibition. "Dutch’s Spirits is named after the New York gangster and bootlegger Dutch Schultz, who is believed to have been the mastermind behind the expansive underground moonshine distillery, although some local historians stop short of giving him credit."  

I assume if you read Illuminatus! you don't need an explanation of who Dutch Schultz is, but if you need a primer, this should help, hat tip Jesse Walker. 

A live look into coverage of the recent election. 

94-year-old woman with back pain treated like drug addict. 

Is California secretly libertarian?  And maybe libertarians should use referendums more, hat tip John Merritt.

A psilocybin playlist. 

Obituary for Joanna Harcourt-Smith. 

RAW quotes Jefferson Starship [UPDATED]

I've always listened to a lot of music, and a wide variety, too, including rock music and classical. Nowadays , I listen mostly to classical; in college in the 1970s, although I did listen to recordings of Stravinsky and Bach and other classical composers, I mostly listened to rock, including many Jefferson Airplane/Starship albums and solo albums made by members of those bands.

I now regret that and wish I had explored classical more in those days, but the upside is I can explain a reference to Jefferson Starship in The Starseed Signals.

At the end of Chapter 13, RAW quotes these lyrics, attributing them to the Jefferson Starship:

Hide witch hide the good folks come to burn thee
Their keen enjoyment hid behind a gothic mask of duty

RAW in fact gets the lyrics slightly wrong; he writes "Burn, witch, burn" instead of "Hide witch hide." 

In any event, he is quoting from the opening of "Mau Mau (Amerikon)" the opening track of the album Blows Against the Empire, released in November 1970 under the name Paul Kantner and Jefferson Starship.  The songwriting credits for "Mau Mau" are Kantner, Grace Slick and Joey Covington. The album includes contributions from just about every San Francisco rock musician at the time and has a suite of songs on Side Two about hijacking a starship. Here is an interesting bit from the Wikipedia article:

"By Kantner's admission, the underlying premise of the narrative was derived in part from the works of science fiction author Robert A. Heinlein, particularly the novel Methuselah's Children. Kantner went so far as to write to Heinlein to obtain permission to use his ideas. Heinlein wrote back that over the years many people had used his ideas, but Paul was the first one to ask for permission, which he granted. In 1971, Blows was the first rock album ever nominated for a Hugo Award in the category of Best Dramatic Presentation. Although it received the plurality of the vote among the five nominated works, the majority of voters elected not to issue the award that year."

Kantner (1941-2016) was the Jefferson Airplane's most prolific songwriter; he and Grace Slick had a daughter, China, who was an MTV VJ in the 1980s and also has worked as an actress. Here is a bit from Paul Kantner's Wikipedia bio: "Identifying as a political anarchist, Kantner advocated the use of entheogens such as LSD for mind expansion and spiritual growth, and was a prominent advocate of the legalization of marijuana, which he regularly consumed for most of his adult life." I don't know if he and RAW ever met, but they must have known some of the same people in San Francisco.  UPDATE: See the comment below from R.U. Sirius. 

Kantner co-wrote the tune "Wooden Ships," recorded both by Crosby, Stills and Nash and by Jefferson Airplane. 

New RAW biography finds a publisher

Prop Anon announced on Twitter Tuesday that his new biography of Robert Anton Wilson will be published by Strange Attractor Press. 

If you are familiar with Strange Attractor or can take a moment to look at its website, you'll likely agree it is a good fit for the book. It was the British publisher, for example, of Erik Davis' excellent High Weirdness. The range of titles is eclectic and unusual. The "About" section of the website says, "Strange Attractor Press is an independent publishing house, founded in 2003, based in London, UK and run by Mark Pilkington and Jamie Sutcliffe."

It is too early to reveal any other details, such as a publication date, although Prop says maybe 2022 or early 2023. I will share announcements as they become available.