The RAW cover artist who is a Vodou priestess

You give me a cure all from New Orleans

Now that's a recipe I sure do need

Some cider vinegar and some elderberry wine

May cure all your ills, but it can't cure mine

Your Lou'siana recipes have let me down

Your Lou'siana recipes have surely let me down 

"Till the Next Goodbye," Mike Jagger and Keith Richards, from the Rolling Stones album, It's Only Rock and Roll 

Sometimes when you follow a link on a blog posting, you learn something. Via a link at this blog post by Apuleius Charlton, I learned that Sallie Ann Glassman, the cover artist for a Falcon Press edition of Ishtar Rising, is "an initiated Vodou Priestess" who owns the Island of Salvation Bontanica, a spiritual shop which provides voodoo religious supplies, candles, incense, medicinal herbs and works of art. 

Glassman's Wikipedia biography also leaves the impression that she is an interesting person: "Glassman's art is both esoteric and syncretic. She has produced two major non-traditional tarot packs: the Enochian Tarot is derived from the Enochian magical system of Elizabethan magician Doctor John Dee, and the New Orleans Voodoo Tarot replaces the standard four tarot suits with depictions of the spirits of the major strands of Vodou (Petro, Congo, Rada) and Santería practices."

I don't know what "Louisiana recipe" let Mick Jagger down, but I'll bet Sallie Ann Glassman could discuss it with you. 

Sallie Ann Glassman in 2009 (Creative Commons photo)

Mozart and the Freemasons

When I mentioned that I was reading Mozart: The Reign of Love by Jan Swafford, I wrote that I hoped Swafford would cover the composer's ties to the Freemasons. It's an excellent book, required reading if you are interested in classical music. But I wanted to specifically mention that I've already read a lot about Mozart and the Freemasons, and Swafford hasn't even gotten  yet to The Magic Flute, which Swafford argues is maybe Mozart's best opera. 

Swafford goes into quite a bit of detail about Freemasons and Mozart's decision to join a local lodge. He also describes the Illuminati and shows that quite a few local Illuminati were Mozart's friends. (Mozart did not get heavily involved in Illuminati doings, but as Swafford shows, Mozart didn't really devote much time to anything, other than making sure he had a good time and writing music at an astounding pace until he died young at age 35.)

Swafford devotes a lot of time to discussing Mozart's masterpieces (there were a lot of them) and so naturally, there is quite a lot devoted to the six "Haydn" string quartets. 

After discussing the first five, Swafford comes to the Quartet in C Major No. 19, e.g. "Dissonance." which Swafford says is "one of the sui generis moments of his creative life."

Swafford explains that Mozart begins with a section that was (particularly for the time) harmonically daring and says that in the beginning of the piece, Mozart is going "from darkness and uncertainty to light and certainty. It is perhaps germane that when he wrote the piece, Mozart had just become a Mason. In the future, some would see here an evocation of the order's initiation ceremony, which begins in blindfolded darkness. When the blindfold is taken away and the initiate is stunned by the light, he has symbolically journeyed from ignorance to enlightenment."

The footnote for this passage cites a book called The Magic Flute Unveiled by Jacques Chailly, which sounds interesting. 

I've been listening to a lot of Mozart as I read the book (Swafford does a fine job of pointing to lesser known works that are just as good as the greatest hits) and I expect to listen to the Haydn quartets as much as I can over the holiday weekend. 

Lake Shore Drive renamed

 

Chicago's Lake Shore Drive, now Jean Baptiste Point DuSable Lake Shore Drive. Creative Commons photo. 

A footnote to Illuminatus!: The Black Mass scene takes place in "elegant apartment, high above Lake Shore Drive."

Lake Shore Drive has now been renamed Jean Baptiste Point DuSable Lake Shore Drive, in honor of an early pioneer. And if it helps you better visualize the scene from the book, see the above photo.

Hat tip: Nick Helweg-Larsen. 

Wednesday links

 June Eris of the Month. 

Apuleius Charlton on RAW's introduction to Hyatt's Secrets of Western Tantra. 

What if Ken Campbell had been the Doctor?

Human Beatbox and Finnegans Wake

Adam Gorightly & Prop Anon talk Saucers, Spooks, and Kooks

Simon Russell Beale on John HIggs and classical music

 

Simon Russell Beale (Creative Commons photo)

British actor Simon Russell Beale, asked by the Guardian about his recent "cultural highlights," plugs William Blake Vs. the World by John Higgs: 

"Blake is a complete mystery to me. I’d recognise an artwork, but as for his writing, I was limited to “Tyger Tyger, burning bright” and the words of Jerusalem. So I’m loving this book, which charts Blake’s extraordinary imaginative life – this mythological reading of reality that he invented, or discovered. You start to think: 'Oh my God, that artist has been somewhere in my consciousness for the whole of my life, but I know absolutely nothing about them.' There’s a whole world just on my doorstep that I didn’t realise existed."

If you follow the link, Beale also recommends a classical music podcast by Joshua Weilerstein that covers Beethoven's symphonies and Stravinsky, two composers Robert Anton Wilson was interested in. 

Prometheus Rising discussion and exercise group, Week 38

 

The Emperor Augustus, an autocrat who in my judgment sought to project "friendly strength." 

Chapter Four seems quite interesting, although some of the exercises do not seem practical to me.

I enjoyed the discussion of the four quadrants, and the suggestion that all of us should try to be "a little less rigid, a little more flexible." I liked the G.  Rattray Taylor table, and it seems to me that culturally we are in a Matrist period. It also seems to me that the Democratic Party has become more "Matrist" while the Republican Party has tended to be more "Patrist" and authoritarian. The discussion of Nietzsche's concept of resentment and e.e. cumming's couplet Communist intelligentsia "every kumrad is a little bit/of concentrated hate" seems relevant to the current left on Twitter in 2021.

I have my doubts about some of the exercises. If RAW is serious about telling us to "Get roaring drunk and pound the table, telling everybody in a loud voice just what dumb assholes they all are," well, I'm just not going to do that. 

But I did watch a Three Stooges video, "Woman Haters" on YouTube. And while I don't plan to visit the "Lion House at the zoo" any time soon, I do have two "lions" in the house -- two cats -- and the male Siamese is very dominant, and constantly harasses and chases the female Torty, so that's something I can observe every day. And newspapers tend to have strong hierarchies, so I ought to be able to observe that when I go into the office this week. 

New 'Bodge' from Liverpool

 

The Liverpool Arts Lab issues a new Bodge; you can get a paper copy of it or just download the PDF.  I thought the artwork was particularly good this time. 

Bobby Campbell on Carl Oglesby

In the "RAW Thoughts" discussion thread at Principiadiscordia.com, Bobby Campbell discusses The Yankee and Cowboy War by Carl Oglesby, a book often mentioned  by Robert Anton Wilson and available as a PDF and in other formats at Archive.org. 

"An oft cited fav of RAW's, which reads almost like an Illuminatus! appendix, describes a secret history of conflict between Northeastern and Southwestern power elites.

"It plays almost like a "previously in the History of the United States" recap / recontextualization of our contemporary political strife. There are so many plot lines & trends that Oglesby identifies back in 1976 that we have now seen come to actual fruition, that there is slightly eerie quality to his more paranoid ruminations. (Defactualization -> TechnoFascism)"

More here. 

'Ishtar Rising' discussion group, Week Two

 

The Week Two blog posting for the Ishtar Rising discussion group has been posted. Go here to read it and take part.  I'm having another super busy day today, but I'll be over there during the weekend posting a comment. 

Discordian news roundup in Britain

Michelle Olley (the Bobby Campbell version). 

I do not have time for a long blog post today, but I wanted to alert you that Michelle Olley has penned a useful roundup of various events in Britain in the Mycellium newsletter, "An Update for the Cosmically Enthused," please read it here. 

Reminder: Ishtar Rising reading group

 

Today I'm reminding everyone that Apuleius Charlton has begun a new Ishtar Rising reading group at his blog, Jechidah. First entry was last week and there will be another one Thursday, so you still have plenty of time to hunt up a copy and join in. 

FBI releases information on Marjorie Cameron (Jack Parsons' wife)

Marjorie Cameron in the 1940s (via Wikipedia)

Here's some news I suspect will interest sombunall of you, via Twitter:

Nick Redfern: "The FBI has placed its file on Jack Parsons' wife, Marjorie Cameron, onto its website, The Vault. It runs to 154 pages. A lot of interesting info in there!" (Here is the link).

Adam Gorightly comments: "Looking through these files on Cameron, it appears that most of them had been previously released as Jack Parsons' FOIAs, but in past iterations Cameron's name had been redacted. Cameron died in the late 1990s, and so maybe a subsequent Cameron-FOIA request undid said redactions."

Prometheus Rising exercise and discussion group, Week 37

Unsplash photo by Adele Morris 

Chapter Three: Small Miracles

By Apuleius Charlton
Special guest blogger

It’s a small miracle that any of us manage to hold on to or develop any type of sanity. Rereading the third chapter this weekend it struck me how many things can go wrong with the initial imprinting of the First Circuit. Birth itself seems to be a traumatic experience by nature; after months of dark, warm oblivion to be suddenly squeezed out into cold, bright existence. While, by all means, the birthing process is miraculous, it doesn’t seem particularly pleasant for any of the parties involved. And while I would put my trust firmly in modern medicine, I can understand why some try to reduce possible distress on the child’s part by giving birth underwater. 

The myriad of things that can hurt us as infants, from our hand being pulled away from our privates to not being held enough, to being mistakenly (or purposefully) struck....just a minefield of incidents that could fuck up the foundation of our psyche. I always imagined that I had a negative initial imprint because I certainly do see the universe as a hostile and unforgiving place. 

Looking back on my adolescence and twenties, it is pretty obvious that I was going through some sort of extended crisis based around the first circuit. I went through hypochondriac fits: one year I ended up in the doctor’s office on a monthly basis, worrying that I was dying. This was partly driven by my cigarette smoking habit- something strongly associated with searching for first circuit comforts. While smoking was a calming and gratifying experience, I was also raised to believe that “if you smoke, YOU WILL DIE A HORRIBLE PAINFUL DEATH AND YOU DESERVE IT.” So between my addiction, my guilt and myself we had a smashing time. The hypochondria was also a symptom of my deep dissatisfaction with the way my life had been and was going. It was only after moving far away from my parents, for a myriad of reasons beyond smoking, that I was able to come to terms with my childhood and finally stop flagellating myself, or at least not quite as much, for my nicotine abuse. Eventually I returned home with a firmer understanding of my past. 

Then it was time to experience the present and future along with some real fun panic attacks. These occurred occasionally over the course of a couple years while I was stewing in my discontent and coming to terms with life. Through these attacks I learned how well other mental activities cease when the bio-survival circuit senses danger. Working with a therapist helped me find the ways to symbolically “solve” the source of my panic attacks. (Which mostly seems to consist of repeating “You’re just having a panic attack” and doing my best to ignore it until it goes away.) I’ve also found externalizing my anxiety/depression and treating it like an annoying, needy old dog seems to work. 

While I practiced pranayama and basic hatha yoga during this time, it seems in many ways that what was needed was time. Time for growth and most importantly for acceptance. The bio-survival circuit seems to be tailored to induce panic and ungainly dispositions, for me it took “simply” giving up the struggle against it or its eternal desires to form a working relationship with this earliest part of myself. 

While the higher circuits are fascinating, I find that most human behaviors can be explained through the first and second circuits, we’ll explore the latter in the upcoming weeks as we dive into Chapter Four and primate politics.