Prometheus Rising exercise and discussion group, Week 49

The Golden Gate bridge in California. Unsplash.com photo by Maarten van den Heuvel.

Chapter 7

By Apuleius Charlton
Special guest blogger

All is changing. 

What happens when we build a binding circuit inside our minds and that which is outside our minds refuses to be bound? Confusion and Chaos. 

As any Erisian knows, the best proof of the Goddess is "who do you think put all this chaos here?" 

I hate to be cynical, but there's not as much here as there is in other chapters of Prometheus Rising. Not in this day and age. Geography is a forgotten subject and California isn't a great example of progress. What is the West and the East in the days of the Internet? Knowledge moves in tangling webs- true knowledge, if there is such a thing, remains occult and speaks from two sides of the same mouth.

Citizens United doesn't negate Wilson's and Henry Adams' arguments but it does render them obsolete: who cares once the battle has been won? Illegitimate wealth and power have been absolutely enshrined and until the impossible happens, they will remain. Every time I remember that corporations are people, I die a little more inside. There is nothing to be done until that decision is undone. For all that John Roberts is lionized for not siding with the extremist bench, he should still be drawn and quartered for his treason against all free peoples. 

For further reference read John Higgs' "Growth" chapter from Stranger Than We Can Imagine. A man got killed for attempting to demonstrate the second exercise in the chapter (allegorically, at least). 

Information-doubling and Jumping Jesus were fun theories in the nineties, but after we've passed 2012 it just seems the more we are exposed to, the dumber we become. 

RAW's 'Scientific and Experimental Magick'

One of the mysteries involving Robert Anton Wilson's "lost" book, The Starseed Signals, finally published by Hilaritas Press in 2020, is what happened to the material in it. 

Reading it revealed that much of it was repurposed into Cosmic Trigger 1. 

And now the indefatigable Martin Wagner also has revealed part of the answer: Much of the same material in the book was used in a long, dense article on the Eight Circuit model, "Scientific and Experimental Magick," published in Gnostica in January 1975, and now reprinted by Martin on his website. The intro for the article says, "This article is taken from his incredibly popular series of lectures at the Gnosticon 4 last September," but if you've read The Starseed Signals, you also should recognize a lot of it.

For example, these striking sentences in the article also are found in the book:

Jacques Bergier has suggested, somewhat whimsically, that the Parisian radio station which broadcasts a one-hour transmission on French civilization once a week may be an earthside analog of magick/religious/UFO phenomenon. That is, some central “station” may be broadcasting a one-hour transmission on Cosmic civilization. Space-time relativity considerations make it not unthinkable that the Transmissions received on Earth in the past 30,000 years—by shamans, yogis, alchemists; Buddha, Jesus, Joseph Smith, Bohme, Blake, Crowley, Mary Baker Eddy; flying saucer “contactees“; etc.—are part of the same educational project. These Starseed Transmissions (as Dr. Leary calls them) suffer a great deal of semantic noise in passing through the nervous system which receives them, but remain strikingly identical in emphasis.

The Book of Mormon, Crowley’s Book of the Law, the Judeo-Christian Bible, the Upanishads and Vedas, etc., when closely and dispassionately studied, appear very much to be the same signal with encrustations of local prejudice, ignorance, bias and distortion.

Tyler Cowen decides to SMI2LE

Tyler Cowen

It's an easy criticism to say that the space colonies and dramatic life extensions forecast by Robert Anton Wilson haven't arrived yet, but readers of this blog will notice that I like to point out indications that SMI2LE isn't dead, it's just not moving as quickly as predicted.  I recently mentioned Balaji Srinivasan and Zoltan Istvan; here is another example. 

Tyler Cowan has a project called Emergent Ventures, funded by donations, a "fellowship and grant program from the Mercatus Center" which "seeks to support entrepreneurs and brilliant minds with highly scalable, 'zero to one' ideas for meaningfully improving society." 

Tyler periodically announces Emergent Ventures grants on his Marginal Revolution blog; the latest announcement was published Sept. 10. It lists 13 winners; I want to quote what Tyler says about two of them:

"BeyondAging, a new group to support longevity research."

"Nina Khera, 'I’m a teenage human longevity researcher who’s interested in preventing aging-related diseases, especially those related to brain aging. In the past, I’ve worked with companies like Alio on computation and web-dev-based projects. I’ve also worked with labs like the Gladyshev lab and the Adams lab on data analysis and machine learning-based projects.'  Her current project is Biotein, about developing markers for aging, based in Ontario."

Here is an article on SMI2LE, and if you follow the link and read the whole announcement at Marginal Revolution, you will see some of Tyler's other announcements arguably promote increases in intelligence. There is a grant to "Zena Hitz, St. John’s College, to build The Catherine Project, to revitalize the study of the classics" and a grant to "for a project to make the Great Books on the web easy to read." I have bookmarked the blog of Sam Enright,  a university student studying in Scotland; some of you may enjoy Enright's blog post, "A Beginner's Guide to Miles Davis." 

Memorial site for L. Neil Smith

 

A memorial site has been set up for L. Neil Smith, the libertarian science fiction writer who died August. 27. Relatives, friends and fans are posting photos and links. The above is Bobby Campbell's illustration for the article on Smith I wrote for New Trajectories 2; Bobby gave me permission to post it at the memorial site. 

Bobby Campbell to release new art and comics soon

 

This might be a good time to sign up to be a subscriber to Bobby Campbell's Patreon account.   If you hurry up and sign up, you'll get a limited edition postcard later this month with original art.  I'm a subscriber, so I'm looking forward to mine. 

Many other projects are on the way, including "THE MAGNIFICENT MULLAH NASREDDIN HOOJA

6 page comic starring the sensational Sufi satirist" (scheduled for release Sunday) and "AND BOB'S YOUR UNCLE 6 page comic about 'The Headless Way' meditation assigned by RAW in his Quantum Psychology Class." Other projects are on the way, see this post. 

Subscriptions start at just $1 a month, so it won't break the bank to support Bobby. 

Jesse Walker dates the Leary letter

From the Berkeley Barb

Yesterday when I posted the link to the RAW letter to Timothy Leary I noted that there was no date for the letter but that it referenced the Bicentennial (e.g., British friends, 1976, the 200th anniversary of when we threw off the yoke of the British monarchy). Jesse Walker wrote to me saying that the letter apparently dates to 1975:

"He refers to the saucer-TV contact possibly happening in 'late 75,' which makes me think the letter is from 1975. (People were already talking up the bicentennial then.) Or possibly a little earlier -- but he wrote up that saucer-TV stuff for the Berkeley Barb in '75 (see page 14 of  https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/community.28033528.pdf), and that's also when Wilson and Leart were working on the Periodic Table of Energy (I assume that's what "PTofE" stands for)."

Thanks, Jesse!

RAW writes to Tim Leary about 'experimental theology' and other matters

 

Robert Anton Wilson explains, "The bison in our illustration is named Tennial. He's our mascot, Bison Tennial, and also our bicentennial mascot." 

A letter from Robert Anton Wilson, undated, to Timothy Leary about various matters, preserved at the Internet Archive. Hat tip, Sean Howe. (No date on the letter, but the bison, above, suggests 1976). (UPDATE: Please see this follow up post, where Jesse Walker dates the letter to 1975). 

Prometheus Rising exercise and discussion group, Week 48

By Eric Wagner
Special guest blogger 

I had forgotten the vicissitudes of getting magazines by snail mail. The cover of the new issue of The National Review arrives with nothing inside.  Either intentionally or accidentally most of the magazine did not arrive in my mailbox. Oh well. I must admit it pleased me to have such an easy excuse not to read the new issue. The Skeptical Inquirer still hasn’t arrived. I suspect it will take me at least a year to finish these four exercises. 

I enjoyed reading Fate magazine. I read a nice article on pets on the Titanic, and it pleased me that one author still believes in the Priory of Sion. I wonder what Bob Wilson would have made of the debunking of that conspiracy. 

About fifteen years ago doing the exercises in this chapter I bought a copy of Scientific American. It had an article on how researchers had burn victims play a skiing video game, and playing the game lessened the patients perceived pain as they vividly imagined the intense cold of the world of the game. This pleased me because some of my fellow teachers at the time perceived videos as worthless. 

I have had a number of discussions with intelligent Muslims recently. I forwarded Bob Wilson’s interview with David Bohm to some Muslim friends, and they really liked it. This year I heard more references to Ramadan than ever before. Even Weight Watchers had an article on how to follow the WW plan during Ramadan this year. I don’t remember Weight Watchers ever mentioning Ramadan before (and I first joined Weight Watchers back in 1978). 

I have little desire to “find a victim and explain the universe to him or her, until they are able to escape you” at this time. I may not repeat this exercise this time around. 

The Attic Dwellers review Illuminatus!

The Attic Dwellers ("We are Tig & Eric - Hosts of a Public Access Style Variety Show Filmed in an Attic (Movies | RetroGames | PopCulture)") do a review of Illuminatus!, about five minutes. On Twitter, RAW Semantics writes,  "Take Kurt Vonnegut, dose him up with more acid than a human being can handle, send him on a road trip with Jack Kerouac...  and make it the length of Lord of the Rings." Quite a fun review of Illuminatus!" There's also brief discussion of Masks of the Illuminati and Schroedinger's Cat. Posted in 2019, about five minutes. 

Illuminatus!, Hassan i Sabbah and Barry Longyear [UPDATED]

 The Prometheus Award, usually given out at a science fiction convention, was awarded in an online ceremony this year in a cooperative venture with Reason magazine, and the above video of the event, two hours long, has two parts. The first 15 minutes features the award being given to Barry Longyear for  his novel, The War Whisperer: Book 5: The Hook, and the Prometheus Hall of Fame Award being given to F. Paul Wilson for his short story, "Lipidleggin." That's followed by a panel discussion, one hour and 45 minutes, featuring Longyear, Libertarian Futurist Society president William Stoddard, Reason book editor (and RAW expert) Jesse Walker, and Reason magazine's editor, Katherine Mangu-Ward.

Illuminatus! is brought up twice during the panel discussion. At one point, the panelists describe which books got them interested in science fiction, and Jesse mentions that Illuminatus! was an important influence for him.

The Hook's major plot point involves using targeted assassinations of leaders trying to mount invasions as a method of self defense (as opposed to killing mostly-innocent people in huge numbers) and at 1:31 in the video, Jesse asks Longyear if that was inspired by Hassan i Sabbah, the historical figure discussed in Illuminatus!  Longyear gives a rather long and rambling answer and appears to confirm he got the idea from learning about Sabbah, although unfortunately he does not cite his source. (He admits he is not very good at keeping track of such things.)

Interestingly, Jesse traces where the Hassan i Sabbah element in Illuminatus! comes from. According to Jesse, Sabbah featured in a 1930s book which was a source for William Burroughs, and via Burroughs RAW learned about Sabbah.

Jesse did not identify the 1930s, book, but the Wikipedia entry on Burroughs' Nova trilogy explains, "The Nova Trilogy (as well as a passage in the book on the cut-up technique named Minutes to Go) feature the character Hassan-i Sabbah and his final words Nothing is true—everything is permitted. Burroughs was introduced to Hassan through Betty Bouthoul, who had written an extensive book on the assassins titled The Master of the Assassins (French title Le grand maître des Assassins)."

UPDATE: Jesse clarifies the 1930s book he had in mind was Alamut by Vladimir Bartol, available in English translation.

Lest you doubt my research skills, I will mention that Jesse's official biography states that he lives in Baltimore with his wife, two daughters and a rabbit. I can now reveal through extensive investigative journalism that Jesse's bunny rabbit identifies as female and is named "Kiki." 

Friday images

 

It's Friday, the end of the work week for many of us, so please relax and enjoy these images. Above, a new meme from Rasa that captures a key part of RAW's philosophy. Below, a photograph of Mozart's Masonic lodge in Salzburg, posted by @amoebadesign on Twitter.

Thursday links

1940s publicity photo of Lana Turner 

 RAW Semantics on RAW's classic essay, "‘Left and Right: A Non-Euclidean Perspective." 

Apuleius Charlton on Chapter 6 of Ishtar Rising. "Cardinal Spellman (1946) and Lana Turner (1955): Which would you rather get stuck in an elevator with?" Seems like a pretty easy call. 

PQ on Book I.3-4 of Finnegans Wake.

Advice for "older high risk people" during the current COVID-19 wave (could apply to everyone.)

"I was not aware cats did this kind of thing." Occasionally they can be useful. 

RAW, Sinclair Lewis and JRR Tolkien

 

Sinclair Lewis 

Among the various famous American writers who became prominent in the 1920s, I particularly like Sinclair Lewis. I have read many of his books, including most of the famous ones (still need to get around to Arrowsmith) and also many of the lesser-known ones (I am apparently the only person on Earth who thinks Work of Art, a novel about the hotel business, is a great book.)  Some of his books are available free at sites such as Project Gutenberg, including Babbitt and Main Street. I'm a member of the Sinclair Lewis Society and I get the group's newsletter. 

Robert Anton Wilson records in Cosmic Trigger II that he read Sinclair Lewis when he was young; I don't know if he continued to read Lewis as he got older, as I do. 

But here's something you might not have guessed: Sinclair Lewis was an influence on J.R.R. Tolkien.

Citing a 1977 biography of Tolkien by Humphrey Carpenter, the fall 2019 issue of the Sinclair Lewis Society newsletter says that Tolkien told an interviewer the word hobbit "might have been associated with Sinclair Lewis's Babbitt. Certainly not rabbit as some people think. Babbitt has the same bourgeois smugness that hobbits do. His world is the same limited place."