Martin Wagner's big RAW discovery: 'Actually I found it three times'

Martin Wagner (image from Hilaritas Press website). 

Martin Wagner initiated the project that resulted in the new RAW book, Lion of Light, when he located Robert Anton Wilson's lost essay, "Do What Thou Wilt," in the Harvard University library; he emailed Jesse Walker and I about his find, and I posted about it here and told Rasa.

(To be clear, that discussion was initiated on Sept. 3 last  year by Jesse Walker, who told Martin and I in an email that he'd found part of the "lost" essay at the Internet Archive. Martin replied that he knew about that, but added, "Meanwhile, the (only existing?) Do what thou wilt : an introduction to Aleister Crowley typescript incl. a letter to Herb Roseman arrived at the Harvard Library."  We were talking about finding someone to physically go over to the Harvard library and look at the manuscript, and I wrote, "Or maybe I should tell Rasa, and he will contact Harvard on behalf of the RAW Trust, which would hold the rights?" Jesse replied, "It would be good to let Rasa know anyway -- and I'll bet they'd have the best chance of persuading Harvard to copy it for them." I then wrote to Rasa on Sept. 6 last year, sharing our discussion so far, and Rasa immediately got to work.)

But Martin had been on the trail of the work for years; when I asked for his account of finding it, he said, "Actually I found it three times." 

Martin also helped with the production of the Lion of Light book by sending over a list of other RAW pieces that discuss Crowley.

I wrote to  him asking to find out more about his discovery. Here is his account:

"Actually I found it three times, firstly in 2018 in a LAShTAL (a forum devoted to AC) thread from 2007, after RAW passed away:

I have been looking through boxes of Gordon Press oddities that I had recieved from Herb(the man behind the rebel press) for a copy of Mr. Wilson's piece he had written on Crowley and sent to Herb for possible printing it via the Gordon Press.

"I informed Rasa, Jesse and you, Jesse's reply:

That "Herb" would be Herb Roseman, who was slated to publish three Wilson books back around 1969/70 that did not materialize.

"But the LAShTAL user who posted this wasn't active anymore.

"A few years later I came across it on the website of Weiser Antiquarian Books, a bookshop for rare, secondhand, and out-of-print books on comparative religion, mysticism, and the occult, which I checked from time to time:

https://www.weiserantiquarian.com/pages/books/59624/robert-anton-wilson/an-original-typescript-do-what-thou-wilt-an-introduction-to-aleister-crowley-along-with-a-typed

"Last year I searched for the title and found it via Google on worldcat: https://www.worldcat.org/de/title/1250281680

"Later that year, I was asked if I had more Crowley material and sent a list of essays and digitized book forwewords & intros which were used in Lion of Light." The email was sent to Mike Gathers, Michael Johnson, Oz Fritz, Rasa and others. 

Here is last year's blog post on the third discovery that launched the new book. 

See also my 2018 blog post. 

And see my 2018 post on "Missing RAW books," which mentions five books, including Starseed Signals. Hilaritas  has done a good job in dealing with this. 

Here is Martin's website (you can click for an English version). 

The new RAW book, "Lion of Light'

 

Hilaritas Press chose Maybe Day on Sunday, the 50th anniversary of the original Maybe Day, to announce the release of Lion of Light, a collection of Robert Anton Wilson's writings about Aleister Crowley.

You can read the official announcement (posted at the to right of this page). I bought the book the first day it was officially available, and here are some of the things I can tell you:

 • It publishes a long essay by Robert Anton Wilson, Do What Thou Wilt,  discovered in the Harvard University library by Martin Wagner, and also collects other pieces about Crowley written by RAW. It's a good-sized collection of Wilson's writings, and none of it has appeared in any of Wilson's previous books.

• While Hilaritas Press usually tries to add useful supplementary material to its Wilson editions, it seems to have taken particular care this time in selecting and adding companion pieces. The edition includes  a foreword by Richard Kaczynski (author of the Crowley biography Perdurabo, currently on sale as a cheap Kindle) and an introduction by Lon Milo DuQuette,  the occult scholar and author of books such as The Magick of Aleister Crowley: A Handbook of the Rituals of Thelema. 

• Also, the book includes pieces by Gregory Arnott and Oz Fritz, two prominent Robert Anton Wilson who have read much of Crowley's writings, much of RAW's writings, and likely all of the available biographies of Crowley.

• And also, there is a good-sized piece by the prominent RAW scholar R. Michael Johnson, "23 Riffs on Robert Anton Wilson, Aleister Crowley, Psychedelics, Intuition and Everyday Metaphysics."

• And in addition to all of that, an "Editor's Note" by Mike Gathers describes how the book was put together by an editorial team of Chad Nelson, Oz Fritz, Michael Johnson and Mike Gathers. a "Publisher's Notes" on that team, and a piece by Richard Rasa on the cover, created by Jimmy Templedweller with use of AI. 

I won't even try to describe the photos the editors found; I'll keep them as a surprise for people who buy the book. 

Lion of Light seems to me to be an important book in the Hilaritas catalog, and I will have more about it soon. 

More on Maybe Day

Yesterday, I was still at Confluence in Pittsburgh; for Maybe Day, I posted my announcement of the upcoming Robert Shea ebook (which I forgot to say I am assembling with the permission of Mike Shea, his literary executor), put on my old Boing Boing RAW t-shirt, and spent a third day at the convention. I interviewed Ada Palmer, and I should be posting that interview soon, and also should soon be posting a convention report.  

I'll do a separate blog post Tuesday on the release of Lion of Light, the new Robert Anton Wilson book on Aleister Crowley that has just been released by Hilaritas Press. But here are some other Maybe Day releases you might have missed.

First of all, when I  finally logged back onto Twitter to get an idea of what I had missed, I was surprised and grateful to see that Bobby Campbell had created an artwork, seen above,  to promote my blog! Thank you so much Bobby!

There's a lot of goodies at Bobby's Maybe Day site, please check it out. Don't miss Bobby's piece, "Living in a RAW World," tracing the influence of Discordian ideas. The illustrations Bobby comes up with are great.  I kind of want to "borrow" a bunch of them for this blog. And Bobby, although it's true that the Steve Jackson Games version of the Illuminati conspiracy irritated RAW, Robert Shea apparently was fine with it and even wrote a short piece for one of the editions of the game. 

I will be exploring some of the other Maybe Day material Bobby links to, as time allows.

One of Brian Dean's new images for Maybe Day 2023. Source. 

Happy Maybe Day!

Bobby Campbell's illustration for Maybe Day. 

Today is Maybe Day, the annual holiday for fans of Robert Anton Wilson. It is moreover, as many have pointed out, the 50th anniversary of July 23, 1973, when RAW thought that, just maybe, he had been contracted by beings from Sirius, an incident that is part of the narrative of Cosmic Trigger. 

I am using today to announce that I am working on an ebook collecting short nonfiction pieces by Robert Shea, Wilson's Illuminatus! collaborator, and interviews of Shea. I have a working title, Every Day Is a GOOD Day, and I think I am pretty far along. I have about 50,000 words so far. I don't know when it will be finished, but I hope completion will be sooner, rather than later. While I have generally received good cooperation, I have not been able to get in touch with the folks at Playboy to get permission to reprint Shea pieces that have appeared there. If anyone has any suggestions, please advise. 

I am currently attending ConFluence, a science fiction connvention in Pittsburgh which stars Ada Palmer, one of my favorite writers, as the guest of honor. Gregory Arnott and his wife, Adie, also are here. 

As I am still busy with the convention, I won't  have much time for awhile to look for Maybe Day celebrations on the Internet. But I have a few suggestions. Be sure to go to the Maybe Day website of Bobby Campbell, who has organized Maybe Day activities for four years now.  I am expecting new material at the RAW Semantics website.  If you are doing something today that Bobby has not publicized, please mention it in the comments. I am not intentionally ignoring anyone, and will do my best to get caught up, today and tomorrow. 

Update: The new Robert Anton Wilson book about Aleister Crowley, Lion of Light, has been released. A new Hilaritas Press podcast has been released featuring Ivan Stang (of Church of the Subgenius fame). Details here. 

The artist known as Cosmic Trigger

 

I confess to not knowing until a few days ago that there is a musician named Jamie Grashion who records under the artist name Cosmic Trigger. You can visit his Soundcloud page, the artist bio reads, "Cosmic Trigger is a young innovative producer with a penchant for psychedelic sound design with oodles of studio experience with the likes of Shpongle, Hollie Cook, The Orb, Jesus & The Mary Chain and many more."

See also this useful interview from earlier this year, where he is asked about the name: "The name Cosmic Trigger came from a Robert Anton Wilson book of the same name, one of the things he is best known for is his involvement in the Discordian movement. Discordianism can either be described as a joke pretending to be a religion or a religion pretending to be a joke, I enjoy embracing the ambiguity of life which perhaps makes its way into my music."

Famed hacker Kevin Mitnick has died

 

Kevin Mitnick. (Creative Commons photo, source). 

As there is considerable interest in Robert Anton Wilson among computer hackers/computer geeks, I thought I should record here that the famous computer hacker Kevin Mitnick has died. The New York Times obituary seems fair; while not minimizing any of the things he did, it also notes that "no evidence emerged that Mr. Mitnick used the files he had stolen for financial gain."

The obituary, written by Alex Traub, is quite  interesting and I urge you to read it. Here is one paragraph: "Mr. Mitnick’s most spectacular crimes were his attempts to evade capture by the authorities. In 1993, he gained control of phone systems in California that enabled him to wiretap the F.B.I. agents pursuing him and confuse their efforts to track him. At one point they raided what they thought was Mr. Mitnick’s home, only to find there a Middle Eastern immigrant watching TV."

Prop Anon's dedication to his RAW biography

Prop Anon has had to spend less time and energy on his music career so that he could work on the RAW bio. (Photo from prop-anon.com.)

On Twitter, @RAWSemantics poses a question: "Just dawned on me that @PropAnon's forthcoming book will be first ever #RobertAntonWilson biography published. How did it take so long (historically, I mean)? In any case, an auspicious event."

Robert Anton Wilson died in 2007, more than 16 years ago, as Prop (e.g. Gabriel Kennedy, the byline under which the upcoming biography will be published in February 2024) noted in his reply. (Of course, Eric Wagner wrote An Insider's Guide to Robert Anton Wilson, which I purchased in two formats and carry around on my phone for ready access, but it's not a biography per se, more like a very well-informed reader's guide for people who want to know more about RAW's ideas. Note that if you buy Eric's book, you will want to buy the 2020 revised edition.)

Here are  some  suggested answers to the question Brian raises:

1. Doing a serious biography of someone is no easy task; it takes a lot of work if someone is going to step up to the plate. Prop has put about seven years of work into this book, largely putting aside other ventures important to him, such as his music career. He really deserves a lot of credit. 

2. As much as we love him, RAW is not an author who sells a huge number of books. So it's not like publishers were beating the bushes for a biography.

3. While RAW is a cult author with a dedicated following, he's not somebody who commands a large following in academia. There's little incentive for an academic press to  seek a book about him, or for a college professor to burnish his resume by writing such a book. 

4. While many authors with a reasonable sense of self worth are careful to make sure their literary papers are preserved in a university library, Wilson (and Robert Shea) did a remarkably poor job of preserving their literary papers (manuscripts, correspondence with other authors and publishers and editors, etc.). Prop's job would have been a lot easier if he could have gone through a big collection of RAW papers at a university library.

When publication of the book comes closer, I plan to ask Prop about his research for the book.

I wish I  had a book cover for the upcoming bio I could  post, but it hasn't been released yet. Of course, you will see it here when it becomes available. 

Addendum: When I raised point #4 on Twitter, Prop wrote, "And Tom, you are correct tho. Chasing down RAW archives from many different Special Collections Libraries took a lotta time.

"But also taking lots of Time was me Surviving while being without an apartment for 3 years and counting.

"I may have finished quicker if I had an apartment."

This seems to underscore my point that Prop deserves credit for not giving up until the task was completed. I ran across an interview with Peter Gabriel some time ago in which the singer said that an important part of success is persistence. And in fact RAW makes much the same point in Cosmic Trigger 2, one of my favorites of his books. 

Update: My original headline for this post asked why the RAW biography took so long. I was referring to Brian's question, but Prop feels this is kind of a backhanded compliment.  (I was trying to praise Prop's work ethic, not question it!) As I don't want to be misunderstood, I have changed my  headline. 

Wednesday links

 

Prop Anon on his name. 

Why the Julian Assange charges should be dropped. 

How to do stuff with AI: A guide. 

A weekly dose of optimism. 

A partial solution for global warming. 

More than 4,000 JFK assassination documents secret or censored

 

President John Kennedy arrives in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963.. (Cecil Stoughton. White House Photographs. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston)

President Joe Biden  has issued a final order on a 1992 law requiring the release of documents on the John Kennedy assassination, the New York Times reports. But more than 4,000 documents remain secret, according to the article, written by NY Times chief White House correspondent Peter Baker.

Baker writes that 99 percent of the documents that have been reviewed have been disclosed, but more than 4,000 have not been completely released, although that's only partially Biden's fault.

 "But 2,140 documents remain fully or partially withheld as a result of Mr. Biden’s action, officials said, while another 2,502 remain withheld for reasons outside the president’s purview, like court-ordered seals, grand jury secrecy rules, tax privacy limits or restrictions imposed by people who donated papers, and 42 for a mix of both," he writes.

In the article, skeptic Jefferson Morley and Oswald-did-it author Gerald Posner are both quoted as saying that it's finally time to release anything.

On Twitter, Jesse Walker writes, "Here's something I don't get to say every day: I agree with both Jefferson Morley and Gerald Posner."

James Joyce ebook on sale

I usually check Amazon's monthly deals for ebooks, and I noticed a book on sale for July that might interest some of you.

The Last Words of James Joyce by James Broderick is a new novel, here is part of the publisher's description: "A disgruntled Community College professor who loves literature but loathes his students. A homicide detective who takes her inspiration from Patti Smith' s punk period. A cult of Christian zealots who livestream actual crucifixions. And a writer of porn movies whose career does not have a happy ending. All of them connected by a lost manuscript written by one of the twentieth century' s greatest writers. (That is, if it exists.)At the heart of this multi-faceted narrative is Lucia Joyce, James Joyce' s daughter and muse, a brilliant and visionary woman whose life remained shadowed by the specter of madness. Was she the recipient of her father' s last masterwork?" Manhattan Book Review said, "“This fascinating novel goes beyond just outrageous characters and a fun storyline. Broderick delves into the life of Lucia Joyce, making this book an entertaining mystery with a dash of historic fiction.” The Kindle is on sale for $2.99.  The ebook is NOT on sale at the Barnes and Noble website. 

As "James F. Broderick," Broderick is the author of several books, including James Joyce: A Literary Companion (McFarland Literary Companions, 17). Here is his faculty page. 

Perdurabo, Revised and Expanded Edition: The Life of Aleister Crowley by Richard Kaczynski also is on sale as a $1.99 ebook.   See this discussion when it was previously on sale. 

Jules Evans on RAW's Chapel Perilous

In an essay which was published last year but which I missed, "Robert Anton Wilson on how to integrate weird experiences," writer Jules Evans reflects on Robert Anton Wilson's experiences in Chapel Perilous. (It was published at Medium, and you will have to log in with a free Medium account to read it.)

Evans reads Erik Davis' book, High Weirdness, about Terence McKenna, Philip K. Dick and Wilson, and they went through.

"All of them had spiritual experiences in the 1970s which were extremely messy, quasi-psychotic and baffling, so baffling that they came back to them again and again, trying to make sense of them for the rest of their lives," Evans writes.

"It seems to me that, of the three freak prophets, Robert Anton Wilson (RAW) emerges from his weird experience best, because he is best able to go on with his life. The other two seem to me to have become frozen in their epiphanies, unable to integrate them and carry on productively with their lives, and also to have become captured by rather lurid explanations of them," he writes.

Much of what Evans writes will seem familiar, but he comes to some interesting conclusions of his own, and relates an anecdote about the Illuminatus! play I had not encountered before. 

The 'Illuminatus!' candidate

Robert Kennedy Jr (Creative Commons photo by Gage Skidmore).

 RFK Jr. says COVID was ‘ethnically targeted’ to spare Jews. 

On Twitter, Richard Hanania sarcastically comments, "RFK suspects covid was created to spare Ashkenazi Jews and the Chinese. Presumably it still kills Mizrahi Jews. 

"Maybe those who engineered the virus wanted to improve our test scores? 

"Finally, a politician asking the tough questions."

Reason magazine did an interesting interview. 

One of RAW's editors has died

Peter Beren

Publisher's Weekly reports the death of Peter Beren, 75, on June 28. 

"Beren began his career in 1976 as an editor with the San Francisco indie publisher And/Or Books, but was best known for his work at Sierra Club Books, which he joined in 1988 as marketing director, and where he rose to the position of publisher, which he held until his departure in 1997," the obit says. 

It also says, "During his 'retirement career,' which he wrote about for PW in 2014, Beren continued to champion Bay Area figures, working with such talent as photographers Art Wolfe, Frans Lanting, Galen Rowell, and Baron Wolman, as well as scholars Ralph Metzner, Colin Wilson, and Robert Anton Wilson (no relation)."

The Wikipedia article on And/Or Press says that the publisher put out two Robert Anton Wilson books, The Illuminati Papers (1980) and Right Where You Are Sitting Now: Further Tales of the Illuminati (1982). 

Beren's official page lists books he has written, including More True Than Strange: Collected Writing 1968-2018. The book's description includes this sentence: "Meet Gurus like Karmu, the Black Christ of Cambridge, Timothy Leary and his sometime collaborator, Robert Anton Wilson, musicians like the Incredible String Band and Canned Heat, or some of the famous chefs, like Alice Waters and Bruce Aidells, who started the Foodie Movement."