My Naomi Wolf synchronicity

Naomi Wolf

I've recorded some of the synchronicities that I've run into on this blog; here's another one. I don't really know what they mean.

I noticed the other day on Twitter that some of the folks I followed were posting about a mistake made by author Naomi Wolf that was revealed when she was being interviewed live on BBC radio. I recognized her name, but I've never read any of her books. It's not really germane to this blog post, but it seems to me how people reacted was a pretty good empathy test.

Anyway, I was struck that I got an email Thursday, reminding me that Dr. Naomi Wolf was waiting for my response to connect to her on Linked In. I know of no connection whatsoever between me and Dr. Wolf and can't imagine why she would even know who I was but I dutifully accepted and connected with her.

Thursday night, my wife and I went to a Cuyahoga County Public Library event featuring two novelists: Thrity Umrigar interviewing Celeste Ng. (I can recommend them both: Umrigar's The Story Hour is a really good novel, and so is Ng's Little Fires Everywhere.)

During the dialogue, Ng brought up the incident without mentioning Wolf's name, describing it briefly.

So why do I keep running into Naomi Wolf? Is Universe trying to tell me I should read one of her books?

In Pause, Play -- A Higher Consciousness Handbook, the Kindle ebook by Klaas Pieter van der Tempel that Gary Acord and I published (only $2.99! A steal!), the author argues that synchronicities should awaken us:

Whether the synchronicities are boring or amazing, interpret them as if they are meant to be meaningful. Objectively speaking, you cannot know what they mean, not should you need to. You can only decide it for yourself. Know that, as with dreams, the main message of any synchronicity is this: Wake up!

Erik Davis 'High Weirdness' events in U.S. [UPDATED]

Announcement from Erik Davis on Twitter:

"New Yorkers!: I will be doing two HIGH WEIRDNESS events in mid June. Event 1: @morbidanatomy is sponsoring a lecture at Green-Wood on Monday 17."  Details here.
"
New York, Part 2. The second HIGH WEIRDNESS event will take place on Tuesday the 18th at the @AssemblageNYC Nomad. This book reading will be FREE but you need to rsvp with an access code here: ACCESS CODE: WEIRDNESS @ToddGailun

UPDATE:

West Coast events were announced today by Erik:

"Angelenos: Two free HIGH WEIRDNESS events at the end of next week. I'll be reading at SKYLIGHT BOOKS Saturday the 8th at 5 pm. Sunday the 9th I will be doing a talk on weirdness at ZEBULON CAFE, also at 5. Books will be available at both."

"Bay Areans: I will be doing a book reading for HIGH WEIRDNESS at the famed CITY LIGHTS on Thursday JUNE 13, at 7pm. So happy to read there! I will do some other HW stuff later in the summer. @t3dy."

I'm sure the Cleveland event will be announced soon ....

James Heffernan's Eight Circuits book

I finally got around to buying James A. Heffernan's Nonlocal Nature: The Eight Circuits of Consciousness and I hope to read it this summer; as the title implies, it is about the Eight Circuits of consciousness model developed by Timothy Leary and Robert Anton Wilson.  The Kindle is only $3.99. The book is dedicated "to the memory of Robert Anton Wilson."

In the meantime, if someone who has read it wanted to write a review, I would be willing to post it here. Or you could just write something in the comments.

A physicist and James Joyce

Murray Gell-Mann in 2007

The New York Times obituary for Murray Gell-Mann notes that he was known for his Nobel Prize and for his work on particle physics: "He decided to call them quarks after a line from James Joyce’s' Finnegans Wake': 'Three quarks for Muster Mark'."

Gell-Mann, 89, who died Friday, also helped forge the alleged link between physics and Eastern mysticism, although it wasn't on purpose: "In a moment of whimsy, Dr. Gell-Mann, who hadn’t a mystical bone in his body, named his system the Eightfold Way after the Buddha’s eight-step path to enlightenment. He groaned ever after when people mistakenly inferred that particle physics was somehow related to Eastern philosophy."

The Earth Will Shake online reading group, Week Fourteen

Scene from The Magic Flute. 

This week, please read from page 267 (the start of Part Seven) to Page 293 ("Dimly, all of the pieces fit together, and he understood part of what it meant to be a Freemason.")

This is the chapter in which Sigismundo is initiated into becoming a Freemason, and I appreciated the fact that Wilson took the time, on Page 272, to give a definition of what "Freemason" means, for the benefit of people who don't know much about the subject (such as, for example, myself -- this is going to be a fairly short blog entry.)

The fact that Freemasons stood for freedom, and freedom of conscience, helps explain why figures such as Beethoven and Mozart were interested in the movement. As I've written before, Mozart's opera The Magic Flute has elements of Freemasonry, and it was Beethoven's favorite Mozart opera. Beethoven himself was influenced by members of the Illuminati.

So why is this section interspersed with a passage about Maria Maldonado's dream journal?

A recent Metropolitan Opera production of The Magic Flute. 

The next reading group [UPDATED]

As we cruise through the second half of The Earth Will Shake, I wanted to raise the topic of continuing with a reading group for The Widow's Son, one of my favorite RAW books.

On the whole, I would prefer to simply read it, weighing in on the comments every week of course, but allowing someone else to take the lead. Would anyone be interested in being the guest blogger for the reading group?

Update: We have a volunteer! Gregory Arnott has offered to lead the reading group. After Gregory and I have had a chance to talk, I'll do a followup post on when we are likely to start, etc., and seek feedback.

Saturday links

Gravity's Rainbow, Timothy Leary, and the Occult Part 2, from Oz Fritz. Lots on Timothy Leary.

Strange Attractor is printing up more copies of the new Erik Davis book.  I am referring to this. 

Jason Louv on Assange. 

Owners of biblical replica of Noah's ark sue over ... rain damage.

Thomas Knapp on possible war with Iran.

Review of 'Robert Anton Wilson: Beyond Conspiracy Theory'

Robert Anton Wilson: Beyond Conspiracy Theory (ReSearch #18) edited by V. Vale, is a nice treat for the hardcore Robert Anton Wilson. It has a very good, long interview by V. Vale and includes other items, some of them arguably unique. It is well produced and edited. It's not an essential part of the RAW canon, and at 138 pages it's arguably less substantive that Beyond Chaos and Beyond, this year's other posthumous RAW book (466 pages), but it's so well designed it almost seems like an art book.

The bulk of the book is Vale's interview, and fortunately it's valuable. I want to be careful not to give anything away, which would be unfair to Vale,  but I also want to try to characterize it. There is a particularly good discussion about Aleister Crowley and magick. There is a good, long answer to a question about Wilson's "key books," good discussion of William Burroughs, discussion about what it's like interacting with fans and a nice anecdote about RAW meeting a famous American writer.

The book also includes Wilson's 172-question "International Conspiracy Trivia Quiz" (with Wilson's answer key), a list of 50 books from Wilson's library that Vale requested, a marketing document on the lectures that Wilson could offer, two letters from Wilson and an introduction by Andrew Bishop (quite well done.) Bishop is the person who found the forgotten interview. 

The book is illustrated by Vale's photographs of Wilson, plus some irrelevant but artistic "street photography" by Yoshi Yubai.

The book had originally been planned as a special issue of RE/Search while Wilson was alive. It was never published and parts of it later were included in Wilson's Coincidance. The remaining material was rediscovered in 2016. There's an Editor's  Note that carefully explains all this, an example of the book's meticulous editing.

Robert Anton Wilson: Beyond Conspiracy Theory has a list price of $20; with fees, it cost me $25. "While supplies last" a small photo print of RAW signed by Vale is included, a nice bonus.

You can also read my Beyond Chaos and Beyond review. Since I published the review, a paperback edition has been issued, available for $20.

Probably coincidence, but both of the new books have "beyond" in the title.

See the RE/Search website (lots of arty and punk rock publications, with many on subjects of probable interest to most RAW fans.)

Cosmic Trigger 2 memes

New from Rasa. Restatements of the eight circuit model.

New RAW book is now out

The new book I wrote about last month, Robert Anton Wilson: Beyond Conspiracy Theory, has been released into the wild by RE/Search Publications. My copy arrived in the mail yesterday, and Joshua Hallenbeck mentioned in a note that he has received and read his copy (and "quite enjoyed it.") So if you pre-ordered it, too, you should be getting your copy any day now, if it hasn't arrived already (they are being shipped via media mail.)

Give me a couple of days to finish my copy and I will post a review here.

Don't miss the comments

Plato

The participation in the ongoing online reading group has not been quite what I had hoped for, but the quality of the comments have been good. Rarebit Fiend has a great catch in last week's entry, where he gives the origin of the character Hans Zoesser. Oz Fritz is consistently interesting, and his discussion of Platonism in this week's comments, obviously just getting started, is quite good. And we welcome back Eric Wagner, who has given a barrage of comments. My thanks to everyone who has weighed in since the reading group began.

The Earth Will Shake reading group, Week 13

Jonathan Swift

This week, please read part six, "The Hanged Man," from the quotation from William Blake's "Milton," ("I will not cease from Mental Fight," page 247, to page 264, "Someday. Somehow."

This was one of my favorite chapters, tying together Robert Anton Wilson's interest in personal liberty with his interest in Irish literature. Sir Edward Babcock explains that Jonathan Swift served "intellectual liberty" and "not just political liberty" (page 251) and the rest of the chapter illustrates how personal liberty is important, and not just the liberty to debate "political issues." The chapter is about sexual repression, although Wilson was interested in other personal freedoms such as  freedom to read or freedom to control what foods and drugs you choose to put into your body.

I liked the references to the works of James Joyce on pages 249-250 and the discussion of Jonathan Swift. I probably haven't read enough Swift, as I haven't gotten much further than Gulliver's Travels and "A Modest Proposal."

Years ago, I belonged to a book discussion group in Lawton, Oklahoma, and we would take turns suggesting works to read. I once suggested reading Gulliver's Travels and the others agreed, although when we had the meeting, I was mortified to find out that almost nobody in the book club had bothered to read it.

The capacity to feel a "fierce indignation" and to want to write about it is a characteristic of many investigative reporters.

The William Blake verse excerpted at the beginning of the chapter is from a poem often known as "Jerusalem" and also known as "And did those feet in ancient time." It was set to music and apparently is a popular patriotic song in Britain; many Americans who are my age likely would know it from the cover version by Emerson, Lake and Palmer on Brain Salad Surgery, an album that was popular among my friends when I was in high school. It would also be difficult for even an American to miss the connection to the movie Chariots of Fire. The Blake poem also is referenced in Alan Moore's novel Jerusalem. William Blake is a great favorite of many RAW fans, although I confess that when I studied the English Romantics in my English lit survey course, I wound up going all in for Percy Bysshe Shelley. (Perhaps you should be able to tell something about a reader by asking him/her/they to name a favorite Romantic poet, just as supposedly you can tell about a person by asking which Beatle is the person's favorite. I'm not sure how the latter would work for me, as George originally was my favorite, then John, and finally Paul.)

The section of the chapter in which John Babcock is considering his options -- whether to confess or keep silent, and how that decision will affect both him and Geoffrey Wildeblood -- sounds a lot like the "Prisoner's Dilemma," perhaps reflecting RAW's interest in game theory.  Prisoner's Dilemma also is a novel by one of my favorite writers, Richard Powers.

Sunday links

David Bowie's favorite books

The gateway drug myth (and Joe Biden's role in propgating it). 

Twelve writers on their famous books. 

Supergee cites RAW. 

Evan Dando knows he's lucky. No, he's not dead yet. Not really related to the topic of this blog, but a pretty amusing story.