Oz Fritz on 'An Occult Response to Crisis'

Oz Fritz  has a blog post up, 'An Occult Response to Crisis,' which draws on Aleister Crowley, RAW's The Widow's Son and Ishtar Rising and Alejandro Jodorowsky to respond to the current health crisis.

At one point, Oz writes that as a response to the "current death crisis," Ishtar Rising seems "very well timed."

Which reminds me there is a passage in Ishtar Rising about dealing with mortality that I really liked:

An anonymous Greek, 1200 years earlier [e.g. about 250 AD], put the same message in slightly different and even more memorable words on his very tombstone to instruct the future in bold wisdom:

             Nothing to clutch in life
             Nothing to fear in death

There is no way of arguing against this ancient Mediterranean sanity, any more than you can argue with an April breeze. Those who feel it are immediately bucked up, and all your words of gloom and sin will not bring them down again. As the Egyptian Pharaoh Khati said, 2000 years earlier than even the anonymous Greek tombstone, "A man's heaven is his own good spirits."

(From the "Introduction to the 1973 Edition)

The saying on the tombstone also sounds Buddhist to me.

Schroedinger's convention

The Worldcon in New Zealand, scheduled to be held from July 29 to August 2, has announced that it will now hold its convention online.

"The strong belief that we can put on a great Worldcon has led us to the decision to make CoNZealand a virtual convention. Our Tech Division is confident they can deliver a virtual Worldcon and are excited about the possibilities," says the announcement. 

"We are standing by our decision not to cancel, but in consideration of the health, safety, and wellbeing of our members and crew, we think that holding a large face-to-face event, even if it were possible would be irresponsible."

"We hope to announce the new online membership rates for CoNZealand by 15 April. "

More at the announcement page.

Meanwhile, the planned big North American Science Fiction Convention in Columbus, Ohio on August 20-23,  where the Robert Anton Wilson Trust has applied to purchase tables in the dealer's room and where Gregory Arnott, Bobby Campbell and I had planned to organize programming devoted to RAW's work,  has become Schroedinger's Convention. It is in a state of uncertainty, both possibly alive and possibly dead at the same time, until we get closer in time and the convention announces a final decision.

"The Columbus 2020 NASFIC is in late August and there is still a strong possibility that it will happen. We are in regular contact with the hotel and authorities and we are monitoring the situation and will keep you updated as events occur," the convention says on its website. 

Many other SF conventions simply have been canceled. 

This is certainly an odd and an unfortunate situation. I had certainly hoped, when I began planning last year, to be heavily promoting the convention by  now.

Christina Pearson, Robert Anton Wilson's daughter and the trustee of the Robert Anton Wilson Trust, has been very supportive of our efforts. I am supposed to be her Virgil, her guide to the NASFiC and to SF conventions and SF fandom in general. I wish I knew what to tell her.

What are you reading these days?

I've been re-reading The Twin Towers, J.R.R. Tolkien's second Lord of the Rings novel. (I re-read The Fellowship of the Ring 1-2 years ago.) Aside from the fact Tolkien is great, the Lord of the Rings has a constant sense of lurking possible doom in the background, and the characters also sense that even if they come out OK things will never be the same as before. That fits the current mood.

Illuminatus! would seem to be a modernistic "reply" work to LoTR which also has a large cast of characters, a long narrative and appendices. More on Illuminatus! soon.

RIP Adam Schlesinger

Music means a lot of many of us -- it was certainly a big part of Robert Anton Wilson's life -- and one thing I've noticed about the ongoing pandemic is that early on, it's claimed many musicians: country singer Joe Diffie, jazz musical family patriarch Ellis Marsalis, rocker Alan Merrill (you probably don't know the name, but you likely know the hit he wrote, "I Love Rock and Roll," which helped make Joan Jett a star) and, particularly upsetting for me, Adam Schlesinger, founder and one of the two main songwriters for Fountains of Wayne.

Form letter from RAW

Authors who aren't rich enough to  hire a staffer often have to resort to a form letter to deal with getting lots of correspondence; Arthur C. Clarke had one, and I think Robert Heinlein, too. I know now that Robert Anton Wilson had a form letter, too, one that was quite witty.

This was posted on Facebook Tuesday by James Koehnline, and Oz Fritz took the time to call it to my attention; thank you, Oz.

Ask Eric Wagner

Eric Wagner

"Ask Eric Wagner" is a new occasional feature of this blog, in which readers pose questions to Eric Wagner, RAW confidant and the author of An Insider's Guide to Robert Anton Wilson. If you have a question, post a comment, and Eric will answer it when he has time. The Management. 

Do you know if there are extant copies of the MLA courses RAW guided - Illuminatus, Crowley, there was one on politics, Tales of the Tribe or any others? -- Oz Fritz

Eric Wagner:  I do not know about copies of the MLA courses. Other readers of Tom’s blog likely know more than I do. I have seen some of the material on various websites over the years.

My second question: how do you think RAW would have responded to the current pandemic and the resulting social isolation and economic slowdown? -- Oz Fritz

Eric Wagner:  I do not know how Bob would have responded to the current world crisis. I feel less in tune with his nervous system than I used to. Twelve years ago i wondered what he would have made of Obama’s campaign and presidency. I don’t know how he would have responded to Trump’s presidency or our current crisis. (Rasa has commented that Bob did not want anyone to channel him.)

Man, I don’t seem like much help.

Beside the wonderful and colorful list of rock bands in the final chapter of illuminatus, there‘s hardly any mentioning of neither popular nor underground music in his texts.
Taken the important role, that different styles and scenes have had in the development of counter culture, expression of freedom and conscious altering techniques (e.g. Underground Rock in the 60/70s, Rap and HipHop in the 90s and Techno in the 90/00s) it seems interesting that it never really appeared on his screen. But maybe i am just not aware of certain thoughts and output on this issue?

Could you talk a little bit about that from your point of view?  -- DMS

Eric Wagner: Rhoda Chief, a rock singer who reminds me of Grace Slick, appears in Schroedinger’s Cat. Bob recorded with a punk rock band. He wrote approvingly of Madonna. In general, he tended to focus on the music that worked for his nervous system, mostly classical, and especially Beethoven.

Eric, I know this has been discussed elsewhere but I'm wondering if you have any specific memories: how did RAW feel about the less-than-impressive trajectories for life extension and space migration? I can't imagine he was a big fan of the space shuttle program...aside from the ISS I've always been bitter about the switch to the shuttle. -- Rarebit Fiend

Eric Wagner:  It seems to me he would see space migration as slowly happening, just as he would see life extension as slowly happening. Robert Heinlein commented that it "never pays a prophet to be too specific”. (I think Heinlein quoted someone else here). I think the trajectories of S.M. and L.E. continue as Bob predicted they would, but they continue more slowly. Intelligence increase seems a different kind of challenge. The declining popularity of science and democracy might have given him pause. He did discuss this somewhere. He commented about the declines in America’s educational systems. On the other hand, world literacy continues to advance, and I’ve read that the current pandemic might improve science’s popularity.

Thank you for the questions.

Busy, but go read Adam Gorightly

I am very busy with work today, so today's blog post will be short. But don't miss Adam Gorightly's amazing new "This Day in Discordian History" entry at the Historia Discordia website.

Review: 'Ishtar Rising'

For many years, I've had an old Playboy Press edition of The Book of the Breast, one that I picked up cheap somewhere, from a library sale or garage sale or something.

I never read it because I assumed it was written quickly an an excuse for Playboy to publish a book with a bunch of breast pictures; I couldn't think of it as an "official" Robert Anton Wilson book. More recently, I didn't read it because I was waiting for the Hilaritas Press edition of the book published under its later title, Ishtar Rising: Why the Goddess Went to Hell and What to Expect Now That She's Returning.

I finally read it this weekend, and I have something interesting to report: It IS a Robert Anton Wilson book. RAW took Playboy's money and wrote the book he wanted to write (as I mentioned the other day, the editor printed liked it and printed it just as RAW wrote it.)

The book cites or discusses many of RAW's preoccupations (Principia Discordia, Aleister Crowley, James Joyce, etc.) and has many of the Wilson-style passages that may or may not be "true," but are certainly stimulating and entertaining:

In ancient Egypt, evidently, woman and the moon were the original religious objects because their mutual 28-day periods were the earliest markers of time. When the cycles of solar time were discovered, the male sun god, Osiris, and the male phallus, became sacred, and woman and the moon were pushed into second place. Eventually, under Christianity, the female-lunar rites became identified with witchcraft and black magic, and their appearance provoked the horror and hatred of the great witch-hunts. It is within this context that the Christian feeling that the breast is "obscene" must be understood. (Similarly, the use of drugs in the lunar-female religions explains the Christian antipathy to drugs.) 

The book's erotic theme allows RAW to talk about sexual alchemy.

A few points about the new Hilaritas Press edition: It includes not only the original 1973 introduction, but also RAW's 1989 introduction, which is one of the best parts of the book. In addition, Hilaritas adds a foreword by Grant Morrison, quite long, full of interesting observations, and obviously something Morrison didn't just quickly toss off.

Rasa was not able to get permission to use some of the original images (which were all in black and white) , but he worked hard to replace them and match them with RAW's original captions (and many of the illustrations in the new book are in color). In every instance in which Rasa has made a substitution, he has bettered the original; for example, an original black and white photo of Carole Lombard is replaced with a very nice color photo. Rasa even convened the Robert Anton Wilson Advisors so they could weigh in on which artistic color breast illustration to use early in the book.

So I am pretty sure that if you do plan to read the book, the new Hilaritas Press third edition is the one you want. And I also think the book is worth reading, if maybe not as important a part of the canon as Cosmic Trigger or Illuminatus! 

-- Tom Jackson

A RAW prediction that's coming out nicely

N.K. Jemisin (Creative Commons photo) 

Some of RAW's predictions have not happened as quickly as many would like -- immortality has not arrived for anyone, I'm not typing these words from a space city in orbit around the Earth, and, well, many of you will notice I'm not suddenly getting any smarter.

But I've been reading Ishtar Rising, and there's a prediction in RAW's "Introduction to the 1989 Edition" that has turned out rather well:

 Ishtar and Inanna are archtypes of historical, as well as personal, psychological processes. The last 3000 years of history have followed the classic Ishtar/Inanna pattern: the Goddess has descended to Hell -- gradually at first, as Patriarchy emerged in the early city-states, and then with catastrophic speed as Christianity arose to damn the female half of humanity to sub-human status -- and now, in this century, the Goddess is beginning to rise again, through a thousand cultural transformations of which Feminism is only the tip of the iceberg.

You'd have to be asleep to not notice the more prominent role women are playing in the culture as they emerge from "Patriarchy" -- witness for example the rise of the MeToo movement, or Joe Biden's recent pledge he'll select a female running mate.

One particular piece of literary culture within the wider culture I happen to be familiar with is science fiction, once largely a male venture. Consider these names: N.K. Jemisin (Hugo Award, best novel, 2016, 2017 and 2018), Mary Robinette Kowal (Hugo Award, best novel, 2019), Ann Leckie (Hugo Award, best novel, 2014), Martha Wells (Hugo and Nebula awards), Ada Palmer (John Campbell Award for best new writer), Jo Walton (lots of awards including a Prometheus), Catherynne M. Valente, Becky Chambers, Arkady Martine (so new she hasn't won anything yet but I loved A Memory Called Empire), Johanna Sinisalo (Prometheus Award), Sarah Hoyt (Prometheus Award)  and more names could be offered. If you don't agree with me that women have been dominating science fiction, you will at least have to agree with me they've never played a more prominent role. (I like most of these writers and Ada Palmer is my favorite new writer.)

Still blogging for you .....

I do wish my editor did not supervise me so closely.

Links:

Bob Dylan releases first new song in years. Very long, about the JFK assassination.

March Eris of the Month. With RAW article. 

Latest coronavirus roundup from Slate Star Codex.

RAW's 'Mammaries'

I've started reading the new Hilaritas Press edition of Ishtar Rising, and then realized I had read some of it before. Chapter 4 (of the 7 chapters), "Mammary Metaphysics," is one of the essays in Coincidance.

RAW's introduction to the piece in Coincidance provides a summary of how he felt about the book, looking back years later when he had become an established author:

The next essay comes from another potboiler I did for Playboy Press, called The Book of the Breast [footnote: Now published by New Falcon Publications as Ishtar Rising]. As usual, my philosophical and sociological speculations got in the way of lubricity which the editor really wanted, but he got fired along about then and a new editor, Martin Ebon, liked this book so much it was printed just as I wrote it. Curiously, it was the only one of my books for Playboy Press that sold well enough to earn regular royalties for me over a period of several years. 

Kudos to the late Martin Ebon for not screwing up the text, read more about him here.

RIP Steve Stiles

Steve Stiles in 2006

Steve Stiles, a great science fiction fan and professional artist, died of cancer in January. He won the Hugo for best fan artist in 2016.  I want to belatedly note his career here; I've seen various signs that he was a Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea fan, or at least knew of them.

For example, when I searched for "Steve Stiles Robert Anton Wilson" on Google, I found this archived email exchange:

Date: Sat, 13 Jan 2007 17:43:09 -0500
Subject: [WSFA] Re: Robert Anton Wilson
From: "Steve Stiles"
To: WSFA members
Reply-To: WSFA members

----------
>From: "Keith F. Lynch"
>To: WSFA members
>Subject: [WSFA] Robert Anton Wilson
>Date: Sat Jan 13, 2007, 1:11 PM
>

>Robert Anton Wilson, author of the Schroedinger's Cat trilogy,
>coauthor of the Illuminatus trilogy, died on January 11th at age
>74 after a long illness.
>
>I met him and his sometimes-coauthors Robert Shea and Timothy Leary
>at the 1991 Worldcon in Chicago.  Now all three of them are dead.

I remember seeing the young Robert Shea walking down the street near
Rockefeller Plaza in the '60s, but, being a shy kid, didn't say hello.
Thought he looked like a young FDR, and the long cigarette holder perched
jauntily between his teeth enhanced that image. I knew him then as the
editor of "The Scene," a non-s.f. mimeographed fanzine, and a sometimes
contributor to Paul Krassner's "The Realist." I think his writing career was
in its early stages and I probably recognized him from an appearance at a
Lunacon.

--Steve Stiles
http://www.stevestiles.com/

You can read the File 770 obituary, or the Wikipedia article, or the official website. 

Free James Bond movies on Pluto TV

In the interests of keeping everyone's spirits up, I wanted to note that Pluto TV (the free substitute for cable TV, apps for smartphones and tablets) is showing a bunch of old James Bond movies right now (and a lot of other movies and stuff -- I like the rock concert movies.)

I watched "Never Say Never Again," one of the few Bond movies I'd missed. Not bad, and a nice bonus is the early scenes feature Prunella Gee. I'm pleased to report her character isn't killed off (unlike many other Bond galpals). It might have been traumatic to Daisy to see her mother being killed onscreen by SPECTRE.

Yes, I know the Bond movies are kind of sexist and not art flicks. I'm also planning to make time for the free Metropolitan Opera broadcasts. See the link for the schedule; "Nixon in China," a great show, is April 1. 

There's lots of other free stuff at Tubi.