Nature's God: Eric Wagner's introduction

Nature’s God: Introduction “Bewitching Rhetoric” by Eric Wagner (pg 3-7 Hilaritas edition)

From “John Wilcock presents ‘Four Significant Events in U.S. Counterculture, 1958 &1959.’”

By Gregory Arnott
Special guest blogger

Knock three times and say a prayer to Nature’s God. It’s time to follow Sigismundo into the Northern Territory wilderness and Maria into the all-enveloping arms of Her. Time to test the mettle of humanity against the inexorable tides of change. Happy Walpurgisnacht, tomorrow is May Day- one of the two days when Magonia or Faerie is closest to the mortal realm.

Eric Wagner begins by telling us the ways that he has experienced Nature’s God over the years. In one way this is the look inside the life of someone who has been a RAW fan long before many of us in the community. He can remember when Nature’s God was not yet published- I can contrast this to when I read Illuminatus! the first time a year after RAW’s Greater Feast. The third way that Eric experiences Nature’s God considers its (possible) relationship with Pynchon’s Mason & Dixon, a novel I read after Illuminatus! and roughly a couple months before I read Masks of the Illuminati and Cosmic Trigger and roughly four years before I would read The Historical Illuminatus Chronicles. Eric seems to have a profound, or at least extraordinarily circumspect, relationship with RAW’s last novel; the first time I read it, I was underwhelmed. All this is to point out how Eric does an excellent job of making the reader consider their relationship with the novel at hand. I have to confess I don’t remember if my New Falcon copy had Eric’s introduction in it, although it was published after 2010. But this is an excellent introduction for someone who is rereading the text- it prompts curiosity and reflection and I can’t think there’s much more an author could ask of a colleague.

As I said, I was not a huge fan of Nature’s God when I first read it; after the denser The Earth Will Shake and The Widow’s Son it just didn’t seem to be complete. Given that I had the prejudice of knowing this was meant to be the third of five novels it almost seemed like a hinge that was missing a flap. (Flap? Side? I’m not a craftsman, folks.) What was supposed to be the pivot of an angle became the second point of a line. And then-

But, it is what it is, or it seems to be what it seems to be, and that’s just life. Stories don’t always have neat endings and we don’t always get to find out exactly what happened. I don’t know why Wilson didn’t complete the, from what I understand, much anticipated and lamented Bride of Illuminatus! or the final novels of the Historical Illuminatus! quintet. That said, as much as I love his novels I have always found his nonfiction - if anything can be truly called nonfiction in RAW’s wonderful world - more thrilling than the fiction. I don’t prejudice The Grand Old Man any of his choices, but I do wonder. (And for fuck’s sake do I wish he had published Tale of the Tribe, much thanks to Fly for salvaging the remains.)

Eric asks what is Will and discusses the dual concepts of Will as personal force and as symbolized by the penis in Nature’s God. One of the best explanations of Will and how to visualize one’s own dick or someone else’s dick or whatever makes you happy is found in Crowley’s essay “The Wand” from part two, Magick. of Liber ABA: Book Four. (Chapter VI). But the discussion of Maria’s essay - which is obviously an embedded version of RAW’s first published essay for Krassner’s The Realist, “The Semantics of God” - takes the idea of Will to a whole new level, at least for this reader. When I reread Nature’s God earlier this year I realized that RAW’s final novel contains the same thrust, if you will, and vibe of his first published essay; there’s an ouroboros here and it is delightful. RAW removed two novels to suck his own dick. Maria gets her due and becomes RAW’s mouthpiece in a history that is perhaps better than our own for having heard the word a couple centuries earlier. RAW has the first and final word. In a fashion.

There are many ways to look at the novel at hand. I hope to read a lot about your perspectives and ideas over the coming months. RAW is an excellent antidote to dismal times: three knocks gains you entry.

From Eric Wagner: " I thought Thelonious Monk dancing might prove a nice opening soundtrack: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjJYeCYO-hA."

A Discordian song?

As we Discordians (and everyone else) sticks apart during the pandemic, here is an apparent Discordian song by the Commoners Choir, "Singing Together Apart." The performance apparently was put together by @JaneClifford23 who lists "Eris" as one of her interests in her Twitter bio.

Review: Kingdom of the Wicked by Helen Dale

The Kingdom of the Wicked Book One: Rules, and The Kingdom of the Wicked Book Two: Order, Helen Dale, Ligature, 2017.

By Gregory Arnott
Special guest blogger 

Continuing my valuable work of reviewing books that came out years ago, I’d like to touch on Helen Dale’s Kingdom of the Wicked duology. Dale is best known for controversy caused by her publishing the novel The Hand that Signed the Paper under an assumed identity in 1994 that ties into the current, exhausting conversation surrounding cultural appropriation. Dale continues to flirt with “controversy” and contributes to The Quillette, a self-proclaimed bastion for unpopular intellectualism. Yet, for all the firestarting that Dale has been accused of, I found The Kingdom of the Wicked to be a painfully, and beautifully, human look at a topic that could easily be mishandled.

That’s not to say that Helen Dale isn’t being subversive  throughout the two novels. The Kingdom of the Wicked is an alternative history of the trial of Christ, herein referred to exclusively by the proper Hebrew name of Yeshua ben Yosef, something I think RAW would have appreciated. Indeed, all of the otherwise-familiar characters are separated from their previous characterization(s) by being identified by their historically/culturally correct names and being placed firmly in Dale’s reconstructed first century setting. The historical accuracy is contrasted with the fantastic elements of the setting; namely that Archimedes was rescued from the Siege of Syracuse, began to work for the Romans and jump-started the Industrial Revolution by 1700 years. The novel’s world is introduced by the members of the Pilate household ordering pizza and the differences between authentic pizza and the Judaen imitations. (A discussion of pizza seems to be a good introduction to a constructed world as Neal Stephenson also does it in Snow Crash.) Another highlight from the first novel is Caiphas, instead known by the Hebrew Kayafa, coming back from a Roman symposium with a head-splitting hangover stopping at a gas station to buy cannabis to help and meeting with the Judean revolutionary Yehuda Iscariot. (It is interesting that Judas is given his Hebrew name but retains his bastardized-Greek epithet.)

Another side note: I asked my wife, who knows more about ancient Judaism than I do, where the characterization of Judas as a revolutionary comes from; she said there is no historical or Biblical evidence for this theory, but that folk etymologies have connected the name Iscariot with the Sicarii, a group of radical anti-Roman zealots. Most likely, Iscariot is a Hellenization of a Hebrew epithet meaning “from Kerioth”, a town in Judaea. Curiously, this is one of the apocryphal stories built around her cast that Dale takes and runs with. My own research brought up that some theologians have tried to explain, if not justify, Iscariot’s betrayal of Christ in terms of a political disagreement. Of course, I am familiar with Judas as Revolutionary from my favorite retelling of the Gospel, Jesus Christ Superstar. The second book opens with a bit of Biblical errata brought to life in the form of Christ’s purported, non-divine, father- a Roman legionnaire with the regrettable, only because of modern context, name Pantera. Because I love Celsus and Origen I really appreciated this storyline.

Aside from consumable vice, and there’s plenty of it, sex is everywhere in the novel. This is the main point of contention between Imperial Rome and occupied Judaea -- but there are plenty of other issues which are explored over the course of both novels. In many ways the Romans are going to be more sympathetic to a modern reader, at least of my persuasion, but the Jewish people are given plenty of time to lodge their complaints against the Roman lifestyle. The Romans have brought industry and its benefits, namely electricity, travel, communication, and medicine, to Judaea; but their laws and social mores horrify the local populace, who are willing to live in relative squalor rather than bow to Romanization.

And with the discussion of sex comes the discussion of women’s issues. Much of the defense of Yeshua ben Yosef comes from the fact that while he sympathizes with the Jewish separatists, the Zealots, to an extent, he also opposes their violence and commitment to honor killings. The honor killings are conducted against Jewish women who marry Romans -- this tradition of concubinage is horrifying to the locals but it also allows the women to live much better lives than they do under Jewish law. Cynara, the daughter of Joseph of Arimathea, is an example of a Jewish woman who has for the most part abandoned her people’s lifestyle and become almost fully Romanized. Mary Magdalene, instead of being cast as the traditional prostitute, is instead a Romanized, but still spiritually Jewish, newscaster whose stunning beauty and willingness to live with a Roman causes other characters to call her a whore out of jealousy. Much of the debate between the Roman and Jewish people centers on easy access to abortion under Roman law. One of my favorite parts of the book comes from Pontius Pilate, who, while being forced to argue abortion because of the Zealots, says with marked irritation that this is all “woman’s work.” That is not to say that it is lesser than a man’s work, but the modern sensibility is that abortion is almost exclusively a woman’s issue.

The novels follow the Trial of Christ for the disruption in the Jewish Temple. His prosecutor and defender are fictional characters whose own stories form a large part of the narrative. There were many elements of the novels I can’t cover here but do their part to flesh out Dale’s world. The novel creates an intellectually stimulating dialectic between the Roman and Judaean ways of life, where the excesses and virtues of each are brought into view by the conflict between them, and we are also given glimpses of the possibilities that emerge from a fusion -- or a refusa l-- of both. The parallels to our own times and the endless liberal versus conservative debates are difficult to ignore. In these works at least, Dale comes across as the true classical liberal that she aspires to be, eschewing ideology for a clear-eyed and agnostic wrestling with the truth. Oh and there’s cyborg women who fly giant hawk ships with living snakelike hair- one of them is Jesus’ half sister. Pretty good.

The 'totally convinced'

Photo by Anastasiia Chepinska on Unsplash

Although I read a lot about COVID-19, I find I struggle to figure out what I should do, what other people should do and what the government should do in response. There is just so much that isn't known about the disease yet. I do my best, but I am full of doubt.

If your social media feed is like mine, you are getting a lot of commentary from "experts" who are convinced the lockdown should end immediately, the lockdown should continue for months, what everybody should do, etc.

A couple of quotes. Here is one of my favorites from Robert Anton Wilson: "The totally convinced and the totally stupid have too much in common for the resemblance to be accidental."

And here is a Friday  blog post from Tyler Cowen, "How things are, in a few short words."

If we keep the economy closed at current levels, it will continue to decay, and at some point turn into irreversible, non-linear damage.  No one knows when, or how to model the course of that process.  That decay also will eat into our future public health capacities, and perhaps boost hunger and poverty around the world.

If we keep people locked up at current levels, fewer of them will be exposed to the virus, and in the meantime we can develop better treatments, and also improve test and trace capabilities.  No one knows how quickly those improvements will come, or how to model the course of that process, or how much net good they will do.

The relative pace of those two processes should determine our best course of action.  No one knows the relative pace of either of those two processes.  Yet commentators pretend to be increasingly knowledgeable, moralizing based on the pretense of knowledge they do not have.

That is where we are at!  And here is my earlier post Where We Stand.

Try the Beethoven quiz

Here is something for RAW fans who are into Beethoven: A quiz to test your knowledge of Beethoven, from the Guardian.

I only got six out of 15 right, not a top score. I've read a few books on Beethoven, and one of my wrong answers came straight out of a biography, so I guess some facts about him are disputed.

I guess we'll see how Eric Wagner does, but based on his study of Beethoven and his track record as a Jeopardy champ,  I'm sure he'll leave me in the dust.

Thanks to Nick Helweg-Larsen for the tip and to Ted Hand for the above screen shot from Facebook.

Come join the reading group!

As I wrote the other day, the new reading group for Nature's God starts Thursday.

If you are new to this blog, we have had a practice of reading Robert Anton Wilson's works together; whoever is leading the discussion will post a weekly blog article, and the rest of us weigh in with comments. The discussions, including the first two Historical Illuminatus books, are archived at the right side of this page. Our new reading group will be led by Gregory Arnott.

Rasa kindly created the above meme, and writes, "I’ve been lurking, but enjoying the readings a lot!!"

Thanks for your support Rasa, and for anyone else who writes comments or simply lurks.

We'll be using the Hilaritas Press edition, although you are welcome to use any. The Hilaritas Press version has fine new illustrations by Bobby Campbell. We start Thursday, with discussion of Eric Wagner's introduction, if you want to read ahead a little bit.

Friday links

I'm following a Twitter account that sends images by Rene Magritte, one of my favorite artists. This one is "Time Transfixed." 

April Eris of the month. 

Douglas Rushkoff on RAW.

New podcast with Erik Davis.

Message from Ringo Starr.

Pot brownie recipe in the Washington Post.    

Watch Adam Gorightly in a new movie

Scene from "The Hill and the Hole." 

Looking for a movie to watch? "The Hill and the Hole," a weird tale of the American Southwest based on a Fritz Leiber story, has finally been released, and it stars Adam Gorightly, California film actor, author and all-around Renaissance man!

It is available for rent on Vidi Space and it should be available soon at Amazon Prime and other video outlets. You get to see Adam portraying a "Masonic mad man," Adam promises. 

Vidi Space is available on Apple TV, Roku, Fire TV, and other such devices. 

Here is Adam's Daily Grail article about the film. 

Reminder: Nature's God reading group

The Nature's God reading group, led by Gregory Arnott, begins next week on Walpurgisnacht, April 30, when we'll consider Eric Wagner's introduction.

As usual, the Hilaritas Press edition is the official edition, but everyone is welcome to join in with any edition you can find. Gregory will write blog posts, and everyone is invited to post comments.

Vintage poster

This poster, featuring Timothy Leary, Robert Anton Wilson and Terrence McKenna, is from a website featuring the art of Gregory Evans.  Via the @RAWilson23 Twitter account. The trio were the subject of Erik Davis' excellent book, High Weirdness.

Back to Twin Peaks

Actress Sheryl Lee ("Laura Palmer," "Maddy Ferguson") in 1990 (Creative Commons photo.)

Inspired by Gregory Arnott's recent article, I have been immersing myself into Twin Peaks. I am re-watching the original series on Netflix, then I plan to rewatch the movie Fire Walk With Me, then finally I will watch the 2017 season three revival (which I have never seen.)

Gregory mentioned to me the other day that he was rewatching the third episode of the first season, and while I wouldn't expect everyone to join me in my new obsession, certainly that episode is worth your time. (It has the famous scene in which Agent Cooper meets a dwarf and a character resembling Laura Palmer in a dream. It is still an astonishing scene.)

One aspect of Twin Peaks I find striking is the large number of people associated with it who are mainly known for the show. Where would Kyle MacLachlan be without Twin Peaks? Or composer Angelo Badamenti?

Steve Fly's YouTube playlists

If you are looking for some videos to watch during your quarantine time, Steve Fly has put together two good-sized YouTube playlists of interest to RAW fans.

There's a The Tale of the Tribe and The Tube playlist (194 videos) and also the Email to the Tribe Video Orientation (142 videos).

Robert Anton Wilson Fans site revamped

Mike Gathers, who has played a role in the invaluable Robert Anton Wilson Fans site for many years, has announced he is updating the site with new material.

The website, if you haven't visited it yet, is a large collection of RAW material, including a bibliography, a huge collection of interviews of RAW, essays and letters written by RAW, audio and video. It's a resource that's been around for many years. Wilson's penultimate book, Email to the Universe, is essentially a collection of highlights of material from the site. Much of the material at the site was gathered by Gathers, Michael Johnson, Eric Wagner, Dan Clore, Marc Lutter, Ted Hand and Jesse Walker; see Michael Johnson's intro to the Hilaritas Press edition of Email to the Universe for more information.

Mike Gathers, who has served as the site's host for several years now, saw my recent post about Robert Anton Wilson's MLA course syllabus for Illuminatus! and decided to use his quarantine time to update the site. Mike saved 7 syllabi from Wilson MLA courses and he has been posting them in a new Maybe Logic Academy section on his website.

Mike also plans to fix broken links at the site, add material found by Martin Wagner (often highlighted at this blog), add other new material and in general freshen up what is already a wonderful site for Wilson fans.

Please join me in thanking Mike for his efforts.

See also this related post by Bogus Magus (who made the Illuminatus! syllabus available.).