I really hope Bobby is okay with me using this.
Editor's Note: Nothing will ever be "sharp" with me, angels know nothing of Time.
My memories of Sex, Drugs & Magick are appropriately hazy. For many years, I kept it as a constant resource, constantly referencing chapters three and four while occasionally revisiting the interludes. I can vividly remember the sense of pure disgust I always felt at the denouement of the "Slouching Towards Bethlehem: The Story of Leonard." I can also vividly remember how Wilson guided me to an understanding of the Ninth Degree Ritual of the O. T. O.. Teaching moments that are buried deep inside whatever construct I am after years of trying to be something beyond the realm of the rational. My New Falcon copy is properly tatty at this point, so I am glad to have another before me.
At first, I avoided this book. I wasn't interested in the "drugs" part and believed that I could entirely avoid the "drugs" side of sex, drugs and magic. Which is entirely laughable, almost Shakespearian in how my prudish, classist conceit was brought to its knees by the sweet, smokey lure of chronic cannabis usage. Reading Sex, Drugs and Magick probably became viable because of an early, overly-solemn, in only the way a young magician can be, wintertime experience with psychedelic mushrooms. And then a further three experiments, in quick succession, over the Spring. Because of one of the authors quoted in the first pages of the text that we are beginning to explore, I somehow believed it was more responsible for me to try psychedelic mushrooms than smoke a joint- I was, and continue to be, very dumb. But I did the mushrooms and as I geared up I excused myself to watch something, I wasn't quite sophisticated enough yet to remember to memorize Crowleyean rituals beforehand- ha! What I watched was Moore's eulogy for Wilson, given in London a few months after our Great Human's Great Feast. Later that night the world fell apart and I heard the story of Tulsi Das and His Monkey Army. Good stuff. (Moore)
So months later, after reconciling myself with what I had perceived as the rambling and hippy-dippy language of Illuminatus! and Promethea, I read Sex, Drugs and Magick. There were secrets here, primed to slip into a spellbook; descriptions of potent drugs and the states of consciousness they could engender. Lush historiography of mankind's gropes towards ἐλευθερία (eleutheria) coupled with suspension-of-disbelief-requiring accounts of its grand, occult successes. Is it crude, bold and somewhat foolish compared to Wilson's later writing? Sure, but that's why I love pre-Illuminatus!-being-published-by-Dell RAW. He was brash and silly and full of It. He had the broken spectre and glory of a newborn magician. Wilson the Magician. I wouldn't argue that this is our closest contact with that persona, but I would argue it is one of the more straightforward.
I started smoking cannabis on the reg a few months after reading Wilson, and almost wouldn't have been ready for it. I wasn't ready to have that many laughs with my friends. It was a brilliant blanket experience that spread over me and filled my mind with a royal road that united disparate sections of myself- the euphoric, the abstract, the mundane and the foolish. I am a being of smoke whose pleasure imitates the Prophet's, peace be upon Him, in that I love, above all things, perfume, prayer and women (woman) with the addendum of certain drugs. (The Koran, as well as the Bible, is imminently more entertaining and lucid under the influence of THC. I believe, if hazy memory serves, this is mentioned in Sex, Drugs and Magick.) Needless to say, all I have said in this paragraph is entirely based on my own experience and mileage may vary. (Marincolo) (Thompson)
I have changed since the last time I read Sex, Drugs & Magick. Changed in many ways. The cannabis abuse still remains; I find myself in complete agreement with Alan Moore's alter ego in Jerusalem, Alma Warren, that "anyone who doesn't think marijuana is addictive isn't trying hard enough." The magic remains; I will bang my head against this door until it cracks. The sex, thankfully and improbably, continues- which is more than I deserve. If someone were to ask me what was good about life, I would easily answer "sex, drugs and magic." Still can't mark the purpose, not yet. But with these tools, these necessary cyborg tools that cling and peel from our innermost selves, we continue to grope towards something beautiful, something harmonious, something immortal. That's the Art that we all strive for- life is nothing less than drudgery without that hard-pressed vintage of the human imagination, that faculty which brushes against the (underbelly?) of something greater and grander than our fleeting impressions. (Eno) (Havens) (Crowley)
Thus do I end my catechism.
And, according to Christina and Rasa's promising words, we will be treated to the reflections of eight, much more impressive, magicians by the time we are done with this fanned-out edition of Wilson's tome- written during the tumult of the counter-Revolution and the first nuclear-blast blindness of the post-Sixties era--in this blessed year of Our Lord 2022. The world has changed--I have changed--since this was published last year and it landed in my hands. I wonder how we shall change before we have concluded.
(Havens)
