Sex, Drugs & Magick Chapter Two: Don't Bother

 

Detail from Botticelli's Venus and Mars: is the satyr grasping datura stramonium? 

Sex, Drugs & Magick Chapter Two: Horned Gods and Horny Potions

I think my title for this week is much more accurate than the actual title of the chapter; everything I've read about solanaceous drugs comes to the same conclusion- they're not worth the hassle. (I guess it could be argued that the factitious works of Castaneda portray jimson weed in a positive light in the first couple books, though I'd argue that the tone of those works is still cautionary and highly, if perhaps falsely, contextualized.) Wilson later wrote : "[t]he four weirdest and scariest drug stories I know all involve belladonna, a chemical for which I now have the same sincere respect as I have for hungry tigers, earthquakes, floods, wildfires, the IRS and Dr. Hannibal Lecter." In his short essay "La Belle Dame Sans Merci," that introduction is followed by a harrowing account of a very unpleasant trip though separate realities that Wilson experienced while living in Yellow Springs with Arlen (who briefly, through Wilson's solanaceous lenses turned into a vampire). 

In Jim DeKorne's excellent Psychedelic Shamanism the solanaceous drugs are discussed as "belladonna alkaloids" and he focuses mostly on the use of different strains of datura grown in North America, colloquially referred to as jimson weed or thorn apple. DeKorne attributes the popularity (?) of experimentation with belladonna alkaloids to the aforementioned works of Carlos Castaneda and makes some fascinating observations about the usage of this family of drugs. To DeKorne, datura is a distinctly feminine drug, something that can be backed up by Don Juan's imaginary expertise, and is known for its dangerous twists and turns; he equates datura, quite poetically, with the femme fatale stereotype. DeKorne notes that trips utilizing belladonna alkaloids often are bad trips in the context of male, Western users but serve a beneficial, or at least non-traumatizing, purpose for female and indigenous users throughout history. DeKorne also brings up the modern hypothesis that the broomstick is associated with witchcraft because medieval witches perhaps applied their "flying ointment" to their genitals using broom handles as the applicator/dildo. I would imagine that this idea would not have been in the milieu at the time Wilson wrote Sex, Drugs & Magick, or he surely would have included it in this tome. 

Whatever the case, DeKorne concludes that with other, less dangerous and more predictable doorways to eternity available, it is best to avoid consuming belladonna alkaloids. He does recommend growing datura, which when I read the book I took to heart and for one summer/autumn I had two large datura plants, they grow quickly, in my apartment's backyard. I only had one a handful of blossoms appear, the blossoms are quite beautiful and give datura another one of its names: "angel's trumpet." I also found the plants to be distinctly feminine, probably because of DeKorne's impressions on me and their association with witchcraft. I cannot say that I ever tried datura or any other derivative from this family, my wiser teachers got to me early and by the time I read Castaneda, I knew to take everything with a grain of salt. 

Historically, there's a lot to talk about concerning the solanaceous drugs, but practically it seems like there is very little use for them. (I do raise my eyebrow at the suggestion that Euripides' maenads are obviously under the influence of solanaceous drugs.) Perhaps it is best to view this family of drugs as the exclusive purview of indigenous populations who have retained a contextual practice for utilizing them and as an art that has been lost in our Western culture, burned away with what few practitioners may or may not have been persecuted during the days of witch hunts. All reconstructed recipes of "flying ointment" I have ever seen come with strict warnings that these are conjectural and for intellectual purposes only. 

Stray Thoughts

- The Book of Shadows that Wilson references certainly isn't centuries old; Wicca was made up whole cloth by Gerald Gardner in the mid-twentieth century. (Wilson does include Francis King's similar assessment.) While this doesn't delegitimize the religion, the constant aping at an obviously made-up sense of posterity is embarrassing. Like most things in modern magic, the elements of Wicca can be traced back to Aleister Crowley. Crowley, in his old age, had some remaining fans/disciples/hanger-ons including Gerald Yorke, Kenneth Grant and Gerald Gardner. Crowley was the co-author of the three Degree rites of Gardnerian Wicca or Gardner was heavily influenced by Crowley's writing when he authored the rites himself. This Crowleyean influence would diminish as Gardner's Wicca philosophy matured. 

- In his essay "Magic, Running Through the Gutters Like Lightning," Alan Moore references the idea of flying ointment and the broomstick applicator and advises the reader: "best not to think of the Quidditch changing rooms in Harry Potter." Speaking of Harry Potter, I wonder what Wilson, who predicted that Dr. Strangelove may contain the last major reference to mandrakes, would think of today's world where plush and animatronic mandrakes are available in bookstores because of The Boy Who Was Worth Millions. 

- "La Belle Dame Sans Merci" was published in email to the Universe, available from Hilaritas Press! 

- Here is an article that discusses the Botticelli painting that serves as the illustration for this week. The article describes datura as "poor man's acid" and have an effect that is "half alcohol and half opium," I would say our other sources disagree. 

- I read John Dickson Carr's The Crooked Hinge some years ago on Wilson's recommendation in this chapter. I remember being slightly disappointed by what I perceived as too little drugged witchcraft but the denouement is as interesting as our author suggests. It also involves the Titanic! 

Sex, Drugs & Magick: while the worst are full of passionate intensity

 

The Scapegoat by William Holman Hunt

Sex, Drugs & Magick: Slouching Towards Bethlehem: The Story of Leonard 

Is there any way to read the Story of Leonard as anything more than a warning? Perhaps we can look at it as a funny anecdote, but that seems cruel- so a warning it must be, since Wilson doesn't paint a very positive picture of "Leonard." 

From the beginning of the chapter, where Leonard asks to masturbate in front of the others, the average reader would be inclined to see this person as an extreme abnormality. Even if Wilson wasn't personally offended by the request, he surely would have known that even his open-minded readership would, for the most part, find this to be a shocking incident. Wilson, who was obviously uncomfortable with the request, is more even-handed in his actions than most people would be. Perhaps, in Wilson's mind, this is meant to be a psychological profile, similar to the story of Jane, but it is far removed from the clinical setting. Thus it becomes something of a curiosity, a grim invitation to see where being too malleable and adaptable to new ideas and phases can lead. 

I knew a couple of people who resembled Leonard greatly in my youth. Around the time I first read the story I was immediate reminded of a pair of particular acquaintances. Both were bright, for as Wilson points out "dimwits do not acquire such remarkable notions," but I didn't think too highly of either of them. Both came from a fundamentalist/evangelical background which they divorced from more-or-less violently during the blossoming of late adolescence. One went on to obsessively follow atheism and then Ayn Rand libertarianism, came out as gay, had a brief dalliance with drug-inspired spirituality, became a drag enthusiast and then a punk anarchist (still can't quite wrap my head around what that even was) and last I heard had settled into a new type of religion: the insufferable modern academic. The other was the more irritatingly Christian of the two, who went to NYC, became a fashion model, came out as gay, became a cocaine and nightlife enthusiast and last I heard was back home, an enthusiastic fundamentalist lay-preacher who publicly renounced his "evil" ways. It is truly bizarre where life leads you when you become an operative of ideas instead of making ideas work for you. 

In college I witnessed many friends try psychedelics or marijuana for the first time and experience periods of LSD-evangelism or spiritual dabbling that faded as quickly as it came on. By the time I tried LSD, I was so fully influenced by watching others that the trip wasn't particularly revolutionary- I was painfully aware that all of the "revelations," while fun in the moment, would fade when faced with the harsh light of day(s). Indeed, one of my favorite parts of Mad Men is Roger Sterling's brief acid enlightenment that is referenced a few episodes later when he has resumed his capitalist, shallow ways: "I guess it wore off." This isn't to say that my LSD experiences weren't enjoyable or had no effect, but by that time in my life, filled with the history of acid's ups and downs, the glamour wasn't quite as convincing. 

I can think of a few reasons I didn't go down a similar path: my endemic cynicism makes me resistant to groupthink or finding other people's lifestyles enviable, I have kept a few obsessive interests which align outside experiences firmly within my lenses, and I was deathly afraid of ever appearing foolish or impressionable. (And unlike the two aforementioned "Leonard-types," while I was raised in a Christian family, they weren't fundamentalists.) These tendencies have their downsides as well, but I personally consider avoiding fundamentalist Christianity and public masturbation as wins. I don't think much of dabblers and am somewhat of the belief that a too-open mind lets in a lot of trash. Our intellectual discrimination is a valuable, essential tool in navigating the forests (and weeds) of ideas we encounter in life. 

Stray Thoughts

• It is somewhat obvious that Leonard, or at least Sandra, were students at Antioch while Bob and Arlen lived in Yellow Springs, OH. Wilson was fond of writing about how Antioch was filled with strange, ahead of the curve ideas in other pieces; I imagine that Leonard/Sandra were part of his inspiration for that belief. Concerning Sandra, I think it is interesting how contemptuously Wilson describes her- if anything, the brief sentences given to her are perhaps more unflattering than the entire portrait of her wayward beau. 
• Another bit of history in this chapter is how Wilson describes himself as following a radical right-wing libertarian philosophy. This notion of a superior "right-wing" libertarianism is presented in Illuminatus in the form of Hagbard Celine and his crew of merry submariners. A reader could notice that Wilson does not describe himself as "right-wing" in his writings from the eighties onward. (This isn't to say that Wilson ever paid lip-service to being left-wing.) One can imagine (presume?) that the rise of the Moral Majority and the Reagan Revolution made the notion of being a right-wing anything distasteful to Wilson. 

Keep your head on your shoulders, not between your legs. Enjoy the scenery, but don't become a part of it. 

Sex, Drugs & Magick Chapter One: We shall win Jackie is an ego bitch Farewell

Taken from the Kerista Commune website

Sex, Drugs & Magick: Chapter One: Overview The Brews of Aphrodite

Wilson starts us off with a comprehensive overview of the subject matter of the book using a familiar cast of backing sources. Much of the information is outdated or wasn't accurate at the time; but the gist of his argument remains strong. Indeed, we can see the seeds of the philosophy behind today's (often misrepresented and unfairly maligned) harm-reduction policies in this chapter in his arguments that people aren't going to stop using drugs and therefore accurate information and safety measures should be put in place. On the other hand, as utterly charming as the Burroughs version of Hassan-i-Sabbah and the Hashashin might be, we know that it is fantastical, to say the least. Given the benefits of hindsight, modern readers can clearly see Leary's showman shift while talking about sex and acid to Playboy magazine...we are in waters that are still muddled by decades of red tape and corpses piled up from the ever-raging Culture War. 

Nevertheless, we are in good hands as Wilson's specialty is navigating the muddle and he takes an appropriately skeptical position while relating the arguments. He builds up to this at the end when he sets up the idea that he can only present the information he has been given. Wilson cannily uses a mixture of research, sourced-ideas and personal anecdotes throughout the book, providing the audience with something more than a single research paper, prepared with amateurish enthusiasm. (I do not use the term amateur as a slight or as a belittling word choice, but rather in the true sense of the word.) 

During his foundational chapter, Wilson also begins his tour of odd peoples and ideas which proliferated in the latter half of twentieth century America. The Kerista cult is a suitably fascinating group that he passes over and has led me to research the group multiple times when reading this book. This time around I found that there is now a documentary on the group which I'll have to watch titled Far Out West. (Interestingly Kerista's free love commune introduced the word "compersion" into the lexicon. Compersion is the supposed feeling of fear/pleasure that comes with sharing your intimate partner's affections.) Kerry Thornley was a member of the San Francisco Kerista commune and it is likely much of what Wilson knew about the group came from him, along with "Tree," as it were. Kerista was heavily inspired by Robert Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange land and interestingly, one of the "acid-cults" that Wilson chooses not to name for their privacy clearly seems to be the Church of All Worlds, which Margot Adler would later write about in Drawing Down the Moon. 

If one pays enough attention we can see that the article in Time magazine that Wilson cites as saying that Gnosticism is the most important idea in the modern world must be discussing the work of Voegelin's which introduces the phrase "immanentize the eschaton," made famous in Illuminatus!. It appears that the article might have been penned by that King of the Squares, William F. Buckley Jr.. The article appears in the larger context of Wilson's argument that the War on Drugs can be seen as an extension of the religious wars that have plagued mankind since Rome. It is a frustrating argument because it is convincing. Wilson also relates some sober history lessons about our country's founders views on religion that more Americans need to read today. Desperately. 

Next Up is the Story of Leonard, which I have already mentioned slightly horrified me every reread. I'll see if I can come up with something useful to say. As a editorial note: we are back to our regular broadcast schedule this week as I am finally free for the summer. It was a sprint to the finish line the last few months and it is a relief to be able to focus on my personal projects now.