Sex, Drugs & Magick: Smoke Gets In Your Eyes

One of the few shots where he isn't exhaling tobacco smoke.

Sex, Drugs & Magick: Drug of Choice: The Story of Bill

I'd say this is the most straight forward of the Interludes in Sex, Drugs & Magick. It is unambiguous and tightly composed, even ending with something of a punchline. While this might be trite, I'm a huge fan of the show Mad Men and this seems like it could have been the B plot in a Wilson-penned episode of that show. (Do you think Wilson would have enjoyed Mad Men?) It has the most essential element for the show: old fashioned Mad Ave executive clashing with a changing world during the 1960s. There's enough mixed drinks, smoking, latent homosexuality, women's liberation, soullessness and longing to be free that all we need are a few melancholy shots of Don Draper as he tries to figure out something about himself that it'd be ready to film. Yet, I'd also say that this story is a lot less subtle than the show was at times. 

From the very beginning, we all know where this is going...although Wilson occasionally disparaged armchair psychology, the Freudian foreshadowing has a sense of silly inevitability to it. Unlike the other stories, there isn't much ambiguity about the ending and Bill seems to take a net-positive change from his experimentation with cannabis. Perhaps contemporary readers would have shuddered at the idea of marijuana bringing out their buried homosexuality, but in the 21st Century, I'd imagine most of us would earnestly say "good for him." (Except of course for those fervent, forked-tongued members of the American Taliban currently pushing Evangelical and Papist "morality" down our collective throats.) Wilson is also more conscious of his portrayal of Bill than his other characters, taking time to point out to the reader that while he relates the unpleasant parts of Bill's personality, the man had some good qualities. It is striking that Bill earns this circumspection in a way Jane, Leonard, Tom or Jerri did not; perhaps Wilson did not share my viewpoint that those characters seemed more distressed and unbalanced than Bill and therefore didn't require his defense. 

Bill, for all that Wilson says about his wit and help writing ad copy, seems like a very unpleasant person at the beginning of the Interlude. Would a contemporary reader have viewed his homosexuality as a just comeuppance for his earlier misogyny? I'm not sure. Wilson goes on to say that "nobody was particularly likeable as the 1960s ground toward their miserable end;" certainly, most of the characters in Mad Men carry their foibles on throughout the seasons of the show and we get to watch their lives continuously fall apart and be picked back up over the course of the show's decade, so this sticks with the script. Are people generally less likeable in times of societal shifts? Pretty much every writer I've encountered who either imagines or reminisces upon the late-Sixties considers it with an air of wistfulness that often overlaps with being haunted by memories. I believe the late-Sixties might really have been as grim as Wilson says, as it seems to be that it caused some sort of cultural trauma that echoes until this day. But that's all just this barely-child-of-the-twentieth-century's musings on things that transpired long before I was born. 

For all that the above might interest me, the most important part of the Interlude is Wilson's very clear demonstration of how to talk to someone who is paranoid because of cannabis. I have used his method of forced calm, jocularity and distraction many times before; and, for all that some will warn of the dangers of mixing marijuana and alcohol (I don't recommend doing it in large amounts! Alcohol impairs judgement enough on its own.) I have found that a snifter of something can put a stopper on the worst of green delusions with no ill-effect. I have also found that being around people who "zone out" to a large degree while smoking marijuana, or who smoke a large enough amount to be "zoned out" no matter their exposure, is not copacetic with a pleasant experience for new hands or anyone who slips into paranoia. I fall on the side that sees marijuana as an excellent vehicle for conversation and exploration of the minds' delightfully ridiculous tangents and nothing harshes my buzz like being trapped in a dirty room watching someone play video games. (Adulthood has happily robbed me of those dismal collegiate smoke sessions.) 

Wilson's capability and awareness is contrasted by the gawking ridiculousness of Danny and his party guests. After reading this the first time I was determined not to be caught unawares in the types of situations that might arise while indulging. I used to keep a bottle of niacinamide in the house until I found that its "face-warming" or hot flash side effects can cause a lot more distress, despite whatever benefits the vitamin might have. While introducing more drugs, chemicals or supplements into the mix might be a shot in the dark, talking and remaining upbeat and positively "normal" hasn't failed me on any occasion so far. 

Stray Thoughts

- After his line about nobody being particularly likeable as the Sixties ground down Wilson goes on to say: "The flower children had grown thorns; the Weathermen contingent of the old SDS was planting bombs hither and yon; movies like Joe or Easy Rider seemed to underscore the mood of genocide or civil war that was in the air just as the joyous and hilarious Skidoo and I Love You, Alice B. Toklas had echoed the open-ended optimism of the early 1960s..." While these cultural hallmarks aren't touched upon in the series, I think this augments my supposition that Mad Men echoes this tale quite nicely. 

- The same paragraph ends with the line: "As I said, Joe and Easy Rider had already warned us that Middle America was armed and dangerous." This line is all the more chilling today as we watch our rights forcibly stripped while the enemy gleefully hints at which others they plan to take away. These foes of freedom have been cemented in power by an indifferent Middle America disgusted with the admitted excesses of identity politics and new movements. They are still armed and dangerous and will watch most of us fall over with the same cold indifference of the camera recording Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper's motorcycle death spills. 

- Wilson at one points compares Bill to Claggert (presumably Danny is Billy Budd) which is a lovely reference to Bill's initially hostile homosexuality since Melville's short novel positively scintillates with gay undertones. 

- Wilson also says that listening to Danny and Bill talk was like listening to Rousseau arguing with de Sade. While posterity cannot hear Rousseau's opinions of de Sade, I'm happy to let you know you don't need a proxy for de Sade's response. Rousseau's brand of Enlightenment philosophy was a favorite target of de Sade's, and it is easy enough to find his contempt for Rousseau's ideas about innate nobility and the positive passivity of females in his works. 

- I watched Joe for the first time this week and it is a really good, hilarious and excruciating film. I would have used Exuma's "You Don't Know What's Going On" for this week's song but I didn't care to evoke the scene or film...the movie is dark. I've been dark enough this week considering my Prometheus Rising post on Rawillumination. It is worth watching, perhaps essential, and considering all the angles. Joe says a lot about our times. To an eerie extent. I hope not a damning extent. 

In keeping with Wilson's ruminations about hashish and sex in the previous chapter, in Joe, right before the most tragical denouement the audience is treated to this exchange:

"Never screwed on grass before, huh?"

"That was...that was..."

"Outrageous, right?" 

Sex, Drugs & Magick: Sayyiduna

 

This is supposedly an American newspaper's depiction on Crowley's Ordo Templi Orientis Abbey of Thelema in Sicily (November 1923)

Sex, Drugs & Magick Chapter Three: The Smoke of the Assassins 

 

Perhaps I am not subtle enough, but this seems to be the most apropos of all the Wake quotes in this volume. I always found Wilson's anecdote about being excited to see how many times "Leary" and "LSD" appeared in Finnegans Wake until Dr. Leary pointed out that his name was extremely common as lsd is an abbreviation for the pound to be incredibly charming. I love a man who laughs at himself. Perhaps that is why, no matter how I might seem to quibble with the material, I am infinitely grateful Wilson was my guide. Anyways, the quote is so appropriate I feel we must chalk it up to synchronicity or Providence. 

 

I have talked previously about the legend of Hassan i Sabbah and just how much we need to take with a grain of salt when reading modern accounts of the Old Man of the Mountain. Our culture is awash in the legend, especially within esoteric or counter-cultural circles, the widening gyre of information that is the Internet, even video games and New York Times bestseller book clubs. How much can be believed? I have wrestled, while reading the chapter and composing this post, with that question. I find that I might be too cynical in my view of history, distrusting any reports further back than this morning as untrustworthy. However, whatever truth there might be in Marco Polo's account of Hassan i Sabbah and the Assassins, he most certainly did not bring spaghetti back from China. 

 

I believe that my distressing skepticism comes partly from reading Michael Muhammad Knight's excellent William S. Burroughs vs. the Quran earlier this year. This book is a captivating memoir that I have mentioned before and I really encourage you to read it. The book contains plenty to interest people with our interests; a discussion of Burroughs' mythologization of Hassan i Sabbah, the career of Peter Lambourn Wilson and even an appearance by the RAW biographer, Prop Anon. While reading the book the weight of Burroughs' influence on Wilson occurred to me as one that I don't think about as much as others; that I should probably attribute much of what Wilson relates about Sabbah as coming from the Burroughs model, which might not be accurate. Wilson himself notes in this chapter that Burroughs held Sabbah in a place of honor, a man who honored so little in the ways of other men.

 

Indeed, it seems to be a kind of an unintentional game, Westerners trying to figure out who the Hashashin really were and their modus operandi. The Ismaili Muslims of Iran were referred to by other Muslim writers as the "Hashishiyya," but this word was also applied to Sufis or Sufi orders suspected of using hashish. The use of hashish was controversial, then as now, and there was a large amount of prejudice in the Islamic world against those who consumed it. I'll share some Sufi poems that seem to echo sentiments heard in dorm rooms all across our Great Nation:

Hashish contains the meaning of my desire.
You dear people of intelligence and understanding.
They have declared it forbidden without any justification on the basis of reason and tradition. 
Declaring forbidden what is not forbidden is forbidden. 

Preserved or written by Ibn Kathir (14th Century) 

The use of hashish is censured by all silly persons, weak of mind, insensitive,
To the censure coming from stupid and envious individuals.
Share hashish with a goodly young man firm.
In the preservation of friendship and appointments.
Is it not a relaxation for the mind? Thus enjoy
It, all you sensible men!

Muhammad bin Makki bin Ali bin al-Hussain al-Mashhadi (11th Century?) 

However, lest we get the idea that medieval Sufis were proto-hippies, they were (and are) a diverse group of peoples; the same source where I found the above poems also includes a Sufi poet condemning the use of hashish. It also seems that, far from the more colorful legend of converting the fidai, that the original belief in the Western popular imagination about the Ismailis and linking them to hashish was the belief that the fidai used hashish before battle/assassinations to give them courage. (An interesting idea for anyone who has gotten too high and tried to go grocery shopping, which quickly becomes a visit to Tartarus.) As far as I could tell, there are many historians who have concluded that Hassan i Sabbah was nothing more than a very pious Shia Muslim. But that just isn't as much fun, is it? 

Wilson says: "Hassan made modernists and even post-modernists out of his contemporaries, and they didn't like it at all." Perhaps Hassan taught us all, even if unintentionally, a centuries-early lesson in post-modernism. And if we are to be post-modern, then we can choose whatever historical quasi-fiction we wish to believe. So, if we desire a fitting narrative for Sayidunna, we need to go no further than the beginning of the twentieth century in the Balkans. In a novel called Alamut, the Slovenian writer Vladimir Bartol laid the groundwork for the modern take on Hassan i Sabbah. The novel concerns the initiation of ibn Tahir into the ranks of the fedayin as well as the recruitment of some of the "houris" to inhabit his faux-paradise. A psychological novel, Alamut concerns itself with the brainwashed devotees and the discovery of Hassan's ruse on the part of one "houri" and ibn Tahir. The novel concludes with ibn Tahir confronting Hassan where the Old Man utters his motto to him, not to Burzug Umid. Alamut also contains the incident recounted at the end of this chapter, however it is Hassan who orders two fedayin to take their lives instead of Sinan. While it might not be perfectly accurate, it is a good yarn and the speech Hassan gives to ibn Tahir concerning the watchers atop A'raf has haunted me the years since reading it. 

(And at this point I'd like to report that in Philip Farber's excellent High Magick: A Guide to Cannabis in Ritual and Mysticism, it is noted that, similar to the Hindu soma, the Zoroastrians had the drug haoma. Like soma, haoma has been conjectured as originally indicating many different drugs; yet, based on various descriptions it seem highly likely that the plant indicated by these terms was cannabis. (A far more pleasant, common intoxicant in that area of the world than amanita muscaria.) Farber notes that while some Zoroastrians and historians write about Zoroaster condemning the use of haoma, it was another drug he condemned in the Avesta, mada, which might have been the same as haoma, but might not have been. (Fun, right? Why can't people read religious texts clearly?) The modern haoma ritual of Zoroastrianism uses ephedra or Syrian rue for the substance, but Farber contends that the original psychoactive haoma was kept for the "magi" priest-class of Zoroastrians. All of this is for me to say that Zoroastrians are originally from the same Persian area that the Ismailis would inhabit.) 

Further into the chapter, closer to us than Hassan i Sabbah but prey to as much, if not more, obfuscation and confusion is the discussion of Crowleyean sex magick. This chapter is incredibly important because here, in plain enough text, Wilson reveals the operation of sex magick and provides enough information to piece together the Ninth Degree Ritual of the Ordo Templi Orientis, its most prized secret. It was from this chapter that I was able to piece together the operation in whole; when I told one teacher I believed that I had divined "a part" of the ritual, he simply replied "a part?" 

Based on my further research, my conclusion was correct. While it is dressed up in his charmingly ridiculous bombast, Louis T. Culling's Sex Magick and The Complete Magickal Curriculum of the Secret Order G.B.G. also provide the essential part of the operation as well as including "Of The Homunculus" (a secret instruction of the Ninth Degree) in his writing about "the bud-will." Granted, this is tied up in C.F. Russell's/Culling's rigmarole, but all of that is quite entertaining in and of itself. (God, I love Culling.) Much of my confirmation comes from Francis King's The Secret Rituals of the O.T.O. and various back papers in his Crowley On Christ. I should note that Caliphate partisans are happy to say that King's book, aside from being illegally printed in the first place, is devastatingly flawed. Aside from mumblings about the Third Degree Ritual, I have never been given a satisfactory explanation of how it is in any way incorrect that didn't smack of misdirecting insincerity along with unfamiliarity with the text. King himself states that his work was based on the collection of Frater Volo Intelligere, Gerald Yorke, who was as in-the-know as any of Crowley's acquaintances, even if he wasn't a member of the O.T.O.. Crowley's opus, Magick Book 4, is dedicated in part to Frater Volo Intelligere. 

Aside from spilling the beans in this manner, Wilson also reveals, as he does for us in other works, what he believes to be the incriminating poem in Crowley's The Book of Lies. Chapter 69 goes as follows: 

THE WAY TO SUCCEED -- AND THE WAY TO SUCK EGGS!

This is the Holy Hexagram.
Plunge from the height, O God, and interlock with
    Man!
Plunge from the height, O Man, and interlock with
    Beast!
The Red Triangle is the descending tongue of grace;
    the Blue Triangle is the ascending tongue of
    prayer.
This Interchange, the Double Gift of Tongues, the
    Word of Double Power -- ABRAHADABRA! -- is
    the sign of the GREAT WORK, for the GREAT WORK is accomplished in Silence. And behold, is
    not that Word equal to Cheth, that is Cancer, whose Sigil is 69*?
This Work also eats up itself, accomplishes its own
    end, nourishes the worker, leaves no seed, is perfect in itself.
Little children, love one another!

[*In the poem proper, the "69" is the astrological sign of Cancer.] 

A poem that isn't a poem and isn't usually included in the running for the poem that put Reuss in a mood but shares similar concerns is #36 which contains the original version of Crowley's version of the Lesser Ritual of the Hexagram, The Star Sapphire. I can personally attest that regular practice of this ritual is transformative and comforting in many ways, especially when coupled with the theory expressed in #69. Wilson says of this: "I learned this [that Crowley could appreciate the inner meaning of mystical Christianity] directly by performing his Lesser Ritual of the Hexagram (a combination of Christian and Egyptian invocations, and one of the most powerful consciousness-altering techniques I know), which gave me an entirely new and fresh insight into the central Christian symbolism of Crucifixion and Resurrection." If you're looking for something to do, I think Wilson would echo my recommendation to commit the Star Sapphire to heart. 

Let's move away from the mysterious men and their shroud of smoke for now, though they may already have captured our imaginations. 

Stray Thoughts

- Wilson quotes Crowley's "The Psychology of Hashish," which was originally attributed to Oliver Haddo, the decidedly unflattering portrait of Crowley offered in Somerset Maugham's The Magician. "The Psychology of Hashish" is the second, and by far the most valuable/instructive part of Crowley's compendium of marijuaniana The Herb Dangerous. The other three portions of Crowley's study are composed of a dry medical report by a (seemingly real not-actually-Crowley-persona) English physician on cannabis: the other two sections are a translation of a poem on hashish by Baudelaire and an excerpt from "The Hasheesh Eater" by Fritz Hugh Ludlow. Regardie, in his introduction to The Herb Dangerous in the Sixties reprint Roll Away the Stone, compares Ludlow's work to de Quincey's and presciently calls for a reprint that would surely be (and proved) popular with the then-current generation. 

- Speaking of Baudelaire, it should be said that his and Gautier's descriptions of the effects of hashish are best taken as reports from Olympus. They are an example of what I like to call "the absinthe problem." I had always heard that absinthe was hallucinogenic because of the presence of wormwood in the 19th century recipe, which has been removed in our modern productions. However, I had also read in accounts that the wormwood's presence was negligible and that the riotous effects upon the imagination are in themselves imaginary and to be attributed to nothing more than absinthe's not-insubstantial alcohol content and romance. (I really should read Phil Baker's history of absinthe.) Both reading Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal and Gautier's Mademoiselle de Maupin can prove without doubt that each of them is capable of intoxicating the reader with nothing more than words, it goes to follow that the effects of any drug would loosen their already-tenuous grip on this dull world. I believe Wilson will later discuss how disappointed that many a hippie was to discover that opium doesn't deliver the reveries of "Kubla Khan" or The Opium-eater's visions. Alas, we are not all naturally gifted with the fervid imagination of Coleridge or de Quincey. 

- I could find nothing about Ismaili fedai wielding a flame dagger, celebrated or otherwise. 

- In High Magick, Philip Farber also writes about the ancient notations of the perhaps-mythical Shen Neng/Shennong on cannabis. Farber interestingly relates that Shennong also stated, aside from extolling the medical benefits of cannabis, that "[c]annabis...enabled seekers to forget their own consciousness and attain the Tao." Farber also notes that while cannabis was not looked kindly upon by Confucianists, some parts of Taoism have always retained a fondness for the drug and that one of the eight Taoist immortals is Ma Gu...which translates as "Hemp Maiden" or, delightfully, "Auntie Hemp." 

- I looked up Dr. Michael Aldritch, something I don't think I've ever done before this reading. I couldn't find much about him, but he is still around and evidently wrote the now-uncommon Drugs-For & Against. He also contributed to the "High Times" Encyclopedia of Recreational Drugs. 

- I am disappointed that after multiple rereadings of this text, I still haven't read Terry Southern's "The Blood of a Wig." The story, found in Red Dirt Marijuana and Other Tales, concerns the account of a magazine editor's outrageous drug use. Evidently the titles refer to injecting the blood of a schizophrenia patient (the "wig") and contains this bit about the Kennedy assassination: 

- I learned, through trial and major error, that it is never in one's best interest to bring up the feeding of the Red Lion or the White Eagle in their truest sense, save when under the rose. 

Sex, Drugs & Magick: Illusionogenic

Still from I Love You, Alice B. Toklas! (1968)

 Sex, Drugs and Magick Interlude: Divorce Psychedelic Style: The Story of Tom & Jerri

Reading this was a reminder of how far we are from the Sixties, which in many ways laid the foundations of today's world, for better or worse. We get to walk down memory lane when Dorothy Day was still influential, there were Fidelistos in the United States and even witness the appearance of an automat. Occasionally you'll see a Dorothy Day quote pop up anymore, but leftist Catholics aren't really something you run into everyday in our brave century. While Che Guevara posters/t-shirts were popular during my youth in the late nineties-early aughts, I doubt even those who knew who Che Guevara was would have said they supported Fidel Castro. And I don't even know if there's an automat left on the face of the earth today. Tom and Jerri's story, more than those of Jane or Leonard, is a story of the progression of the Sixties. 

Like Jane and Leonard, Wilson shows occasional glimpses of contempt for his subjects. He doesn't admire their hardline Marxism/Christian radicalism when he meets them and obviously thought that Tom's hardline approach was detrimental to his children. (Like many children of the movers and shakers of that era, I wonder how Tom and Jerri's kids felt about their childhood, spent in unique living situations due to their parents (over?) abundance of belief.)  As the chapter approaches the end of Tom's progression towards his "Church of One Flesh," Wilson seems to be raising his eyebrows in bemusement and even includes the incestuous aspect of Tom's acid-enlightenment for the reader to balk or gawk at. 

The message from this story seems to be the same as Leonard's, to a different degree- be careful where these chemicals take you. Wilson doesn't object to the use of drugs, and he scrupulously doesn't object to anything directly or to the subjects of the stories during his appearances, but rather seems to be fascinated by how the drugs can "take over" unsuspecting or overly-credulous users. Unlike the end of Leonard's story, neither Tom nor Jerri seem to end up in truly pathetic states at the end of the chapter. Unless you're invested in Tom and Jerri's marriage, which would be an odd choice considering how lackluster their relationship seems to have been, nothing too horrible happens to either. Things "end" a bit bizarrely on Tom's part, but at least he was still visiting his kids. 

One things that this interlude contains, and which I feel I should contest, is Wilson's assertion that users cannot take acid more than once a week. Perhaps this was a deliberate blind on Wilson's part, on the naivety of a Wilson who hadn't quite subjected himself to his truly bracing experiences with Hoffman's problem child, but I believe either way the information is simply wrong. 

Three bits against Wilson's pronouncement. First, in my personal experience I have tripped multiple times within the span of a few days. This is the easiest piece of evidence to refute as one could assert that because of the day and age we live in, I can't be sure I received true LSD-25. Secondly, Wilson himself later reveals (This is in Cosmic Trigger II, I believe. Tom, can you confirm?) that he censored the truth in the later Cosmic Trigger about his use of acid and seems to have been using it very frequently during that time period. Thirdly, John Higgs' revolutionarily awe-some biography of Timothy Leary, I Have America Surrounded, scrupulously recounts Leary's use of acid which was certainly on a daily basis for many parts of his life. 

So what is the explanation? It certainly could have been a deliberate lie as Wilson does seem concerned with what acid can do to the unprepared. We know that the Wilson who wrote Cosmic Trigger seemed concerned that admitting to his own acid-consumption could strip him of credibility. Or was Wilson simply not yet inducted into the frequent use of LSD when he published Sex, Drugs and Magick? I'm genuinely curious as to what the reader thinks about this. 

Stray Thoughts

- An amusing part of this chapter is where the Wilson of the Interlude seems to be "weirded out" (peculiared out?) by the acidhead copywriter who claims he was in contact with flying saucers as we all know that Wilson would shortly be experiencing his own extraterrestrial, acid-aided communication with beings from Sirius. 

- Wilson also provides us with two explanations for why LSD users adopt counter cultural ideas; is it the milieu of people that use and have access to acid or is it the alienating effect of lysergic acid? This is another bit where I'd be interested in hearing what the reader of this post thinks. For me, I imagine that both theories have some truth to them. I can't say that my psychedelic experiments made me into a crunchy hippie, but I do share many qualities with the counter culture and I know that those substances changed or clarified me. 

- Tom's network of sexual partners is laughable to me as I have personally witnessed the incredible animosity that people can have towards a partner or former partner's current or former lovers. (I feel like there is a comma missing in that sentence.) Sex and violence are closely linked in the human mind, I've never bought into the Free Love Movement's ideas that it is a pure expression of community. 

- Maybe don't "ball" your sister?