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| "The Great Beast" (Illustration by John Thompson from Robert Anton Wilson's Cosmic Trigger) |
Lion of Light: Robert Anton Wilson On Aleister Crowley
Reading Group
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
Welcome! Our corner of the Robert Anton Wilson community, based around Tom Jackson's RAWIllumination, is excited to announce a reading group for the recently published Lion of Light (from Hilaritas Press): it will be hosted here at Jechidah and led by Oz Fritz and Yours Truly.
Oz is a music producer/sound engineer and possesses a masterful knowledge of the lives and times of both Aleister Crowley and Robert Anton Wilson. He is also the best damn practical Qabalist I've ever run across, so I'm personally looking forward to whatever secrets and possible meanings he'll dig up going through the book. I can also vouch that Oz is a great person and happy to share his knowledge without pretense and with an open hand. Check out his blog.
I'm a Rabelaisian windbag and probably mad, but I've spent the majority of my life exploring the works of Crowley, Wilson et al. and trying to put them into practice. Not sure if it was the best decision I made, but it is; I know no other way. Besides, I've witnessed, after a manner, many splendors and phantasms that I wouldn't have otherwise.
Come with us to the borderlands of biography where the shades are at least as real as the shadows on the wall of Plato's cave; a hinterland of serpents, stars and garters...
Or come explore the conversation between two of the wittiest, most brilliant men to have wielded a pen, who transformed the lives of so many people...sometimes for better, sometimes for worse...with two guides who have been listening in to their dialogue with careful attention for years. Perhaps we'll be able to rend Isis' Veil and show some of the truths behind the scintillating obfuscation of occultism and reveal the depths of humor and humanity that lies beneath.
We'll officially begin on Labor Day (September 4th), but keep an eye on this space for updates in the days ahead.
In the meantime, I'd heartily recommend taking up the small practice of prayer in "Appendix Lamed" of The Illuminatus! Trilogy or Crowley's Liber Resh: practice is an essential part of understanding magic. While the resulting experiences are subjective, they do tend to deepen one's relationship with the beliefs and practices of our magical predecessors. I'm always happy to field questions and try to point in a direction!
Love is the law, love under will.
Yrs. &c.,
A.C.
Reading you just in this introductory post, it seems obvious that you will be the perfect host for this reading group, and that it should be a very interesting experience.
ReplyDeleteI don't know if I will have a copy yet on september 4th, but I will jump in as soon as I do.
Do you actually perform the adorations four times a day, every day?
I tell myself that these might make sense in a place like Egypt, but where I live here in Iceland, the sun set and rise only ~3 hours apart in summertime, and rise and set 4 hours apart in wintertime, so a bit nonsensical.
Although of course, this is nothing but a rationalization of my laziness about it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCMNNJST9P4
@Spookah Glad to hear from you again! I'm looking forward to the group. And I guess I now have to get into Graham Bond...I can't believe I've been missing this for so long! His music reminds me of Soft Machine. (Kevin Ayers is a big fav of mine.) What an amazing album. I'll be listening to Love is the Law and We Put Out Magick on You this weekend. Got-damn, but you do have the grooviest music taste.
ReplyDeleteAt the beginning of the album Bond performs the Lesser Ritual of the Pentagram, which I would probably have recommended at some point anyways. So if learning that would suit you more than Resh, that's also something I do quite often (usually at least once physically and once "astrally" in my head when I'm falling asleep or distressed). I've even taught it to my daughter as her first "real" magic spell. (I personally prefer Crowley's version, The Star Ruby, but the Lesser Ritual is pretty well perfect. "The medicine of medicines," as I believe Crowley refers to it in an early work.)
But yes, I recite Resh- it makes me feel better and situates me. I do miss the noon/midday prayer often because I'm at work- but this year my schedule should allow me the time and privacy to perform that as well. The prayers are very short...the biggest time investment is the memorization which is pretty easy once you are able to just switch around some names and adjectives.
I am always happy to disregard some of the specific stipulations in Crowley's writings...if you try to follow Liber A perfectly as an eighteen year old occultist you get really, really frustrated really quickly and eventually figure out that Crowley was sometimes being a fantastical dick in parts of his work. If you take him literally. So no, you don't need to do it specifically when the sun is rising, at the zenith, setting and at midnight. Usually I perform them when I've woken up (sometimes in the shower if I'm in a rush!), around noon, whenever sunset is (or when your evening begins) and then before going to bed. I did try to keep the strict schedule as a kid and got really hung up on the time changes...I like my more lax schedule more.
It was just a recommendation and there's also the simpler, but very effective, prayer in Illuminatus! as well. No pressure to do anything except to keep providing me more music recommendations.
Thank you for your elaborate answer.
ReplyDeleteI know that no one is being pressured to do anything. But I admire this level of dedication. The four adorations are the first thing that Regardie asks the reader to do at the beginning of the One Year Manual, which could be a deal-breaker for many from the get go...
I sometimes struggle to keep up with, for instance, daily meditation, pranayama, or journaling. At the same time, I feel like relapsing into skipping days or having breaks doesn't matter too much ultimately, as long as it's the exception rather than the rule. And seeing yourself finding excuses not to do it can be enlightening as well, definitely part of knowing thyself, perhaps even more important than actually doing it, at least in one way...
That being said, I do see the point of Resh in constantly reminding oneself of hir place in Universe, and thus both showing more humility towards one's life and adopting a 'view from above' in the realization that our own personal drama (or the whole of the human race's, for that matter!) matters little in the face of the Cosmos.
At this point of my life, I am very litteraly getting paid to know about music, since I work at a record store. In magickal terms, the Disks of the material world for me happen to be actual round vinyls, that produce both living income AND a cool soundtrack to my life.
Thank-you for your generous words, Rarebit. There's some great Qabalistic analysis from RAW in Lion of Light.
ReplyDeleteI concur with the immense value of practice. In his exegesis on Liber Resh found in one of the volumes of his ESSAYS, Jerry Cornelius maintains that the benefits of this ritual accrue even when not performing them at exactly or even close to the four temporal cardinal points.
I'm excited to set off on this voyage. Full steam ahead!
I found some thought-provoking ideas.
ReplyDeleteIn the chapter regarding the Four Adorations, Regardie writes that “in order that we may once more progress towards the full awareness of the source of life and love and liberty, we make ritual gestures of affirming a link between the Sun and ourselves.”
I earlier mentioned Egypt, but interestingly enough it is on another continent, among the Pueblo Indians, that Carl Jung stumbled upon something similar (as recalled in his Memories, Dreams, Reflections).
One Indian explains: “we are the sons of Father Sun, and with our religion we daily help our father to go across the sky. We do this not only for ourselves, but for the whole world. If we were to cease practicing our religion, in ten years the sun would no longer rise. Then it would be night forever.”
So Jung deduce that the life of the Pueblo Indian “is cosmologically meaningful, for he helps the father and preserver of all life in his daily rise and descent. If we set against this our own self-justifications, the meaning of our own lives as it is formulated by our reason, we cannot help but see our poverty.”
He then further elaborates: “the ritual acts of man are an answer and reaction to the action of God upon man; and perhaps they are not only that, but are also intended to be ‘activating’, a form of magic coercion. That man feels capable of formulating valid replies to the overpowering influence of God, and that he can render back something which is essential even to God, induces pride, for it raises the human individual to the dignity of a metaphysical factor.”
Where I was seeing a sign of cosmic humility, Jung sees pride.
Finally, he comes to the pretty awesome conclusion “that man is indispensable for the completion of creation; that, in fact, he himself is the second creator of the world, […] without which [...] it would have gone on in the profoundest night of non-being down to its unknown end. Human consciousness created objective existence and meaning, and man found his indispensable place in the great process of being.”
Sounds good. I loved "Lion of Light".
ReplyDeleteIn Lion of Light I hypothesize that RAW grasped Magick so quickly due to his prior frequent reading of Joyce. I'm current traveling through Finnegans Wake, sometimes the synchronicities appear off the charts. For instance, I had just finished writing an email to my friend, the great musician and songwriter, Afton Wolfe describing the data I needed for mastering his new ep. Started back in FW only to instantly see the word "aftanon" (p. 183) which begins sounding the same as his first name. Joyce likely indicates "afternoon" by that word, coincidentally when the email and this took place. Two sentences later we see "soundconducting walls thereof."
ReplyDeletePerhaps less mind blowing, but relevant here: a few days or a week ago over at Raw Illumination, one thread had Spookah, Lvx15, and myself commenting on different correspondences with Lion of Light. Diving back in FW after reading the last comment there I immediately came across a lion reference: " ... she, the lalage of lyon-esses, and him, her knave arrant. To Wildrose La Gilligan from Croppy Crowhore." Coincidentally, I mention the old TV sitcom, Gilligan's Island in the same piece hypothesizing the Joyce/Crowley connection for RAW.
Oz, I take it that this is not your first time reading Finnegans Wake, so I'm wondering how are you reading it now, opening it at random, or actually from beginning to end?
ReplyDeleteI liked your foreword to Lion of Light a lot and will have a few questions when the reading group gets there.
Thank-you, Spookah. This is my third time reading FW straight through, but my first time really studying it more closely. In between straight through readings, I have many times opened it at random to read short sections. In the past, I didn't dive into any of the secondary literature except what RAW wrote in Coincidance. This time I'm supplementing it with Tindall's A Reader's Guide to FW and Campbell and Robinson's A Skeleton Key to FW. They each provide chapter by chapter commentary so I read those chapters then the corresponding one in FW. I just finished the first chapter in Book II which Campbell and Robinson call "The Children's Hour." I'm taking a short break to read RAW's lengthy piece on Joyce published in Semiotext[e] USA also called "Coincidance."
ReplyDeleteAnother synch I had was expressing the wish to read Eric Wagner's forthcoming book on Joyce and RAW, Straight Outta Dublin (to him in an email) during this period then unexpectedly receiving a draft of it in a pdf by Rasa about 3 days later for being on a Hilaritas committee to review new book submissions. At the time I expressed that wish, no one knew about it except myself as I didn't get around to finishing and sending the email to Eric for another 23 days partly because I was busy reading his book.
Would you recommend Tindall's Reader's Guide?
ReplyDeleteI have a copy of Joyce's Book of the Dark, by John Bishop, still unread.
I plan on delving into it along with FW at some point. Perhaps add Vico's New Science as well, but I do not own a copy as of yet.
I do recommend Tindall's Reader's Guide. As a matter of fact, I have an extra copy I'd be glad to send you. I picked up another one without realizing I already had it. I think you're in Europe though so it may be less expensive to pick up a cheap used one than to pay for the postage. I've heard good things about Joyce's Book of the Dark and maybe will look at it one day. Also Vico's New Science ... so many books, so little time.
ReplyDeleteThank you very much for the offer, Oz. Although I think you might be right, I could probably find a copy that would amount to less than postage alone.
ReplyDeleteJoyce's Book of the Dark seems absolutely fascinating, but perhaps almost as demanding as FW itself. You get a taste of John Bishop's mastery of Joyce's text in his introduction to FW in the Penguin edition, in which he mentions RAW's reading of it.
Both Tindall's and Campbell &Robinson's guides also prove demanding yet still very helpful.
ReplyDeleteWhile I've already expressed my desire to join this reading group to A.C. I figured I'd make an official statement here as well. I read Lion of Light while Apuleius was going over the manuscript, and found the synergy of Wilson and Crowley accessible and invigorating. I'd been meaning to reread it anyway since the book came out (congrats to all involved, by the way!) and now I have the perfect excuse.
ReplyDelete