Lion of Light: No Slacking, Please

 

Mike Gathers (from the Hilaritas Press website)

Lord of Light: Editor's Note

(Theory)

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.

We’ll need to go back almost half-a-century to begin at the beginning: when Wilson sent a transcript for “Do What Thou Wilt,” the centerpiece and impetus of the volume at hand, to the publisher-of-the-weird Herbert Roseman. Or perhaps we should go back sixty-one years to Wilson and Roseman’s time working together in Yellow Springs, OH. If we wish to expand the scope of our vision, exchanging focus for greater accuracy, we can go back to Wilson’s birth in Flatbush ninety-one years ago. Or we can go back 147 years, 10 months and 23 days ago to the birth of Edward Alexander Crowley, the future (or, 119 years past from our perspective) Prophet of the New Aeon. That’s a small sample of how Crowley would have us think, if we are to take him at his occasional word. Crowley repeatedly stated that one of the myriad benefits of the practice of keeping a magical diary was the cultivation of the magical memory, or the ability to “remember, backwards.” Crowley encouraged students to make the first entry of their journal an autobiographical account of how they ended up in the here and now of beginning to keep a magical diary. With typical Crowleyean exactitude, he allows this task to become improbably difficult. He was not much of a man for short cuts when he believed something was worth doing; nor at times when one suspects he didn’t have or understand his motivations behind an undertaking. “No slacking please,” indeed. “Go back to the beginning” seems like a simple enough task, but like James’ turtles or Aquinas’ causes, we quickly learn that trying to trace anything back to the beginning can take an eternity. So the student is forced to focus on the particulars, even if they’ve made their best concerted attempt at their journal’s autobiographical frontispiece, because we aren’t given enough time to complete it. One cannot drain the ocean in three draughts, magic is afoot and calls for experimentation of exploration. To begin at the beginning, we must put one foot forward and hope that we can properly cover the foundations at some future junction twixt past and present. But one does one’s best and Mike Gathers provides a comprehensive account of the particular history of the Hilaritas Press original publication, Lion of Light: Robert Anton Wilson On Aleister Crowley. Being Mike Gathers, a veteran and expert archivist of Wilson’s astoundingly proliferative corpus, he does an excellent job of doing this: therefore, I won’t recount too much of the history here, as it would be extraneous. Simply read the “Editor’s Note” and our Editor will give you all the information you need on the history of the pieces contained herein and the process that went into making this book physically extant. It seems like a great work in and of itself that required fortuitous circumstance(s), years long vigilance and enthusiasm for the work of Aleister Crowley and Robert Anton Wilson, as well as old fashioned hard work on the behalf of various parties who make up a large part of Wilson’s living legacy. Gathers included a facsimile of the cover letter for “Do What Thou Wilt” in his “Note” and quotes from it where Wilson writes about a longer, forthcoming “long book” on Crowley, Lion of Light. Mike also notes that some other forthcoming books mentioned in the letter never came to pass in the form that Wilson described in November 1974. Out of the seven working titles in his letter, only one came to pass in the manner that Wilson expected at the time; which is to say that this isn’t the Lion of Light that Wilson occasionally mentioned working on during that period of his life. But whether there is an unpublished manuscript for the longer work out there somewhere, Mike notes that the title was simply “too good to pass up.” So, whether Lion of Light might have been different in the universe next door; this is our universe’s reconstruction of the book that could have been, composed by its experts. Gathers makes sure to note the efforts of Oz and Chad Nelson towards producing the collection that is our Lion of Light, along with input provided by Michael Johnson, Rasa and himself during the coagula process. I was so impressed by what I was able to see of the inner workings of the conversation, as well as the assiduous copyediting efforts of Iain Spence, that I penned a brief post on Tom Jackson’s RAWIllumination. Mike also made sure to note the copyediting work on the behalf of Eric Wagner in a comment for that post. (Not that the post is particularly important, especially in light of the heft Gathers’ “Note,” but I was struck enough that I felt I would be remiss not to add another testimony to the work behind this fantastic recreation.) Furthermore, Gathers gives a cohesive account of how “Do What Thou Wilt” was rediscovered thanks to the always attentive Tom Jackson, Martin Wagner and Jesse Walker. In John Higgs’ The Future Starts Here, he closes the book by discussing Daisy Eris Campbell’s mycelium metaphor, which compares nicely to Brian Eno’s concept of “scenius.” The oversimplified version of either conceit is that great works of art, scholarship or progress are due to networks of people, not individuals; thus it is with Lion of Light. This book was the result of a group of people united by their passion for Robert Anton Wilson and, somewhat less, the work of Aleister Crowley. Under the aegis of Hilaritas Press, these threads were brought together to produce something valuable for our scholarship, entertainment and further illumination. So it will go with this reading group, if we are lucky; as a group of voices, we will be able to explicate and shed some light upon various parts of Lion of Light, increasing our knowledge and enriching our conversation so that we can take as much from the work as we may at this time. I’m looking forward to the process and am overjoyed I have seen the resurrection of what might have been lost to the haze of time otherwise. After giving thanks to those that allowed this to come to pass, let us seize this moment and experience the transformative possibilities of such a potent collection of texts, together. Next week, we’ll discuss Lon Milo Duquette’s “Few Words of Introduction” and Richard Kaczynski’s “Forward” before diving into Wilson’s works. I should also note that new posts will be going up on Sundays from here on.

(Practice)

In last week's post I recommended that readers take up the practice of reciting the prayers in Crowley's Liber Resh or, the Four Adorations. I've personally noted that there's some more fire in my adorations this past week, even with the flimsiest prospect of doing them along with a few other people scattered across the globe during this particular moment. I can only reiterate my encouragement to do this and see what might happen.

Love in the law, love under will.

The first bit of enrichment from this group came for me last week, when Spookah introduced me to the music of Graham Bond. Bond was a British jazz musician who lived a tragically short life, but one that produced some truly magnificent musical testaments to the creative faculties of the magical milieu. Please enjoy the first fruit of our mycelium network. Abrahadabra Thelema.