In 1968 John Cage assembled the book Notations with Alison Knowles a collection of experimental music scores by 269 mid -XXth Century composers including the Beatles. "The fascination of a composer's notation is the fascination of the human personality." – Aaron Copeland. The book can be downloaded here courtesy of the Manhattan School of Music.
Lion of Light: 23 Riffs on Robert Anton Wilson, Aleister Crowley, Psychedelics, Intuition, and Everyday Metaphysics by R. Michael Johnson – Part 2: p. 277 – 312.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
Riff 13 dives deep into the practical with a survey of self-experimentation including suggestions for a methodology. The anacrusis, or pick-up note for this riff occurs in the last paragraph of #12: "But remember: RAW actually did tantric sex-magick. He didn't just read or theorize about it." Riff 14 provides some specific exercizes from RAW's oeuvre. I spy a nice Qabalistic jazz form coming out of Michael's horn starting with the suggestion from The Earth Will Shake for Siggy "to look, each day, for ten beautiful things in Napoli he had never noticed before." In RMJ's next verse, after name-checking the Golden Dawn and 777 And Other Qabalistic Writings of Aleister Crowley we get an exercize from Masks of the Illuminati for Sir John to "see the Buddah in everyone he met . . ." He ain't heavy, he's my buddah. Tiphareth = Beauty = gold = Buddha
A couple more Crowley exercises follow then the General Semantics related practice of communicating in E-Prime, i.e. English without the forms of "be." More suggested methods for doing these practices come next then another excellent book of exercises I can personally recommend gets cited: Undoing Yourself With Energized Meditation by C.S. Hyatt. These two riffs are a few of my favorites things, Coltrane style. If we look at their qabalistic key numbers we get 13 = Gimel = G and 14 = Daleth = D; GD = Golden Dawn. Plotting these paths on the Tree: Gimel runs vertically from Tiphareth to Kether and Daleth goes horizontally from Chokmah to Binah – they almost make a cruciform cross, the horizontal bar is a little high. A great quote concludes these stanzas: "Indeed on "work," both Crowley and RAW were in love with that sort of hard work that suited them. And they want you to exert yourself to those same ends. Actually, if you're the sort they want: they demand it. You know who you are."
Riff 15 continues RMJ's promotion of psychedelic drugs. Some remarkable research is presented showing much promise and hope using psychedelics in a responsible, therapeutic setting. A short cautionary note aiming to avert possible adverse side effects of "Magick and Psychedelics" is given a riff back on p. 278. The warning conflates the two subjects of Magick and Psychedelics as RAW does not. The initial injunction to get grounded in Philosophy comes from the list of prerequisites RAW gives in Cosmic Trigger I for Magick, a list he picked up from Crowley though I don't recall exactly where at the moment. It then turns to psychedelics advising to read about the drug, have a guide, and learn about set and setting before returning to the Magick prerequisites from CT. Thepsychedelic side of this mash-up sounds like RMJ paraphrasing RAW. I tried and failed to find where RAW puts it like that or where he advises anyone about taking psychedelics. Whatever its source, it presents excellent advice. The closest I found to this appears in Sex, Drugs & Magick where Wilson does give advice to specific individuals for their situations but haven't found where he dispenses suggestions for taking psychedelics to his general readership.
Due to a personal bias from having witnessed an acid related tragedy to someone I met – he jumped off a building and died the next day – I will expand upon the single cautionary sentence in the essay. First, I highly, highly (no pun intended) recommend reading or rereading the chapters on psychedelics in Sex, Drugs & Magick. RAW sounds pretty balanced between what psychedelics can give and how they can take away. In the "Introduction" he writes: "I have known the psychedelic activists and liked many of them, but my own temperament has always been skeptical. I do not have the glands of a True Believer."
"My friend novelist, William S. Burroughs, liked to say 'that anything which can be accomplished by chemical means can also be accomplished by non-chemical means.' I have personally found this to be true."
I also note that RAW makes it a point to say that no drugs were involved on July 22nd and 23rd, 1973 with the big breakthrough contact with his HGA or beings from Sirius, or Something Else Entirely, whatever it was. It occurred after a prolonged sex magick ritual. (CT 1)
Crowley advises: "Balance every thought with its opposite. Because the marriage of them is the destruction of illusion." RAW exemplifies balance when he concludes the story of Jane and LSD in SD&M:
"I suppose most people would have a strong opinion about whether her new life is better or worse than her old life. I am not at all sure. All I do know is that, just as you read in the anti-drug propaganda, she went from acid to a mental hospital; and just as you read in pro-drug propaganda, she ultimately appeared to be reborn as a new person." (emphasis added). Later in the book RAW tells someone: "Acid is bad for some people."
No commentator on Magick I know of advises the use of psychedelics with ritual or related exercises. Prometheus Rising presents a book of Magick exercizes with no mention of psychedelics except in one instance where RAW gently suggests smoking a joint if it agrees with you. Not one of Crowley's rituals advises getting high on drugs. There seems a reason for this and not because they're anti-psychotropic drugs.
As a matter of fact, a passage in the the Book of the Law explicitly says to take drugs: "I am the Snake that giveth Knowledge & Delight and bright glory, and stir the hearts of men with drunkenness.To worship me take wine and strange drugs whereof I will tell my prophet, & be drunk thereof! They shall not harm ye at all ..."Al 2:22. RAW has quoted this passage, probably several times; it starts off the "Prelude" to Sex, Drugs & Magick. Yet, this quote gives a certain, specific condition to take strange drugs: "To worship me." This is Hadit talking, what Freud and Deleuze call the vital phallic force, aka kundalini, the life force. That's the condition for taking "wine and strange drugs", to strengthen this vital force which "stirs the hearts of men ..." i.e. activates the heart chakra.
Bruce Springsteen recognizes this in Spirits in the Night when he sings:
"Well now wild young Bill was a crazy cat and he shook some dust out of his coonskin cap
He said, 'Trust some of this it'll show you where you're at, or at least it'll really help you feel it'"
New things I learned in the second half of "23 Riffs": the Default Mode Network of the brain (riff 16) and Cladistics (riff 20). Not to mention toxoplasmosis gondii, and the order of particulates, microbes and chemicals called the expsome that affect everyone's microbiome like drugs. I enjoyed the different examinations and definitions of "self" and "ego" (riff 17). Also the point that we all use metaphysics to make sense of the world though mostly without any awareness of this. (riff 18) The most obvious example seems the use of language and all the signifying concepts, maps and models it brings.
The hot button topic of gender fluidity gets discussed, most appropriately it seems, since we live in the aeon of Horus which Crowley recontextualized as a bisexual god. Crowley called his feminine side Alice. Riff 21 looks at how Magick may have helped change the world. I agree with most of the examples except the speculation raised by others that the Discordian pranks of Operation Mindfuck (O.M.) helped fuel the "alternate facts" and outright lies of Trumpism. There seems some confusion between correlation and causation. The intentions of RAW and Trump appear polar opposites. The often humorous surrealism of O.M. intended to wake people up and raise consciousness - service to others. The MAGA bullshit appears completely self-serving – one definition of black magick. RMJ seems to agree: "Those who claim, in 2023, that RAW's actions, even obliquely, led to the January 6th coup attempt, or even Trump's election in 2016, look like idiots to me." Those commentators who suggest the O.M. pranks comprised a magickal working that worked too well fail to recognize that Magick causes change to occur in conformity with Will. Obviously the will of O.M. didn't intend the empowerment of a nutjob like Trump. It would be like blaming Timothy Leary for the Manson murders because he advocated for LSD and Manson used LSD to brainwash his followers into killing. Or blaming Marilyn Manson for the Columbine school shootings because the shooters listened to his music.
A correlation between Crowley and Finnegans Wake comes up again via The Book of Lies in riff 16. I've expanded upon this in a recent essay and am working on a follow-up piece. Qabalah key 16 corresponds with the Hierophant, a function performed by both Crowley and Joyce who definitely knew of each other. Speaking of Religion, which both James and Aeister traversed thoroughly, RMJ writes an exceptionally good account of his Religion in the last paragraph of riff 20. Key 20 corresponds to The Hermit in Tarot. That's the card Jimmy Page chose for his mystical experience in The Song Remains the Same that was filmed at Boleskine, Crowley's former house on Loch Ness in Northern Scotland.
In riff 23 R. Michael Johnson sends us home with brilliant advice for the praxis of Hermetic experimental science: "If you've read this far, I have you thinking about such things as Intuition, simply 'cuz I brought it up so often. Magick works by invoking often, then repeating the invocation." (emphasis added).
The idea of invocational repetition got conceptualized as the Refrain. It's elucidated in A Thousand Plateaus by Deleuze and Guattari (Capitalism and Schizophrenia Volume II) in the chapter "1837: Of The Refrain." I regard this as highly advanced Magick and think it genius to connect repeated practices with music. As you consider the following little taste of this concept, remember what RMJ wrote about the positive use of chaos.
"The role of the refrain has often been emphasized: it is territorial, a territorial assemblage. Bird songs: the bird sings to mark its territory. . . . The refrain may assume other functions, amorous, professional or social, liturgical or cosmic: it always carries earth with it; it has a land (sometimes a spiritual land) as a concomitant; it has an essential relation to a Natal, a Native. A musical "nome" is a little tune, a melodic formula that seeks recognition and remains the bedrock or ground of polyphony (cantus firmus)." (ATP p.312). Apply this to developing True Will which is called the bud Will in the beginning stages.
"From chaos, Milieus and Rhythms are born. This is the concern of very ancient cosmogonies. Chaos is not without its own directional components, which are its own ecstasies. We have seen elsewhere how all kinds of milieus, each defined by a component, slide in relation to one another, over one another. Every milieu is vibratory, in other words, a block of space-time constituted by the periodic repetition of the component. Thus the living thing has an exterior milieu of materials, an interior milieu of composing elements and composed substances, an intermediary milieu of membranes and limits, and an annexed milieu of energy sources and actions-perceptions. Every milieu is coded, a code being defined by periodic repetition; but each code is in a perpetual state of transcoding or transduction. Transcoding or transduction is the manner in which one milieu serves as the basis for another, or conversely is established atop another milieu, dissipates in it or is constituted in it. The notion of the milieu is not unitary; not only does the living thing continually pass from one milieu to another, but the milieus pass into one another, they are essentially communicating. The milieus are open to chaos, which threatens them with exhaustion or intrusion. Rhythm is the milieus' answer to chaos. What chaos and rhythm have in common is the in-between – between two milieus, rhythm-chaos or the chaosmos." (ATP p. 313)
We're talking about alchemy here, folks, the construction of structures or bodies or milieus of higher consciousness - more permanent abodes in C5 - 8 – Leary's ET brain circuits. A milieu can be read as the whole environment affecting a state of consciousness. They borrowed the portmanteau word "chaosmos" from Joyce. The in-between is what Tibetan Buddhists call the Bardo. Magick has many rituals taking the form of death and rebirth. The space in between those is the Bardo; this represents the space where any meta-programming might take place, also called the choice-point space. With enough presence and attention, you can choose your rebirth. The I.N.R.I. signs and formula run through the death/rebirth cycle. RAW writes a very comprehensive account of this in Masks of the Illuminati. The bardo seems very chaotic. RMJ writes about psychedelics and psychedelic-like effects from reading things like Finnegans Wake bringing in a "controlled chaos" and that being needed for real change to occur. Deleuze and Guattari discuss:
"In this in-between, chaos becomes rhythm, not inexorably, but it has a chance to. Chaos is not the opposite of rhythm, but the milieu of all milieus. There is rhythm whenever there is a transcoded passage from one milieu to another, a communication of milieus, coordination between heterogeneous space-times." (ATP p. 313). "Play that funky music white boy." - Wild Cherry. "Would you like to dance with me we're doing the cosmic slop?" – Parliament/Funkadelic
Cosmic Slop was written by George Clinton and my friend, the late great Bernie Worrell. Bernie plays the synthesizer in the following Talking Heads song, Burning Down the House. Byrnepresents a fun, and very rhythmic dive into chaos.
