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The Sex Magicians Chapter Five: What is Property? (p.40-41)
The main thing that jumps out to me from this very short chapter is the list of individuals Markoff Chaney considers for his "Fraternal Order of Hate Groups," as this gives us one of those windows into Robert Anton Wilson's political opinions around this time. Robert Welch and Robert DePugh were both far-right, anti-Communist "activists," George Wallace was the famous segregationist governor of Alabama who provided us with the iconic photos of white supremacy in the Deep South, Jerry Rubin was the most useless member of the Chicago Seven and later proved himself a moronic hypocrite by embracing the "greed is good" philosophy of the eighties, Ti-Grace Atkinson is a radical feminist and proponent of political lesbianism and Eldridge Cleaver was a leader of the Black Panthers. While I'd argue that Cleaver, despite his criminal activities, had the most legitimate grievance out of this motley crew, Wilson would obviously been less than pleased with the Soul on Ice author, as he had recently held Timothy Leary under "revolutionary arrest" in Algiers after Leary had fled to that country.
Chaney's meeting with the butler promises an interesting development in our small-statured anarchist's sexual career. Probably the funniest part of this chapter would be Chaney's mistaken belief that "Au revoir, ma cherie" translates as "good-bye to virginity." So at this point we know he is in for an encounter with a rich eccentric with some interesting sexual peccadillos: more on this later.
The Sex Magicians Chapter Six: Where did the universe come from? (p. 42-55)
The chapter titles are becoming more gnomic.
Joe Smith is an unpleasant and unsympathetic character, in my opinion, especially because he reminds me very much of a contingent of people who, earlier this month, turned over our country to a wannabe-dictatorial regime. By the second paragraph of the chapter we know that Smith and his wife are your run of the mill American idiots whose prejudice is born of not being able to see past the tip of their noses and living an extraordinarily unexamined life. I don't particuarly feel anything for Matilda or Smith as the "sanctity" of their marriage is slowly, inevitably sacrificed by the end of the chapter.
Chapter Six ramps up the pornographic qualities of The Sex Magicians as the Mama Vibe takes over our dumb fuck character's consiousness (and conscience). I will admit that while Joe is walking past the marquees (the funniest bit in this chapter) I did not understand how SHE SUCKS MEN DRY had a double-meaning. Maybe that shows my inherent perversion or the fact that I try to keep finances firmly away from the forefront of my mind. I guess I'd rather think about oral sex than money...go figure. I laughed aloud at FELLINI'S TOM SAWYER and THEY LIVE FOR SEX AND ALLAH.
The Ore House sounds like a grand place with a curious pun choice for a name. Since gold is heavily associated with Tiphareth in Kabbalah we might be able to stretch the gold centered puns at the topless restaraunt as a sign that the soul of our novella is sex. Sex appears in many different forms as Smith's mind twists everything into references to un-American activities. There's a curious connection between food and sex throughout the chapter, from Smith eating his cheeseburger while being increasingly overcome with sexual delirium, to Briggitte's forsaken steak and accepted peach pie and her display with the bananas. Sex and food are about as far apart as anything can be in my mind- I remember even as a young man being particuarly repulsed by the Seinfeld episode where George discovers the aphrodisiac qualities of pastrami- and that probably made me more uncomfortable than anything else in a chapter where Wilson seems to be deliberately making his character as uncomfortable as possible.
Honestly, I'm curious why someone as vivacious as Briggitte would see anything of worth in a Joe Smith type of fellow, but some guys have all the (thoroughly undeserved) luck. Joe Smith is certainly stiff and fucked-up and whatever happens to him because of his moment of, admittedly understandable, weakness, I hope it changes him irreparably. Fuck off Buster and to hell with Mayor Daly, indeed.
In honor of the stomach-turning simile that I've chosen as this week's title, here is the late, great Bob Eisenstein telling a joke to Jerry Seinfeld on Curb Your Enthusiasm.
-A.C.
(Spookah- I've restored your lost comment on the last post.)
I note that Robert Welch is now the third Welch to pop up in this book, after Josie and Raquel.
ReplyDelete“What is Property?”
Property is theft, maybe? Or rather, property seems like theft to some people some of the time?
“It’s just down the block. On Lake Shore Drive.” (p.41)
Lake Shore Drive = LSD
Am I confused, or is there a very similar scene of someone making an offer of this kind to Markoff Chaney in the Illuminatus! Trilogy?
Although I agree with you that the Smith couple does not appear particularly likable, I also have mixed feelings toward Briggitte. If Joe sure could benefit from loosening up a bit, the fact that he’s being hit on by his sister-in-law just does not turn me on.
I appreciate her strong-mindedness (“fuck you, buster!”), but trying to sleep with her sister’s husband behind her back just isn’t cool in my book. I’m all for free love, but this has to come with openness and integrity. As for what she might be seeing in Joe, your guess is as good as mine.
In fact, this whole thing reminded me a lot of Billy Wilder’s The Seven Year Itch, in which Marilyn Monroe similarly goes for some embarrassing Joe Schmuck.
“He couldn’t see the name “Donald Duck” without reading it as “Donald Fuck.” (p.42)
Could that be a way to suggest to the reader to turn “duck” into “fuck” in the previously seen question “why is a duck?”
Why do we have sex? Is it just for a quick release of tension, like Dr. Prong? Is it a way to procreate once in a while, and something to be avoided the rest of the time in order not to become sinful and dirty, like it is for Joe Smith and his wife? Or could sex be more than that, a way to higher state of consciousness? Am I just looking too hard into this?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jY98TD1k8dM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yEE7AA7wvL4
As far as I remember, it's been five years (pre-Pandemic) since I read Illuminatus!, there isn't an analogous scene in the Lauded Trilogy. Or at least the scene doesn't lead to what it's leading to here. (A somewhat toned-downed version of the scene might be in the independent edition of The Trick-Top Hat.)
DeleteI also share your objections to Briggitte's come-ons, but taking this as porn- it didn't surprise me. Sometimes the leading man fucks the sister. With the uptick in incest-themed porn in today's market, an affair with the SiL seems almost tame.
I am glad to have you as our Welch Watch Correspondent and your eagle eye elsewhere!
I was wondering if "What is Property" showed any correspondence for Geburah, the 5th Sephira for chapter 5 and "Property is theft" indicates yes.
ReplyDeleteI see the Joe Smith scene of chapter 6 differently, modeled a little bit like Crossing the Abyss, but not that, more like going through a bardo space, or a taste of Chapel Perilous if you will. The path of Gimel crosses the Abyss connecting Tiphareth (6) with Kether (1). The Abyss is said to represent the gap between the illusory and the real. The intense sexual energy Smith feels that makes him see everything as sexual can be one of the symptoms or side effects of starting out on that crossing.
The abyss, or bardo Smith has been forced to navigate is going from having his beliefs control what he does with his body to listening and allowing what the body wants to do. Crossing the abyss of sexual fantasies and illusions blocked into becoming actual by his beliefs about Adultery, etc. into real sex. Briggitte has her name because she's the bridge - "bridge it" - between the virtual and the real. She is Babalon, the guide across the Abyss that gets gets Joe out of his head and back into his body.
Chapter 6 - "Where does the universe come from?" does connect with Tiphareth, in my opinion.
I think, from a Thelemic perspective, I grok you here. This is Lust.
DeleteWould you care to elaborate more on how you see a connection between Geburah and 'property is theft'? I do not follow your thoughts here.
ReplyDeleteIf we put this sex scene from chapter 6 in parallel with the earlier one between Prong and Tarantella, I would agree that something seems to be happening to Joe Smith that wasn't present for Prong. Those 'Mama Vibes', I guess. But do you think someone as thick as Joe has any chance not to get lost in Chapel Perilous? Some say that it can be dangerous to learn new things too fast. Conversly, he could also soon experience a consciousness shift that would make him look at his previous views with amusement.
I now feel pretty curious to see how this will unfold, while before your comment I couldn't have cared less about the fate of Joe Smith!
Good thinking on Briggitte=bridge as well!
My first YT link goes to a scene from Thunderbolt & Lightfoot, which features Jeff BRIDGES as one of the leads, although he's not in this scene.
I looked up some of the references. I checked Robert DePugh, and discovered he was a founder of the Minutemen (the right wing group of the 1960s, not the Revolutionary War group or the punk rock group). I looked up Lake Geneva and discovered it is a resort area in Wisconsin.
ReplyDeleteI felt kind of bad for Joe and his poorly thought out ideas, although I could see why you just disliked him.
I meant to have this in the post; but the most significant part about Lake Geneva, for me, is that it was the long-time home of Gary Gygax. Gygax was the brilliant, nerdy, flawed co-architect of D&D. Maybe Matilda going there with her kids while her sister bonks her husband is a reference to how D&D might cause you to not get laid. (A joke.)
DeleteAs a quick aside, I just today received in the mail the Bumper Book of Magic. It might be the most beautiful book in my collection, along with the Secret Teachings of All Ages.
ReplyDeleteThank you very much Apuleius for hyping it up. Looks like I have many MANY hours of delightful reading ahead of me now. What a winter this is going to be!
I'll be posting my review this weekend- *hopefully!*
DeleteIt is the most beautiful book. John Coulthart is a fucking genius and the Moores are/were/are nigh-deities.
DeleteSpookah, Geburah = Mars = the god of War. Taking something that doesn't belong to you might be looked at as a war-like action or an act of conflict against the person or entity being stolen from. I give this as a point of view, not an absolute truth. I don't know that I agree with the premise that property = theft and I don't have enough of a background in political philosophy to debate the the premise either pro or con nor do I particularly care.
ReplyDeleteJoe Smith doesn't seem stupid to me because he's hung up with moral dilemmas and has conservative beliefs. Lots of brilliant people have their own moral dilemmas that may look silly from the outside. I would argue that he did make it through that mini tour through Chapel Perilous when he surrendered to Babalon-Briggitte.
This is how I was planning to put in my two cents: the idea of property as theft is as expansive, nebulous and dangerous as the idea(s) of "property." What do we own/what do we owe? That's Dynamics right there. That's Geburah in a very large sense. Along with war gods, we should probably associate economic theorists and the rich with Geburah.
DeleteI was being pretty hard on Joe in my write-up. (I also meant to bring up the film Joe- which is brilliant. I've mentioned it before in one of our groups as Wilson mentions it and it is very relevant to the chapter at hand.) Like I said, I'm associating him with a lot of things that shouldn't fall on his thinly-written fictional shoulders. Poor boy.
Anyone can fall into the Abyss. More than once, even. You don't even have to be intentional or intelligent- and even blind men can beat their way out of their wet paper bag Abysses. They may not retain their propriety or sense of self from before, but I imagine there's a ton of people who have plumbed Chapel Perilous (sleep) walking around. Maybe.
I also do not hold a strong opinion one way or another regarding the proposition that property is theft. It of course would need to be clearly defined and unpacked. But that was the first thing to come to my mind when reading the heading "what is property".
ReplyDeleteUnless Joe Smith keeps on being possessed by those mysterious 'mama vibes', I would think that after having sex with Briggitte is when the serious Chapel Perilous would start, with Joe being consumed by guilt, shame, conflicting emotions and such. But again, thank you for making me care a bit more about the fate of this character.
I was wondering how come someone like Joe has a copy of Pussycat magazine as reading material. Sex is supposedly dirty and sinful for him. Perhaps he got it because his wife is away, and that's supposed to show some hypocrisy in his beliefs.
Something else that I greatly appreciate in this novel, actually maybe what I enjoy the most, is the overall cartoonish feel of it, pretty typical of RAW fictional work, and Illuminatus in particular.
Towars your enjoyment of the cartoonishness of the novel: I think that's why I consider this book to be "responsible" pornography. It's very clearly not set in this world or inviting some of the possibly life-altering actions in the book.
DeleteWhile I don't think Pussycat is necessarily painted in an awful light, I think that Wilson's portrait of Sput doesn't allude to a professional work environment at Pussycat and I, perhaps naively, believe that the process affects the product. It seems that someone like Joe would mindlessly consume the questionable pornography and not understand, or bother to think about, the hypocrisy.
Joe and Matilda's life isn't going to be the same after this, that's for sure.
I would agree with Smith probably feeling post-coital guilt except that he does appear a porno cartoon character so I'd like to consider that he successfully crossed the mini-abyss from out-of-wedlock sexual fantasies to realities and attained full realization, attainment and understanding with the Mama Vibes. I skimmed ahead and didn't see this character returning. I think he enjoys sex, but has rules about what he can and can't do, morally speaking. I don't think he'd work at an Orgasm Research lab if he strongly objected to all sex; scientific sex seems ok, even if it makes him hot and bothered. He mentions the temptation to "rub one out" which suggests masturbation is ok for him and would explain the Pussycat Magazine. The mention of it seems a humorous breaking of a porno 4th wall as the whole episode with Briggitte reads like a letter to Pussycat Forum.
ReplyDeleteQabala & Synchs: I got an all gold anniversary thank-you email from Usana (vitamins) and reached the chapter in Moby Dick where Ahab pulls out a gold coin that weighs an ounce that put me in mind of the gold-themed restaurant, The Ore House, that Joe takes refuge in. Apuleius reveals the Tiphareth correspondence. ORE = 275 = domicilium pulchrum, Latin for "beautiful home." Tiphareth = Beauty. Looking at ORE from a Tarot pov yields a sex magick process, or perhaps instruction.
O = The Devil - the phallus
R = The Sun - another suggestion of Tiphareth
E = The Star - which depicts Babalon pouring out cosmic love
The waitresses wear gold medallions with their names, the first mentioned = Nugget. I live in 49er country in Northern California. My house and mailing address is on Nugget Street.
"The Prospector's Pleasure" = 169 = 13 x 13. As mentioned earlier, 13 = Gimel, the path crossing the Abyss connecting Tiphareth with Kether. A prospector digs for gold. Pleasure is the name of the 6 of Cups in the Thoth Tarot - 6 = Tiphareth. "The Alchemists Delight" = Daleth, key # 14 which crosses Gimel connecting Binah and Chokmah, the archetypal Mother and the archetypal father therefore representing the alchemical blending of male and female. Daleth corresponds with Venus (love) which brings us to the next burger, "The 49er" = Babalon (see The Book of Lies chapter 49.
When Joe sees Briggitte pleasuring herself with a banana:
"My God", he said, totally shocked."
My God = 43 = "the number of orgasm – especially the male"
"he said" = 65 = Adonai = The Holy Guardian Angel concomitant with True Will
"totally shocked" = 69, a position they will both soon be in.
Beautiful Gematria, I feel like reading the Bumper Book of Magic has restored my vision in some ways. I think a cynicism born of not understanding the returns blinded me magically for too many years. It has always been like watching a master work on an instrument to read your analyses over the years, Oz- but I feel like I am able to feel them more.
DeleteApuleius, I agree with your comments on the Abyss, above – anyone can fall into it at anytime even without knowing, etc. I received my copy of the Bumper Book of Magic a little over a week ago, but have only had the chance to give it a cursory look through, so far. Looks incredible!
DeleteThank you Apuleius for all your answers.
ReplyDeleteGood call on the film 'Joe'. If I recall correctly, RAW mentions it in Sex, Drugs & Magick. So back when we had that reading group, we watched the movie, and I think both you and me found it very good. I always had a thing for this 'dark side of the sixties' type of cinema.
Oz Fritz doing minute cabalistic exegesis of texts seems like a prospector digging for gold to me. Cue in Neil Young's Heart of Gold.
Also, I believe the punk band the Minutemen jokingly named themselves as a reference to premature ejaculation, because they were writing such short songs. So, that makes them relevant to this book, I guess?
ReplyDeleteHere's the Minutemen in full Bloom:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e547HjQ16bg
I suspect the cartoonish vibe might be coming from acid. LSD-25 can have this grotesque edge that you don't find so much in, say, psylocibin.
The connection between the colorful world of acid and cartoons has been visually made in many a 60s-70s rock music cover art or concert poster, as well as on blotters, as documented in Erik Davis latest book.
https://techgnosis.com/blotter/
I just got myself a copy of this one, that came along with the Bumper Book of Magic. Early Xmas.
I recall being 18 hanging out at a place in Southern California called Isla Vista, where the U of C Santa Barbara is located, being on something I was told was acid watching old cartoons on a big screen at a pizza joint. and totally digging it. Toontown from the film, "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" seems acid-like.
ReplyDelete"Heart of Gold" makes a great reference.