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| In Throbbing Color |
The Sex Magicians Chapter Twelve: "Is God male? female? or neuter?" (pg. 81-83)
God makes its only appearance in one of the chapter titles and it echoes Wilson's first published piece in Krassner's The Realist. There Wilson asked the audience to consider the size of God's dick ("willy") if we are to imagine God as a male. Here, he asks us to consider God as not only male, but female or "neuter," a term which, even in today's widening world of gender identity, has failed to have caught on. The exercise seems to be of some obvious utility while pondering the possible spiritual depths of the chapbook at hand. As a note, while I deliberately avoided telling my daughter what to believe in regards to the Gods, I did have some stipulations while she was growing up. One of the most important stipulations was that we never referred to a possible "over"God as "he" or "she" but always as "it." My reasoning was that it is of no utility to conceptualize a human-like God in the first place, considering that this posited being would have also designed cholera, tsunamis, tapeworms, extinctions and botflys. (One reason I think so many "religious" people are unable to interact with reality in a meaningful way is the sheer impossibility of the mental task of reconciling an omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent deity and the harsh facts of life.)
Back at Sput's pad things are getting spooky for Dr. Prong. Prong who is obviously stoned out of his gourd and unprepared for such an eventuality, is sinking in a sea of flesh. Here he has been arguably transported into a deeper interface with Malkuth as the world of sensation by his ingestion of Turkish tobacco. Wilson notes that while there is no such thing as a true aphrodisiac in Sex, Drugs & Magick, he also doesn't undersell the possibilities of combing marijuana and sex. As one of marijuana's most common effects is heightened sensory awareness, sex can become something that seems to last much longer where seemingly every bit of physical contact is noted and what would be a small adjustment to a sober mind becomes the rocking of ships of flesh on starlit spans of sheets.
Dr. Prong, like many straights, vastly underestimates what it is possible to think about and do under the effects of cannabis. While I'm no good at mathematics to begin with, I'm sure those who have more experience in the subject are able to ponder on some of the more extraordinary conclusions that come down from the realm of pure numbers while under the influence. Despite his concerns about decorum, Dr. Prong is easily coerced into joining in the unfolding orgy. He becomes a piston in a daisy chain and also a self-contained philosopher as his training tries to kick in, despite his lack of objectivity.
Thus is Dr. Prong able to escape his cycle of anxiety over the mysterious Ezra Pound and the fate of Fernando Poo.
(The next chapter is a doozy and I'm still on the mend, so we'll be back later this week with more of The Sex Magicians. - A.C.)
Thank you for posting this. I feel grateful that I have caught up in all my reading groups.
ReplyDeleteWe recently watched the films Oh, God! and Oh, God! Book 2 where George Burns plays God and they actually have some interesting and straight-forward answers to some of those theological conundrums like evil and suffering. We're going to complete the trilogy with Oh, God, You Devil. For instance, at one point God admits to making mistakes which reminds me of the Sufi heresy Gurdjieff expressed in All and Everything that a big mistake got made by a certain high ranking angelic individual.
ReplyDeleteI should probably watch the Oh God! movies. I know Wilson spok highly of George Burns. I hope you'll like this bit of antihumour:
Deletehttps://youtu.be/Iiaibd8PFTM?si=dtBtkvy41wGWhtT1
Crazy video! I wonder what the "Popcorn classic was?" I could have watched those guys for daze.
DeleteNot sure if the Oh God films are on RAW's movie list; they're on Gold's list. Great for all ages!
On p.82, we read that Tarantella’s “tongue was flicking up and down [Prong’s] wand with fiery little flashes.” Having ‘wand’ for a penis I find humorous in the context of sex magic, and I like that it is followed by the adjective ‘fiery’, Wands corresponding with the element of Fire in the Tarot.
ReplyDeleteI cannot understand how I managed to go through 25 years of browsing the internet without ever before encountering the expression ‘daisy chain’. There seem to be another film called Daisy Chain in its international release, a German production featuring Catherine Deneuve:
https://letterboxd.com/film/das-liebeskarussell/
I note that, although the Pussiettes don't seem to mind girl-on-girl action, there is no mention of gay sex going on. It appears almost a trope in pornography to only have women being bisexual, while male homosexuality remains mostly confined to porn directed at gay audiences. Seeing both females and males going both ways seems to me more joyful and carefree (also maybe more inclusive), especially in a context like the one in this chapter. Admittedly, in real life as well bisexuality seems more prevalent in women than in men, although that might be due to cultural notions.
I recently discovered director Radley Metzger through his 1973 film Score, and found it refreshing how people are just hornily banging everything that moves. Although terribly unethical in the way events unfold, there was nonetheless an aura of fun glowing from this movie.
I appreciate that I could follow Wilson’s description of the group sex, as opposed to De Sade’s. I was last summer reading Philosophy in the Bedroom, and almost every description of orgy would get me heavily confused as to who was doing what to whom. It tended to end up being impossible for me to mentally visualize the action, without having the characters to contort and turn into one of those Picasso paintings.
This is only about three people, and more about free love than sex per se, but oh well. As much as I like the Jefferson Airplane version, I think I like this one even more.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6e2BEqFD798
-Spookah
I find very great writing in this chapter for describing a real bardo space, albeit a dark and disgusting one. But Wilson deftly blends this darkness with light, including the exact opposite – the spiritual, or non-material into the extremely material physicality of mass grinding and fornicating. It may feel titillating to read of these antics, but if one was like Dr. Prong sitting " amid a wall-to-wall sea of writhing, panting, gasping bodies, it could seem horrible, especially from an astral pov. Fortunately, Prong took a remarkable drug causing him to take a transcendental, metaphysical pov and see it as mathematics and religion. It reminds me of Pynchon doing the same in Gravity's Rainbow – writing porn so extreme as to be more disgusting than sexy, but also throwing allusions to a higher or lighter side. I call this literary "chiaroscuro" after the painting or drawing technique of blending light with shade.
ReplyDeleteThe Notarikon (adding the initials) of the first sentence: "Back at Sput's pad things were also getting a little spooky" = 225 = 15 squared. 15 = Ayin which corresponds with The Devil in the Tarot. We have God in the chapter title and the Devil in the first sentence to set up the duality of light and darkness in the chapter. The Devil describes the strongest male aspect in the Tarot as Wilson alludes to with Dr. Prong immediate after suggesting The Devil. RAW doubles down on the maleness at the chapter's conclusion by mentioning "Dr. Prong's prong."
ReplyDelete