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.

Lion of Light Reading Group

 

"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. 

Ishtar Rising Week Seven: ! : Really love your peaches wanna shake your tree

Editorial Note: One thing about my writing process is that I am conscious of a desire to be able to look back and be proud of my work. This causes an amount of perfectionism, dallying and rejection of what seems to me to be slapdash attempts. This is a long excuse for not having the post up until today. I eventually figured out that I was trying to take to large a bite at the apple and needed to divide the chapter into two parts. (This post will cover material from the beginning of the chapter until the top of page 118 where a new paragraph begins.) Happy belated Lammas everyone! 

It was upon a Lammas Night when corn rigs were bonnie...

"Eve tempted by the Serpent" William Blake c.1796

Ishtar Rising Chapter Four Part I: Mammary Metaphysics (Hilaritas Press edition pg.95-118) 

I believe the telegram quoted from the beginning of the chapter was the first bit of Discordianism I ever encountered in the wild. I was immediately attached to the message and the cheekiness, it wouldn't be long until I found the Principia online, but I'll admit it wasn't until reading Illuminatus! that I truly appreciated the holy book. 

I think it is a sign of WoMankind's recognition of our own sticky, drippy biological process that fruit plays such an important part in our symbolism. As someone who was blessed to live on a farm with an orchard, there was always something delightfully heady about the blooms turning into hard knobs and then plumping up into crisp-yet-bursting apples and chin-coating peaches. I hope that the smell of the blossoms in the spring and the soft stink of rot and fermentation as fruit drops to the ground overripe will stay with me my entire span. Like the Mellisai attending the Delian hive, the constant buzzing of bees was a hallmark of trips through the orchard. While the end result was less-than-perfect, my first wedding took place under what remains of the apple boughs and the ceremony, which I penned, mostly contained liturgy from the Canticle of Canticles... 

Who is this that cometh up from the wilderness, leaning upon her beloved? I raised thee up under the apple tree: there thy mother brought thee forth: there she brought thee forth that bare thee.

As a child, I was troubled by the story of Eden. (I spent a lot of my childhood troubled by stories.) It always seemed like a stacked game and I didn't understand the arbitrary nature of fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. I didn't understand that God would love us and condemn our race for such a simple mistake. Why did you put the Tree there in the first place, asshole? It wasn't until later, when I read about the Rape of Persephone that I began to feel that the fruit in the garden functioned much like the pomegranate seeds offered to Demeter's daughter; a deliberate, shitty trap. I eventually began to see the plight of humanity after Eden as something akin to Persephone's- trapped in a loveless marriage with God. Considering Wilson brings up the theory that at first Eve would have been Mother to Adam and a consort of God, the bad marriage analogy might hold some metaphorical water. 

It wasn't until I read the Ophidian Gnostic interpretation of the Eden myth that it made true sense to me: Eden was a trap, designed to keep mankind in thrall to the Demiurge/Jehovah and the Tree was the way out. The Serpent was Christ, emanation of the Pleroma, and Eve was an agent moved by the Shekinah/Sophia to free mankind from the Edenic illusion. Thus we became as gods, knowing good and evil. 

As I've mentioned before, I was enchanted with Graves' The White Goddess when I read it before discovering it was mostly a product of Graves' imagination. At the time I still cared about such distinctions. I was enthusiastic about the idea of a Goddess-based religion but I found the Wiccan-inspired books and the revisionist myths of Women's Liberationist scholars charmless and obviously full of shit. My prior knowledge of mythology assured me that these stories were incomplete and left out a lot of detail. Considering that I had expanded beyond Edith Hamilton and Scholastic books on Myth, I felt that I had some basis for this suspicion. I still stand by it and am relieved that Wilson points out that the idyllic yarns about a pre-historical matriarchal golden age are mostly conflation and exaggeration. 

I don't know what it says about me that I prefer my Goddesses from the lens of historical esoteric tradition rather than that of twentieth century feminist theory. Does it mean that I am unwilling to accept women on their own terms? Am I still a slave to outdated Apollonian academic authority? Or do I prefer an older style of writing? 

Take, for instance, the lovely speech of the Goddess that Wilson heard while attending a coven meeting in Minneapolis. That is from Gerald Gardner's "Prose Charge" which I am almost certain was written by Crowley in his dying days. It was Crowley's genius that seeded Wicca, although modern neopagans tend to despise the man. At the time Gardener was lurking around Hastings trying to pump the Grand Man for ideas, Kenneth Grant was also a member of the milieu. Both Grant and Gardner competed for the attention and affirmation of not only Crowley but Austin Osman Spare in the twilight years of both men. It is from Grant that Wilson received the fallacious information about an all-encompassing pre-historic Cult of Isis. According to the Pyramid Texts and the records of Heliopolis, the first venerated God of Egypt would have been Atum and later Ptah. This quickly evolved into the cult of many gods before the ascension of Osiris. While Grant's theories are entertaining in the extreme and Crowley himself spoke of a pre-historical Isian Age, there's no historical evidence for these ideas. (Grant is one of my favorite magicians, if only for the fact that he was so very, very mad and brilliant in that order. If we are able to complete our upcoming Louis T. Culling series, we'll have to go spelunking in the Tunnels of Set with Mr. Grant.) 

I also have to disagree that Homer had any especial dislike or misunderstanding of Achilles in The Iliad. We have to remember that one of the stories surrounding Achilles is that he hated the idea of warfare, although he was made for it, and tried to hide as a maiden when Agamemnon called the Kings of Greece to sail upon Ilium. In fact, Agamemnon sent wily Odysseus to suss out Achilles and remind him of the Oath of Tyndareus. Pity Achilles reader, his doom was sealed by his love of Briseis and Patroclus. Later, of Briseis, a Byzantine would write: 

tall and white, her hair was black and curly;
she had beautiful breasts and cheeks and nose; she was, also, well -behaved;
her smile was bright, her eyebrows big

As Wilson begins to discuss the shift in attitudes towards women and sex with the rise of Christianity, I can feel my blood pressure rising. I will say that Origen is a complicated mess of a human being who seemed blessed with mystical insight that was marred by his own mental deficiency to overcome the cancer of the early Church. I don't think we can rely on assessments of women by someone who castrated themselves. Augustine is an ass and a poison. It's funny how the position of Orthodoxy hasn't changed that much since that nasty-little man did as much as he could to aid the ruination of civilization. 

We'll continue with Wilson's Magical Maliciousness Tour next week as we continue to examine how it all kept going wrong. 

Stray Thoughts

I appreciated the inclusion of dialogue from Faust. I've always found the plot point that when given immense magical powers, Faust used them to sleep with Helen of Troy extremely relatable. 

Considering the vocal number of TERFS (Trans-exclusive radical feminists), I'm not sure that "its (Women's Liberationism) shell of dogma [has] been softened by the noisy splashing of all the other odd and colorful fish swimming about in the free waters of Consciousness III."
I'll probably need to read The Greening of America. Perhaps we are simply in a liminal period between major change in sexual expression, after all many on the left have embraced gender identity, and eventually people will be amused or unconcerned about the "noisy splashing" of other people's expression. 

Just as Augustine believed that Adam and Eve were perfect because of their lack of feelings before the fall, the credo of the anal personality today is "facts don't care about your feelings" which was made famous by the ultra-orthodox Ben Shapiro and the whole Daily Wire crew of ghouls. In fact I saw coverage this past weekend of the arch-analist, integrationalist and non-ironic theocrat Matt Walsh had taken some time off from insulting Simone Biles to start some dumb controversy about how men shouldn't cry.  

While reading about Augustine's theory about Adam and Eve having sex through pure will, I was immediately reminded of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. And now I have to wonder if Dennis Reynolds would be Augustine's perfect man: 

This week's music selection is not only inspired by Lammas Night, but the whole idea of The Wicker Man in light of the oncoming narrative which, as far as I remember, I've always considered a film with a happy ending. One of my all-time favorites! 

The Derpsichorean Muse: Wilson's 1989 Preface to Secrets of Western Tantra

Sallie Ann Glassman's cover art for the 1989 Editions of Hyatt's Secrets of Western Tantra and Wilson's Ishtar Rising 

Contrary to the ubiquitous adage, the cover is often a decent place to begin one's investigation of a book. We can see that the reissue of Wilson's The Book of the Breast, now titled Ishtar Rising and Hyatt's first printing of  Secrets of Western Tantra were released during the same year: a one-two punch to the stuffed shirts of the Old Aeon- a magical EpiPen to combat the anaphylaxis of patrist reality tunnels. Both issues are graced with watercolor bodyscapes from the Proprietress of Island of Salvation Botanica and Tarot artist, Sallie Ann Glassman. The volumes appear to be a set; perhaps a sign of an alliance between Dr. Wilson's Theory and Dr. Hyatt's Practice. Speculation aside, I wish to go over Wilson's Preface to Secrets of Western Tantra as it was almost certainly penned at the same time as Wilson's Introduction to the 1989 Edition of Ishtar Rising. The Preface and the Introduction overlap and compliment each other; after digging up Hyatt's volume, it seems it would be an oversight on my part to forget the former. 

I forgot to cover Wilson's mention of Graves' The White Goddess in his Introduction to Ishtar Rising. Graves' study of a supposed pre-Christian goddess religion is alluring, but, as the fantasist John Crowley (no relation) points out- entirely factitious. Akin to Margaret Murray's anthropological studies and Gardner's Wicca, the matriarchal poetess-goddess of Graves' mostly existed on the back of the skull, projected by the twentieth century's fantasia of revisionist spirituality. However, this reader will note that after years of wrestling with magic and metaphor that the shadows on the cave wall are occasionally caused by travelers in the background of the puppeteers. And just who exactly are these mummer-goalers anyways? Wilson says with uncharacteristic conviction that he knew, when he first read Graves' book of lies, that his songs came from Her- the goddess who was and is a real as Haggard's 'She' or Ida Craddock's spectral beau(s). 

I can relate. 

Like Wilson, I read Graves' The White Goddess while in high school, it was one of the few books I read in the school's library. I was enchanted and while I didn't believe Graves' line of bullshit, I desperately wanted to. When I first read the 'Binah' issue of Alan Moore's Promethea, my breath was taken away when I flipped to the splash page with BABALON looking down upon our supplicant protagonists, Dr. Dee and the City of Pyramids. After I first read Joyce's improved pater nostra in Wilson's Prometheus Rising I order Finnegans Wake and began reading it the following week and said the prayer faithfully before rising and retirement. I still say it to this day. Wilson's Preface has already become whirlwind of magical prose that matches or surpasses the Introduction to Ishtar Rising. 

I always admired Wilson's first essay, "The Semantics of 'God'," perhaps because it confirmed my sophistry that God should be referred to strictly as an 'it,' never a male or female. I'm also very immature and love the prolonged, contra-Jesuit spiel considering the dimensions of God's dick. 

(I would also like to refer anyone who believes that Wilson would have been amused, enthusiastic or positive about the so-called Intellectual Dark Web, the alt right or the conspiratorial thinking of the modern era to the little summation of Illuminatus! that our author provides on pg. 12 or Secrets of Western Tantra: "...it was the Great Goddess, in her most mischievous form as Eris (deity of confusion and chaos), who rises at the climax to strike down the neo-Nazi villains." Let us pray to the One False Goddess that the tide of shit falls down upon the fascists.

Wilson goes on to discuss a synchronicity between the first part of his Preface and George Washington. While I don't find it as remarkable as Wilson did in 1989, I had been a Deist for a few years before reading Wilson after all, I do approve of the use of "Providence" in place of "God." I believe it is a more accurate framing of our whatever-the-Creator-may-be. I will go ahead and raise my eyebrow at Wilson's hyperbolic statement that Washington may be "the" main character of Nature's God. There is no way that is true; while Washington is certainly one of the more striking characters in Nature's God, as described by Seamus Muadhen, Sigismundo's struggle with Miskasquamish/himself is the clear center of the narrative. Or perhaps Wilson's fiction has no "center" to the narratives... 

Fragments of Thought 

I used to smirk when I read about Masonic and Illuminati fears of Catholicism, the Black Brothers of Rome and the Papacy. Now I think differently. 

 I can also say, with all honesty, that I meditated deeply upon how King Kong would have sex with Fay Ray (it involved a Vaseline-covered sheet) as a child. Perhaps that should be a formal technique for liberation. 

As Uncle Bob mentions Arnold Toynbee in this Preface, I would like to take this time to recommend Ray Bradbury's story "The Toynbee Convector." It is by far my favorite of Bradbury's vast oeuvre and one of the best examples of Utopian fiction in existence. 

Wilson goes full-throttle and (to mix metaphors) the crescendo to his Preface is sudden and loud. Wilson talked up Hyatt's work in a quite a few of his New Falcon-era publications. Commercial or philosophical symbiosis aside, RAW is an ebullient and convincing carnival-barker for Secrets of Western Tantra. I look forward to rereading and reworking the book; our friend Oz has provided it with his 'thumbs up' which is a pretty good heading to follow. 

Whether made-up wholesale or a chthonian fount of femininity, Wilson's life demonstrates the worth of submission to Her. Wasn't he blessed to burn forever, in Her Ecstasy? 

"...the hour is too late for caution, hermeticism or concealment, all of which have become the habits of the Old Aeon's dying Establishment in seats of power everywhere. The only truly revolutionary act today is to tell the truth about everything." - Robert Anton Wilson, April 16th 1989

Ishtar Rising Week Two: Children of Hermes

Inanna, Goddess of Heaven and Earth Who Descended Into Hell for God-Knows-What Reason

Wilson’s Introduction to the 1989 Edition

Dante based his famous beginning around the Biblical idea that the lifetime of humanity is 75 years. Having been born during the Middle Ages, Dante was lucky to reach his late fifties. Dante’s line is much more famous than his actual biography and as it prefaces the introduction to a book about symbolism, his poetic fallacy can be forgiven.

By 1989, and at this point established with New Falcon Press, Wilson was done with whatever opacity of purpose he had adopted for the earlier Playboy Press editions. The first part of his introduction makes it very clear that this is a book about magic, subversion and myth. I had actually read Wolkstein’s Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth  before I picked up Ishtar Rising which was at the time out of print and somewhat expensive. Alan Moore incorporates the Ishtar/Inanna myth into one of the best issues of his Promethea series, and while Moore is obviously erudite enough to have been exposed to the Ishtar myth long before reading Wilson, this reader can’t help but suggest that Wilson’s repetitive mentions of the myth had something to do with Moore believing it to have been such an important magical allegory. 

As such, Wilson begins his introduction with an explanation of why this story resonated so deeply within him as emphatically as he ever writes elsewhere. (The raw self-reflection that Wilson demonstrates in this chapter, coupled with his usual elan, makes me firmly believe that this piece of writing is a “true” Robert Anton Wilson.) The Underground Journey, he points out, is present in almost all of his work; his characters are repeatedly made to spend seasons in Hell to better understand themselves and the world. By the end of the first part of his introduction his earnestness and passion remind me of his wonderful poem, “Lawrence Talbot Suite:” 

My werewolf heart is pierced at last

By the silver bullet of the Lady’s gaze

I am the Beast the Lady rides
I am the stars that are in her hair. 

(Versions of the poem can be found in The Illuminati Papers and Masks of the Illuminati.) 

The second part of the introduction provides a solid foundational theory to the magic alluded to in part one by building upon Welles’ F for Fake. Wilson would later expand on the analysis presented here in Cosmic Trigger II (I believe, it could have been CT III) in what may be one of the most interesting writings on film that I’ve ever read. The earlier version here is just as satisfying, if not more compact. Luckily F for Fake is no longer as obscure as it was when Wilson was writing in the late Eighties. It’s been released by the Criterion Collection and is one of the few Welles films I’ve watched multiple times. (It’s a great film to watch when you’re lonely as it feels, at least to me, like one big, fucked-up party.) 

Wilson writes with more flair in these few pages about F for Fake and Welles in general than I could ever hope to. I don’t have much to add aside from how fascinating the film and its subject matter really is; Clifford Irving’s career is as bizarre as anyone could ask for and he managed to draw in two of the biggest enigmas of the twentieth century- one famous, one made famous by Welles’ film. Howard Hughes was a hugely consequential kook who will reappear in this narrative as the patron, and possible exploiter, of Jayne Mansfield’s formidable bosoms. El Mir, after my repeat sessions with Fake, might be my favorite artist of the 20th Century- I would love to have one of his Modiglianis. The theory of art presented in the second part of the introduction (which is very much in line with the movements of cubism, Dada and surrealism that Wilson uses to buttress Welles’ film and philosophy) is perhaps the grand artistic tradition of the twentieth. Wilson’s mastery of art theory is as impressive as any of his intellectual accomplishments and shouldn’t be understated. Wilson, being Wilson, also draws in Joyce and Crowley to augment his overview of Art. (The joke of Crowley’s is beloved by me not only because of its original appearance in Magick in Theory and Practice but its appearance in Wilson and Moore’s works.) 

It is surprising to me that Wilson didn’t receive any messages from magicians or truth-seekers on account of Ishtar Rising. In fact, I would hold up Wilson’s earliest titles, namely The Sex Magicians, Sex, Drugs and Magick, and The Book of the Breast/Ishtar Rising as books that still drip with magic. Wilson also does a little of the work of later interlocutors by acknowledging his bitterness against the “Women’s Lib” Movement at the time of the original authorship. He notes himself that the book was written during a time when “everyone was a little nuts” and that his views had changed by the time the New Falcon edition was published. But he notes, like other commentators, that his writing was a product of its times and opts to keep most of his original work intact. In an act of Wilsonian wit and irony, our Man uses Christ’s call to his Father as an end to his introduction to a work on the Female Godhead. 

I think we’ll reserve his 1973 Introduction for next week as there’s plenty to unpack there as well. I am looking forward to what everyone has to say! 

What Does This All Mean?

 No clue. 

Yet, we can try to conjecture along with Robert Anton Wilson and the Eternality known occasionally as Inanna, Ishtar, Persephone and even that sissy Christ as they descend into Hell and rise again. 

Join us Thursday to discuss Wilson's introductions to the 1973 and 1989 editions! 

Ishtar Rising Week One: Invisible Progress

Scan of an old Playboy paperback of Ishtar Rising, originally The Book of the Breast, provided by the magnificent Rasa and the illustrious Christina Wilson of Hilaritas Press

Howdy, friends and foes! (Stolen from Ada Palmer, but doesn’t it seem like an excellent greeting for the Internet?)

Today is the Feast of St. Molly of Dublin; the 117th Anniversary of Mrs. Bloom’s grand, ranting soliloquy after her Husband asked for breakfast. June 17th is also occasionally proposed as the date of the Wake and this day happens to be the 69th (nice) anniversary of the time Jack Whiteside Parsons blew himself to hell and the date of Yr. humble Narrator’s nativity. Hopefully an auspicious day to begin our clamber out of Hell, following the ascending thighs of She. Venus Callipyge as the guide from Inferno instead of Beatrice in Heaven, or Virgil going in the Other Direction. 

This is dovestamemoria; think of it as Rawillumination After Dark. I started this blog so this reading group wouldn’t confuse the order of the Prometheus Rising reading group on Tom’s mothership. This isn’t a competing group but rather a survey-on-the-side of another excellent RAW title; something entirely different than the slow feasting-digestion that Prometheus Rising deserves. I am your host: Apuleius Charlton, Rarebit Fiend, Logreus...the other name I don't use online anymore.

The progression of the reading group doesn’t need to be complicated- after this week’s discussion of Morrison’s foreword we’ll be reading/discussing the two introductions, then we’ll proceed to read/discuss a chapter per week afterwards. Now that I think the housekeeping has been taken care of, let’s proceed to the latest introduction, exclusive to the Hilaritas Press edition, by comics legend and magician Grant Morrison.

Foreword to the Foreword by Grant Morrison for the 2020 Edition

I’m not a Grant Morrison fan. That’s okay, they have plenty of other fans including many people whose opinions I respect and whose ideas I admire; our own Bobby Campbell and Marcus Parks of Last Podcast fame are both enamored with Morrison’s The Invisibles. Morrison’s contribution to bringing “nerdiness” and comics back to their mythological origins cannot easily be understated. A good choice to introduce Wilson’s early (book length) examination of myth and reality. I will do my best to comment, but I expect the rest of you will find more salient points to be made. Let’s get on with it: 

Foreword by Grant Morrison for the 2020 Edition 

The note by Hilaritas Press is worth...noting. I assume many readers of this missive have a beat-up New Falcon edition of Ishtar Rising...it is very different from the original Book of the Breast, not only because of Wilson’s editing but because the nature of republication often mimics the original work imperfectly, if not inaccurately. Rasa, Cristina and the Crew That Never Rests have taken it upon themselves to restore the original illustrations and format. Their effort has certainly not been in vain and the Hilaritas Press outdid themselves- this is a gorgeous publication that titillates all sensibilities. If you don’t own one, you really should avail yourself of this lovely volume. If nothing else, you can use it for masturbation material after a solar flare takes out the Internet.   

Morrison’s introduction, like a couple (at least) of the other Hilaritas Introduction mentions that the title and the author’s attitude(s) were a result of its/his times. While the statement is by no means untrue, it does bring a wry smile to my lips every time I read it. Not because it is obvious, but because it is necessary. I think it is partly necessary because of the nature of Wilson’s writing. He was an enthusiastic futurist and loved making predictions based on the scientific and other trends of his day. Like most futurists and prophets, he was often wrong. This causes a bit of lag in the translation of his ideas across the tides of time: I suffered a serious hangover after I first read Cosmic Trigger when I realized that the book that had blown my mind was simply wrong about so many things. Life expectancy is going down and all that shit. That takes awhile to reconcile, especially after starry-eyed worship. Secondly, it is necessary to make statements like that in the world of recent history. I don’t know how I feel about the changing rhetoric of the day; whether it is simply rational context or irritating kowtowing. Either way, Ishtar Rising, or The Book of the Breast, is a product of its times- Morrison’s foreword and this post are products of our times. 

In short, Morrison’s foreword is Excellent. They articulate how Wilson’s text was a product of its times, something beyond its day and relevant to the readers of the nascent 21st Century. Morrison does it with style and acid (in the Hoffman sense) ink. Great Stuff. Morrison also makes the important point of the hyper-sexual/unsexy World of Tomorrow. Pornography is largely demoralizing and while we are doused with tits, slits and dicks the current sexuality seems to be contrasted between a cry for help and seeking the next fix. The foreword reminds me of Higgs’ accurate, if dismaying, chapter on 'Sex' from Stranger Than We Can Imagine; while sexual liberation began with a yearning for communion, today’s tawdry sexual market is not that different from the prudish-surface/morlockian kink underground of the past. We’re not exactly the matrist paradise of unrestrained sexuality that Wilson hoped for, the current panorama isn’t even the stylish, intellectual and deeply sexist bacchanal that Hefner desired. We’re more like the party goers in Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut- masquerading at being sexual but instead looking incredibly awkward and dumb. Who the fuck thinks a bunch of rich people and a Scientologist makes a good orgy anymore? This isn’t the late 40s. 

Perhaps the pure matrist ideals of Ishtar Rising “failed” in part because the dawn of the matriarchal age is now four thousand years in the past. According to Uncle Al, The Isian Age preceded the Osirian Age which ended around the Vernal Equinox of 1904. We are currently in the later dawn of the Age of Horus, somewhere around 8AM perhaps, when the Child comes forth. There isn’t a whole lot of Male/Female to truck with in this new and terrible Aeon but rather the Individual, the Child. Considering that the world of today does look like a giant, violent, overcrowded crib- Crowley might have been correct. I intended on ending this post talking about the end of the tunnel of COVID-19 and the hope that we are ascending with Innana to a better world. However, I have to agree with Morrison that She is probably still in negotiations. 

But, I’m a hopeless fool and will structure this as if She is ascending and We are following. Perhaps Eurydice won’t fail Orpheus. Excelsior, True Believers!