RAW auction 2016

RAW Auction 2016

a letter from Bob’s daughter Christina

[read the whole text in the above link]

Matters of the heart; One of my personal loose ends is sorting through my remaining boxes of my parent’s possessions. A couple of the possessions I have integrated into my daily life, an object sitting on a shelf, or a shirt hanging in my closet, a book in the bookcase.  But the truth is everything else stays all boxed up, and relatively useless unless you feel like developing muscles lugging boxes around. I don’t, and it is time to make these items available to others who may enjoy them.

To do this, I am setting up an E-Bay auction, to list a number of RAW collectables, along with “just random” stuff that belonged to Bob and Arlen, my parents.

Before you make assumptions about whatever will be listed, and why I would do this let me explain! In late 2007, I also sold some memorabilia, as I needed desperately to raise money to take care of Bob’s past debts, family needs, and to take some financial weight off me as I attempted to help my brother. I was so grateful for folk’s interest and support, and was deeply touched and amazed at some of the notes I received!

Fast forward to today; I have several boxes, not a lot, as Bob and Arlen really never owned much. And, most of what they did own was often second-hand, well-used, etc! But… I have a sense that some folks would really enjoy having an object infused with RAW’s history and life; whether every-day stuff, or not! And, again, the income (whatever is received) will help to pay bills, and move Hilaritas Press forward!

For instance; I have Bob’s lovely Aran Fisherman’s sweater made by John Molloy of Donegal, Ireland that he bought in Ireland for warmth (photo above). It is too big for me, my husband doesn’t wear sweaters, and someone might just think it would be awesomely cool to write their own masterpiece while wrapped in a sweater of RAW’s!

- 0 -

Back in the day, several of us bought bits and pieces, to help pay Bob's tax bills, or whatever.  Here is your opportunity (if you believe in that psychometry stuff).

Me personally? (the bogus one)
I love having the T-Shirt that he got given for his appearance on Politically Incorrect, even if he never actually wore it!

Watch this space, for further news of eBay auctions.   Or stay in touch with Hilaritas Press.

Snapshot of RAW in 1995

[A vintage 1990s-era disinformation® essay-interview with Robert Anton Wilson by Disinfo former site editor, Alex Burns]

Author’s note: This interview was originally published in REVelationmagazine (#13, Autumn, 1995): 36-40.

A most illuminating read...

A startling revelation for RAW fans are his future projections for the fictional Illuminati series as a whole. “I eventually plan to continue The Historical Illuminati Chronicles. Right now I’m more concerned with the future again. I’m working on Bride of Illuminatus which takes place in 2026, a more congenial place for my mind to roam than the Eighteenth Century. If I live long enough, I hope all my novels will form one continuous saga from 1750, when Bach died and Sigismundo Celine was born, up through the democratic and industrial revolutions, on to Darwin and Nineteenth Century rationalism, then linking in the outbreak of Relativity (Einstein, Joyce, Crowley) in Masks of the Illuminati, jumping forward to the psycehdelic age in Illuminatus and quantum/computer revolutions inSchroedinger’s Cat and then finishing up with my hopes for the future in Bride.”

He hopes that readers will gain a new perspective by being able to read the series sequentially. “After the first Illuminatus! trilogy with Shea, I noticed that some of the negative responses indicated an ignorance, not just of modern science, but of the Enlightenment philosophy of the 18th Century. Many people who can read are still living, mentally, in the dark ages. So thats when I began to think of a series of interconnected novels that would take such readers through all the revolutions of the past two centuries and prepare them for the 21st Century. The reason Sigismundo Celine, in The Earth Will Shake, is born in Naples is because the Inquisition still existed there in 1750. Taking him out of that fanatic Catholic world into the world of French rationalism begins the process of taking the readers from the Age of Aquinas to the Age of Space.”

Read the whole thing here.

A quick hit of RAW doing a hilarious presentation

At The Prophets' Conference - December 2000 in Palm Springs - if you have another hour...



According to Richard Metzger, in Wilson and I

"The RAW fans contingent in Palm Springs were totally distinct from everyone else present (goths and cyberpunk vs New Agey senior citizens who wanted to hear about Pleiadian prophecy and 2012 Mayan stuff, which Bob just hated). Bob got really ripped on hard alcohol before his talk and swore like a sailor, which seemed to deeply offend the organizers of the event. We ended up hanging out in his hotel suite, smoking pot. A young guy had given him a bag of these black psilocybin mushrooms which he’d managed to smuggle into America from Ireland, which Bob didn’t really seem to want and gave to me (my god were they strong). It was in Palm Springs that I got to see firsthand how bad his post-polio syndrome had gotten. He was getting pretty wobbly on his feet, but this did not seem to dampen his enthusiasm in the least for copious amounts of Marlboro reds, whiskey and weed.

Mentally he was certainly as sharp as ever, that never changed, but his health seemed to go downhill quite fast in the years I knew him. The aforementioned “enthusiasms” were often consumed with rapacious gusto for a man of his age and he once revealed to me that since nearly everyone who he had ever loved in his life was already dead, he was going to smoke as many cigarettes and pound back as much Scotch as he damn well pleased. Bob’s your uncle!"

ILLUMINATUS! READING GROUP STARTING ON MONDAY FEB. 24

Press release from RAWIllumination.net

Website RAWIllumination.net to sponsor online group reading of 1970s cult literary work “Illuminatus!” starting on Feb. 24.

An online reading group plans to spend more than a year doing a page-by-page analysis of an unusual 1970s cult novel that has never gone out of print.

Illuminatus! by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson, originally published as a series of three science fiction paperback originals, was  influenced by writers as diverse as James Joyce, William Burroughs and H.P. Lovecraft. The book reads at first like a thriller about a vast conspiracy, albeit one that uses an obscure theological term, “immanentize the Eschaton,” in the first sentence. But it also has elements of fantasy and the occult and spends many pages discussing political theory.

The ostensible subject of the book is the Illuminati, an alleged secret society that seeks to control the world and is still the subject of many conspiracy theories. Many of the book’s protagonists are either battling the Illuminati or struggling to figure out what is really going on.

The work makes liberal use of Discordianism, a tongue-in-cheek religion devoted to worship of the Greek goddess Eris, who was blamed for starting the Trojan War, and of the Kabbalah, an esoteric mystical system that began as part of Judaism. The text also reflects the authors’ strong interesting anarchism and libertarianism.

Readers of the RAWIllumination.net website will participate in an online discussion of the book beginning on Feb. 24. The discussion will proceed at a pace of 10 pages a week, to give readers time to untangle many of the esoteric references and meanings in the text. The slow pace also will allow time for readers who missed the initial announcement to get caught up and participate. The standard paperback edition has 805 pages, so the discussion is expected to take well over a year. 

Each week, an entry on a 10-page section of the book will be posted on the website’s blog, and readers will be invited to weigh in using the comments.

The book began as a joke in a Chicago bar. The two authors, Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea, were editors at Playboy magazine in 1960s, responsible for the Playboy Forum, a section of letters from readers. Many of the letters dealt with speculation on who had killed the Kennedys and other conspiracy theories. 

   

The two editors, who were friends, had a habit of going to a bar every payday. One day, Shea jokingly suggested that the two collaborate on a novel that would take seriously every crazy conspiracy theory that had been sent in by a reader. The idea caught the pair’s imagination, and they began work on the book that became Iluminatus!

Issued beginning in late 1975 as three mass market paperbacks, The Eye in the Pyramid, The Golden Apple, and Leviathan, Illuminatus!  was reissued beginning in 1984 as a one-volume trade paperback and has remained in print ever since. It also is available as an ebook and an audiobook. 

Illuminatus! received good reviews from publications such as the Village Voice but was generally ignored by major literary magazines, newspapers and book reviewers. It won only one literary award, the relatively obscure Prometheus Hall of Fame Award, in 1986. It has received less attention from major literary critics than two broadly similar works written at about the same time, Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon and Mumbo Jumbo by Ishmael Reed. It has nonetheless enjoyed a strong cult following from its initial publication and there are many websites on the Internet devoted to it or to one of its two authors. 

The two authors never collaborated on another book, although they remained close friends, but Illuminatus! helped them launch their literary careers. Wilson quit his job at Playboy and became a freelance writer. He eventually published more than 30 books, including novels and essay collections. He died in 2007. Shea continued to work for Playboy, but after he lost his job at the magazine, he began sending out proposals for novels and began a successful second career as a historical novelist. He died in 1994.