Tuesday, December 20, 2016

Aleister and Adolf

The latest from Douglas Rushkoff, with images by Michael Avon Oeming.

Review on Boing Boing (has a range of images from the book)





Tuesday, December 06, 2016

Starseed Signals - re-appearing


"Starseed Signals, a Robert Anton Wilson book written in 1975 during a period of close collaboration with Timothy Leary, finally will be out soon.

The final touches are being put on the production by the publisher, RVP Publishers, and the book is supposed to be out during the first or second quarter of 2017, according to information given by the publisher to RAW fan Chad Nelson."     Thanks to RAWIllumination.net



And, just for fun, an hour of Bob, if you want it...


Wednesday, November 02, 2016

Maybe Bucky would feel impressed

A Japanese design company has come up with an elegant solution to the problem that Bucky solved with his Dymaxion Map, of showing the countries and continents of Earth so that all were correctly scaled (unlike most of the maps we may feel familiar with (The Mercator, The Peters, etc).

Even better, using principles of origami, they have made it so that it can actually be made into a globe!

You can find all the details about how they figured it out on their website, here.

They certainly acknowledge their debt to Bucky's original work (you can see his Dymaxion map on page 3 of their explanation) - but in some ways their map looks less odd than Bucky's (which can also be folded into a near globe).
Bucky's Dymaxion Map


Monday, October 24, 2016

RAW 3000


The @RAWilson23 twitter account, that I run, recently passed the threshold of 3,000 followers, which isn’t necessarily a major milestone in the grand scheme of the social-media-sphere, but just the same... 3,000 others found & connected. Not too shabby.

Admittedly, It’s only a ⅓ of the users that @R_A_W has, but that account seems to continue to only have a passing resemblance to the lives and ideas of Robert Anton Wilson, and so I’m happy to continue my @RAWilson23 project. I did, of course, offer to turn the account over to the RAW Estate as they became more active, but they declined, and seemed happy to let my little experiment continue.

One of my favorite things about this project has been watching the explosion of RAW awareness through this little node in the planet's info circulatory system. My goal has been to signal boost the others so that they could find each other, but there wasn’t all that much to work with at the beginning. Mentions of RAW on twitter were pretty slow, and mostly just automated quote accounts tweeting “belief is the death of intelligence” over and over and over again. @jacksontom and his RAWillumination.net blog was the first sign of new life in the (ugh, sorry) RAWnaissance, and I hope everyone appreciates how critical it was that Tom kept the light going after the Maybe logic Academy dissipated and before the RAW Trust formed, and how it remains a primary means of propulsion for all this flying lasagna :)))

And then along came @JohnHiggs & @DaisyEris and the merry band of Discordians @2CosmicTrigger3, which seemed to open up the floodgates! There were a lot of us already working on RAW relevant media, but the Cosmic Trigger play seemed to create a kind of harmonic convergence, that amplified those already at the party, while also bringing more people into the festivities. These days I find it genuinely difficult to keep track of all the RAW related shenanigans at play in the world.

Here’s just the tip of the twitter iceberg:

@festival23COD@amoebadesign@PropAnon@rasadeva@AdamGorightly@notjessewalker@ChasingEris@robinince@rushkoff@PQuadrino@BogusMagus@FLYAGARIC2019@StealThisSingul@AldertonKate@catvincent @gacord@advantardeodus@cnels43@jonone100@reichinhell@leashless@jakeshannon@RGC777


There's dozens and dozens more, of course, all conspiring to keep the ravioli in orbit, long may they stick apart!

Friday, September 16, 2016

RAW auction 2016


[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!

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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.

Wednesday, July 13, 2016

False Documents

Find here, a review of False Documents, a collection of writings from Peter Lamborn Wilson, in Woodstock Times.


He famously described the concept of the Temporary Autonomous Zone (TAZ), writing through his nom-de-plume of Hakim Bey.




Monday, July 04, 2016

The Illuminati rise again...

"Forged in the same crucible as every modern political ideology from conservatism to nihilism, anarchy to military dictatorship, the Illuminati conspiracy has become a modern myth: not merely in the dismissive sense that its factual basis evaporates under scrutiny, but as a shapeshifting narrative capable of adapting its meaning to accommodate new and unforeseen scenarios. Since the 1970s, it has been gleefully satirised as a baroque folly of conservative thought by counterculture figures from Robert Anton Wilson onwards, yet this has only increased its fame and mystique: Dan Brown’s Angels and Demons demonstrates that today’s readers will still lap up Robison’s unreconstructed version of the story in their millions. In popular culture and old-time religion, satire and nationalist politics, the Illuminati conspiracy still resonates with its warning that the light of reason has its shadows, and even the most enlightened democracy can be manipulated by hidden hands."

From:     "Darkness Over All: John Robison and the Birth of the Illuminati Conspiracy"
at the Public Domain Review




In just a minute Bob tells you the 'truth' that he considers them a short-lived organisation from the past, but ends up wishing them well in their future endeavours.    You figure it out.  OM.

For those of you who have not read Bob's range of Guerrilla Ontology books, particularly with reference to The Illuminati, we can still recommend the original trilogy - ILLUMINATUS!.
You can find a selection of notes about it (which arose from Bob's online study group, etc) here.

For people who like original source material, you can find Robison's book as a PDF at the Conspiracy Archive, here.


Thursday, March 24, 2016

New release from Hilaritas Press - Prometheus Rising

You can now find an eBook version of Prometheus Rising (featuring a New Afterword by Richard Rasa), available on the Hilaritas Press website, here.   A print edition will follow.



Also on the website, you can find my memories of the Maybe Logic Academy.





Tuesday, March 15, 2016

New book about RAW

Our very own PropAnon has landed a book deal with TarcherPenguin, to produce a book entitled "Chapel Perilous: The Life and Thought Crimes of Robert Anton Wilson" due in 2017.

Way to go!  Keep spreading the word...


In the Outlaw Area

Back in January 1966, the New Yorker published this extended conversation with Bucky Fuller, written by Calvin Tomkins.   It avoids that sensation of difficulty/complexity that arises from some of Bucky's own writing, and gives an affectionate and lucid description of spending time in Bucky's company, and his endlessly intriguing and amusing conversation on a wide range of subjects (or rather, of inter-related aspects of Universe).



Talking of teaching himself maths:

“Later on, we came to geometry. The teacher made a point on the blackboard, then erased it and said, ‘That doesn’t exist.’ She made a row of points, and said, ‘That’s a line, and it doesn’t exist, either.’ She made a number of parallel lines and put them together to form a plane, and said it didn’t exist. And then she stacked the planes one on top of the other, so that they made a cube, and she said that existed. I wondered how you could get existence out of nonexistence to the third power. It seemed unreasonable. So I asked her, ‘How old is it?’ The teacher said I was just being facetious. I asked her what it weighed and I asked how hot it was, and she got angry. The cube just didn’t have anything that I thought was existence, but I thought I was probably being unfriendly, and so I shut up. I got A’s in all my science work, and when I got to Harvard I didn’t go on with mathematics, because it was so easy—just a sort of game you played. I thought I’d take something really difficult, like government or English."

Hat tip to Bobby Campbell for this image
"There is no doubt whatever in Fuller’s mind that the whole development of modern science and technology has resulted from a willingness on the part of a very few men to sail into the wind of tradition, to trust in their own intellect, and to take advantage of their natural mobility. According to Fuller, the influence of this tiny minority, the navigator-priests of pre-history who ventured into the outlaw area and returned with the new wealth that was knowledge, was always far greater than that of the kings or other rulers to whom they were officially subject, and the situation is no different today; it is modern technology, rather than political leadership, that directs the real movement of contemporary history. “Take away the energy-distributing networks and the industrial machinery from America, Russia, and all the world’s industrialized countries, and within six months over two billion swiftly and painfully deteriorating people will starve to death,” he has written. “Take away the politicians, all the ideologies and their professional protagonists from those same countries and leave them their present energy networks, industrial machinery, routine production, and distribution personnel, and no more humans will starve nor be afflicted in health than at present.”




Much earlier, he wrote a collection of pieces, worth tracking down if you can find a copy, called "The Bride and the Bachelors: Five Masters of the Avant-Garde" - with insightful descriptions of Duchamp, Tinguely, Cage, Rauschenberg and Cunningham.

You can find a free PDF of The Afternoon Interviews here.

Tuesday, March 01, 2016

Books to hold in your hand




Hilartias Press releases fresh edition of Cosmic Trigger I: Final Secret of the Illuminati, with new introduction by John Higgs.  NOW AVAILABLE (as hard copy or eBook).




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OUT TODAY!      New from Douglas Rushkoff   Available from Indiebound.org  




And also:

Aleister and Adolph - occult graphic novel by Douglas Rushkoff  (Disinfo)

This will be available in November 2016 from Dark Horse Comics







Sunday, February 07, 2016

Legal fictions - the stories we all believe in

“in order to change an existing imagined order, we must first believe in an alternative imagined order.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind



“Ever since the Cognitive Revolution, Sapiens have thus been living in a dual reality. On the one hand, the objective reality of rivers, trees and lions; and on the other hand, the imagined reality of gods, nations and corporations. As time went by, the imagined reality became ever more powerful, so that today the very survival of rivers, trees and lions depends on the grace of imagined entities such as the United States and Google.” ― Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

Saturday, January 23, 2016

Language of the birds


"The exhibition takes its name from the historical and cross-cultural notion that there is a magic language via which only the initiated can communicate. Often referred to as the “language of the birds,” it is a system rumored to operate in symbols, and to be a vehicle for revealing hidden truths and igniting metamorphic sparks."


Nino Japaridze “Six of Winds” 2015. Courtesy Gallery of Surrealism

Participating Artists
Kenneth Anger * Anohni (FKA Antony Hegarty) * Laura Battle * Jordan Belson * Alison Blickle * Carol Bove * Jesse Bransford * BREYER P-ORRIDGE * John Brill * Robert Buratti * Elijah Burgher * Cameron * Leonora Carrington * Francesco Clemente * Ira Cohen * Brian Cotnoir * Aleister Crowley * Enrico Donati * El Gato Chimney * Leonor Fini * JFC Fuller * Helen Rebekah Garber * Rik Garrett * Delia Gonzalez * Jonah Groeneboer * Juanita Guccione * Brion Gysin * Frank Haines * Barry William Hale * Valerie Hammond * Ken Henson * Bernard Hoffman * Nino Japaridze * Gerome Kamrowski * Leo Kenney * Paul Laffoley * Adela Leibowitz * Darcilio Lima * Angus MacLise * Ann McCoy * Rithika Merchant * William Mortensen * Rosaleen Norton * Micki Pellerano * Ryan M Pfeiffer & Rebecca Walz * Max Razdow * Ron Regé, Jr. * Kurt Seligmann * Harry Smith * Kiki Smith * Xul Solar * Austin Osman Spare * Charles Stein * Shannon Taggart * Gordon Terry * Scott Treleaven * Panos Tsagaris * Charmion von Wiegand * Robert Wang * Peter Lamborn Wilson
Paul Laffoley “Astrological Ouroboros” 1965 Oil, acrylic, and hand applied vinyl letters on canvas and wood. Courtesy Kent Fine Art
A little flashback to an MLA gathering in Paris 2008, to see the exhibition Traces du Sacré (Traces of the Sacred).
Aleister Crowley “The Moon (Study for Tarot)” 1921, Oil on board. Courtesy Buratti Gallery.

Wednesday, January 20, 2016

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.

Tuesday, January 19, 2016

Wednesday, January 06, 2016

Cosmic Trigger play - updates

New cover from Nic Alderton

Gathering of the Cosmic Fools


Word of the day: apophenia – the human tendency to find patterns amongst random data / signals.
[See Ian 'Cat' Vincent's blog entry here]





From the email/newsletter from Meesh:

"So, on the weekend of Saturday January 23rd 2016, we will be gathering somewhere in NW London, to begin making good on our promise to get the play to Santa Cruz, USA, by July 23rd 2017, following a second UK run. We will do this by putting our heads together and getting to work on the practicalities, as well as coming up with ways to keep it Heroic/Magical/Capertastic.

HELLLLPPP!!!

We will need all kinds of help. Good job so many of you lot are proper amazing.  [...]

Also on this day will be the signing of The Cosmic Book of True Will for all those foolish enough to tell Goddess your Plans. You write your intention in this book, sign it (in something akin to blood) and achieve it by July 23rd 2016 - but if any one of us fails - WE BURN THE BOOK! No pressure, then.

Until then, KLF - Keep Lasagne Flying


PS:  if you feel unlucky that you didn't get to see the play under discussion, you may catch a glimpse of what you missed in this video:


Cosmic Trigger Theatrical Promo from C S on Vimeo.

Keep up with the story, both on Fnordbook here and Twitter

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