After I published yesterday's surprise news about a Prometheus Rising hardcover (I had no idea it was on the works and learned about it when I saw a social media announcement), I decided maybe I could learn more. So I asked Rasa how it came about and if more hardcover editions of Robert Anton Wilson's titles were in the works. Here's what he told me:
"We might offer hardcover editions of other titles, but this was an unexpected offer from Ingram that made this release possible. We are busy with other projects, but Ingram offered to do some of the leg work if we would publish the best selling book from our catalog, Prometheus Rising. We know that’s one book that people often go back to, to do the exercises or to just re-read, so making a hardcover seemed like a cool idea. We’ll keep you posted on future plans."
Hilaritas Press has just announced that a hardcover edition of Prometheus Rising is now available, from the usual book channel, such as this one. RAW fans can still get a paperback, audiobook or ebook, but this is now an additional option. The above video, only about half a minute long, aims to offer an idea of what you'll be getting.
If you check out the video and look closely, you'll see copy on the flaps on the book jacket. Rasa explains:
"On the inside flaps of the new hardcover's jacket is a bit of text from Cosmic Trigger II. In his description of the 8 Circuits, RAW used the same placement of Circuits 6 & 7 that he used in Prometheus Rising. That differs from Tim Leary's version, but it should be noted that Leary said Bob's Prometheus Rising description of the circuits was better than his. See the Hilaritas Press's edition for an afterword that goes into that issue in detail.
"Here's the text from Cosmic Trigger II that we added to the new hardcover's inside flaps."
• • •
Circuits 1 to 4
Leary distinguishes eight types of intelligence. The first four are:
Bio-Survival Intelligence: seems mostly genetic and tells an animal or human how to find the nourishing and “supportive” and how to avoid the predatory or toxic.
Emotional-Territorial Intelligence: tells an animal how to read the body-language of another animal and know what the other animal is feeling (and, hence, what it will probably do next.)
Semantic Intelligence: is based on genetic potential and early imprints but mostly is learned slowly, over years, from peers and instructors. It allows us to understand one or two symbol systems (or even several if we are clever) and perhaps to create a symbol-system of our own, sometimes.
Socio-Sexual Intelligence: allows us to manage our social and sexual relations in ways that keep us reasonably happy or at least out of jail.
Circuits 5 to 8
Leary’s other four types of intelligence, which are rare in our society, are:
Neurosomatic Intelligence: the “wisdom of the body” holistic physicians talk about;
Neurogenetic Intelligence: access to the “collective unconscious” or “species mind” where archetypes like the inward-turning spiral or King Kong are stored and, when activated, trigger leaps of intuition;
Metaprogramming Intelligence: the capacity to turn on and tune in to each type of intelligence as needed; and
Non-Local Intelligence: which enables one to endure “mystical” experiences without coming out of them as a raving loony.
This description of the Eight Circuits of Intelligence, aka, the Eight-Circuit Model of Consciousness comes from Robert Anton Wilson’s Cosmic Trigger 2: Down to Earth.
Cover for the new American edition of John Higgs' biography of Timothy Leary.
Some welcome book news from John Higgs in the latest newsletter: Two of his books of most direct interest to Robert Anton Wilson fans are about to finally be published in the U.S.
As I reported earlier,The KLF finally is going to be published in the U.S. and Canada. Quite a lot about Robert Anton Wilson in the book; it's a really weird and a really interesting book, even if you aren't particularly a KLF fan.
"I’m delighted to report that it will be published by Blackstone on 9th July, in paperback, ebook, and as an audiobook, read by me," John writes. "This is the original text, incidentally, not the 10th anniversary UK edition with the meta-commentary. That would be too bewildering for a book in its first printing. It is the ideal version for forcing on people with no interest in The KLF but who really need to read it nontheless." Here is the pre-order link.
"Not only that, but my first book I Have America Surrounded: The Life of Timothy Leary is also going to be republished in the US, thanks to Open Road. It will be available in print, ebook and audiobook, again read by me, from July 30th." No preorder link yet, but it should be up soon, he says.
John also recommends a must-see play in London, "This Is Memorial Device," based on a David Keenan novel. He also reports that two Beatles podcasts are ending and discusses his Dr. Who book.
I have been finally getting around to slowly pursuing a neglected interest of mine. I recently watched an old John Wayne "B" movie called "The Lucky Texan" (not brilliant cinema, but interesting to see a young John Wayne) and "Sherlock Jr." starring Buster Keaton (actually a good film, with good stunts).
I figure I may as well combine that interest with this blog, so I've decided once a month to watch a movie from Robert Anton Wilson's list of his favorite 100 movies. The obvious first choice would be Intolerance the long silent film which apparently influenced Illuminatus! So I will watch it in the next few days and blog about it next week. As it was issued in 1916, it has long been in the public domain, so it should be easy for anyone who wants to watch it with me and post comments to find a free copy. (For example, the Wikipedia article linked to in this paragraph has a copy). Nearly three hours long, so I may need to watch it as a serial.
"If the world seems to be full of stupid, crazy and half-asleep people, that is because it is still dominated by Belief Systems. Whether this BS operates under the label of religion or cult or Political Correctness, it shuts off all brain functions except memorization and represents the suicide of intelligence."
"For the new website, we decided to downgrade the previous chronological orderings of the seven hundred-odd items it contains. Instead, we wanted to invite more thematic and synchronistic cross-connections, opening word-cloud wanderings and liminal trawls through the archive. Rather than hot takes, it is designed for cool descents into a rather labyrinthine underground packed with still glowing oddities, sigils, and gems," he writes.
Running a search for "Robert Anton Wilson" produces 27 different hits. I plan to listen soon to his hour-long talk on "Pulp Illuminations," described as "A talk I gave ... about Illuminatus!, the occult, and the tension between high and low magic in the 1970s."
But many of the other pieces interest me, too. If you are into Led Zeppelin, for example, you could do worse than to peruse pieces such as "Magic Men: Led Zep," which wonderfully evokes the band's effect on teens in the 1970s: "Over the hills and far away, in the longago pubescent dawn, my world was a half-dreamt thing built as much from Tolkien, Lovecraft, and Hunter S. Thompson as from the concrete chunks of reality that the usual suspects doled out daily."
The new blog post at RAW Semantics, "Sum of all minds," is an "updated/extended (practically new)" piece that rewrites a post originally up in 2020. But in fact is is very timely, as it explains one of the aspects of Reality Is What You Can Get Away With, the new Robert Anton Wilson release from Hilaritas Press.
When I bought and read Reality, one of the few RAW titles I had never gotten around to, I noticed that the phrase "The sum of all minds is one" (or a very similar version of the same phrase) recurs in the book.
"When I first heard the quote, I was amazed, given that it came from a Nobel Prize-winning physicist – it seemed sort of mystical, and totally at odds with modern western definitions of a “mind” (noun) as a kind of metaphorical personal container of thoughts and experiences," writes Brian, who took the trouble to look up what Schrödinger wrote and then explains what it might mean, discussing the term monism and how it relates to RAW's thinking.
More Beethoven blogging: When I posted about the RAW-recommended Ninth Symphony and Missa Solemnis, I got an interesting anonymous comment (feel free to out yourself, if you like):
The Missa Solemnis is wonderful. If you're inclined to look in more obscure areas for Beethoven's work, give the Cantata on the Death of Joseph IIa listen. He wrote it while he was still in Bonn, but he missed the deadline, so it wasn't performed. It's powerful. He recycled some of the music into Fidelio, and it includes the first version of what became (and evokes the reaction) "O Gott, welch ein Augenblick!"
Addendum: It was Gary McGath, he didn't mean to be anonymous, see the comment.
This is an intriguing recommendation for a couple of reasons.
It's an early work. Hipsters (like RAW) like to bring up the late works, and many of Beethoven's "greatest hits" come from the middle period. I like all that, too! But I also really like early Beethoven, (and when I recently read a biography of Sviatoslav Richter by Karl Rasmussen I discovered that Richter liked early Beethoven, too). I really like the third piano sonata (Richter does a great performance) and the first piano concerto (ditto for Richter) and I like The Creatures of Prometheus, an early work of ballet music. So I'm inclined to give the cantata a fair hearing.
And there's also a connection to the Illuminati, believe it or not.
Robert Anton Wilson has said that when he made Beethoven a member of the Illuminati in Illuminatus!,he did it as a joke, not realizing until later that there was an actual connection: “Actually, a few things that I thought I invented did turn out to be true, oddly enough. The one I still remember is Beethoven’s link to the original, real, historical Illuminati. I invented that as a parody of right-wing books on the Beatles serving Moscow – but hot damn years later I found, in a bio of Ludwig, that he had several associates in the Illuminati and the Illuminati commissioned his first major work, The Emperor Joseph Cantata." (Joseph II had his faults, but he pushed many liberal reforms, so the radicals of the time liked him.)
Jan Swafford's Beethoven biography goes into considerable detail about Beethoven's Illuminati connections and the cantata.
As with other Beethoven work, even relatively obscure compositions, it's easy to find recordings of the cantata on streaming music services, and I've bookmarked one to listen to during the next few days.
UPDATE: Eric's comment reminds me that I meant to cite him as my on-call Beethoven expert, and I just forgot. I will blame getting old. Eric told me he has a CD of the piece and said, "I recommend listening to the Emperor Joseph Cantata at least a few times."
The 2024 inductees into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame have been announced, and standing alongside Cher, Foreigner, Peter Frampton and the other new members of rock music's pantheon are the MC5, the band mentioned in Illuminatus! I blogged about recently.
Well, this looks interesting! The Hilaritas Press podcast released today features R.U. Sirius.
Official blurb: "In this episode, Mike Gathers chats with writer, editor, & vocalist/lyricist Ken Goffman (aka R. U. Sirius) about Psychedelic Transhumanism, Singularity, and more.
• • •
"Ken recorded this podcast about two weeks before the passing of his longtime partner Eve Berni. All of us at Hilaritas Press and the RAW Trust give our love and deepest condolences to Ken and all who knew Eve."
I participated in the campaign with a small pledge, so I'll be getting a digital copy of the book (estimated delivery June) while others will be getting a variety of prizes, including a physical copy of the book (estimated delivery July).
It's interesting to click on Community, and see who backed Peakrill Press publisher Dan Sumption. While most of the backers, 41, came from the United Kingdom, there were nine from the United States, and one apiece from Australia, Finland, Guatemala, Malaysia, Portugal and Switzerland.
I have been meaning to read Raymond Chandler for years, and not just because he was one of Robert Anton Wilson's favorite writers. (In this interview, RAW says, "My favorite writers are James Joyce, Ezra Pound, H.P. Lovecraft and Raymond Chandler.") I was also interested because I like mystery novels in general, and because an old friend of mine has read every one of Chandler's books.
So, finally, I checked The Big Sleep out of the library and read it. I really enjoyed the book. Such good sentences! Chandler's prose, with many funny wisecracks, has a sense of immediacy and vividness that hold the reader's attention. I can also see how Chandler must have influenced later writers, such as Lawrence Block in the Matt Scudder series, which I have been re-reading.
After I read The Big Sleep, I was curious about Chandler's influence on RAW. Eric Wagner's An Insider's Guide to Robert Anton Wilson is very good about tracing literary influences on RAW, and I keep a Kindle of it on my phone for reference. When I looked at the book, it reminded me that RAW wrote about Chandler in The Illuminati Papers. The piece Eric references is "Infinite Cruelty," and it asserts that Chandler "created the unique literary form which is his and his alone, although more widely counterfeited than any other technique but Hemingway's." Eric also finds other RAW quotes about Chandler's influence in Wilson's style and Wilson's way of telling stories. Wilson: "All my fiction tends to follow the Chandler mythos of the skeptical Knight seeking Truth in a world of false fronts and manipulated deceptions. (Of course, this is also my biography, or that of any shaman.)"
RAW apparently read Chandler over and over again, and I certainly want to read more.
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