In my Week 17 posting for the Prometheus Rising discussion group, I wrote about my plan to imitate Eric Wagner's plan to do a reading exercise that would contrast "selective attention" against "mind controls everything," his adaptation of one of the exercises in Chapter One of Prometheus Rising. You can follow my link and look back to read Eric's full explanation; here is what I said I would do: "For 23 days, I will read two of my favorite authors, Robert Anton Wilson and Tyler Cowen, on alternate days, using the 'selective attention' model. Then for 23 days, I will read them using them as 'magickal texts.' (I don't really know how to read them as 'magickal texts,' but I figure I know some people who can offer suggestions. Gregory? Cat? Oz? Anyone else?)
"As I deal with my life, I want to focus on how to stay positive and how to deal with information. So for 'selective attention,' I believe it would make sense to focus initially on RAW's Cosmic Trigger 2: Down to Earth and on Cowen's The Age of the Infovore: Succeeding in the Information Economy. "
The selective attention part ends on March 16. I have completed re-reading The Age of the Infovore and I anticipate that I will finish re-reading Cosmic Trigger 2 by the end of the day Tuesday.
So now it's time to try the reading as magickal texts part of the exercise, which takes me to April 8, if I counted correctly. As I know how to do that as well as I know how to fly a passenger jet airplane (e.g., not at all), you will notice from the passage I quoted that I asked for help.
Oz Fritz responded, " I can't say I have a good answer but I can offer suggestions of how to look for one as I search myself. Magick = the Science and Art of causing change to occur in conformity with Will. Dion Fortune amended, or awomened, or streamlined this definition to include 'causing change in consciousness ...' Initially, beginning magick aims for the 'Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel (HGA)' which I interpret as contact with a specific (but multiple) Higher Intelligence from the territory of C6 (as in Leary's model) or beyond; only one interpretation from a concept that appears a multiplicity. The specificity of this contact has to do with the model that the HGA = the ultimate expression of one's True Will i.e. what you really wish to do in life. So perhaps reading something as a magickal text intends to move that along?
"This model includes the notion that Higher Intelligence ranges freely and can communicate through any medium. You might see a billboard that communicates something about your work when expanded out from the context of the advertisement; a young child might randomly say something that has relevance to your spiritual goals; your cat might cause spillage leading to hidden treasure, etc. So perhaps the psychokinesis model, applied to reading books, allows for the possibility that your HGA entered the consciousness of the author(s) causing them to write something personally useful to you years later. I sincerely hopes this helps and doesn't muddle things further."
So, if I'm reading this correctly, I should read passages looking for "the ultimate expression of one's True Will i.e. what you really wish to do in life."
Gregory Arnott wrote, "My answer would be: Wilson's books are some of the most powerful magical texts in my library. I've learned more about the sapient secrets of the cosmos and the darkness that lies in the heart of man from his works than most honest-to-Cthulhu grimoires. If you look at the article I wrote for Bobby Campbell's project, I have more there. Just imagine that the radical ideas and expositions of the mind you experience while reading them are becoming reality: THC helps. I'm pretty sure RAW is still alive in some manner and speaks through his texts. The grand old man, follow the threads. I don't know Tyler Cowen very well, so I can't give much advice there. Do the same thing, I guess?"
Gregory is referring to his piece for New Trajectories, "Ewige Schlangenkraft." I'll re-read it, but it seems to me the key sentence is "Just imagine that the radical ideas and expositions of the mind you experience while reading them are becoming reality: THC helps."
BFHN also pointed out in the comments that in the John Higgs interview of Alan Moore, above, about RAW, Moore talks about magickal readings of literature. (For your convenience, the interview is posted above.) There's a lot of discussion in the interview about how art and magick are largely the same thing, and Moore seems to have literature more in mind than anything else, but I think BFHN may be referring specifically to the point in the interview, that when you use the cut-up technique popularized by William Burroughs on texts, "glimpses of the future leak through."
I've bought a bunch of the RAW Hilaritas Press books as ebooks, so thought one way to do the cutup technique might be to do screenshots of passages selected a random on my laptop (using the Amazon Reader app) then do screenshots on my Chromebook, here's what I came up with in the first experiment:
So, for the magickal texts effort, I'll alternate from concentrating on Oz's suggestion, Gregory suggestion and doing cutups.
8 comments:
Exercize Update
Chapter 1, exercize 5: I am currently reading The Starseed Signals and looking for points of intersection between it and PR using “selective attention”. This approach has provided numerous examples of the early presentation of the Thinker and Prover.
One of my favorite quotes is that of Dr. Lilly "In the province of the mind what one believes to be true, either is true or becomes true within certain limits. These limits are to be found experimentally and experientially. When so found these limits turn out to be further beliefs to be transcended. (Page 178)
Chapter 1, exercizes 7 & 8: Using Dr. Leary’s software from 1986 ‘Mind Mirror’ (available @ archive.org along with many of his books) I can experiment with a created subject and then practice putting myself into that mind frame. A useful substitute during these times of social distancing. It’s very informative but clunky in an 8bit mid 80’s way
https://archive.org/details/msdos_Timothy_Learys_Mind_Mirror_1986
Pro Tip: Ctrl + F11 will slow the game down to playable levels
Coin Comic (but especially for Tom the ‘Cleveland Okie’)
https://www.gocomics.com/lug-nuts/2019/01/22
Scott in Wisconsin
You might try applying English Qabalah to significant words or phrases in the texts. Try Cipher X, made by a friend of Kerry Thornley:
A=9 L=18 W=3 H=12 S=21 D=6 O=15 Z=24 K=1 V=10 G=19 R=4 C=13
N=22 Y=7 J=16 U=25 F=2 Q=11 B=20 M=5 X=14 I=23 T=8 E=17 P=26
RAW = 16
Please share results!
Great post and experiment! Also, the cut-up presented. The summary of what I wrote is spot on. I would only add to also be open to receiving anything that might be construed as spiritual (in Leary's lingo "post-terrestrial")guidance or advice. I completely agree that Wilson's books represent powerful magickal texts.
One attribute of a magickal text: synchronicities or parallels with events in the reader's present life or the world they live in. Literature that speaks outside the time of its creation. I think many people would agree that the book I'm currently reading, Proust's In Search of Lost Time works as a magickal text even if they don't call it that, they express effects of change in themselves for the better after reading it.
This past Saturday a close friend of mine died, it was expected. Her name is Lee Perry, I mentioned her in last week's comments as the co-writer, with her husband Glenn, of Floating in a Quiet Dark Place. I felt very emotional but tried to keep it together by keeping to my routine which included reading a half hour of Proust. In the passage I read that day, the narrator discovers that his best friend, Robert St. Loup, a major recurring character in the book, has died in the war. This seems to cause the narrator to become very philosophical, possibly the most philosophical he has become so far, for a long stretch of pages that I continue to proceed through. I came across this passage today that synch's nicely with the title of Lee's book:
"... whereas real books should be the offspring not of daylight and casual talk but of darkness and silence. And as art exactly reconstitutes life around the truths to which we have attained inside ourselves there will always float an atmosphere of poetry, the soft charm of a mystery which is merely the vestige of the shadow which we have had to traverse, the indication, as precise as the markings of an altimeter, of the depth of a work."
I cannot recall exactly what struck me in the Alan Moore video as being tricks for magickal readings, but I’m pretty sure it was in the first third so you might be right in your assumptions Tom. Especially since cut-ups came up in last week’s discussion. Alan says that “glimpses of the future leak through”, so that would describe what seems to be happening here with this group’s Third Mind.
Incidentally, The Third Mind also is the title of Burroughs and Gysin’s cut-up book.
I tend to partly blame cannabis for my hazy memory. Moore, seen in this video smoking a spliff, also seems affected since he for instance mentions Blavatsky’s Isis Unveiled when he is almost surely talking about RAW’s Ishtar Rising. But THC can allow for connections to happen and sometimes sheds a new light on things. I personally tend to not be very productive in my reading when high, but it might prove satisfactory with your cut-up experiences Tom.
After re-reading Gregory’s article in New Trajectories, I also went through Oz Fritz’ as well. He delves further into this idea of the HGA, so that might help clarify a few points.
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Last week, I found my fourth coin. My eye caught something that seemed to be of a similar size than the right kind of coin, but at first I couldn’t see anything engraved on it and thought it might just be cardboard. I picked it up nonetheless and, not only was it exactly what I was looking for, it also was an older version, with a different design, that has the year 1974 on it and was subsequently taken out of circulation in 1980.
I began the exercize on october 23rd and it took me 84 days to find the first two. Then 46 more days before I found the third coin. And only 12 days after that, I got the last one. It is tempting to see the fourth and last ‘special’ coin as sort of a wink from the Universe, but maybe it only ‘is’ a happy coincidence.
Regardless, and without jumping to any conclusion, the time period between each find has been decreasing significantly. Despite now being ‘done’ with this exercize, I will probably keep on looking, as a way to practice both visualization and selective attention, which might or might not be the two ends of a same spacetime event.
“Money, after all, is an abstract artifact, like language - - merely symbolized by the paper or coin or whatever.” Robert Anton Wilson
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@ Scott: thanks for the link to Tim Leary’s Mind Mirror, this is new to me!
The whole Beliefs Unlimited text can be found here (contains some typos):
https://dedroidify.blogspot.com/2008/04/john-c-lilly-beliefs-unlimited.html
And by the way, it seems that a primer of sorts on Lilly, collecting what I assume to be essays and excerpts from his books, is soon to be published:
https://www.synergeticpress.com/upcoming-titles/lilly/
Thank you for your interesting post and for your wonderful blog. Checking out rawillumination.net every day has helped me make it through this year of lockdown.
I misstated the title of the Perry's book. It's Floating in Quiet Darkness.
@Lvx15, once I have a number, is there a place online to look it up?
Tom -
Look for two words or phrases that have the same value, then think of it like “po” in the new inquisition. I’m not aware of any published Cipher X decoder ring.
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