Hilaritas looking at publishing 50th anniversary hardcover edition of 'Cosmic Trigger'

 

The Hilaritas Press edition of the first book of the Cosmic Trigger trilogy. 

Cosmic Trigger; The Final Secret of the Illuminati, first published in 1977 and published in a new edition by Hilaritas Press in 2016, is one of Robert Anton Wilson's most popular and influential books. It's the first in three Cosmic Trigger books that RAW published. (The second one, Cosmic Trigger II: Down to Earth, also available as a Hilaritas edition, is a personal favorite of mine.) 

With the 50-year anniversary of the publication of Cosmic Trigger I looming, Mike Gathers has  suggested that something should be done to mark that anniversary. Rasa was pleased by the suggestion and has decided that a new hardback edition, with some sort of extra features, would be a good idea. Ideas for what to have in the new edition are now being discussed. 

Halloween reading update

I've finished the two books I planned to read for Halloween. A few comments:

Twice As Dead by Harry Turtledove is an urban fantasy, set in Los Angeles in the years following World War II. The protagonist is a mixed-race detective. There are vampires, ghosts and other supernatural beings. The detective has a talking cat who periodically kills rats that are sent by the detective's enemies to snoop on him. I thought it was one of Turtledove's better books.

The Return by Walter de la Mare has a protagonist who falls asleep at a graveyard. When he wakes up and returns home, he and others discover his face has changed to resemble the person who was buried where the hero took his nap. There is not much else that actually happens in the book and the reader is left wondering if the protagonist is experiencing everything he describes or suffers from mental illness. At first I was a little disappointed by the book, but then I started noticing how atmospheric and poetic many passages were.  I started marking them. 

"After all, what is every man?" he talked on; "a horde of ghosts -- like a Chinese nest of boxes -- oaks that were acorns that were oaks. Death lies behind us, not in front -- in our ancestors, back and back, until -- "

Another passage:

The still grave face beneath the shadow of its veil had never turned, though the moon poured all her flood of brilliance upon the dark profile. And once when as if in sudden alarm he had lifted his head and looked at her, a sudden doubt had assailed him so instantly that he had half put out his hand to touch her, and had as quickly withdrawn it, lest her beauty and stillness should be, even as the moment’s fancy had suggested, only a far-gone memory returned in dream.

One of the characters is named Herbert Herbert, so I wondered if Vladimir Nabokov referenced the novel when he named the main character in Lolita Humbert Humbert. But whereas Humbert Humbert liked very young girls, Herbert Herbert surrounds himself with very old books. 

De la Mare also wrote ghost stories and I plan to hunt them up. 

Christina Pearson update

 

RAW daughter Christina Pearson, who runs the RAW Trust,  is still facing open heart surgery, now scheduled for Oct. 27 at last report. I wanted to note that the Gofundme to help her has exceeded its goal, as people have rallied around her, but the site is still taking donations, if you can afford to help. 

Preorder the new RAW book

Over the last few years, I have bought many books from Hilaritas Press, the publishing imprint for  the Robert Anton Wilson Trust. Many of these books have been editions of RAW's works, but many also have been works by other writers. What I've almost always done is buy the book as soon as it was released.

This time, I am doing something different. I have preordered Maybe Magick, the latest compilation of RAW's writings, due for release Oct. 31.

I don't suppose that my one order will make much difference, and several preorders by other fans likely won't make much difference, ether, but preordering books  helps  them become a success. As ChatGPT explains, "the biggest reason is that preorders can influence how publishers, bookstores, and the media judge a book's prospects for success. A preorder is more than a promise to buy a book: it can help build momentum before the book even reaches store shelves." Follow the link for a longer explanation.

Here is the Amazon page to preorder. Here is the Bookshop page.  You can also preorder from Barnes and Noble. 

Of course, I will still cover the full announcement when the book is released. 

'What the world needs most is a little more tenderness'

 

The above is probably from Rasa. Posted on Bluesky by Klaster Chaosmos, who posts a lot of Discordian/RAW-related material. 

Hilaritas podcast: Prop Anon on 'Quantum Psychology'

 

"Guest host Zach West chats with Gabriel “PropAnon” Kennedy, author of Chapel Perilous: The Life and Thought Crimes of Robert Anton Wilson which he’s now recording as an audiobook. Zach and Gabriel spend most of the episode unpacking Quantum Psychology as Wilson’s attempt to change how we talk, perceive, and argue."

Related links here. 

The new Damien Echols book

Damien Echols has a new book out. As he was one of the writers invited to contribute to the Hilaritas Press edition of Sex, Drugs & Magick, I thought there might be some interest among RAW fans. 

The book is The Alchemy of the Broken Blade: Forging Inner Transformation from the Fire of Experience and it features a forward by Mitch Horowitz. Here is some of the book blurb:

"The Alchemy of the Broken Blade is a field manual for those walking through the fire. It is for anyone who’s been shattered―by trauma; by grief; by the long, slow erosion of purpose in a world that worships distraction; that demands everything and gives little back. The Alchemy of the Broken Blade weaves a path for personal transformation through ritual, discipline, and relentless presence.

"Bestselling author Damien Echols delivers a practical tool kit for personal transformation and healing, not based on theory but on lived experience. He shares a spiritual practice born from extremes: From a wrongful conviction that led to death row, solitary confinement, spiritual breakdown, and resurrection, Echols spent years clawing his way out of despair and into a life he could stand inside again. And through that process, Echols discovered a path―not clean or easy but sacred."

The author's bio begins, "Damien Echols is an American author who first became known as one of three teenagers, the West Memphis Three, wrongly convicted of a triple murder in 1994. DNA evidence secured his release from death row in 2011, after which Echols authored several autobiographical and spiritual/magickal books."

Shakespeare news update

A possible portrait of Christopher Marlowe. (Source). 

Fascinating article from the Guardian: 

"Dramatic new evidence concludes that the play Edward III should be added to William Shakespeare’s canon, and also that it was a major collaboration with his contemporary rival Christopher Marlowe.

"The history was published anonymously in 1596, and it has long been thought that Shakespeare wrote at least a few scenes. However, Dr Rory Loughnane, a leading scholar and co-author of the research, told the Guardian that computerised textual analysis pushed the case 'beyond any reasonable doubt' that the Stratford-born playwright was the principal writer."

Here is a sentence from the article I particularly enjoyed: "The researchers used various forms of computerised linguistic analysis in comparing Edward III with securely attributed works by 10 dramatists active between the late 1580s and the mid-1590s. In one test, 23 segments – 'the lion’s share' – were identified as being written by Shakespeare, while nine segments were classified as Marlowe, whose works include Doctor Faustus."

Shakespeare of course was born on April 23. 

David Lee's assumption, and mine [UPDATED]

The Washington, D.C., headquarters of the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank. Creative Commons photo, source. 

The David Lee essay I referenced yesterday had a sentence that jumped out to me: "Well, judging by nearly everyone (but not all) the people I've ever met on the Discordian scene, I'd assumed anyone handling RAW's legacy would be fairly politically Left, and on board with proper climate science."

The assumption that everyone who is a RAW fan is a leftist seems uninformed. But when I make that remark, I am really pointing a finger at myself.

I got interested in RAW when I was in college. I was in a small group of Libertarians at the University of Oklahoma. We were all big fans of the Illuminatus! trilogy, which came out in the 1970s, when I was in college.

I assumed at the time -- and thought for many years -- that most, or at least very many, RAW fans are libertarians. Launching this blog about 16 years ago taught me this was not true. In Britain particularly (David Lee is British) RAW fans tend to be Labour Party types. There are a few British libertarians, but apparently only a few. In the U.S., there are in fact plenty of RAW fans among libertarians. But it's not clear to me that they outnumber people into magick or Bernie Sanders fans. 

It took me awhile to realize that Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea attracted a wide range of weirdos, rather than just the sort of weirdos I hung out with in college. Do other RAW fans make that same mistake? 

UPDATE: In the comments, Brian Dean says he "strongly doubts" that British RAW fans tend to be Labour Party types, and I acknowledge that if he and other British fans insist upon this, they would know better than I would. 

Monday links

 Michael Johnson on secret compartments in books. 

Dave Lee on Robert Anton Wilson and the yoga of hope, an essay he says was rejected for the upcoming RAW book on magick.  

Libbie Grant on  "The 13 Best Weird Literary Novels."

Edrith on 31 science fiction books to read, novels and collections. 

"Nonetheless, we have to hold our noses and vote for Democratic candidates, at least at the Federal level. The country is safest when the same party doesn’t control the White House and both houses of Congress."

My contribution on the My9albums meme. also see above. Also, Jesse Walker's version. 

Another reading group, 'The Classical Style,' has been indexed

 

For years, we have had online reading groups at this blog, with posts that discuss a book a section at a time  and comments by other readers. In each case, I have put together links for each book, so that if you want to read it later, you can read the blog posts  and the comments. All of those links may be accessed by scrolling down the right side of this page.

I spent some  time today creating a page with links for all of the posts by Eric Wagner about The Classical Style by Charles Rosen, so now that's available, too. 

Here are other online reading  groups, indexed by links: Illuminatus!, Vineland by Thomas Pynchon, Natural Law by RAW (the Hilaritas version), Prometheus Rising by RAW, Nature's God by RAW, The Widow's Son by RAW, The Earth Will Shake by RAW, Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov, The Beethoven Quartets by Joseph Kerman, Email to the Universe by RAW, Cosmic Trigger by RAW, Coincidance by RAW, Masks of the Illuminati by RAW and Quantum Psychology by RAW. Read or re-read one of these books and see what the rest of us had to say about it! Again, look at the right side of the page and scroll down to find the book. 

I probably need to figure out a way to make it easy to find all of these reading groups. Maybe I will put up a list. 

The next online discussion group will be for the Schrödinger's Cat trilogy. That will start in January, using the one-volume edition; more details soon. 

Oz Fritz on Hermetic material in Schrödinger's Cat.

Diagram from the new Oz Fritz blog post

In January, we will start an online discussion group on Schrödinger's Cat. Oz Fritz isn't waiting for the discussion of this seminal RAW work to begin; he has a new blog post up, "Robert Anton Wilson, The Rosy Cross and The Night of Pan," which discusses RAW's use of Cabala in the work. Oz remarks,

"This may seem fanciful to those who don't know Wilson or wish to deny his Cabala. The book Maybe Magick, scheduled for release at the end of this month (October, 2026) has a couple of articles (at least) that illustrate the complexity of his Cabalistic reckoning. Another example can be found in the introduction I wrote for Lion of Light."

And in the same post, Oz calls the trilogy a "Manual of Shamanism."

I'll have details up soon about the planned reading group. 

'Tales of Illuminatus' Kickstarter fulfillment completed [UPDATED]

 

Bobby Campbell has announced that the trade paperback of the first three issues of the Tales of Illuminatus trade paperback of the first three issues  (pictured) and the paper edition of Skeleton Key #1 (Michael Johnson's zine of commentary) have been mailed to people who had them included in their Kickstarter packages.  I'm pretty sure that completes fulfillment for all of the people who supported the project with their pledges for the third issue. UPDATE: See Spookah's comment.