Category: General

“Hey, Zaphod’s just this guy, you know?”

I find it important to avoid hero worship, to always remember that Zaphod’s just this guy. Part of my being a Thelemite is to avoid the lazy trap of becoming a Crowleyite. Uncle Al was very human. Of course, another trap is letting someone’s flaws convince you to disregard everything else about them, see Miles, Lovecraft, Allah (Clarence 13X), Ye, etc. Of course, YMMV, there are artists that I will avoid wholesale because of their stupidity. Looking at you Lydon.

I first read this book first over 30ish years ago while I was tussling about with a Thelemic boy-toy and my beatnik roommate had a copy. I was (and am) well-read and had a foundation in mysticism and meditation, with a healthy (?) skepticism. I was a hungry spiritual seeker and wanted to KNOW dammit! I knew Crowley by reputation, especially from Colin Wilson’s The Occult, yet had not yet given the devil his due.

Needless to say, most of this book went over my head. Oh but I Got IT! I wasn’t sure if Crowley and Thelema were the Way but I was willing to try.

Back to 2021, I have kept Thelema close. I have also become an adult with a disposable income and have started updating my Uncle Al collection. This was a fun re-read, insomnia at 3am (eternal) on a Saturday, I took over the couch and read this all the way through, stopping for coffee and breakfast, smooching the wife et al. Oh, it’s a completely different book than that young man in Queens read so long ago.

A few years ago, in my effort to finally become an adult, I took some advice from Rodney Orpheus’s writing and rewrote the LBRP to my own ethos. This re-read helped me understand why it was working and gave me clues to rework the Hexagram rituals.

All Al’s foibles and pomposity seemed larger, almost like self-mockery, to be treated as blinds.

I look forward to re-reading his rest, although I will take it slow.

A collection of essays based around the Jungian idea of a shadow self, the dark part of all of us.

There is this idea that as we work on ourselves, work to become blessed, enlightened, closer my God(dess) to Thee, we become better people. We correct ourselves to become pure beings of light.

This is obviously a one-sided, zero-sum idea. It is born from the idea that is Us vs. Them, Good vs. Evil, Light vs. Dark. Aristotelian dichotomy fed through Manicheism that somehow went from a proclaimed heresy to current Protestant orthodoxy.

This essays in the book discuss, from various points of view, the dark shadowy parts of our nature, from the deeply personal to our issues as a nation.

I’ve read this once so far, sitting serving on a Grand Jury during the government shutdown. I wasn’t that impressed at the time but the concept has kept with me. Sure, it is in part because we are watching America simultaneously confront and celebrate its Shadow self. Watching grown men punch teenagers in the face for asking that they wear a mask, racist vigilantes condoned on network television, children dying in cages, and large aspects of our democracy dismantled.

It will be a while before I can come back to this book objectively, if ever, through no fault of its own.

Just finished Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by P.K.Dick for the first time. One of his more solid novels.

The theme of empathy is threaded throughout, being the main difference between humans and the Nexus 6 androids. The androids at one point declare that empathy is a lie, a myth that humans perpetuate to oppress them.

It is not difficult to look at this through eyes accustomed to our modern circumstances. We’ve all seen the arguments about masks. My wife and I watched the PBS interview with Dr, Fauci and one of the questions he was asked was about anti-vaxxers. There is a concerted effort to quash empathetic action so the privileged are not inconvenienced.

This got me thinking about the nature vs. nurture. Some humans, eg. sociopaths, psychopaths, the deeply autistic, are born without empathy, while others are programmed by propaganda. Ultimately this what the Black Lives Matter is in essence, a cry for empathy.

I have been thinking a lot of the various memes that Roald Dahl created with Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. They are referenced often, probably more than the old favorite The Wizard of Oz.

My wife and I have been steadily making our way through the multitude of seasons of the Amazing Race. There is Golden Gnome ticket in one season, another a contestant compares a ballon ride to the Glass Elevator bursting through the top of the factory.

A random episode of Travel Man, with my hero Richard Ayoade. They are about to climb up a medieval tower, and the guest references the same Glass Elevator.

Of course, The Office episode with the Golden Ticket in the paper.

In the first episode of the show Hannibal, the analogy of the golden ticket is used to describe what a serial killer is looking for in his victims, that spark of life that for a moment satisfies his desires. It is properly Qabalalistic interpretation, where we must dive from Malkuth into the Tunnels of Set, seeking out the sparks of light lost at the Tzimtzum, when the retreat of Ain Soph from the world shattered the vessels and scattered the light.

Most of the references of course are made from a merely popular culture level, informed by the Gene Hackman movie and possibly the Depp/Burton version. I’m not sure, I tend to be removed from the popular and cinema-informed.