DEEP SCRATCH

Category: Robert Anton Wilson

  • The Jumping Jesus Singularity

    Thanks to Bobby Campbell for bringing this into my head. RAW on his jumping Jesus Hypothesis with some great visual accompanyment.

  • How drugs helped invent the Internet

    Jason Silva seems to me to be a smart motherfucker who’s touching on a large chunk of ‘the tale of the tribe’ and a large part of RAW’s interests: linguistics, life extension, computers and neural-networks, philosophy and most importantly, i think, Techno-Optimism, as we enter 2012.
    Fresh!
    –Steve fly.

    “The phrase that leaped to mind when I first saw Jason was ‘existential jazz’; like a trumpet player or modern-day digital Mingus, he jams, riffs and rhapsodizes through a tumbling thicket of ideas with such a sharp and vital alacrity that it can take the breath away. He’s a modern performance philosopher, reviving the vibe of Tim Leary and Buckminster Fuller and revivifying the dialogue that they started decades ago.–http://thisisjasonsilva.com/reviews/

  • On the run up to the year 2012 (and The tale of the tribe)


    On the run up to the year 2012. by Steven ‘Fly Agaric 23’ Pratt.

    While the domesticated primates enter the Gregorian year 2012, I would like to share some of my thoughts on interpreting the ‘2012’ phenomena , and with a focus upon Bloomsday (16th June, the single day of James Joyce’s novel Ulysses) opposed to Doomsday (the end of humanity and planet earth as we know it). Most but not all of my observations today are highly influenced by the work of Mark Pesce and his conception of the next billion seconds (roughly a giga-second or 30 years) spanning from 1995-2025. Mark’s species of ‘2012’ phenomena, if you like, does not involve any galactic alignments or geological earth shifts, or the return of the space gods it simply involves the facts surrounding humanities collective decent into novelty (connectivity) and proposes answers to the question ‘what happens after we’re all connected?’ (please forgive any miss-interpretations and blunders I may have made in recycling some of Mark’s innovative study).

    Well I interpret what happens after we’re all connected based in part on Mark’s scholarly answers, to follow something along the lines of…your connectivity and your network defines you, and if you are not sharing or prepared to be shared then you may be made obsolete by some superior shared intelligence, wither, and die off quickly.

    With a ‘biological meaning’ concerning the human brain body nervous system: a human health-knowledge network of shared wisdom in real space-time, to the more abstract ‘software meaning’ concerning globalised light-speed computer networks and the resulting tendency for mash-upable, sharable, and free media to flourish, Mark approaches an almost Hermetic principle for the digital age echoing that which is as above, as that which is below. To remove the up/down two valued duality it might make sense to replace up and down with Software and Hardware, to produce that which is software, as that which is hardware, somewhat exstinguishing the distinction between the two by showing their unity and ‘mash-upable-ness’, I am here reminded of Terence Mckenna’s clever inverse of the old saying ‘The flesh made word’ into ‘The word made flesh’, in describing the technological singularity possibly taking place during 2012 and beyond.

    Today the idea of the ‘word made flesh’ could be ascribed to transhumanism and the impact that ‘information processing or information theory’ reflect on the human genome, neuro-psychology and thousands of other fields that are certainly radically and utterly transformed by the new ‘digital word’ or program made flesh. In this model the network provides the essential bridge between worlds, the vital connection between the two or more opposing forces, resolving them to the satisfaction of the individual, as defined by the group or connected network.

    I see a similar thread of openness and sharability and mash-up-able-ness in the methods and innovations developed by those critters whom Dr. Robert Anton Wilson listed as inspirations and those he recommended attentive study of, in particular the heretics listed in his ‘tale of the tribe’ which consists of approximately Twelve historical geniuses who have had a long lasting positive impact on humanity, and on Bob; and who may still yet emerge like Dracula from the grave to reposes culture in 2012? At least I get excited the more I look into these characters and into Bob’s writings upon them and why I think they are important for all around the world humanity in 2012.

    If this be a conspiracy theory so mote it be. Just consider the efforts to supress and keep out of print so many of the texts and source works cited before the age of bit torrent and pirate bay. The burning of Joyce’s books, and burning of Giordano’s body, the imprisonment of Ezra Pound, the ‘top secret privacy’ assigned to some of Shannon and Weiner’s early papers, the general harassment of Giambattista Vico, Freiderich Nietzche, and Orson Welles, and the ‘crazy stick’ poked at Marshal McLuahan, Joyce, Pound and even ‘Wilson’ himself, that damned old crank’ as he often referred to himself in that somewhat Irish humour of self-mockery. Praise Bob!

    So the conspiracy, if there must be ONE in this article takes into account that the most suppressive and violent censors throughout history, generally authoritarian systems of Church and State. (remember that the first paragraph of Joyce’s Ulysses starts with the word ‘Stately’ and ends with ‘crossed’ to symbolize State and Church crossed, as Bob liked to point out to his readers.) What we see in the current 2011, OCCUPY (world around peaceful revolution of economic intelligence and shared wisdom) echoes through Wilson’s works in the form of writings on Benjamin Tucker, Silvio Gessell, Lysander Spooner, Buckminster Fuller, Marx (and the brothers Marx) and Ezra Pound. Therefore the study of ‘the tale of the tribe’ can give great footholds and anchors for the Occupy movement to expand and feed on nutritious like-minded research into the ‘open source consciousness’ all-around-the-world movement.

    Perhaps if the ‘decentralized cosmology’ of Giordano Bruno were applied to the Mayan cosmology and 2012 calendar conundrum we might begin to see that we are each to our own calendar?, above as so below, and that ‘every man and every women is a star. Or, that in a decentralized cosmology with no absolute centre anywhere at all at all, it follows that the self-centred idea of a single paradigm shift on a single day, on a single typical G-star orbiting the sun in a galaxy among hundreds of Billions seems just slightly, to repeat the phrase, self-centred. So maybe the galactic alignment is up to where you place yourself and the geological shifts are within your body, the super cosmic overmind inside your head? Let’s no forget however that alongside his ‘decentralized Universe’ Giordano Bruno accomplished great innovations in Kabbalistic science experiments, magical programing languages and magical devices (memory wheels, alphabet wheels, symbol systems) all of which can greatly improve the art of protest and IMPACT at any Occupy events.

    McLuhan, like Fuller and like Pound might have us question ‘what is money and how is it?’ How did it get that way, and a deeper somewhat metaphysical look into the chain of values that lead to money, the relationship between credit and money etc., and right now…“No people ignorant of the nature of money can now maintain its rights, let alone attaining or holding to sovereignty. We have in our time two parties: the infamous, which tries to sabotage economic knowledge; the intelligent, which demands full light on the issue of coin, paper means of immediate exchange, and of credit. Credit, from this angle, becomes the privilege of delaying compensation.”—Ezra Pound, ARABIA DESERTA, Guide to Kulchur, pg. 271.

    I have found that like Wilson’s writing on so many varied subjects, McLuhan, Fuller and Pound can radically alter your perception of ‘what is money’ by raising varied and good questions seemingly ‘ignored by the mainstream economists and journalists’ up until only quite recently 2009. Wilson would home in on these grey areas of the counter culture, like alternative economics and alternative systems of distribution, chains of value, intelligence and transparency and weave them into both his fiction (maybe the most scientific of science fiction writers) and in particular into his non-fiction. Hunt em’ down and source out the sources, a treasure trove of workable methods and principles, not least, for example in Bucky’s ‘synergetics’ ‘dymaxion geometry’ and ‘Tesegrity geometry’ lie scattered among Lovecraft’s letters, Einstein’s dreams and Goofy’s nighmares to interpret how you will. READ HIM!

    “It is action at a distance, both in space and in time. In a highly literate fragmented society, “Time is money,” and money is the store of other people’s time and effort.”—Marshal McLuhan, Money: The poor man’s credit card, Understanding Media, pg. 147.

    To return to Mark Pesce and hypereconomics, we can now see the real impact of technology on peoples in real time, making Bucky’s ephemeralization and McLuhan’s Global Village apparent facts of the process of living on earth in 2011.

    Now we have the social networks to use as a parallel to the Global Village imagined out of thin air by McLuhan 50 years or so ago, and we have nano-technology and invisible light-speed information networks crossing the entire planet, imagined by Bucky to bring about an individual revolution of intelligence, as in the open source movement, sharing the tools and methods to then use them to build more tools and more sharable methods (maps, instructions, languages, blueprints).

    McLuahn and Bucky were right on many observations and predictions about the future of technology and how we be living today socially, psychologically, technologically, but Mark Pesce presents detailed new books and fresh video lectures taking these ideas, by way of working examples from the real world, into 2012 and beyond, combining the knowledge and confidence to make it real as Bob made it real in his own literary synthesis, and helped define WHY we should also go back and read the sources and roots of these innovations in sharing and ‘open source consciousness’.

    Bob specialized in this field and has a lifetime spent digging up and translating for those that follow the obscure bridges and links between multiple revolutionary innovations and their place in popular culture, Bob’s open source interests ranged from traditional computer software, political science and currency’s to open source Theology, Magick and Neuro-linguistic programing and open source psychology, and dipping beyond into open source nanotechnology and open source genetic engineering I imagine. Perhaps even contemplating open source atomic reactors for kicks?

    “Of course, my position is based on the denial that money does store wealth. I think it’s a semantic hallucination, the verbal equivalent of an optical illusion, to speak at all of money containing or storing wealth. Such thinking should have gone out with phlogiston theory. The symbol is not the referent; the map is not the territory. Money symbolizes wealth, as words symbolize things, and that’s all. The delusions that money contains wealth is the mechanism by which the credit monopoly hof study. as gained a stranglehold on the entire economy. As Colonel Greene pointed out in Mutual Banking, all the money could disappear tomorrow morning and the wealth of the planet would remain the same. However, if the wealth disappeared — if squinks from the Pink Dimension dragged it off to null-space or something — the money would be worth nothing. –Robert Anton Wilson, Illuminating Discord Interview, 1976. 

    And remember that if your research into the tale of the tribe starts to get a little stale and you feel lost in Korzybski’s giant tome or Joyce’s Wake, or staring at Shannon’s equations in a daze don’t be afraid to grab some stickers, a pen or some paint and go out into the wilderness and connect with your environment in a way that cannot be mistaken as vandalism but viewed as Art, funny, subtle, well placed and meaningful, and from the right place. Start a study group to begin looking into some of these characters and how they resonate with our current affairs on planet earth, make music, write, exorcise, smile, hug, love and live fully awake in 2011 and 2012. Get yourself connected. The writings on the wall, gotta’ get yourself connected, stumble you might fall.”

    –Steven ‘Fly Agaric 23’ Pratt.

  • Twenty RAW quotes for 2011

    ALL QUOTES FROM DR. ROBERT  ANTON WILSON.
    DO NOT ADJUST YOUR MIND
    IT IS REALITY THAT IS MALFUNCTIONING—TSOG
    Bad critics judge a work of art by comparing it to preexisting theories. They always go wrong when confronted with a masterpiece, because masterpieces make their own rules.—Illuminati Papers, pg. 12.
    Ez, McLuhan and associates reprinted Fenollosa’s “The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry ” As part of their Square Dollar Series. It Anticipates some formulations of General Semantics and NLP.–Recorsi
    Little Tony was sitting on a park bench munching on one candy bar after another.
    After the 6th candy bar, a man on the bench across from him said,
    “Son, you know eating all that candy isn’t good for you. It will give
    you acne, rot your teeth, and make you fat.”
    Little Tony replied, “My grandfather lived to be 107 years old.”
    The man asked, “Did your grandfather eat 6 candy bars at a time?”
    Little Tony answered, “No, he minded his own fucking business.–Guns and Dope Party.

    Just as a hologram is so structured that each part contains the whole, Finnegans Wake is structured in puns and synchronicities that “contain” and reflect each other, creating the closest approximation of an infinite regress ever achieved in any art-form.–Coincidance.

    Green plants, alive, like
    the stone Buddha — rock solid –
    — as twilight descends.
    In 2012, if the McKenna scenario is right, comes Omega point.–Cosmic Trigger, pg. 223.
    What underlies the accelerations noted by Henry Adams and Korzybski is nowadays known as the selection of negentropy out of stochastic processes. Our understanding of this is chiefly due to almost-simultaneous discoveries (1946-48) by quantum physicist Erwin Schrodinger, mathematician Norbert Weiner and an electronics-communication expert at Bell Laboratories, Claude Shannon.–Prometheus Rising, page 110.
    Like Joyce, Vico believed that poetry arose out of creative etymology (“incorrect etymology,” in Academese). Like Joyce–and also Whorf and Korzybski–Vico believed a radical change in language could alter our perceived reality tunnels.–Coincidance, Pg. 22.
    I distinguish between information—all that humans can check by experience—as distinct from noise—those “things” (or non-things, or nothings) that thye can only make noises or chatter about.—Another faith-based organization, TSOG, pg 89.
    The two philosophers most frequently mentioned in the Wake, Nicholas of Cusa and Bruno of Nola, taught a dialectic of resolution of opposites. Joseph Needham in his monumental Science and Civilization in China, repeatedly mentions both Bruno and Nicholas as the only two Occidental philosophers before Liebnitz to have a basically Taoist outlook.–Joyce and Daoism.
    Conspiracy is just another name for coalition.–The Historical Illuminatus.
    New bud on the vine:
    But three thousand miles due East
    Wall Street still smolders–Haiku

    R. Buckminster Fuller, in his Synergetic-Energetic Geometry, which he claims is the “co-ordinate system of the Universe,” reduces all phenomena to geometric-energetic constructs based on the tetrahedron (4-sided), the octet truss (8-sided) and the coupler (8-faceted with 24 phases). Fuller argues specifically that the 8-face, 24-phase coupler underlies the 8-fold division of the chemical elements on the Mendeleyev Periodic Table. –Octave of Energy, Cosmic Trigger.

    Every government that employs secret-police agencies must grow more insecure, not more secure, as the strength, versatility and power of the secret police grows.—Celine’s Laws, Illuminati Papers.

    Two of the giants of quantum math, Schrödinger and Dirac, both spent time at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Dublin. Schrödinger, in fact, wrote his most important nonmathemetical book there — What Is Life? [1948], in which he defined life as a function of negative entropy. This thought seemed so radical and far-out that nobody began to grasp it until Wiener and Shannon showed that information also behaves like negative entropy. Information = that part of a message you didn’t expect; the unpredictable part.–Celtic Roots of Quantum Theory (essay)

    Like marijuana, a Wellsian long shot creates an information overload and provokes you to enlarge your reality-tunnel to accommodate it.—An Information Rich environment, Cosmic Trigger III. Pg. 88
    I think it’s time to abolish politicians entirely and let everybody participate in self-government via internet. We needed ‘representatives’ in the 18th century because we couldn’t all go to Washington. Meanwhile, times changed and our ‘representatives’ have sold us out to the corporations, as we in the majority party all agree, whatever our differences in other matters. And we don’t need ‘representatives’ anymore; we have the Net technology to represent ourselves.—TSOG. Pg 162
    In the present context, Korzybski’s mathematized language structures, like the Fenollosa/Pound emphasis on Chinese ideogram helps us perceive/conceive Internet in alternative ways, not possible for those restricted to Indo-European semantic structures.–Recorsi.
    Sweet! Sweet!” sings a bird–
    Old Ez in Virginia
    Heard one cry “Tulip!–Haiku

  • Alice In Amrita-Land Dodgson

    Alice in Amanita Land?

    “Alice Pleasence Liddel or ALP, “Finnegan said simply, “is one aspect of Anna Livia Plurabelle or ALP, the superwomen who contains all women, in Joyce’s Finnegans Wake.”

    “Oh,” I said. It seemed the only adequate comment.

    “I have wondered, “de Selby went on, “if one can equate APL with ALP on cabalistic grounds, since both equal 111, what of PLA? But that is an irrelevance, i’ve decided. What is important is that in 1932 not only did Alice P. Liddell and John S. Joyce die, but the atom was split for the first time, and the 92nd chemical element was discovered–the last natural element, you see. For the first time in history, humanity had access to the energy of the stars and possessed a full catalog of the basic building blocks of the universe.“ – Robert Anton Wilson, The Horror of Howth Hill, email to the universe.
     http://acrillic.blogspot.com/2008/01/alp-111-and-raws-wake.html

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_in_Wonderland

    “Be who,
    farther potential? and so wider but we grisly old Sykos who have
    done our unsmiling bit on ‘alices, when they were yung and
    easily freudened, in the penumbra of the procuring room and
    what oracular comepression we have had apply to them! —James Joyce, Finnegans Wake, Pg 115.

  • The Tale of the ‘Dog’ Tribe

    The Tale of the Dogon?
    By Steve ‘fly agaric 23’ Pratt, June 21st 2010. Amsterdam

    “First you were Nomad, next you were Namar, now you’re Numah and it’s soon you’ll be Nomon. –James Joyce, FW, pg. 374.

    Introduction.
    After another 24 hours of reflection on my writing and ideas blogged here, how they were formulated, where they came from, and how much ‘value’ they have, how much ‘truth? I have been cast on a whirlwind journey through memories and some forgotten texts, and landed myself in the thick of the Sirius mystery, Cosmic Trigger, Finnegans Wake and the ‘Space’ philosophy and music of SUN RA.

    This blog is my attempt to track my thoughts and ideas as they grow, and here I’m writing an introduction to navigate and update my ideas. It may help to know that I first wrote out 3000 words describing my thoughts and experiences on the Summer Solstice, and then went back into some reference books and web searching to add exhibits to my thoughts.

    This process of sourcing out particular areas of interest ‘words’ and ‘phrases’ resulted in a massive influx of new directions and links between my original subject matter. I new of places that I wanted to search because of the words, but the extra information surrounding these investigative nodes, the page numbers and the ‘illustrations’ help to waft my initial sparks, and fan them–like bellows–into a firey synthesis. –Steve fly, 22nd June, 2010. 2.00P.M

    Roots Festival Encounters of the Tuvan kind

    Yesterday, 20th June 2010; I stepped outside my front door into the roots festival held just a few meters away from where I live in Oosterpark Amsterdam. I did not plan going to the festival and more or less stumbled upon the band HANGGAI soundchecking while strolling with a friend around the park, early on in the day. I stuck around for their full performance and this led to a longest day epiphany for me. Triggering a flurry of ideas and connections between my favourite things. Let me try to explain.

    When I lived in San Francisco I was fortunate to be introduced to Tuvan music and culture from two sources, the first was via a close friend describing the enduring story behind ‘Ghengis Blues: a collaborative album between an American Bluesman and a Tuvan throat singer, the high pitched part of the ‘throat singing’ struck my memory nodes, evoking the Massive Attack tune, Karmacoma.

    The second source of my initial interest in Tuvan throat singing and music was Via the great 20th century scientific genius: Richard Feynman, close friends and work associates of mine were friends with Feyman, and I picked up on the ‘Tuvan’ musical interests of his, somewhat. He played drums and had a flare for art, music and poetry that I found attractive for a nanotechnologist and Nobel Prize winning scientist.

    My only other encounter with Tuvan throat singing, or Tuvan anything, since my trip to America ten years ago, was just a month back at the ‘Firey Tongues’ festival, held at the beautiful T.A.Z called Ruigoord. Where I believe that along with a stunning ‘Tuvan Throat singing’ solo performance there was a reading from a newly translated ‘text’ from Tuva, as usual I did not pay full attention to that performance, but was instantly struck by the ‘Tuvan’ meme bouncing back into my mind, that got me to thinking and talking a little about ‘Ghengis Blues’ and Richard Feynman and my experiences.

    Only a matter of hours ago I was once again confronted with that unmistakable sound of ‘Throat singing’ like a whistle into phase shift resulting in an almost electronic ‘ static’ in the air. The band HANGGAI played a full array of instruments, drums, guitar, bass, flute, vocals and various other stringed instruments I am unfamiliar with.

    During the performance I noticed a lady dancing, spinning, leaping and twirling around to the music, who I thought was moving with the music just perfectly, and made me smile, made me think and wish I would have the confidence to get up and dance like that in the early afternoon. When the show came to a close I sat under the Big Top tent, watching the stage and the festival smiles, taking in the good vibes. The dancing lady was close by with her friends and so I said ‘thankyou for dancing and the good vibes’. She kindly then began to explain a little about Tuvan music to me, and that she was from Mali, I did my Ghenghis Feyman rap, and we were sharing our admiration for ‘Tuva’ and ‘Nepal’ and indigenous music in general I suppose.

    After a few minutes of conversation I learn that the lady I am talking with was the wife of the great Ali Farka Toure’ (1939-2006) and the people she is with are some of her family, her words suddenly take on an extra richness and ‘truth’ in describing Mali, and the beauty of ‘travel’. But alas, after a few moments we were swept back into the festival and unable to continue our conversation, and unfortunately unable to catch her name, but ‘Ali Farka Toure’ sure stuck with me, I am familiar with his music in part from playing and spending time with Guitarist Fareed Haque of Garaj Mahal, who incorporates much West African music into his playing, and invariably some critters surrounding Fareed and the band turned me onto Ali Farka Toure’.

    I did not get chance to launch into my Garaj Mahal rap, or any other rap, and due to this my mind was reeling, thinking I must write, write this out out here in a blog as an introduction to the following synthesis between areas of my ongoing research and study into Myth, Magic and Music.

    Shortly after leaving the show I sat alone on a bench rolled a joint and started to read the book I grabbed off the shelf yestermorn’ for any reading opportunities that present themselves: “The Way Of The Sacred by Sir Francis Huxley. Who I once heard lecture on indigenous knowledge and culture at the Prophets Conference, Santa Fe, Ten years ago. While flipping through the book I stumbled upon Dogon, and suddenly right there where I was sitting it all came together in a flash.

    Finnegans Wake and the Dogon Nommo Cosmic Trigger fired by Sun Ra and His Intergalactic Arkestra.

    (*F26*)I forget to) bolt the thor. Auden. Wasn’t it just divining that dog of a dag –James Joyce, FW, pg. 279

    Ah, well not yet, I would like to take more caution when entering into these waters, and try to outline ‘why’ the things I write about here are meaningful to me and ‘why’ I feel they are meaningful and worth communicating to others.

    I have read Cosmic Trigger by Robert Anton Wilson as recently as 2009, and several times before that, and I read Finnegans Wake almost daily, and often aloud. Sun Ra and his Arketra can be found throughout my DJ sets from over the last twelve years, and since being fortunate to build a close friendship with Sun Ra scholar and associate; John Sinclair, I’ve taken on an extra literary, cultural and multimedia appreciation of Sun Ra and got into a good chunk of his prolific output as composer, arranger, bandleader, poet and visionary futurist.

    “Their cosmology is one of the most complicated ever to be recorded in print, and it begins, as does the Hindu cosmogony, with an egg—the Egg of Amma, the name Amma signifying God and meaning “to hold tight,” “to arrange.” –Sir Francis Huxley, The Way Of The Sacred, pg. 94.

    James Joyce, Robert Anton Wilson and Sun Ra are arguably complex individuals of a special genius, and as three individuals I am somewhat familiar with I would like to propose a synthesis of these three artists in the form of a short story. And along the way use extensive footnotes and hyperlinks to exploit some of their ideas, while sticking with my own ‘synchronistic’ encounters and experiments as guides to what to include and what to…

    Dogon.

    “This stone is an ark because it is the foundation stone on which the earth is created. It has its own number, 60, the number of years that elapse between celebrations of the Dogon foundation ceremony. Upon it, in Dogon cosmology, the House of Amma descends as a granary and as a spinning whorl. The granary has a round base and a square top, associated with the numbers four and six respectively. It is the mirror image of its heavenly prototype, which has a square base and a round top. This reversal, in which the inside also becomes the outside, takes place during the descent, which is made down the rainbow, in a sevenfold spiral. Here the spinning whorl enters the Dogon picture. –Sir Francis Huxley, The Way of The Sacred, Pg 166.

    The Dogon are a West African culture with a remarkably refined and celebrated history, mythology, astrology and culture in the west that has led some researchers to propose strong cases backed up by various evidence suggesting that they were visited by advanced beings or that they contacted other intelligences and managed to preserve some of this special advanced knowledge in their language, culture and rituals.

    When I visited Berkeley in 2000 AD, I attended an unforgettable and important conference held in the Presidio called Planetworkers: Information technology and Global Ecology. This event was a kind of nodal point for me, a place where I witnessed presentations and presenters that were ahead of their time, I thought, folks like Bruce Sterling, Mark Pesce, Peter Russel, Ralph Abraham, Erik Davis and many more of that genius calibre, a special combination of West Coast intellectual optimism and techno-shamanism. Terence Mckenna was scheduled to be at Planetworkers 2000 but had died only weeks earlier, his life and work were acknowledged and celebrated at the conference that, thankfully made space for the psychedelic components to ‘consciousness’ research and psychedelic studies. Always a good thing I think, especially when combined with intellectual genius and cutting edge technology, such as ‘the world wide web’.

    Between presentations were a selection of music al offerings, some of which featured a Bass player called Kai Eckhardt who I shared a conversation with in the foyer only to discover that he was playing a show later that week with a pianist called Jack Perla, who’s name and playing I knew from my collaborative musical partner from back home in Wolverhampton called Surinder Sandhu, who had recently worked with Jack. This cool encounter with Kai led me to the show and a meeting with Jack, and later being invited to Kai’s studio, where I met thunderous drummer ‘Alan Hertz’ and Keyboard player and composer Paul Godwin, who had an electronic outfit called DOGON.

    “Because of their preoccupations with the doubleness of things, the Dogon have two signs for each of the four elements. –Sir Francis Huxley, The Way Of The Sacred. pg. 94.

    I was familiar with the name Dogon from reading Cosmic Trigger and this mini little synchronicity burnt into my memory right there. I was invited back to Kai’s studio shortly afterwards to perform with Paul Godwin, Rhiannon and Kai in his ‘Modern Fairy Tale’ spoken word musical opera, and thereafter to perform in many other settings with the great Kai Eckhardt, leading to me playing over fifty shows with Garaj Mahal and recording on their first two studio albums: Mondo Garaj and Blueberry Cave.

    In an email correspondence with Mark Pesce last week I mentioned ‘Dogon’ and Paul Godwin, who Mark had also collaborated with on a music related project, in the context of remembering the Planetworkers Conference, where Mark gave a speech titled “The Real World”.


    Dogon Nommo Hemphill and Roach.

    The above sketches out some of the thoughts I was having yesterday while reading Francis Huxley on the Dogon, sitting in Oosterpark, minutes after a remarkable conversation and musical performance that somewhat helped me tune in the West African ‘Dogon’ tribe in Huxley’s book that has led to my current state of excitement in revisiting the ‘Dogon’ tales in 2010, using both ‘Finnegans Wake’ and the music and art performance of Sun Ra and his Arkestra, as contextual ‘spaces’ and ‘times’ for this new analysis, and a basis for my own interpretations of the data.

    Comet Kahoutek

    A somewhat related theme to the ‘Dogon Mystery’ by way of Cosmic Trigger is the fly by of the comet Kahoutek in 1973 that ties into both the ‘Starseed transmissions’ transmitted by Dr. Timothy Leary from Folsom Prison and with Sun Ra who performed a special concert for the Comet on December 12, 1973. ‘Concert for the Comet Kahoutek’ was the first Sun Ra disk I bought in approx. 1998, in part due to the ‘Starseed’ connection to the Comet.


    Kosmic Trigger.


    “Have real honest to god extraterrestrials from Sirius been meddling in the affairs of this backward planet? – Robert Anton Wislon, CT, pg, 184.

    I should emphasize the impact this book had on me twelve years ago, in my attempt here to record my state of mind and reason back then, when building ‘fly agaric 23’ and navigating my way through the works of RAW and Terence Mckenna, continuing my experimental, Jazz inflected musical journey as a Drummer and DJ, intent on including and sharing some of the wisdom I perceived within these works; the drive that led me to journey to the US and study with Dr. Wilson.

    Like Robert Anton Wilson, the Dogon tribe of West Africa demonstrate an interest in the Sirius double/triple? star system. “Sirius is important to you” and “something about time, the future and infinity” are words that Dr. Wilson saw written on a Black Board by a man with a long white beard, like Mr. Natural (or Dr. John Dee) in an important vision/dream he wrestled into his waking life and book, due in part to the fact that he had this dream/vision on July 23rd 1973. Sirius, the Dogon tribe and the 23 enigma collide or give birth at this point in RAW’s life, experimenting with Astral Projection, Magick and psychedelics and experiencing contact, success and breakthroughs in these areas of Occult research and shared feedback.

    Finnegans Nommo

    Through the cycle of Osiris, Isis plays a number of important roles; she is mother, faithful wife, sister-lover, steadfast widow. The goddess had thousands of names, and many shapes; she might be a divine cow, a bird, or even the star Sothis (Sirius). Her manifest nature is shown at one point in FW as several of these forms, and the search for the parts of Osiris is suggested simultaneously, as a questing crone runs to “sothisfeige her cowrieosity” (14.02). –Mark L. Troy. –http://www.trentu.ca/faculty/jjoyce/mummeries/troybook.htm

    So what are the Dogon Tribe all about and why are they so important to us today, what can we learn from the wisdom they have shared, how does it relate to our present situation on earth? These more objective questions are best tackled by invoking my favourite book and mighty not-so-secret secret weapon in the war on some drugs: Finnegans Wake.

    It seems that much of the great learning and wisdom gathered by the Dogon can be best distinguished by its relationship to modern ideas, scientific findings, cosmological models, BIG uestions about a singularity, self and becoming, causality, prophecy, the future of humanity and planet earth, the cosmos, spacetime and beyond.

    While reading Sir Francis Huxley describe the intricacies and complex ideas of the Dogon I thought of the ‘resolution of opposites’ at work in Finnegans Wake, and in a flash saw every piece of symbolism Huxley mentioned in Joyce’s masterpiece, as if it were itself a tale of the Nommo tribe, or some extraterrestrial multilingual intelligence guiding us into the future of hypertext and hyperculture. Lo.

    Sun Ra and Sirius

    It seems likely to me that amidst Sun Ra’s extensive literary study into African and world folklore and mythology he came across the practices and traditions of the Dogon tribe. And I imagine would have latched onto some of the themes of possible extraterrestrial contact, but more importantly forwarded, retranslated and represented the music, dance, art and culture of these tribes, Sun Ra performed and recorded music. Something that unfortunately most other extraterrestrial theorists overlook as a means of communication with ‘higher’ beings, if you like to use the ‘higher’ label.

    Make it Knu!

    The most economical explanation for all of this seems to be that an Earth-Sirius communication has occurred, at least once, probably several times. –RAW. CT, 1pg. 89.

    That ‘they’ or ‘it’ travel by way of music seems a given to me personally, if you like to adopt a pretty simple model for extraterrestrial intelligence and communication. Yet, we must agree that any advanced form of communication would work throughout all of our recognized mediums and our spectrum of energy waves. But music, music seems like an ancient and relatively simple mode of two-way communication with ‘it’. Maybe it’s better to call ‘it’ hyper-intelligence’ and maybe at this stage propose that ‘it’ maybe ubiquitous throughout spacetime.

    The music and ‘it’ tend to reveal each other on occasion, I think, and something about some music in the Jazz idiom seems to somehow scramble time & space in a way reminiscent of ‘hyperintelligence’ a glimpse into the fututure-presnet-pist side, where everything changes in an instant, and new worlds open up and with them new possibilities, new conversations, new languages and new ideas. Make it Knu!

    ET Net

    Mark Pesce recently exposed the genius of James Joyce and in particular his book Finnegans Wake, and illustrates how Joyce co-opted the future in some sense, co-inventing ‘hypertext’ before programmable computers and co-ordinating some as yet unknown and undefined ‘Hyperintelligence’ into his book, that has managed to withstand the void of literature created by html Hypertext, internet and twitter. I have collaborated on further illustrating his writing.

    To my knowledge Joyce did not report any extraterrestrial experiences in the explicit sense that both RAW and Sun Ra did, ‘RA’ claiming his first encounter in 1936 went as follows:

    … my whole body changed into something else. I could see through myself. And I went up … I wasn’t in human form … I landed on a planet that I identified as Saturn … they teleported me and I was down on [a] stage with them. They wanted to talk with me. They had one little antenna on each ear. A little antenna over each eye. They talked to me. They told me to stop [attending college] because there was going to be great trouble in schools … the world was going into complete chaos … I would speak [through music], and the world would listen. That’s what they told me. –Szwed, John F. (August 21, 1998). Space Is the Place: The Lives and Times of Sun Ra.

    However, anybody who claims that Joyce did not have an Extraterrestrial experience seems to have missed the point of Finnegans Wake, that for me qualifies as a totally ‘alien’ and certifiably advanced language and/or code. Precisely the kind of thing an advanced civilization would want to communicate to earthly humanity: the wonder and epiphany at the interconnectedness of all things.

    For me James Joyce’s FW and the music of Sun Ra and his Arkestra are similar shaped vehicles of extraterrestrial communication, but whereas the music of Sun Ra is explicit and enters through the eye and ear world, Joyce reverses the process somewhat, ringing and jangling songs and tunes, spells and proverbs from dozens of languages, all sensed in the head-space, but with a strange sense of timelessness and transcendence of space, when ‘non-simultaneously apprehended’ with the human eye; jumping about a jungle of earthly hyperintelligence and hilaritas, condensed into nodal clusters of meaning and hyper-connectivity, ringing many bells and scattering connections allwayswords.

    SUN RAW

    “I might mention that Arthur Young, founder of the Institute for the study of consciousness, was the one who originally turned Robert Temple on to the idea of trying to find out how the Dogon tribe knew so much about the dark companion of Sirius. And Arthur Young, in turn, had first heard of this tribal lore from Harry Smith, a film maker who claims to be the son of Aleister Crowley…) –Saul Paul Sirag, CT, pg. 242.

    I am not sure if RAW listened to Sun Ra, but it stand a good chance due to telling me he liked Charlie Parker, Mahler, Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane, Beethoven and Miles Davis, in particular. And Robert first got turned onto the debil’ weed at a Modern Jazz Quintet show, so RAW was certainly Hip to Bebop and jazz, and with his perchance for ‘Classical’ music too one would imagine Big Band Jazz and the sounds of Sun Ra might tickle his fancy.

    Who knows, but I want to show here how the music of Sun Ra links directly into RAWs chapter in Cosmic Trigger detailing Dr. Timothy Leary’s experience with extraterrestrial intelligence and the comet Kahoutek earyh flyby in 1973, an event I chose to magnify here as it had a significant ‘woo woo’ effect on me when I first read Cosmic Trigger and encountered the Sirius Mystery. Nonetheless I like to think that RAW might enjoy a SUN RAW comparative essay with a healthy dose of Finnegans Wake stirred in.

    For more on this please see my essay ‘The Myth Art and Music of Sun Ra’ (Headpress, 2010)

    Back To Earth Frontear.

    “The Dogon believe that everyone is born with eight seeds stored within the collarbones, four coming from the mother’s line and four from the father’s—a prototype, in symbolic terms of modern genetic theory. –Sir Francis Huxley, The Way Of The Sacred, Pg. 166.

    Although the ‘outer space’ theme may often be criticised as leaving planet earth and humanity behind in an escapist trip to the stars, yet on the contrary I will show how the outer space theme in the works of Sun Ra, RAW and James Joyce, or the ‘cosmological’ complexity and ‘chaos’ often inherent in their works transmits a message for earth people, right here right now, that this ‘it’ or ‘hyperintelligence’ exists everywhere and nowhere, invisible and staring us straight in the face, neither here nor there but with us. No we are not alone in the Universe, on any level, we are hyperconnected throughout time and space, on many levels, if we wish to tune into them. Tune in, remember, and find the other worlds?

    Solstice 2010

    “by the tremours of Thundery and Ulerin’s dogstar, you alone, windblasted tree of the knowledge of beautiful andevil, ay, clothed upon with the metuor and shimmering like the horescens, astroglodynamonologos, –FW, 194.

    Looking back at my experience this Solstice I deduce that the Sun, and the sun behind the sun has gently hinted that ‘Sirius IS impotant” and that the African wisdom found in the Dogon tribe can be teased out from Finnegans Wake and the study of Joyce’s special cosmological ‘tribal’ language.

    A New Dogon tale?

    I have found that during my research into these three iconoclast multicultural icons the pull to create a new interpretation of current events and the state of the planet earth in 2010. Using my sense for connectivity and mixing media I present the SUN RA SIRIUS SEED TRANSMISSION sampler, enjoy, love, steve.

    “An whele time he was rancing there smutsy floskons nodunder ycholerd for their poopishers, ahull onem Fyre maynoother endnow! Shatten up ship ! Bouououmce ! Nomo clandoilskins cheakinlevers ! –James Joyce, FW, 370.

    “Circling round Shaun the girls weep, their mourning song echoes, “dosiriously it psalmodied” (470.13). The girls are sadly desirous of Osiris, desirous as Sirius (Sothis). It was in the form of this star that Isis wept for the lost Osiris. The sight of the rising Dog-Star has always coincided with the overflow of the Nile waters, thus it was considered that the tears of the goddess, weeping for her brother-husband, caused the inundation which fertilized the land of Egypt (DRT, p. 22). This idea is expanded at 254.16, “A and aa ab ad a bu abiad. A babbel men dub gulch of tears.” In this watery babbling runs the Nile, which flows (after leaving the Nyanzas and Jebel) as the Abiad or White Nile, until it reaches Abu, the area of the first cataract, at which point the Nile Valley begins (“Nile”, EB, XIX, 695). Thus, a naturalistic explanation is given for the babbling waters flowing down into the valley, which the ancients saw as a vale or gulch of tears. —Mark L. Troy. Mummeries of Resurrection

    Some sources and resources:

    SUN RA: Essays And Interviews – Edited by John Sinclair
    Cosmic Trigger – Robert Anton Wilson
    Finnegans Wake – James Joyce
    The Way Of The Sacred – Sir Francis Huxley
    Mummeries of Resurrection – Mark L. Troy
    Wikiedia

    http://hyperreal.org/~mpesce/
    http://www.vurigetongen.nl/page2/page2.html
    http://www.fotuva.org/music/discog.html
    http://www.amsterdamroots.nl/index.php?id=517
    http://mkzdk.org/francis/index.html
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sirius_B#Sirius_B
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sothis

    –Steven James Pratt.
    First draught June 21st 2010, Amsterdam, 6.30 A.M

  • A.I AND JAMES JOYCE. Venter and Earwicker Bachwords

    “TO LIVE, TO ERR, TO FALL, TO TRIUMPH, TO RECREATE LIFE OUT OF LIFE.” – from James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

    “We report the design, synthesis, and assembly of the 1.08-Mbp Mycoplasma mycoides JCVI-syn1.0 genome starting from digitized genome sequence information and its transplantation into a Mycoplasma capricolum recipient cell to create new Mycoplasma mycoides cells that are controlled only by the synthetic chromosome.
    http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/science.1190719

    “The genome contains blueprints, in which are encoded the names of the researchers, a website address, contact email and quotes from James Joyce, Richard Feynman and a biography of Robert Oppenheimer. —http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/audio/2010/may/21/craig-venter-synthetic-life-form

    “a rude breathing on the void of to be, a venter hearing his
    own bauchspeech in backwords, or, more strictly, but tristurned
    initials, the cluekey to a worldroom beyond the roomwhorld, for
    scarce one —James Joyce, Finnegans Wake, pg. 100

     

    Synthetic biology is a new area of biological research that combines science and engineering. Synthetic biology encompasses a variety of different approaches, methodologies and disciplines, and many different definitions exist. What they all have in common, however, is that they see synthetic biology as the design and construction of new biological functions and systems not found in nature. –http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_biology

    http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf

    http://www.ted.com/talks/craig_venter_unveils_synthetic_life.html

    Synthetic Genomics is a company dedicated to using modified or synthetically produced microorganisms to produce the alternative fuels ethanol and hydrogen. Synthetic Genomics was founded in part by J. Craig Venter. Venter’s previous company, Celera Genomics, was a driving force in the race to sequence the Human Genome.[1]

    The firm takes its name from the phrase synthetic genomics which is a scientific discipline of synthetic biology related to the generation of organisms artificially using genetic material.[2] Currently, Synthetic Genomics is working to produce biofuels on an industrial-scale using recombinant algae and other microorganisms. They are receiving funding from companies like Exxon for this venture. –http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_Genomics

     

    As a development of that ongoing effort, last week Venter announced in the pages of Science magazine that his research team had – by putting together a living and replicating bacterium from synthetic components, inserting a computer-generated genome into a cell – “created life” in the laboratory for the first time. The experiment suggested the possibility of creating bacteria to perform specific functions: as producers of fossil fuels or medicines.

    Venter, now 63, is nothing if not a showman and the publication of this revelation and the subsequent press conferences, have polarised opinion in ways with which he has long been familiar. Some authorities, and several newspaper leader writers, have claimed him as our Galileo or our Einstein; others have been notably underwhelmed.

    Freeman Dyson, the physicist, captured the full range of academic sentiment in this dry appraisal: “This experiment is clumsy, tedious, unoriginal. From the point of view of aesthetic and intellectual elegance, it is a bad experiment. But it is nevertheless a big discovery… the ability to design and create new forms of life marks a turning point in the history of our species and our planet.”

    Venter’s ego and his preference to turn to corporations rather than research foundations as funding partners (Exxon Mobil is a $600m sponsor of his energy experiments) do not tend to endear him to the academic establishment. Steve Jones, professor of genetics at University College London, and a perennial voice of reason, offered me this verdict on the biologist’s latest headlines.

    “It’s very easy to mock Venter,” Jones suggests. “When he first appeared, people just kind of sneered at him. But they stopped sneering when they saw his brilliance in realising that the genome was not a problem of chemistry but a problem of computer power. I don’t think anybody can deny that that was a monumental achievement and he has been doing fantastically interesting things subsequently with marine life. Having said that, though, the man is clearly a bit of a prick and one with a serial addiction to publicity.” —http://www.guardian.co.uk/theobserver/2010/may/23/observer-profile-craig-venter

    HIGH RESOLUTION PDF OF NEW SELF-REPLICATING LIFE FORM.

    lastly but mostly, in
    her genesic field it is all game and no gammon; she is ladylike in
    everything she does and plays the gentleman’s part every time.
    Let us auspice it! –James Joyce, FW, pg. 112

    * “TO LIVE, TO ERR, TO FALL, TO TRIUMPH, TO RECREATE LIFE OUT OF LIFE.” – from James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
    * “SEE THINGS NOT AS THEY ARE, BUT AS THEY MIGHT BE.”- a quote from the book, American Prometheus which discusses J. Robert Oppenheimer and the first atomic bomb.
    * *“WHAT I CANNOT BUILD, I CANNOT UNDERSTAND.” – attributed to Richard Feynman (physicist, philosopher, badass) as the last words on his blackboard at the time of his death as described in The Universe in a Nutshell by Stephen Hawking (physicist, philosopher, badass).

  • RAW V.A.L.I.S JOYCE & HOLO-GRAMIC PROSE?

    “One great part of every human existence is passed in a state which cannot be rendered sensible by the use of wideawake language, cutanddry grammar and goahead plot. –JAMES JOYCE, Referring to Finnegans Wake in a letter to Harriet Shaw Weaver (1926-11-24)”

    I have a playman’s or better yet ploughman’s interest in physics, science and the paranormal, once again due for the most part to Dr. Robert Anton Wilson.

    I was fortunate to meet many of the bright characters from the Berkeley Based Physics Consciousness Research Institute, where RAW was a somewhat regular alumni, with an irregular illumi.

    Fly On The Tale Of The Tribe: A Rollercoaster Ride With Robert Anton Wilson

    by Steven James Pratt

    Link: http://a.co/gOGNKyV

    (more…)

  • The Tale of the Tribe pt..1.

  • The Tale of the Tribe pt..2