There were some other reasons I dropped out of college, besides the personal and familial instinct to do so. Even though I went to one of the most radical colleges in the country, Antioch, it still wasn’t radical enough for me. Older now, I realize that such a place still exists within the larger waters of our society and culture. Even though the campus was a seething hotbed of intellectual and cultural ferment, outside influences still broke through the circle to affect the experience of the people going there. My expectations were very high as was my idealism.
One of the biggest assets of a college like Antioch was the ability to have a self-designed major & curriculum within the overall structure of a liberal arts degree. However, if you were coming in at age nineteen or thereabouts, reeling and dealing with psychotropic experiences, alongside the new interpersonal freedoms and strangeness of life at a small college, it can be difficult to have the willpower and foresight to know which of the many paths available to take. For the somewhat socially awkward the challenges are even greater. You have to be a real go getter to make that system work for you. A big part of it is getting a good guidance counselor and feeling comfortable talking to her or him and them being able to work with you. You have to click. This wasn’t my experience. Another assett is the schools work study program. “Antioch College is the only liberal arts institution in the nation to require a comprehensive off-campus cooperative work program for all of its students.” This is the area where I wish I’d been a little older and wiser in my choice for work-study. I stayed on campus and worked at the library there full time, itself a decision that pushed me in the direction of the field I am still in today. Mostly I didn’t want to work off campus that summer so I could still be with my then girlfriend. Another reason was because I had no clue as to what to do. Now, if I could time travel, I’d tell my younger self to go do something cool like work at Dreamtime Village for a few months, a center of permaculture, art & media in a town once abandoned, now reclaimed, in the Driftless region of Wisconsin. What else would I do for my co-op credits? Well, Ouroboros Press is now doing internships. Learning the art of fine bookmaking is something I’m definitely interested in. I may have also gone off to work somewhere in radio. But I didn’t. At the time I was more concerned about being in a relationship, writing and making music. Practicing Thelemic Magick was also very important to me. Magic still is, but my horizons have been expanded beyond Thelema, even though I was initiated into that tradition when I was 18 (via the Marcela Motta line for anyone interested in lineage -though I no longer have any association with the particular order.) In starting my second year I wanted to make sure I didn’t have a roommate. I needed space to set up my temple and a bit of regular to practice the magick. I put in an application to live at the Buddhist Zen Center on the campus, instead of in the traditional dorms. For some reason I was really surprised that they didn’t want a person practicing Ceremonial and Ritual Magick in that space. They might have even been turned off by all the stuff I wrote about Aleister Crowley in my letter to them, though I don’t know why. The school itself relied on people like me who went for one year or one and a half years and then dropped out as a regular source of income. They expected it. The high tuition helped pay more for those who stuck it out. The freshman class was always larger than those above who stayed and graduated. This may be a general trend of many colleges in general, but Antioch seemed to have a very high turnover rate for their freshmen. It’s an intense school. In the end I decided it would be better if I pursued my goals outside of college. Part of the reason was financial. I realized I could get a job back home, work, read, write and do The Work in my free time. That is the path I have been on since. I’ve also long since paid off the student loans, that if I had gone on to graduate, I’m not sure I would have paid off by now. Instead I have a house, and savings. And I do have a relationship. Marriage and home life are very important to me. Sometimes I wonder, “Do I just have a large chip on my shoulder?” I’ve been in an entry level position my whole library “career” and I’ve watched plenty of co-workers advance beyond me in those terms. On the other hand, my job is low stress, and it gives me the mental freedom necessary to dwell in an internal world while I work: the place where my Art comes from. Yet at the same time I realize people often give up on their true dreams and follow a path that has been set out for them. In America that path often reads like this: graduate high school, go to college, get a job, get married, have kids, etc. I know I did everything backwards having a daughter when I was sixteen. I know there were deeper things at work going on there, besides my teenage hormones. And that is one of things I found so irritating about college. I had just gone through a huge personal initiation through “the veil of sorrow” in trying to cope with all that happened while my daughter was being carried by her mother and after she was born. To see so many kids when I was in school, and still now, write off all of their twenties as a time to fuck around and not really do anything with their lives is depressing. I know that is a generalization, but it is an attitude prevalent in our culture that many people succumb to. If the path you find yourself on isn’t one best reached by traditional means through higher education, maybe it isn’t worth the hefty price tag. Another criticism I have of the college path is the way it tends to self-perpetuate academia. Young adults go to school, get a bachelors degree and then try to join the workforce only to learn that they can’t get much further along than an entry level position. So they go back to school and get their masters, perhaps in an area they have no real love for, but will earn them money, and go further into debt. When they get out they still may not have a job. The next choice seems to be going back to school again for a Ph. D. and then becoming a professor. I also see this process as a way that favors the specialist over the generalist. I like to wear many hats, to be a jack of all trades, to be a multidimensional artists. The full phrase after all is “Jack of all trades, master of none, certainly better than a master of one.” I’ve seen this over and over again, school crippling the years that should be productive. I reckon that as the economy continues to worsen, as people struggle for finite resources on a finite planet, most degrees and the debt associated with them, will come to be viewed as a liability and not an asset. There are other ways to achieve ones goals. I’ve learned it takes as much discipline to implement them outside of school as it would have in school. To me the rewards of self directed learning are greater, as is the freedom. In my next post I’ll be exploring some of the ways I’ve continued my education outside of academia. The experiences have been much more affordable and personally rewarding -all of which leads up to my own self-designed curriculum modeled on and taking into count the Seven Liberal Arts.
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“School is a place where they take sixteen years to wear down your brain.”
–Haruki Murakami, Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World WHY I DROPPED OUT: Personal & Familial Motivations At the time of this writing it has been thirteen years since I dropped out of Antioch College. In my year and a half as I student there I spent most of the time hiking in Glen Helen Nature Preserve, getting stoned, writing poetry, making music, and having my first experiences on the radio at Anti-Watt, the campus’ pirate station. I also worked at the Olive Kettering Library where I cut my teeth as a shelver and book geek, reading as much as I could. At the time the subjects I was most deeply interested in were poetry, ritual magic, the psychology of Wilhelm Reich, music, anarchism and permaculture. I was going to get a liberal arts degree with a focus in psychology, but when I realized the head of the department was a rabid behaviorist, with a picture of B.F. Skinner hanging above his desk, I chose a different tact, steering towards the religion and philosophy department. He didn’t approve of my interests in Reich or Jung, didn’t consider them part of psychology. Then I changed my mind altogether and quit. I hadn’t done too well in my official studies. After all what I really wanted to be when I grew up was an Artist Magician. But there weren’t very many job descriptions around for such a thing, and besides no one I knew of was hiring Artist Magicians. Still, I knew I’d be better off if I went back to Cincinnati, got a job, and started making stuff. There were a few other reasons as well: I hated living in the dorms for one. I’m a pretty sociable person, but if I don’t get some alone time on a regular basis I can start getting irritable with the people around me. Add some awkward romantic situations and other interpersonal snafu’s into the mix, alongside seeing your close friends who came to school with you from back home go down a bad path with hard drugs, and a broader picture starts to develop. It took me a year to get hired on at the library. And another year to reach my tendrils out into the local experimental music and noise scene, which in turn got me involved with the Art Damage radio program on WAIF (I’d been a fan since High School). I met some other occult enthusiasts and forged some deep friendships. Through one of those friends I met the woman who became my wife and on life has gone. I’ve been thinking a lot about my roots lately as I’ve been engaged in Work relating to the UnderWorld, and it was one night, when smoking cigars with friends, that I realized how much I’d been influenced by family patterns in my feelings about school. My grandparents on my father’s side hadn’t gone to college. Both lived through the Great Depression. My Grandma had grown up on a German family farm in Ohio canal country where she learned the ways of running a household. My Grandpa had gone to work in his teens selling newspapers, which he did for the rest of his life, eventually turning it into a successful magazine and paper stand business in the heart of downtown Cincinnati. This business served my father’s family well. They were money-wise and thrifty. They put away and saved. They brought up five kids, were able to take them on vacations to National Parks around the country, and instilled in all of them a fine work ethic. When they left the planet they still had enough to leave behind an estate, and more importantly a legacy. None of their children went on to college, but they’ve all done fine. My Dad went to trade school. My late uncle Jerome operated a successful industrial cleaning business. The one thing they all had in common was their willingness to work –the one trait absolutely necessary to achieve whatever dreams you may hold. Things were a little more mixed on my maternal side. My grandparents hadn’t gone to college, my Grandpa Cannon, like my Grandpa Moore, didn’t even make it to high school. He grew up in various parts of Kentucky, deep in the hills. He has spent much of his life devoted to music. My Great Grandparents, through the matrilineal line, came from Italian peasant stock who had moved to Frankfurt, Kentucky where they had farms. I was lucky enough to remember my Great Grandpa Pardi. He was a chemist who had a love for classical music, poetry and astronomy. On this side of my family only my Mom and an Aunt, of the seven children, ever went to college, but they did so as adults. It is from this side of my family that I feel my poetic and musical nature extends. For awhile I thought dropping out of college was my own choice, but the insight had in contemplative smoking, showed me again how much we are shaped by our families. I have always felt that if I continue to work hard at pursuing my own goals, outside the standard paths, I will make headway. I feel I have in my own roundabout way. What is important to me is that I do something to push forward every day. There have been a few times when I wished I’d stuck it out at Antioch. I’m more prepared now to do the work required at such a radical school then I was at age nineteen and twenty. I have more discipline. On the other hand I’ve never been sorry that I was able to get out before I went deep into debt, and I’ve never been sorry that I paid off my student loans. Meanwhile many of my friends have undergraduate or Masters degrees and work in positions no more prestigious than the one I have, while those who are just finishing school compete for waitress and bartending jobs with last years graduates. A number of them are also artists and creative spirits and the proverbial day job has allowed them to pursue these activities without being a mooch or a couch surfer. I did take away a number of things from my time at Antioch that I still hold as core-values. Chief among these is the school motto, from former Antioch president Arthur Morgan, who said “Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.” I have taken these words to heart. Right now would I be ashamed? I have had some small personal victories, but I feel it is only in the past few years that I’ve really buckled down and gotten to work on those things I find important. These include the creation of a resilient home, my ongoing dreamplay, deepening my practice of magic, furthering my skills in the craft of writing and in radio. All of my past experiences have prepared me for the next stage in my continuing self education, for another turn up the spiral on the path that is my life. I will be exploring my current path of self education in the posts in “The Seven Liberal Arts” category, but first there will be a follow up post exploring why I think college isn’t the best idea for folks in the current economy and in our declining industrial culture. I always follow arguments about the book industry and piracy with interest and fascination. For one reason, as a writer learning the ropes of what is at times a baroque system of production and distribution, and secondly as an avid reader and person who has worked in libraries for over 13 years. I’m also pretty much of a bibliophile. In a way, I’ve devoted my life to literature, and working as a shelver in a place with nearly two million items (including Audio/Visual) suits my lifestyle as a textual junky. The library supports my habit when I can’t afford to buy a fix on my own. Sometimes I think of myself as a monk in service to all the people who utilize the vast resources of this institution. It’s not the highest paying job, but it serves me well in my pursuits of magic, writing, and radio.
So it was with great zest that I sunk my teeth into Jack Faust‘s recent post on book piracy that was in itself a response to a post from another magician Andrieh Vitimus, whose offering I also read with zeal. I wanted to offer a couple of my own ideas to this conversation, about the role of libraries, the buisness of books, and their place in occulture. A THIRD PATH Libraries offer a third path that is neither piracy nor strictly commercial. I’ve never heard of any author complaining about the exposure given of their work to readers from being in a library collection. Some people, who aren’t collectors, or who otherwise don’t have the money to spend on books, or the space to keep them, become avid patrons of a library. In fact, some of the most well-read people I know don’t have much of a personal book collection to speak of, but have educated themselves through the library. Authors still gets paid, for one book or multiple copies in some systems, but word of mouth and reader recommendations can help build an audience for the other people who may buy her books. A really large library will also preserve a lot of books that won’t remain on bookshelves in a store for more than a year. These are the less popular volumes that none-the-less might have intrinsic value even if only one person read them in a decade or more. The problem with a continually growing library though, is that some stuff does have to be discarded to make room for new titles. In my library these discards are usually sold at regular our huge annual used booksale, and smaller sales throughout the year. Unfortunate as it is though some materials are thrown away. Into the garbage. I rescued two copies of The Cincinnati Journal of Ceremonial Magick and a book by Wilhelm Reich from the trash, among other things. COLLECTIONS DEVELOPMENT Not all library employees are occultists by any means. Nor are all even aware of the important work (in my opinion) of a man like Wilhelm Reich -they may not even know his books have suffered censorship and burning during the McCarthy era. Which brings up another issue as far as “collections development” goes, as it is known in the field. While the public library I work at has a number of titles from Llewellyn and Weiser, and some smaller companies, they aren’t shelling out the heftier amount of dough it would take to purchase copies from Fulgur, for example. Even with Scarlet Imprint‘s Bibliotheque Rouge paperback editions, I don’t think anyone in collections development is aware of their existence. Some of the independents are represented such as NewPage, but other ones such as Immanion are not. The thing is, much of the development is done through an automated service and through recommendations from the American Library Association (in the country where I leave and speak of, anyway.) They didn’t even buy a copy of Carl Jung‘s Red Book which was a publishing sensation, and would have added immensely to our collection of Jung’s work and related materials. That leaves young students of the Mysteries to go for what they see available in the 133 and 299 dewey range. On the other hand, what the library doesn’t have in terms of even newer releases from the most widespread occult publishers, is made up for by our selection of academic works on religion, philosophy and mysticism as well as an immense collection of folklore literature. Collections development has also become automated to a degree. “…libraries have increasingly moved to powerful, second-generation interfaceable or integrated systems that can control all aspects of library operations. The libraries presented as examples show that increasing user expectations, the siren call of cyberspace and network connectivity, and administrative faith in the savings to be obtained from electronic technical services continue to drive the migration to higher-level library management systems.” (Blurb from New Automation Technology and Collections Development) While I enjoy computers and use them in a variety of ways, not all aspects of culture should be decided by algorithms. OCCULT LIBRARIES As I spoke about in the talk I gave at the 2011 Esoteric Book Conference, there are a few projects to build occult libraries or archive materials. These include The New Alexandrian Library begun by the Assembly of the Sacred Wheel and well under way at this point. There is also the archival project of the good folks at Black Moon Publishing, Linden Mishlen and Louis Martinie. There is also the Sheneset Project started by John Michael Greer to preserve not just magical texts, but those that might be important in navigating and increasingly turbulent planetary future. The Open Hearth Foundation launched a public pagan library in Washington D.C. with a collection that currently consists of “3,000 titles, 250 tarot decks, and 40 different periodical and newsletter series“. And when I was in Seattle last year I also learned about their Metaphysical Library, a membership library. It is my belief that more of these types of specialized libraries need to appear to preserve, protect, and champion this kind of knowledge, creating a place for both noobs and veterans to engage in study, research and collaboration. Short of starting a library or archive at these scales, it remains within the power of the individual to develop a personal collection that she or he is also willing to lend to trustworthy individuals. If you have a lot of books there is the BiblioteQ Open Source Cataloging Software available free (one can always donate to the developers) to create a computer catalog of your own, or you could have a pen-and-paper check out system. PUBLIC VS. PRIVATE Building occult libraries in our individual communities is important for a number of reasons (as is supporting and getting involved with those that may already exist in your area). One reason that I am most familiar with is due to the fact that library budgets are being cut all over the country. Because public libraries must answer to politicians and taxpayers they do what they can to boost circulation statistics. And because many have adopted a policy of catering to the most popular trends and tastes, this helps boost those circulation statistics. This means large numbers of books by the most popular authors (James Patterson, Janet Evanovich, Dan Brown and the like) are bought, whereas up-and-coming authors, literary titles, and books by lesser known genre writers may get passed over or not purchased at all. In I see this as a mirror of the corporate publishing situation. A library should cater to the needs of their patrons, and their desires to a degree. In my own experience some of the best books I’ve read have been the ones I didn’t know I was going to read when I first went into a library. The more choices and diversity in materials there are, the more the Field of Possibility opens up to move a person in an unexpected direction. To a place of discovery. With the amount of books being published by Indie Authors as soloists, and with the amount of active small and specialty presses around the world, libraries are even more in need of individuals within the respective institutions to forge alliances with authors, and presses to secure titles for them so that collections don’t stagnate into homogenized pools of pulp. Private & Membership libraries offer an alternative to the public funded/corporate model. But like many non-profits they require a dedicated patronage to pay yearly dues, as well as being involved in additional ongoing fundraising. At the beginning of this year I joined Cincinnati’s oldest library The Mercantile, at the beckoning of a dream. I did it in part to honor the dream, and to become involved with the literary community there on the one hand, and also to learn more about how a membership library operates. One thing is clear to me about the private library vs. the public: the quality of programming and speakers they get is more impressive to me than the public libraries because they have the support of the community who is vested in its survival, and who want to have interesting lectures and discussion groups about books. I don’t think it’s an either/or issue. Both serve different needs and purposes. Both can be strengthened as well. I choose to support a membership library for a number of reasons, but in part because governments and the public at large are fickle. The money spent on public libraries could just as easily be moved somewhere else, in which case it is wise for a community to have other centers of learning in place. A TEXT LIFE IN THE E-VERSE Regardless of what a person may think of the content from some of the publishers involved in producing fine editions, it should be remembered that at the very least they are doing an immense service in keeping the art of bookmaking alive. Keeping that art alive is of tremendous importance at a time when E-books are on the rise. E-books have advantages, and I’m not so much of a luddite as to be against them, but they also have disadvantages. Due to the changes that will happen to any given digital format over time an E-book has a much shorter shelf life than a traditional book made by an artisan -that if properly cared for could become an heirloom and last a few generations. A digital E-reader as a device, for that matter, will also break, or be superseded by a newer model, long before a book will be worn out. That being said, I do like the idea of being able to eventually have, say, the entire Library of Congress in a device that fits in my backpack. More than I’d ever be able to read in my life. Digital Rights Management is another issue with E-books. Some authors or companies put this on a work so it can’t be copied or transferred to another device, as a preventive against piracy. I believe this is fundamentally flawed. No one stops a person from re-selling a physical book they have bought, buying used books, or giving away or letting people borrow books. All of these things are part of the culture of books and E-books should be no different. QUIT SCHOOL AND CREATE YOUR OWN LIFE The only qualms I have with Jack Faust’s response to the Andireh Vitimius’ is the example he uses of a twenty year old in school. “Let’s imagine I’m currently 20 years old. I work at Taco Bell making 8.50$ an hour, or the minimum wage in California. Let’s imagine I go to school and I’m not getting much help paying for it, and I’m carrying a full course-load while working just beneath the full-time arrangement. Something like 34 hours a week or so. Discounting what comes out of my paycheck for taxes, social security, etc: I make about $315 a week. Or I make $1260 a month.” He uses this scenario to explain why pirating books can be justified. I’m not interested in stopping piracy. I don’t think it can be done. I’d rather be creating. That’s why I dropped out of college myself and that’s the advice I’d give to anyone in this situation. It may sound like bad advice to those who’ve been programmed with the belief that a degree is necessary to make it in the real world. I’ve lived in the real world my whole life and I don’t have a degree. A person in the above situation would be far less likely to be able to afford books after he graduated than if he just quit school and started doing the Work necessary to build the life he really wants. After graduation he’ll be saddled with a debt larger than a mortgage, and making a delayed entry into a workforce only to compete with last years graduates for a position as a barista. Then he’ll really have to pirate books…if he has any time or inclination left to read after work. Granted, I still think its a good idea for doctors and the like to get some extra schooling, but for most jobs a degree isn’t necessary. Working with a Master of the skill you are trying to learn is a different matter altogether. That’s why I’m all for rebirthing Guilds into the 21st century. Libraries are a good example of an existing institution and profession where a Guild would be effective. To be a librarian professionally requires a Masters degree. That’s 6+ years of school…and 6+ years of debt. Having worked, as I mentioned, in libraries for 13 years, I know that many of the duties a librarian does I could be trained to do if given the opportunity to work under one. In coming into a job like this the traditional three-fold path of Apprentice, Journeyman, and Master could be applied to learn about all aspects of the field. I’ll be exploring the idea of guilds in contemporary settings further in future posts. Quitting school will also give you an opportunity to spend more time at a library learning about what you really want to do and a bit of extra free time to make it happen. This is the path I took and it hasn’t always been easy. It has been mostly fun though. I paid off my student loans from the year and a half I went to school and have worked ever since at the things I love: writing stories,poetry and essays, playing in bands, being on the radio, practicing magic, dreaming. There is also a lot of other stuff going on in my life, the triage of wife, house and kids. I may not have reached all my goals in the time I thought I would. On the other hand, since I started early, by the time some of my peers are just finishing off paying for school, the kids will be well out of the house (close to that time already) and a little further down the line my wife and I will, barring misfortune, have the house paid off. I can tell you now that my study is already quite cozy when I want to settle in for a good read and a glass of Scotch. As Robert Moss is fond of saying “The time is always NOW.” As magicians and creative spirits let us build the culture we ourselves would like to live in. Riding in the car with me on the way to the radio station a couple of weeks ago Owen said to me, “A Bard should have a beard,” when I asked him about the blurb on the back of his book Rules of the Game that said he is a poet who “walks the ancient path of the Bard.” Owen of course doesn’t have a beard. In the gentle way that an Elder can speak to someone younger who is also on the path, he also talked about, to paraphrase the oral transmission, that he couldn’t call himself a Bard “because a Bard would know far more than me”. This was humbling for a fired up youngster like me to hear. The emphasis, as I think about it these many weeks later, is that he walks the Bardic Path, aspiring to be as Bard…and yet he hasn’t given himself that title. And this from someone who has written two books of a projected seven in an Arthuian cycle. In addition to the six books he’s already had released through Black Moon Publishing and his own imprint Skip and Run. In addition to all the music he’s helped create with Bitter Blood Street Theater, Blacklight Braille. It was his time in these bands, and other reminiscences, as well as thoughts and opinions, that are collected up in Rules of the Game.
Another time Owen told me the reason he shaves is to remain attractive to the ladies. He doesn’t think young girls like all that facial hair too much. I must say I’ve never been one to have much of a beard myself. I’m not a hairy guy. Except for what’s growing out of the top of my skull… that is down to my shoulders right about now. But I guess I distinguish between having long hair and being hairy. Still, no beard and I guess that might mean that I too walk the Bardic Path … without quite being a Bard. It’s something I am in aspiration towards as well. (Robert Graves famously wrote of the distinction between regular poets and the true Muse Poets -servants of the Goddess. Maybe by shaving Owen keeps himself attractive to the Muse…and therefore still open to inspiration in his later years.) I’m reading James M. Cain‘s, The Moth, right now. I love it. It’s the best book I’ve read in quite awhile. Owen told me once how his father had known James M. Cain, and how he himself liked his books. With The Moth being so much about the love of a man for women, I can see why Owen liked this writer so much. Cain does have a literary style that draws you in to the life of the character: a Bildungsroman. The moral and ethical aspects of the novel also draw parallels to Graham Greene‘s work. Cain was originally from Maryland just like Owen. In some cases Knight’s style is similar to the work of Cain. Especially Owen’s short fiction collected in Waterford and Nearby Towns. On first getting inside some of these tales you get the feeling that they are strictly realist -and they are for those of us with a pantheistic or polytheistic world view. That is to say they are imbued with Magic, and what Arthur Machen called “The Inmost Light“. Yet he shows the Magic arising from so called “everyday situations”. This book also features a lovely color plate from Belgian artist Martine Khadr-Van Schoote. My favorite book of Owen’s is the short Wind Over Linden Hill: Biography of a Pagan. It goes into some of Owen’s earliest memories of life on a Maryland farm gradually transforming into a dream. This dream, he told me later, became a recurring one, an important dream. A big dream. In it he also writes of being a servant of the Goddess Danu. On the more epic scale is his long novel The Draug -reproduced as a 915 page facsimile of his hand written text and notes detailing the setting and the large cast of characters. A Draug, as I first heard of it referenced in article on the Sea Trow of Scottish (Orkney Islands) lore. The Norse and Scandinavian conception of the Draug is that of an undead creature haunting graves. A distinction is generally made between a land Draug and a sea Draug. In the case of Mr. Knight’s novel it is definitely a land Draug. The story concerns a class of anthropology students who leave their college to do some field work, and how they get taken by a group of Amazons into a subterranean and Chthonic realm. The things that live there have grown pale and albino-white from their lack of exposure to sunlight. Owen, besides being a fine saw player is also a fine poet. His poetry -infused with strains of his Norse and Druidic polytheism, is also shaded by his time as a musician in the counterculture of the late 60’s on through the 70’s and beyond. Owen has long immersed himself in the Bardic tradition, and poems like “The Moon to Poolesville” are cast in a lunar glow. His poetry and lyrics are collected in Moonlight Snow. Owen has also tried his hand at the detective novel in Harry Powell, Detective. It’s not a typical sleuth mystery. In fact, it has more in common with the “transgressive” works of Samuel R. Delany, like Hogg for instance, than with Conan Doyle. It shouldn’t be a surprise that Owen is a fan of the work of the late J. G. Ballard. Thomas Howerton Owen Knight is a treasure in Cincinnati’s underground, pagan, artistic, or otherwise. I cannot say for certain how his work has been received in the wider magical and occult communities, let alone the literary, so will not speculate here. I do know this. The time is ripe to acquaint or reacquaint yourself with his singular style and impressive body of work. My wife Audrey and I are in our house. She wants to read a book I have. It is volume IX from a X volume set and she hasn’t read the other books. It’s a translation of a Japanese novel, by one Musakami, close to Murakami, but the “S” was prominent. I look into the book. The words are highly decorated. This text was printed beautifully. At the top of each page are interesting decorative pictures …a spider, a sword, a scroll… and other symbols. The book mentions “God” a lot, and I find this to be strange, coming from an Eastern source, especially as the God in question seems to be a Biblical one. The story is about a Ninja and as I read the book (together with my wife?), we watch a Ninja, fully covered and wrapped in black cloth, lightly treading through soft snow up a small mountain. The Ninja seemed to be a kind of monk.
Feelings: Surprise Reality Check: I was having a slew of Japanese related literary dreams in 2010 to early 2011 (about Yukio Mishima among others), but this theme hasn’t come up for awhile. I guess it is saying, “Hey Justin, don’t forget about this thread of your inner life. It’s not over yet!” As a young boy I of course had a fondness for Ninjas… remember those Teenage Mutant Turtles? The name in the dream, Musakami, is similar to Haruki Murakami whom I definitely want to read (and am reading now). Murakami’s novel’s A Wild Sheep Chase and Dance Dance Dance both have a lot of dream related stuff in them from what I hear. ~ So, the Haruki Murakami novel I wanted to read is checked out by another patron at the Public Library where I work. But now that I am a member of The Mercantile Library I look up Murakami in their catalog. Well, they don’t have A Wild Sheep Chase but they do have Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World also on my reading list. I go get it on my lunch break and start reading it over a bowl of spicy white bean chili and rice. It’s very humorous. Each paragraph is like a stanza in a poem. The translator has obviously done an excellent job. The book contains two narrative threads, one the “Hard Boiled Wonderland” is about a data launderer, who washes information for clients by processing it from his right to left brain. He gets hired by a mysterious scientist who lives in a lab far beneath an office building. You take the elevator all the way down, go through a maze of bureaucratic hallways, then take a ladder down several stories, pass through some caves, go underneath a waterfall from the underground river into the scientists lair, where he is working on “listening to skulls”. He has learned how to resonate the skulls of humans and animals via some kind of acoustic measurements…and now he has a plan to erase sound from the world. He says this will aid our evolution, implying that it will perhaps help us get full blown telepathy. And evolution is never easy he says. The second narrative is “The End of the World” which takes place in small mysterious town -presumably so far in the future it looks like the past -or at the edge (End ?) of the world. The narrator of this section comes to the town. Everyone in the town is given a job by the Gatekeeper. The character is to become the towns Dreamreader. He must go to the Library every night at sundown and read the “old dreams” stored in the Library. …and that is about as far as I’ve gotten. But it certainly seems like my dreams were leading me to the rite reading material, for inspiration on my own stories and more. I can’t wait to learn about the Dreamreader and the “old dreams” he reads. To become a Dreamreader the narrator had to undergo a procedure from the Gatekeeper. An initiation. The Gatekeeper takes a knife and heats it up in a fire. After it cools he stabs the man in both eyes, but this doesn’t hurt him. This helps him to read the old dreams, kept inside of skulls. The Librarian tells him how to do this, “Before your eyes the skull will glow and give off heat. Trace that light with your fingertips. That is how old dreams are read.” The Dreamreader narrates, “Dreamreading proves not as effortless as she has explained. The threads of light are so fine that despite how I concentrate the energies in my fingertips, I am incapable of unraveling the chaos of vision. Even so, I clearly sense the presence of dreams at my fingertips. It is a busy current, an endless stream of images. My fingers are as yet unable to grasp any distinct message, but I do apprehend an intensity there.” I relish reading the rest of this book and seeing where the right and left brain converge, into one skull-story. As a writer who keeps a long hand journal, and who still does a lot of preliminary work by hand, I accumulate a lot of papers, in addition to printouts of various drafts. And I tend to let things pile up around me in my den for months at a time before reorganizing. (I should reorganize more often because it is nice to have a clean desk to work on. I like my desk.)
I always make interesting discoveries in these periodic cleanups. In this case I found a loose page that should have been in the oversized binder collecting my dreams and other journalings from 2010. The dream was about finding some books by fantastist and folklorist Jane Yolen, books about Russian mythology and folktales. This was synchronistic to me because I was deep in the middle of reading Reinventing Collapse: The Soviet Example and American Prospects by Dmitry Orlov. Orlov’s book is a highly humorous read of what would otherwise be a glum subject: the collapse of the United States as a superpower. While those who believe the U.S. is morally as well as financially bankrupt may welcome such a collapse, the way it is playing out -yes, now- imposes immense difficulties on many people, including the proverbial at risk: young, old, and those already immobilized. Orlov was born in Russia and livd there until age 12 before emigrating to the U.S. with his parents. He was an eyewitness to the Soviet Collapse, over many extended visits. As such the parallels he draws between the two superpowers is fascinating. What is more helpful on the downward slope of peak oil and Western civilization, are the ideas he draws from people’s experience in the former Soviet union. After building up the picutre for us Orlov focus’s in on three areas we can all work on: collapse mitigation, adaptation, and new opportunities. Within these he tightens the focus onto areas of housing, transportation, employment, and food. One of the more interesting sections are the ideas for types of jobs and work -most outside of the official economy- that people took up in Russia, and how those may be adapted to the states. A truly fascinating read and one that has me doing more to Be Prepared. I was a Boy Scout after all. The next day though, after seeing the page from my dream journal about the Jane Yolen Russian mythology books, I was down stairs at the library in the Children’s stacks pulling holds. I thought of the paper and then looked at the shelf in front of me. Lo and behold, I found in that very section three titles by Yolen where she retold traditional Russian stories. I took them with me to read later. Then, I was down in the fiction stacks later, pulling some graphic novel holds I saw a few titles from Alan Moore. I’d recently read his amazing essay Fossil Angels, originally published online, and reprinted in Abraxas 2. The essay blew away my understanding of magic, while touching on so much else that I’d personally felt to be true as well. I highly recommend reading the essay, itself an amazing work of art. It inspired me to read some more of Alan’s graphic works. I’d read his graphic novel, From Hell some years before and loved it. It remains the only graphic work I’ve read which has been so meticulously researched containing footnootes and bibliography. This time I picked up A Small Killing. Why this particular graphic novel by Alan Moore? Because I was on a Russian kick and the story concerned a wayward advertising agent during the Soviet collapse who was on his way to Russia to work on an advertising campaign for a soft drink. It was a good read, and also inspired me to listen to Negativland‘s Time Zones Exchange Project, again, a classic piece of radio art. When I finally got around to reading the Yolen childrens books I learned a number of things. In The Sea King, I learned that the “morning is wiser than the evening” perhaps because in the morning we awake with fresh dreams. In The Flying Witch, a tale of Baba Yaga, I was shown that if you are going to have an encounter with this witch it pays to be feisty -and to know how to cook turnips, a truly underrated vegetable. In the Firebird, I learned how the ballet was taken from traditional Russian tales. While not a huge fan of the Neo-romanticism exemplified by Stravinsky, I did find the story enjoyable. More importantly Yolen shared all her source material, and I got an insight into her working methods: reading countless versions of the myth, until, at last the story becomes ones own. I thought the readers of this blog would want to know of the passing of psychologist James Hillman, who died on October 27 at 85 from complications with bone cancer.
Just the little I’ve read of his amazing work has had a profound and long term effect on me. Perhaps the most influential was when I was at Antioch College. I was in crisis mode. I was telling a counselor that I wanted to go into Psychology, except I was having issues with the head of the department who was a big behaviorist with a picture of B.F. Skinner hanging above his desk. The school counselor suggested I read Hillman’s book We’ve Had a Hundred Years of Psychotherapy – and the World is Getting Worse written in conversation with Michael Ventura. I never did read that one, and I never did study psychology in academic setting. The teacher was very hostile towards Wilhelm Reich and Carl Jung, even at a radical school like Antioch. I dropped out after the term. Later I did read The Souls Code: In Search of Character and Calling by Hillman which is basically his thoughts about the Daemon, or Holy Guardian Angel if that’s your preference of terms. It was excellent. In it he talked about various well known individuals early lifes, and how by looking into them, the pattern, as set out by the daemon, for a persons life work could be seen in these early experiences. I still have The Dream and the Underworld sitting on one of my bookshelves awaiting attention. I’m sure it is essential reading for aspiring Oneiromancers. In the New York Times obituary of Hillman they quoted him from 1976: “Some people in desperation have turned to witchcraft, magic and occultism, to drugs and madness, anything to rekindle imagination and find a world ensouled. But these reactions are not enough. What is needed is a revisioning, a fundamental shift of perspective out of that soulless predicament we call modern consciousness.” Gyrus wrote of this, over on his Dreamflesh blog, “However else Hillman has inspired me—and he’s inspired me very deeply—I just have to admire someone for whom witchcraft, magic, occultism, drugs and madness are ‘not enough’. Obviously he didn’t take the path of trying all of these and going through the other side. And obviously I don’t agree with him if he’s dismissing them outright (I don’t think he is). But it’s an important message for all of us mad druggie occultists. Something more is necessary.” Eric Clarke and I had a good chat about James Hillman at the Esoteric Book Conference after party (2011). Eric emphasized how James Hillman wasn’t into the “victimization” that is part of so much modern day therapy and New Age fluff. In a review of One Hundred Years of Psychotherapy… the Library Journal wrote that Hillman “contend(s) that therapy encourages self-preoccupation, leaving no attention or energy for the woes of the outside world. Similarly, the ‘inner child’ movement has created a population of self-centered, juvenile adults who feel they have little power. Political apathy, a dying environment, and an inability to form real relationships are among the ills resulting from this solipsism.” Rather than fall back on endless hours of therapy and introspection people can pick themselves up and set about doing the real work, based on the call of their daemon, that will change themselves and this world. By writing this I’m not dismissing the validity of soul retrieval and our inner young ones. These aspects need to get reintegrated. Health is the goal -and a return to meaningful work and life, not an endless round of sessions delving into troubled pasts, which in many instances seems to prevent people from moving forward. A good therapist would be one you don’t need to see forever. James was also an adept dream teacher. His most famous words for dream interpretation were “Stick with the image”. Don’t over-interpret the image. Carry the image with you. It has its own energy and is its own interpretation. James Hillman was a champion of the imagination and the soul. His tireless work aimed at the reenchantment of this world. One of Science Fiction’s ongoing concern’s has been “the Future”. This is why some of the futures written about in the past seem so stale to us in the present. Some still tell an entertaining tale -a good story is a good story after all. For example, it is still a blast to read Philip K. Dick, even though many of his stories were set in the 1990′s (and while the tech in his books was not necessarily prescient, the biting social commentary has continued to be so).
“The future, as always, is now,” novelist John Crowley writes in his wonderful essay for Lapham’s Quarterly, The Next Future. Crowley goes on to say about Science Fiction, later in his text, “from the beginning it gained extraliterary power from its prediction of actual marvels that were sure to come sooner or later. No other fiction, not even the tales of Darkest Africa or polar exploration, had that. The more often the future was imagined, however, and the more detailed the guesses, the more they proved unequal to the strange meanderings of real time.” Still further into his timely thicket he asks “Why should the future be privileged as a realm of speculation?” Indeed, some of the most innovative of “Speculative Fictions” have been alternate histories, different “nows”, postulated through magic or the parallel worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. These are the “forking paths” which have emerged from Jorge Luis Borges‘ famous garden. One of my favorites in this subgenre is by Kim Stanley Robinson, The Years of Rice and Salt which imagines a world where the Black Plague destroyed European and Christian culture, leaving Islam and Buddhism in a cultural ascendancy. It is a very useful thought experiment to make. And it tells the alternate history from the time of the Black Plague, up to present times. (One of the more interesting elements is how it follows several characters and their reincarnations through the centuries.) Locus: the Magazine of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Field even has a regular column entitled “Yesterday’s Tomorrows” penned by Graham Sleight which looks back at various SF writers bodies of work. (It’s always one of my favorite parts of the magazine.) Following this, and following the SF field in general, a reader can discern how the future changes with time. Having contributed a story to a contest being run by John Michael Greer, author of many books on magic and the popular peak-oil blog, The Archdruid Report, and having followed not only Greer’s line of reasoning about peak-oil, but also James Howard Kunstler’s, this question of probable futures is very engaging for me. As a writer of Science Fiction and Fantasy, among other things, doubly so. Greer, in his initail post about the contest writes, “Still, one of the virtues of science fiction is that it doesn’t always fall into such ruts, and more often than other branches of literature, recognizes that the social and technological habits of any given era are not the permanent fixtures they sometimes seem, but points along a historical trajectory shaped, among other things, by ultural fashions and sheer dumb luck. Even if we get through the crises of our age the way the people of Stephenson’s world got through the period they call the Terrible Events, and create a technological society on the other side of it, our descendants won’t be wearing T-shirts or calling people on cell phones in the year 5400 AD, any more than we now wear togas or take notes on wax tablets the way the ancient Romans did; they’ll wear other clothing and communicate with other tools—and with any luck they’ll snack on something less repellent than energy bars. Fairly often, science fiction catches wind of such shifts; sometimes it succeeds in guessing them in advance; tolerably often, for that matter, what starts out as imagery from science fiction becomes the inspiration for design in the real world—I trust nobody thinks, for example, that it’s accidental that most early cell phones looked remarkably like the communicators from the original version of Star Trek.” He then goes on to ask for the writers in his audience to come up with stories depicting responses to peak-oil, with the following reasoning, “Still, the arrival of the limits to growth bids fair to have at least as massive an impact on the future of the decades ahead of us as space travel and its associated technological advances had on the decades that followed science fiction’s golden age, and it seems to me that it’s past time to get thinking and writing about the dangers and adventures, the hopes and fears, the dreams, problems and possibilities of a world on the far side of peak oil.” Then, a number of weeks down the line I get wind of Neal Stephenson’s Hieroglyph Project, in an article he wrote called “Innovation Starvation“. In it he proposes that Science Fiction writers shouldbe inspiring more of the kind of big engineering projects that industrialized countries, specifically America, pursued in the wake of World War II. Massive highway systems. Space shuttles to the moon. The internet. And he gives two good theories as to how Science Fiction is able to inspire people into action: “1. The Inspiration Theory. SF inspires people to choose science and engineering as careers. This much is undoubtedly true, and somewhat obvious. 2. The Hieroglyph Theory. Good SF supplies a plausible, fully thought-out picture of an alternate reality in which some sort of compelling innovation has taken place. A good SF universe has a coherence and internal logic that makes sense to scientists and engineers. Examples include Isaac Asimov’s robots, Robert Heinlein’s rocket ships, and William Gibson’s cyberspace. As Jim Karkanias of Microsoft Research puts it, such icons serve as hieroglyphs—simple, recognizable symbols on whose significance everyone agrees.” I don’t feel the same way Stephenson does about the passing of these big projects. The US interstate system has made it easier to navigate from point A to point B, to get from the West to the East and from the South to the North, but what is missed on those trips are the inner corners of America, what Harry Smith has called “the Old Weird America” reached on the Blue Highways that written about in William Least Heat-Moon’s book of the same name. And while I’ve been inspired by the notion of visiting other planets, I’d much rather visit the Otherworld and take care of the Earth. Besides, I don’t really believe we have to kind of fuel and resources it would take to get back to the Moon, let alone Mars or outside the Solar System. That doesn’t mean that I don’t like some of the other points Stephenson makes, particularly those where he contrasts isolated research, the kind done by individuals and groups in the pre-internet area, that required visits to the library, and the kind of wide open research done nowadays with a few clicks on google. There is something to be said for the kind of long, slow developments that occur when working on a problem over a duration of time. Or when learning a skill or craft over a period of many, many years. This is how all great art develops, from the initial insight to the hours, days, weeks, months and years it takes to see a vision be grounded in physical creation. And where do occultists, magicians, and dreamers stand in all this? How do today’s pagan philosophers at the growing edge envision our collective future? As Stephenson and Greer both know, fiction is a great playground to toy with these types of thought experiments. And to inspire readers to action. There has been a tradition of Occult Fiction that goes all the way back to Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Algernon Blackwood, Arthur Machen, on to Aleister Crowley and Dion Fortune, and that stretches onwards to the likes of Kenneth Grant and Storm Constantine to name just a few culprits. Esoteric artwork is at this time coming into its own, as is the field of magickal musick. Esoteric publishing is hitting a renaisance with many of the wonderful presses issuing fine editions. I’m thinking of the likes of Scarlet Imprint, Xoanon Limited, Three Hands Press, Fulgur Limited and Waning Moon Publications, again to name just a few. Now is a ripe time for those who are Operative Mages and also Working Writers to come forth with a new generation of Occult Fiction. This is just one of the things I’m working on. If you have what might be considered Occult Fiction of your own, please link to it in the comments. (Thanks to Sophie Gale, from the Green Wizard’s forum, for the John Crowley article.) I am with Robert Moss in a room. We are both dreaming of books and practicing an exercise of going into a dream (inside the dream), to read a text and copy it while in a trance state, to our notebooks. In my dream I see a grid, like graph paper, with various Hebrew letters: Cheth, Resh, and Tau. I take them to mean, CREATE. I copy the grid down… then I have a plastic grid in my hands with lines of webbing between the squares. I can poke holes through the webbing. There is another large block of text, something in English which I want to copy but it is too much. I tell Robert it would be nice to have some shamanic drumming to aid us in re-entering the dream, but he didn’t bring his frame drum and he would want someone else to do the drumming while we journey.
The dream narrative, winds around to some other subjects. On waking, after writing it all down in my journal, I’m having my morning tea and checking my email. I’m Reminded by Shade’s lovely work on the Horus-Maat Lodge calendar that it is the New Moon. Also Aion’s post about the New Moon/Solar Eclipse and beginning of the Dog Days. The New Moon was in Cancer, and this made sense to me as I hand considered Cheth and it’s associations to the Chariot card, and Cancer. Looking at the letters from my dream I thought that perhaps Cheth, Resh and Tau could be a transliteration into English for the main letters in CHARIOT. In Hebrew there are no vowels after all. After I started uploading the podcast I danced and did the Rite of Children. It was joyous and filled with energy. I focused on sending energy to my Grandson, and also to a young kid I had seen in the library often who looked to be neglected, but also to all children everywhere. After the rite, I decided I would lay down and go into the Chariot card for a pathworking/meditation. I visualized the Thoth version of this trump and “became” the armored knight whom I saw as a “Guardian of the Grail”. In my visionary state I realized this armored knight not only guarded the grail from those who would misues its power, but also offered the grail to the destitute and those who needed to drink of its life. Later in the day I wrote the following poem musing on all this: The Chariot of Creation, is fueled by a Cauldron a Grail whose Guardian steers the whirling vortices of bubbling energy, a Brew of Bitter Blood Born to Babalon Drink and flood your mind with visions of Cherubim prisms the Eagle, the Lion, the Bull, and the Man tethering the Mercurial Ba Feathers on the wings of the rising Ka soar upwards to the height of heavens and fill the Grail anknew… to complete the sequence I plan to do pathworkings for Resh and Tau, the Sun and Universe. I am at home in Cincinnati. I am part of a Nocturnal Emissions tribute show that is going to happen at the Southgate House. In fact, I have to go to a meeting in the parlour of the Southgate House to discuss the show with other people involved. My friends Paul Bartley, Andrew Hissett and I will be performing one of cover versions of a Nocturnal Emissions song. Inside the parlor we talk about the logistics of having the Nocturnal Emissions tribute.
Then my wife and I are sitting on a park bench talking to a guy named Adam who works at the library with me. I call him Adam West, though I’m thinking of Herbert West. He is talking to me about the Nocturnal Emissions tribute show. He says, “You guy’s sounded good. Especially your keyboard part, the pattern you copied from my keyboard.” Images of going to his apartment to copy some code from his keyboard into my Korg MS2000 fill my mind. I am excited about the feedback. It seems there was a tribute CD put together as well and a book. Nigel Ayers has come into town for for a release party associated with the cd/book. I am at the release party. People are talking about the book. Andy Hissett and I flip through it, really surprised by some of the contributors, such as Metallica, and other even more mainstream people. It is laid out in a very graphic, collage style. I point at the cover and say, “It looks like it was designed by R. Crumb” the famous comic artist. Adam is quick to point out that it wasn’t R. Crumb but another “crumb” who draws in a similar style and may even be a pen name of Crumb’s. Inside the tribute book is a book of R. Crumb’s comics about roots / blues / country musicians. I want to buy a copy of the tribute book. There are two versions. One is an oversized folio and is signed by Nigel Ayers. The other is octavo sized. I look at the octavo: it is made up of loosely bound cards, flexi vinyl discs, and other bric a brac. The folio is the same, but the flexi discs in it are so oversized I don’t think I’ll be able to put them on the turntable. So I decide to buy the small one and ask Nigel to sign it for me. It’s twenty bucks. Then Nigel and I get to talking. I tell him I want to review the book for Brainwashed, “after I’ve had time to sit with it,” I say. He understands. I explain to him, “I reviewed your Nightscapes album.” He seems appreciative. The book is held together by elastic bands going through a hole in one corner of the hard board. Holding it, it turns into a bracelet, made up of over-the-counter style drug packets, pill holders, the kind that are cased in plastic and foil, that you have to punch the foil out to get to the pill. This is an accessory that Nigel made to come with the book. Nigel says to me, “I’m a multimedia artist. I don’t limit myself to specific forms, only to what needs to be created.” He is a writer, musician, video and visual artists. About a year after this dream I finally got in touch with Nigel. I shared the dream with him, and then I asked him if he would do an interview with me. The interview is finally done and is up now on Brainwashed. I’ve also reviewed his recent album “In Dub Volume 1,” and the ‘zine he produced between 1990 and 1999, “Network News” which is now available as a print-on-demand trade paperback. This dream also inspired some of my own work in another area. After having it I begin to obsess over “multidimensional art”. Last winter I’d planned on writing a Manifesto of Multidimensional Art, or MOMA. I wrote some notes down, but nothing came of it, and yet the idea and desire to write it never left my mind. Somehow, at the beginning of March I was infused with an upsurge of inspiration (Thank you Mnemosyne). Once I saw the way to structure the manifesto -in the pattern of the Qabalistic Tree of Life- writing it came easily. It is now available in the Spring Equinox edition of Silver Star: A Journal of New Magick. Shade, the editor, also published my poem Earth Goddess. |
Justin Patrick MooreAuthor of The Radio Phonics Laboratory: Telecommunications, Speech Synthesis, and the Birth of Electronic Music. Archives
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