Spendy liveblogs "Jim Morrison: Secret Teacher of the Occult"
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sus
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Paul was 14 when he first dropped acid with his buddy Jimmy—on a "bright and spectral autumn afternoon in suburban north Atlanta," peaking as they traced the Chattahoochee flow.
They get into acid from reading Huxley's Doors of Perception. Book as gateway drug. Turn-on to a turn-on. A friend was telling me how LSD had been carefully cultivated by the Order of St Anthonys long before it was 'officially' discovered by Hoffman.
They get into acid from reading Huxley's Doors of Perception. Book as gateway drug. Turn-on to a turn-on. A friend was telling me how LSD had been carefully cultivated by the Order of St Anthonys long before it was 'officially' discovered by Hoffman.
sus
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I guess there are novels predating Bicycle Day (the day Hoffman synthesized LSD) with plots about ergot (a precursor to LSD) being refined, turned into a chemical weapon to turn on the world, usher about new consciousness.
Apparently Joyce makes reference to Sandoz Labs, where Hoffman worked. Apparently Sandoz had links to the Order of St Anthonys and to Theosophists.
IDK if there was actually a theosophical cabal turning on the creative minds of continental Europe in the 19th century, or whether the Rockefeller Foundation x the CIA supplied counterculture figures with LSD to usher about a new global consciousnessness, that's way above my paygrade, I'm just reporting the rumors since they're interesting I think
Apparently Joyce makes reference to Sandoz Labs, where Hoffman worked. Apparently Sandoz had links to the Order of St Anthonys and to Theosophists.
IDK if there was actually a theosophical cabal turning on the creative minds of continental Europe in the 19th century, or whether the Rockefeller Foundation x the CIA supplied counterculture figures with LSD to usher about a new global consciousnessness, that's way above my paygrade, I'm just reporting the rumors since they're interesting I think
sus
Moderator
Anyway, Paul does lots more acid, it's 2002, he's an adult now and he starts having lots of number synchronicity experiences. It starts with 333
"It became so frequent I couldn't shake the feeling that someone or something was trying to communicate with me."
He leaves Santa Cruz where he's living and moves to Nashville. He keeps seeing repeating numbers. "that mysterious frequency that prompts you to pay attention"
"It became so frequent I couldn't shake the feeling that someone or something was trying to communicate with me."
He leaves Santa Cruz where he's living and moves to Nashville. He keeps seeing repeating numbers. "that mysterious frequency that prompts you to pay attention"
sus
Moderator
He starts writing a book about Jim Morrison as a 'secret teacher'. He's kipping it in a sleeping bag behind the Sebastopol community center, taking a bus into Santa Rose during the pandemic to work at an outdoor coffee shop that has an outlet for his MAcbook to plug into
He's wondering to himself why am I doing this why am I writing this crazy book. Meanwhile he keeps seeing 1717 everywhere he goes. Keeps finding pennies and feathers on the ground. Then one day he's reading Friends Gathered Together, a book of interviews with Morrison's friends, and sees a picture of Morrison's childhood home and it's at 1717 Alameda Avenue. So obviously this is the sign he's been looking before.
OK that's the background on why the book exists, now what does it say?
He's wondering to himself why am I doing this why am I writing this crazy book. Meanwhile he keeps seeing 1717 everywhere he goes. Keeps finding pennies and feathers on the ground. Then one day he's reading Friends Gathered Together, a book of interviews with Morrison's friends, and sees a picture of Morrison's childhood home and it's at 1717 Alameda Avenue. So obviously this is the sign he's been looking before.
OK that's the background on why the book exists, now what does it say?
Benny Bunter
Well-known member
Is his brain is squirming like a toad?
sus
Moderator
Well, it's all about this notion of the invisible world. He quotes Terrence Malick's Thin Red Line, when Pvt Witt says, "I've seen another world. Sometimes I think it was just my imagination."
Wyld talks about how esoteric means "inner" + "secret," how it's about the search for the invisible inner reality behind appearances.
"Jim Morrison felt, as have all past and present teachers, that our survival depends on reestablishing contact with the invisible realms"
Wyld talks about how esoteric means "inner" + "secret," how it's about the search for the invisible inner reality behind appearances.
"Jim Morrison felt, as have all past and present teachers, that our survival depends on reestablishing contact with the invisible realms"
sus
Moderator
It's interesting too b/c it's this felt sense that there is an invisible reality behind appearances. That "behind" isn't passive or neutral, it's the result of active concealment by someone or something. There is a paranoid, persecuted instinct. "Reality is what has been concealed from us for so long."
sus
Moderator
Wyld quotes Jacob Boehme the Lutheran mystic, describing his "peak" experience:
Which brings to mind Whitman's Leaves of Grass. Or the classic image of acid at Woodstock: laid out on the lawn, sunglassing reflecting two twin suns. I have noticed in some of @luka's poems an ecstatic cosmic communion mediated by grass. There is a way the blades like tendrils come up and greet and surround you and engulf you, a bed of connections while you face toward solar energy
Which brings to mind Whitman's Leaves of Grass. Or the classic image of acid at Woodstock: laid out on the lawn, sunglassing reflecting two twin suns. I have noticed in some of @luka's poems an ecstatic cosmic communion mediated by grass. There is a way the blades like tendrils come up and greet and surround you and engulf you, a bed of connections while you face toward solar energy
sus
Moderator
Then Wyld goes on to talk about mystic experiences in general, what Steinbeck called lonely glories. Moments of sudden, powerfully felt glimpses into other worlds, other realities. "Break on through to the other side." "mystical experiences... characterized by the dissolution of personal boundaries and a sense of becoming one with other people..."
Joyce's necessary madness. Kerouac wanting "uninterrupted natural" (like an exquisite science, trying to always stay high). "Why should I compromise with anything else or with the 'Bourgeois' calm of the backyard lawn'?" (grass carefully trimmed and mowed—not for lying on but to display, like housepaint, for neighbors) "On tea I have seen the light. In my youth I was the light. In my childhood I bathed in the hints of light."
Joyce's necessary madness. Kerouac wanting "uninterrupted natural" (like an exquisite science, trying to always stay high). "Why should I compromise with anything else or with the 'Bourgeois' calm of the backyard lawn'?" (grass carefully trimmed and mowed—not for lying on but to display, like housepaint, for neighbors) "On tea I have seen the light. In my youth I was the light. In my childhood I bathed in the hints of light."
sus
Moderator
Wyld is very into the idea of Secret Teachers. Which he got from a guy named Gary Lachman. A book called Secret Teachers of the Western World.
Secret teacher "prefer living in the margins of society where they can be left alone to experience their ecstatic states of cosmic consciousness"
(“There are no books written about cosmic orgasms” –Neal Cassady)
Secret teacher "prefer living in the margins of society where they can be left alone to experience their ecstatic states of cosmic consciousness"
(“There are no books written about cosmic orgasms” –Neal Cassady)
sus
Moderator
I keep thinking about the phrase "turned on" as I read this book
Like a lightbulb going off
But also like being bathed in sunrays. Eastern dawn in the mind. A sunrise. A moment of vision. "In my youth I was the light." Divine spark. An enchanted enthusiasm. The world turns you on and suddenly it's glowing with meaning. "I want a blaze of light to flame in me forever in a timeless, dear love of everything."
Like a lightbulb going off
But also like being bathed in sunrays. Eastern dawn in the mind. A sunrise. A moment of vision. "In my youth I was the light." Divine spark. An enchanted enthusiasm. The world turns you on and suddenly it's glowing with meaning. "I want a blaze of light to flame in me forever in a timeless, dear love of everything."
sus
Moderator
You have to get charged up, you get charged up from people and also from art. You get what Randall Collins calls "emotional energy."
And you go off and you charge up other people. Or you put your charges into art which is like a battery for zapping other people far across time and space
And you go off and you charge up other people. Or you put your charges into art which is like a battery for zapping other people far across time and space
sus
Moderator
And then there are people that dull your senses your aliveness that put out your flame. I think zoomers call them energy vampires. @ghost turned me on to Pa Salieu's "Energy." And I guess he got turned on to Pa Salieu from Dissensus? Every post is a potential battery if you have the equipment to hook up to it right, receive the charge
Why you keep wastin' your energy?
Never let them draw out the energy
They just want you fall 'cause their jealousy
Yeah, protect your energy
Why you keep wastin' your energy?
Never let them draw out the energy
They just want you fall 'cause their jealousy
Yeah, protect your energy
sus
Moderator
I got caught up in the TE Lawrence x Jim Morrison chapter and ended up posting it here: https://www.dissensus.com/threads/18247/
sus
Moderator
The flame metaphors are everywhere in this book. "Candle burning at both ends" stuff. At one point Wyld describes Morrison's birth year ('43) as the year of the bombs: the inauguration of the Manhattan Project, and the discovery by Hoffman of LSD.
(The hydrogen bomb uses, as its trigger, an atomic bomb)
This video does a decent job of describing the process by which a fire starts. The activation energy needed for solid wood vs isolated shreddings.
The way heat generates more radicals generates more heat generates more radicals. "If our initial bit of energy spreads out before it can make a large concentration of radicals, then our fire won't get started... We have to start making our fire with very small pieces of fuel; for this job, something which is not wood is even better: straw, and grass seeds. Because they are high in a molecule called cellulose... [which] comes with its own oxygen, so once we start burning it it's very easy to keep it burning. Wood however has lignin... which is much harder to burn. But even then, our problem is water... If our wood is damp it won't light at all."
sus
Moderator
(I'm riffing now but it seems meaningful that poet-spellcaster-prophet types are sometimes associated with lightning. Before man could make fire, he could find and maintain existing fire. Lightning is the physical form of mythological Prometheus, striking down the tree-towers, starting fires that primitive man could collect and use for the miniature factories of his campfires... The energy of the forge, that breaks down structure, melts and liquifies it to be reformed, recast and cooled.)