OTO, CAW, Stranger in a Strange Land

[Rcfchess at aol.com]

In a message dated 08/12/2006 9:40:59 A.M. Eastern Standard Time,  
robinlandseadel at comcast.net writes:

Add to  that little shelf of "Required Hippie Reading" Richard Brautigan, 
"Another  Roadside Attraction", "Demian", "Dune" and a frayed mass market copy 
(with  disolving pages) of "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test".

--------------  Original message ----------------------
From:  mikebailey at speakeasy.net-------------------
> 
> OTO is the legal  heir of Crowley's magickal legacy 
> http://oto-usa.org/
>  
> CAW has had ups and downs, but I'd consider it harsh to call it  weirdo 
apostasy;  
> basically the cool thing about them is their  primo holy book is a work of 
> fiction and they don't deny that; they  have a whole lot of other books 
they 
> recommend too, it's an  ecumenical neo-pagan outlook they promote and I 
find 
> merit in many of  their ways
> http://www.caw.org/
> 
> at various times I've  belonged to both without denying my Judeo-Christian 
> heritage...it's  fair to say Crowley emanated both sublime and disgusting 
> stuff...been  both inspired and repelled by him...
> 
> Stranger in a Strange  Land in a way is Heinlein's _Gravity's Rainbow_ 
> of course Michael  Valentine Smith is a Christ figure and the vision is of 
a 
> generous  cosmos where for some reason "love sweet love is deemed a crime"; 
also  
> it has some great and moving prose, memorable characters, pretty fine  
stuff I'd 
> say
> 
> There's sort of an SF- and  psychedelic- canon including Stranger, 
Childhood's 
> End, Electric  Kool-Aid Acid Test, Illuminatus!, Jack Kerouac and Alan 
Ginsberg, 
>  Timothy Leary (even if he was deep cover CIA), the Whole Earth Catalog  
(anybody 
> remember "DR's trip" from the Last Whole Earth Catalog?),  Baba Ram Dass, 
and a 
> lot more writers and musicians in the 60s and  70s, that for me anyway 
developed 
> the vocabulary and mental  flexibility to enjoy Gravity's Rainbow and 
perhaps had 
> a coherence  when taken together to allow one to think of a workable 
>  counterculture...
> 
> no sooner does one think of such a thing  than one remembers how the whole 
> structure was (or was it?) a house  of cards...but such a sweet one...
> 



And let us not forget John Lennon's lyrics, of course, & other works by  
Hesse, & a couple by Kesey, & all of Alan Watts, & Rollo May, &  R.D. Laing 
(though some of his theories were proven wrong), & the poetry of  Jim Morrison...
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