AtDTDA (16) 434 +

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

          Mark Kohut:
          For those--you know who you are---who have led 
          the way in exploring Magic in TRP.
 
          From the same essay by Segal:   'The bulk of The 
          Golden Bough is devoted to an intermediate stage 
          between religion and science---a stage of magic 
          and religion combined.
 
              "Thus the old magical theory of the seasons was 
               displaced, or rather supplemented, by
               a religious theory."...
 
          Does this apply to Pynchon's vision?
          ......any How and Why?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

              As it has ever been, and apparently ever shall be, gods, 
              superseded, become the devils in the system which supplants 
              their reign, and stay on to make trouble for their successors, 
              available, as they are, to a few for whom magic has not 
              despaired, and been superseded by religion. 
              William Gaddis, the Recognitions, pg 102

This is a developing theme in TRP's writings, something that gets closer and 
closer to the surface of his texts as we move closer to our present. There is 
the older order---the realm of polytheism, shamanism, olde magicke, alchemy,
and all those other "non-scheduled theologies" that Lenny Bruce warned us all 
about as he was channeling the rapcious Oral Roberts. This newer order of 
spiritual leadership---monotheism and spritual systems designed to prop up 
vertical hierarchies, systems of control imposed by the elect upon the 
preterite---is a cover story for the real agenda: slavery, capitalism, what 
Starhawk calls "Power Over":

          I talk a bit about different kinds of power: power-over, the power 
          that comes from a gun or from the state, the power to control 
          resources or inflict harm--that power we're all familiar with.  But 
          there's another kind of power. "Poder" in Spanish means both 
          "power" and "to be able."  There's a power that's our ability to 
          be able to do something, and that power grows when we act 
          together. We don't have control over the police or the power 
          they represent, but we do have control over how we act and 
          organize to increase the power we can have together. 

http://www.starhawk.org/activism/activism-writings/CancunJournal5.html

            An anarchist seeking to crush the process of economic 
            globalization and, ultimately, capitalism, using the rhetoric of 
            freedom and self-empowerment, may seem absurd to 
            conservatives and libertarian party members. Starhawk 
            identifies two types of power: power over, and power as 
            ability. The distinction is imperfect, but power over is the 
            “entitlement and ability of some groups to control others, 
            extract their labor or resources, and impose sanctions or 
            punishment.” Power over is a kind of hard power--the 
            ability to get people to do things they do not want to do. 
            I can control another because of a threat emanating from 
            myself--do what I want because otherwise I will beat, 
            imprison or torture you, etc. Starhawk extends the category 
            to include exploitation based on economic necessity. If you 
            are poor and starving or in need of medical care, for example, 
            I can get you to do what I want by paying you. Interdependent 
            modern economies, without the potential for self-sufficiency, 
            can be a source of power-over if the resources within them 
            are distributed inequitably.

http://www.stanford.edu/class/symbsys205/starhawk.html

Mark Kohut cites "The Golden Bough", a well known source of ideas concerning
pre-christian beliefs. I never read it. I haven't read a lot of things. But for 
some really weird reason, accidents of birth, "coincidence" that turns out not 
to be, I got involved in this really odd neck of the woods. It's a lot like 
living in a Pynchon novel, to be specific, Vineland.

I gave a call to my neice [let's call her "Thelma", she's my primary local 
source for all things O.T.O.] a couple two-three days ago. It went to her 
answering machine, and Thelma soon called back. Later that day, my wife 
[all excited] asks if an old acquaintance called, I said no, Gail says she saw 
the name of someone from her old discussion group, I said that was my 
neice's phone number. It was the same name of a man Gail knows who 
once was in the C.I.A. but won a lottery and retired. It turned out that it 
was his son's [identical] name on the phone, who happens to be my neice's 
boyfriend. He happens to be "into" the Golden Dawn. 

My own personal, "Practical" experience around people who are into "Magick" 
or Wicca is that usually [somehow] there is some "intelligence gathering' 
activity in close proximity, just like in Pynchon. Have I projected a world, or 
do I just live there? What is my precise, personal degree of fictionality? How
did I wind up in Vineland? Or maybe OBA hangs out with the far-far left, and 
I've hung out with the far-far left ["accident" of birth] and we both know what 
good cooking smells like. Certainly, if Pynchon has been wandering into this 
neck of the woods [as John Ross seems to be insinuating in "Murdered by 
Capitalism"], he'd have every good reason to be strictly on the QT and stay as
close to invisible as he can possibly manage. And he does---his primary claim
to fame among the hoi-polloi is as the Invisible Man of Western Letters, kinda 
like some superhero with fucked-up powers, or a calling card printed with 
invisible ink.

Scratch the gold paint off of Catholicism's overt colonialist actions and you 
find slavery as the hidden agenda, just as much as scratching off W's teflon 
coating of fighting for "Freedom" in Iraq reveals an obvious grab for somebody 
else's petroleum. Charles Hollander says that for TRP it's all about justice, 
which makes this quote from a recent "Law & Order" episode very much 
on point:

          "We're up to our eyeballs in ancient history, 
          that's the price of justice."

Ancient history gets dragged along for justice's long, long ride in part to 
provide context for all this injustice. We have to be able to appreciate the 
taboos of the past in order to appreciate some of the more overt violations 
of those taboos. In the case of Thomas Ruggles Pynchon, the great injustice 
always has been and always will be slavery, the imposition of the the power 
of the elect over some powerless preterites, it's in all of his large-scale 
writing from V. to AtD.  Segal's statement: "Thus the old magical theory of 
the seasons was displaced, or rather supplemented, by a religious theory"
gives the impression that this "Catholic" blending of old and new somehow 
turned out good or useful, when in fact it separated indiginous tribes from 
their local and ancient sources of power, the church claiming that power as 
expressly their own. As in many other concepts expressed by OBA, 
the Firesign Theater immediately leaps to mind:

http://www.firesigntheatre.com/albums/wfte1.mp3

Consider Frank's introduction to astral travel and magical work by El Espinero.
The scene of Frank peering into the shaman's crystal skull is as pure a 
represention of scrying as once could imagine. As in Pan's Labryinth, the realm
of the magical---accesible "to a few for whom magic has not despaired", a
realm of dream and visionary experience---is a place where the real work is 
being performed.

Ours is the realm of Maya. Maya is but a thin veil for that place where the real 
work is happening.