Wednesday, January 09, 2008
THE LIBERTARIAN LEFT
The Church of Gnostic Luminism - The Luminist Manifesto - Sacraments:
Proper Uses of Psychedelics
The consciousness-expanding herbs and chemicals are powerful tools, and, like all tools, they can be dangerous if they are used inappropriately. Proper training and preparation are important.
Looking forward hopefully to a more libertarian future, the Church of Gnostic Luminism will develop plans for such training for aspirants to the Yoga of Light Containing Herbs. A goal will be the establishment of a monastery and a Holy Order of Light. An underground tradition of psychedelic science has developed over the decades, originating before the “legal” prohibition of LSD began in 1965; and the Church of Gnostic Luminism will draw upon this body of lore for guidance, along with the experience and teachings of the established psychedelic churches.
Notice at the bottom of the website the ever-watchful Eye of Horus in the left corner.
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"Maybe Quarterly" - Volume 4, Spring Equinox 2007 - Issue 1
This is a publication of the Maybe Logic Academy, a creation of Robert Anton Wilson. This website announces the death of Wilson and contains the tributes posted by his followers. Portions of a couple make my point. Note first that "All Hail Eris!" is attributed to Wilson. Here are some quotes from his "children":
All Hail Discordia
This is the rallying cry of the Discordians, a group of followers of Wilson and other luminaries in the Discordian orbit who "worship" the goddess Eris. From a fan:
I especially loved the night you "spilled" the IXth Degree secret of the OTO at a magickal get-together years ago.
I remember being turned onto your "Illuminati Trilogy" by Victor Koman, and his band of Libertarians/Discordians. Ah, the good old days....
The post is signed ".'.93'.'"
Another - this one from "J"
It should be noted that RAW was not a liberal in modern sense, but an anti-statist libertarian (tho' not of the right-wing sort, true)...
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Next, a listing of articles written by Robert Anton Wilson. Notice particularly this collection:
from New Libertarian
"That Old Black Magick " from April 10, 1977
"I, Robot" from July 3, 1977
"Neurological Relativism" from March 1978
"A New Writer: F.W. Nietzsche" October 1984
"Dirty Socks and Denture Breath" August 1990 (RAW fiction, chapter 2 in "The Prometheus Meltdown," a tribute to Robert Heinlein)
There are also articles from "Gnosis" and "Magical Blend Magazine" plus an article from "The Journal of the Libertarian Futurist Society". His article "My Debt to H. P. Lovecraft" from Crypt of Cthulhu introduces another important god-figure in the Discordian cult.
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Author F. Paul Wilson (related?), a physician and author of sci fi, horror, thriller, and medical novels "bringing libertarian themes...to millions of readers." It was Lovecraft, among others, who introduced this libertarian to the genre. He claims "to make explicitly libertarian points in his fiction" according to the website.
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Next, Dennis Bardens. This obituary is from the Times Online where you can read:
Back in civilian life, Bardens organised a major exhibition of the works of his great friend, the occult artist Austin Osman Spare. Before the First World War, Spare had briefly been associated with Aleister Crowley, although he developed his own ideas on mysticism, which were at a clear remove from Crowley’s black magic and crooked libertarianism. Spare believed in ghosts, and often painted them, and his ideas inspired Bardens.
A. O. Spare, another member of the Discordian orbit--this one a very dark member, indeed. His drawings used to be online. They displayed faces in odd places on bodies that were otherwise relatively normal. Such as the stomach. After looking at many of them, I concluded that Spare was telling us about possession.
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"Libertarian Ceremonial Magick or How to turn a Fundamentalist into a Tolerant Person" by Don Chaote.
A chaote is a practitioner of chaos magick. From the article:
Perhaps you have read by now my account of how I organized the draft card burning at the 1969 Young Americans for Freedom convention (YAF: a right wing group) with the torch of Liberty. It is generally conceded that this was the modern beginning of the Libertarian movement. ...
Now let us have a volunteer – if not a fundamentalist, then one who can pretend to be one. Someone who might fit H.L. Mencken’s definition of a puritan: someone who lives in mortal fear that someone somewhere is having a good time. If that is you, then what are you doing here among libertarians?
And at the end of the article:
In the June 2004 issue of Liberty magazine there is an autobiographical article in which he describes how he invoked the libertarian movement by ceremonial magick.
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H. L. Mencken
At LewRockwell.com there is an article titled "H. L. Mencken: The Joyous Libertarian" by Murray N. Rothbard. With this article we see a crossover into the libertarian right of the Acton Institute and other organizations in this orbit.
The extortions and oppressions of government will go on so long as such bare fraudulence deceives and disarms the victims – so long as they are ready to swallow the immemorial official theory that protesting against the stealings of the archbishop's secretary's nephew's mistress' illegitimate son is a sin against the Holy Ghost. ~ H. L. Mencken
At the end of the article is the following:
Murray N. Rothbard (1926-1995), the founder of modern libertarianism and the dean of the Austrian School of economics, was the author of The Ethics of Liberty and For a New Liberty and many other books and articles. He was also academic vice president of the Ludwig von Mises Institute and the Center for Libertarian Studies, and the editor – with Lew Rockwell – of The Rothbard-Rockwell Report.
Copyright © 2002 by the Ludwig von Mises Institute
