Verwirrung Blog roundtable discussion

[Cain]

Sorry, had got caught up with things.

That does sound interesting...my only worry is that it could overlap more when it came to the cognitive psychology aspects of LMNO's stuff.  But if you could avoid that potential pitfall, it does sound really very good.

Would you want to add anything else into that mix though?  Like more on linguistics generally, or perhaps system based looks at the world around us (which sortof links in, plus with your computer skills you would probably find very easy to understand and convey).

Also, I've started on finding sources to use for writing.  Stand by for PMs, people (if I don't get to you today, I'll get to you before the week is over).

[Cain]

Verwirrung relaunch date:

27th of January.  Thats when our New Peoples Glorious Democratic Republic blogging regime should come into practice.  This is why:

http://www.warrenellis.com/?p=6914

Let's face it. You're in a blog rut.

Most of the time, you write about more of the same kinda stuff that you usually write about.

Maybe it's your day-to-day life, the stuff you did. Maybe it's topical news response. Maybe it's short fiction. Maybe it's re-linking random stuff you see on the internet. Maybe it's LOLCAT porn. (I hope it's not LOLCAT porn.) Maybe it's here on LiveJournal, or it's over on Vox, or Blogspot or Blogger or Blogblog or Postablogablowablog, or WordPress or Facebook or FacePress or FacePlant or maybe it's just your Twitter account. It's what you're comfortable with, I know, I know...

...but why not try doing something different, just for a day?

Two weeks from today, Tuesday January 27th, is Lewis Carroll's 177th birthday. Carroll, you'll recall, wrote about a girl who fell down a rabbit hole and found herself in a place where all the rules had changed. In two weeks, on Lewis Carroll's 177th birthday, you should do the same.

That's right: the 5th Annual Rabbit Hole Day is coming.

When you wake up on the 27th, instead of writing about your usual work and school and politics and friends and news and stuff, experience life down the Rabbit Hole and write about the work, the school, the politics, the friends, the news, the stuff that you find there instead. Travel through time. Turn into an animal. Flee from assassins. Talk to your goldfish. Conquer Greenland. Sprout some extra limbs. Learn how to walk on water. Marry an insect.

Take a break from the Every Day and write about your Rabbit Hole Day. Your normal life will be waiting for you when you get back.

[Telarus]

In an effort to actually think about pushing the memetics of the Blog, I still think tha Blog should be the Homepage for the PD.com site. I find the current homepage a bit stale and static, and teh fact that the FnordFind Search doesn't work annoys me to no end.

I would like to see a smaller version of the IRC page header with maybe "Read the Book" on the yellow tab, and then under that a much smaller "Verwirrung" header, and then the rest of the blog. Links to the forums, the BIP and the IRC page should go in a sidebar.


I can work on designing this, but it may not get as much attention as it would deserve because of homework this week.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

Sorry, had got caught up with things.

That does sound interesting...my only worry is that it could overlap more when it came to the cognitive psychology aspects of LMNO's stuff.  But if you could avoid that potential pitfall, it does sound really very good.

Would you want to add anything else into that mix though?  Like more on linguistics generally, or perhaps system based looks at the world around us (which sortof links in, plus with your computer skills you would probably find very easy to understand and convey).

Also, I've started on finding sources to use for writing.  Stand by for PMs, people (if I don't get to you today, I'll get to you before the week is over).

Sounds good to me.

[Cramulus]

In an effort to actually think about pushing the memetics of the Blog, I still think tha Blog should be the Homepage for the PD.com site. I find the current homepage a bit stale and static, and teh fact that the FnordFind Search doesn't work annoys me to no end.

I would like to see a smaller version of the IRC page header with maybe "Read the Book" on the yellow tab, and then under that a much smaller "Verwirrung" header, and then the rest of the blog. Links to the forums, the BIP and the IRC page should go in a sidebar.


I can work on designing this, but it may not get as much attention as it would deserve because of homework this week.

there's been a trickle of effort in redesigning the front page. I'm not sure what the current status is, but rumor has it the new front page will have our wordpress feed, possibly in addition to some other goodies. Faust, 000, and that jesus guy all worked on it, but I'm not sure what the timeline is. Since it's based on working on the front page during leisure time, I doubt there's a proper date of launch. 

[Cain]

As far as I'm concerned, a blog feed for the front page would be more than sufficient.  I'd be very happy with that

[the last yatto]

but rumor has it the new front page will have our wordpress feed, possibly in addition to some other goodies.

GASM feed?

[Cramulus]

on the blog - is THAC0 too arcane to refer to casually?

[Cain]

You could always drop a link to an explanatory article.

The wonder of Web 2.0 -linkifying everything

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

on the blog - is THAC0 too arcane to refer to casually?

I don't know what it means, but now I want tacos.

Thanks Cram.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

on the blog - is THAC0 too arcane to refer to casually?

I don't know what it means, but now I want tacos.

Thanks Cram.

That's cause you've never been a half-elf paladin*.



* yes, I know...

[Requia ☣]

I'll sign up.  Not sure what yet though.  Only thing I can really think of is trying more of the stream of consciousness stuff I was spewing out a couple weeks ago.

[Cain]

I'll sign up.  Not sure what yet though.  Only thing I can really think of is trying more of the stream of consciousness stuff I was spewing out a couple weeks ago.

That could be cool.

Also, Rata, would you want to discuss hacking and computer security?  I know that's kind of under my portfolio currently, but while I just have lots of reference material, you actually have some white-hat experience in the area.

[Telarus]

I have a 7 page report on crowley, cannabis, and 5th circuit techniques that has been awaiting publication somewhere.... I'm pretty sure I want to serialize it out, because the 7 pages are just a "Part 01", and I'm going to continue it.

I can probably get a good 2-4 articles serialized out of it. Here's a taste:

Cannabis: A Paratheoanametamystichood of Eris Esoteric (POEE)
Special Report: Part 00001

Please file this in the Out-House under E. Lost Documents and Forgotten Truths.

RMN: What was it that first sparked your interest in consciousness enhancement?

Robert Anton Wilson: Korzybski's Science and Sanity. I was in engineering school and I picked up the book in the Brooklyn Public Library. He talked about different levels of organization in the brain-animal circuits, human circuits and so on. And he talked a lot about getting back to the non-verbal level and being able to perceive without talking to yourself while you're perceiving.

It was 1957. I was very interested in jazz at that time, and I told a black friend about some of Korzybski's exercises to get to the non-verbal level, and he said, "Oh, I do that every time I smoke pot." I got interested. I said, "Could I buy one of these marijuana cigarettes from you?" He said, "Oh hell, I'll give it to you free." And so I smoked it.

I found myself looking at a quarter I found in my pocket and realizing I hadn't looked at a quarter in twenty years or so, the way a child looks at a quarter. So I decided marijuana was doing pretty much the same thing Korzybski was trying to do with his training devices. Then shortly after that I heard a lecture by Alan Watts, and I realized that Zen, marijuana and Korzybski were all relating the same transformations of consciousness. That was the beginning.

http://www.futurehi.net/docs/FiringTheCosmicTrigger.html

   Without that connection, Robert Anton Wilson may not have wrote many of his books, and I would probably not be writing this, nor you reading it right now. Who am I? You may call me Episkopos Telarus, KSC (Keeper of the Sacred Chao), Tender to the Edible Zen Garden, Keeper of the Contradictory Cephalopod, which you should think of as an arbitrarily chosen Holy Name of Discordia. Don't know about Eris(Discordia) yet? Well, I didn't set out to write that kind of article, but you can brush up by reading the Principia Discordia, by Malaclypse the Younger (Greg Hill) and Omar Khayyam Ravenhurst (Kerry Thornley) ¹. Just realize that that's the tip of a very weird iceberg.

   Having mentioned that, I'll sum up the reasons for writing this article by saying that a soft voice from my Pineal Gland told me to write it. This article does not attempt to lay out all of the esoteric knowledge regarding the Sacred Herb (and really, doesn't attempt to explain all about anything). It simply represents a synthesis of my current research into some form of narrative. Useful for the moment, constantly under revision. Also, keep in mind that research of this type becomes extremely hard to corroborate the further into the rabbit-hole we go.

Here we go.....

   It began about two years ago while I was trolling through www.occultforums.com. I noticed someone scrambling for any magical correspondences through which to work with Cannabis (marijuana/ pot/ hemp/ chara/ etc), and something pulled me to my copy of Aleister Crowley's Liber 777, a brilliant compilation of some of the most confusing magical correspondences ever put to paper. I had recently read that Crowley coded his opinions and research of various mental states (or "astral planes") into Liber 777, along with the substances, archetypes, and techniques he used to attain these states. The key to unlocking this, it seemed, was a good understanding of his numbering system, and lots of time playing connect the dots (I was woefully ignorant of the structure of the Tree of Life at that time). As Crowley explains in the intro to 777, when someone from one culture thinks of (or works with) a specific God (example, Egyptian: Thoth) and one from another culture thinks of another God (Hindu: Hanuman, or Roman: Mercury), he considered these not two different thoughts, but the same thought under different labels (these entities are all listed in line 8 of various tables).

"Well Crowley was such a complicated individual that everybody who reads Crowley has a different Crowley in his head." -Robert Anton Wilson

   I began in the obvious places, the tables entitled XLIII Vegetable Drugs and XXXIX Plants, Real and Imaginary. This generated a working set of numerical "keys" with which to comb through the rest of the book. These keys were (Vegetable Drugs) 2-Hashish, 3-Soma, 7 & 8-Cannabis Indica, 14-All aphrodisiacs, 15-All cerebral excitants, and (Plants, Real & Imaginary) 23. Cannabis Sativa, Lotus, all Water Plants.

2, 3, 7, 8, 14, 15, 23

   Armed with this numerical sigil, and struck by the synchronicities it held (it begins with 23, ends with 23, and has an esoteric 5 in the center, flanked by 15's), I began a very strange trip through esoteric mysticism and history. Many of the columns were frustratingly blank. While I will not reproduce the full table that I generated in this article, these numbers and their entries in 777 inspired much of the material presented here. When obvious references to these "keys" occur in the article I will reference this in parentheses, using (key23), or (key14), for example.

   Now, many people have been researching the esoteric history of Cannabis, and I will draw on many sources for this Report, from Neo-Zoroastrians to Old Skool Discordians, from the Canadian Senate to Sects of Stoned Saddhus, from Zen Tricksters to Sufi Mystics. Let us begin with the Discordians, primarily references in the Principia Discordia. I will warn you against assuming that any or all Discordians you meet smoke Sacrament. As a disorganization, we channel those who partake in this sort of Sacrament into certain esoteric sects, while still embracing those who reject it for various reasons, recognizing that they have found their own Sacrament with the Goddess.

   The first reference in the Principia to Cannabis comes during the Myth of the Apple of Discord, or 'How the Trojan War Began' (pages 00017-00018) in which a footnote reads **There is historic disagreement concerning whether this apple was of metallic gold or acapulco. This seems typical of the Principia Discordia, in that a cryptic reference leads you to (or reveals that you do) know something about an obscure subculture, which suddenly makes the joke that much funnier. Can you imagine that? The three most self-important Greek Goddess fighting over who gets da kine bud as big as an apple, Bogarting the Wedding Gift. And Eris, forced to lurk past the wedding threshold, obviously meant for the bride, Thetis to claim it, but only Goddesses have the nerve to claim to be 'the fairest one' at a wedding.

   The next veiled reference comes on page 00027, a doodle of a cockroach with the caption, "This is St. Gulik. He is the Messenger of the Goddess. A different age from ours called him Hermes (key2, key8). Many people called him by many names. He is a Roach." The reader may be familiar with the term 'roach' in reference to marijuana, but may wonder where this comes from. We can trace the term back to a Spanish marching song popular with rebels and soldiers in the Mexican Revolution of 1910-1920. The most well known lyric goes,

La cucaracha, la cucaracha
Ya no puede caminar
Porque no tiene, porque le falta
Marijuana que fumar.

The cockroach, the cockroach
No longer can he march
Because he doesn't have, because he la-acks
Marijuana to smoke.

   And if I were a Mexican soldier...or rebel, in that situation, that's exactly how I would feel. What? Cannabis makes you a lazy stoner, you say? Oh, we'll get to that brilliant bit of governmental-religious social manipulation later.

   Further on, we find a wood cut of a POEE Brother wearing the 5-fingered hand of Eris and smoking a joint (page 00033). Then on page 00039 we are introduced to the 5 Discordian Apostles, and find out that the 3rd Apostle, Sri Syadasti, Patron of the Season of Confusion is the offspring of "the Squaw Mary-Jane and the Gentle Chief SunFlower Seed, of the Peyotl Indian tribe". The fact that Sri Syadasti's full name ² is a Sanskrit Koan (thus confusing the two types of "indians") comes to fruition when we read the footnote: "NOTE: Sri Syadasti should not be confused with Blessed St. Gulik the Stoned, who is not the same person but is the same Apostle." This appellation, "the Stoned" anchors the Sri/Gulik connection to the Sacred Herb. Sri Syadasti the Stoned also has a beautiful alliteration.

   Further references are there to be found by the curious seeker, especially where Gulik pops up, but I also feel I should mention Lord Omar's introduction to the 5th Edition. Kerry Thornely begins his introduction to the 5th edition of the Principia Discordia ³,

"If organized religion is the opium of the masses,
then disorganized religion is the marijuana of the lunatic fringe."

   This theme runs through his introduction, with many references to marijuana, and to many of the mystic sects mentioned in this Report. The comparison of organized to disorganized religion also highlights how little the effects of Cannabis resemble the effects of opiates, the numbingly oceanic "security" drugs. Cannabis also proves itself distinct from alcohol and other substances that effect emotional control and blur the lines of primate pack status. Again, it's effects separate itself from the abstract-symbol accelerants, from the "lowly" caffeine and nicotine to the more "extreme" cocaine and methamphetamines. It seems to share traits with some of the psychedelics, such as psylocibin and LSD, but in the doses normally ingested does not cause archetype invoking hallucinations which overwhelm the usual perception of reality.

References:
  1 - http://www.principiadiscordia.com/
  2 - http://www.principiadiscordia.com/book/46.php
  3 - http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~tilt/principia/intro5.html
  4 - This citation appears in the next article, stoopid.
  5 - This is a recursive footnote. Fnord.⁵

[Requia ☣]

It's a bit pinealist.