When your number is up

I got through this life by sometimes (when lost) simply paying attention to patterns to steer  me, and that includes what Jung called synchronicities (i.e. coincidences that seem to carry some kind of significance or meaning, over and above ‘mere coincidence’).

I don’t intend to go into a discussion of this right here, rather note a recent cluster of ‘significance’ as an example.

The two members of the KLF recently announced that they will create some kind of event in August 2017 (23 years after burning a million pounds in a strange media event).    I turn to John Higgs’ wonderful book about the whole strange story - The KLF: Chaos, Magic and the Band who Burned a Million Pounds -

and enjoy it all over again.

That reminds me that I bought a limited edition of a book from Mr. Higgs at the Cosmic Trigger play event in Liverpool in 2014 - Standing on the Verge of Getting It On - so I dig it out, as it seems related to the wonderful social history of the period he  included in the first book.     I have copy 43 out of a limited edition of 111.   I didn’t ask him, at the time, what significance that number had.

As I read through, an extraordinary man called Brian Barritt walks in on one of the musicians who is reading “Cosmic Trigger” and he says “I appear on page 111 of that book”. 

[This is not true of current editions, where you find Brian on page 115, or 116 – although there is a reference on page 111 of the old New Falcon edition to John Lilly mentioning ‘angels’  (Cosmic  Coincidence Control Centre) – and page 111 of the most recent release,from Hilaritas Press has material about cabalistic numerology and communication with Higher Intelligence.]

So I dig out my signed copy of Brian’s book – The Road of Excess - that I bought from him through the mail and feel surprised to see he lived at number 111 of a street in London.

Which triggered memories of studying online with Robert Anton Wilson (hereafter ‘Bob’) who was, among other things, a Joycean scholar, and we did some work on Finnegans Wake, in which the number 111 appears quite frequently.  Bob seemed to think of it as indicating Renewal and Creativity.   Joyce links it to Anna Livia Plurabelle (the feminine influence in the book), who also represents the River Liffey.  The book not only contains a myriad of puns (the river of life, for instance) but also offers a series of coded materials (possibly drawn from Cabbalism) and numerology, ALP = 111.   [the Hebrew A or aleph=ALP=111]

Other variations with the same value include APL (apple?), LAP, PAL, etc.

Again, I don’t want to side-track into all of that material here and now.

I don’t know a lot of numerology, so decide to Google it, and found that people consider 111 as an ‘angelic’ number.   Given that Cosmic Trigger covers a period when Leary and Wilson thought they were getting messages from ‘alien beings’ or higher intelligence, or their Holy guardian Angel (or something)  I perceive some kind of connection.

And in that same research, I saw a reminder of the odd fact that Robert Anton Wilson died on the 11^th January, 2007 (11/1 in the UK, or 1/11 in the USA, as a palindrome it works both ways).  Even odder, given that I only just noticed this (a heads up from DJ Fly Agaric) Bob managed to die on the 101^st birthday of Albert Hofmann (inventor, discoverer of LSD, who was still alive and well, at the time, as I described in a post on our shared blog).   As we are now approaching the tenth anniversary of Bob’s death, that makes it Uncle Albert’s 111^th birthday on Wednesday!

These things go on, and although some seem done consciously (like creating 111 copies of a book), I start to perceive particular significance when unrelated areas also get drawn into the net.  For instance, my hobby is magic, and a few weeks ago I ordered a DVD about close-up magic called (I kid you not) “LAP” and am right now awaiting delivery.   [Update:  11/01/2017   Of course, this DVD arrived today, just after I posted to our group blog.]

Steve (DJ Fly) took this a step further, when he turned to Finnegans Wake (which always gets published, in all editions, with the same page numbering):

If the page numbers are significant then dates can be determined from them. The first time I saw this type of correlation is of page 111 of the Wake with Robert Anton Wilson's death on January 11th.

...peraw raw raw reeraw puteters out of Now Sealand in spignt of the patchpurple of the massacre, a dual a duel to die to day, goddam and biggod, sticks and stanks, of most of the Jacobiters...

That not only contains references to RAW (another nickname for Robert Anton Wilson), "to die to day", but also to RAW patatows (a pretend currency we invented to amuse him).

Here’s Bob himself:

"This 1:11 business turns out to be more curious than we realize at first, even if we note that it is connected with Bloom's son, who died at age 11 days, Shakespeare's son Hamnet who died at 11 years and the 22 (2x11) letters in the Hebrew alphabet or the 22 words in the first sentence of Ulysses. If ALP and APL invoke all this, the LAP, a further permutation, invokes the LAP where a Freemason wears his apron, as in Aleister Crowley's BOOK OF LIES, Chapter 54, in which some Freemasons guess that the lost Mason Word is AMO, whose number is 111, and some guess that it is LAP which also has the number 111. (By Cabala, AMO=A which is 1, M which is 40, and O which is 70, 1+40+70=111, while LAP=L or 30, A or 1, and P or 80, and 30+1+80=111.) William York Tindall, a Joyce scholar who likes to count, has noted that many long sentences in FW have 111 clauses. Anna Livia Plurabelle's untitled "mamafesta" in Chapter Five has 111 alternative titles; when sad, she is described as "wan wan wan"; in Chapter 8, she has 111 children. Most books on Cabala hint at transcendental meanings in the fact that the Hebrew A or aleph=ALP=111 when spelled in full as aleph-lamek-pe."    

from Wilson's book Coincidance  (a new edition of which I find myself helping to proof-read right now).

Here's another little piece of the jigsaw.   Julian Cope appears in both the Higgs books mentioned above, and has done the definitive work on stone circles, megaliths, etc.  The Modern Antiquarian.

So imagine my surprise, in my Google trawl, when I came across this:

 ...echo in the conjunction of archaeoacoustic research focused on megalithic tombs and the frequency of the number 111 in Finnegans Wake: ‘the majik wavus has elfun anon meshes’ (FW 203.31): the magic wave has 11+1 meshes.

...‘the ride onerable’ (FW 328.13) – three ones – of ALP’s gematric value, 111 Hz is also a natural resonance frequency identified for Neolithic tombs and chambers in Ireland and Britain, which cluster mostly within the ‘myrioheartzed’ (FW 331.23) range of 110-112 Hz (Mills 2014: 66-67). In the context of ‘chambermade music’ (FW 184.4) this frequency has consciousness-altering effects: at 110-112 Hz the patterns of activity over the prefrontal cortex abruptly shift, resulting in a relative deactivation of the language centre, with regular exposure to resonant sound at that frequency ‘turning on’ an area of the brain that relates to mood, empathy and social behaviour.

All of which, as ever, leaves me puzzled.  What I may take from it comes from pages I would normally ignore (I don’t have a lot of respect for much of the New Age stuff online).  If the frequent appearance of 111 in your life has to do with Manifestation and Prosperity, then it seems a good idea to stay optimistic and positive – so as to manifest the good stuff…  A reasonable message, after the horrific year just passed.

Ritual and Romance

My birthday on the now secular Valentine's Day sparked the title for this post, but also the fact that I found myself working on material related to Jessie Weston's book about the Death and Resurrection Show, and myths and legends, elements and initiations, The Holy Grail, the Hero's Journey, and all that.

At the same time, reading Turn Off Your Mind (originally published as Turn Off your Mind: The Mystic Sixties and the Dark Side of the Age of Aquarius), and the latest Crowley biography, "Aleister Crowley: The Biography - Spiritual Revolutionary, Romantic Explorer, Occult Master - and Spy" by Tobias Churton.

I have to say that I have never found Magick that attractive. But then again, even as someone who reached the age of 21 in 1967 (and lived in Notting Hill at the time) I never could finish reading "Lord of The Rings". Too twee, too fey. And I don't have a religious bone in my body. The Christian subtext of books by C.S.Lewis must have leaked out to make me feel queasy. I didn't get involved in "Stranger In A Strange Land" (a rather right-wing Heinlein cult book, with curious links from Crowley to L. Ron Hubbard and Scientology) and I also find the trend to self-mutilation as a fashion (tattoos and piercings) quite weird. So I have little interest in, or affection for, gnomes, elves, hobbits, magical powers, sword and sorcery, faerie, witches, cosplay, etc. Sad news for Star Wars fans, I dare say, who seem to still love that 'knights in armour' romance, with swordplay as a pastime (or honourable, serious duel) in a world of guns. The code of the samurai, Zen, etc.

Having said all that, in an online study group I mingled with serious students of Magick who seriously disliked my flippancy and sarcasm, and worked hard to convince me that Thelemic Magick did not belong in the same camp as the religions I sneered at. I still consider that a moot point, but out of respect for other people's belief systems (BS) I cooled it.

I don't have any 'taboo' problem with Pagans, or Wiccans or people who choose to follow Lucifer (I suspect Madame Blavatsky called her magazine that just to tease 'the straights'). I simply don't believe that the world actually contains ghosts and spirits and aliens, etc. I haven't experienced them. If this mysterious world does contain other lifeforms, or higher intelligences, or gods, or spirits, etc - then presumably that remains true across time and space. Why would they have knowable names in Latin and Greek (what would a South American shaman call them?) Why would they even want to communicate - do you talk to the ants in your garden? How come Crowley doesn't seem to have met Mescalito (as Castaneda claimed to have done)? All the silly questions of the smart-ass child. Secret Chiefs? Um, yeah, OK, whatever. Duh.

I think I had trouble with the American Thelemites because they didn't understand that my resistance to Crowley did not arise from Christian horror, or tabloid name-calling, fear of Black Magic, etc. He obviously had great intelligence and charisma, etc. What I suffer from (as a prejudice of my own) arises from the British class / caste system.

All his achievements seemed less impressive (to me) when I thought that he never had to work a day in his life, had the freedom to travel around the world (when that put you in a much more exclusive club than in these days of tourism), and so on. Not to say he didn't suffer, or go through poverty and insecurity, etc. Still, he appeared to me to belong in a group called 'Conservatives' (however broad a spectrum that can cover) and I had a built-in loathing for the position. I didn't even have too much of a problem with his Nietzschean elitist attitude, as I probably appear pretty snobby about stupid people, the bourgeoisie, etc, myself. The arrogance and smugness of the affluent and powerful in the UK, however, still pushes my buttons. One thing that Churton suggests contributed to some of his love of show was the fact that he had money but it came from 'trade' - so he never really got accepted by the aristocracy (you have to understand the caste system). Maybe that led him to enjoy appearing as Lord Boleskine, or various Counts, Princes, Sheiks, etc. Then I read on, to find just how much AC came to hate the stuffy, rigid, inflexible world of the British class system himself. Recasting him in my mind as a bohemian and artist changes the whole feel of the thing, for me.

Anyway, and ahem, this new biography seems the fairest and clearest I have read (and I've read them all). Tobias Churton has done a fine job, and this helps me understand more of AC himself, including the almost untold story of his involvement in espionage (although Richard Spence's "Secret Agent 666" did get there first with this theme).

In fact, not just Crowley has emerged as having possible 'intelligence' connections. Both Gurdjieff and Madame Blavatsky have now had similar rumours spread about them, as has Houdini! I put some of this in a blog as ESPionage and magiCIAns - which also indicates John Mulholland (well known stage magician) as having advised the intelligence services about using sleight of hand to (for instance) spike people's drinks.

Ahem.

I just don't do rituals. Me personally. I don't even do birthdays and New Year, marriages and funerals, very well. The small 'rituals' of the day - like coffee - I consider as more like routines. Dressing up and taking on other personas belongs in theatre and performance, to me.

I remember a sharp-suited and witty, married, Jewish atheist - a friend of my mother - who eventually came out as gay, split from his wife, became a Catholic and dived into Opera, and when I asked him about it he said he just loved all the costumes, and incense, and music, and emotions and ritual, etc. It sounds like a stereotype, but this was one (real) person. Ceremonial magic appears to employ the power of ritual, just as the Catholic Church does (dwarfing scale of cathedrals, the sound of choirs and organs, the incense, the ritual movements of kneeling and crossing yourself, the wafer and the wine, etc). I guess my resistance came from perceiving the parallels, not the differences.

I certainly can't dismiss other people's experiences, and I know that if I don't try the experiments then I can't really comment effectively. One of my teachers, Robert Anton Wilson, certainly considered some of Crowley's experiments worth trying, but I never did agree with him on everything. In Cosmic Trigger he dismisses vegetarianism as sentimental, and never had a good word to say about astrology (even though Crowley - and Antero Alli - spent a lot of time on it, wrote about it, used it, etc).
To me, astrology proved a rather effective mythological language and short-hand for discussing states of mind, temperaments, etc. So although Bob recommending ceremonial magick to the well-prepared and cautious it didn't move me to try. But each to their own. He didn't get much out of a flotation tank (and neither did I), but some people swear by them. Whatever, as they say, turns you on.

So, hey - I will try to shape up some of my ideas in this realm, as part of this year's project. You can see some initial work I did on the elements and initiation for a blog back in 2005, here - The Third Degree.

I also wrote an imaginary meeting between two different kinds of magicians, Houdini and Crowley, which might have ended up as a comic book,
but never did. So I expanded the words, and got a few of the illustrations done, and put it online anyway. Magical Means.

As you may have guessed, I find magic of the stage variety far more interesting and entertaining. I compile notes about the subject (including the psychology of it) in a blog called Intelligence Increase.