Death of a Moor

Peter Lamborn Wilson (1945-2022)

Peter Lamborn Wilson is dead.

Peter Lamborn Wilson was a prolific, controversial writer and researcher into the lives and beliefs of mavericks, misfits, hobos, punks and heretics. He is best-known for his coinage of the term Temporary Autonomous Zone or TAZ which can be applied to any spontaneous association of free people from Burning Man to improv dancing, especially those gatherings which maximize what Wilson liked to call "ontological anarchy".

As an Ontological Anarchist, Peter necessarily acquired an unusual resume'. Educated at Columbia, Wilson left New York in 1968 for a spiritual "Journey to the East" across the Islamic world from Morocco to Katmandu, seeking wisdom and teachers in tea houses, palaces and opium dens and settling finally in Tehran, where his presence coincided with Empress Farah Pahlavi's desire to spread Iranian culture into the West. At the Iranian Academy of Philosophy, Wilson was put in charge of English publication where he was able to translate the works of famous Islamic philosophers and poets, for instance (my favorite) The Drunken Universe: An Anthology of Persian Sufi Poetry with Nasrollah Pourjavady.

Wilson's academic tenure in Tehran was cut short in 1979 by the Iranian Revolution in which the Shah and his wife were replaced by the Ayatollah Khomeini (a minor poet himself in the tradition of Khayyam and Hafiz).

Back in New York, Wilson aligned himself with various fringe organizations among which was the Moorish Orthodox Church of America which Wikipedia describes as "a syncretic, non-exclusive, and religious anarchist movement originally founded in New York City in 1965 and part of the burgeoning psychedelic church movement of the mid to late 1960’s in the United States." MOCA traces its lineage back to a black Chicago religious leader from the 1920's, Noble Drew Ali, whom the Black Muslims also claim as their founder. More detailed information concerning this "religious anarchist movement" can be found on the web at the Moorish Orthodox Information Kiosk or in Wilson's own Sacred Drift: Essays on the Margins of Islam published by City Lights in San Francisco.

Wilson obituaries have appeared in such wide-ranging venues as The Global Ganja Report and the New York Times (!) so I will not repeat here what others have written but instead publish a brief account of how this ontological anarchist affected my own life.

In the early 80's computers were just beginning to enter our lives. Instead the photocopier gave rise to a web-like phenomenon called "zines", short for "magazines" in which anyone with a few dollars for stamps and access to a Xerox machine could become their own publisher. The quality of zines ranged from semi-professional to unreadable but what they all had in common was quirky originality and instant access to off-beat topics. I cannot locate in my records the zine in which I first encountered the writings of Peter Lamborn Wilson but it might have been Popular Reality which one archivist described as "distinguishing itself as an open forum for the most unpopular of opinions."

Connecting via one of the zines of that era Peter and I began a letter exchange concerning the Moorish Orthodox Church and he invited me to come visit him in New York should opportunity arise. So in the spring of 1986 on some errand involving physics and publishing I met the man himself in his third floor apartment on West 107th St just a few blocks from the Nicholas Roerich Museum.

Wilson lived in a rat's warren of books, papers and unusual objects from his Islamic travels, the centerpiece of which was an old mechanical Remington typewriter on which he composed his voluminous works, He seemed to have a dislike for computers and never quite moved into the digital age. Over a few tokes of crumbly hashish he regaled me with tales from his travels and invited me to become a member of the Moorish Church. It is customary to take an Islamic name and I knew nothing of that faith. Wilson's own Moorish name was "Hakim Bey" and several of his books, articles and performances appear under that name. "Well, you could do worse, Nick, than "Jabir", the 9th Century Islamic alchemist."

So Jabir it was. To which I later added "'abd al-Khaliq", designating myself as servant of one of the 99 names of God. A few weeks later I received from Hakim Bey a photocopied diploma certifying my new rank as "Adept of the Seventh Heaven."

My first substantial adventure with the Moorish Orthodox Chuch was the Antarctic Astral Projection Project. On the night separating August from September 1987, various individuals would attempt by any means at their command to astrally project themselves to a location on the Antarctic continent aptly named "Cape Longing". We would dutifully record our impressions which would then be collected and published in the zinosphere as part of the Akashic Records, one more fanciful account of the spiritual strivings of the human race. Doctor Jabir decided to go there as Mandrake the Magician and fancied the trip as a conclave of other fictional magician/scientists observing and producing new physical, mental and spiritual phenomena in the exotic low-temperature environment not far from the Earth's South magnetic pole. As I recall music and dancing girls were involved as well as a spectacular display of the best Southern Lights that my human imagination could produce.

Another Moorish adventure as Doctor Jabir, this time in real space, was the Temporary Autonomous Zone San Francisco performance in 1993 organized and produced by the legendary Joseph Matheny. The site of TAZ SF was Komotion International, an art and performance space in San Francisco's Mission district. This event featured a dozen or so performers, both male and female, some of whom mingled with the audience. Hakim Bey himself was one of the stars and calmly lectured on some obscure feature of Ontological Anarchy. Most of us were attempting to be as outrageous as possible but Bey trumped us all by affecting an utterly conventional academic normality in an ocean of freaks. Jabir read some of his newest quantum tantric poetry, Robert Anton Wilson shared some of his latest provocative prose. Circus acts and dances followed and there was some sort of bondage scene going on that I had helped to prepare back stage. 

MOCA produced at odd intervals the Moorish Science Monitor to which I sometimes contributed. And once I was a guest along with Robert Anton Wilson on the Moorish Orthodox Radio Crusade, an after midnight series hosted by Hakim Bey on New York's independent radio station WBAI.

Back in Boulder Creek I often enjoyed co-hosting our long running series of poetry readings with fellow Moor Omar abu Khan (aka Ed Cramer).  But all in all, Doctor Jabir achieved the height of his Moorish identity in the call for Tantric Jihad which he has performed in venues as various as house warmings and Esalen Institute,

My sheik is dead.

Hail and farewell

O noble teacher of the Way

Hakim Bey has crossed the Black Sands. 

Jabir 'abd al-Khaliq declares Tantric Jihad

Easter 2022

August O'Connor decorating pysanky in Boulder Creek

 EASTER 2022

Easter begin as a pagan holiday celebrating the Anglo-Saxon goddess Oestara, Our Lady of the Dawn, of the Spring, of Fertility and of Regeneration. The feast of Oestara was transformed by Chrisians into the Feast of the Resurrection of Christ, the most joyous day in the liturgical calendar. What better symbol of fertility and new beginnings than the egg!

Ukrainian Easter eggs are called pysanky and (my father being Ukrainian-American} each year during Holy Week, our family would gather around the gas cooking stove in Columbus, Ohio and decorate hard-boiled eggs with pinheads dipped in molten wax heating on the stove. On Easter Sunday my family would attend solemn High Mass at St Augustine's Church across the street, then return home for a hearty dinner usually centering around baked ham and mashed potatoes. We ate the ugly pysanky and displayed our best eggs in baskets, on shelves and exchanged them with friends.

Some pysanky from Nick and August

In this year 2022 witnessing sad struggle between passionate kinsmen over the future of Ukrainia. Knowing that Russians and Ukrainians share a common Slavic soul, for we Slavs to harm or harass one another benefits only Satan. One can only hope this Easter that some unanticipated miracle will occur, a miracle as great as the one symbolized by these decorated eggs, a miracle no better expressed than by John Updike's powerful Oestarian lines:

SEVEN STANZAS AT EASTER

Make no mistake: if He rose at all

it was as His body

if the cells' dissolution did not reverse, the molecules

reknit, the amino acids rekindle,

the Church will fail.

 

It was not as the flowers

each soft Spring recurrent

It was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled

eyes of the eleven apostles

It was as His flesh: ours.

 

The same hinged thumbs and toes,

the same valved heart

that -- pierced -- died, withered, paused, and then

regathered out of enduring Might

new strength to enclose.

 

Let us not mock God with metaphor,

analogy, sidestepping, transcendence;

making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the

faded credulity of earlier ages:

let us walk through the door.

 

The stone is rolled back, not paper-mache, 

not a stone in a story

but the vast rock of materiality that in the slow

grinding of time will eclipse for each of us

the wide light of day.

And if we will have an angel at the tomb,

make it a real angel,

weighty with Max Planck's quanta, vivid with hair,

opaque in the dawn light, robed in real linen

spun on a definite loom.

Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,

for our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,

lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are

embarrassed by the miracle,

and crushed by remonstrance.

 

American novelist John Updike

 

April Fool's Day 2022

 APRIL FOOL'S DAY, 2022

April Fool's Day, the coming of Spring, the beginning of Ramadan, a few weeks before Passover and Easter: a good time to repost this brief summary of one of the goals of quantum tantra: a brand new more intimate way of experiencing Nature that might someday replace science, religion, philosophy and common sense.

FUTURE SCIENCE

I wanna wham Momma Nature in a warm, wet dream

Wanna strum Her Pond, palpitate Her Stream

Wanna feel Her quiver like a tambourine

Wanna hear Her E equals MC scream!

Ethnic Nick

 Friends of the (human) family—

When August and I first got together she encouraged me to examine and appreciate my ethnic roots which are Slovak on my mother’s side and Ukrainian on my dad's side. For both of my parents English was their second language and among themselves they spoke some sort of Slavic tongue none of us five kids could understand. I grew up with Slovak conversation as a kind of soothing background music.

Both sets of grandparents came to America around 1900 and both worked in (separate) coal mines in Ohio and Pennsylvania. My parents met not in some mining town but in the steel-making city of Lorain, OH where a lot of Slovaks migrated after the mines.

There was a shop in Capitola where August lived that sold all sorts of curious objects among which were the flags of various nations and to humor Nick August bought me a Ukrainian flag which I hung outside on my deck next to my bath pavilion. Years of Boulder Creek rain, wind and summer sun gradually deteriorated that flag until it turned into tatters and I threw it away. But about a year or so ago I ordered a fancier version from Amazon which I hung out on nice days and kept inside when it rained.

This flag was more than just the simple blue and gold but also featured the Ukrainian trident and the words Ukraina in Cyrillic characters.

The fate of Ukraine in modern times has been to be sandwiched between two greater powers. Russia on one side and Lithuanians, or Poles, or Germans on the other. Lately the United States has taken an interest in this resource-rich land and managed to violently overthrow its democratically-elected president in 2014, replacing him with a vassal more compliant to the entities who run America. Not entirely innocent, these Ukes, as they call themselves, they treat their Russian-speaking minority somewhat the way Israelis treat Palestinians, as an unfavored underclass, using heavy artillery in this case to murder thousands of Russian-speaking civilians in the Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts with the tacit approval of our hypocritical American government.

Today I unfurled my ethnic flag and mourned the sad entangled fates of Ukraine and Russia. But more mourned the sad descent of the country of my birth into a terrible New Dark Age.

Good luck to us all.
Nick

What Does Nature Want?

 

Classical Tantra

CLASSICAL TANTRA

Every glance is Her Glance

Every touch is Her Touch

Every smell is Her Sexual Attractant

Every meeting a Teaching.

A Calculus of Kisses

 

Zeno of Elea (500 BC): Ancient Greek logician

 

 

A CALCULUS OF KISSES

 

In a foot race

Achilles can never catch the tortoise

Let alone outrun him.



For Achilles gets half way in one slice of time

And half way more in slice number two

And half way again in slice number three

After an infinite number of slices

Achilles merely gets to where tortoise has been

Not to where he's at now.



Thus no matter how fast Achilles can hurtle

He can never outrun the much slower turtle.

So argued the famous Greek philosopher

Zeno of Elea.



Lat's you and I set a timer for sixty seconds.



In the first 30 seconds I'll kiss you just once

Kiss you twice in the following fifteen

Four kisses during next seven point five

Then in half that time, we'll squeeze in sixteen.



If one takes this game to its ultimate limit

We can fit infinite kisses into only one minute.

So following what Zeno's logic allows

We'll be tasting infinity using our mouths.

Which of Your Body Parts Needs More Amour?

Nick Herbert contemplates his 108 chakras

 Quantum Tantra represents an as yet unrealized new kind of physics that hopes to connect with Nature in a direct and more intimate way than merely "physicists making measurements". Quantum tantrikas seek a new way of knowing the "inanimate world" analogous to the mysterious way we presently experience our own bodies. Systematically experiencing our own bodies could be good practice for some day experiencing the physical world in a brand new (quantum) way.

To that end, Nick Herbert has been developing an original system of body chakras to aid in exploring this great corporal gift we've been given, both for its own sake and in preparation for a new (possibly quantum) way of enjoying our own body and the physical world.

This chakra project began when Nick was studying for his physics degree in the '60s while at the same time working at a psychic book shop (East-West Books) in Menlo Park, California. At that time so many new particles were being added to the physicist's worldview, Nick wondered why the number of bodily chakras had remained the same for centuries despite advances in meditation techniques and yes, the advent of new and more efficient psychedelic drugs.

Nick's immediate goal was to expand the number of classical chakras using two rules: 1. As in particle physics where each (fermionic) particle has an antiparticle, each chakra should possess an antichakra; 2. Each chakra should be represented by its own symbol (preferably some simple geometric form) with its "antichakra" represented by a black-white reversal of that form.

Progress in this program has been reported in three previous blog posts: Sixty-four Chakras, Eighty-four Chakras and Ninety-nine Chakras along with more background and justification for this unusual project. After working and playing with this notion for more than fifty years, Nick has finally decided on a total of 108 chakras -- 108 different places to situate your awareness and your willed action. 108 different playgrounds in which to exercise your imagination.

One Hundred and Eight Nick Chakras

 The lighter symbols are chakras, and the darker versions are antichakras. This convention is maintained for the first 72 chakras but is slightly modified for the rest of the group.

Seven classic Hindu Chakras plus one

The seven classic Hindu Chakras plus a "Ground chakra" added as antichakra to the classic Hindu "Crown chakra" makes Eight Hindu Chakras.

 Eight Spinal Chakras

The Eight Spinal Chakras: "Will" and "Auto" represent the voluntary and involuntary nervous systems as objects of conscious attention. Note the nice chakra and antichakra organization.

Eight Sensory Chakras

 The Eight Sensory Chakras. Note that the Lungs and the Bowels are highlighted as two important ways our bodies interact with the outside world.

Twenty-four Hand & Foot Chakras

Twenty-four Hand & Foot Chakras. Six chakras each: whole hand plus five fingers; whole foot plus five toes. Note that the antichakra of each hand is the corresponding foot chakra.

Twenty-four Arm and Leg Chakras

 Twenty-four Arm and Leg Chakras. Six chakras each: whole arm plus shoulder joint, upper arm, elbow, forearm and wrist; whole leg plus hip joint, thigh, knee, calf and ankle. Note that the leg parts are the anti-chakras of the corresponding arm parts.

Thirty-six Special Chakras

Thirty-six Special Chakras plus the foregoing Seventy-two chakras round out the total to one hundred and eight. The Special Chakras include the two Girdle Groups: Eight Pelvic Girdle chakras and Eight Shoulder Girdle chakras; the Eighteen Cranial chakras; the single Full-Body chakra plus the final No-Body chakra.

Sixteen Girdle Chakras

 

The Eight Pelvic Girdle chakras are antichakras to the Eight Shoulder Girdle chakras. Note that in this system, the sternum is homologous to the sacrum and the two clavicles are homologous to the two pubic bones.

Eighteen Cranial Chakras

 

Eighteen Cranial Chakras. In this special case, the chakra/anti-chakra convention does not apply. Here the light circles/ dark circles correspond to paired and unpaired anatomical forms. For instance there is only one inion and two temporal lobes. The former is symbolized by a dark circle; the latter by a light circle. The cranium itself is single (should be a dark circle) preserving the symmetry: six paired and six unpaired Cranial Chakras.

The final two chakras represent 1. The Whole-body Chakra, experiencing your entire body without breaking it into parts, and 2. Its antichakra the No-body Chakra symbolizing the contemplation of the entire physical universe with a small you-shaped piece cut out of it. 

Purely by accident these 108 Nick chakras correspond to the 108 beads in a traditional Indian japamala. 

You Might Want To Know What Tantra Means

 Many thanks to Prem Ashoka for videoing this at Baron's birthday party.

Amazed by the Muse

Erato, Muse of Poetry: Sir Edward Poynting (1836-1919)

 In science, music, art and even in ordinary conversation, where does inspiration come from? Often fresh ideas that well up in my mind both in dreams and in waking life seem so strange that it is easy to imagine that they come from somewhere outside myself. Thus the notion of a Muse is born, an actual disembodied entity, conventionally female, who favors the artist from time to time with hints and nudges of where to go next.

In the 1990s, I took part in an exciting public poetry movement in Boulder Creek, CA which was centered around the Boulder Creek Brewery, the Boulder Creek Bistro, and J.J. Webb's Poetry Grove a few miles north of town. As a frequent contributor to this poetic action, I was continually looking for inspiration and often appealed to my poetry Muse, in whatever realm She dwelt, for just one more original spark to light my lyre.

Since these poetry sessions were rather frequent, I practiced keeping my versical antennas open for Muse reception wherever I went. Which, in this particular case, happened to be a seaside gathering of the Holy Hemp Sisters.

In an era of severe marijuana prohibition, including daily military-style helicopter surveillance and the classic midnight "knock on the door" of families caught growing the forbidden flower, the Santa Cruz Holy Hemp Sisters responded with fun and good humor, their insignia being a strand of artificial hemp leaves worn in the hair, as a necklace or as a waistband. To get a sense of the HHS activities, here's a recent Facebook post by LB Johnson a prominent member of that Holy Sisterhood.

 

"Seems like another lifetime... The Holy Hemp Sisters, educating about the virtues of cannabis through outreach and events, 1990s. Special thanks and gratitude to Theodora Kerry for her tireless leadership, creativity and vision. Also to Sandra Pastorius for her wisdom words and tech skills at the time.

We put on some well attended creative events, Hemp Hop Heaven, and The Hallowed Weed (Oct 31), come to mind, along with many booths at festivals and street corners. One year we had a booth at the county fair and a fundamental Christian group labeled us witches and put out a flyer using the cauldron photo that we created for the Hallowed Weed event. Teehee... we got a kick outta that!

When Theodora and I were at the Jazz Heritage Festival in New Orleans, 1991, we got the news that the HH Sisters were mentioned in an article on the front page of the Wall St Journal. That was an awesome time, the good ol' days."

 

LB Johnson at the Seabright Beach Holy Hemp Sisters gathering

 Some time in the '90s I attended a Holy Hemp Sisters gathering on Seabright Beach just north of the Santa Cruz Yacht Harbor. As the festivities were taking shape I decided to break from the group and walk along the ocean towards the Yacht Harbor. I was barefoot and enjoying the sensation of cold water washing over my feet as I walked along the shore.

As I was enjoying my salt-water foot bath, I noticed a beautiful woman in a long flowered skirt walking towards me from the opposite direction, a woman whom I surmised had nothing to do with the Hemp celebration. Then just as this woman approached within a yard of me, a larger than usual wavelet swept across the sand. The woman instinctively raised her long skirt out of reach of the water, affording a quick glimpse of her lovely legs just above above the knees. As we passed each another going our separate ways, I smiled at this accidental little erotic gift at the edge of the Pacific Ocean.

i had not waded more than a few yards past this raised hem line encounter when I noticed, scratched in the sand in two-inch-high block letters, the following message, just seconds before it was erased by the incoming tide: WILL YOU MARRY ME? it said. Then the next wave swept the message away. Perhaps, I reasoned (my mind inclined to think in mythological terms by the cannabis molecules I had previously inhaled) the first encounter had signaled the presence of my Muse; while the second encounter showed me Her message. (Thank you, Sophia!) Which message I was eventually able to expand into this:

THE MAN WHO MARRIED THE SEA

 

Will you marry me? said the sea

Will you take my name?

Yes I will, I answered back

And to the sea I came.

 

Will you marry me? said the sea

Will you be my fiancée?

I've spread myself beneath the moon

In kelp and coral lingerie.

 

Will you marry my estuary?

Will you copulate with my slough?

Do you take my foamy white breakers?

I will, said I, and I do.

 

But would you dare to wed the sea?

We practice deep polygamy

So He, She, It would marry thee

And no one ever leaves the sea.

 

Will you marry me? said the sea

Will you share my deep salty life?

Would you be the sea's newest husband?

Would you be the ocean's next wife?

 

Will you marry me? said the sea.

Would you offer me your heart?

Why get married? my heart replied

I've belonged to the sea from the Start.

 

Nick, amazed by the Muse