I’m still working on some new reviews, so I thought I’d start another series of Raw Feeds.

I’m going a long way back on this one — to 1987, and the very first book I decided, mostly as a memory refresher, to write up notes on.

For some reason, Robert Anton Wilson came to mind as needing a series.

I read his Illuminatus Trilogy, co-authored with Robert Shea, but made no notes on it.

Wilson was an interesting figure and acclaimed in various circles including the Boomer counterculture, libertarians, science fiction, occult circles, and gaming since the Illuminatus Trilogy inspired Steve Jackson Games Illuminati game. His wiki page seems accurate given what I’ve read of him.

Wilson, a bit like a modern Charles Fort, preached a sort of “agnosticism about everything”.

Raw Feed (1987): Masks of the Illuminati, Robert Anton Wilson, 1981.

Once again Wilson shows amazing erudition of occult/philosophical/conspiratorial/religious quantum matters. As he said, he structured this book like a detective novel.  I’m not sure I liked the final hallucinatory, Joyce-style ending, but it provided final (though there is really no such thing as finality given the philosophy of the book) illumination for Einstein, Joyce and their work. The comparison of Joyce’s writing, relativity theory, and occult systems was interesting.

The book’s main characters are Albert Einstein, James Joyce, and Allister Crowley. Continue reading →