I have no intention to demean RAW or his work, as I think he remains one of the most lucid and witty of writers and teachers, and he clearly acknowledges the giants whose shoulders he stood on, but I have just been reading Burroughs’ ‘Selected Writings’ (a very cool set of essays) and it struck me just how ahead of the game WSB seems. Especially in relation to Illuminatus! (in which he appears, of course).

In no particular order, the number 23 Mystery; the Death/Orgasm hanged man gimmick of the LDD initiation; cut-ups used to portray drug, dream and delirium states; the Manichean battle between authoritarian ‘shits’ and their various Control Systems, and MYOB anarchic ‘Johnsons’; psychic warfare, including the use of drugs and magick; Korzybski’s model of communication and experience; life extension, intelligence increase, space migration; ideogrammic method (hieroglyphs and language as virus); 'reality' as neither 'sci-fi' nor 'realistic' (versions of alien invasion); to name but a few.


I collected a few links to his recordings and films, etc in my own blog
slogger.blogspot.com/2008/01...tic.html

"In the magical universe there are no coincidences and there are no accidents. Nothing happens unless someone wills it to happen.The dogma of science is that the will cannot possibly affect external forces,and I think that's just ridiculous. It's as bad as the church. My viewpoint is the exact contrary of the scientific viewpoint. I believe that if you run into somebody in the street it's for a reason. Among primitive people they say if someone was bitten by a snake he was murdered. I believe that. - w. s. burroughs