Robert Anton Wilson’s cultural influence

Jesse Walker writes from Reason Online that “We’re living in Robert Anton Wilson’s world.”

The co-author of the Illuminatus! triology, he says, is “the unacknowledged elephant in our cultural living room: a direct and indirect influence on popular books, movies, TV shows, music, games, comics, and commentary. (His late co-author has left less of a mark: Many of Wilson?s books have cult followings, while the only Shea effort to make a big splash was the trilogy he wrote with Wilson.) Allusions to Wilson?s work appear in places both classy and trashy: There?s a Wilsonian stamp on films as diverse as Magnolia, The Mothman Prophecies, and Sex and Lucia, and it?s because of Wilson and Shea that the Illuminati, a secret society that once lurked only in right-wing conspiracy tracts, became the villains of Lara Croft, Tomb Raider. Now Wilson?s the star of a lively documentary, Maybe Logic, that?s being screened at film festivals and distributed on DVD.”

Robert Anton Wilson’s cultural influence

Jesse Walker writes from Reason Online that “We’re living in Robert Anton Wilson’s world.”

The co-author of the Illuminatus! triology, he says, is “the unacknowledged elephant in our cultural living room: a direct and indirect influence on popular books, movies, TV shows, music, games, comics, and commentary. (His late co-author has left less of a mark: Many of Wilson?s books have cult followings, while the only Shea effort to make a big splash was the trilogy he wrote with Wilson.) Allusions to Wilson?s work appear in places both classy and trashy: There?s a Wilsonian stamp on films as diverse as Magnolia, The Mothman Prophecies, and Sex and Lucia, and it?s because of Wilson and Shea that the Illuminati, a secret society that once lurked only in right-wing conspiracy tracts, became the villains of Lara Croft, Tomb Raider. Now Wilson?s the star of a lively documentary, Maybe Logic, that?s being screened at film festivals and distributed on DVD.”

Robert Anton Wilson’s cultural influence

Jesse Walker writes from Reason Online that “We’re living in Robert Anton Wilson’s world.”

The co-author of the Illuminatus! triology, he says, is “the unacknowledged elephant in our cultural living room: a direct and indirect influence on popular books, movies, TV shows, music, games, comics, and commentary. (His late co-author has left less of a mark: Many of Wilson?s books have cult followings, while the only Shea effort to make a big splash was the trilogy he wrote with Wilson.) Allusions to Wilson?s work appear in places both classy and trashy: There?s a Wilsonian stamp on films as diverse as Magnolia, The Mothman Prophecies, and Sex and Lucia, and it?s because of Wilson and Shea that the Illuminati, a secret society that once lurked only in right-wing conspiracy tracts, became the villains of Lara Croft, Tomb Raider. Now Wilson?s the star of a lively documentary, Maybe Logic, that?s being screened at film festivals and distributed on DVD.”

Robert Anton Wilson’s cultural influence

Jesse Walker writes from Reason Online that “We’re living in Robert Anton Wilson’s world.”

The co-author of the Illuminatus! triology, he says, is “the unacknowledged elephant in our cultural living room: a direct and indirect influence on popular books, movies, TV shows, music, games, comics, and commentary. (His late co-author has left less of a mark: Many of Wilson?s books have cult followings, while the only Shea effort to make a big splash was the trilogy he wrote with Wilson.) Allusions to Wilson?s work appear in places both classy and trashy: There?s a Wilsonian stamp on films as diverse as Magnolia, The Mothman Prophecies, and Sex and Lucia, and it?s because of Wilson and Shea that the Illuminati, a secret society that once lurked only in right-wing conspiracy tracts, became the villains of Lara Croft, Tomb Raider. Now Wilson?s the star of a lively documentary, Maybe Logic, that?s being screened at film festivals and distributed on DVD.”

Saint Valentine . . . not a culture hero?

Those fundamentalist Saudis mentioned earlier are not alone in their hatred of hearts, flowers, and by extension, divine Eros. They have company on the Indian subcontinent, where other Muslims and the Hindu Shiv Sena party also rage against the evil foreign holiday, or at least they did last year.

Other people who simply felt out of the romantic loop this year can find their consolation and links to Web anti-Valentine sites here.

Saint Valentine . . . the pagan?

Islamic clerics in Saudi Arabia (our good friends, the Saudis) denounce Valentine’s Day as a “pagan Christian holiday” and forbid its celebration in the kingdom. Other news reports speak of reprisals against shop owners selling Valentine’s Day items. Ah, wonderful, a jihad against hearts and flowers. More here: scroll down.

Valentine’s Day was just fine in this Pagan household, thanks for asking.

Rejection

Rejection Collection is a web site to which writers submit their rejection letters and then comment on how the letters made them feel.

While dwelling on their feelings, few seem to resolve to write better and to research markets better.

Here, an editor reflects at greater length about how these wounded writer egos are missing the whole point and/or are ignorant about how publishing works. Zowie!

Remember, the first million words are just for practice.

The Three Fairly Sagacious Persons

The Church of England abandons the term “Three Wise Men” for “Magi”–unfortunately, it’s just kneejerk political correctness rather than a reappraisal of Zoroastrian influence on the birth of Christianity. Read more here, and don’t overlook the joke at the end.

“Hello, Pagan”

Despite the best efforts of those of us at The Pomegranate and such writers as Michael York, author of Pagan Theology (and a member of The Pom’s editorial board), some people continue to use “Pagan” as a synonym for “irreligious.”

Consider the “Pagans Only” page at the fundamentalist Christian TTW Ministries. (Thanks to The Paris Project for the link.)

Like too many of my students, preacher Todd Friel is confused about apostrophes and the use of the comma in direct address. “Pagan’s” is not the plural form of the word “Pagan, and that “Hello Pagan” makes me think of “Hello Kitty,” which sends my mind off in entirely unsuitable directions. (Love the blue hair, though.)

Sometimes to feel as though I am truest to my Pagan heritage when I am teaching rhetoric and grammar. Maybe we need some WWQD bracelets: “What Would Quintilian Do?”

Teen Witches

Some people are saying that the “teen witch” craze, symbolized by the 1996 movie The Craft, has peaked. I don’t think so. My latest Llewellyn Publications reviewer’s catalog recently arrived, and I saw that Silver Ravenwolf’s Teen Witch had been redesigned. Whereas the former cover art had something in common with the poster/box art for The Craft, the new cover seems more in common with last year’s movie Thirteen.

It’s all about Pouty. Adolescent. Sexuality.

In his review essay “Sifting the Ashes,” an expose of the tobacco industry (collected in the book How To Be Alone, Jonathan Frantzen desconstructs the industry-funded anti-smoking ads aimed at teens and comments how “several antitobacco newspaper ads offer . . . the image of a preadolescent girl holding a cigarette. The models are not real smokers, yet despite their phoniness, they’re utterly sexualized by their cigarettes. The horror of underage smoking veils a horror of teen and preteen sexuality.”

Witchcraft, the new cigarette?

On a more positive note, a Colorado Witch describes sitting in on an interview of several teen Wiccans by a National Public Radio reporter.

“I spent the afternoon in the upstairs of the Oh My Goddess coffee house in Denver, listening to Barbara Bradford Hagerty of NPR interview 6 teenage Wiccans and one Christian teen learning about Wicca. She was amazed at how articulate, intelligent, and self-aware they were. She’s planning on doing a segment or show about teens and Wicca. They wouldn’t stop talking! She used more than one minidisc to record, which she says never happens in an interview. The 6 Wiccan teens were all raised Wiccan, more or less.

“She spoke briefly to most of the parents and to me; she may talk to me again in a couple of days if she can on her way to the airport. She is a colleague of Margot Adler’s, and therefore actually knew something about the topic. She asked each of the Wiccan teens if they thought it was a phase that they would grow out of, and the general consensus was ‘No. This is who I am.’ It was an amazing experience.

“Based on the kids that were there today, I have to say I think that the future of Paganism is in pretty capable hands.”

UPDATE 4/29/07: I had not looked at this post for a while, but it appears to me that the cover displayed, which is on Llewellyn’s web site, is not the one that I described as “pouty” a couple of years ago. Does anyone know for sure?