Category: jfk

Were We Controlled? The Strange Case of A. Edward Horsey

Post author By Gorightly
Post date May 30, 2017
3 Comments on Were We Controlled? The Strange Case of A. Edward Horsey

One of the more curious characters (and when I say character, I mean, yeah, this guy was definitely a character) to emerge from the Oswald/Thornley/Garrison rabbit hole was a oddball named A. Edward Horsey, who somehow finagled his way into the fringes of the Garrison Investigation during the same time frame that Kerry Thornley was up to his ass in it.

This strange saga began on July 8, 1967, when Mr. A. Edward Horsey (of 3330 Virginia Street, Kalamazoo, Michigan) contacted Special Agent V. Lemar Curran of the Detroit FBI Field Office. At this time, Horsey informed the Bureau of his involvement with a group of researchers who were trying to get to the bottom of the JFK assassination. According to Horsey, he and his associates had enlarged frames of the Zapruder film and discovered two men lurking on the Grassy Knoll immediately following the assassination, one of whom held a literal smoking gun that Horsey identified as a CIA operative named Al Grout, a name first connected to the JFK assassination by way of an extremely rare and obscure book entitled, The Plot to Kill JFK.

But that wasn’t all: Horsey had uncovered evidence (or so he said) that another CIA agent named Bill Medina had recruited Lee Harvey Oswald in Mexico City, all part of a dastardly plot to set Oswald up as the assassination fall guy. Afterwards, the FBI checked with the CIA who denied employing any agents named Al Groat or Bill Medina. (But, of course, that’s what you’d expect ‘Them’ to say!)

July 18,1967 FBI memo regarding A. Edward Horsey.

Around the time Horsey was sharing his conspiracy theory with the Feds, a book well known to assassination buffs was published called Were We Controlled?, authored by the pseudonymous “Lincoln Lawrence.” Were We Controlled? presented the scenario that Oswald was a sleeper agent (ala The Manchurian Candidate angle) mind controlled by a secret technology called Radio-Hypnotic Intracerebral Control (R.H.I.C.) and Electronic Dissolution of Memory (E.D.O.M.)

Were We Controlled? by Lincoln Lawrence. — *Were We Controlled?* by Lincoln Lawrence.
Download here courtesy of the Historia Discordia Team.

Lawrence described R.H.I.C. as the “application of post-hypnotic-suggestion triggered at will by radio transmission. It is a recurring hypnotic state, re-induced automatically at intervals by the same radio control. An individual is placed under hypnosis. This can be done either with his knowledge—or without it by use of narco-hypnosis, which can be brought into play under many guises. He is then programmed to perform certain actions and maintain certain attitudes upon radio signal… an R.H.I.C. controlled person can be processed as Oswald was in Minsk, allowed to travel to any country… and be put to use years later by the application of RHIC controls. In short, like the toy, he can in a sense be ‘wound up’ and made to perform acts without any possibility of the controller being detected… He can be made to perform acts that he will have no memory of ever having carried out. In a manipulated kind of kamikaze operation where the life of the ‘sleeper’ is dispensable, R.H.I.C. processing makes him particularly valuable because if he is detected and caught before he performs the act specified… nothing he says will implicate the group or government which processed and controlled him.”

As for E.D.O.M., “it enables man to juggle with other men’s sense of time… through the use of radio-waves and ultra-sonic signal tones…. It in effect blocks memory of the moment.” According to Were We Controlled?, E.D.O.M. was employed to erase from Oswald’s brain the identities of the assassination conspirators. However, this shadowy group (referred to in Were We Controlled? as—you guessed it—“The Group”) didn’t want to take any chances, so as an extra precaution they brought in another patsy and did the same RHIC-EDOM number on his head. In this second instance, Jack Ruby was mind controlled to kill Oswald.

As for “Lincoln Lawrence”—the pseudonymous author of Were We Controlled? who was “working in liaison with the department of defense”—he was later revealed to be a New York media personality named Art Ford, most well known for his 1950’s television show Art Ford’s Jazz Party.

In 1976, assassination researcher Dick Russell met Art Ford in the NYC offices of Circus magazine. Russell described Ford as a “prominent radio announcer and longtime student of parapsychology with many connections in the publishing world.” However, publisher and UFO scene maker Tim Beckley informed me that Ford’s star had been pretty much faded by the mid-70s and at that time he was eeking out a living writing for Circus, having been relegated to a converted broom closet as his “office.” One of the circumstances that contributed to Ford’s tarnished falling star status was his involvement in the payola scandal of the early-60s.

Beckley recalled that around the time Were We Controlled? was released, Ford was trying to get him interested in a manuscript, but Beckley found Ford a bit too pushy and steered clear. As for Ford’s parapsychology interests, he was part of the Long John Nebel/UFO scene in New York during the 50s and 60s and appeared as a guest speaker at the Big UFO Show there in 1967. During his presentation, Ford claimed to have discovered an ET ray gun at the North Pole that was 100,000 years old! However—to those who had a chance to catch a glimpse of this weapon (such as Beckley)—it looked like a toy gun. During this same period, Ford produced an obscure and now impossible to find film on the Bermuda Triangle.

Flyer for The Big UFO Show in NYC, June 22 – 25, 1967 — Flyer for 'The Big UFO Show' in NYC, June 22 – 25, 1967.

During their meeting, Ford told Dick Russell that the source for Were We Controlled? was an “intelligence insider” who passed info to him through a middle man, a New York Attorney named Martin J. Schieman, who was most noted for his representation of Mad Magazine in a precedent setting case, Berlin v. E.C. Publications, Inc., which established that parody does not infringe on copyright.

Around the time of the publication of We’re We Controlled?, Schieman was discovered in his office at the Time-Life building with a gun beside him and a bullet through his head, the result of an apparent suicide. However, Ford intimated that Schieman’s death was probably no coincidence and that Ford feared for his own life as well.

“I never met Lawrence,” Ford told [Russell]. “Whoever he was, he was very clever. He covered himself well. The only reason I am sure the man actually existed is, I got a telegram from him and then he managed to reach me by phone. I received payment, in cash, for helping him research his book. The research I did all went to a certain mail drop and was picked up. When he first contacted me, he told me to look into mind control techniques….”

In the introduction to We’re We Controlled?, “Lincoln Lawrence” cites another book which he claimed held the ultimate answer to the JFK assassination:

“We were told quite flatly that there was in existence a report that named three men who concocted a diabolical plot to kill JFK. It was supposed to be fifty-eight pages in length and was circulating in Chicago. We thought that this was a slim lead, but decided that we must find it and read it.

“In view of the fact that we devoted most of our waking hours for three years to this investigation, perhaps it isn’t surprising that we did indeed find that ‘report!’

“Its author, David M. Warren, refers to it as an ‘explosive documentary novel.’ In the early pages appears the claim that it ‘blows the lid off the secrecy surrounding the facts of Kennedy’s assassination.’

“Mr. Warren begins his strange story with these words: ‘Contrary to the findings of the FBI and the Presidential Investigating Commission, there was a plot behind the senseless slaying of President John F. Kennedy…. The killing was not the work of a lone assassin as most people have been led to believe…. A private investigating firm located in New York City have in their possession documented evidence which backs up the charge.

“Mr. Warren’s cast of characters includes two directors of the plot and a third person who was the key man in the plot. The fatal shot was fired by a marksman other than Lee Oswald, and Oswald was merely a dupe used by the key man.

“This odd document ends with a strange statement. In the beginning of his narrative, Warren writes, ‘Part of the mass of evidence unearthed by the private investigators included a diary, a small black book that contained, in shorthand, a detailed account of the plot to assassinate the President…”

Although “Lincoln Lawrence” identified the author of the above mentioned “report” as David M. Warren, for some strange reason he neglected to provide the actual the title of the book—or even the publisher’s name—but simply gave their address as 2715 North Pulaski Road, Chicago, IL. The title of this “explosive documentary novel” it turns out—drum roll please—was The Plot to Kill JFK.

This is where the Discordian connections first come into play. The Chicago publisher mentioned by Lincoln Lawrence happened to be Novel Books, the very same outfit that published Kerry Thornley’s Oswald. Both Oswald and The Plot to Kill JFK hit the shelves in 1965, two of the earliest JFK assassination themed books. Thornley’s editor at Novel Books was a young lady named Louise Lacey who established a friendship with Kerry and would later be ordained as a Discordian Pope. She’s also a good friend of mine!

Among the rarest of JFK assassination tomes, The Plot to Kill JFK was actually a two-fer—two-paperback-books-in-one—a gimmick publishers used back in the day to market novellas that we’re long enough for a regular sized title. The other book combined with The Plot to Kill JFK was a lusty romance yarn provocatively titled Summer of Want by Jenmary Cady. (Don’t worry, this all will come together shortly… sort of.)

The Plot to Kill JFK featured Al Groat as the trigger man in the caper, the same shadowy individual that A. Edward Horsey had claimed was a CIA agent and part of a Dealey Plaza assassination hit team. Also featured in the book was another supposed CIA agent (that Horsey also identified to the FBI) named Bill Medina.

The Plot to Kill JFK was authored under the apparent pseudonym “David M. Warren” and is considered among the rarest of JFK assassination conspiracy books. In fact—when I first started traveling down this odd avenue—there were zero copies available anywhere on the Net, and one of the few existing copies was located in the special collections at the University of Oregon, part of the personal library of Linus Pauling donated after his death. Not unlike Art Ford, Pauling was a man of many interests, among them the JFK assassination and UFOs!

Unfortunately, The Plot to Kill JFK was unavailable for interlibrary loan, and so on the remote chance that maybe I could connive them into making me a scan, I contacted the U of O Library and was informed that The Plot to Kill JFK had just recently been scanned into their system. and boom, the next thing I knew it landed in my dropbox! Once downloaded into my hot little conspiratorial hands, I immediately dove into The Plot to Kill JFK to get to the bottom of this whole JFK assassination thing.

The Plot to Kill JFK goes something like this: During the McCarthy commie scare era, this industrialist dude named Silas Proctor hired this other guy named Judson P. Starkey who ran an investigative firm with its main function being to flush out commies from private businesses. And so Proctor and this Starkey dude became associates, and after the Red Scare pretty much petered out, Starkey turned his investigation firm into an organization called the America First Society. The America First Society (as the name suggests) wanted to Make America Great Again by not only busting out a can of whoop ass on any commies they came across, but also put minorities in their place and that whole bit, kind of like the KKK meets the John Birch Society with a bit of fascism throw in for good measure.

In a nutshell, Proctor and Starkey were pissed at JFK because they saw him as a globalist do-gooder who loved the coloreds and was in bed with the Reds, so they decided a Dallas dust-up was in order and got this Al Groat guy who had been a sharpshooter in the military to do the dirty work.

The Bill Media character in the book is Oswald’s handler who gets him a job at the Texas School Book Depository under the pretense that he’s recruiting Oswald to be a CIA agent there to prevent JFK’s assassination, when in reality, they were setting-up patsy Oswald to take the blame for the crime of the century!

So that’s the basic premise of The Plot to Kill JFK, and while the book is very rare, I think my description will save you the time of actually reading it, because—in my estimation—it’s pretty cornball. However, if you do want to read it, I’ve uploaded a copy here for your possible reading enjoyment!

If you’ve been crazy enough to follow me this far, here’s where things start to link up to Discordia, and in particular Kerry Thornley and the Garrison Investigation. In December 1967, Harold Weisberg (the main thorn in Thornley’s side in relation to Garrison’s investigation) received a letter from a St. Petersburg, Florida housewife name Helen Hartmann. In her letter, Hartmann describes how she just recently caught the JFK assassination conspiracy bug and heaps lavish praise on Weisberg as being one of the key researchers who opened her eyes to the Warren Report “Whitewash.”

Hartmann also mentioned a St. Petersburg radio show on WLCY-AM hosted by a fellow named Bob Ruark who, in her opinion, was doing important work interviewing different researchers on the JFK assassination beat. To keep him in the loop, Hartmann started transcribing some of these interviews for Weisberg. In a January 17, 1968 letter, Hartmann included a rough transcript of a Florida TV interview with Kerry Thornley, and in this same letter, curiously enough, she asked Weisberg what he knew about Lincoln Lawrence of Were We Controlled? fame, and then goes on to write:

“I heard him [Lawrence] one night on a northern radio station and almost thought I could identify the voice but, unfortunately, conditions were such that the station kept fading away and I could not hear enough of it to be positive. His book is one of those suspected of being subsidized by some agency of the government, as I wrote in my first letter—writing of the possibility of some books being subsidized. In his case, it would have been because he presented such a far-out theory that all other critics would be made to appear ridiculous as well…”

Bear in mind that at the time of its publication, Were We Controlled? was very obscure and went virtually unnoticed, and those who did notice thought it was some sort of disinformation or pseudo science fiction. In the mainstream of JFK assassination research, Were We Controlled? was pretty much dismissed and really didn’t get talked much about until a decade or so later when the likes of Mae Brussell started name dropping it. By the time remote distance mind control started being talked about in the conspiracy research circles of the late 1980s, many were pointing to Were We Controlled? as one of the first books to explore the topic.

Hartmann’s correspondence to Weisberg ran over the course of a year-and-a-half and was quite detailed. She was obviously a hardcore researcher and went into a lot of minutiae back-and-forth regarding the assassination and different evidence that pointed toward a conspiracy. In some of her letters, Hartmann mentioned meeting a researcher named A. Edward Horsey.

In a December 17, 1968 letter to Hartmann, Weisberg writes:

“…There were some strange doings. First a man identifying himself as Horsey called me at home about Thornley and himself, beginning by saying [Thornley] had clobbered me on TV and perhaps should not have. He called me several more times in N.O. [New Orleans], or someone did, the last time leaving a message. When I called back the woman who answered the phone said he’d moved, leaving no forwarding address, about three days earlier—before this call was placed. Meanwhile, he or someone else had phoned my home, found where I was staying, and phoned there. The one who phoned there was impolite, identified himself as Thornley, and declared the alleged intention of ‘getting to the bottom of this.’ Now the man with whom I stayed in N.O. knows something of the story and asked for a number to which I could return the call. The caller refused to give it… Can you explain Horsey to me? This strange behavior?…. How did he get in all this, meet you, etc?… It looks strange…”

In a December 23 response to Weisberg, Hartmann starts her letter saying, “I am a little frightened by all that has been taking place here is to understate. I will start at the beginning and see if I can put things in some kind of order then some sort of picture may emerge…

What proceeds from there is a chaotic (Hail Eris) nine page account detailing her odd interactions with A. Edward Horsey who Hartmann became aware of through a local TV and a radio program Horsey appeared on in early September in which he stated ‘that he was in this area doing some investigations and that he would be leaving to return to Kalamazoo very shortly… A couple weeks later I received a phone call from him and he asked to visit me to talk about the investigation. He said he had been given my name and phone number by a man who lives near where he was staying….”

Soon after, Horsey paid Hartmann a visit and explained that he was involved with a loose knit group of researchers that included Josiah Thompson, author of Six Seconds in Dallas, and noted that: “This ‘group’ had arranged to receive all mail at an address in Houston, Texas in the name of Dr. John Smith.” Horsey mentioned they were using this mail drop because he and his associates had been threatened and harassed by those who wanted to shut down their investigation so they had to keep everything very hush-hush. Horsey also mentioned that he was trying to track down Kerry Thornley (during this period Kerry lived in Tampa.) At a later date, Horsey informed Hartmann that he’d indeed met up with Thornley and was trying to help him with his pending case in the Garrison Investigation.

Hartmann’s letter goes into exhaustive detail concerning the crazy intrigue surrounding Horsey’s visit to St. Petersburg, which you can read here.

The letter includes death threats (from anonymous sources) against both Horsey and Hartmann, all of this on account of Horsey’s claim he had solved the JFK assassination. Throughout the letter, Thornley played a prominent role in Horsey’s “investigation” and communications with other researchers in the field—like Vincent Salandria and Sylvia Meagher—seemed to suggest that Thornley was somehow throwing a monkey wrench into everything and, due to these antics, getting other researchers mad at Horsey. Or at least this is how Horsey portrayed the situation. If the intent of Hartmann’s rambling letter was to confuse the hell out of Weisberg, it no doubt succeeded.

In a letter dated 12/27/68, Weisberg shared this bombshell: “When [JFK assassination researcher] Gary Schoener told me that the call Vincent Salandria was deliberately led to believe was from David Lifton, in which he was asked to undertake Thornley’s defense, was really from Ed Horsey…” which clued Weisberg into the reality that Horsey was most likely spreading disinformation.

On account of these shenanigans, Weisberg decided to call Kerry Thornley to see what the hell was going on with this Horsey character, and Kerry told Weisberg that “He apparently had heard this call was by Horsey, not Lifton. He denied making any of the calls to me, or those to Sylvia Meagher [that] Horsey told me he [Thornley] had made and presumably charged to his phone….”

Confused yet?

In subsequent letters, Hartmann informed Weisberg (and other correspondents) that she was now on to Horsey’s game and that he was “poison.” And yes, it was true that Horsey had been placing phony phone calls pretending to be other researchers and doing remarkably good vocal imitations of them, thereby gaining access to information while at the same time spreading disinfo and turning other researchers against each other.

In January 1969—as these curious Horsey revelations were coming to light—the Weisberg/Hartmann correspondence apparently ceased around the same time that Horsey also seems to have fallen off the map.

The only known photo of A. Edward Horsey.
Courtesy of the Harold Weisberg Archives.

A few years back—when I first stumbled on the Hartmann/Weisberg correspondence—I didn’t know quite what to make of it all, as Horsey seemed like just one among the many sketchy characters that associated themselves with the Garrison Investigation. Then—a couple years ago—I was contacted by a quite well known conspiracy researcher of the 1990s (now retired) who had mysteriously disappeared from the scene toward the end of that decade. Anyway, this “retired” conspiracy researcher (we’ll call him Commander X) re-emerged from the shadows, albeit briefly, to alert me to Horsey’s connection to The Plot to Kill JFK and quite possibly Were We Controlled? To this end, Commander X voiced his suspicion that the author of both books might very well have been A. Edward Horsey, a theory that indeed makes a certain amount of sense.

Let’s look at the Were We Controlled?/The Plot to Kill JFK parallels. The narrative of both books, although non-fiction, are presented in a novelized form and read like fictional accounts in terms of action and dialogue. Both books feature a shadowy group of conspirators consisting of industrialists and businessmen with right wing affiliations and intelligence agency connections.

The Plot to Kill JFK conspirators were motivated to kill President Kennedy not only because they felt he was soft on Communism, but that he would be bad for big business; whereas the assassination plot in Were We Controlled? was designed to manipulate the New York Stock Exchange and allow the conspirators to profit from their foreknowledge of JFK’s death. In both scenarios, Oswald was set up as the patsy.

Flyer distributed by A. Edward Horsey for The Citizens Investigating the Death of John F. Kennedy — Flyer distributed by A. Edward Horsey for
'The Citizens Investigating the Death of John F. Kennedy.'

When Horsey talked to the FBI, he informed them that Jack Ruby had been acting under a post-hypnotic command when he shot Oswald, which was the exact plotline featured in Were We Controlled? Horsey claimed he’d been harassed and threatened. Similarly, Art Ford aired his suspicions that attorney Martin Schieman had been murdered due to the publication of Were We Controlled? and that Ford said he feared for his life, as well.

Commander X also suspected that Horsey may have been a closet Discordian and that he and Thornley were working in cahoots (ala Operation Mindfuck) to disrupt and spread disinfo among JFK assassination researchers. In response to Commander X, I pooh-poohed this idea, noting that in the hundreds of letters—and reams of Thornley/Garrison Investigation materials I’ve reviewed—not once had I ever come across any communications between Thornley and Horsey or any mention of Horsey by Thornley and I seriously doubt the two ever met. Commander X was also suspicious because Thornley’s book Oswald had been published by the same outfit—Novel Books—that was responsible for The Plot to Kill JFK, hence the possibility there might have been some sort of nefarious link between the two.

Goddess only knows…

But get this: I’m now fairly certain that it was actually Horsey who penned the “Helen Hartmann” letters! The Hartmann/Weisberg correspondence ended around the same time Horsey dropped off the map, and Hartmann—as far as I can tell—was the only one who met Horsey in the flesh or talked to him at any length. A lot of researchers got crazy phone calls from the guy, but no one ever seems to have actually met Horsey.

Although Horsey claimed he was living in Kalamazoo at the time of his St. Petersburg “investigation,” I suspect Kalamazoo was also a snow-job and that he was actually living in St. Petersburg the whole time. In addition, it seems that Horsey fed the FBI a line of BS (which is a crazy thing to do) about living in Kalamazoo, along with all the other bogus information he passed along.

So who the hell is/was A. Edward Horsey? An online search conducted in 2014 indicated that A. Edward Horsey (aka Aubrey Ted Horsey, aka A.E. Ted Horsey, aka Aubrey E. Horsey) was still alive (now in his mid-70s) in St. Petersburg, Florida. Further Internet sleuthing revealed that “A.E. Ted Horsey” was listed as the director of two religious organizations located in Florida.

When I entered the addresses of Horsey’s “churches” into Google Earth Street View, I discovered a couple of normal, though dumpy looking suburban homes, giving the impression that Horsey and his religious affiliations were some sort of scam. At one time, Horsey was using the email address of ahorsey@aol.com, so a couple years back I tried to send him some fan mail there but it bounced back—but who the hell uses AOL anymore?

During a recent online search, I found a link indicating that Horsey had passed on (in 2007) to that big JFK Assassination in the Sky. This news came as a bit of a head scratcher because when I first conducted online searches for Horsey a couple years back all indications seemed to suggest he still alive. Now I don’t know what to think.

If anyone has further intel on the mysterious A. Edward Horsey, please contact us here at Historia Discordia headquarters STAT!

Download the Horsey Files here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5FuqteOcgejVU9OcTV2NUxQR3c/view?usp=sharing

https://www.corporationwiki.com/Florida/Gulfport/horsey-a-edward-413429.aspx

audio barbara reid book discordian timeline discordianism greg hill interview jfk jim garrison kerry thornley lee harvey oswald monkey business photo podcast radio gogo roger lovin video writings

You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’: Roger Lovin and the Dark Side of Discordia (Part 00004)

Post author By Gorightly
Post date May 6, 2017
14 Comments on You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’: Roger Lovin and the Dark Side of Discordia (Part 00004)

Roger Lovin circa mid-1970s in New Orleans. Photo by Stephen May.

Welcome to the final installment (maybe!) of our series on Roger Lovin.

Before proceeding, I thought a short recap was in order.

Roger Robert Lovin was born in Knoxville, Tennessee on May 11, 1941—although there’s conflicting evidence which suggests that his birth name was actually Watlington, and that he later legally changed his name to Lovin. (More on that kink in the thread later…)

According to the bio page of Lovin’s Sci-Fi novel Apostle, he was “a minister of the Gospel at age 16,” although I certainly wouldn’t take Lovin at his word for that—but on the same hand I could totally see him doing the whole Marjoe Gortner teen preacher trip as a young lad growing up in Tennessee.

The first verifiable documentation we have on Lovin dates to 1962 when he was drummed out of Navy for stealing “a television set from a Naval Ammunition Depot in North Charleston, S.C.” Lovin later admitted to assassination researcher Harold Weisberg that he’d been “kicked out of the Navy for a homosexual offense.” Afterwards, Lovin moved to the New Orleans’ French Quarter and cultivated the image of a bohemian renaissance man who—at one time or another—was a performing musician, painter, writer, and all around raconteur. Lovin also claimed to be a soldier of fortune who had smuggled guns into Cuba.

Lovin managed a coffee house/art gallery in the French Quarter where he’d occasionally stage happenings and—as the beatnik scene segued into the hippie era—he adopted all the trappings of the times, growing long hair and dabbling in psychedelics and free love whenever the opportunity availed itself, which as we’ll soon see was frequently and in great abundance.

Lovin was married for roughly three years to a woman named Sandra Bankson, who I really haven’t found out a whole lot about, other than she was employed as a professional dancer.

In-and-around 1964 or 1965, Lovin became friends with Greg Hill and Kerry Thornley and—along with bohemian scene maker Barbara Reid—was one of the early members of the New Orleans’ Discordian Society, and after Hill and Thornley split New Orleans, Lovin became the official head of the Discordian Society’s French Quarter cabal.

Due to his Discordian connections, Lovin came to the attention of Jim Garrison as a potential suspect in his investigation. Lovin passed along some Discordian materials to Garrison via Harold Weisberg and—probably due to this—Garrison came to suspect that the Discordian Society was a CIA front involved in JFK’s assassination!

In 1968, Lovin started the first New Orleans alternative newspaper, The Ungarbled Word, which pretty much brings us up to speed… So away we go!

Jean Marie Stine (then known as Henry Stine, prior to changing gender identity) first encountered Lovin in New Orleans in early 1969. When Lovin learned that Stine was the author of Season of The Witch, he was exuberant with praise for the book, overwhelming Stine with his intensity and charm. A short time later, Stine heard that Lovin was the editor/publisher of The Ungarbled Word and made an appointment to discuss a writing gig.

After arriving at the scheduled time at Lovin’s French Quarter office, Stine was informed by Lovin’s secretary that, although Roger was in, he might be delayed a bit as he was presently ‘busy’ with a young woman there seeking a job. Lovin—the secretary explained—was quite the accomplished pick-up artist who successfully scored with every woman he ever hit on, and—due to the fact he inevitably hit on every attractive woman who crossed his path—it was likely that he and the young lady were having sex in his office at that very moment. An hour later, Lovin came out with the girl on his arm, and afterwards during their meeting confirmed that indeed he’d been doing the ol’ bump-and-grind while Stine waited patiently outside.

Roger Lovin's The Ungarbled Word business card. — Roger Lovin's *The Ungarbled Word* business card.
Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.

One night—while Stine and Lovin were making the rounds of various French Quarter bars—the subject of Jim Garrison came up and Lovin revealed that Garrison and his investigators were trying to build some sort of sketchy case against him using doctored evidence which included a photo that had been touched-up to make Lovin more resemble another suspect in the case.

Oddly enough, this scenario is strikingly similar to what occurred to Kerry Thornley when Harold Weisberg (using Garrison’s official District Attorney stationary) contracted a California artist to touch-up a photo of Thornley to make him more resemble Lee Harvey Oswald and bolster the theory that Thornley was one of the notorious Oswald doubles. When I mentioned this to Stine, she was quite taken aback and insured me that she wasn’t confusing or conflating the Thornley photo touch-up caper with what had occurred to Lovin, and that these were two separate incidents.

Early in 1969, a bookkeeper working for Lovin ran off with The Ungarbled Word proceeds. In order to keep things afloat, Lovin resorted to selling a stake in the paper to a couple of local characters who not long afterwards attempted a hostile take-over. Part of the plan of these interlopers was to install pre-gender-transition Hank Stine as the new editor/publisher, but when Stine clued Lovin into this planned coup, Roger immediately withdrew whatever Ungarbled Word funds were in the bank and along with Stine, and another writer named Alice Ramirez, (author of The Geek), the three high-tailed it out of town, eventually making their way to Los Angeles.

Shortly after arriving in L.A.—as Stine recalled—Lovin was literally starving, and to keep three square meals coming his way each day, he sweet-talked three waitresses (from three different restaurants) into bringing him food. One of the waitresses worked the morning shift; another work the afternoon shift; and a third, the night shift. And so—according to Stine—each brought meals to Lovin at different times—morning, noon and night—and, of course, Lovin would have sex with each of them during their visits.

A couple years later, Stine recalled visiting Lovin at his Hollywood apartment and was amazed to see a large chart Lovin had put up on the wall to keep track of all the women he was seeing, a system devised to schedule his revolving door of lovers. There have been some online estimates that Lovin bedded down somewhere in the area of around two thousand women. However, Jean Marie Stine suspects it was probably a far larger number, more in the range of ten thousand… and we’re not even talking about the under aged ones yet!

If there was ever someone destined to write a 1970s “How To Pick Up Chicks” book, it would have been Lovin. And who knows, he very well might have (under a pseudonym). During his Hollywood days (1969-1973), Lovin worked in the smut industry as an editor for American Arts, which had several different imprints, and it was through one such imprint he published his novel Eleven (1970), which included this cover blurb: “Eleven by Roger Lovin is an unnatural twist on the Lolita syndrome, the story of the love affair between a three-hundred-pound man and an eleven year old girl, a grotesque situation which Lovin handles with understanding…”

Eleven by Roger Lovin, published in 1970 — *Eleven* by Roger Lovin, published in 1970.

At the time—as Stine recalled during our recent interview—none of Lovin’s friends suspected he had a thing for underage girls, and most assumed Eleven was simply just his spin on a taboo subject. Later, it would become evident that the roots of Eleven were much more than a mere fictional flight of fancy and had real world implications.

In 1974, Little, Brown and Company published Lovin’s opus, The Complete Motorcycle Nomad.

Released as a Sports Illustrated selection of the month, it’s still considered by many motorcycle enthusiasts as a classic in the field.

Advertisement for Lovin's The Complete Motorcycle Nomad — Advertisement for Roger Lovin's *The Complete Motorcycle Nomad*.

My first inkling of Lovin’s illegal activities came by way of a news clipping (I’d stumbled upon in the Discordian Archives) from the science fiction fanzine Locus, the gist of which stated that Lovin had been arrested on “four counts of contributing to the delinquency of a minor, four counts of aggravated crime against nature, one count of carnal knowledge of a juvenile, and three counts of indecent behavior with a juvenile…” Lovin had been “released on $2,500 bond after being charged Oct.22 [1979] with possession of pornography…”

News clipping from Locus: The Newspaper of the Science Fiction Field, December 1979. — News clipping from
*Locus: The Newspaper of the Science Fiction Field*,
December 1979.

At the time, I wasn’t quite sure what to make of these allegations. Nor did I have any other background on Lovin, so it was hard to know how deeply he was really into any of this, or if it was simply an isolated incident of showing pornography to some kids, or perhaps an instance of poor judgment in regards to having sex with an underage girl.

My curiosity about Lovin persisted over the years, and when I’d occasionally stumble upon some item related to him in the Discordian Archives, it would inevitably lead to a web search. About ten years ago or so I happened upon this thread at ancestry.com where a woman—who suspected Lovin was her biological father—was seeking further information on him. The thread (from 2005) consists of around thirty entries, many from people who claimed to have known Lovin, some of whom said he had gone to prison for pedophilia.

A post from someone claiming to be Lovin’s sister (going by the name of “Freewind143”) stated that she and her other family members “were never made aware” of any criminal charges against her brother, and that Roger had been sterile and never fathered any children. Freewind143 noted that he “died in New Orleans on November 1, 1991.” Along with her post, Freewind143 shared a photo of Lovin with two of his sisters. The photo did indeed appear to be Roger Lovin—probably in his mid-to-late 40s—which would have put the timeframe the picture was taken around the mid-to-late 1980s.

Roger Lovin with his sisters. — Roger Lovin and his sisters with a portrait
of R. Buckminster Fuller framed behind them.
Photo from Ancestry.com.

My friend Tim Cridland (aka Zamora the Torture King) has been of immense help in untangling this twisted Roger Lovin web… a web which still may have a few tangles in it yet! Tim, like me, possesses an unnatural interest in many odd and arcane tributaries, and the people who inhabit many of these strange lanes, such as the colorful French Quarter characters associated with the New Orleans Discordian Society, including Kerry Thornley, Barbara Reid and Roger Lovin. In his role of Zamora, Tim travels around the world performing feats of wonder, and on his off hours often haunts local libraries and other repositories of ancient knowledge. While in New Orleans last year, Tim was able to lay his hands on some Roger Lovin related news clippings which provided further confirmation that Lovin had indeed been arrested and charged with the crimes mentioned in the Locus article.

According to October 25, 1979 edition of the Baton Rouge States-Times Advocate, “A self-styled preacher and part-time writer has been arrested in a raid at his apartment where thousands of pornographic pictures of young girls were seized….[Police information officer] Gus Krinke said the photographs depicted nude and partially nude girls, sometimes involved in sexual acts. He said most of the girls were runaways, but others came from fatherless homes in New Orleans… police said Lovin’s apartment was equipped with a darkroom enabling the film to be developed and printed there… Some of the girls may have posed for Lovin, officers said, after he convinced their mothers he simply wanted them for models.”

The October 25, 1979 New Orleans Times-Picayune stated that—following Lovin’s arrest—the police were “conducting a massive search for the identities of as many as 500 young girls who are believed to have been intimately involved with a man arrested here for possession of pornography” and that “Lovin may have been involved in a pornography network which stretches across the country… Lovin found many of his subjects by attending young people’s functions… police have proof he lured one of more of his victims away from a recent science fiction convention.” The article went on to state that Lovin was “originally from Tennessee” and “legally changed his name from Watlington to Lovin.”

October 27, 1979, Times-Picayune article on Roger Lovin's arrest — October 27, 1979, *Times-Picayune* article on Roger Lovin's arrest.

According to the October 26, 1979 edition of the New Orleans Times-Picayune:

One woman who took his course on “Writing for Kids” at the University of New Orleans, said he was an excellent teacher who never missed class.

“He was a very smooth talker,“ the woman remembered. “he gave the impression of being a very intellectual type person.

“He seemed to be a devil-may-care type of bachelor. But he was very balanced.”

The woman added, however, that it was obvious he wasn’t a run-of-the-mill type of person.

“Some of the things he said were a little strange,” she remembered. “But I wasn’t offended. Some of the older ladies were a little bit offended by his choice of words, but it was never anything serious.”

The former student said she wasn’t shocked when she heard the news, but was surprised that he could lead such a dual life.

“I got friendly with the man,” she said. “He didn’t seem like an absolute pervert. He just wasn’t like that.

“He made it clear several times that he wished he was in bed instead of in class because he had had too much to drink the night before. But he was always there.”

Advertisement for Lovin's 'Writing For Kids' class at the University of New Orleans — Advertisement for Lovin's 'Writing For Kids class
at the University of New Orleans.

According to Jean Marie Stine, at the time of Lovin’s arrest he lived in an apartment complex at 1112 N. Rampart St., and in a room across the hall lived a friend of Lovin’s who was an illegal arms dealer—which brings legendary Science Fiction author Norman Spinrad briefly into the story. Spinrad—also friends with Lovin—took a cross country trip with him in the mid 1970s, and part of their travels included a stop-over in the French Quarter. It was there that Spinrad was introduced to Lovin’s neighbor (the guy with all the guns) and this fellow took Spinrad for a ride up in the woods where he demonstrated some sort of rocket launcher, which completely blew Spinrad’s mind. Anyway, this same fellow was later raided by the cops for unregistered firearms. During the raid—when Lovin attempted to intervene on behalf of his friend—the officers told him to back off, pushing Roger back into his own apartment, where they observed photos of nude young women (and very young girls) posted on the walls. In short order, the cops got a warrant and raided Lovin’s apartment, leading to his arrest.

To friends, Lovin presented his side of the story that, yes, he’d had sex with underage girls, many that were runaways from broken homes home to whom he’d provided shelter and a warm bed, and without his ‘guidance’ they would have been out on the streets hustling sex for drugs or money. Lovin further insisted that he had taken these wayward youth under his wing with the consent of their parents, who were well aware of his sexual proclivities. During this period, Lovin was passing himself off as a “minister” of some sort, which might have been yet another ploy he used to ingratiate himself with both the parents and their children. Most of these parents were the girl’s mothers, who Lovin presumably charmed with his notorious silver tongue.

Newspaper reports and other accounts I’ve come across alleged that some of the girl’s parents had given Lovin permission to use them as photographic ‘models.’ After Lovin’s arrest, police detectives tracked down a number of these parents and pressured them into signing a criminal complaint against Lovin or face being charged with child endangerment.

Another spin Lovin put on the story was that his arrest had been orchestrated to cover-up a deeper NOLA scandal related to government officials caught having sex with underage boys. The intent of this cover up—according to Lovin—was to create a media distraction while behind the scenes the officials were let off the hook with minor offenses, the details of which were buried in the back pages while Lovin’s arrest was the front page news.

Jean Marie Stine felt there might have been some measure of truth to Lovin’s conspiracy theory. At the time, Stine was living in Baton Rouge and remembered reading the initial news reports about this government-officials-in-bed-with-boys-scandal, but then suddenly it all but disappeared from the front pages and was apparently swept under the rug at the exact time Lovin was facing his own legal kerfuffle.

According to Stine, the story became ever more tangled after Lovin’s trial, which should come as no surprise given Louisiana’s long history of political corruption. As it turns out, Lovin never actually served time in prison, but was in lock-up at the city jail for a period of time awaiting sentencing. According to Stine’s sources, an anonymous Lovin supporter—who suspected that Lovin would probably never make it out the Louisiana prison system in one piece—offered a sizable sum to the judge presiding over the case in the form of a “political contribution.”

The judge—as the story goes—was seeking an office in a higher court, which was apparently an elected position, and ultimately the “contribution” was accepted. These negotiations took place over the course of several months, and in the meantime Lovin’s stay in city jail—while not as bad as prison—was no cake walk, either. In fact, the first few weeks proved to be pretty rough, until one day when he was approached by a member of the Louisiana chapter of the Hell’s Angels. As it turned out, the Angels were big fans of Lovin’s The Complete Motorcycle Nomad and—after discovering that HE was THE “Roger Lovin”— let him know they “had his back” and from that point forward nobody messed with Lovin during the rest of his stint in jail.

Early Discordian Roger Lovin.
Courtesy of the Discordian Archives

When all was said and done, Lovin was granted a suspended sentence, which consisted of something in the area of five years probation. The terms of the probation dictated that he could neither leave New Orleans nor have any contact with juveniles. Lovin managed to stay on the straight and narrow for the court-ordered term, and after his probation ended—somewhere in the mid-to-late 1980s—he started making frequent trips to Belize where he could have sex with underage girls and not worry about the consequences. According to Jean Marie Stine, Lovin eventually ended up living fulltime in Belize and the last she heard was that he’d died sometime in the early 1990s.

A while back, Tim Cridland came across Lovin’s Social Security number on an old FBI memo. When Tim ran it through the online Social Security Death Index, it come up with no results for Roger Lovin… or any one named Watlington, for that matter. Tim hunted for death notices and obits in the Louisiana newspapers—as well as searching local cemetery records—but was unable to find any confirmation of Lovin’s death. The only thing definitive we had in that regard was the statement by “Freewind143” (on the Ancestry.com forum) who claimed that her brother had “died on November 1, 1991.”

However, some of Freewind143’s other comments didn’t quite jibe with the known facts, including her claim that neither she nor other family members were aware of criminal charges. Freewind143 also noted that “Roger Lovin” was her brother’s real name, which contradicts the NOLA newspaper articles that reported Lovin had been born with the last name of Watlington and later legally changed it to Lovin. Lovin first mentioned his name change to Clarence Doucet of the New Orleans Times-Picayune in a January 13, 1974 interview. An October 25, 1979 article in the Times-Picayune confirmed that “Records show Lovin is originally from Tennessee. He had his name legally changed from Watlington to Lovin.”

Given these discrepancies, Tim started entertaining the notion that perhaps Lovin had never actually died. I also began to suspect that Tim might be on to something, and that “Freewind143” may have been intentionally muddying the waters. Going out even further on this limb, the thought entered my mind that maybe Roger Lovin himself was posting as Freewind143!

Freewind143 noted that her brother had been sterile, this in response to the woman on the thread who was trying to figure out if Lovin was her biological father. Assuming Lovin had already changed his name once before, I began to wonder if this was yet another instance of creating a new identity to distance himself from the past, and that Lovin’s move to Belize was also part of this disappearing act.

Like her brother, Freewind143 is a writer, and using the pen name of “Freewind Gingerblaze” has authored three fantasy titles.

Freewind’s books could be considered in Lovin’s literary wheelhouse, as he was an author of one Science Fiction title, Apostle, and had written a couple more Sci-Fi/Fantasy manuscripts that were never published. Could these “Freewind Gingerblaze” titles have been the previously unpublished Lovin novels?

Another web search revealed that Freewind Gingerblaze’s real name is Molly Bressette, formerly Molly Annis Lovin. (On the Ancestry thread, Freewind143 noted that some of her family members call her Ann because her middle name is Annis.)

Googling “Molly Annis Lovin” led to a couple pertinent links here and here that appear to confirm her story.

Of course these findagrave.com entries could have been easily fabricated, but it seems like a lot of effort to go through (concocting an entire family tree) unless someone was really intent on faking their own death. Not that I wouldn’t put it past Mr. Lovin, who always seemed to have something up his sleeve. With all that being said, I’d wager that the name change switcheroo—from Watlington to Lovin—may have been Lovin pulling the leg of reporter Clarence Doucet back in 1974, and later this name change story was repeated (without fact-checking) during the Times-Picayune’s reportage of Lovin’s arrest in the fall of 1979. Just the same, it certainly seems curious that Freewind143—and other Lovin family members—“were never made aware” of her brother’s criminal history.

THE END. (MAYBE…)

Thanks again to Tim Cridland for his invaluable contributions to this craziest of all stories. Check out Tim’s Off The Deep End blog for more related madness, including his evolving series on Rev. Raymond Broshears.

Also, check out my interview with Jean Marie Stine about Roger Lovin embedded into this web page below, or, you can listen on your preferred new fangled whatever SoundCloud podcast harvester via my new podcast show called Radio Gogo with Adam Gorightly.

Follow me on SoundCloud, you’ll deliciously regret it!

Also, Millennials, share with your parents via Facebook, Instagram, whatever is hip now, they desperately want to understand what you’re into, so throw them a curve-ball that will not only educate but also confuse them!

And lastly, you can download the Lovin Files (for supporting documentation) here.

Hail Eris!

barbara reid discordian timeline discordianism interview jfk jim garrison kerry thornley lee harvey oswald letters monkey business roger lovin writings zines

You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’: Roger Lovin and the Dark Side of Discordia (Part 00003)

Post author By Gorightly
Post date February 26, 2017
5 Comments on You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’: Roger Lovin and the Dark Side of Discordia (Part 00003)

This installment of our Roger Lovin series is where things start taking a turn for the weird (relatively speaking!) as we’ll examine how Lovin became an unwilling participant in Jim Garrison’s JFK assassination dance party.

As anyone who frequents this site is well aware (or has bought my books—yes, please buy my books!), Garrison targeted Kerry Thornley as part of a supposed sinister assassination cabal centered in the New Orleans’s French Quarter. The key witness against Thornley—in this regard—was Early (and squirrelly) Discordian Barbara Reid, who most likely imagined or confabulated or conflated her claims against Thornley as a means to launch herself into Garrison’s orbit.

Our previous series on Barbara Reid can be found here and here for those with a need to get up to speed on Reid. (See what I did there?)

Ol Fearless — Ol' Fearless illustration of Lovin used for his opinion column in *The Ungarbled Word*.

In his March 1969 column in The Ungarbled Word (the underground French Quarter newspaper Lovin published), he wrote this about Reid:

“Prominent among Garrison’s self proclaimed informers is one Barbara Reid… a self-proclaimed witch who maintains a “Voodoo” altar in her French Quarter home. She has a long history of two-faced dealings, and has been known to sell information in return for “favors.” She is, she claims, Jim’s ear in the quarter…”

The key figure investigating Lovin’s supposed connections was assassination researcher Harold Weisberg whose skullduggery we’ve previously examined in great depth here, here and here.

Weisberg for awhile was hooked at the hip with Barbara Reid, and it was Reid who no doubt steered Weisberg in Lovin’s direction. Part of their suspicions concerned Lovin’s association with an outfit called the Modern Language Institute that apparently held occasional meetings at the Ryder Coffee House, a beatnik hangout promoting integration and free speech which we talked about in our first installment of this series.

The Ryder Coffee House was a meeting place for all manner of groups, primarily left leaning bohemian types, however its doors we’re open to all, which explains the presence there of the Modern Language Institute (MLI), an organization affiliated with anti-Castro Cubans and other right wingers—or perhaps these right wing elements had infiltrated the MLI, possibly using it as a front organization, or as a means of recruitment into clandestine anti-Castro (possibly CIA funded) activities… I know, it gets deep. And a lot of the information surrounding all of this is ancient and murky. But hang with me.

It was Garrison’s contention (ala Weisberg and Reid) that Lovin and Thornley had attended meetings of the MLI at Ryder Coffee House along with the MLI’s manager, an anti-Castro Cuban named Arnesto Rodriquez. (In some of Weisberg’s memos, he even suggests that Lovin managed the Ryder Coffee House at one point during this period.)

In regards to the MLI, Garrison was all over the notion that anti-Castro elements had been part of a JFK assassination hit team in cahoots with rogue CIA agents and that the likes of Arnesto Rodriguez and Kerry Thornley and Roger Lovin were all wrapped up in these alleged clandestine activities and that MLI served as some sort of cover for covert operations. I tend to doubt there’s much to these theories—at least in relation to Thornley and Lovin—but as anyone knows who has looked into this arcane history, nothing is cut-and-dried, and both Thornley and Lovin indeed had some curious connections with many of the shadowy figures who inhabited the French Quarter during those wild and wooly days. Whether, ultimately, these connections had any direct bearing on JFK assassination conspirators is still a matter of vast conjecture and conspiratorial fodder.

Harold Weisberg described Lovin as a “beatnik-type painter from Slidell, LA… who had run guns to Cuba for profit.” Weisberg was informed by Arnesto Rodriguez that he “was moving his school [Modern Language Institute] from across 6th street at the end of July 1963 and early August, that [Rodriguez] did not immediately finish up the back room, and that he agreed to a Lovin proposition that, in return for fixing it up, Lovin be given the use of the space for a studio. Arnesto says that on an unexpected return to the suite on a Sunday he found a naked Lovin convorting [sic] with a naked girl and thereupon terminated the arrangement for the space…”

As we learn more about Lovin, this anecdote is perhaps the first instance (in this series) of pulling back a curtain that will reveal much more about his veracious sexual appetite.

According to another memo by Harold Weisberg:

“LOVIN was connected with an organization known as Services Unlimited, care of the Bourbon House Bar in New Orleans, La. The Organization will allegedly do anything for money: i.e., fly a plane, steal property, paint a house, surveil individuals…Lovin claims to have been in jail in the state of Georgia for smuggling arms to Fidel Castro in the Sierra Mountains of Cuba prior to 1959. Source advised LOVIN claims to have done smuggling for FIDEL CASTRO in 1958 for a few weeks, but is not known to have returned since that time. He is allegedly now anti-Castro.”

In regards to the charge that Lovin was running guns, this claim apparently came from Lovin himself, and scant evidence exists to support this allegation, other than the real possibility that Lovin made it all up to create an aura around himself as that of a secret agent renaissance man who dabbled in the arts and literature on one hand while at the same time working as a soldier of fortune engaged in covert activities. On the other hand, it’s certainly not out of the realm of possibility that Lovin might have been involved in clandestine capers, as he was indeed a man of many talents, some of which pushed the envelope toward criminality. Just the same, the so-called “Services Unlimited” yarn seems somewhat far-fetched, and sounds like something Lovin might have cooked up over beers at the Bourbon House one night with his friends.

There was also the allegation (once again courtesy of the Harold Weisberg-Barbara Reid tag team) that Lovin and Lee Harvey Oswald had been roommates, this allegation coming (allegedly) from an informant named Bernard Goldsmith. But once again, this sounds like Lovin possibly yanking someone’s chain, or Barbara Reid conflating one thing she heard with another.

The Lovin-related info passed along to the FBI was sourced from a couple interviews Harold Weisberg conducted in 1967 and 1968. According to a Weisberg memo from April 12th, 1968, Lovin admitted that he’d been “kicked out of the Navy for a homosexual offence that he said was isolated but mixed up in another and major case…” This episode might be related to another FBI memo that states: “LOVIN was alleged to have stolen a television set from a Naval Ammunition Depot in North Charleston, S.C. sometime in February 1962.”

FBI memo concerning Lovin's role in the television heist caper.

In his column from Feb 20th, 1969 edition of The Ungarbled Word, Lovin had this to say about his interactions with Garrison’s investigators:

“I am, and have been, a close friend of Kerry Thornley. Kerry served in the Marine Corps with Lee Oswald, and Garrison contends that he (Thornley) met and had dealings with Oswald here in New Orleans. In the early days of the investigation, during the initial questioning of everybody even vaguely connected with anybody else, I was asked to come answer questions at Garrison’s office. Louis Ivon, one of Garrison’s investigators, informed me that he had information to the effect that I had, 1. Roomed with Oswald, 2. Sold him a rifle, and 3. Was part of the alleged conspiracy.

“I pointed out that, during the time in question, I wasn’t even in the city and could prove it. Ivon didn’t seem to want to hear that. When I offered to submit to a lie detector test, he was also less than anxious to listen.

“Later, I was twice visited by Harold Weisberg, a writer who represented himself as being from Garrison’s office. He made tapes of the two conversations, took my photo scrapbook, and vanished. He was since written two books on the assassination, both of which have been panned by critics as being far from factual. A year ago, Weisberg sent a letter on Garrison’s stationary to Fred Newcomb, an artist requesting that he retouch a picture of Kerry Thornley to make him look more like Oswald. Newcomb sent Weisberg’s request to the D.A., and got an answer declaiming any connection with Weisberg. Bother letters, Weisberg and the D.A.’s were on official stationary, and appeared to have been typed by the same secretary.

“Also last year, a young girl who was a part-time beer salesman on Bourbon St. and who said she was working for Garrison, tried to pump me for information on Oswald. I laughed at her, and she said “You had better talk. We’ve got a case on you and have ways of making you talk.”

February 20, 1969 edition of The Ungarbled Word. — February 20, 1969 edition of *The Ungarbled Word*.

As for the scrapbook (taken by Harold Weisberg) that Lovin mentions in his article, this contained, among other stuff, a sheaf of Discordian material that was enough of a head scratcher to get Weisberg imagining that the Discordian Society was somehow part of his JFK assassination conspiracy wet dream, a nutty notion I covered in some depth in a previous article entitled “Was The Discordian Society A CIA Front?”

But, weirdly enough, the JFK assassination wasn’t the only political assassination that Lovin became associated with—however obscurely. According to another odd FBI memo, in 1964 Lovin had taken dance lessons at the Continental Dance Studio in New Orleans—with the intent of becoming a dance instructor himself—and Lovin’s then wife, Sandra Lovin (né Sandra Bankson), was also involved with the studio as an instructor.

The gist of this FBI memo concerned visits to the Continental Dance Studio (also in 1964) by an individual going by the name of Eric Stavros Galt, which—it turns out—was an alias for James Earl Ray, the (alleged and convicted) assassin of Martin Luther King Jr.

Apparently, Ray had used the Galt alias during the period he received his series of dance lessons, and a couple weeks after MLK’s assassination—on April 19, 1968—the Feds tracked down different people associated with the dance studio to learn what they knew about Ray’s activities. To this end, Lovin and others associated with the dance studio (including his wife, Sandra) were questioned, and it doesn’t appear anything too monumental came out of this, other than the fact that the owner of Continental Dance Studios, Marlin C. Myers, did indeed confirm that Ray (under the alias of Galt) had attended some dance lessons there.

This inquiry seemed to be triggered by an earlier interview that Lovin had with Garrison’s investigators, and as they were showing him different photographs, apparently one of the James Earl Ray/Eric Stavros Galt mug shots was passed to him, and though Lovin didn’t recognize the photo, he said the Stavros part of the name sounded familiar, but that he might have been conflating it with a novel he had read. It all gets a bit convoluted, to say the least, but here’s the memo below, if you wish to get even more confused.

Thanks to Tim Cridland (aka Zamora the Torture King) for unearthing a lot of this information and making my head spin trying to explain it all.

COMING SOON: the Final Installment of this Series (at least I think it will be the Final Installment) which will be a bit of shocker to some, [whisper]containing some rather delicate revelations, as well as an audio interview I conducted a while back with Jean Marie Stine who found herself in the thick of a lot of Lovin’s adventures in New Orleans and later in Los Angeles in the early 1970s.[/whisper]

book discordianism illuminati james shelby downard jfk official business robert anton wilson writings

When Downard Met Discordia

Post author By Gorightly
Post date December 21, 2016
54 Comments on When Downard Met Discordia

James Shelby Downard in the early-90s. Photo by Adam Parfrey. — James Shelby Downard in the early-90s.
Photo by Adam Parfrey.

I owe a lot to Robert Anton Wilson and specifically the influence Cosmic Trigger Volume 1: Final Secret of the Illuminati (1978) had in piquing my interest in subjects like ufology, magick, Forteana, Discordianism, and the dreaded Bavarian Illuminati. I’m not sure which of these interests (or sometime obsessions) came to me solely through Cosmic Trigger, but after discovering the book it certainly dovetailed with a lot of high weirdness I was into—or things I would soon be into—and made me more aware, for instance, how synchronicity plays such an integral role in our lives—or more precisely in the lives of those who tune into it. (Whatever it is.)

Cosmic Trigger by RAW — *Cosmic Trigger: Final Secret of the Illuminati* by Robert Anton Wilson

Of course, it’s not like I wasn’t into a lot of this stuff before discovering Cosmic Trigger, but it did make me feel I wasn’t alone in Crossing the Abyss, which many of us experience in our lives at one point or another. And so RAW ala Cosmic Trigger put a lot of things in perspective for me, or turned up my focus to arrive at a broader understanding about my own experiences, psychedelic and UFO-wise.

I believe it was through Cosmic Trigger that I became aware of James Shelby Downard (maybe), although Downard might have first popped up on my radar via Adam Parfrey’s seminal anthology Apocalypse Culture (1987), which I probably read around the same time I first sunk my teeth into Cosmic Trigger in the late 1980s, and which did a similar number to my head.

During the period RAW was experiencing all of his Sirius synchronicities, a Fortean researcher named William Grimstad sent him an audio cassette series entitled Sirius Rising, a recording with James Shelby Downing that “…set forth the most absurd, the most incredible, the most ridiculous Illuminati theory of them all…[that] the Illuminati were preparing Earth, in an occult manner, for extraterrestrial contact…. The only trouble is that, after the weird data we have already surveyed [in Cosmic Trigger], the Grimstad-Downard theory may not sound totally unbelievable to us….”

At the time, Downard was an obscure and little known figure outside the small circle of Fortean/Conspiracy researchers who gravitated around him that included Bill Grimstad, Michael Anthony Hoffman II and Charles Saunders.

Due in some measure to Downard’s influence, Grimstad (under the non-de-plume of Jim Brandon) authored the Fortean classics Weird America (1978) and The Rebirth of Pan (1983). In the “Dallas, Texas” section of Weird America, Brandon presented the theory that JFK was a “ceremonial king-who-must-die” killed by modern age alchemists following an ancient druidic tradition, a hypothesis arrived at by a “certain body of opinion, undoubtedly the farthest out brain wave of assassinology yet.” No direct mention was made, at this time, as to the theory’s originator: James Shelby Downard.

Books by Jim Brandon — Covers of Jim Brandon's (William Grimstad) books: *Weird America* and *The Rebirth of Pan*.

It was through “King Kill 33°: Masonic Symbolism in the Assassination of John F. Kennedy” (featured in Apocalypse Culture) that Downard first came to the attention of conspiratologists and over time rose to the status of a mythic figure who traveled across the country in his famous airstream trailer investigating Fortean mysteries and battling Freemasonic adversaries at every turn, his trusty Colt 45 always at his side.

James Shelby Downards Mystical War by Adam Gorightly — *James Shelby Downard's Mystical War* by Adam Gorightly.

Due to my own interests in Downardiana, I penned the 2008 mini bio James Shelby Downard’s Mystical War in which I listed a bibliography of his known works:

“King Kill 33°: Masonic Symbolism in the Assassination of John F. Kennedy”, co-written with Michael A. Hoffman II, Apocalypse Culture, edited by Adam Parfrey, Amok Press, 1987.
“The Call to Chaos: From Adam to Atom by Way of the Jornada del Muerto”, Apocalypse Culture: Expanded and Revised, edited by Adam Parfrey, Feral House, 1990.
“Sorcery, Sex, Assassination and the Science of Symbolism”, Secret and Suppressed: Banned Ideas and Hidden History, edited by Jim Keith, Feral House, 1993.
“Skullduggery”, Independent History and Research, 1998.
The Carnivals of Life and Death: My Profane Youth, 1913-1935, edited by Elana Freeland, Feral House, 2006.

As for unpublished works, Michael Hoffman informed me several years ago that Downard’s “…niece, Robbie Smith, had in her possession at his death, Mr. Downard’s locked suitcase files which neither Mr. Grimstad, this writer or Charles Saunders had ever seen. She told me about some of the contents. I was desperate to buy them but could not meet her price. She admitted to destroying some of his materials after his death! I found her difficult. God willing, she has preserved something and someone will be able to purchase these from her one day. If it’s all lost, it’s a tragedy.”

This news that the last remnants of Downard’s literary legacy might have knowingly or unknowingly been tossed into a dumpster was certainly a disappointing prospect, which is what would have happened to the Discordian Archives had not Dr. Bob Newport intervened and rescued them from Greyfaced oblivion.

*James Shelby Downard's The Carnivals of Life and Death: My Profane Youth: 1913-1935*, edited by Elana Freeland.

In the intro to The Carnivals of Life and Death, Adam Parfrey noted that Downard died before he could write the second part of his biography and so the general consensus seemed to be that we’d probably never see any further Downardian writings—that is, until NOW…

During the course of writing James Shelby Downard’s Mystical War, I corresponded not only with Michael Hoffman, but also Bill Grimstad, and stayed in touch with Bill over the last decade. At the end of 2015, Grimstad informed me that he’d come into possession of what appeared to be Part 2 of Downard’s biography(!) and inquired if I was interested in publishing the material. Hell, yes, I responded.

The caveat, though, was that the manuscript was in microfiche format (circa 1980s) and would need to be converted into tiffs. I agreed to split the costs for this process, and then afterwards began sorting through the material, which in itself proved a somewhat daunting task due to the fact that it consisted of a staggering 799 pages, a combination of biographical material as well as Downard hashing out his central themes and theories in a manner that only he could do.

Page 1 of Downard’s unpublished magnum opus. — Page 00001 of Downard’s unpublished magnum opus.

Phase two of the project entailed converting the manuscript to PDF and getting it into proper chronological order, but this as well was somewhat challenging and was making my head hurt a bit; it seemed the only way to review it and make sure I had all the pages in correct order was to print out the beast, maybe a few pages at a time. After printing out a dozen or so pages, I realized that about 2/3rds of my black ink cartridge had been sucked dry due to the black margins on the pages that were a by-product of the microfiche conversion. A visit to FedEx-Kinko’s and $150 later, I had a printed version in my hot little hands, which was a lot less expensive than sinking several hundred dollars into black ink cartridges. (Yes, I realize this is a first world problem!)

Downards missing magnum opus — Downard's missing magnum opus courtesy of FedEx-Kinko's.

The plan from there was to OCR the beast and just edit as I go. Unfortunately, the first test OCR revealed that each page would take more time correcting the OCR errors than it would take to just retype the whole enchilada fresh—which is exactly what I’m doing now, a few pages here and a few pages there—in between other projects I’m currently working on.

If there are any volunteers out there who would like to assist me in the typing drudgery, say 50 pages at a pop, drop me a line and this will allow you a sneak peak at a portion of Downard’s missing magnum opus—not to mention a gratis copy after it’s published!

To be continued…

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You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’: Roger Lovin and the Dark Side of Discordia (Part 00001)

Post author By Gorightly
Post date December 11, 2016
2 Comments on You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’: Roger Lovin and the Dark Side of Discordia (Part 00001)

To follow is a multi-part part series on Roger Lovin, one of the more mercurial characters of the Early Discordian scene. Lovin’s story does indeed have a dark tinge to it, as the subtitle suggests, all of which will be unveiled in our final installment with an audio interview of Jean Marie Stine recorded June 24, 2016… but let us begin at the beginning.

Born Roger Watlington in Knoxville, Tennessee on May 11, 1941, he later changed his name to Roger Lovin which would prove apropos in terms of the footloose and fancy free lifestyle he later adopted.

In the early 1960s, Lovin managed a French Quarter coffee house called The Gryphon, which doubled as a bohemian art gallery and hangout for French Quarter beatniks. In this regard, a curious news article appeared in the Oct 12, 1964 The Times-Picayune about a smoke bomb attack at The Gryphon that caused minor damage and one injury.

Oct 12, 1964 The Times-Picayune article about the smoke bomb caper. — Oct 12, 1964 *The Times-Picayune* article about the smoke bomb caper.

It’s unknown if the bombing was in any way directed at Lovin, although that wouldn’t come as a surprise as he was always a somewhat controversial character fond of ruffling the feathers of the squares. However, I suspect this incident may have had something to do with the bohemian clientele that frequented The Gryphon and a certain conservative element in New Orleans that was probably none too thrilled about it. As noted in the news article, a similar smoke bomb attack went down at the Quorum Coffee House (also known as The Quorum Club), another establishment with deep Discordian ties. A Wikipedia entry describes The Quorum as “a coffee house in New Orleans, known as a model for multicultural exchanges in the politically and racially charged atmosphere of the 1960s. It became a frequent target of segregationist harassment in New Orleans after it opened to persons from all racial backgrounds in 1963. In 1964, police raided The Quorum and arrested 73 people on charges such as ‘playing guitars out of tune.’”

Although The Quorum was a multicultural beatnik mecca, Kerry Thornley returned to New Orleans in the summer of 1964 and delivered a decidedly un-beatnik type lecture there on Ayn Rand and Objectivism—but that was typical Thornley: an iconoclast who reveled in tweaking people’s sensibilities on either side of the cultural or political spectrum. It’s also important to note that Kerry’s last meeting with the notorious Gary Kirstein (aka Brother-in-law who supposedly lured him into the JFK assassination) took place on the back patio of The Quorum (cast in creepy shadows) following Kerry’s lecture there that night.

Another Early Discordian, Barbara Reid (the main witness against Kerry in the Jim Garrison fiasco), became known as a “den mother” to a group of hippie kids that hung out at The Quorum, so the Discordian connections ran deep and weird. Apparently, there’s a film documentary about The Quorum called, appropriately enough (yes, you guessed it), The Quorum, which speaks to the influence this coffee house had on French Quarter culture. The website for The Quorum film describes how it was started in 1963 “by an idealistic group of individuals most of whom had met at the Ryder, an earlier, short-lived, racially integrated coffee house on Rampart Street in the New Orleans French Quarter. When the Ryder was shut down by city officials on the pretext of needing the space to construct a hotel, approximately twelve of the former Ryder patrons banded together to establish a similar sort of establishment with a similar purpose….”

As it so happens, the defunct Ryder coffee house (mentioned above) became of interest to Jim Garrison during his JFK assassination investigation as a supposed meeting place where Thornley had met with Lee Harvey Oswald and other suspected diabolical doings went down, which I previously covered in this post. But I digress…

The Quorum and Gryphon smoke bombings occurred during the same period Jim Garrison rolled out a campaign to “clean up” the French Quarter, and the specific targets of this campaign were strip clubs and establishments catering to the homosexual community. This is not to suggest that Garrison was in any way responsible for the smoke bomb caper, but what these events spoke to was the tension and unrest brewing across the cultural landscape, particularly in the French Quarter which had always been a fertile breeding ground for freaks and free spirits to flourish.

This period is covered in Plot Or Politics?: The Garrison Case and Its Cast (1967), authored by award winning New Orleans States-Item reporters Rosemary James and Jack Wardlaw, who covered the Garrison investigation from its very beginnings. Plot Or Politics? also covers, albeit briefly, the rise of Garrison’s political career and provides an intimate snapshot of what was brewing behind the scenes with the Garrison investigation before it became a thing. Plot Or Politics? is also of interest because it devotes a couple pages to none other than Kerry Thornley regarding his interactions with Oswald in the Marines. This section on Thornley is noteworthy because it appeared several months before Garrison painted a target on Thornley’s back.

In regards to Garrison’s campaign against “vice,” pages 21 and 22 of Plot Or Politics? informs the reader that:

Almost as soon as he took office, Garrison took aim at the city’s sin strip—“The Street”, Bourbon Street. Former New Orleans newsman Bill Stuckey recalls:

“Shortly after he became district attorney in 1962, [Garrison] launched a crackdown on homosexuals in New Orleans, raiding ‘gay bars’ frequently, arresting ‘gay kids’ on the streets of the French Quarter. After one such arrest, the New Orleans States-Item sent me to the police station to see what the formal charges were. There, on paper, probably was one of the strangest charges in U.S. legal history: ‘Being a homosexual in an establishment with a liquor license.’ The drive died down after several weeks. One benefit of it may have been the creation of a body of homosexual informants for the district attorney’s office—informants possibly involved in his Kennedy plot investigation.”

It probably appears like I’m once again digressing, but I wanted to lay out the cultural landscape of the period—a culture in which Lovin was knee deep—and the conditions that precipitated the crackdown on the homosexual community, all of which might have attributed to the coffee house smoke bombings, and a cultural sea change which was only then just beginning to make waves…

When Greg Hill and Kerry Thornley moved away from the French Quarter in the mid-60s, they left the New Orleans branch of the Discordian Society in the capably chaotic hands of Mr. Lovin, whom Thornley described in the Illuminet Press intro of Principia Discordia as “a dashing, talented and handsome con artist who was too shallow to settle into any one thing. But for years and years after he read the Principia, under his Discordian name of Fang the Unwashed, he consistently and with unswerving devotion to the task excommunicated every new person any of the rest of us initiated into the Discordian Society.”

Discordian Society business card. Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.

Kerry wasn’t just lightly tossing around the assertion that Lovin excommunicated new Discordian initiates, as revealed in this December 2, 1964 letter from Greg Hill (aka Malaclypse the Younger) to pilgrims Judy Gates and Bob Yeager.

December 2, 1964 letter from Greg Hill to Judy Gates and Bob Yeager. — December 2, 1964 letter from Greg Hill (aka Malaclypse the Younger)
to pilgrims Judy Gates and Bob Yeager.
Courtesy of The Discordian Archives.

The Early Discordians become infamous for these types of humorous letters, and one of the funniest I’ve come across was composed by Lovin dated December 17, 1964, addressed to Greg Hill (who appears to have been staying with Bob Newport in Chicago at the time):

All Hail Discordia!!!!!?!!!!!!!

To: MALACLYPSE (THE YOUNGER), K.C.: OMNIPOTENT POLYFATHER OF VIRGINITY IN GOLD AND HIGH PRIEST OF THE HERETIC FRINGE AND PROTESTANT PERSAUSION

FROM: FANG (THE UNWASHED), W.K.C.: LIBERATOR OF THE THIRD EYE, PROTECTOR of the WESTERN WORLD, EXALTED LAMA of the NEW ORLEANS CABAL, and L.L.L.L.L.L. (Lovin’s Licentiously Liberated Lightning Lechers)

Hail Eris,

Concerning thy recent epistle of Excommunication: Screw Thee. Thou wilt understand, of course, that it isn’t the humble Fang; but FANG, W.K.C.: L.T.E., P.W.W., E.L.N.O.C., and L.L.L.L.L.L. and wilt therefore realize that naught of a personal nature is meant… dig?

Wouldst do me the favor of communicating Lord Omar’s current whereabouts to me in the swiftest mode. This One is plagued with constant uncertainties and apprehensions due to an extreme dearth of information concerning That One. I fear me ever that the Foul Forces of Light and Reason have fallen upon him unaware and smotten (wow!) Him severely about the shoulders and intellect. Thou wouldst earn thyself everlasting gratitude and a mention in the evening maledictions by such an action. Also; if you don’t, I’ll kill you.

As to the progress of the New Orleans Cabal: The first Temple of Eris in New Orleans was formally defecated on Nov. 3, 1964, at 519 Decatur St. (which, oddly enough, is also my home address.) It occupied a converted broom closet. Admittedly, that is rather humble quarters for such a large and far-flung organization; but in the short space of one month we have more than doubled our area. This noble word was accomplished chiefly through the untiring efforts of our noble leader, FANG, W.K.C.: L.T.E., P.W.W., E.L.N.O.C., and L.L.L.L.L.L. and his noble assistant, Charles Noble. They single-handedly (one hand, three hooks) formed K.R.U.D. (Kollectors of Revenue Under Duress) and saw to the raising of funds. Our membership already includes two beatniks, one wasp, a hunchbrain, and a genuine, card carrying square who has 2.7 kids and a wife with a cloth coat. Therefore, be of good cheer. Today New Orleans, tomorrow the Catacombs – with some scattered showers in the evening.

As I am naturally curious about what sort of person would spend his time on such drivel as this, kindly send me some data about yourself. Send also a copy of HYMN. Barring the feasibility of a picture, send a piece of fingernail and some hair…..

In closing, let me say: MARY CHRISTMAS, SAVIOR MONEY!!!

(signed) FANG

Envelope of the December 17, 1964 letter from Roger Lovin to Greg Hill.
Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.

December 17, 1964 letter from Roger Lovin to Greg Hill.
Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.

As the beatniks morphed into hippies, Lovin went right along for the ride. On December 9, 1966, he hosted a “psychedelic happening” billed as an “LSD trip without LSD” that certainly sounded Discordian in nature, as documented in the December 10, 1966 States Time Advocate news article below.

December 10, 1966 news article from the States Time Advocate — December 10, 1966 news article from the *States Time Advocate*.

On October 16, 1968, Lovin appeared on TV program called Hotseat revealing “The Truth About Hippies.” It was around this time that he started the first underground newspaper in New Orleans, The Word (later to be known as The Ungarbled Word.) While all of this was going on, Lovin became a suspect of sorts in the Garrison investigation, all of which will be discussed in more detail than you can possibly imagine in future installment of this series!

Roger Lovin on the Hotseat — October 16, 1968 clipping from *The Times-Picayune* TV listings
of Roger Lovin’s appearance on *Hotseat*.

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November 27: This Day in Discordian History

Post author By Gorightly
Post date November 27, 2016
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The Idle Warriors by Kerry W. Thornley, published by IllumiNet Press, 1991 — *The Idle Warriors* by Kerry W. Thornley, published by IllumiNet Press, 1991

On this date in 1963—in the aftermath of the JFK assassination—we find the first mention of Kerry Thornley’s The Idle Warriors, his novel based on Lee Harvey Oswald and life in the Marines during the Cold War era. Thornley’s observations at this time about his old Marine Corps pal would—not long after—form the basis of his Warren Commission testimony and his subsequent book titled, appropriately enough, Oswald.

This was today in Discordian history.

November 27, 1963, News Orleans States-Item masthead. — November 27, 1963, *News Orleans States-Item* masthead.
Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.

New Oreans States-Item article — November 27, 1963 *New Orleans States-Item* article on the JFK Assassination
with the first reference to the Kerry Thornley's *The Idle Warriors*.
Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.

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fnord

Post author By themgt
Post date November 22, 2016
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RAW vs. Mae Brussell!

The spring 1977 issue of Conspiracy Digest featured an interview with Robert Anton Wilson (RAW) in which he discussed the full spectrum of where his head was at during the period.

Fresh off the publication of Illuminatus!, the interview included RAW’s musings on conspiracy theories, space migration, life extension, the Eight Circuit Model and Aleister Crowley.

In response, Mae Brussell—the Matron Saint of Conspiracy Theorists—fired off the following letter challenging RAW’s contention that Tim Leary’s stint in prison was anything but difficult, and in actuality (or at least in Mae’s reality tunnel) Leary had been coddled by the Feds (and fed steak!) and that his time in lock-up was actually a cake-walk.

Mae further employed the cake metaphor to explain how the likes of Leary, RAW and John Lilly were in cahoots with the CIA to corrupt the youth of America!

White sugar is a drug in cake icing used to induce us to consume white flour. Sugar is, literally, a reward for eating the cake. Lilly, [Bucky] Fuller, Wilson, and Leary are the white sugar frosting that sweeps people into happy time, scooping them up into a dream world so they will avoid the reality of a good diet of sound action. Leary, Wilson and their likes are used by the CIA Intelligence Community to sugar sweet the yellow brick road to Oz, while the means to enslave mankind are being manufactured under our noses…

Mae's Summer 1977 letter to Conspiracy Digest busting RAW's chops. — Mae's Summer 1977 letter to *Conspiracy Digest*
busting RAW's chops.

In response to Mae’s missive, RAW came clean about his role in this diabolical brainwashing plot, confessing that he’d been a “high Official of the Central Intelligence Agency since July 23, 1973” and, further agreeing with Mae’s theory on the “white sugar” allegations, agreed that:

Dr. Leary didn’t merely have a high time at that great pleasure resort, Folsom Prison, as Mae has discovered; he had a great time in all the 29 prisons he visited during the last six years, although actually most of the time he was living (with a private harem) in the Taj Mahal, only appearing at the prisons often enough to keep alive the myth that he was a political prisoner…

RAW's reply to Mae Brussel's Summer 1977 rant. — RAW's reply to Mae Brussell's
Summer 1977 rant.

One might conclude that Mae’s theory re: RAW and Leary as dastardly members of this “white sugar mafia” was, in essence, a metaphor to suggest that they’d been used by intelligence agency handlers to soft peddle psychedelics and space migration and all the other heady stuff they were entertaining at the time.

In this vein, I remember hearing one of Mae’s tape recorded radio shows (from the early 1980s) where she claimed that Leary, RAW and other unnamed “spychiatrists” were part of a mind control squadron that went around brainwashing important people. For instance, Mae claimed that this Leary-RAW MK-ULTRA tag team showed up at Larry Flynt’s mansion (during the period that Flynt was attempting to expose the Kennedy assassination) and effectively messed with Flynt’s mind and influenced him to drop his one million dollar reward to expose the assassination. Afterwards, Flynt became increasingly erratic, like showing up for his trial dressed only in a diaper made out of an American flag, and a number of other publicity stunts that gave the impression he’d gone off his nut.

(If anyone has a copy or knows which episode from the Worldwatchers Archive of this specific Mae Brussell tape please contact your humble chronicler here at HD hindquarters so I know I just didn’t imagine hearing it.)

Given these peculiar insights, one wonders if Mae, at some point, hadn’t been exposed to the rantings of Kerry Thornley, as it was during this period (late-70s/early-80s) that Kerry’s schizophrenia kicked into high gear and he was making similar claims that both RAW and Leary were working as his handlers, covertly visiting him in Atlanta to do whatever it is that diabolical mind control handlers do. It makes perfect sense that Thornley may have contacted Mae in this regard, as during this period he was firing off letters left and right to whoever would listen to his JFK Assassination revelations, and his suspicions that he’d been MK-ULRTA’ed.

Case in point: A 1975 “affidavit” in which Kerry talked about a “team” of handlers he met in Atlanta, one of whom “bore an uncanny intellectual and psychological resemblance to an anarchist writer friend of mine [RAW] who lives in California…”

Some Further Comments On The Pipe Smoking Incident memo. — Kerry's affidavit claiming that RAW and some other intelligence agency handlers visited him in Atlanta in 1975. Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.

In RAW’s intro to The Prankster and the Conspiracy, he wrote:

I remember my last phone conversation with Kerry, during which he announced that just a week earlier I had come to Atlanta, argued with him about my alleged CIA connections, spiked his drink with LSD, and brainwashed him again. I told him that I had not left San Francisco in months, and that if he had a bad acid trip the previous week then somebody else gave him the acid, not me. I insisted on this as persuasively as I could.

Finally, Kerry relented—a bit. “Well, maybe you believe that”, he said. “But that means your bosses have been fucking with your head and implanting false memories in you too!”

“How do you argue that you haven’t had your head altered? “Look,” I said, I’ll put my wife Arlen on. She’ll tell you I haven’t left here in months.”

“That won’t prove anything,” he said with the calm certitude of a Gran Master announcing checkmate. “They probably fixed her head too.”

I don’t remember the rest of the conversation. I felt lost in an Escher painting…

A 1976 letter from Kerry (to Greg Hill) claimed that both Leary and RAW visited him that year, and he went on to write that, “I am literally surrounded by the intelligence community, but after the first three attempts to murder me things seem to have cooled down and most of the spies now appear to be on my side…”

1976 letter from Kerry to Greg Hill outlining the vast conspiracy that was consuming his mind. — 1976 letter from Kerry to Greg Hill outlining the vast conspiracy
that was consuming his mind. Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.

During this period, RAW and Leary wrote on article (June 1976 issue of Oui) entitled “Brainwashing: How To Fold, Spindle and Mutilate the Human Mind in Five Easy Steps” which may have further fueled the fire in the minds of some that RAW and Leary were taking names and washing brains!

1976 Oui Magazine article by Robert Anton Wilson and Timothy Leary. — 1976 *Oui Magazine* article by Robert Anton Wilson and Timothy Leary:
'Brainwashing: How To Fold, Spindle and Mutilate the Human Mind in Five Easy Steps'

Download “Brainwashing: How To Fold, Spindle and Mutilate the Human Mind in Five Easy Steps” here.

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Cosmic Trigger Online Reading Group, Week 19

Post author By Gorightly
Post date August 15, 2016
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Thanks to Charles Faris for inviting me take the helm for this week’s Cosmic Trigger reading. I ended up writing a lot more than I’d initially intended… but sometimes that happens! (I blame it on the Dog Days.)

We pick up with The horrors begin (page 150 of the Hilaritas edition) through to Ishtar’s Walk: a guided tour of Hell, a section that covers RAW’s lean years after he quit his cushy Playboy job and tossed caution in the wind to devote himself to full time freelancing. This was a difficult period when he went on public assistance (the dreaded “W” word: “Welfare”) to keep his family fed and a roof over their heads in a rundown Berkeley apartment complex with neighbors on either side who appeared to be going off their heads—like so many others who emerged from the madness that’d gripped the country at the end of the 60s—from the highs of the Woodstock Nation to the lows of Altamont, Kent State and the riots of Chicago, which RAW witnessed first-hand. RAW was smack dab in the middle of the cultural sea change taking place—that all of the sudden seemed to have lost traction, like Hunter Thompson’s wave that “finally broke and rolled back.”

Before we knew it, the 70s were upon us and something had changed. So many of the heroes of the movement had either burned out or sold out or spun out. By 1973, the sixties looked a thousand light years away in the rear view mirror as the lost idealism of that decade bled over into the early seventies. A hung-over generation awoke one morning to discover President Nixon’s “War on Drugs” in full swing, its crosshairs trained on the country’s youth, poor and minorities; draconian drug laws designed, it seemed, to create a prison state of mind, with RAW’s good friend Tim Leary—who Nixon proclaimed “the most dangerous man in America”—serving as the poster boy for all things immoral and indecent.

Kerry Thornley during his Sacred Mind Ashram period in Atlanta. Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.

Amid Watergate revelations of government snooping gone wild, paranoia ran high in a fragmented counterculture, as out of this era emerged a generation of damaged goods—like some of RAW’s loony Berzerkeley neighbors—or his friend Kerry Thornley, who had a job done on his head not only by the “brown acid,” but due to the trials and tribulations of the Garrison Inquisition. Operation Mindfuck had come full circle, it appeared, biting its creator, Kerry Thornley, square on the ass.

Against this backdrop, occasional self doubt crept into RAW’s reality tunnel. Since the whole world seemed to be going mad, maybe he was, as well… filled with doubts that he’d made the worst decision of his life quitting Playboy all the while the prospect hanging over his head that he’d never become a successful writer, let alone afford to pay his bills. Also the uncertainty of Illuminatus! was still dangling in the wind, yet unpublished.

In the midst of unsure times, RAW continued his path of self discovery, practicing Sufi heart-chakra exercises to free his mind of troubles and open himself up to the wonders of the universe—which all sounds pretty new agey in retrospect, but it was a sign of the times. It was the Aquarian New Age and RAW was at the forefront, not only diving headfirst into those trendy currents, but also examining them with a critical eye. Much the same way Aleister Crowley had done decades before, by examining consciousness (magick) using the scientific method, and at the same time approaching these practices in an unbiased/unconditioned manner, the ultimate goal to metaprogram one’s self and open higher circuits.

“We place no reliance on virgin or pidgeon.
Our method is science, our aim is religion.”

It was a transition period when the counterculture crossed its own abyss—from the social activism, sexual liberation and drug induced revelations of the 60s—into a state of creeping dread brought on by Watergate, Cointelpro and the War on Drugs. Out of this madness emerged the New Age Movement, which many of the old guard radical left considered a cop out, people staring at their navels when they should be overthrowing The Man.

This period witnessed a renewed interest in the JFK assassination, as well as the other political assassinations of the late 60s, as conspiracy buffs began noticing a pattern from one assassination to another, this coupled with a deepening mistrust of government, and a growing Police State, all contributed to The Paranoid Period.

Then Kerry Thornley, high priest of Eris, re-entered my life, dragging the Kennedy Assassination horrors with him. (p.151)

At this point in the narrative, RAW brings up Thornley’s feud with Jim Garrison, which I’d be remiss if I didn’t attempt to explain. But don’t tell me I didn’t tell you it gets way convoluted.

Thornley—as weird history instructs—served with Oswald in the Marines for a short period and due to this association went on to author a couple books about his Marine Corps chum titled Oswald and Idle Warriors. Garrison conjectured that these books were written as a means to portray Oswald as a commie influenced lone nutter with an itchy trigger finger in order to set him up as a patsy in the assassination… all part of a convoluted conspiracy caper that Thornley (maybe) was party to. But I’m getting ahead of myself…

As to the nature of Garrison and Thornley’s beef, this date backs to Kerry’s association with JFK researcher David Lifton, author of the classic Kennedy assassination tome, Best Evidence.

In his initial discussions with Lifton in 1965, Thornley mentioned how Oswald spoke Russian in the ranks at El Toro with a Marine whose name he thought might have been John Renee Heindel. This revelation (that Oswald conversed in the Russian tongue with Heindel) came as a surprise to Lifton, because he was quite familiar with Thornley’s Warren Commission testimony and the fact that Kerry hadn’t actually identified Heindel as the Russian speaking Marine in question. In fact, Thornley’s only mention in the Warren Report concerning this topic is a passage where he’s trying to recollect the name of the Russian speaking Marine, and he can’t. In later conversations, Kerry admitted that he’d only recalled Heindel’s name (after delivering his testimony) when he and Warren Commission attorney, Albert Jenner, were having lunch together and Jenner provided Thornley with the name “Heindel.” How Jenner came to this conclusion (that Heindel was the guy who spoke Russian) is unclear, but it stuck in Thornley’s mind only later to be repeated to Lifton. And I haven’t even started getting convoluted yet! Hang on…

John Renee Heindel. Photo Credit: House Select Committee on Assassinations files.

Another curiosity concerning Heindel (according to a Warren Commission affidavit) is that his nickname in the Marines was “Hidell,” which was certainly a head scratcher, given that fact that Oswald used the “Alec Hidell” alias when he ordered the Manlicher-Carcano rifle allegedly used to kill Kennedy.

In mid 1967, Lifton discovered that our man Heindel was then living in New Orleans, which just happened to be the base of operations for Jim Garrison’s investigation and, in mid September, Lifton contacted Garrison to pass along this info about Heindel.

Not long after, Garrison called Heindel in for questioning, who denied the whole bit about speaking to Oswald in Russian. This led Garrison to somehow arrive at the conclusion that Heindel was lying. In addition, Garrison and his crew uncovered “evidence” that Heindel was seen with Oswald at several New Orleans bars during the summer of 1963. (Whether this “evidence” against Heindel was of any substance is another matter entirely.)

Long story short, Garrison wanted Thornley to travel to New Orleans to “confront” and “identify” Heindel as, you guessed it, the guy who spoke to Oswald in Russian. In the interim, Garrison requested (through Lifton) that Thornley write up a statement summarizing his memories of Oswald and Heindel. To this end, Lifton got together with Thornley (they were both living in Los Angeles at the time) and Lifton prepared an affidavit that Thornley signed and then Lifton afterwards mailed to Garrison in September 1967. Mainly, it was Lifton who behind all of this, and it’s doubtful that Thornley would have pursued the matter had not Lifton insisted.

Garrison’s ultimate plan was to call Heindel before a grand jury, and ask him if he’d ever heard Oswald speak Russian. Previously, Heindel had gone on record stating that he had not, thus it was Garrison’s assumption that Heindel would once again testify to the same tune. Then—following Heindel’s testimony—Thornley would be called into testify that he, in fact, had heard Oswald and Heindel speaking Russian—or at least that’s the convoluted scenario Garrison envisioned. As a result—according to Garrison’s madcap plan—Heindel would then be indicted for perjury. Ultimately, Garrison envisioned a far grander scenario than simply implicating Heindel as a low level player in JFK’s assassination: his eventual goal was to persuade Heindel to provide detrimental testimony against some of the other suspects in the case, like Clay Shaw.

Lifton’s willingness to cooperate with Garrison on the matter soon soured after he examined the charges against Heindel and came to the conclusion that it was a whole bunch of nothing. When Lifton informed Thornley of these developments, Kerry attempted to distance himself from Garrison’s investigation by sending this letter to the New Orleans District Attorney’s office dated October 24, 1967:

Dear Mr. Garrison,

As a personal favor to Mr. Lifton I spent a whole day with him preparing that damned affidavit. It says everything I know about the subject. I regret that I bothered.

When I said I would speak to you ON MY TERMS, as you had apparently offered to do through Mr. Lifton, I meant it. And since you chose, when I called you the first time, not to deal on those terms, to hell with it.

I have no interest to speak of in this matter and from now on intend to keep out of it, as actions on my part can only in my view stimulate the state to violate the rights of others who for all I know may be innocent. “It is far better to reward the guilty than to punish the innocent,” said Robert Ingersoll, and every time you subpoena an innocent individual you punish him to the extent that you have violated his precious and unalienable right to liberty.

But what you do is your business, sir, and you are welcome to it.

Sincerely,
Kerry Thornley

Thornley's October 24, 1967 letter to Jim Garrison. Courtesy of The Discordian Archives.

In late November 1967, Lifton met Garrison in Los Angeles, and at this time, “[Garrison] now had a brand new hypothesis. Kerry had been rapidly shifted from star-witness-to-be-list, to that of CIA agent/bad guy, who had met with and presumably conspired with Lee Oswald in the fall of 1963. The ostensive vehicle for this shift of position from star witness to culpable defendant was nothing more than a theory of the assassination postulating Kerry’s involvement invented and promulgated by Warren Report critic Harold Weisberg, and some testimony from a local New Orleans character named Barbara Reid…” —Excerpt from May 1968 letter from David Lifton to Mark Lane chronicling the Thornley/Heindel/Garrison matter. Courtesy the Discordian Archives. Read the PDF here.

Over the next three years, Thornley was repeatedly hassled by Garrison and drug through the mud. Due to all this, “[He] had begun to enter a different belief-system. He was puzzled over many aspects of the case Garrison had tried to manufacture against him, and kept brooding over the details. Basically, the case rested upon what ordinary people call coincidences. Jungians and parapsychologists call them synchronicities. Garrison called them ‘propinquities’ and said they proved the existence of “a conspiracy so vast as to stagger the imagination!” (p.151)

Garrison believed (or theorized or concocted) that Kerry Thornley was part of a JFK assassination cabal based out New Orleans, a notion that Thornley initially dismissed, but later—starting around 1973 or so—he began to suspect that Garrison might have been on the right track, at least in terms of an assassination cabal that both Oswald and Thornley were somehow associated with, or more correctly, manipulated by, and used as unwitting dupes—all of these machinations dating back to their time together in the Marines.

Thornley—as RAW notes—became obsessed with this whole notion that he’d been manipulated and perhaps even mind controlled and his paranoia grew to the extent where he began suspect that even his friends may have been in on the conspiracy, including those involved in the Discordian Society, like RAW and Bob Shea.

This scenario, among many other crazy things, are discussed in greater depth in my books The Prankster and the Conspiracy and Caught in the Crossfire, so check those out if you want to get increasingly convoluted.

Then, early in 1975, Thornley remembered an odd conversation in 1963 with a New Orleans man whom we will call Mr. M. The subject was — are you ready? — how to assassinate a President and get away with it. (p. 152).

RAW’s reference to a “Mr. M” is somewhat puzzling, as in most of Thornley’s writings he refers to the mystery man in question (who conversed with him about assassinating a President) as a pro-Nazi spook named Gary Kirstein (aka Brother-in-Law) who Kerry—at one time or another—suspected was actually Watergate burglar and CIA big-shot E. Howard Hunt (in disguise.) However—for a short period of time—Kerry suspected that Kirstein/Hunt may have actually been someone named Tom Miethe, another supposed neo-Nazi intelligence community type, so maybe that’s how RAW latched on to “Mr. M.” Or perhaps RAW wanted to avoid libel charges, so just used “Mr. M” instead of Kirstein to play it safe.

Then Thornley read about the case of Robert Byron Watson. (p. 153)

In mid 1975, Thornley came across a series of articles in Atlanta newspapers concerning the case of Robert Byron Watson, a young man who claimed he’d been framed on drug charges due to information he had regarding the MLK assassination—details of which sounded strikingly similar to Kerry’s own experience with certain shadowy characters (Gary Kirstein and Slim Brooks) in New Orleans in the early-60s. Kerry contacted Watson’s lawyers and sent them this memo outlining his knowledge of The Conspiracy:

Thornley's memo to Robert Byron Watson's attorneys. Courtesy of The Discordian Archives.

I must point out that two weeks after Thornley first made his charges against Mr. M. (to the Atlanta police) he was robbed, pistol-whipped and had his I.D. taken. (p. 154).

As a sidebar, I recently discovered that The Discordian Archives (which were passed on to yours truly in 2009) were in RAW’s safekeeping during the period Greg Hill moved to New York City in 1974. Evidently Hill couldn’t afford or didn’t want the hassle of transporting them to New York and decided to leave them with RAW (then living in Berkeley) who became the Discordian Archives curator, so to speak. So the chain of chaotic custody over the years has been this: Greg Hill > RAW > Greg Hill > Bob Newport > Me.

RAW evidently made good use of the archives, utilizing it as source material (it would appear) for portions of Cosmic Trigger. For instance, the inclusion of the thumbprint letter.

Original Thumbprint Letter reproduced in Cosmic Trigger. Courtesy of The Discordian Archives.

RAW attempted to bring some attention to Thornley’s plight by authoring an article called “Assassination Scene Heats Up,” which he sent to Kerry for comment. Download PDF here. Courtesy of The Discordian Archives.

As you can see, Thornley scrawled comments on each page, which became increasingly hostile as the pages turned, because he felt RAW was misinterpreting or not understanding him. However, the main reason RAW penned the piece in the first place was to help Kerry bring some attention to his claims. As far as I know, the article was never published.

Thornley began writing to me regularly about his solution to the assassinations, and insisted more and more often that his life was in danger. I tried to calm him down a bit by reminding him of the difference between theory and proof. It soon became evident, from his subsequent letters, that he was now half-convinced that I was part of the assassination conspiracy team. (p.156)

After sending out his JFK assassination related memos to Watson’s attorneys and other law enforcement officials, Kerry attended an Atlanta house party where he was given some “funny-tasting” marijuana. At this party he talked to a group of individuals about the JFK assassination, one of whom he suspected was RAW.

A few days later, Kerry met again with one of the party goers, who passed him a pipeload of weed that—after puffed upon—blistered the inside of his mouth, making him suspect someone was attempting to poison him. Kerry delivered an affidavit to the Atlanta police describing this incident, dated July 25th, 1975, along with the pot pipe and its contents:

“I have spoken to several people about the group of very nice people I met at a party at the Celestial Mansion on Flat Shoals Road last Saturday night.
“One person I met there who may or may not have been part of this group (which knew more about the JFK assassination re Gary Kirstein, it seemed, by what they said and the questions they asked me, than I do) was a guy who said his name was Jack Wolverton…

“While we sat in the kitchen rapping, I filled up the enclosed pipe with a few leftover roaches and passed it to Jack. There was a long interval when my attention was directed elsewhere and Jack had the pipe.

“When he passed it back to me, I took a drag and IMMEDIATELY felt a large blister form inside my right check. Puzzled, I passed the pipe back to Jack, running my tongue over the blister. I did not observe carefully whether Jack actually smoked the pipe or merely made a pretense of doing so. When the pipe was returned to me, Eve, who had been out, came in the door. I took another puff only to have yet another blister, pop up right next to the other one at the exact time the smoke made contact with the membrane inside my cheek.

“Thinking it might be some sort of allergic reaction, I commented on it, and passed the pipe to Eve. She took a drag and experienced no unusual reactions.

“I then went into the bathroom and examined the blisters in the mirror. They were dark red blood blisters and each was about the size of a deformed collar button.

“I have had only one other experience with blisters forming instantly from any cause other than direct burns by fire, and that was in Atomic, Biological, and Chemical Warfare School (‘Defense’ I think they call it, not ‘Warfare’) in the Marines. That time our instructor demonstrated the effects of mustard gas to us by placing an infinitesimal amount on each of our fingertips—the result: instant blistering.

“I returned to the kitchen and commented that the blisters had formed when I had taken a drag on the pipe. Jack said: ‘Oh, I don’t think there is any relation.’ Something about the certainty of his unsolicited opinion, something about the tone of voice and timing—too hasty an interjection—has caused me to become very suspicious.

“Earlier I had asked Jack if he knew who those other people were at the Celestial Mansion or understood what we had been discussing. He said ‘no,’ that he had been playing music at the time on his guitar, which was true. He had been playing John Prine songs, which occupy a special place in my heart in relation to the Celestial Mansion because of a very high experience I had there in 1972 upon first discovering John Prine’s music. The whole incident at the Celestial Mansion had been carefully orchestrated by people who knew a great deal about me, people I correspond with, and the JFK assassination, particularly my involvement. I was made to feel as comfortable as possible, and then I was pumped just enough to see if it was Gary Kirstein that I was naming. (Does Kenner, Louisiana, mean anything to you was one of the questions I got asked.)

“On the way from The Plaza to the apartment was when I asked Jack if he knew those other people. He said he did not. I then explained to him what had happened and my suspicions concerning Gary Kirstein.

“Enclosed is the pipe and its contents, along with the plastic bottle the roaches were in before Jack got there, and to which he had no access. It seems to me this material should be analyzed. It was fished out of the trash by me a few days after the incident. Several important witnesses, including Ruby and Shaw died of cancer, for one thing, and some chemicals (nicotine for example) can stimulate cancer…”

In a follow-up memo dated July 27th, 1975, Kerry further addressed the pipe smoking incident:

“Occasionally in the past people have misinterpreted comments I have made which were only suggestive or indicative, taking them for firm opinions. I’m not at all sure whatever gave me those blisters was something intended to give me cancer, specifically. It could have been that stuff (Philip) Agee mentions in a recent PLAYBOY interview which causes a ‘nasty respiratory ailment.’ Since the smoke caused blisters in my mouth—which must have been sore in that spot—I didn’t inhale much of it. I do seem to have minor throat and lung irritation at this time. Just don’t want to seem like more of a crackpot paranoid than I really am after nearly twelve years of bizarre experience relating to JFK’s death.

“Also the ‘Celestial Mansion’ is the old name for a commune which was in the house I still call by that name. It is not the formal name of a business establishment.

“Upon checking, I have discovered that I have a sample of Jack Wolverton’s handwriting, for he wrote out his address for me in my notebook last week.

“Finally, concerning Wolverton, please give him the benefit of every doubt. I would hate to dump on him if his only mistake was that of befriending a person who happened to be feeling somewhat paranoid last week.

“I’m still very puzzled about the Celestial Mansion incident of last Saturday night. I continue to feel on a subjective level that the people who talked to me had my best interests at heart. It was as if they were checking me out to make sure I was not involved in the assassination. It was really stupid of me not to ask them how they came to know so much. One person who spoke to me, briefly, during the half-hour or so before the ‘team’ moved in, identified himself as Lew Deadmore. I find an architect by that name listed in the phone book. One of the members of the ‘team’—the one who spoke to me most—bore an uncanny intellectual and psychological resemblance to an anarchist writer friend of mine who lives-in California whom I have only met face-to-face once (in 1968), but with whom I’ve corresponded extensively. I have written him a letter about the incident, wondering if that was him. If it wasn’t he’ll probably think I’ve lost my mind.

“I doubt if I have been any too coherent about the Celestial Mansion incident. It requires more detail than I am inclined to deal with, considering the other writing I should be doing about Gary Kirstein. I’ll be glad to answer any questions about it, however. Meanwhile, let me summarize it by saying that I was questioned very informally but extremely skillfully by what seem to be a ‘team’ of five or six people who faded in and out of the crowd at a party. I’m quite sure this really happened and can give hard, objective reasons for so believing it was not just my imagination.”

In the above memo, SOME FURTHER COMMENTS ON THE PIPE SMOKING INCIDENT, Kerry notes that one member of the “team” at the Celestial Mansion, “…bore an uncanny intellectual and psychological resemblance to an anarchist writer friend of mine who lives in California whom I have only met face-to-face once (in 1968), but with whom I’ve corresponded excessively.” This “anarchist writer friend” was supposedly RAW.

In RAW’s intro to The Prankster and the Conspiracy, he wrote:

I remember my last phone conversation with Kerry, during which he announced that just a week earlier I had come to Atlanta, argued with him about my alleged CIA connections, spiked his drink with LSD, and brainwashed him again. I told him that I had not left San Francisco in months, and that if he had a bad acid trip the previous week then somebody else gave him the acid, not me. I insisted on this as persuasively as I could.

Finally, Kerry relented—a bit. “Well, maybe you believe that”, he said. “But that means your bosses have been fucking with your head and implanting false memories in you too!”

How do you argue that you haven’t had your head altered? “Look,” I said, I’ll put my wife Arlen on. She’ll tell you I haven’t left here in months.”

“That won’t prove anything,” he said with the calm certitude of a Grand Master announcing checkmate. “They probably fixed her head too.”

I don’t remember the rest of the conversation. I felt lost in an Escher painting…

art book camden benares discordianism jfk john f. carr writings

Camden Benares and John F. Carr’s A LEGACY OF SEX, DEATH AND CHARISMA

Post author By Gorightly
Post date February 20, 2016
4 Comments on Camden Benares and John F. Carr’s A LEGACY OF SEX, DEATH AND CHARISMA

“To follow is the third version of ‘A Legacy of Sex, Death and Charisma’ written by myself and Camden Benares around 1988. The first version was written by Camden and was significantly different, featuring a Marilyn Monroe film festival. Brother Ball was the main protagonist and it featured Fitzgerald Baker in a much different situation. The original story was written in the late Seventies before we had completed the first book of our opus, The Crying Clown Celebration.

We had a much better understanding of our characters after completing The Book of Phillip and our intention was to sell this short story to one of the SF magazines and use it to promote the novel. Unfortunately, it never sold. So there it is 25 years later. I still believe it’s one of the best things we ever wrote.”
—John F. Carr,
Boalsburg, Pennsylvania,
Sept. 2015

Benares and Carr — Smiling Early Discordians, Camden Benares and John F. Carr.

A LEGACY OF SEX, DEATH AND CHARISMA

Camden Benares & John F. Carr
Copyright 2010 by John F. Carr

Fitzgerald Baker may well have been conceived in an act of erotic terrorism. That was what his mother had told him and it can be verified that Felix Pendragon initiated her into the League of Erotic Terrorists. However, she was also known to sacrifice truth for entertainment in most of what she said. Her story of spitting the ejaculation into a hypodermic and using the needle to perforate her hymen to accomplish a virgin birth was entirely fictional. But Fitz hadn’t come to a lifestyle crisis counselor because his mother was an artist at the whiff riff.

He was thirty-eight years old and had already come to terms with his mother’s reality according to the genealogy chart he handed me:

John Fitzgerald Kennedy 1917 to 1963 Assassinated	Norma Jean Baker alias N.J. Mortenson alias Marilyn Monroe 1926 to 1962 probable suicide
Gene Fitzgerald Baker Born between 1958 & 1961 Assassinated in 2002 (see note #1)	Zelda Harrington birth date unknown Assassinated in 2002 (see note #2)
Zach Fitzgerald Baker 2003 to 2052	Mary Gulik 2033 (?) — (see notes #3 & #4)
Fitzgerald Felix Baker 2050 —

Notes:

The allegation that Gene F. Baker’s parents were J. F. Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe cannot be proved or disproved.
There is no verifiable background data on Zelda Harrington. Mary Gulik has said that the name was an alias for erotic terrorist Robin Jefferson. Zelda Harrington was pregnant when she disappeared immediately after her husband’s death.
The woman who took the name Mary Gulik was approximately two years old when left at a Daughters of Demeter lodge.
Mary Gulik is an unreliable source of information. She once said, “Relating the mundane truth is a failure of the imagination.”

Baker had made the appointment through my answering service. His actual words as recorded on the thread spool were, “My name is Fitzgerald Baker. I want an appointment with Counselor Wendell as soon as possible. He was recommended to me by Clyde Burbank, my partner in the architectural firm of Burbank and Baker. Prior to my appointment, I wish for Counselor Wendell to see the head thread, The Crying Clown Rites. Any expenses in connection with the viewing may be charged to my account.”

As I was waiting for him to arrive, sitting at my console watching the movements of a free fall mime troupe on the holly, the control panel emitted a low chime and showed the flashing light that indicated a visitor had entered the foyer. I punched two buttons on the keyboard. The mime troupe was instantly replaced by the three-dimensional image of a tall, youthful-looking man wearing a sheen suit of metallic blue and gold that fit smoothly over his well-muscled frame.

As he came closer, I looked for signs of strain on the face framed by shingle-cut, shoulder length, chestnut brown hair. When his face was nearer the camera, red fatigue lines showed around the blue irises of his eyes. Beneath the straight nose there was a full moustache that partially obscured the set line of his mouth. The movements he made as he reached into his pocket showed that he was under a strain and putting effort into controlling it.

His hand emerged from his pocket with a key card which he held against the scanner. I looked at it on the monitor and read:

Fitzgerald Felix Baker
ICID: 0-915904-24-1

I pressed the control that opened the first set of doors. Fitz went through them, waited for them to close and then stepped through the second door when I punched the release. His first words on entering my office were: “Clyde Burbank recommends you highly. Your success in handling his success crisis was very effective. He thinks you can help me with my problems.”

“Sit down and tell me about them.”

He handed me his genealogy chart and asked, “Have you seen The Crying Clown Rites?”

“Yes. I have a copy here which we can view on the holly if that is desirable.”

“No. I don’t want to see it again. That’s why I asked you to see it before this appointment. Take a look at the chart I gave you and you’ll know almost as much about my origins as I do. Then we’ll get into my present problems.”

I scanned the chart, then read it quickly, finding no connection at least, no apparent connection between it and the thread that detailed the rites of passage into manhood within an obscure, macho enclave.

When I looked up, Fitz said, “As you’ve just read, my background connects me to the old Kennedy clan. That chart doesn’t show the aunts, uncles and cousins whose lives ended by assassination, suicide or disappearance. I don’t know whether I’m going to live long enough to develop a satisfactory lifestyle or not.”

“Do you think that someone is trying to kill you?”

“I don’t know. Lately, I’ve had the feeling several times that I was being monitored.”

“Have you considered hiring a security service?”

“Yes, but I don’t want to do that if there are any good alternatives. I would hate to be imprisoned by my own ancestry.”

“Have there been attempts on your life in the past? You could be being monitored for some other reason than assassination.”

“There haven’t been any attempts in the past several years, but before then there were two definite attempts and some close calls in near accidents that could have been planned by an unknown group or individual. That may sound paranoid to you. Let me show you that if it is paranoia, it has a solid foundation.”

Fitz pulled open the presfast at the top of his suit and showed me a scar that looked like a laser gun crease, dark, puckered skin next to a gold medallion on a chain. Then he said, “That scar was made by an assassin at a political rally on the University of California Berkeley campus. She escaped in the crowd and was never captured or identified. I gave up my political science major, transferred to UCLA and became an architect.”

Fitz seemed lost in memories for a minute. I asked, “What’s the significance of that talisman around your neck?”

He pulled the metal and chain over his head and handed it to me. It looked and felt like gold. The lines of the design were worn but recognizable as a boat. Sunken letters on the back spelled out Kennedy. Fitz said, “My mother told me that it is a replica of the boat my great-grandfather commanded during Hitler’s war. She said that he gave it to Marilyn Monroe and it’s been in our branch of the family ever since.”

“Let’s get back to your present problems and why you wanted me to see The Crying Clown Rites.”

“I wanted you to know a little about my background so you can understand how seriously that head thread affected me. In the thrill kill scene, I saw the hunters as all the assassins lurking around my family tree and I identified with the victim. Maybe I should have left then, but I stayed. When they got to the actual initiation rites and one initiate said, ‘I don’t have to go through this: I can die,’ and then tries to commit suicide by holding his breath. That’s when I ran out of the theater, vomited in the street, again in the vault station lav and for a third time when I got home.”

“What did you do then?”

“I took an Oblivion Blue. When I woke up, I made the appointment with you.”

“Do you have any problems in your business life?”

“Only an increasing feeling of encroaching boredom across the entire spectrum of architecture.”

“Sexual relations?”

“Nothing enduring. I find casual encounters adequate to meet my present needs.”

“What is your domestic situation?”

“I live alone.”

“Would you describe yourself as lonely?”

“Not exactly. There are people and activities in my life, but not enough meaning, not enough significance. I’m tired of transient personalities, throwaway relationships and plug-in lifestyles. By objective standards I’m successful, but I’m almost middle aged and bored with the future I see for me. The Crying Clown Rites was the input that caused an overload. Not only did I feel that I had missed something, failed to complete my personal rites of personhood, but I found myself simultaneously worried about assassination and suicide. I don’t know if I’m going to live long enough to come to terms with my own death wish.”

Fitz was showing signs of agitation which meant to me that I should bring this session to a close. I asked, “Do you have any religious or ethical prohibitions concerning suicide?”

“No. I’ve never been captured by any ideology that emphasized negatives and prohibitions.”

“Then the next step in resolving your crisis is to discover whether you wish to live or die. I’ll need a diagnostic analysis and your approval of the procedures.”

“I don’t give a damn about the procedures. I’m very interested in the answer to that question. What do I do and when do we start?”

“Take off your clothes and step into the diagnostic analyzer.”

Fitz shed his sheen suit and entered the white cubical. I keyed in the program for maximum information. In a few minutes I would have a complete medical file on Fitzgerald Baker.

When Fitz emerged dressed from the cleanser, I said, “It will take about three days to make preparations. Can you be here at eleven hundred on Friday?”

Fitz confirmed the appointment and left. I fed the thread I’d made of the session into the computer for stress analysis, punched in a request for full information on John Fitzgerald Kennedy and began to plan the next session with Fitz.

At the end of my working day, I sat down at the console to clear my head for the evening’s activities. I lit the candle in the custom holder, watched it as it flickered. The sensor in the rim of the holder used the heat as energy to push the candle higher each time the flame dipped below the rim. I punched the key for the candle exercise thread and concentrated on the candle flame as my own voice at random intervals asked me, “Where are you?”

When I reached the right space, I left the office, and Fitz’s problems with it, until the next day.

All my preparations were complete when Fitz arrived promptly at eleven hundred on Friday. I ushered him into the green room and asked, “Have you ever experienced pharmodrama?”

“No. My only knowledge of it comes from the holly.”

“I want to explain a little about it so that you will focus on the experience instead of on the techniques used to produce it. Basically, pharmodrama uses pharmaceuticals and technology in combination to create a drama in which you will be the central character. The drug mixture that I’ll give you is adjusted for your chemistry. The drama will take place while we’re sitting in these recliners with the sensor skullcaps on.

Fitz interrupted to ask, “Will we both be having the same experience?”

“Not exactly. You are going to be the star; I’m going to see the same scenes but I will tuned in to your reactions to the experience.”

“Is this going to tell you whether I wish to live or die?”

“It’s going to tell both of us.”

“Good, what else do I need to know before we start?”

“When the drugs begin taking effect, you will become aware of everything that you think of as you slipping away and may be somewhat surprised to discover that you still exist when all that represents you to you is gone. As soon as your reactions to that state stabilize, an identity thread will be fed into your brain via the skull cap to create the temporary persona that you will be for the drama.

“I’ll be outside of your own awareness but tuned into everything that, you experience, ready to handle any problems if there are any.”

Fitz said, “I’m ready.” He sat down in the recliner. I injected the drug mixture into him, adjusted the controls so that only I could read the monitor output and waited for the temporary chemical dissolution of the facade that Fitz presented to the world.

When the readout confirmed that Fitz was ready, I fed the identity thread into his skullcap. As soon as positive pickup registered, I took the maximum dose of Empathy Plus for someone with my metabolism and empathy quotient and waited.

As the Empathy Plus coursed through my blood stream, I could feel my own personality receding, enabling me to identify with the star of the drama I was recreating, a drama based on some of the known facts in an historical event. I put on my skullcap and verified that I could detect and empathize with the thoughts and feelings of my client, who now believed that his name is John Fitzgerald Kennedy and that he is the thirty-fifth president of the United States.

The drama began with the voice of a reporter coming directly into our brains, a voice with most of the regional accent lost through announcer’s training but the rhythm of the speech was definitely American Southwest and the hint of a Texas drawl hovered over the words like a hummingbird checking out a flowering plant. At some deep level I knew it was the voice of an actor hired by me to record the message he was delivering, but within the pharmodrama framework, I was hearing it as Fitz heard it as an announcer’s voice coming out of the open-topped vehicle’s radio, saying, “For those of you who just tuned in, November 22, 1963 is a pleasant day here in Dallas, just right for a presidential motorcade. I’m here at Dealey Plaza and according to the schedule I was given, President Kennedy should be coming into sight any moment now.”

The laser beam scanner transferred my client’s thoughts via computer into my skullcap as input, thoughts that became mine as my own personality submerged and I became the pseudo John Fitzgerald Kennedy:

I was waving to the crowds, hearing them cheering, hoping that the presence of Governor John Connally and his wife in the car would help convince skeptics that I had patched up the differences between conservative and liberal factions of the Texas Democratic Party.

With the facsimile of excitement in his voice, the announcer said, “Here comes the lead motorcycles turning onto Elm Street. There is the presidential limousine now, a blue Lincoln coming this way. The President is waving to the crowds who seem very excited. The President’s wife is sitting beside him. Just in front of them, in the seat behind the driver are Texas Governor Connally and his wife. I’ve never seen the people of Dallas give anyone a more enthusiastic reception.”

Mrs. Connally turned toward me from the forward seat and smilingly said, “You can’t say the people of Dallas don’t love you, Mr. President.” As I started to smile at her in reply, there was a loud noise. I seemed to be riding the crest of a shockwave.

What’s happening? I can’t think straight. Did I have too much to drink? Never liked heavy drinking parties anyway. Remember Charley at Harvard. Always lushing it up, especially after midterms. I remember his favorite toast:

Drink it up!
Drink it up!
Drink it up!
If you die young,
What’s the diff?
The coeds will say,
As they lay you away,
“That’s a good-looking stiff.”

The shockwave hit me again. It’s that Japanese destroyer. It’s run into our starboard side. The wheel is being torn out of my grasp. My back just hit the rear of the cockpit. Somebody is saying something, but I can’t understand it. It’s Johnston saying to someone who’s moaning, “Aw, shut up. You can’t die. Only the good die young.”

That’s right, Johnston, you tell them. I can’t die now. I’m still in my twenties. Only the good die young. Like my brother Joe. Joe was good. His death made me resolve to do better. Wait a minute. Joe died in 1944 and I was on Olasana Island with Johnston in 1943. What’s going on? Time and space are closing in together. There’s blood all over Jackie’s pink suit and I hear that voice again.

The announcer’s voice continued, “Those loud noises were shots. I can’t tell whether the President has been hit or not. He’s leaning forward and his wife is bending over him as the car continues down the hill. I think that Governor Connally has been hit. It looks like he was driven downward to the floor of the car. Did you hear that noise? That was another shot.”

Last effort to make sense of this. Got to clear my head. Someone is yelling something about Parkland Hospital. I can take it all in now, all of it. That’s blood on Jackie’s suit. The crowd seems to be running in different directions, screaming, yelling and pointing. What are those People doing? They’re picking up bits of bloody bone. One has a handkerchief. It’s like with Dillinger. They’re souvenir hunters. Where’s that bone from? Is it Connally’s? He’s slumped down and looks bad. But the hair’s wrong. John’s hair doesn’t have that much color. Could it be colored by the blood? Could blood make it look that color of reddish brown? The car is going faster now and I can’t see many details. I’ve got to make sense out of all of this. The wind noise is taking all, the sounds away. I can’t understand what is being said. I can’t feel the air hitting me in the face anymore. Everything has a pink tinge to it. Am I looking at Jackie’s suit or is that blood in my eye? I can feel the pain building into another wave. It’s headed my way. Got to figure out some way to stop it. Feels like it’s going to be as bad as that pain in my back. Oh God, I understand it now, but I’m not ready. I’m only forty-six and I’m dying young.”

With learned mental effort I wrenched my own personality free from the consciousness of the pseudo John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Rapidly I phased out all the input to Fitz Baker and replaced the Dallas assassination reconstruction thread with the personality recovery program that would leave the, memory of the pharmodrama intact. While the monitor gave me visual indications that Fitz was re-becoming himself, I paid attention to my breathing, calming the intense emotional experience with concentration on the repetition of the inhalation crest and the exhalation trough.

Once the disconnection procedure was complete, Fitz, still seated in the recliner, looked toward me and said, “I want to live. I really want to live, don’t I?”

“There is no doubt in my mind. Is there any in yours?”

“No. I was him but the feelings about premature death were all mine. Do you think he felt as I did? Is it possible that our internal experience was the same?”

“It may have been, but there is no known reliable method of chronicling the unrecorded thoughts of the dead. Some of the religious groups are exploring that territory. Of course, very little of their data can be verified because of its subjective nature. Is knowing what he thought as he was dying important to you?”

“I don’t know yet. I haven’t quite recovered from the identification with him in the pharmodrama. I think I’ll go to Arlington, where he’s buried, this year and say a final goodbye to him on the anniversary of his death. Then I’ll be able to let him rest in peace, maybe we both will.”

Fitz resting in peace had an ominous connotation, reminding me of his fears of being monitored for the purpose of assassination. I said, “You might have more peace of mind if you called Max Security and have them check whether or not you’ve been monitored lately and if you have, by whom and for what purpose.”

“Is that a professional recommendation?”

“I’d recommend the same procedure to a friend.”

“Okay, I’ll do it. What else?”

“I’d like to see you again on Monday. By that time you should have the Max Security report. Why don’t we meet for brunch at the Egg Keg around 10:30? You know where it is?”

“I walked past it on my way here from the vault station. I’ll see you on Monday.”

Fitz got up from the recliner and left. That was a reassuring sign. An intense pharmodrama experience like he had just undergone tends to immobilize some of the crisis prone for up to forty-eight hours.

On Monday, Fitz was in the anteroom of the Egg Keg when I arrived. I turned on my ever present pocket recorder before he said his first words to me, which were, “I got the Max Security report: I was being monitored about ten days ago.”

“By whom?”

“The government. According to the report, I’m one of the architects being considered for a government project. That is a waste of time and effort on their part. I would never attempt to do creative work for a bureaucracy. It would drive me bureau crazy.”

We went into the restaurant, showed our key cards to the scanner, punched out our orders on the menu terminals and, in a few minutes were eating our omelets, mine with truffles and Fitz’s with mushrooms, and drinking light draft beer from chilled crystal mugs. When we were finished, I asked Fitz if he were willing to vault somewhere else for coffee. (A small minority of humans get nauseous from teleporting on a full stomach. Fitz was evidently not one of them.)

“Do you have a particular place you prefer?” asked Fitz.

“The coffee bar in the pyramound at Calm Springs, if that’s acceptable to you.”

“Of course it’s all right with me. Clyde was certain that you would make yourself familiar with my work as part of the counseling, but then my partner is right about most things. I imagine that we’ll talk about architecture over coffee. I’m ready.”

We left the Egg Keg and began walking toward the vault station, two affluent members of a mobile society where only a minority lived at the misery level. The combination of structural glass and spring sunlight along our route occasionally flashed our reflections back at us two men matching their walking pace to each other, Fitz a few centimeters taller than me, his prominent Adam’s apple and depilated chin contrasting with my full, short, black beard, his copper-colored sheen suit harmonizing with my rust jump suit. Both of our minds were on the same subject. That was confirmed when Fitz asked, “Did my partner tell you why he decided to become an architect.”

“No. He mentioned that his family encouraged him.”

“It was something that his grandfather told him. Clyde asked his grandfather why he had moved to California. The old man told him, ‘I was born in New York. My parents were born in New York. All four of my grandparents were born in New York. When my son was born, also in New York, I couldn’t wait for him to get old enough to appreciate his cultural heritage. By the time he was, we were living in a new building on the other side of the city. I took him back to the old neighborhood to give him an appreciation of the past. All of the buildings were gone, replaced by newer ones. Not a single place where any member of our family ever lived before was still standing. What heritage was there to share? None. I talked it over with your grandmother and your father and we decided to come to California. After we’d been here for a few years, I saw the same thing happening here, new buildings for old. By this time your father had frequently demonstrated a talent for taking things apart, so I encouraged him to go into the demolition business, but you shouldn’t go into your father’s business, Clyde. You are creative. You should create buildings that will last long enough for your grandchildren to see them.’ So Clyde Burbank became an architect.”

“You remember that story well. Can you tell me what made it important to you?”

We walked about another thirty meters before Fitz ended his frown of concentration and said, “I never met either of my grandfathers and I never got that kind of advice. I became an architect by a different path but with the same kind of spirit that Clyde’s grandfather inspired in him. That’s what the study of architecture created in me. That’s probably what Clyde recognized in my designs that caused him to ask me to become his partner.”

The vault station was just ahead of us. As we entered an assorted party of six, all wearing the faddish after-midnight makeup of Chinese red, emerged, talking about a festival that they had evidently attended in Hong Kong. They headed for the cleansers as Fitz and I went to the terminals, thumb pressed our key cards to the scanners, punched in our destination, and went to our respective booths.

Inside the darkened cubicle, I felt the sensations that teleportation always induces in me: the bubbling of my blood through my veins and arteries as if champagne were circulating in my body, the tingling of my skin as my brain recorded the feeling of thousands of small brushes gently stimulating the surface that connected me to the rest of the world, the lightless flash as I was transported via the energy force lines of the Earth to the foothills of the San Bernardino mountains.

I emerged from a similar cubical into the Calm Springs vault station, which differed from every other vault station only in its signs. Automatically, although if I had thought about it I would have realized that I hadn’t changed time zones, I checked my watch against the clock showing local time.

Fitz, having, of course, arrived at the same time, saw me look at my watch and said, “Local time is 11:48.” As far as I could tell he hadn’t glanced at the clock and he wasn’t wearing a visible watch. I asked, “What told you the correct time?”

“It’s one of my tricks. I always know what time it is wherever I am.”

“How did you learn that?”

“I’ve always had that ability.”

“Can you teach it to me?”

“I don’t know how to teach it to anyone, but if I ever learn how it’s done, I’ll tell you.”

As we left the vault station I saw the pyramound about two kilometers away. I had seen it before but saw it with new eyes now that I was standing beside the man who designed it. The hemispherical top was the mound that collected the maximum solar energy for utilization in the modules below which were assembled in the form of an inverted pyramid. Each outside corner was supported by a tubular structure that housed both a lift and a baffled gravity drop which could be used for humans and equipment.

The structure was visually appealing and blended harmoniously with the nearby foothills and mountains. With unspoken agreement Fitz and I boarded the tram that ran from the vault station to the building. Moving closer to the pyramound changed the visual, but not the mental, perspective from which I viewed it.

Fitz was looking off into the distance, perhaps at the tops of the mountains. I got his attention by saying, “I compliment you on your achievement.”

“Thank you. It’s one of my better efforts.”

“It looks like it was specifically designed for this spot, was it?”

“Yes, this was where the dowser found the water, using a bent coat hanger as an indicator.”

As we neared the first of the lift/drop tubes, I asked Fitz if he had invented the concept. He said, “Oh, no. The design of powered lifts and gravity drops have both been around for a while. I just modified them for the pyramound. When the techies were responsible for most architectural design, what John Brunner called ‘shitabrick phase architecture,’ there were no gravity drops, which meant that a power failure created instant disaster for the people but no damage to the building it was the same kind of ignorance in action that produced the neutron bomb and a history of human warfare.”

Proceeding to the terrace, Fitz and I continued our discussion. While getting coffee from the automatic dispenser, Fitz asked, “Can you name one architect from the last century who has an admired work still standing now?”

“Wright.”

“Right. Can you name one of his works that you’ve seen?”

“The Swedenborg glass chapel at Portuguese Bend.”

“You are hereby awarded two points, would you like to try for four?”

“No, I’d rather concede that most of twentieth century architecture was uninspired and not well adapted to human needs and values.”

We took our coffee cups to a nearby table with a view of the mountains. I mentally reviewed what Fitz had said previously about architecture before speaking again.

“You mentioned at our first meeting that you were bored with architecture. Would you like to expand on that thought?”

“I’ve established myself as an architect. I’m not plugged into any energy drains that require me to work and I’ve accomplished the architectural goals that I set for myself. This building, with its replaceable modules, will probably survive longer than I will. What architect could ask for more in a world where change seems to be the major constant? I could. I wanted to create a building that would be an artistic tribute to those changes, an edifice to edify humanity, a temple of humanity. Do you know the project that I’m telling about?”

“Yes, your design of the Pantheon of Prophets. It’s a great achievement.”

“I’ve completed it. It’s opening next week and I’m so bored with the entire project that I’ve been looking for some excuse to avoid attending the dedication. Do you know what most architects are working on now? Huburbs. That’s like reinventing the wheel. Of course each one is different, but every one has the hub center which usually is a vault station. Every one has a variety of structures in the spokes and rim. Some of them make interesting or practical use of the space between the spokes. The only major question of design is what style: Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Persian, Greek, Roman, medieval, renaissance, academic, baroque, functionalism, technic or some combination of any number. If I had to devote the rest of my life to that kind of work I would feel empty. I don’t intend to suffer that kind of professional deformation.”

“I understand what you mean.”

“Perhaps you do vicariously, but what would you do if you were experiencing a lifestyle crisis? Go to another lifestyle crisis counselor or handle it yourself? Do counselors have the same kind of crises as other people?”

“Some of them do, but the two main occupational hazards are suicide and insanity, the traditional refuges from inescapable reality.”

Fitz finished his coffee in a final swallow before asking, “If you felt near an overload now, what would you do?”

“Meditate, exercise or vault to a place where I could change my head around.”

“Let’s go to one of those places, one with a minimum of architecture.”

We took the tram back to the station, vaulted to Pasadena and walked to the Western Zen Gardens, where there were cacti, rocks and sand enclosed within a perimeter of trees that blocked all buildings from view. A carved wooden plaque, beside the gate read:

The sound of Zen is the sound of rain.
The taste of Zen is the taste of tea.
The feel of Zen is the feel of the wind.
The smell of Zen is the smell of the sea.

Fitz and I walked quietly through the garden until we came to the arced mound where an assorted group of people were sitting cross-legged on the ridge, some of them meditating, others watching the Zen Shaman as he raked gently flowing curves in the sand. When the Shaman finished, he turned to the seated gathering and said, “I feel that it is question and answer time. Any of you may ask any question. I will answer it to my own satisfaction which may not be the satisfactory answer for you. Bear in mind that I speak for no one but myself and that I am not here to debate philosophical or theological points. Who has a question?”

A serious looking young man, halfway between puberty and full physical growth, asked, “How can I atone for original sin?”

The Shaman replied, “There is no original sin and therefore no atonement is required. All of us are born without sin, living Buddha’s full of Zen.”

A balding man in expensive clothes asked, “Why does the quality of life seem to decrease as I grow older?”

“Welcome to the here and now,” said the Shaman. “Everything that you have experienced has been necessary to get you to where you now are. If you think that you have ever been in a better place, stop looking backwards and face the direction in which you are going.”

The balding man responded with, “What will you do if someone asks you a question you can’t answer?”

With no show of surprise, the Zen Shaman answered, “In Zen Buddhism there is a device known as a koan, which is a paradox or seemingly unanswerable question, used for meditation. If I am asked such a question, I shall use it as a koan.”

An attractive brown-skinned woman of less than thirty years asked, “How can I resolve problems of morality?”

“Any code of morality is formed by abstracting from nature and creating a guide to behavior. Such guides are useful to many people, but they become unpleasant tools if they are used to attempt to control the behavior of others. Your morals are for you alone. If they require the belief of others, they will frequently conflict with the reality you experience. Never let your sense of morals prevent, you from doing what you perceive as right.”

A robed figure of indeterminate age and sex asked, “What makes you think you have all the answers?”

Looking toward the speaker, the Shaman replied, “I don’t have all the answers because there are many more answers than questions. For instance, the question, ‘Where have you been?’ has an incredible variety of possible answers from any one person. The answer to the query, ‘What am I seeking?’ differs from individual to individual. The person who has an answer for every question doesn’t have to know all the answers.”

A middle aged woman asked, “What is Zen and what is its purpose?”

The Shaman replied, “Zen is the radical approach to clarifying and liberating consciousness, a way to help create the experience of Buddha that state of enlightenment in which you and your actions are one.”

Fitz got the Shaman’s attention and asked, “Do you believe in any god?”

“I believe in a cosmic consciousness that could be defined as a deity, but belief in a god is not necessarily essential to becoming one with your experience unless you want a personal relationship with a god.”

A restless prepube with shoulder-length hair as black as mine asked, “What is the secret of Zen?”

“Zen has no secrets,” said the Shaman. “Are there-any other questions?”

No one responded, The Shaman, inclined his head toward the gathering, said, “You are the Buddha,” picked up his rake and walked down the garden path. Some of the people remained, but others began to leave, Fitz and I, by unspoken agreement, among them.

Just before we reached the gate posts from which no gate had ever hung, Fitz stopped to read the haiku-type poem there:

With nothing to do,
Liberation’s journey begins
With nowhere to go.

I waited patiently while Fitz pondered that paradox for several minutes. When he had stood there longer than necessary to commit the three lines to memory, he turned to me and said, “I’m going to attend the dedication ceremony for the Pantheon of Prophets. Then I’m going to stop designing buildings, maybe just for a while, maybe for the rest of my life. I’ve concentrated on my profession and neglected my own spiritual development in the process. It’s time for me to take a sabbatical.”

“Call me if you need additional counseling, or even if you don’t. I’d like to know where your journey takes you.”

Fitz agreed to do so. Then we came to the vault station and went our separate ways, for a while.