I’ve just finished reading Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. It’s one of those books I should have read a while ago, but kept putting it over because of the story that Kesey only wrote it to fund Further. Whether that’s true or not, it’s still an excellent book.

Yesterday I started and completed reading Aleister Crowley‘s The Book of the Law (also known as Liber AL vel Legis)– although I really shouldn’t say it is Crowley’s since, as the story goes, it was dictated to him by a spirit called Aiwass.

The book describes the philosophy of Thelema and is something of a holy text to two cults that I’ve been looking into recently: the Ordo Templi Orientis and Argenteum Astrum.

It ended up being your basic cult material. The basic theme of the book is the one law, “do what thou wilt”. All peaches and cream, right? Well, it would be, but they’re not a big fan of folks who don’t subscribe to Thelema.

Refuse none, but thou shalt know & destroy the traitors... Them that seek to entrap thee, to overthrow thee, them attack without pity or quarter; & destroy them utterly. Swift as a trodden serpent turn and strike ! Be thou yet dealier than he ! Drag down their souls to awful torment : laugh at thei fear ; and spit upon them !

Let the Scarlet Woman beware ! If pity and compassion and tenderness visit her heart ; if she leave my work to toy with old sweetnesses ; then shall my vengeance be know. I will slay me her child : I will alienate her heart : I will cast her out from men : as a shrinking and despised harlot shall she crawl through dusk wet streets, and die cold and an-hungered.

With my Hawk's head I peck at the eyes of Jesus as he hangs up the cross.

I flap my wings in the face of Mohammed & blind him.

With my claws I tear out the flesh of the Indian and the Buddhis, Mongol and Din.

Let Mary inviolate be torn upon wheels : for her sake let all chaste women be utterly despised among you !

Not a friendly bunch, eh?

But the keen and the proud, the royal and the lofty ; ye are brothers !

And it ends with this, The Comment:

Do whalt thou wilt shall be the whole of the law. The study of this Book is Forbidden. It is wise to destroy this copy after the first reading. Whosoever disregards this does so at his own risk and peril. These are most dire. Those who discuss the contents of this Book are to be shunned by all, as centres of pestilence. All questions of the Law are to be decided only by appeal to my writings, each for himself. There is no law beyond Do what thou wilt. Love is the law, love under will. The priest of the princes, ANKH-F-N-KHONSU

Today I finished reading Derrick Jensen‘s A Language Older Than Words. I’m not sure what to say about it, other than it’s the best book I’ve yet to read.

Go. Read it.

Today I finished reading Eric S. Nylund’s Signal to Noise. I’ve had somewhat of a love-hate relationship with the book, but, in the end, love prevails and I’d recommend it to any cyberpunk fan. Although it’s not your average cyberpunk. I think of cyberpunk as generally being placed in a sci-fi setting, but not focusing much on the actual science fiction. And, of course, cyberpunk has your post-apocalyptic/dystopia themes, too. Signal to Noise is leaning more toward normal science fiction – they have aliens! – and ends with the apocalypse, instead of taking place in it. It ends in a cliff-hanger, too. Bastard.

All in all, a good book. I think Eric Nylund spent a tad too long at Microsoft, though. The whole book revolves around corporations and business.

A few weeks ago I finished reading Timothy Leary’s The Politics of Ecstasy. It’s an ok book. Less attention on the philosophical/mystical side of the psychedelic experience, and more on the real-world stuff. You know, politics.

I’ve just finished reading Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain. One of the best books ever written, I’d say. Definitely deserved the Nobel Prize. It should be required reading for all Westerners.

I need to read it again.

I just finished reading James Bamford’s The Puzzle Palace: Inside the National Security Agency, America’s Most Secret Intelligence Organization. If you have any interest the intelligence community, spys, or privacy, read this book. It has more information than I ever thought the NSA would possibly let out. (The fact that they did let it out frightens me. What are they hiding?) I can’t emphasize this enough: Read This Book. You’ll be amazed.

At the same time, that capability at any time could be turned around on the American people and no American would have any privacy left, such [is] the capability to monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn't matter. There would be no place to hide. If this government ever became a tyranny, if a dictator ever took charge in this country, the technological capacity that the intelligence community has given the government could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back, because the most careful effort to combine together in resistance to the government, no matter how privately it was done, is within the reach of the government to know. Such is the capability of this technology... I don't want to see this country ever go across the bridge. I know the capacity that is there to make tyranny total in America... That is the abyss from which there is no return. -Senator Frank Church, 1973, referring to the NSA's SIGINT technology

Today I finally finished reading Volume Two of Emma Goldman’s Living My Life. Although it’s a direct continuation of the first (the first page is 504), I didn’t enjoy it as much as Volume One. The meat of the book is on Soviet Russia, following her 1919 deportation from America, which I just found to be too depressing.

Everybody should read the first volume. If you feel like it, go for the second.

Now I need to figure out what happened to her after her autobiography ends (1923/24).