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This Specularium site has 3 major sections and a blog. Many have wondered why a wizard chooses to devote so much effort to scientific speculations, a recent item in a debate on the Blog of Baphomet clarifies this issue: -
‘Wizards of old had to have a detailed working knowledge of religion, for religion formed the cultural and intellectual backdrop to their times and they would have fallen foul of it, or appeared stupid, without such knowledge. Today’s wizards need to familiarise themselves with science for exactly the same reasons.’
Plus any sort of esoteric or magical hypothesis implies some sort of Rebel Physics, some sort of extra component to reality that requires explication or refutation, and which may lead to a more comprehensive understanding of the profoundly peculiar reality in which we find ourselves incarnate. When you look at the sharp end of physics in the quantum and cosmological domains the standard conventional models look full of holes and contradictions and unresolved questions, leaving many metaphysical assumptions open to potentially fascinating debate. The Path of Knowledge needs to encompass all that we can know, including the contra-intuitive and the peculiar and the esoteric. Much of what now passes for science previously lay in the domain of wizard’s speculations. Let the titanic struggle continue!
Anyway, on a more mundane note, a few observations about Book Zero.
My contacts inform me that Ray Sherwin recently sold a handwritten manuscript of Psychonaut to an unnamed American collector for an undisclosed sum. Plus Ray, with whom I exchange approximately biennial emails, informs me that he has recently retired to the sun with a nice little villa in Fuerteventura.
Methinks these events may have a connection, if so, well done Ray, enjoy the proceeds. The manuscript in question had long ago faded from my attention. The natural products business idea I borrowed from you has made me millions, even though you in your inimitably laid back style didn’t go all the way with it yourself.
I do however wonder exactly which manuscript this concerns. Before departing for a couple of years in India and Australia I left a first Liber Null manuscript with the Morton wizard and eventually received a single copy of Liber Null with a White Cover whilst in Australia. This proved invaluable in setting up the Church of Chaos down under for the duration of my stay, the eight of us did tremendous work in the basement of the self-styled Lord Vegtam’s apartments. Ian Johnstone, do you still live?
On the way back I rewrote Liber Null in the foothills of the Himalayas and this manuscript became the basis of the Red Cover version of Liber Null which Ray and I made about 400 copies of and sold mainly to The Sorcerer’s Apprentice in Leeds during my 2 years in Yorkshire at Ray’s village in East Morton. We collated and glued the books together in Ray’s kitchen. This red version became the text adopted by Weisers and eventually rolled into a single book along with Psychonaut which I wrote on my return to the UK. I had thought that I'd given the Psychonaut manuscript to The Sorcerer's Apprentice for their initial Brown Covered A4 edition.
Ray always seemed vague and evasive about just how many White Cover Liber Null’s he made. The one I had eventually got lost or given away sometime after I moved to Bristol. I never saw another, rumour has it that only either 2 or 5 got made. So this little tome, whimsically titled Book Zero, that sunk a hundred paradigms and launched a hundred more, actually came out in a sort of ‘zero’ edition limited to perhaps 2 or 5 copies. Does anyone know what became of them?
Anyway in the longer term, having recently acquired sachet making machinery, in a few decades my executors will market my ashes, attractively packaged in 10g sachets, partly for the pleasure of esotericists of an essentialist persuasion, partly for use in occult art and science, and partly to offset the rapacious death duties on my estate. Prices on application, (probably in Chinese Yuan/Renminbi) when the time comes.
Supplemental : A correspondent just sent me a pic of a White Cover Liber Null. It bears the number 50 of 100 and contains what looks like a brief message from the author and a signatorial squiggle, neither from me methinks. What did the mouse do when the cat went off to the Himalayas?