The Occult Timothy Leary by Joseph L. Flatley makes a significant contribution to the secondary literature around the illustrious life and times of the always controversial Dr. Timothy Leary. In the popular mind Leary often gets remembered as an evangelist for drug experimentation and one of the prime instigators of the 1960s counterculture. Like one of his colorful predecessors, Aleister Crowley, much of his profound philosophical research and exploration gets hidden beneath the notoriety and controversy surrounding the man. Flatley intends to alter that perception by focusing on the Hermetic side of Leary culminating in a unique presentation of the eight-circuit neurological model of consciousness as reflected in the subtitle: The Tarot, Magical States, and Post-Terrestrial Evolution. He instantly won me over with a quote from Finnegans Wake before the proceedings began.
The book has two distinct sections. Part 1 provides a biography of Leary's life in approximately one hundred pages. Flatley does an excellent job sketching out all the salient points of his "Many Lives" with a particular emphasis on anything occult. A reader unfamiliar with the good Doctor or only aware of his popular image will find enough information for a balanced portrait of the man. At the other end of the spectrum, readers like myself who have read everything by and about Leary they could find will discover new interesting facts and anecdotes. As a fan of Leary, I found this compelling reading. I couldn't put the book down except when I got into the shower. Flatley shows meticulous research turning up brilliant gems of stories.
The primary occult connection explored in the first half of the book concerns Aleister Crowley whom Leary called himself the reincarnation of. People who take that to literally mean the transmigration of Crowley's soul into the body of baby Leary find that beyond baffling given that Timothy came into the world (1920) many years before Crowley enjoyed his Greater Feast (1947). What Leary means by reincarnation is told in the book. A You Tube video can be found where Leary states that "I'm carrying on much of the work he (Crowley) started." We also discover that Crowley wasn't the only famous magician Leary claimed to reincarnate.
I only know of two events that directly ties Leary to Crowley; Flatley examines both of them. The first concerns a synchronicity wherein Tim and his friend Brian Barritt had a powerful psychedelic episode they later found out occurred in the same spot where Crowley and his chela Victor Neuberg scryed the Enochian aethyrs in the desert near Bou Saada, Algeria. This Enochian working was documented in The Vision and the Voice. The book uses Barritt's partner Liz Elliot's account to tell the story. Elliot embellishes the event by claiming that Crowley and Neuberg "took their mescaline" when no evidence exists for that claim. Crowley certainly used peyote, known as anhalonium lewinii at the time, to access the visionary space, but evidently, judging by his diaries, not for those Enochian workings. His diaries go into great detail about how he gained access to those spaces. They appear to have been realized strictly through ceremonial magick and a specific mantra practice; no psychoactive substances. Mescaline was first synthesized from peyote in 1919; this magick occurred in 1909. This doesn't make the synchronicity any less amazing.
The most obvious parallel between Crowley and Leary concerns their use of psychedelics to expand consciousness. There's no evidence Leary experimented with any Thelemic practices like the rituals of the pentagram and hexagram unlike his partner in crime Robert Anton Wilson, a prominent secondary character in TOTL. The stories with Wilson provide an added bonus to the book. It seems Leary went through a Crowley phase mainly after his escape from prison through to his recapture in Afghanistan and subsequent reimprisonment.
The second half of the book looks at the eight circuit neurological model of consciousness Leary formulated through the lens of the Tarot. This comes from The Game of Life by Leary with contributions by Robert Anton Wilson originally published by Peace Press in 1979 with a second edition coming out in 1993 by New Falcon. Flatley describes the structure of this model with each circuit having three stages for a total of 24 stages and how Leary assigned the 22 trumps of the Major Arcana to each of the stages while coining two additional Tarot trumps for stages 22 and 24. He begins by giving a brief history of the Tarot before examining each stage through its associated Tarot card and the astrological sign associated with it. For instance, stage 1, bio-survival receptivity is looked at through the lens of the first trump, The Fool and the Zodiac sign Pisces. It should be noted that the correspondences from the Zodiac appear to be entirely Leary's creation and have no relation to the Thoth Tarot or the Tarot of the Golden Dawn. The Zodiac only has 12 signs so only 12 Tarot trumps correspond with the Zodiac in the conventional system. Leary doubles up the Zodiac signs to match his formulation of 24 stages. Pisces corresponds with stage 1 while Pisces 2 corresponds with stage 13 in the model. The logic of this does make sense as we shall see shortly.
Each stage in TOTL begins with Leary's illustration of the Tarot card as it appears in The Game of Life with a slight modification from Flatley. For instance THE FOOL looks like:
This appears exactly the same in
The Occult Timothy Leary except the top left and bottom right corner Ace of Diamonds signifiers have been replaced by the number 1 to indicate stage 1. This follows for each of the stages with the stage number replacing the playing card signifier Leary has. The
Game of Life uses the Ace to 9 of Diamonds then the Jack, Queen and King of Diamonds to represent the 12 stages of the first four circuits which he called terrestrial. The post-terrestrial stages(13 - 24) uses the same playing card numbering but switches to the suit of hearts.
One thing I didn't know until reading this new book is that Leary's tarot correspondences originally appeared in his unpublished book The Periodic Table of Energy the substance of which became The Game of Life. This may or may not account for the slight and largely insignificant discrepancy in the Death card. Flatley maintains that Leary changed the name of the card to DEATH HORSE. In the second edition of The Game of Life this card goes by THE SKELETON HORSE in one place then DEATH-REBIRTH on the following page.
Leary applied the conventional order of the tarot for each successive stage with the exception of switching THE EMPRESS and HIGH PRIESTESS cards for stages 3 and 4.
Flatley does a superb job laying out the connection between the neurological stages and the Tarot trumps. It makes for a nice concise introduction to Leary's model with each section giving Keywords, Traditional meanings (Leary's card interpretations appear decidedly untraditional) and my favorite – Questions to consider in a reading. The latter provokes self examination. For instance, in stage 15 the question gets asked, "Are you finding a balance between indulgence and moderation in your sensory experiences?"
The final chapter consists of how to use Timothy's tarot for divination. Flatley shows his rigorous research by discovering a tarot reading by Leary found amongst his personal papers housed at the New York Public Library. This building can be seen in the opening shot of Ghostbusters, an extremely esoteric film in its own right, but I digress. What I find very interesting is that Flatley dug up the method Leary devised for a Tarot spread directly related to the neuro-circuits. Like a Robert Anton Wilson book or article on the circuits, The Occult Timothy Leary both provides the information and suggests ways to use it for personal evolution; magick in theory and practice.
Leary's tarot only uses the Major Arcana, the 22 trumps and the two additional cards he made up. Flatley references Robert Anton Wilson to bring in the Minor Arcana, the pip cards and the court cards in the four suits of Wands, Cups, Swords and Pentacles (or Coins). Each suit corresponds to one of the four elements: Wands = fire, Cups = water, Swords = air, Pentacles = earth. Wilson (incorrectly, in my view) attributes each of the suits to one of the four terrestrial circuits appearing in Prometheus Rising (Hilaritas, p. 118) like this:
Y fire wands CIRCUIT IV
H water cups CIRCUIT II
V air swords CIRCUIT III
H earth pentacles CIRCUIT I
The letters in the left column, YHVH, represent the four-fold name of God: Yod He Vau He. The attributions look correct EXCEPT for the circuits. Note the out of sequence circuit numbering in the far right column going IV, II, III, I. In my view, circuits I and IV make better sense when switched to make the attributions look like this:
Y fire wands CIRCUIT I
H water cups CIRCUIT II
V air swords CIRCUIT III
H earth pentacles CIRCUIT IV
This has the first circuit corresponding with fire while the fourth circuit corresponds with earth. Circuit IV, the Socio-Sexual, makes a composite of circuits I - III just as earth forms a composite of the three pure elements of fire, water and air.
Interestingly, right below these attributions Wilson provides Carl Jung's attributions from Psychology and Alchemy (PR p. 117) which RAW correctly assigns to the circuits with the first circuit corresponding to fire as it should, in my view.
Note that with the switch the circuits now appear in the same order that they get turned on in the body. In the Game of Life Dr. Tim also correlates the Wands/Fire suit with circuit I. This doesn't mean I'm right and Flatley/Wilson are wrong. As Crowley puts it in The Book of Thoth:
"It seems hardly possible to define these terms in such a way as to make their meaning clear to the student. SHe must discover for hirself by constant practice what they mean to hir. It does not even follow that SHe will arrive at the same ideas. This will not mean that one mind is right and the other wrong, because each one of us has hir own universe all to hirself, and it is not the same as anyone else's universe." (Quotation modified to reflect Leary's use of generalized personal pronouns.)
* * * * * *
The occult emphasis in the book appears squarely on connections between Leary and Crowley as made crystal clear by the cover illustration showing the good Doctor posing like a famous Aleister Crowley photo in the posture of the Hierophant (see above). However, I would argue that G.I. Gurdjieff had an equal if not stronger influence on Leary's thinking. In his dedication for Info–Psychology (Falcon, 1987) Leary places Gurdjieff at the top. It reads in full:
"This book celebrates all
Evolutionary Agents
And Cyber–punks
On this Planet and Elsewhere
Especially
Georges I. Gurdjieff
who made us laugh
Aleister Crowley
who did the English translation
To Israel Regardie
who kept the Falcon flying high
To Thomas Pynchon
who gave the American version
To William Gibson
first of our species to circumnavigate
the Info-World
In his novels NEUROMANCER, COUNT ZERO,
BURNING CHROME, MONA LISA OVERDRIVE
Gibson has outlined the Cyber-Info
Society of the near future"
TOTL begins chapter 1 with a story Tim told in his autobiography, Flashbacks (J.P. Tarcher, 1983) about his grandfather telling him at a young age to "Never do anything like anyone else, boy." This is a slightly different iteration of a well-known story Gurdjieff tells near the beginning of Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson. In Gurdjieff's earlier version his grandmother lies on her death bed:
"'Eldest of my grandsons! Listen and always remember my strict injunction to you: In life never do as others do'
Having said this, she gazed at the bridge of my nose and, evidently noticing my perplexity and my obscure understanding of what she had said, added somewhat angrily and imperiously:
"Either do nothing – just go to school – or do something nobody else does.'"
She dies immediately after giving Gurdjieff this advice. It seems likely that both stories were fabricated, but they make an important point. I find it funny and a little paradoxical for Leary to tell the same story about being different though arguably he does make it different by changing the source to his grandfather. I believe Leary repeats Gurdjieff's story as a way of aligning himself to the same esoteric lineage. I last saw Leary speak at a club in New York called the Wetlands toward the end of 1990. He introduced his assistant as Gurdjieff's grandson.
I'm very grateful Flatley includes this anecdote: "'He (Leary) told me that the circuits were derived from Gurdjieff,' Rushkoff says." I have always believed that to be true, but would be hard pressed to find a citation for that knowledge. Fortunately I don't have to now. Familiarity with Gurdjieff's Fourth Way system provides a valuable background to understanding Leary's model of the brain circuits. Two primary principles Gurdjieff espoused are the Law of Octaves and the Law of Threes. These are most easily researched in In Search of the Miraculous by P.D. Ouspensky. The Law of Octaves derives from the discovery by Pythagoras of the diatonic musical scale in which the eighth note, called the octave, is exactly twice the frequency of the first note when ascending. Scale comes from the Latin scala which means ladder. The Law of Threes states that all manifested phenomena comprises three forces which he designated as active/affirming, passive/denying, and neutralizing/reconciling. This law resonates with various archetypes and principles related to 3 as for example the Christian trinity, the supernal Sephiroth in Kabbalah and even Ohm's law in electricity which states that V = IR; voltage V (reconciling) = current I (active) multiplied by resistance R (denying). Flatley compares the 3 stages for each circuit with the Trimurti group of Gods in Hinduism – Brahma the creator, Shiva, the destroyer and Vishnu, the preserver. Following Leary, he also connects them to the three aspects of neural synapses – the microscopic junctions where neurons communicate with each other (TOTL p. 115).
Leary's 8 circuits do not rigorously follow the musical aspects of the Law of Octaves, but the 3 stages in each circuit closely resemble the Law of Threes. Gurdjieff often described ordinary humans as 3 brained beings. Understanding the nature of each of these brains (also called centrums) can go a long way toward understanding the neurological model based upon them. The first one is the moving or instinctive centrum which handles all the physical functions of the body. I think of it as the physical brain. This corresponds with Leary's circuit 1 the Biosurvival. The second one is the emotional centrum or the Emotional-Territorial of circuit 2. The third brain is the intellectual centrum or the Semantic circuit as TOTL has it.
It seems a basic initial stepping stone, especially in the area of self-observation, to comprehend the first three circuits as the physical, emotional and intellectual aspects of the nervous system. Gurdjieff didn't clearly formulate a fourth brain but he does have a higher emotional centrum (circuit 6) and a higher intellectual or mental centrum (circuit 7). In CT1 RAW fills in the missing Gurdjieffian centrums as False Personality = circuit 4; the magnetic Centrum = circuit 5; and The Essence as circuit 8. Both Leary and Wilson changed the names of the higher circuits as their research and speculation evolved. Flatley uses Leary's original names as they appeared in Exo-Psychology and this is how they appeared in CT1. The original terminology makes the most sense to me so I agree with Flatley on that point. In the Game of Life, Leary changed the name of circuit 6 from the Neuro-electric to the Neurophysical. (For reasons unknown to me, the inconsistent use of the hyphen reflects both Leary and Wilson's nomenclature.) By the time of Info-Psychology [A Revision of Exo-Psychology] Leary has circuit 6 as "A Neurogenetic ontology" and circuit 7 as "A Neurogenetic teleology." Two pages later he refers to C6 as a Cyberelectronic phase and C7 as a Cybergenetic phase which reflects the original terminology. In Prometheus Rising Wilson calls C6 the Neurogenetic Circuit and C7 the Metaprogramming Circuit. By the time of Quantum Psychology, first published seven years later, RAW no longer calls them "circuits" changing them to "systems." C6 is now the Metaprogramming System with C7 named the Morphogenetic System. I find these differences in nomenclature helpful, not contradictory. They all serve to further the instruction inscribed upon the entrance to the Temple of Apollo (the Sun god) at Delphi: Know Thyself.
Comparing the Gurdjieffian centrums with Leary's circuits as presented by Flatley, we'll see a clear correspondence between the terrestrial and post-terrestrial circuits.
Leary Gurdjieff
Terrestrial
Circuit 1 Biosurvival Moving
Circuit 2 Emotional-Territorial Emotional
Circuit 3 Semantic Intellectual
Circuit 4 Socio-Sexual Personality
Post-Terrestrial
Circuit 5 Neurosomatic Magnetic Center
Circuit 6 Neuroelectric Higher Emotional
Circuit 7 Neurogenetic Higher Intellectual
Circuit 8 Neuroatomic The Essence
The most obvious ones are C2 Emotional with C6 Higher Emotional and C3 Intellectual with C7 Higher Intellectual. It appears C2 and 6 represent different modalities of the same system; likewise C3 and 7.
C1 concerns the functioning of the body and takes imprints soon after birth. C5 activation turns on the body's senses. The correspondence between C1 and 5 appears more obvious with Leary (soma means body). C4 and C8 don't show a clear correspondence, but I speculate they may show a similarity with C4 giving a composite of C 1-3; perhaps C8 represents a composite of the post-terrestrial circuits, though maybe not.
C1 represents the body. Trying practices that turns on the body like yoga or martial arts activates C5.
C2 suggests the heart. Opening the heart chakra gets you to C6.
C3 connects with the mind. Learning to control thoughts (very difficult) and focus the mind gives an approach to C7 ... maybe. I say maybe because I've personally not experienced this circuit. I have experienced some of the psionic attributes grouped within the C6 territory by extensively working to reach the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian an operation that begins in Tiphareth, i.e. the heart.
* * * * * *
Flatley gives an account of the conditions following Tim's terminal prostrate cancer diagnosis leading up to his death. He leaves out a couple of points, one of which looks very occult. Leary's good friend John Lilly asked Glenn and Lee Perry, owners of the Samadhi Tank Co. to set up a floatation tank for him in his house to help with the transition. They went down to L.A. and set it up and in the process gave him a copy of The American Book of the Dead by E.J. Gold. Leary had written of rituals found inside it in an article years earlier called "Commonsense Alternatives to Involuntary Death" later included in the book Chaos and Cyberculture. Lee Perry related to me that after giving the book to Tim he started playing word games with the text on the back cover.
Leary originally planned to have his head removed after death and cryogenically frozen then changed his mind, as related in
TOTL. However, in a film made by Paul Davids,
Timothy Leary's Dead, about his final year leading up to and including his death, we see his head being severed for preservation. It can be
viewed for free on Tubi. The final shot in the film before the credits roll shows a close-up of his severed head. This turns out to be a theatrical stunt, but looks very realistic. I thought this absolutely brilliant because of its qabalistic implications illustrating another close affinity with Crowley. The Hebrew letter Resh translates to English as Head and corresponds with The Sun tarot card. The Sun corresponds with Tiphareth. Crowley once stated (in
The Confessions of Aleister Crowley) that his primary goal in life involved turning people on to the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel, an operation beginning in Tiphareth. This appears synonymous with the discovery of one's True Will, i.e. one's life purpose; the answer to the question, why are you here?" Timothy Leary symbolically carried on Crowley's work until the very end.
TOTL relates the last word Leary spoke which happens to serve as a keyword for Tiphareth.
* * * * * *
I only have one major criticism. Leary's three stages for each circuit describes the functions of reception, integration and transmission. For instance, stage 13, the first post-terrestrial stage, indicates the receptive function of the Neurosomatic circuit, stage 14 gives the integration aspect of that circuit with stage 15 communicating from that circuit. Flatley writes, "When considering the tarot, it's probably more helpful and less abstract to think of the three functions of each circuit as feeling-thinking-action (or sensation-mentation-creation)." I completely disagree with this; for me it adds confusion being that they each have a circuit of their own, C2, C3 and C1. But lest we forget, these are merely maps and models so if it works for you to access that territory, it works; it doesn't matter what I think.
I also found a couple of small issues with the copy editing. The timeline gets confusing when the book appears to say the Beatles broke up in 1965 (p. 38). They actually dissolved in 1970. I didn't understand how the timeline jumps from 1965 to 1970 then back to 1966 until I realized the likelihood a mistake occurred. Page 190 under C7 calls stage 1 thinking when it should be feeling according to Flatley's designation. I saw 3 or four typos, but so what? Except for the timeline thing these errors don't interfere with comprehending the material.
All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed the book and commend the author, a true Evolutionary Agent, for all the hard work and time he devoted to help bring the work of Timothy Leary to a wider and perhaps younger audience. As R.U. Sirius states in the Foreword, "In The Occult Timothy Leary, Joseph L. Flatley gives you the big picture. And what a picture it is!"
