10 Books That Began Your Journey Down the Rabbit-hole
September 15, 2007 by cadeveo
This one’s for all of the others who reside in any of the hundreds or thousands of disreputable parallel worlds that our more “reasonable,” brethren and sister-en refer to as the domain of those “tin-foil hat types.” For the uninitiated, I’ll clue you in. No one actually wears those tin foil hats, not even the supposed tin-foil hat types.
Tinfoil hats are so mid-90’s! My hat’s 100% organite! It’s kind of heavy, but now I have the kind of neck a bodybuilder dies, or pops muscle enhancers, for! (I realize these are not mutually exclusive propositions.)
Any-whats, the following informal conversation starter is for all of you.
What are the ten books that first initiated your journey down the rabbit-hole? Maybe they were the books that sparked your search for the truth about JFK or some other world event, about yourself or about that whole elusive thing called Reality. Perhaps these are the ten books that got you questioning all the received truths fed to you in school, by the media and by the well-meaning and equally deluded folks around you. Or maybe these are the ten books that brought you to that jaw-drop moment. You know, the moment when your tiny bubble of consciousness exclaimed to itself, to everything and nothing: “Wow…reality is sloppy, messy, poetic, fun, crazy and, generally, a million times more maddening, frightening, beautiful, love-filled and awe-inspiring than the very boring version I’ve been led to believe in!…And I’m part of it!”
Here’s my list (in semi-chronological order):
1. Lies My Teacher Told Me, by James W. Loewen
I saw this listed in a book of the month type magazine when I was in high school and it intrigued me so much, I asked for it for my birthday. It rocked my world: from finding out Helen Keller had been a devout socialist, to the dark-side of Christopher Columbus and the huge, racist streak of Woodrow Wilson and the fact that, during the depression, the president ordered General McCarthur to fire on a bunch of WWI veterans who were peacefully marching on D.C. to get the pension “their government” had promised them. I never accepted what I was told at school about history ever again. This book also led me to a few other great ones, including Don’t Know Much About History and a whole bunch of Chomsky, which I eventually overdosed on!
2. Secret Teachings of All Ages by Manly P. Hall
I found a copy of this in my high school library. The cover itself, with gold embossed lettering and elaborate, Renaissance-style artwork, caught my attention and the title sealed the deal. I noticed that the last time it had been checked out had been in 1980, and couldn’t understand why. From footnotes that included Madam Blavatsky and Ignatius Donnelly, to Hall’s take on the history of philosophy, alchemy and those secret teachings, this book really opened my eyes to all sorts of possibilities out there in the world. This was my first exposure to the “Francis Bacon was Shakespeare” theory, as well as the history of the Order of the Rosy Cross and the mysterious Comte de St. Germain and Cagliostro.
3. Cosmic Trigger by Robert Anton Wilson
Maybe Logic. Fnords. The 23 Enigma. The underground history of perceptual change agents from shamans, Sufis, Masons, and up to this day; plus the mysteries of Sirius, the Illuminati, and the strange way that crazy isht tends to happen to people who get obsessed with such things. Another birthday gift, this time when I was a college freshman. Just the introduction, where Wilson states that he does not believe in anything, sent a perceptual shock through my system. How can someone not believe in things? Is this guy putting me on? Oh, the naivety! In my dotage, I’ve come to suspect Wilson, as often as not, was putting himself on. Nevertheless, this was a mental ice-breaker of a book.
4. What is Property? by P.J. Proudhon
When I was younger, I used to flip randomly through my dad’s set of Encyclopedia Britannica’s when bored and read whatever page I happened upon. One lucky Sunday, I came across an entry on Proudhon and his pithy and startling, for a fifteen year old, quote: “Property is Theft.” Like the angsty teen I was, I decided this guy had to be cool. Luckily I was in a university town, so I had the opportunity to find an English translation of What is Property? at the college library. I read it and came to understand that he was talking about the institution of private property being based upon the violent conquest of land inhabited by other people and Proudhon’s theories about how the concept and institution of property came to be legitimized. The book also includes his thoughts on how we might transcend property’s unsavory nature. For awhile, I just repeated Proudhon’s famous quote because it sounded like some cool isht to say, but once I really digested what he was saying, it had a pretty profound effect. Still relevant food for thought even if he was living in an age when the concept of property still was fairly bound up with the concept of usage and the idea of intellectual property would’ve seemed mad. Reading this tome also began a stint of devouring every book I could about the theory and history of anarchism (I still lean toward the individualist version) and all its bastard children.
5. The Illuminatus Trilogy by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson
Lots of great underground history mixed into a hilarious satirical fiction-stew. There will never be another book quite like this.
6. The Gnostics- Elaine Pagels
7. The Mass Psychology of Fascism by Wilhelm Reich
The guy had to leave Germany after he published this in the early 30’s. Prescient stuff and still powerful reading, whether you buy everything he says or not. His basic thesis was that fascism and totalitarian movements in general stem from the repression and distortion of the natural flow of emotions and sexual energy. That will sound very quaint and anything but groundbreaking to many people today, but despite modern New Age fuzzy-fluffiness and the seeming sexual openness we see today, things really haven’t changed much.
8. Lipstick Traces by Greil Marcus
My first introduction to the underground history of 20th century art and activism, from Dada and the Situationist International to punk rock and beyond.
9. The Big Book of Conspiracies
I stayed up for around 36 hours reading this collection of essays in graphic novel form about everything from Area 51, the JFK assassination, Aleister Crowley and the 23 Enigma my senior year of high school. Even the stuff that’s palpable B.S. was highly intriguing B.S. at the time and definitely opened up some stuff in the old perceptual channels. This book also led me to Apocalypse Culture, Cult Rapture and all the Feral House stuff, plus the early, glory days of disinfo.com, when it still generated its own content.
10. The Golden Bough by Sir James Frazier
The college I attended had every volume of this groundbreaking anthropologist’s labor of love. Once I read about the pervasiveness of trinities in ancient religion from Egypt and Sumer and on, I could connect the dots pretty well about the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. That was one of those amazing a-ha moments, but there was quite a bunch more in these volumes, too, with regards to dying gods and the near ubiquity of human sacrifice throughout history and much, much more.
Honorable Mentions:
Foucault’s Pendulum, House of the Spirits, Infinite Jest, Frank Zappa: Negative Dialectics of Poodle Play, The Invisibles, The Tao Te Ching, Go Tell My Horse, Principia Discordia, Saucers of the Illuminati, Mind Control:World Control; The Unknowing Sage: The Life of Baba Faqir Chand
***
I hope you’ll share your very own list of the books that first took you down the rabbit hole of non-consensus reality tunnels. I also hope you’ll tell us what those books did for and to you–and when!
Wow, I’ve got some reading to do! Amazing how we end up down the same rabbit hole with such different influences. My first jaw-dropping book was The Gods of Eden by William Bramley - perhaps embarrassingly now, but at the time it was definitely an oh, shit moment. I mean, how sheltered was I that at 30 I hadn’t come across that stuff yet?? A late bloomer I guess. After that was The Impersonal Life, which blew my mind on another level. Then the Tao Te Ching, Alien Agenda and Rule by Secrecy (Jim Marrs) and a few books on HAARP. Life & Teaching of the Masters of the Far East by Spalding. Bruce Cathie’s stuff still rocks my world. Tagore is another biggie for me, as far as spirituality goes; Icke of course for conspiracy and many others - I put an associates Amazon bookstore on my site to share these and other books that are important to me.
Funny; today I just posted about needed help suggesting titles for my metaphysical book club. It’s not that I don’t know them; just what do I choose for a picky group!!!
There’s a few.
Probably the bible first - Book of Revelations.
The movie Blade Runner had me catch credits showing that the movie was based on the novel “Do Androids dream of Electric Sheep” by Philip K Dick. Man, that title fascinated me and held in my memory for YEARS!!! and years until I finally actually found and read Valis, but also PKD’s “Shifting Realities” which was a big punch to the brain. All PKD shoved me deeper down this hole you speak of. And also showed me the light at the other side, interestingly.
Cosmic Trigger also - found randomly in a used book store when I wasn’t even close to ready to understand anything he was talking about, but interesting as hell. He also mentioned PKD and PKD in turn mentions Cosmic Trigger in Valis (which I read after Cosmic T)
Gods of Eden was one for me as well Angela. Especially the breakdown on Funny Money, was an educational breakthrough for me. Even if the rest is all bull (maybe..) that one real bit of teaching was useful.
What else what else…Life of a Cell - in college, don’t remember the author. Dragons of Eden - Carl Sagan was one way back. The 12th planet. Frank Zappa’s bio. On Bended Knee about the Reagan presidency and control of the media. Lots of others. All of them over time wove together to give me a better picture and perspective on the subjects, until I finally realized it was just about life and shit, all of it!
In no particular order, but roughly around the same time.
1. 5/5/2000: Ice: The Ultimate Disaster | Richard W. Noone
Pole Shift, Catastrophism, Mu, Atlantis, Mesoamerican ruins, masonry, secret societies, Knights Templar, the pyramids - all accompanied with profuse illustrations. There’s even a revealing interview with Manly P. Hall toward the end.
2. The Sirius Mystery | Robert K.G. Temple
After reading Cosmic Trigger, I had to pick this up. It reinforced RAW’s contention that the star Sirius was/is incredibly important to the entire occult edifice.
3) Passport to Magonia: On UFOs, Folklore, and Parallel Worlds | Jacques Vallee
My first introduction to the stories of UFOs and aliens as having unmistakable commonality with folklore and demonology. It’s still the most compelling exposition on the subject; a contender for Vallee’s best work.
4) The Secret Life of Plants | Peter Tompkins, Christopher Bird
Plants exhibiting awareness, even emotions? That premise alone is enough, but the book is much, much more.
5) None Dare Call it Conspiracy | Gary Allen
My first introduction to the whole sphere of JBS CFR/Trilateral conspiracies; it made a huge impression, and was akin to an initiation. I still think that Allen’s books are the most cool-headed out of all JBS-ites.
6) New World Order: The Ancient Plan of Secret Societies | William T. Still
I read this right after Allen’s book. It filled in the blanks on the wider spectrum, bringing into focus the influence of Freemasonry.
7) The Occult Conspiracy | Michael Howard
Morning of the Magicians | Jacques Bergier, Louis Pauwels
An overview of occult-conspiratorial secret societies on a grand scale, spanning the entirety of human history; I wouldn’t recommend it to any one today (shoddy research and unforgivable historical errors), but at the time it was a kind of necessary indoctrination.
Mind blowing! Modern-day alchemists; Third Reich magick; Crowley, Gurdjieff, Thule Society, spies, Nordic occultism, Agartha; Hitler as a perfect vehicle for demonic possession.
9) Behold a Pale Horse | William Cooper
I was reading this at the exact moment of the OKC bombing; I put down the book and couldn’t believe what I was seeing on TV! At the time, it was a spectacular confirmation of the validity of everything Cooper was saying. OKC was my 9/11.
10) Meetings With Remarkable Men | G. I. Gurdjieff
The account of the Sarmoung Brotherhood is memorable. The biggest impression, though, was when Gurdjieff was talking to a Persian Dervish, who proceeds to shoot down everything the former had thought was wise and sound teaching. In particular, what I remember vividly is when the Dervish warns against the breathing exercises of the Hindi yogis. The way he explains the error of these techniques (which are inimical to the normal functioning of the body) is to use common sense.
Passport to Magonia is one I’ve been meaning to read for quite some time. Perhaps this will be the impetus for me to finally do so.
Thanks, Terry!
I love PKD, Dan. I read VALIS the same summer I read Bill Cooper. VALIS was the much better book–it remains one of my favorites. A big touchstone. Shifting Realities is also another mind-blower. So’s Man in the High Castle and Ubik.
I’ll credit Cooper for getting some good stuff out there, but his book mixed in so much questionable and outright false stuff I think it’s done more of a disservice to the truth than it has helped it. (I mean, how do you put the Protocols of the Elders of Zion as an appendix to your book? Unless you’re sending signals to anti-semites that you’re part of their club and/or pandering to them.) I’m surprised that I continue to see Behold a Pale Horse on the bookseller’s tables out on the streets in New York. But I suppose it can be a good test of a person’s ability to distinguish the wheat from the chaff.
I can totally see how reading Pale Horse in the midst of The OKC Bombing would wake a person up to certain things, though!
Since two of you have mentioned The Gods of Eden, that’s got me curious. Another book for my reading list!
Meetings with Remarkable Men is another amazing one, Terry. Morning of the Magicians I’ve seen cited in Gary Lachman’s book Turn Off Your Mind: The Mystic Sixties and The Dark Side of the Age of Aquarius, which I highly recommend.
I’ll add Morning of the Magicians to my list!
These lists are great. I hope you’ll all keep them coming!
Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation ( which I initially took up to help support my woman’s choice to become a vegan, since everyone we spoke to was very critical and tried to paint her as a hypocrite for choosing this ) forced me to go through the philosophical exercise of extending the rights of personhood to animals.
In doing so I began to realize how the rights of personhood aren’t alwaysgranted to human beings and this got me looking into basic anti-globalization theories which led me to overdose on Chomsky as well.
The book Upside Down by Eduardo Galeano had a profound impact on me and lead me to start sharing these ideas –perhaps too passonately — with others . When I sensed that my family and friends were growing tired of my ranting I had to turn to the internet to satisfy my need to discuss these things with people and somebody who caught on to the themes I was engaged in suggested I read a book called Culture Jam by the founder of AdBusters.
While not particularly groundbreaking this book turned me on to the Situationist International, a group whose ideas remain the most explosive to this day. I read and re-read the Society of the Spectacle and The Revolution of Everyday Life, and still do. I read pretty much everything in English by the SI and the American Situationist and translator, Ken Knaab published a book called the Bureau of Public Secrets, which is very engaging on its own, but most importantly turned me on to Reich’s Mass Psychology, Listen Little Man, and People in Trouble.
At the same time, I began reading Cornelius Castoriadis who was a contemporary of the Situationists.
Reich, the Situationists, and Castoriadis made me realize that I needed to really read and understand Marx, which will probably be a life long project.
Obviously this development was not so linear, and more like a tree, the authors making up the other branches I left out would include Lukacs, Bakunin, and Ivan Illich.
Ivan Illich wrote DeSchooling Society, another personal favorite, and this book lead me to discover a very important American teacher named John Taylor Gatto who wrote the Underground History of American Education…
I know I am leaving some out, but I am definitely stuck in this rabbit hole and don’t see a way out of it. Not that I care. I’d rather be in than out — but this is not always the case. isn’t that the way it goes for everyone?
Oh, okay I give in. But if anyone tears into me in caps I’m outta’ here (wink, nudge)
I can’t go into too much detail on some of these because it was so long ago. I’ll start with the earliest and work up.
Anthem - Ayn Rand: I read this before I was out of grade school. It helped me to understand some things about my being an outcast (geek) and what it might really mean. That I should stand in the face of not being accepted by the crowd, and be true to myself.
The Doors of Perception - Aldous Huxley: My first clue that there might be more to the world than meets the eye.
High Priest - Timothy Leary: Although I’ve fallen out with Leary in the years since, it was useful to encounter more ideas that challenged what I was being force-fed at school and home. Probably was the source to my really doubting consensus reality.
The Mothman Prophecies - John Keel: So there is a whole hell of a lot more to this than flying discs and bug-eyed proctologists from elsewhere!
Center of the Cyclone - John Lilly: The world is much stranger than it even appears…
The Scientist - Lilly: This and the above book motivated me to take some personal risks to explore some strange internal terrain.
Illuminatus - Shea & Wilson: This book terrified me at the age fifteen (did I start young? I honestly don’t know.) I was sure that *everything* was engineered. I trusted nothing after reading this trilogy. Hadn’t learned enough at that point to know I shouldn’t trust too easily. But it gave me a good start for not taking anything at face value ever again.
Valis - Philip K. Dick: A friend gave me this book in answer to all the noises I’d been making about a bizarre experience I’d had about a year prior. Total ego death combined with contact with some sort of intelligence that felt more like having all the worlds experience, and all the worlds libraries downloaded into my head. At least I knew I wasn’t alone. Still didn’t know if I was crazy or not though.
The Archaic Revival - Terence McKenna: Even if McKenna is wrong, just to be exposed to such radically different notions has turned out to be invaluable. Proof that an open mind can have be further stretched without an exogenous chemicals.
Finnegans Wake- James Joyce: The novel that isn’t a novel. It’s hardly even a book. When I hold it in my hands, I feel like I’m holding something that crosses dimensions, that it is far bigger than what lies between the front and back cover. I never had a clue that this could be done with language. Possibly the most important book ever written. Joyce said he wanted to write a book that could be used to re-construct the universe if necessary.
And that’s why I sign my name,
HCE
By the way, some folks really might just need a damn tin-foil hat. Myself, I prefer a paper hat, like the those worn by the Residents in “Third Reich and Roll” :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ve0XrTiFiwo
Honourable mentions?
Quantum Psychology - RAW: Personal opinion but I think it is his most important book. Brain change without chemicals or magick.
The Tao Te Ching
The Invisible Landscape - The McKenna Brothers
Ubik - Philip K. Dick
Walden & Civil Disobedience- Thoreau
Frank Fools Crow - Thomas Mails: Because the greatest of these is love. Reading about this man’s love for all of humanity and all life has effected me in a way I can’t talk about.
Our Haunted Planet, Why UFO’s and Operation Trojan Horse - John Keel
The Sermon on the Mount - Emmet Fox
HCE
Man, HCE your experience sounds very similar to one I had in college. I don’t really talk about it to anyone. Cuz it just didn’t seem to “take,” it faded away. But that happened the same summer I read Behold a Pale Horse and VALIS…I think both of them I read after this thing happened and VALIS in particular resonated with it.
Maybe I’ll write about it some time.
Rough chronological order of my reading them:
1. Gerald S. Hawkins, ‘Stonehenge Decoded’. The man who worked out that Stonehenge lines up with the solstices. I read this as a kid. The blending of ancient and modern here, and the way that it’s so obviously right but still not quite ‘kosher’ archaeology is fascinating. The writing of this guy’s first encounter with computer technology is priceless.
2. Davis & Hersh, ‘Descartes Dream’. I won this in a competition as a precocious child. Took me years before I could appreciate it. It’s a book about mathematics and rhetoric, and how they’re two sides of the same coin. Descartes foresaw the mathematisation of the whole world: this book takes a good hard look at that concept. Monstrous heresy, essential reading. An eye-opener. (The prequel, ‘The Mathematical Experience’, is also worthwhile.)
3. Robin Attfield, ‘A Theory of Value and Obligation’. Proposes a sound argument for why intrinsic value exists and why things like trees etc. have it. Again, monstrous heresy when the economists talk only of what you can buy with your dollar.
4. Roger Penrose, ‘The Emperor’s New Mind’. Penrose says the brain is not a computer. This in itself is a bold statement. The consequenses are even more alarming: we have no idea what it /is/.
5. Jon Ronson - ‘Them’. This guy is a journalist who went and hung out with some interesting ‘extremists’. It’s about how people think more than anything.
6. Nick Cook, ‘The Hunt for Zero Point.’ This guy used to work as a journalist for Janes (you know, the defence people) but got interested in tinfoil stuff like electrogravity. Well written and accessible. Also mostly about how people think.
7. Christopher Hodder-Williams, ‘Fistful of Digits’. In 1969, this guy basically described the Internet in all its glory. Mind-blowing. I read this off the back of ‘98.4′ which is also excellent and eerily prescient. He started out writing novels about how terrible things can happen to aircraft - some of these are also eye-openers, even now.
8. Jeff Smith, ‘Bone’. Because it’ll make your grey matter dribble out your ears. Really. Slips in under the defences and, Bam.
9. Douglas McGregor, ‘The Human Side of Enterprize’. Again, back to the 60’s for a revealing look at how to run a business. Enlightening. Once more, astonishing heresy: the more you control a group of people, the less they do what you want. More quotes in here than in Hamlet ;-D
I’ll get back to you with the last one if I can make a decision.
What was I thinking leaving this one out?
10. Robert C. O’Brien, ‘Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH’. Unlikely, I know. But this one runs SO deep. It’s about… well, what is it about? It’s about what makes us human, I guess. No, I can’t say what that is. I guess you’ll have to read it. ‘Z’ for Zacharaiah, too.
The Descartes book sounds up my alley, speedbird. Rats of NIHM makes total sense to me as a rabbit-hole/brain changer book. What’s Bone all about?
Cadeveo,
We’ll have to discuss our “experiences” off-list if you don’t mind. I may have said too much already.
Last two honorable mentions:
Mind and Nature by Gregory Bateson: The single dense-est, most difficult book I’ve ever read. Forget Gravity’s Rainbow, Ulysses or Finnegans Wake. And this is NON-fiction to boot.
Mind boggling in an entirely different way.
The Book of the Subgenius: I’m not kidding. Absolute truth hidden in utter bullshit and funny as hell.
You’ve convinced me Speedbird -
I’m going to check out Bone today.
HCE
[...] to you who responded with book suggestions on my last post; check out this post from Waking the Midnight Sun for titles that started the journey down the rabbit [...]
What’s ‘Bone’ about?
Hm.
Well, I’ll have a go just for you
For starters, it’s a graphic novel with wonderful artwork. The original is B&W but there’s a colorized version now which isn’t half bad in my humble opinion.
Fone Bone, Phoney Bone and Smiley Bone are not-entirely-human characters from the big city who find their way into a somewhat-fairytale valley populated by real humans, inscrutable dragons, talking animals and scary rat-like creatures with pale bubous eyes. There they meet the beautiful Thorn, her Gran’ma Rose Ben, who races cows and also /races cows/, and Lucius Down, who owns the local drinking house.
But dark forces are moving in this rural idyll, involving locusts, Moby Dick, and the things you see in your dreams…
I guess it’s all about what it means to be human, once again. But also what it means to be ‘real’, and what it means to be ‘good’. Big ol’ scary themes. There’s moments when you just fetch up against a precipice, not just a rabbit hole, when you just stare at the page and think ‘yikes!’. (Like, for starters, every time the question ‘what /is/ Fone Bone?’ comes to the surface like some sort of Zen koan.)
OK, enough rave for now
Some other honourable mentions:
Richard Adams, ‘Watership Down’ which is about rabbits in the same way as NIMH is about mice…
Fritjof Capra, ‘The Hidden Conncetions’: made me think hard about what might be meant by ‘consciousness’ and ’self’.
I can’t believe no one’s mentioned 1984 yet. From the meme of re-writing history, to false-flag attacks, and a system of total control over humanity, to why torture is stupid, this book has it all.
Not exactly a book, but Steve Jackson’s Illuminati conspiracy card game is pretty darn cool, partly what got me interested in the eye-in-the-pyramid symbol.
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Very laudable choice with one exeption. Frazer’s Golden Bough was made up. He did no actual research but concocted it at home. Pretty much a fraud. Robert Anton Wilson shows incredible insight and humour.
Your take on Frazier is inaccurate. Yes, he was not a field anthropoligist. He did not do any studies out in the field himself, but he didn’t “concoct” his ten volumes of Golden Bough out his ass. He built upon the available research, writings, and notes of others and then drew his own conclusions and comparisions. He was a synthesizer and theorizer of great insight, originality and talent (given his obvious early 20th century biases) and that’s where the Golden Bough is still incredibly valuable and relevant.
I’m fine if you think Frazier’s conclusions are suspect, but to suggest he didn’t do his research…I gotta shake my head at that one.