Recent Investigations by Long Island Paranormal Investigators:

State University of New York at Brockport

Historical Facts: The State University of New York at Brockport, NY began its existence in 1841 while known as the Brockport Collegiate Institute. In 1942 it became known as SUNY Brockport. The University resides in upstate New York, alongside the Erie Canal. Today the University is a bustling community which supports the town that essentially grew up around it.

Like many colleges, SUNY Brockport is said to have a lesser known paranormal population. One of the most well known of these campus locations is Hartwell Hall. This building is one of the oldest on the campus. Over the years the cleaning staff has claimed to hear people in the halls, and doors opening and closing when no one else in the building. One person has claimed to feel someone grab her shoulder while she was cleaning a classroom. When she turned around there was no one else there. The same person claims that one day she slipped off a ladder and some unseen force caught her and gently placed her on the ground. Hartwell Hall used to have an active pool in its basement. While it’s no longer there, splashing is sometimes still heard by those who enter the basement.

One other account of paranormal activity is from a suite at Mortimer Hall. Mortimer Hall is one of the older dorm complexes on the campus. The suite is said to be the home of a spirit who committed suicide there in the 1970s. A brief examination of this story seems to support the suicide claim. The girls staying inside the suite claimed to have personal items disappear and reappear shortly after in different locations. The personal effects weren’t moved by the girls. One of the students woke up one night to a bright light hovering above her bed. She says it hovered there for a short period of time, then moved to a corner and disappeared as she called her boyfriend in fear. Lights in the room were said to turn themselves on in the middle of the night.

Observed Activity At This Site: During an investigation to SUNY Brockport and Mortimer Hall, the lights in one of the rooms did turn themselves on twice in the middle of the night, on different nights. There was no one around who could have turned them on as a prank.

http://www.ishmael.org
http://www.manyuniverses.com/
http://www.imho.com/grae/chaos/chaos.html
http://www.whatthebleep.com/
http://www.greenanarchy.org/

The Original Affluent Society
-by Marshall Sahlins

Hunter-gatherers

Hunter-gatherers consume less energy per capita per year than any other group of human beings. Yet when you come to examine it the original affluent society was none other than the hunter's - in which all the people's material wants were easily satisfied. To accept that hunters are affluent is therefore to recognise that the present human condition of man slaving to bridge the gap between his unlimited wants and his insufficient means is a tragedy of modern times.

There are two possible courses to affluence. Wants may be "easily satisfied" either by producing much or desiring little The familiar conception, the Galbraithean way- based on the concept of market economies- states that man's wants are great, not to say infinite, whereas his means are limited, although they can be improved. Thus, the gap between means and ends can be narrowed by industrial productivity, at least to the point that "urgent goods" become plentiful. But there is also a Zen road to affluence, which states that human material wants are finite and few, and technical means unchanging but on the whole adequate. Adopting the Zen strategy, a people can enjoy an unparalleled material plenty - with a low standard of living. That, I think, describes the hunters. And it helps explain some of their more curious economic behaviour: their "prodigality" for example- the inclination to consume at once all stocks on hand, as if they had it made. Free from market obsessions of scarcity, hunters' economic propensities may be more consistently predicated on abundance than our own.

Destutt de Tracy, "fish-blooded bourgeois doctrinaire" though he might have been, at least forced Marx to agree that "in poor nations the people are comfortable", whereas in rich nations, "they are generally poor".
Sources of the Misconception
"Mere subsistence economy", "limited leisure save in exceptional circumstances", incessant quest for food", "meagre and relatively unreliable" natural resources, "absence of an economic surplus", "maximum energy from a maximum number of people" so runs the fair average anthropological opinion of hunting and gathering

The traditional dismal view of the hunters' fix goes back to the time Adam Smith was writing, and probably to a time before anyone was writing. Probably it was one of the first distinctly neolithic prejudices, an ideological appreciation of the hunter's capacity to exploit the earth's resources most congenial to the historic task of depriving him of the same. We must have inherited it with the seed of Jacob, which "spread abroad to the west, and to the east, and to the north", to the disadvantage of Esau who was the elder son and cunning hunter, but in a famous scene deprived of his birthright.

Current low opinions of the hunting-gathering economy need not be laid to neolithic ethnocentrism. Bourgeois ethnocentrism will do as well. The existing business economy Will promote the same dim conclusions about the hunting life. Is it so paradoxical to contend that hunters have affluent economies, their absolute poverty notwithstanding? Modern capitalist societies, however richly endowed, dedicate themselves to the proposition of scarcity. Inadequacy of economic means is the first principle of the world's wealthiest peoples.

The market-industrial system institutes scarcity, in a manner completely without parallel. Where production and distribution are arranged through the behaviour of prices, and all livelihoods depend on getting and spending, insufficiency of material means becomes the explicit, calculable starting point of all economic activity.

The entrepreneur is confronted with alternative investments of a finite capital, the worker (hopefully) with alternative choices of remunerative employ, and the consumer... Consumption is a double tragedy: what begins in inadequacy will end in deprivation. Bringing together an international division of labour, the market makes available a dazzling array of products: all these Good Things within a man's reach- but never all within his grasp. Worse, in this game of consumer free choice, every acquisition is simultaneously a deprivation for every purchase of something is a foregoing of something else, in general only marginally less desirable, and in some particulars more desirable, that could have been had instead. That sentence of "life at hard labour" was passed uniquely upon us. Scarcity is the judgment decreed by our economy. And it is precisely from this anxious vantage that we look back upon hunters. But if modern man, with all his technological advantages, still lacks the wherewithal, what chance has the naked savage with his puny bow and arrow? Having equipped the hunter with bourgeois impulses and palaeolithic tools, we judge his situation hopeless in advance.

Yet scarcity is not an intrinsic property of technical means. It is a relation between means and ends. We should entertain the empirical possibility that hunters are in business for their health, a finite objective, and that bow and arrow are adequate to that end.

The anthropological disposition to exaggerate the economic inefficiency of hunters appears notably by way of invidious comparison with neolithic economies. Hunters, as Lowie (1) put it blankly, "must work much harder in order to live than tillers and breeders" (p. 13). On this point evolutionary anthropology in particular found it congenial, even necessary theoretically, to adopt the usual tone of reproach. Ethnologists and archaeologists had become neolithic revolutionaries, and in their enthusiasm for the Revolution spared nothing in denouncing the Old (Stone Age) Regime. It was not the first time philosophers would relegate the earliest stage of humanity rather to nature than to culture. ("A man who spends his whole life following animals just to kill them to eat, or moving from one berry patch to another, is really living just like an animal himself"(2) (p.122). The hunters thus downgraded, anthropology was freer to extol the Neolithic Great Leap Forward: a main technological advance that brought about a "general availability of leisure through release from purely food-getting pursuits".(3) In an influential essay on "Energy and the Evolution of Culture", Leslie White (5, 6) explained that the neolithic generated a "great advance in cultural development... as a consequence of the great increase in the amount of energy harnessed and controlled per capita per year by means of the agricultural and pastoral arts". White further heightened the evolutionary contrast by specifying human effort as the principal energy source of palaeolithic culture, as opposed to the domesticated plant and animal resources of neolithic culture. This determination of the energy sources at once permitted a precise low estimate of hunters' thermodynamic potential- that developed by the human body: "average power resources" of one twentieth horse power per capita -even as, by eliminating human effort from the cultural enterprise of the neolithic, it appeared that people had been liberated by some labour-saving device (domesticated plants and animals). But White's problematic is obviously misconceived. The principal mechanical energy available to both palaeolithic and neolithic culture is that supplied by human beings, as transformed in both cases from plant and animal source, so that, with negligible exceptions (the occasional direct use of non-human power), the amount of energy harnessed per capita per year is the same in palaeolithic and neolithic economies- and fairly constant in human history until the advent of the industrial revolution.(5)
Marvelously varied diet
Marginal as the Australian or Kalahari desert is to agriculture, or to everyday European experience, it is a source of wonder to the untutored observer "how anybody could live in a place like this". The inference that the natives manage only to eke out a bare existence is apt to be reinforced by their marvelously varied diets. Ordinarily including objects deemed repulsive and inedible by Europeans, the local cuisine lends itself to the supposition that the people are starving to death.



It is a mistake, Sir George Grey (7) wrote, to suppose that the native Australians "have small means of subsistence, or are at times greatly pressed for want of food". Many and "almost ludicrous" are the errors travellers have fallen into in this regard: "They lament in their journals that the unfortunate Aborigines should be reduced by famine to the miserable necessity of subsisting on certain sorts of food, which they have found near their huts; whereas, in many instances, the articles thus quoted by them are those which the natives most prize, and are really neither deficient in flavour nor nutritious qualities". To render palpable "the ignorance that has prevailed with regard to the habits and customs of this people when in their wild state", Grey provides one remarkable example, a citation from his fellow explorer, Captain Stuart, who, upon encountering a group of Aboriginals engaged in gathering large quantities of mimosa gum, deduced that the "unfortunate creatures were reduced to the last extremity, and, being unable to procure any other nourishment, had been obliged to collect this mucilaginous". But, Sir George observes, the gum in question is a favourite article of food in the area, and when in season it affords the opportunity for large numbers of people to assemble and camp together, which otherwise they are unable to do. He concludes:

"Generally speaking, the natives live well; in some districts there may be at particular seasons of the year a deficiency of food, but if such is the case, these tracts are, at those times, deserted.
It is, however, utterly impossible for a traveller or even for a strange native to judge. whether a district affords an abundance Of food, or the contrary... But in his own district a native is very differently situated; he knows exactly what it produces, the proper time at which the several articles are in season, and the readiest means of procuring them. According to these circumstances he regulates his visits to different portions of his hunting ground; and I can only say that l have always found the greatest abundance in their huts."(8)

In making this happy assessment, Sir George took special care to exclude the lumpen-proletariat aboriginals living in and about European towns -The exception instructive. It evokes a second source of ethnographic misconceptions: the anthropology of hunters is largely an anachronistic study of ex-savages an inquest into the corpse of one society, Grey once said, presided over by members of another.
"A Kind of Material Plenty"
Considering the poverty in which hunters and gatherers live in theory, it comes as a surprise that Bushmen who live in the Kalahari enjoy "a kind of material plenty", at least in the realm of everyday useful things, apart from food and water:

"As the !Kung come into more contact with Europeans and this is already happening - they will feel sharply the lack of our things and will need and want more. It makes them feel inferior to be without clothes when they stand among strangers who are clothed. But in their own life and with their own artifacts they were comparatively free from material pressures. Except for food and water (important exceptions!) of which the Nyae Nyae Kung have a sufficiency - but barely so, judging from the fact that all are thin though not emaciated - they all had what they needed or could make what they needed, for every man can and does make the things that men make and every woman the things that women make... They lived in a kind of material plenty because they adapted the tools of their living to materials which lay in abundance around them and which were free for anyone to take (wood, reeds, bone for weapons and implements, fibres for cordage, grass for shelters). or to materials which were at least sufficient for the needs of the population.... The !Kung could always use more ostrich egg shells for beads to wear or trade with, but, as it is, enough are found for every woman to have a dozen or more shells for water containers all she can carry - and a goodly number of bead ornaments. In their nomadic hunting-gathering life, travelling from one source Of food to another through the seasons, always going back and forth between food and water, they carry their young children and their belongings. With plenty of most materials at hand to replace artifacts as required, the !Kung have not developed means of permanent storage and have not needed or wanted to encumber. themselves with surpluses or duplicates. They do not even want to carry one of everything. They borrow what they do not own. With this ease, they have not hoarded, and the accumulation of objects has not become associated with status.."(9)

In the non subsistence sphere, the people's wants are generally easily satisfied. Such "material plenty" depends partly upon the simplicity of technology and democracy of pro perty. Products are homespun: of stone, bone, wood, skin-materials such as "lay in abundance around them". As a rule, neither extraction of the raw material nor its working up take strenuous effort. Access to natural resources is typically direct- "free for anyone to take"- even as possession of the necessary tools is general and knowledge of the required skills common. The division of labour is likewise simple, predominantly a division of labour by sex. Add in the liberal customs of sharing, for which hunters are properly famous, and all the people can usually participate in the going prosperity, such as it is.

For most hunters, such affluence without abundance in the non-subsistence sphere need not be long debated. A more interesting question is why they are content with so few possessions for it is with them a policy, a "matter of principle" as Gusinde 10 says, and not a misfortune.

But are hunters so undemanding of material goods because they are themselves enslaved by a food quest "demanding maximum energy from a maximum number of people", so that no time or effort remains for the provision of other comforts? Some ethnographers testify to the contrary that the food quest is so successful that half the time the people seem not to know what to do with themselves. On the other hand, movement is a condition of this success, more movement in some cases than others, but always enough to rapidly depreciate the satisfactions of property. Of the hunter it is truly said that his wealth is a burden. In his condition of life, goods can become "grievously oppressive", as Gusinde observes, and the more so the longer they are carried around. Certain food collectors do have canoes and a few have dog sleds, but most must carry themselves all the comforts they possess, and so only possess what they can comfortably carry themselves. Or perhaps only what the women can carry: the men are often left free to reach to the sudden opportunity of the chase or the sudden necessity of defence. As Owen Lattimore wrote in a not too different context, "the pure nomad is the poor nomad". Mobility and property are in contradiction. That wealth quickly becomes more of an encumbrance than a good thing is apparent even to the outsider. Laurens van der Post (11) was caught in the contradiction as he prepared to make farewells to his wild Bushmen friends:

"This matter of presents gave us many an anxious moment. We were humiliated by the realisation of how little there was we could give to the Bushmen. Almost everything seemed likely to make life more difficult for them by adding to the litter and weight of their daily round. They themselves had practically no possessions: a loin strap, a skin blanket and a leather satchel. There was nothing that they could not assemble in one minute, wrap up in their blankets and carry on their shoulders for a journey of a thousand miles. They had no sense of possession."

Here then is another economic "peculiarity"- some hunters at least, display a notable tendency to be sloppy about their possessions. They have the kind of nonchalance that would be appropriate to a people who have mastered the problems of production.

"They do not know how to take care of their belongings. No one dreams of putting them in order, folding them, drying or cleaning them, hanging them up, or putting them in a neat pile. If they are looking for some particular thing, they rummage carelessly through the hodgepodge of trifles in the little baskets. Larger objects that are piled up in a heap in the hut are dragged hither and thither with no regard for the damage that might be done them.

The European observer has the impression that these (Yahgan) Indians place no value whatever on their utensils and that they have completely forgotten the effort it took to make them. Actually, no one clings to his few goods and chattels which, as it is, are often and easily lost, but just as easily replaced... The Indian does not even exercise care when he could conveniently do so. A European is likely to shake his head at the boundless indifference of these people who drag brand-new objects, precious clothing, fresh provisions and valuable items through thick mud, or abandon them to their swift destruction by children and dogs.... Expensive things that are given them are treasured for a few hours, out of curiosity; after that they thoughtlessly let everything deteriorate in the mud and wet. The less they own, the more comfortable they can travel, and what is ruined they occasionally replace. Hence, they are completely indifferent to any material possessions."(10)

The hunter, one is tempted to say, is "uneconomic man". At least as concerns non subsistence goods, he is the reverse of that standard caricature immortalised in any General Principles of Economics, page one. His wants are scarce and his means (in relation) plentiful. Consequently he is "comparatively free of material pressures", has "no sense of possession", shows "an undeveloped sense of property", is "completely indifferent to any material pressures", manifests a "lack of interest" in developing his technological equipment.

In this relation of hunters to worldly goods there is a neat and important point. From the internal perspective of the economy, it seems wrong to say that wants are "restricted", desires "restrained", or even that the notion of wealth is "limited". Such phrasings imply in advance an Economic Man and a struggle of the hunter against his own worse nature, which is finally then subdued by a cultural vow of poverty. The words imply the renunciation of an acquisitiveness that in reality was never developed, a suppression of desires that were never broached. Economic Man is a bourgeois construction- as Marcel Mauss said, "not behind us, but before, like the moral man". It is not that hunters and gatherers have curbed their materialistic "impulses"; they simply never made an institution of them. "Moreover, if it is a great blessing to be free from a great evil, our (Montagnais) Savages are happy; for the two tyrants who provide hell and torture for many of our Europeans, do not reign in their great forests, I mean ambition and avarice... as they are contented with a mere living, not one of them gives himself to the Devil to acquire wealth."(12)
Subsistence
When Herskovits (13) was writing his Economic Anthropology (1958), it was common anthropological practice to take the Bushmen or the native Australians as "a classic illustration; of a people whose economic resources are of the scantiest", so precariously situated that "only the most intense application makes survival possible". Today the "classic" understanding can be fairly reversed- on evidence largely from these two groups. A good case can be made that hunters and gatherers work less than we do; and, rather than a continuous travail, the food quest is intermittent, leisure abundant, and there is a greater amount of sleep in the daytime per capita per year than in any other condition of society.

The most obvious, immediate conclusion is that the people do not work hard. The average length of time per person per day put into the appropriation and preparation of food was four or five hours. Moreover, they do not work continuously. The subsistence quest was highly intermittent. It would stop for the time being when the people had procured enough for the time being. which left them plenty of time to spare. Clearly in subsistence as in other sectors of production, we have to do with an economy of specific, limited objectives. By hunting and gathering these objectives are apt to be irregularly accomplished, so the work pattern becomes correspondingly erratic.

As for the Bushmen, economically likened to Australian hunters by Herskovits, two excellent recent reports by Richard Lee show their condition to be indeed the same 14 16 Lee's research merits a special hearing not only because it concerns Bushmen, but specifically the Dobe section of Kung Bushmen, adjacent to the Nyae about whose subsistence- in a context otherwise of "material plenty"- Mrs Marshall expressed important reservations. The Dobe occupy an area of Botswana where !Kung Bushmen have been living for at least a hundred years, but have only just begun to suffer dislocation pressures.
Abundance
Despite a low annual rainfall (6 to 10 inches), Lee found in the Dobe area a "surprising abundance of vegetation". Food resources were "both varied and abundant", particularly the energy rich mangetti nut- "so abundant that millions of the nuts rotted on the ground each year for want of picking".15 The Bushman figures imply that one man's labour in hunting and gathering will support four or five people. Taken at face value, Bushman food collecting is more efficient than French farming in the period up to World War II, when more than 20 per cent of the population were engaged in feeding the rest. Confessedly, the comparison is misleading, but not as misleading as it is astonishing. In the total population of free-ranging Bushmen contacted by Lee, 61.3 per cent (152 of 248) were effective food producers; the remainder were too young or too old to contribute importantly In the particular camp under scrutiny, 65 per cent were "effectives". Thus the ratio of food producers to the general population is actually 3 :5 or 2:3. But, these 65 per cent of the people "worked 36 per cent of the time, and 35 per cent of the people did not work at all"! (15)

For each adult worker, this comes to about two and one - half days labour per week. (In other words, each productive individual supported herself or himself and dependents and still had 3 to 5 days available for other activities.) A "day's work" was about six hours; hence the Dobe work week is approximately 15 hours, or an average of 2 hours 9 minutes per day. All things considered, Bushmen subsistence labours are probably very close to those of native Australians.

Also like the Australians, the time Bushmen do not work in subsistence they pass in leisure or leisurely activity. One detects again that characteristic palaeolithic rhythm of a day or two on, a day or two off- the latter passed desultorily in camp. Although food collecting is the primary productive activity, Lee writes, "the majority of the people's time (four to five days per week) is spent in other pursuits, such as resting in camp or visiting other camps" (15):

"A woman gathers on one day enough food to feed her family for three days, and spends the rest of her time resting in camp, doing embroidery, visiting other camps, or entertaining;n; visitors from other camps. For each day at home, kitchen routines, such as cooking, nut cracking, collecting firewood, and fetching water, occupy one to three hours of her time. This rhythm of steady work and steady leisure maintained throughout the year. The hunters tend to work more frequently than the women, but their schedule uneven. It 'not unusual' for a man to hunt avidly for a week and then do no hunting at all for two or three weeks. Since hunting is an unpredictable business and su bject to magical control, hunters sometimes experience a run of bad luck and stop hunting for a month or longer. During these periods, visiting, entertaining, and especially dancing are the primary activities of men.(16)"

The daily per-capita subsistence yield for the Dobe Bushmen was 2,140 calories. However, taking into account body weight, normal activities, and the age-sex composition of the Dobe population, Lee estimates the people require only 1,975 calories per capita. Some of the surplus food probably went to the dogs, who ate what the people left over. "The conclusion can be drawn that the Bushmen do not lead a substandard existence on the edge of starvation as has been commonly supposed."(15)

Meanwhile, back in Africa the Hadza have been long enjoying a comparable ease, with a burden of subsistence occupations no more strenuous in hours per day than the Bushmen or the Australian Aboriginals.16 Living in an area of "exceptional abundance" of animals and regular supplies of vegetables (the vicinity of Lake Eyasi), Hadza men seem much more concerned with games of chance than with chances of game. During the long dry season especially, they pass the greater part of days on end in gambling, perhaps only to lose the metal-tipped arrows they need for big game hunting at other times. In any case, many men are "quite unprepared or unable to hunt big game even when they possess the necessary arrows". Only a small minority, Woodburn writes, are active hunters of large animals, and if women are generally more assiduous at their vegetable collecting, still it is at a leisurely pace and without prolonged labour.(17) Despite this nonchalance, and an only limited economic cooperation, Hadza "nonetheless obtain sufficient food without undue effort". Woodburn offers this "very rough approximation" of subsistence-labour requirements: "Over the year as a whole probably an average of less than two hours a day spent obtaining food" (Woodburn.16)

Interesting that the Hazda, tutored by life and not by anthropology, reject the neolithic revolution in order to keep their leisure. Although surrounded by cultivators, they have until recently refused to take up agriculture themselves, "mainly on the grounds that this would involve too much hard work". In this they are like the Bushmen, who respond to the neolithic question with another: "Why should we plant, when there are so many mongomongo nuts m the world?" (14) Woodburn moreover did form the impression, although as yet unsubstantiated, that Hadza actually expend less energy, and probably less time, obtaining subsistence than do neighbouring cultivators of East Africa. (16) To change continents but not contents, the fitful economic commitment of the South American hunter, too, could seem to the European outsider an incurable "natural disposition":

"... the Yamana are not capable of continuous, daily hard labour, much to the chagrin of European farmers and employers for whom they often work. Their work is more a matter of fits and starts, and in these occasional efforts they can develop considerable energy for a certain time. After that, however, they show a desire for an incalculably long rest period during which they lie about doing nothing, without showing great fatigue.... It is obvious that repeated irregularities of this kind make the European employer despair, but the Indian cannot help it. It is his natural disposition." (10)

The hunter's attitude towards farming introduces us, lastly, to a few particulars of the way they relate to the food quest. Once again we venture here into the internal realm of the economy, a realm sometimes subjective and always difficult to understand; where, moreover, hunters seem deliberately inclined to overtax our comprehension by customs so odd as to invite the extreme interpretation that either these people are fools or they really have nothing to worry about. The former would be a true logical deduction from the hunter's nonchalance, on the premise that his economic condition is truly exigent. On the other hand, if a livelihood is usually easily procured, if one can usually expect to succeed, then the people's seeming imprudence can no longer appear as such. Speaking to unique developments of the market economy, to its institutionalisation of scarcity, Karl Polanyi (18) said that our "animal dependence upon food has been bared and the naked fear of starvation permitted to run loose. Our humiliating enslavement to the material, which all human culture is designed to mitigate, was deliberately made more rigorous" But our problems are not theirs.

Rather, a pristine affluence colours their economic arrangements, a trust in the abundance of nature's resources rather than despair at the inadequacy of human means. My point is that otherwise curious heathen devices become understandable by the people's confidence, a confidence which is the reasonable human attribute of a generally successful economy.

A more serious issue is presented by the frequent and exasperated observation of a certain "lack of foresight" among hunters and gatherers. Orientated forever in the present, without "the slightest thought of, or care for, what the morrow may bring", (19) the hunter seems unwilling to husband supplies, incapable of a planned response to the doom surely awaiting him. He adopts instead a studied unconcern, which expresses itself in two complementary economic inclinations.

The first, prodigality: the propensity to eat right through all the food in the camp, even during objectively difficult times, "as if", Lillian said of the Montagnais, "the game they were to hunt was shut up in a stable". Basedow (20) wrote of native Australians, their motto "might be interpreted in words to the effect that while there is plenty for today never care about tomorrow. On this account an Aboriginal inclined to make one feast of his supplies, in preference to a modest meal now and another by and by." Le Jeune even saw his Montagnais carry such extravagance to the edge of disaster.

"In the famine through which we passed, if my host took two, three, or four Beavers, immediately, whether it was day or night, they had a feast for all neighbouring Savages. And if those People had captured something, they had one also at the same time; so that, on emerging from one feast, you went to another, and sometimes even to a third and a fourth. I told them that they did not manage well, and that it would be better to reserve these feasts for future days, and in doing this they would not be so pressed with hunger. They laughed at me. 'Tomorrow' (they said) 'we shall make another feast with what we shall capture.' Yes, but more often they capture only cold and wind." (12)

A second and complementary inclination is merely prodigality's negative side: the failure to put by food surpluses, to develop food storage. For many hunters and gatherers, it appears, food storage cannot be proved technically impossible, nor is it certain that the people are unaware of the possibility. (18) One must investigate instead what in the situation precludes the attempt. Gusinde asked this question, and for the Yahgan found the answer in the self same justifiable optimism. Storage would be "superfluous", "because through the entire year and with almost limitless generosity the she puts all kinds of animals at the disposal of the man who hunts and the woman who gathers. Storm or accident will deprive a family of these things for no more than a few days. Generally no one need reckon with the danger of hunger, and everyone almost any where finds an abundance of what he needs. Why then should anyone worry about food for the future... Basically our Fuegians know that they need not fear for the future, hence they do not pile up supplies. Year in and year out they can look forward to the next day, free of care...." (12)

Gusinde's explanation is probably good as far as it goes, but probably incomplete. A more complex and subtle economic calculus seems in play. In fact one must consider the advantages of food storage against the diminishing returns to collection within a confined locale. An uncontrollable tendency to lower the local carrying capacity is for hunters au fond des choses: a basic condition of their production and main cause of their movement. The potential drawback of storage is exactly that it engages the contradiction between wealth and mobility. It would anchor the camp to an area soon depleted of natural food supplies. Thus immobilised by their accumulated stocks, the people may suffer by comparison with a little hunting and gathering elsewhere, where nature has, so to speak, done considerable storage of her own-of foods possibly more desirable in diversity as well as amount than men can put by. As it works out, an attempt to stock up food may only reduce the overall output of a hunting band, for the havenots will content themselves with stay- ing in camp and living off !he wherewithal amassed by the more prudent. Food storage, then, may be technically feasible, yet economically undesirable, and socially unachievable.

What are the real handicaps of the hunting-gathering praxis? Not "low productivity of labour", if existing examples mean anything. But the economy is seriously" afflicted by the imminence of diminishing returns. Beginning in subsistence and spreading from there to every sector, an initial success seems only to develop the probability that further efforts will yield smaller benefits. This describes the typical curve of food-getting within a particular locale. A modest number of people usually sooner than later reduce the food resources within convenient range of camp. Thereafter, they may stay on only by absorbing an increase in real costs or a decline in real returns: rise in costs if the people choose to search farther and farther afield, decline in returns if they are satisfied to live on the shorter supply or inferior foods in easier reach. The solution, of course, is to go somewhere else. Thus the first and decisive contingency of hunting-gathering: it requires movement to maintain production on advantageous terms.

But this movement, more or less frequent in different circumstances, more or less distant. merely transposes to other spheres of production the same diminishing returns of which it is born. The manufacture of tools, clothing, utensils, or ornaments, how- ever easily done, becomes senseless when these begin to be more of a burden than a comfort Utility falls quickly at the margin of portability. The construction of substantial houses likewise becomes absurd if they must soon be abandoned. Hence the hunter's very ascetic conceptions of material welfare: an interest only in minimal equipment, "if that; a valuation of smaller things over bigger; a disinterest in acquiring two or more of most goods; and the like. Ecological pressure assumes a rare form of concreteness when it has to be shouldered. If the gross product is trimmed down in comparison with other economies, it is not the hunter's productivity that is at fault, but his mobility.
Demographic constraints
Almost the same thing can be said of the demographic constraints of hunting-gathering. The same policy of debarassment is in play on the level of people, describable in similar terms and ascribable to similar causes. The terms are, cold-bloodedly: diminishing returns at the margin of portability, minimum necessary equipment, elimination of duplicates, and so forth-that is to say, infanticide. senilicide, sexual continence for the duration of the nursing period, etc., practices for which many food-collecting peoples are well known. The presumption that such devices are due to an inability to support more people is probably true-if' "support" is understood in the sense of carrying them rather than feeding them. The people eliminated, as hunters sometimes sadly' tell, are precisely those who cannot effectively transport themselves, who would I hinder the movement of family and camp. Hunters may be obliged to handle people and goods in parallel ways, the draconic population policy an expression of the same ecology as the ascetic economy.

Hunting and gathering has all the strengths of its weaknesses. Periodic movement and restraint in wealth and adaptations, the kinds of necessities of the economic practice and creative adaptations the kinds of necessities of which virtues are made. Precisely in such a framework, affluence becomes possible. Mobility and moderation put hunters' ends within range of their technical means. An undeveloped mode of production is thus rendered highly effective. The hunter's life is not as difficult as it looks from the outside. In some ways the economy reflects dire ecology, but it is also a complete inversion.
Three to five hour working day
Reports on hunters and gatherers of the ethnological present-specifically on those in marginal environments suggest a mean of three to five hours per adult worker per day in food production. Hunters keep banker's hours, notably less than modern industrial workers (unionised), who would surely settle for a 21-35 hour week. An interesting comparison is also posed by recent studies of labour costs among agriculturalists of neolithic type. For example, the average adult Hanunoo, man or woman, spends 1,200 hours per year in swidden cultivation;21 which is to say, a mean of three hours twenty minutes per day. Yet this figure does not include food gathering, animal raising, cooking and other direct subsistence efforts of these Philippine tribesmen. Comparable data are beginning to appear in reports on other primitive agriculturalists from many parts of the world.

There is nothing either to the convention that hunters and gatherers can enjoy little leisure from tasks of sheer survival. By this, the evolutionary inadequacies of the palaeolithic are customarily explained, while for the provision of leisure the neolithic is roundly congratulated. But the traditional formulas might be truer if reversed: the amount of work (per capita) increases with the evolution of culture, and the amount of leisure decreases. Hunter's subsistence labours are characteristically intermittent, a day on and a day off, and modern hunters at least tend to employ their time off in such activities as daytime sleep. In the tropical habitats occupied by many of these existing hunters, plant collecting is more reliable than hunting itself. Therefore, the women, who do the collecting, work rather more regularly than the men, and provide the greater part of the food supply.

In alleging this is an affluent economy, therefore, I do not deny that certain hunters have moments of difficulty. Some do find it "almost inconceivable" for a man to die of hunger, or even to fail to satisfy his hunger for more than a day or two.16 But others, especially certain very peripheral hunters spread out in small groups across an environment of extremes, are exposed periodically to the kind of inclemency that interdicts travel or access to game. They suffer although perhaps only fractionally, the shortage affecting particular immobilised families rather than the society as a whole. (10)

Still, granting this vulnerability, and allowing the most poorly situated modern hunters into comparison. it would be difficult to prove that privation is distinctly characteristic of the hunter-gatherers. Food shortage is not the indicative property of this mode of production as opposed to others; it does not mark off hunters and gatherers as a class or a general evolutionary stage. Lowie (22) asks:

"But what of the herders on a simple plane whose maintenance is periodically jeopardised by plagues-who, like some Lapp bands of the nineteenth century were obliged to fall back on fishing? What of the primitive peasants who clear and till without compensation of the soil, exhaust one plot and pass on to the next, and are threatened with famine at every drought? Are they any more in control of misfortune caused by natural conditions than the hunter-gatherer?"

Above all. what about the world today? One-third to one-half of humanity are said to go to bed hungry every night. In the Old Stone Age the fraction must have been much smaller. This is the era of hunger unprecedented. Now, in the time of the greatest technical power, is starvation an in. situation. Reverse another venerable formula: the amount of hunger in. creases relatively and absolutely with the evolution of culture. This paradox is my whole point. Hunters and gatherers have by force of circumstances an objectively low standard of living. But taken as their objective, and given their adequate means of production. all the people's material wants usually can be easily satisfied.

The world's most primitive people have few possessions. but they are not poor. Poverty is not a certain small amount of goods, nor is it just a relation between means and ends; above all it is a relation between people. Poverty is a social status. As such it is the invention of civilisation. It has grown with civilisation, at once as an invidious distinction between classes and more importantly as a tributary relation that can render agrarian peasants more susceptible to natural catastrophes than any winter camp of Alaskan Eskimo.
References
1. Lowie, Robert H; 1946 An introduction to Cultural Anthropology (2nd ed.) New York. Rinehart.
2. Braidwood, Robert J. 1957. Prehistoric Men. 3rd ed. Chicago Natural History Museum Popular Series, Anthrpology, Number 37.
3. Braidwood; Robert J. 1952. The Near East and the Foundations for Civilisation. Eugene: Oregon State System of Higher Education.
4. Boas, Franz. 1884-85. "The Central Eskimo", Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of American Ethnology, Anthropological Reports 6: 399=699.
5. White, Leslie A. 1949. The Science of Culture. New York: Farrar, Strauss.
6. White, Leslie A. 1959. The Evolution of Culture. New York: McGraw-Hill.
7. Grey, Sir George. 1841. Journals of Two Expeditions of Discovery in North-West and Western Australia, During the Years 1837, 38, and 39... 2 vols. London: Boone.
8. Eyre, Edward John. 1845. Journals of Expeditions of Discovery into Central Australia, and Overland from Adelalde to King George's Sound, in the Years 184041.2 vols. London: Boone.
9. Marshall, Lorna. 1961. "Sharing, Talking, and Giving: Relief of Social Tensions Among "Kung Bushmen", Africa 31:23149.
10. Gusinde, Martin. 1961. The Yamana 5 vols. New Haven, Conn.: Human Relations Area Files. (German edition 1931).
11. Laurens van der Post: The Heart of the Hunter.
12. Le Jeune, le Pere Paul. 1897. "Relation of What Occured in New France in the Year 1634", in R. G. Thwaites (ed.), The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents. Vol. 6. Cleveland: Burrows. (First French edition, 1635).
13. Herskovits, Melville J. 1952. Economic Anthropology. New York: Knopf.
14. Lee, Richard. 1968. "What Hunters Do for a Living, or, How to Make Out on Scarce Resources", in R. Lee and I. DeVore (eds.), Man the Hunter. Chicago: Aldine.
15. Lee, Richard. 1969. "Kung Bushmen Subsistence: An Input-Output Analysis", in A. Vayda (ed.), Environment and Cultural Behaviour. Garden City, N.Y.: Natural History Press.
16. Woodburn, James. 1968. "An introduction to Hadza Ecology", in Lee and I. DeVore (eds.), Man the Hunter. Chicago: Aldine.
17. Woodburn, James (director). 1966: "The Hadza" (film available from the anthropological director, department of Anthropology, London School of Economics).
18. Polanyi, Karl. 1974. "Our Obsolete Market Mentality", Commentary 3:109-17.
19. Spencer, Baldwin, and F. J. Gillen, 1899. The Native Tribes of Central Australia London: Macmillan.
20. Basedow, Herbert. 1925. The Australian Aboriginal. Adelaide, Australia: Preece.
21. Conklin, Harold C. 1957. Hanunoo Agriculture. Rome: Food and Agricultural Organisation of the United Nations.
22. Lowie, Robert H. 1938. "Subsistence", in F. Boas (ed.), General Anthropology. (2nd ed.) New York: Rinehart.

Extract from stone-age Economics. By Marshall Sahlins

I N C U N A B U L A


A Catalogue of Rare Books, Manuscripts & Curiosa
Conspiracy Theory, Frontier Science & Alternative Worlds
Emory Cranston, Prop.

Incunabulum / cocoon / swaddling clothes / cradle /
in-cunae, in the cradle / koiman, put to sleep / winding-
sheet / koimetarium (cemetery)/ printed books before
1501, hence by extension any rare & hermetic book ...


NOTE: This catalog is a reproduction.—deoxy.org

No book for sale here was actually printed before 1501, but they all answer to the description " rare and hermetic"—even the mass market paperbacks, not to mention the xeroxes of unpublished manuscripts, which cannot be obtained from any other source!

The symbol INCUNABULA was chosen for our company for it's shape—cocoon, egg-like, gourd-like, the shape of Chaos according to Chuang Tzu. Cradle: beginings. Sleep: dreams. Silken white sheets of birth and death; books, white pages, the cemetery of ideas.

This catalogue has been put together with a purpose: to alert YOU to a vast cover up, a conspiracy so deep that no other researcher has yet become aware of it (outside certain Intelligence circles, needless to say!)—and so dangerous that the "winding sheet" imagery in our title seems quite appropriate; we know of at least two murders so far in connection with this material.

Unlike other conspiracy theories, such as Hollow earth, Men In Black,cattle mutilation, UFO, Reich & Tesla or what have you, the INCUNABULA Theory harmonizes with genuine frontier quantum mechanics and chaos mathematics, and does not depend on any quack nostrums, pseudoscience or ESP for proof. This will become clear to anyone who takes the trouble to read the background material we recommend and offer for sale.

Because of the unprecedented nature of the INCUNABULA File we have included short descriptions of some of the books, pamphlets, flyers, privately-circulated or unpublished manuscripts, ephemera & curiosa available through us. Some of this is highly inflammable and sexual in nature, so an age statement must be included with each order.

Cash (or stamps) only. No cheques or money orders will be accepted.

Thank You,
Emory Cranston,Prop.



1. Wolf, Fred Alan.
Parallel Universes: The Search for Other Worlds
(New York, Simon & Schuster, 1988) cloth; 351 pp.; $25

Written by a scientist for non-scientists, simplistic and jokey, makes you feel a bit talked-down-to. Nevertheless Wolf uses his imagination (or other scientists imaginations) so well he seems to hit accidentally on certain truths (unless he knows more than he reveals). For example: the parallel universes must have all come into being simultaneously "at the beginning" in order for quantum uncertainty to exist, because there was no observer present at the Big Bang, thus no way for the Wave Function to collapse and produce one universe out of all the bubbles of possibility (p.174). If an electron can dissapear in one universe and appear in another (as suggested by the Everett/Wheeler material), a process called "quantum tunneling", then perhaps information can undergo a similar tunneling effect. Wolf suggests (p. 176) that this might account for certain "psychic phenomenon, altered states of awareness," even ghosts and spirits! Actual travel between worlds must of course involve tunneling by both electrons AND information—any scientist would have predicted as much—but the mention of "altered states" of consciousness is extremely revealing! Elsewhere (p.204), Wolf speculates that a future "highly developed...electronic form of biofeedback" will allow us to observe quantum effects in the electrons of our own bodies, making the enhanced consciousness and the body itself a "time machine" (which is what he calls a device for travel between universes). He comes so close to the truth then shies away! For instance (p.199) he points out that the Wave Function has a value BETWEEN zero and one until it collapses. If the wave function does not collapse, the "thing" it describes exists in two universes simultaneously. How strange of him not to mention that fractal geometry also deals with values between zero and one! As we know the secret of travel between worlds is rooted in the marriage of quantum and chaos, particularly in the elusive mathematics of fractal tesseracts (visualize a 4-dimension Mandelbrot Set—one of the simplest of the trans-dimensional "maps" or "catastrophic topologies"). Wolf appears so unaware of this, we must sadly conclude that he's not part of the conspiracy.

Particularly interesting—and not found in any other material- are Wolf's specualtions about schizophrenia. Are schizophrenics recieving information from other worlds? Could a schizoid observer actually observe (in the famous double slit experiments) a wave becoming two particles and then one particle? Or could such an observation be made by an extremely blank and simple-minded watcher (a sort of zen simpleton perhaps)? If so, the perfect subject for parellel-worlds experiments would be a paradoxically complex simpleton, a "magnetized schizophrenic" who would be aware of the split into two worlds which occurs when a quantum measurement is made. Oddly enough, such a mental state sounds very close to the "positive schizophrenia" of certain extreme psychedelic experiences as well as the meditation-visualization exercises of actual travelers between worlds.

Despite it's flaws, an essential work.

2. Herbert, Nick.
Quantum Reality
(NAL, 1986) Cloth, $40

A masterful and lucid exposition of the different versions of reality logically describable from various interpretations of quantum mechanics. The Everett/Wheeler Theory is here given it's clearest explanation possible in lay persons terms, given the authors awareness (at the time) of experimental verification.

3. ibid.
Faster Than Light: Superluminal Loopholes in Physics
(NAL, 1988) cloth, $30

Some of the theorists who touch on the Many-Worlds "hypothesis" place too much emphasis on time distortions and the implication of "time travel". These of course seem present in the theorems, but in practice have turned out (so far) to be of little consequence. Chaos Theory places much more emphasis on the temporal directionality than most quantum theory (with such exceptions as R. Feynman and his "arrow of time"), and offers strong evidence for the past-present-future evolution that we actually experience. As K.Sohrawardi puts it, "the universe is in a state of Being, true, but that state is not static in the way suggested by the concept of 'reversibility' in Classical physics. The 'generosity' of Being, so to speak, is becoming, and the result is not reversibility but multiplicity, the unmeasurable resonant chaos-like fecundity of creation. "Nevertheless, Herbert's second book is a brilliant speculative work—and it led him directly to a certain circle of scientists and body of research concerned with dimensional travel, rather than "time travel," with the result that his third book (see next item) finally struck paydirt.

4. "Jabir ibn Hayaan" (Nick Herbert).
Alternate Dimensions
(publication suppressed by Harper & Row, 1989); bound uncorrected galleys, 179pp. $100. (We have 5 sets of proofs for sale, after which only xerox copies will be available at $125)

While working on Faster Than Light Herbert came into contact with one of the "travel cults" operating somewhere in California, perhaps one with a sufiistic slant ("Jabir ibn Hayaan" was a famous 10th century sufi alchemist); according to the preface of Alternate Dimensions, which is irritatingly vague and suggestive, this group seems to have trained him and sent him on at least one trip to America2. Herbert suggests that he already had so much experience of altered states of consciousness and ability to visualize complex space/time geometries that only a minimum of "initiatic" training proved necessary.

In any case, despite it's vagueness and brevity, this book is the most accurate and thoroughly-informed work on travel between worlds in our entire collection. So far we have been unable to obtain any deep theoretical work, and only a few papers dealing with practical aspects - but Herbert provides a magnificent overview of the entire field. Written for the lay person, with his usual clear and succinct approach to theory, Herbert's is the first "popular" study to make all the basic links: the Everett/Wheeler hypothesis, Bell's Theorem, the E/R Bridge, fractal geometry and chaos math, cybernetically-enhanced biofeedback, psychotropic and shamanic techniques, crystallography, morphogenetic field theory, catastrophe topology,etc.

Of course he's strongest in discussing the quantum aspects of travel, less sure when dealing with the math outside his field, and most inspiring when describing (pp.98-101) visualization techniques and "embodied ecstasy" (ex-stasis, "standing outside" the body; hence embodied ecstasy paradoxically describes the transdimensional experience).

Herbert makes no claim to understand the traveling itself, and goes so far as to suggest that even the (unnamed) pioneers who made the first breakthroughs may not have completely understood the process, any more than the inventor of the steam engine understood Classical physics (p.23). This definitely ties in with what we know about the persons in question.

Unfortunately the six illustrations promised in the table of contents are not included in the galleys—one of them was a "Schematic for a Trans-dimensional Express" which might be worth killing for!—and the publishers claim that Herbert never supplied the illustrations. They refuse to say why they suspended publication of Alternate Dimensions and in fact at first denied ever having handled such a title! Moreover Herbert has apparently dropped out of sight; if he hasn't met with foul play, he may have returned permanently to Earth2.

We regret having to sell copies of a flawed book for such an outrageous price; we'd like to publish a massmarket edition affordable by all—but if Harper & Row ever find out what we're doing, we'll need the money for court costs and lawyers' fees! So get it while you can—this is THE indispensable background work for understanding the Conspiracy.

5. Thomsen, Dietrick E.
A Knowing Universe Seeking to be Known
(Xerox offprint from Science News, Vol.123, 1983); $5

Unwittingly demonstrates the resonance between quantum reality theory and the Sufism of (for example) "the Greatest Shaykh" Ibn'Arabi, who discusses in his Bezels of Wisdom a saying attributed to God by Mohammad (but not in the Koran): "I was a hidden treasure and I wanted (lit.'loved') to be known; so I created the universe, that I might be known."

5a. We also have a few offprints (at the same price) of Thomsen's witty "Quanta at Large: 101 Things TO DO with Schrodinger's Cat" (op.cit, 129, 1986).

6. DeWitt, Bryce S. & Neill Graham.
The Many Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics
(Princeton, NJ, 1973); cloth, $50

The standard (and far from "easy"!) work on the Everett/Wheeler hypothesis—a bible for the early pioneers.

7. Cramer, John G.
Alternate Universes II
(Analog, Nov. 1984)

A popularization of the Theory by a prominent physicist—no knowledge of the Conspiracy is detectable. We're selling copies of the SciFi mag itself for $10 each.

8. Greenberg, D.M., ed.
New Techniques & Ideas in Quantum Measurement Theory
(Vol. 480 Annals of the NY Academy of Sciences, 1986); cloth, $50

Contains the valuable if somewhat whimsical article by D.Z. Albers, "How to take a Photograph of Another Everett World". Also the very important "Macroscopic Quantum Tunneling at Finite Temperatures" by P.Hanggi (we suspect him of being a Conspiracy member).

9. (Anonymous).
Course Catalogue for 1978-79,
Institute of Chaos Studies and Imaginal Yoga (no address);
xerox of mimeographed flyer, 7pp, $15

An in-house document from the Institute where the first breakthrough was attained (probably in the late winter or early spring of 1979)—therefore, although it makes no overt mention of Travel or the Egg, the catalogue is of prime importance for an understanding of the intellectual and historical background of the event.

According to an unrelaible source (see ESCAPE FROM EARTH PRIME!, #15 in this list), the Institute was located somewhere in Dutchess County, New York, where the founder and director, Dr. Kamadev Sohrawardi, was employed by IBM in the 1960's, "dropped out" and began investigations into "consciousness physics"; it is also claimed that Sohrawardi was a Bengali of mixed English, Hindu and Moslem origin, descended from an old sufi family, and initiated into Tantra. All this disagrees with clues in other sources and is perhaps not to be trusted. Other groups take credit for the Breakthrough, and sohrawardi may have been a fraud—but we're convinced that the catalogue is authentic and Sohrawardi's claim the most certain.

At first glance, the Catalogue appears an example of late-hippy/early-New-Age pretentiousness. Thus there are courses in "Visions of Color & Light in Sufi Meditation," "Inner Alchemy in Late Taoism," "Metaphysics of the Ismaili 'Assassins,'" , "Imaginal Yoga & the Psychotoplogy of the Imagination," "Hermetic & Neo-Pagan Studies," (apparently based on Golden Dawn teachings), "Visualization Techniques in Javanese Sorcery," "Stairways to Heaven: Shamanic Trance & the Mapping of Consciousness," "Stirner, Nietzsche & Stone age Economy: An Examination of Non-Authoritarian Hunter/Gatherer Societies,", and—interestingly enough! - "Conspiracy Theory".

The "shamanic" course may have been a blind for research in psychotropic drugs, including such exotica as ayahuasca (yage, harmaline), ibogaine, yohimbine, Telepathine and Vitamin K, as well as the more standard psychedelicatessan of the late 70's.

However, the Catalogue also contains amazing courses in frontier science, any combination of which could have provided the key or final puzzle-bit to the Breakthrough: apparently Sohrawardi taught or supervised most of them. Thus "The Universe in a Grain of Sand" promised information on models of brain activity, cybernetically-enhanced feedback, Sheldrake's morphogenetic field theory, Rene' Thom's Catastrophic Theory as applied to consciousness, lucid-dreaming research, John Lilly's work on "altered states" and other mind-related topics. Then in "Strange Attractors & the Mathematics of Chaos," Sohrawardi discussed matters unknown outside of the margins of academia till the mid-80's,and made the astounding prediction that Chaos in the macroscopic world somehow be found to mirror Uncertainty in the microscopic or Quantum World, a truth still unrecognized in "official" scientific circles today.He felt that n-dimensional strange attractors could be used to model the quantum behavior of particles/waves, and that the "so-called collapse of the wave function" could actually be mapped with certain bizzare ramifications of Thom's catasrophic topology. Making references to work by Ilya Prigogine which was still being circulated in private "preprint" or samizdat form at the time, Sohrawardi suggests that "creative chaos" (as opposed to "deterministic" or entropic chaos) provides the link that will unify Relativity, Quantum, Complexity and consciuosness itself into a new science.

Finally in his "Advanced Seminar on Many Worlds," he states baldly that the alternative universes predicted by Relativity (Black Hole Theory) are the same as the many worlds predicted by Quantum, are the same as fractal dimensions revealed in Chaos! This one-page course description is the closest thing we have to an explanation of why travel to other worlds actually works. Hence the Catalogue is an indespensable document for the serious student of the Conspiracy.

10. Beckenstein, J.
"Black holes & Entropy"
(xerox offprint from Physical Review, Vol.D7, 1973; 28pp), $15

An early (pre-Breakthrough) speculation with suggestive hints about quantum and chaos-as-entropy—although no knowledge of actual Chaos Theory is demonstrated. This paper was referred to in an in-house memo from the Inst. for Chaos Studies & Imaginal Yoga, believed to have been composed by K.Sohrawardi himself (see #9).

11. Sohrawardi,Dr Kamadev.
"Pholgiston & the Quantum Aether"
(Offprint from the J. of Paranormal Physics, Vol.XXII, Bombay, 1966), $40

An early paper by Sohrawardi, flooded with wild speculations about quantum and oriental spirituality, probably dating from the period when he was still working for IBM, but making visits to Millbrook, nearby in Dutchess Co., and participating in the rituals of the League of spiritual discovery under Dr. Timothy Leary, and the psychedelic yoga of Bill Haines' Sri Ram Ashram, which shared Leary's headquarters on a local millionaires estate. The basic insight concerns the identity of Everett/Wheeler's "many worlds" and the "other worlds" of sufism, tantrik Hinduism and Vajrayana Buddhism. At the time, Sohrawardi apparently believed he could "prove" this by reviving the long-dead theories of phlogiston and aether in the light of quantum discoveries! (Phlogiston Theory—based on the thinking of the sufi alchemist Jabir ibn Hayaan—the original Jabir—was propounded seriously in the 18th century to unify heat and light as "one thing".) Totally useless as science, this metaphor nevertheless inspired Sohrawardi's later and genuinely important work on alternate realities.

12. ibid.
"Zero Work & Psychic Paleolithism"
East Village Other, Vol.IV #4 (Dec.1968)
xerox reprint, single sheet 11 1/2 x 17 $5

Unfortuantely no scientific speculations, but a fascinating glimpse into the political background of the inventor of Travel (or rather, one of the inventors). Making reference to French Situationist and Dutch "Provo" ideas which helped spark the "Events" and upheavals of Spring '68 all over Europe and America, Sohrawardi looks forward to a world without "the alienating prison of WORK," restored to the "oneness with Nature of the Old Stone Age" and yet somehow based on "green technology and quantum weirdness."

Wild and wooly as it is, this text nevertheless poses a fascinating scientific question in the light of the author's later accomplishments—a question still unanswered. All the "First Breakthroughs" we know of with any degree of certainty (those in New York, California, and Java—the actual sequence is unclear) without exception entered parallel worlds without human inhabitants, virtual forest-worlds. Most science fiction predicated other worlds almost like ours, populated by "us," with only a few slight differences, worlds "close" to ours. Instead-no people!

Why?

Two possible explanations:

1. We cannot enter worlds containing "copies" of ourselves without causing paradox and violating the consistency principle of the "megaverse"—hence only wild (or feral) worlds are open to Travel.

2. Other worlds exist, in a sense, only as probabilities; in order to "become fully real" they must be observed. In effect, the parallel universes are observer-created, as soon as a traveller "arrives" in one of them. Sohrawardi wanted a paleolithic world of endless forest, plentiful game and gathering, virgin, empty but slightly haunted—therefore, that's what he got! Either explanation raises problems in the light of what actually happened; perhaps there is a third, as yet unsuspected.

13. (Anonymous).
Ong's Hat: A Color Brochure of the Institute of Chaos Studies
(photocopy of the original color brochure) $25

This bizarre document, disguised as a brochure for a New Age health retreat, reveals some interesting information about the activities of Sohrawardi's group or a closely-associated group, a fairly accurate description of the Egg is provided, as well as a believable account of the first (or one of the first) Breakthroughs. However, everthing else in the pamphlet is sheer disinformation. The New Jersey Pine Barrens were never a center of alternate-worlds research, and all the names in the text are false. A non-existant address is included. Nevertheless, highly valuable for background.

14. "Sven Saxon".
The Stone Age Survivalist
(Loompanics, UnLtd., Port Townsend, WA 1985), Pb, $20

"Imagine yourself suddenly plunked down buck-nacked in the middle of a large dark forest with no resources except your mind," says the preface."What would you do?"

What indeed? and who could possibly care?—except a trans-dimensional Traveller! Loompanics specializes in books on dissapearances and survival involving a good deal of escapist fantasy—but as we know, this situation is all too real for the Visitor to Other Worlds.

Part I: Flint-knapping, an exellent illustrated handbook of paleolithic tool-production; II Zero-tech hunting and trapping; III, Gathering (incl. a materia medica); IV, Shelter; V, Primitive warfare; VI,Man & Dog: trans-species symbiosis; VII, Cold weather survival; VIII, Culture ("Sven" recommends memorizing a lot of songs, poems and stories—and ends by saying "Memorize this book—'cause you can't take it with you." Where is Mr.Saxon now, we wonder?).

15. Balcombe, Harold S.
Escape From Earth Prime!
(Foursquare Press, Denver, Colo., 1986), Pb, $15

This—unfortunately!—is the book that blew the lid off the Conspiracy for the first time. We say "unfortuantely" because ESCAPE!, to all appearances, is a piece of unmitigated paranoid pulp tripe. Written in breathless ungrammatical subFortean prose, unfootnoted and nakedly sensationalistic, the book sank without trace, ignored even by the kook-conspiracy fringe; we were able to buy out unsold stock from the vanity press which published it, just before they went out of business and stopped answering their mail.

Balcombe (whom we've been unable to trace and who may have "vanished"), is the author of one other book we've seen—but are not offering for sale—called "Drug Lords from the Hollow Earth" (1984) in which he claims that the CIA obtained LSD and cocaine from Dero-flying-saucer-nazis from beneath Antarctiac. So much for his credentials. How he got hold of even a bit of the authentic Other Worlds story is a miracle.

According to Balcombe, the first breakthrough was due not solely to K.Soharawardi—despite his importance as a theoretician—but also a "sinister webwork of cultists, anarchists, commies, fanatical hippies and renegade traitor scientists who made fortunes in the drug trade" (p.3). Balcombe promises to name names, and out of the welter of rant and slather, some hard facts about the pioneers actually emerge.

Funding (and some research) emanated in the 70's from a "chaos cabal" of early Silicon Valley hackers interested in complex dynamical systems, randomicity, and chance, and-gambling!—as well as a shadowy group of "drug lords" (Balcombe's favorite term of abuse), with connections to certain founders of the Discordian Illuminati. Money was channelled through a cult called the Moorish Orthodox Church, a loose knit confederation of jazz musicians, oldtime hipsters, white "sufis" and black moslems, bikers and street dealers (see" A Heresologist's Guide to Brooklyn", #24 in this list) who came into contact with Sohrawardi in Millbrook in the mid-60's.

Sohrawardi was a naive idealist and somewhat careless about his associations. He received clandestine support from people who were in turn connected to certain Intelligence circles with an interest in psychedelic and fringe mind-science. According to Balcombe this was not the CIA (MK-ULTRA) but an unofficial offshoot of several groups with Masonic connections! The Conspiracy was penetrated almost from the start, but was actually encouraged in the hope of gleaning useful information about parallel worlds, or at least about the "mental conditioning techniques" developed as part of the basic research.

By the mid-70's, Sohrawardi and his various cohorts and connections (now loosely referred to as "the Garden of Forked Paths" or GFP) had become aware of the Intelligence circles (now loosely grouped as "Probability Control Force" or PCF) and had in turn planted double-agents, and gone further underground. In 1978 or 79 an actual device for trans-dimensional Travel, the "Egg" (also called the Cocoon or the Cucurbit, which means both gourd and alchemical flask) was developed in deepest secrecy, probably at Sohrawardi's institute in Upstate New York, certainly not at a branch lab supposedly hidden away in the NJ Pine Barrens near the long-vanished village of Ong's Hat (see #13 in this list), since no such lab ever existed, nor does it exist now, despite what some fools think.

The PCF were unable to obtain an Egg for several years and did not succeed in Breakthrough until (Balcombe believes) 1982. The California groups, however, began Egg-production and broke through (into "BigSur2") in early 1980 (again, Balcombe's chronology). (Balcombe clearly knows nothing of the situation in Java.)

It remains unclear whether the East Coast and West Coast groups both entered the same alternate world, or two different but similar worlds. Communication between the two outposts has so far proved impossible because, as it happens, the Egg will not transport non-sentient matter. Travellers arrive Over There birth-naked in a Stone Age world—no airplanes, no radio, no clothes ... no fire and no tools! Only the Egg, like a diamond Faberge easter gift designed by Dali, alone in the midst of "Nature naturing". Balcombe includes a dim out-of-focus photo of an Egg, and claims that the machine is part computer but also partly-living crystal, like virus or DNA, and also partly "naked quantumstuff".

Eggs are costly to produce, so the early pioneers had to return after each sortie and forego permanent settlement on E2 until a cheaper mode of transport could be discovered. However, emigration via the Egg proved possible when the "tantrik" or "double-yolk" effect was discovered: two people (any combination of age, gender, etc.) can Travel by Egg while making love, especially if one of the pair has already done the trip a few times and "knows the way" without elaborate visualization techniques and so forth. Balcombe has a field day with this juicy information and spends an entire chapter (VIII) detailing the "perversions" in use for this purpose. Talent for Travel ranges from brilliant to zero—probably no more than 15% of humanity can make it, although the less-talented and even children can be "translated" by the tantrik technique—and extensive training methods have somewhat improved the odds. California2 now contains about 1000 emigrants scattered along the coast, and the eastern settlements add up to 500 or 600. A few children have been born "over there"—some can Travel, some can't, although the talented percentage seems greater than among the general population of Earth-prime. And being "stuck" on E2 is no grave punishment in any case!, unless you object to the Garden of Eden and the "original leisure society" of the Paleolithic flintknappers.

Balcombe claims that the PCF was severely disappointed by the sentience "law" of Travel, since they had hoped to use the parallel worlds as a weapons-delivery system! Nevertheless they continued to experiment, hoping for a more "mechanistic" technique; meanwhile they devote their efforts to (a) suppressing all information leaks, (b) plotting against the independent GFP and infiltrating the E2 settlements, (c) attempting to open new worlds where technology might be possible. They are however handicapped by a shortage of talent: the kind of person who can Travel is not usually the kind of person who sympathizes with the "patriotic discipline of the PCF" and rogue Masonic groups, but some of these end up defecting and "doubling", and anyway most of them are much too weird for the taste of the rigidly reactionary inner core of PCF leadership, who wonder (as does Balcombe) whether these agents are "any better than the scum they're spying on?"

More worlds have been discovered—E3 and E4 are mentioned in ESCAPE! (and we know that E5 was opened in 1988)—but all of these are "empty" forest worlds apparently almost identical with E2.

In summary, Balcombe's style is execrable and attitude repulsive, but his book remains the most accurate overview of the Conspiracy to date. If you're only going to order one item from us, this is it.

16. (Anonymous).
Bionic Travel: An Orgonomic Theory of the Megaverse
(xerox of unpubl. typescript headed "Top Secret—Eyes Only"; 27pp), $15

If this paper emanates from PCF sources, as we believe, it indicates the poor quality of original research carried out by the enemies of Sohrawardi and the GFP, and may explain the PCF's relative lack of progress in the field (especially considering their much larger budget!). The author attempts to revive W. Reich's Orgone Theory, with "bions" as "life-force particles" and some sort of orgone accumulator (Reich's "box") as a possible substitute for the Egg. An unhealthy interest is shown in "harnessing the force of Deadly Orgone" as a weapon for use on other worlds. References are also made to Aliester Crowley's "sex magick techniques" of the Ordo Templi Orientis—even speculations on human sacrifice as a possible source of "transdimensional energy". A morbid and crackpot document, devoid of all scientific value (in our opinion) but affording a fascinating insight into PCF mentality and method.

17. Corbin, Henry.
Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn'Arabi
(trans. by R. Mannheim; Princeton, NJ, 1969), cloth, $50; Pb, $20

One of the few books mentioned by title in the Catalogue of the Inst. of Chaos Studies & Imaginal Yoga (see #9 in this list). The "mundus imaginalis", also called the World of Archetypes or the "Isthmus" (Arabic, barzakh), lies in between the World of the Divine and the material World of Creation. It actually consists of "many worlds", including two "emerald cities" called Jabulsa and Jabulqa (very intriguing considering the situation on Java2!). The great 14th-century Hispano-Moorish sufi Ibn'Arabi developed a metaphysics of the "Creative Imagination" by which the adept could achieve spiritual progress via direct contemplation of the archetypes, including the domains of djinn, spirits and angels. Ibn'Arabi also speaks of seven alternate Earths created by Allah, each with its own Mecca and Kaaba! Some parallel-universe theorists believe that Travel without any tech (even the Egg) may be possible, claiming that certain mystics have already accomplished it. If so, then Ibn'Arabi must have been one of them.

18. Gleick, James.
CHAOS: Making a New Science
(Viking Penguin, NY, 1987), cloth, 254pp, $30

The first and still the most complete introduction to chaos—required reading—BUT with certain caveats. First: Gleick has no philosophical or poetic depth; he actually begins the book with a quote from John Updike! No mention of chaos mythology or oriental sources. No mention of certain non-American chaos scientists such as Rene Thom and Ilya Prigogine! Instead, alongside the admittedly useful info, one gets a subtle indoctrination in "deterministic chaos", by which we mean the tendency to look on chaos as a weapon to fight chaos, to "save" Classical physics - and learn to predict the Stock Market! (As opposed to what we call the "quantum chaos" of Sohrawardi and his allies, which looks on chaos as a creative and negentropic source, the cornucopia of evolution and awareness.) Warning: we suspect Gleick of being a PCF agent who has embedded his text with subtle disinformation meant to distract the chaos-science community from any interest in "other worlds".

19. Pak Hardjanto.
Apparent Collapse of the Wave Function as an n-Dimensional Catastrophe
(trans. by "N.N.S." in Collected Papers of the SE Asian Soc. for Advanced Research, Vol.XXIX, 1980), 47pp, xerox of offprint, $15

An early paper by the little-known scientific director of the Javanese "Travel Cult" which succeeded in breakthrough, possibly in the year this essay was published or shortly thereafter. Hardjanto is known to have been in touch with Sohrawardi since the 60's; no doubt they shared all information, but each kept the other secret from their respective organizations. The pioneers of Java2 became known to the GFP and PCF only around 1984 or 85.

This article, the only scientific work we possess by Hardjanto, shows him to be a theoretician equal or even superior to Sohrawardi himself— and if Hardjanto is also the anonymous author of the following item, as we believe, then he appears a formidable "metaphysicist" as well!

"Apparent Collapse", while certainly not a blueprint for Egg construction, nevertheless constitutes one of the few bits of "hard" science published openly on our Subject. Unfortunately, its theorems and diagrams are doubtless comprehensible only to a handful of experts. The topological drawings literally boggle the mind, especially one entitled "Hypercube Undergoing 'Collapse' Into 5-Space Vortex"!

20. (Unsigned, probably by Pak Hardjanto).
A Vision of Hurqalya
(trans. by K.K. Sardono; Incunabula Press, 1988), Pb, 46pp, $20

The Indonesian original of this text appeared as a pamphlet in Yogjakarta (E.Java) in 1982. We ourselves at Incunabula commissioned the translation and have published this handsome edition, including all the illustrations from the original, at our own expense.

If one knew nothing about the Conspiracy or Many-Worlds Theory, A Vision would seem at first to be a mystical tract by an adherent of kebatinan, the heterodox sufi-influenced freeform esoteric/syncretistic complex of sects which has come to be influential in GFP circles, inasmuch as the idea of "spiritual master" (guru, murshed) has been replaced by "teacher" (pamong); some kebatinan sects utilize spontaneous non-hierarchical organizational structures.

However, in the light of our knowledge of the material existence of other worlds, Vision takes on a whole new dimension, as a literal description of what Hardjanto and his fellow pioneers found on Java2.

They discovered another uninhabited world, but with one huge difference. The author of Vision steps out of his "alchemical Egg" into a vast and ancient abandoned City! He calls it Hurqalya (after a traditional sufi name for the Other World or alam'e mithal). He senses his total aloneness, feels that the City's builders have long since moved on elsewhere, and yet that they still somehow somewhere exist.

The author compares Hurqalya to the ancient ruined city of Borobadur in E.Java, but notices immediately that there are no statues or images, all the decoration is abstract and severe, but "neither Islamic nor Buddhist nor Hindu nor Christian nor any style I ever saw". The "palaces" of Hurqalya are grand, cyclopaean, almost monolithic, far from "heavy" in atmosphere, despite the black basalt from which they seem to have been carved. For the City is cut through by water ... it is in fact a water-city in the style of the Royal Enclave of Yogjakarta (now so sadly derelict), but incomparably bigger. Canals, aqueducts, rivers and channels crisscross and meander through the City; flowing originally from quiescent volcanic mountains looming green in the West, Water flows down through the City which is built on a steep slope gradually curving into a basin and down to the placid Eastern Sea, where a hundred channels flow dark and clear into the green salt ocean.

Despite the air of ruin—huge trees have grown through buildings, splitting them open—mosses, ferns and orchids coat the crumbling walls with viridescence, hosting parrots, lizards, butterflies—despite this desolation, most of the waterworks still flow: canal-locks broken open centuries ago allow cascades, leaks, spills and waterfalls in unexpected places, so that the City is wrapped in a tapestry of water-sounds and songbird voices. Most amazingly, the water flows at different levels simultaneously, so that aqueducts cross over canals which in turn flow above sunken streams which drip into wells, underground cisterns and mysterious sewers in a bewildering complex of levels, pipes, conduits and irrigated garden terraces which resemble (to judge by the author's sketches) a dreamscape of Escher or Piranesi. Viewed from above, the City would be mapped as an arabesque 3PD spiderweb (with waterbridges aboveground, streams at ground level and also underground) fanning out to fill the area of the basin, thence into the harbor with its huge cracked basalt-block docks.

The slope on which the City is built is irregularly terraced in ancient SE Asian style—as many staircases and streets thread their way up and down, laid out seemingly at random, following land-contours rather than grid-logic, adding to the architectural complexity of the layer of waterways with a maze of vine-encrusted overpasses, arched bridges, spiralling ramps, crooked alleyways, cracked hidden steps debouching on broad esplanades, avenues, parks gone to seed, pavilions, balconies, apartments, jungle-choked palazzos, echoing gloomy "temples" whose divinities, if any, seem to have left no forwarding address ... all empty, all utterly abandoned. And nowhere is there any human debris—no broken tools, bones or midden heaps, no evidence of actual habitation—as if the ancient builders of the City picked up and took everything with them when they departed—"perhaps to one of the other Seven Worlds of the alam'e mithal"—in other words, to a "higher dimension."

Thus ends the Vision of Hurqalya, raising more questions than it answers! There is no doubt that it describes exactly what was discovered in Java2 in 1980 or 81. But if the "observer-created" theory of other-worlds travel is true, "Hurqalya" represents the "imaginal imprint" of what Hardjanto (or whoever) expected to find. Yet again, if that theory is false ... who built Hurqalya? One current explanation (arising from time-distortion theorems which have so far remained unsolvable) suggests that the Builders "moved" in prehistoric times to Earth-prime and became the distant ancestors of the Javanese ("Java Man"). Another guess: the Builders have indeed moved on to a "distant" alternate universe, and eventually we may find them.

A small settlement now exists in Hurqalya. Once the American groups heard of the City's existence, members of both the GFP and PFC were able to visualize it and Travel to it from America (the Javanese can do the same from Java-prime to America2). Since 1985 all three groups have expanded most of their exploratory effort on "opening up" new worlds in the Java series. Apparently Indonesian sorcerers and trance adepts are very good at this, and we believe they have reached Java7—without, however, finding replications of the City or any trace of the Builders - only more empty forest.

21. Von Bitter Rucker, Dr R.
"The Cat Was Alive, But Looked Scared As Hell": Some Unexpected Properties of Cellular Automata in the Light of the Everett/Wheeler Hypothesis
(Complex Dynamical Systems Newsletter No. 8, 1989), offprint, $10

Who is this man and what does he know? No other serious mathematician has so far made any connection between cellular automata and the Many Worlds. Tongue-in-cheek (?), the author suggests that Schrodinger's poor cat might be both alive and dead, even after the box is opened, IF parallel universes are "stacked" in some arcane manner which he claims to be able to demonstrate with a piece of software he has hacked and is selling for an outrageous sum; we have also seen and ad for this program in a magazine called MONDO 2000, published in Berkeley and devoted to "reality hacking". We'd love to know what certain members of the Conspiracy would make of this bizarre concept!

22. Kennedy, Alison.
Psychotropic Drugs in 'Shared-World' & Lucid Dreaming Experiments
(Psychedelic Monographs & Essays, Vol.XIV, no.2,1981, offprint, $5

This writer appears to have inside information. The notion of a drug-induced hallucination so powerful it can be shared by many (in a proper "blind" experiment) and can actually come into existence, into material reality; the idea that drug-enhanced lucid dreaming can be used to discover objective information from "other ontological levels of being"; and finally the "prediction" that "a combination of these methods utilizing computer-aided biofeedback monitoring devices" will actually make it possible to "visit 'other' worlds in 'inner' space" (which suggests that the author adheres to the "observer-created" theory of parallel universes)—all this leads us to believe that the author is probably a member of one of the California Travel Cults—as well as an expert bruja!

23. (Anonymous).
A Collection of Cult Pamphlets, Flyers, Ephemera & Curiosa from the Library of a Traveller
(Looseleaf portfolio of photocopied originals) sold by lot, $25

The unknown compiler of this Collection (whom for convenience we'll call "X") left it behind when he "vanished", whence it came into our possession. We know something of the compiler's career from an untitled document written by him and found with the Collection, which we call "The Poetic Journal of a Traveller" (#24 in this list), as well as a pamphlet believed to be by the same author, Folklore of the Other Worlds (#25). (The Ong's Hat Color Brochure was also discovered in the same cache, and is sold by us as #13.)

The Collection contains the following items:

1) A History & Catechism of the Moorish Orthodox Church, which traces the origins of the sect to early (1913) American Black Islam, the "Wandering Bishops", the Beats of the 50s and the psychedelic churches movement of the 60s—deliberately vague about the 70s and 80s however.

2) The World Congress of Free Religions, a brochure-manifesto arguing for a "fourth way", a non-authoritarian spiritual movement in opposition to mainstream, fundamentalist and New Age religion.The WCFR is said to include various sects of Discordians, SubGeniuses, Coptic Orthodox People of the Herb, gay ("faery") neo-pagans, Magical Judaism, the Egyptian Church of New Zealand, Kaos Kabal of London, Libertarian Congregationalists, etc., and the Moorish Orthodox Church. Several of these sects are implicated in the Conspiracy, but no overt mention of the Travel Cults is made here.

3) Spiritual Materialism, by "the New Catholic Church of the Pantarchy, Hochkapel von SS Max und Marx", a truly weird flyer dedicated to "Saints" Max Stirner and Karl Marx, representing a group claiming foundation by the 19th century Individualist Stephen Pearl Andrews, but more likely begun in the 1980s as a Travel Cult. Uses Nietzsche to contend that material reality itself constitutes a (or the) spiritual value and the principle of Infinity "which is expressed in the existence of many worlds." It argues for a utopia based on "individualism, telepathic socialism, free love, high tech, Stone Age wilderness and quantum weirdness"! No address is given, needless to say.

4) The Sacred Jihad of Our Lady of Chaos, this otherwise untraceable group calls for "resistance to all attempts to control probability." It quotes Foucault and Baudrillard on the subject of "disappearance", then suggests that "to vanish without having to kill yourself may be the ultimate revolutionary act ... The monolith of Consensus Reality is riddled with quantum-chaos cracks ... Viral attack on all fronts! Victory to Chaos in every world!"

5) The Temple of Antinous, a Travel Cult of pedophile boy-lovers and neo-pagans devoted to Eros and Ganymede. (Warning: this leaflet contains some just-barely-legal graphic material.) "Wistfully we wonder if the boygod can manifest only in some other world than this dreary puritanical polluted boobocracy—then, gleefully, we suddenly recall: there ARE other worlds!"

6) A Collage, presumably made by X himself, consisting of a "mandala" constructed from cut-outs of Strange Attractors and various Catastrophic topologies interwoven with photos of young girls and boys clipped from Italian fashion magazines. Eroticizing the mathematical imagery no doubt helps one to remember and visualize it while operating the Egg.

24. (Anonymous).
Poetic Journal of a Traveller; or, A Heresologist's Guide to Brooklyn
(Incunabula Press, pamphlet, $15. Believed to be by "X", the compiler of the Collection, & transcribed by us from manuscript.)

Apparently X began this MS with the intention of detailing his experiences with a Travel Cult and eventual "translation" to the various alternate-world settlements, but unfortunately abandoned the project early on, possibly due to PCF interference.

It begins with a summary account of X's spiritual quest, largely among the stranger sects of his native Brooklyn: Santeria in Coney Island, Cabala in Williamsburg, Sufis on Atlantica Avenue, etc. He is disappointed or turned away (and even mugged on one occasion). He becomes friendly with a Cuban woman of mixed Spanish, black, amerindian and Chinese ancestry who runs a botanica (magical supplies and herbs). When he asks her about "other worlds", she is evasive but promises to introduce him to someone who knows more about such matters.

She orders her grandpdaughter, a 14-year-old named Teofila, to escort X through the "rough neighborhoods" to the old man's shop. The girl is wearing a t-shirt that says "Hyperborean Skateboarding Association", and indeed travels by skateboard, "gliding on ahead of me like Hermes the Psychopomp." X is clearly attracted to Teofila and becomes embarrassedly tongue-tied and awkward.

The old man, called "the Shaykh", who claims to be Sudanese but speaks "pure Alabaman", runs a junk shop and wears a battered old Shriners fez. His attitude toward X is severe at first, but X is enchanted by his rather disjointed rambling and ranting—which reveal a surprisingly wide if erratic reading in Persian poetry, the Bible, Meister Eckhardt, William Blake, Yoruba mythology and quantum mechanics. Leaving the girl in the shop, the old man takes X into his back office, "crowded with wildly eclectic junk, naive paintings, cheap orientalismo, HooDoo candles, jars of flower petals, and an ornate potbellied stove, stoked up to cherryred, suffusing waves of drowsy warmth."

The Shaykh intimidates X into sharing a big pipe of hashish mixed with amber and mescaline, then launches into a stream-of-consciousness attack on "Babylon, the Imperium, the Con, the Big Lie that there's nowhere to go and nothing to buy except their fifth-rate imitations of life, their bullshit pie-in-the-sky religions, cold cults, cold cuts of self-mutilation I call 'em, and woe to Jerusalem!"

X, now "stoned to the gills", falls under the Shaykh's spell and bursts into tears. At once the old man unbends, serves X a cup of tea "sweetblack as Jamaica run and scented with cardamon", and begins to drop broad hints about "a way out, not to some gnostic-never-land with the body gone like a fart in a sandstorm, no brother, for the Unseen World is not just of the spirit but also the flesh—Jabulsa and Jabulqa, Hyperborea, Hurqalya—they're as real as Brooklyn but a damn sight prettier!"

Late afternoon; X must return home before dark, and prepare to take leave of the Shaykh—who gives him a few pamphlets and invites him to return. To X's surprise, Teofila is still waiting outside the shop, and offers to escort him to the subway. The girl is now in a friendlier mood and X less nervous. They strike up a conversation, X asking about Hyperborea and Teofila answering, "Yeah, I know where it is, I've been there."

The main narrative ends here, but we have added some other poetic fragments included with the original MS, despite the fact that they might offend some readers, in light of the importance of the "tantrik technique" of other-world Travel. (And let us remind you that a statement of age must be included with every order from Incunabula Inc.). These rather pornographic fragments suggest that X, too shy to attempt anything himself, was in fact seduced by Teofila, and that his subsequent "training" for Egg-navigation consisted of numerous "practice sessions for double-yolking" with a very enthusiastic young tutor.

We believe that X subsequently made an extended visit to America2 and Java2, that he returned to Earth-prime on some Intelligence or sabotage mission for the GFP, that he composed a paper on Folklore of the Other Worlds (see #25), that he and Teofila somehow came to the attention of PCF agents in New York, aborted their mission and returned to Java2, where they presumably now reside.

25. (Anonymous).
Folklore of the Other Worlds
(Incunabula Press, pamphlet,$15. By the same author as #24, transcribed by us from manuscript.)

Our anonymous Traveller from Brooklyn appears to have composed this little treatise after his first extended stay in E2. It deals with tales of Travellers and inhabitants of the other-world settlements, pioneers' experiences and the like. Of great interest is the claim that ESP and other paranormal abilities increase in the parallel universes, that the effect is magnified by passing through the series of discovered "levels", and that a small band of psychic researchers has therefore settled on Java7, the present frontier world. The "temple" of Hurqalya (or whatever these vast buildings may have been) are used for sessions of meditation, martial arts and psychic experimentation. X claims that telepathy is now accepted as fact "over there," with strong evidence for telekinesis and perhaps even Egg-less Travel.

Also intriguing are various accounts of "spirits" seen or sensed around the settlements, were animals supposedly glimpsed on higher levels, and legends which have arisen concerning the lost Builders of Hurqalya. Something of a cult has grown up around these hypothetical creatures who (it is said) are "moving toward us even as we move toward them, through the dimensions, through Time—perhaps backwards through Time"!

X points out that this legend strikes an eerie resonance with "complex conjugate wave theory" in quantum mechanics, which hypothesizes that the "present" (the megaverse "now") is the result of the meeting of two infinite quantum probabililty waves, one moving from past to future, the other moving from future to past—that space/time is an interference effect of these two waves—and that the many worlds are bubbles on this shoreline!

26. Eliade, Mircea.
Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy
(Univ. of Chicago Press), Pb, $30

This "bible" of the modern neo-shamanic movement also served as a metaphorical scripture for the pioneers of interdimensional consciousness physics and alternate-world explorers.Not only does it contain innumerable practical hints for the Traveller, as well as a spiritual ambience conducive to the proper state of mind for Travel, it is also believed that Eliade's mythic material on the prototypal Stone Age shamans who could physically and actually visit other worlds, offers strong evidence for the possibility of Egg-less Travel—which however so far remains in the realm of "folklore", speculation and rumor.

27. Lorde, John.
Maze of Treason
(Red Knight Books, Wildwood, NJ, 1988), Pb, 204 pp, $10

You may remember that after the Patty Hearst kidnapping it was discovered that a cheap pornographic thriller, published before the event, seemed to foretell every detail of the story. Jungian synchronicity? Or did the Symbionese Liberation Army read that book and decide to act it out? It remains a mystery.

Maze of Treason is also a pornographic thriller, complete with tawdry 4-color cover, sloppy printing on acidulous pulp, and horrendous style. It's marketed as Science Fiction, however. And there is no mystery about the author's inside knowledge. "John Lorde" not only knows about the Conspiracy, he's obviously been there. This book is probably a roman a clef, as it appears to contain distorted portraits of Sohrawardi and Harjanto (depicted as Fu-Manchu-type villains) as well as several actual agents of both the GFP and PCF—and even a character apparently based on the real-life "X", author of several titles in our list (#s 24 & 25).

The hero, Jack Masters, is an agent of an unnamed spyforce of American patriots who jokingly call themselves the Quantum Police. Their mission is to regain control of the alternate worlds for "the forces of reason and order" and "make trouble for agents of chaos in every known universe." The Q-Cops' secret underground HDQ contains a number of Eggs granting access to hidden bases on the other worlds, including "the Other America" and "the Other Indonesia".

Jack Masters is investigating the activities of a Chaote named Ripley Taylor, a "child-molester and black magician who runs a Travel Cult out of a comicbook store in a "racially-mixed neighborhood" of New York. The Cops hope to catch Taylor with his "juvenile delinquent girlfriend", blackmail him and turn him into a double agent.

The hero now becomes involved with Amanita, a beautiful woman performance artist from the Lower East Side who seems to know a lot about Taylor and the Travel Cult, but also seems quite attracted to the virile Jack Masters. At first he suspects her of duplicity, but soon decides he needs to "convert" her by making her "fall for me, and fall hard." Jack's problem is that his own "talent" will not suffice for solo Travelling, and in fact he has never managed to "get across"—since the Cops do not practice Tantrik techniques! He suspects her of being an "Other-Worlder" and hopes she can convey him thence via the "infamous 'double-yolk' method."

Meanwhile Taylor has laughed off the blackmail attempt, burned down the comic shop and escaped "into the fourth dimension—or maybe the fifth." Masters heats up his affair with the artist Amanita, and finally convinces her to "translate" him—after three chapters of unininterrupted porno depicting the pair in many little-known ritual practises, so to speak. (The author rises above his own mediocrity here, and attains something like "purple pulp", an inspired gush of horny prose, especially in the oral-genital area.) Masters now rises to the occasion for yet a fourth chapter in which a "government-issue Egg" becomes the setting for a "yab-yum ceremony of searing obscenity."

Immediately upon arrival in "Si Fan" (the author's name for Hurqalya), Amanita betrays our hero and turns him over naked to one of the tribes of "chaos-shamans who inhabit these Lemurian ruins". At this point Maze begins to add to our knowledge of the real-life situation by depicting more-or-less accurately the state of affairs and mode of life in present-day Hurqalya, at least as seen through the eyes of a paranoid right-wing spy.

The thousand or so inhabitants have made few changes in Hurqalya, preferring a life of "primitive sloth" and minimal meddling with Nature. Sex, hallucinogenic mushrooms and song-improvisation contests comprise the night-life, with days devoted to the serious business of "sorcery, skinnydipping, flintknapping and maybe a couple of hours of desultory fishing or berrypicking." There is no social order. "People with bones in their noses sitting around arguing about Black Hole Theory or recipes for marsupial stew, lazy smoke from a few clan campfires rising through the hazy bluegold afternoon, children masturbating in trees, bees snouting into orchids, signal drum in the distance, Amanita singing an old song by the Inkspots I remember from my childhood..."

Masters—or rather the author—claims to be disgusted by all this "anarchist punk hippy immorality—all this jungle love!"—but his ambivalence is revealed in his continued desire for Amanita, and the ease with which he falls into his own curmudgeonly version of dolce far niente in "Si Fan".

We won't give away the rest of the plot, not because it's so great, but because it's largely irrelevant (Taylor flees to distant dimensions, Masters gets Girl and returns to Earth-prime in triumph, etc.,etc.)—the book's true value lies in these pictures of daily life in Hurqalya. Sadly, Maze of Treason is still our only source for such material.

The Conspiracy to deny the world all knowledge of the Many Worlds is maintained by both the forces active in the parallel universes—the GFP and PCF both have their reasons for secrecy, evasion, lies, disinformation, distortion and even violence. Maze of Treason is not our only source for claiming that people have lost their lives as a result of getting too deeply involved in all this. But we at INCUNABULA believe that truth will out, because it must. To stand in the way of it is more dangerous than letting it loose. Freedom of information is our only protection—we will tell all, despite all scorn or threat, and trust that our "going public" will protect us from the outrage of certain private interests—if not from the laughter of the ignorant!

Remember: parallel worlds exist. They have already been reached. A vast cover-up denies YOU all knowledge. Only INCUNABULA can enlighten you, because only INCUNABULA dares.

Thank You,
Emory Cranston, Prop.

http://deoxy.org/inc1.htm
http://www.incunabula.org/inc1.html