The Freedom collective is a one-shot comic that pays homage to the story-telling and artistry of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, and asks:

What if… those two giants had lived and worked in Russia and shared its hopes and fears of the time?

Alchemy is an influential philosophical tradition whose early practitioners’ claims to profound powers were known from antiquity. The defining objectives of alchemy are varied; these include the creation of the fabled philosopher’s stone possessing powers including the capability of turning base metals into the noble metals gold or silver, as well as an elixir of life conferring youth and longevity. Western alchemy is recognized as a protoscience that contributed to the development of modern chemistry and medicine. Alchemists developed a framework of theory, terminology, experimental process and basic laboratory techniques that are still recognizable today. But alchemy differs from modern science in the inclusion of Hermetic principles and practices related to mythology, religion, and spirituality.

 

 

 

 

 

The defining goals of alchemy are often given as the transmutation of common metals into gold (known as chrysopoeia), the creation of a panacea, and the discovery of a universal solvent.  However, this only highlights certain aspects of alchemy. Alchemists have historically rewritten and evolved the explanation of their art, making a singular definition difficult.  H.J. Sheppard gives the following as a comprehensive summary:

Alchemy is the art of liberating parts of the Cosmos from temporal existence and achieving perfection which, for metals is gold, and for man, longevity, then immortality and, finally, redemption. Material perfection was sought through the action of a preparation (Philosopher’s Stone for metals; Elixir of Life for humans), while spiritual ennoblement resulted from some form of inner revelation or other enlightenment (Gnosis, for example, in Hellenistic and western practices).

In the eyes of a variety of esoteric and Hermetic practitioners, the heart of alchemy is spiritual. Transmutation of lead into gold is presented as an analogy for personal transmutation, purification, and perfection. This approach is often termed ‘spiritual’, ‘esoteric’, or ‘internal’ alchemy.

Early alchemists, such as Zosimos of Panopolis (c. AD 300), highlight the spiritual nature of the alchemical quest, symbolic of a religious regeneration of the human soul.  This approach continued in the Middle Ages, as metaphysical aspects, substances, physical states, and material processes were used as metaphors for spiritual entities, spiritual states, and, ultimately, transformation. In this sense, the literal meanings of ‘Alchemical Formulas’ were a blind, hiding their true spiritual philosophy.

 

 

 

 

The origin of Western alchemy may generally be traced to Hellenistic Egypt. The Hellenistic city of Alexandria was a center of Greek alchemical knowledge, and retained its preeminence through most of the Greek and Roman periods.  Here, elements of technology, religion, mythology, and Greek philosophy, each with their own much longer histories, combined to form the earliest known records of alchemy in the West. Zosimos of Panopolis wrote the oldest known books on alchemy while Mary the Jewess is credited as being the first non-fictitious Western alchemist. They wrote in Greek and lived in Egypt under Roman rule.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Technology – The dawn of Western alchemy is sometimes associated with that of metallurgy, extending back to 3500 BCE.  Many writings were lost when the emperor Diocletian ordered the burning of alchemical books after suppressing a revolt in Alexandria (292 CE). Few original Egyptian documents on alchemy have survived, most notable among them the Stockholm papyrus and the Leyden papyrus X. Dating from 300 to 500 CE, they contained recipes for dyeing and making artificial gemstones, cleaning and fabricating pearls, and the manufacture of imitation gold and silver.  These writings lack the mystical, philosophical elements of alchemy, but do contain the works of Bolus of Mendes (or Pseudo-Democritus) which aligned these recipes with theoretical knowledge of astrology and the Classical elements. Between the time of Bolus and Zosimos, the change took place that transformed this metallurgy into a Hermetic art.

 

 

 

 

 

The demise of Western alchemy was brought about by the rise of modern science with its emphasis on rigorous quantitative experimentation and its disdain for “ancient wisdom”. Although the seeds of these events were planted as early as the 17th century, alchemy still flourished for some two hundred years, and in fact may have reached its apogee in the 18th century. As late as 1781 James Price claimed to have produced a powder that could transmute mercury into silver or gold.

 

 

 

 

The Revenge of Margaret Brundage, ‘The Queen of the Pulps’

The Revenge of Margaret Brundage, ‘The Queen of the Pulps’

 

 

 

 

 

 

Margaret Brundage was “The Queen of the Pulps”—and is now something of a forgotten revolutionary. In the early 1930s, when pulp magazines were at their most popular, she forever changed the look of fantasy and horror with 66 steamy covers created for the legendary Weird Tales. Throughout the decade her work was ubiquitous, but by the mid-1940s it had disappeared from the magazine racks. And while she remains a legend among pulp fans for this pin-up horror art, outside the niche she is seldom mentioned.

But her obscurity may soon end. J. David Spurlock, CEO of Vanguard Press, says he plans to put the monarch back on her throne with his forthcoming book, The Alluring Art of Margaret Brundage. (Hardback and paperback will be out in April along with a deluxe, slip-cased special edition featuring 16 bonus pages.)

Before Brundage, few women worked in science fiction and fantasy, and even fewer were portrayed prominently in science fiction and fantasy art. “Whether they realize it or not, today’s female fantasy artists like Olivia [De Berardinis], Julie Bell, and Rowena [Morrill] are following in Margaret’s footsteps,” Spurlock told me in a recent email exchange.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Brundage captured Spurlock’s imagination early in the 1970s, when he was collecting Frank Frazetta’s Conan paperback covers (the ones that Arnold Schwarzenegger modeled his film character on). Frazetta was called the “Rembrandt of barbarians,” but Spurlock learned that the first artist to paint the brawny superhero was actually a woman, in Depression-era pulps—and that woman was Margaret Brundage. A few years ago, he collaborated with a major sci-fi and fantasy art collector, Stephen D. Korshak—son of 1950s Shasta sci-fi publisher, Melvin Korshak—on The Paintings of J. Allen St. John (St. John was Edgar Rice Burroughs’s favorite illustrator). Korshak had been collecting Brundage art, and he urged Spurlock to investigate her “secret life.”

“Most people think of her illustration as spicy, mysterious fare, and that it is,” Spurlock says. “Decades before the gothic fetish craze, Brundage’s lush, provocative paintings, which frequently featured smoldering, semi-nude young women bearing whips, became a focus of acute attention and controversy.”

And that controversy was before “people found out that the M. in the signature M. Brundage was for Margaret—a woman,” Spurlock says. “It was unfathomable that a woman would paint such material. Yet while seeming to fulfill the editor’s request for titillation, she, in keeping with fine-art traditions, and her own politics, persevered to insert both her personality and her point of view into her sensuous women-in-peril pieces.”

 

 

 

 

Some critics complained that Brundage’s art subverted public decency, but as Spurlock says, “Margaret was actually incorporating an alternative, inconspicuous level of subversion to enact a higher level of decency. She took what was an illustration job and raised the bar: presenting women in strong roles—something far from the norm for the times.”

In fact, Brundage was seriously involved with civil rights and other “progressive” causes. With her husband, Slim Brundage, they joined the wildly bohemian Dil Pickle Club during the Chicago Renaissance, where they knew such “radical luminaries” as  Djuna Barnes and Studs Terkel. She focused on equality of the sexes and races by educating the poor to succeed through art, leading to her to become active in Chicago’s Bronzeville African-American art community.

The Alluring Art of Margaret Brundage is almost two books in one, focusing alternately on her art and her secret life. It’s also a tale about America. “Understanding Brundage’s life, from 1900 to 1976, touches on so much turbulence,” Spurlock says. “From women’s suffrage to, her classmate Walt Disney narrowly escaping an anarchist bombing to, the young bohemians, the Labor Movement, the pulps, the Beat generation, McCarthyism, and civil rights, it is an amazing journey.”

 

 

These were wild and crazy guys.

 

 

The Merry Pranksters were a group of people who formed around American author Ken Kesey in 1964 and sometimes lived communally at his homes in California and Oregon. The group promoted the use of psychedelic drugs. Their motto was Never Trust a Prankster.

Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters are noted for the sociological significance of a lengthy road trip they took in the summer of 1964, traveling across the United States in a psychedelic painted school bus enigmatically and variably labeled “Further” or “Furthur.” Their early escapades were chronicled by Tom Wolfe in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Wolfe also documents a notorious 1966 trip on Further from Mexico through Houston, stopping to visit Kesey’s friend, novelist Larry McMurtry. Kesey was in flight from a drug charge at the time.

Notable members of the group include Kesey’s best friend Ken Babbs, Carolyn Garcia, and Neal Cassady. Stewart Brand, Paul Foster, the Grateful Dead, Del Close (then a lighting designer for the Grateful Dead), Wavy Gravy, Paul Krassner, and “Kentucky Fab Five” writers Ed McClanahan and Gurney Norman (who overlapped with Kesey and Babbs as creative writing graduate students at Stanford University) were associated with the group to varying degrees.

 

 

On June 17, 1964, Kesey and 13 Merry Pranksters boarded “Further” at Kesey’s ranch in La Honda, California, and set off eastward. Kesey wanted to see what would happen when hallucinogenic-inspired spontaneity confronted what he saw as the banality and conformity of American society. One author has suggested that the bus trip reversed the historic American westward movement of the centuries.

The trip’s original purpose was to celebrate the publication of Kesey’s novel Sometimes a Great Notion and to visit the 1964 World’s Fair in New York City. The Pranksters were enthusiastic users of marijuana, amphetamines, and LSD, and in the process of their journey they are said to have “turned on” many people by introducing them to these drugs.

The psychedelically painted bus had its stated destination as being “further.” This was the goal of the Merry Pranksters, a destination that could only be obtained through the expansion of one’s own perceptions of reality. They traveled cross-country giving LSD to anyone who was willing to try it (LSD was legal in the United States until October 1966).

 

 

Ken Kesey is center with the beret

 

 

Kesey and the Pranksters also had a relationship with the infamous outlaw motorcycle gang the Hells Angels, who were introduced to LSD by Kesey. The details of their relationship are documented both in Wolfe’s book and in Hunter S. Thompson’s book, Hell’s Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs. Poet Allen Ginsberg also wrote a poem about the Kesey/Angels relationship.

I read Thompson’s book in which he describes how the Pranksters introduced LSD to the Hells Angels in California.  The Angels were being true to form and being quite obnoxious, but once they swallowed some LSD they mellowed right out.  They all became introverted and much easier to communicate with according to Kesey.

 

 

Kenneth Elton “Ken” Kesey; September 17, 1935 – November 10, 2001) was an American author, best known for his novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1962) and as a counter-cultural figure who considered himself a link between the Beat Generation of the 1950s and the hippies of the 1960s. “I was too young to be a beatnik, and too old to be a hippie,” Kesey said in a 1999 interview with Robert K. Elder.

 

 

 

Neal Cassady was in on the shenanigans.  Below photo of Cassady and Jack Kerouac.

 

 

Neal Leon Cassady (February 8, 1926 – February 4, 1968) was a major figure of the Beat Generation of the 1950s and the psychedelic movement of the 1960s. He served as the model for the character Dean Moriarty in Jack Kerouac’s novel On the Road.

 

 

 

Heavy Metal is an American science fiction and fantasy comics magazine, known primarily for its blend of dark fantasy/science fiction and erotica. In the mid-1970s, while publisher Leonard Mogel was in Paris to jump-start the French edition of National Lampoon, he discovered the French science-fantasy magazine Métal Hurlant which had debuted December 1974. The French title translates literally as “Howling Metal.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Heavy Metal logo.
Managing Editor	Debra Yanover
Frequency	Six times per year
Publisher	Kevin Eastman
First issue	1977 (1977-month)
Company	Metal Mammoth Inc.
Country	United States
Based in	Rockville Centre, New York

Most of these bizarre titles are likely buried in the back of second-hand bookstores. Although there is a good possibility that some eccentric university professor is teaching a class on the content of these books that have really bad titles.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

101 Uses for an old Farm Tractor

 

 

 

 

 

 

In his latest book Voodoo Histories Author David Aaronovitch examines the origins of conspiracy theories, why people believe them, and also to make an argument for a true skepticism based on a thorough knowledge of history and a strong dose of common sense.  Based on his research, Aaronovitch defined a conspiracy theory as “an explanation for something which is far more complicated and removes responsibility from the obvious people to the not obvious people, in situations where the more obvious explanation is more likely.”

Aaronovitch detailed a number of problematic attributes which he feels “attach themselves” to conspiracy theories and those who subscribe to them:

• Conspiracy theories do not allow for accident, incompetence, or coincidence.
• The official version of events “almost always, at its heart” has anomalies that cannot be reconciled.
• Scholars, usually with exaggerated credentials, are named as proponents of the theory.
• The theory is anti-elite and, thus, the theorist becomes “kind of a minuteman” warning the populace about the “powers that be.”

On why there needs to be skepticism about conspiracy theories, Aaronovitch used the example of recent developments in the UK which arose as a result of rumors that vaccines cause autism. He explained that this theory became so pervasive that people began to stop having their children vaccinated. In turn, Aaronovitch lamented, the measles virus re-emerged back into the population after it had been eradicated in previous years. “This stuff has to be combated because it does have consequences for people,” he declared. On a far larger scale, he noted that the widespread belief in the fraudulent Protocols of the Elders of Zion in Nazi Germany acted as a proverbial “warrant for genocide” for many misguided players in WWII.

Aaronovich also looked at a number of suspect issues surrounding a variety of conspiracy theories. With regards to the Moon Landing hoax, he observed that to complete such a fabrication would require far more manpower than the actual lunar landing itself. In addition to that, he pointed out that lunar conspiracy theorists often focus solely on the Apollo 11 landing and ignore the many other trips made to the moon. Regarding 9/11, Aaronovich conceded that the official version of events is also a conspiracy theory, but that its very simplicity is what makes this theory much more plausible than a grand overarching plan by nefarious forces inside the US government. To that end, he noted that if the government was truly clever enough to “organize conspiracies,” then they would have planted WMDs in Iraq rather than invade the country and find none. “It would have been a much simpler thing to do,” he mused, “and yet they didn’t.”