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One of the major personalities of North American Occultism is Rudolf’s guest on this upcoming episode: RICHARD KACZYNKSI
He is the author of Perdurabo: The Life of Aleister Crowley (2010), which the Times Literary Supplement deemed “the major biography to date” of the Beast. He has also written Panic in Detroit: The Magician and the Motor City (2019), Forgotten Templars: The Untold Origins of Ordo Templi Orientis (2012), The Weiser Concise Guide to Aleister Crowley (2009), and the novel The Billionth Monkey (2015), among others.
He has recently completed an edited and extensively annotated edition of Aleister Crowley’s The Sword of Song (2020). His writing has also appeared in anthologies such as The Art and Science of Initiation (2019), Success Is Your Proof (2016), Tarot in Culture (2014), Aleister Crowley and Western Esotericism (2012), and Mathematics in Popular Culture (2012).
Since 1990, he has lectured internationally on these and other topics and has been featured in the television documentaries Secrets of the Occult (2006) and Aleister Crowley: The Beast 666 (2007). By day, Richard is a social psychologist, biostatistician and research scientist whose 1993 doctoral dissertation examined metaphysical beliefs and experiences among occult practitioners.
Richard’s website can be found here
And this is his Facebook page
Music played in this episode
In this episode, I am happy to present once again music provided by our guest. Richard Kaczynski is also an active musician and has provided us with several pieces performed by him and some notes regarding them.
1) ASPIRATION, by Page
“I never cared for cover tunes that closely resemble the original: why would anyone listen to an imitation? When I was invited to contribute a track to Mellow Records’ tribute to 1970s progressive rock band Gentle Giant, I worked with vocalist Page to reimagine their song Aspirations with a Tori Amos influence.”
Richard Kaczynski in front of a replica of Keith Emerson’s (from Emerson, Lake and Palmer) famous modular synth
2) 911 – from House of Usher’s debut album Body of Mind
“911 is an instrumental solo from House of Usher’s debut album, Body of Mind (1998). I didn’t so much compose it as it just came out of me the day that my sister died in her sleep on September 11. The title refers both to the date of her death, and the emergency services phone number in the United States.”
3) THREE WALTZES AND AND A MEDITATION, by Henry Klein
“When my book Forgotten Templars came out in 2012, I interspersed my talks with music written by O.T.O. co-founder Henry Klein, letting people hear music that probably hadn’t been played in over a century. I like doing this live, but for when that is impractical I pre-recorded these four short excerpts:a. Baisers de Flamme, 1875b. Botschafter (Ambassadors), 1884c. Electricity, 1873d. En Tout Cas, 1884I particularly enjoy the introduction to Baisers de Flamme. Unlike the other selections, which follow the era’s mold of parlour room waltzes, Baisers de Flamme seems to anticipate by fifteen years the impressionism of Debussy’s Clair de Lune (written in 1890)”.
