43. CHEAP THRILLS

     Montréal emporium Cheap Thrills New and Used Books and Records (since 1971!) provided what we really subsisted upon - Books, Music and Art! This chain of provocative-thought booksellers (with assorted dope paraphernalia) sustained our junkie cravings more than words can describe, proving Knowledge is an Edible Feast. Our Love for the Word mocked our rather tedious rites of the Flesh, in more nourishing ways. Reverence for books defines one of the richest relationships sustaining Humanity : time travel with the iconic importers of Wisdom and Imagination - "Be-they-alive-or-be-they-dead..." - we literally receive their most worthy transmissions / viruses of seeded consciousness (i.e. "their-grinded-bones-become-our-bread"). The Word, courtesy Cheap Thrills, was to be devoured.....

                                                                   Omni magazines, circa 1980's
     Our comix stash consisted of punk oddities Judge Dredd, Tank Girl, Alan Moore's Swamp Thing, Neil Gaiman's Sandman, original Batman, Spiderman, and The Fantastic Four (some issues went back to the roaring Twenties!), occult sensations Doctor Strange, Vampirella, and Tales From The Crypt, and, lest we forget (for it was the Eighties, after all), Heavy Metal and Omni magazines (Omni was the main source of images for our futuristic cut-ups and collages). We also "received through guidance" (ok, shoplifted) an entire occult library inside our black leather jackets, and were, oddly, never caught (sheer luck, or the novice clerks were "instructed" not to notice by a higher power?).

                                                                  Fortune, Dion, The Esoteric Orders and Their Work 
     Prized treasures included The Holy Conversation of the Guardian Angel by Eliphas Levi; Dion Fortune's Craftlore novels (Moon Magic, The Goat Foot God, The Sea Priestess); the sex magic rites and The Diary of a Drug-Fiend confessions of Aleister Crowley, as well as O.T.O. (Ordo Templi Orientis) publications of his obscure prose, meditation tomes and esoteric plays (from which I abscond the pseudonym / nom de plume Lola Daydream).

                                Cover Art of Robert Anton Wilson's Illuminatus! Book II : The Golden Apple
     Other noted delights were Be Here Now (Ram Dass), the Illuminatus! and Schrodinger's Cat series by Robert Anton Wilson, The Right Use of Will channeled handbooks by Ceanne DeRohan, Pauwel and Bergier's The Morning of the Magicians, pulp science fiction by Philip K. Dick and Michael Moorcock (in Dick's case, every word, of every book, was pored over in absolute glee, admiration, and fascination), Peter Tompkin's Secrets of the Great Pyramid, ancient Maya codices, the Urantia Book (an Atlantean version of the Old Testament), treatises on alchemical and cabalistic lore, the Zen wisdom of Alan Watts and Gary Snyder, Beat poetry (our introduction to Ginsberg's seminal Howl), the writings of Our Fearless Leader, W. S. Burroughs,

Charles Fort's Book of the Damned / New Lands / Lo! / Wild Talents (from which I first read Medieval testimonials of rains of fish and blood), Churchward's Lemuria / Mu series,  J.G. Frazier's classic, The Golden Bough (detailing rituals of the pagan tribes of Europe; Maypoles, and such), John Fowles' The Magus, Robert Grave's The White Goddess, Madame Blavatsky's Isis Unveiled, the philosophy of the Theosophists, the Golden Dawn, the Rosicrucians, and Franz Bardon, to name a few. The tales of Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton (whose infamous opening line "It was a dark and stormy night" has spawned literary "windbag" contests) unmercifully haunted my waking life; The Coming Race and Zanoni foretold super powers of the Vril-ya (have you ever experienced a book as one-long-horror of a déja-vu?).

                                             Manly P. Hall, The Secret Teachings of All Ages (1928)
     Our thumbs-up, favorite picture book of all-time, is The Secret Teachings of All Ages, by the esteemed scholar, 33rd degree Mason, and founder of The Philosophical Research Society, Manly Palmer Hall. This beautiful book consists of dozens of full-color plates, illustrating alchemical tracts and archetypal mythologies, with Hall's incandescent spin on the Esoteric world. Zaza and 'Tin, living for a lark in Los Angeles, fluked upon a lecture by the inscrutable Mr. Hall, in which he reportedly wore silver space boots and warned of the repercussions of using drugs, specifically cocaine and crystal methedrine. Defining the usage of drugs as "a Pandora's box of disillusionment" and "an indictment of civilization", he emphatically stated they are responsible for "piercing gaping holes in one's psychic veil".........Gee, no wonder we were always hungry! 

p.s. The books of Manly P. Hall are free online at Google Books, and You Tube features audio recordings of many of the 8,000 lectures on Esoteric Wisdom Mr. Hall gave during his lifetime.