By Elsadorfman – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link

I unexpectedly found myself in New York City last week. One of the best things about a creative life is that I can grab my gear and run at an opportunity like this. I had pending writing deadlines and some design work to do, but I just grabbed my phone and my laptop and headed for the airport. The Hilma af Klint and Robert Mapplethorpe exhibitions at the Guggenheim were both great — and a great pairing. Casa Ramen’s pop-up at The Ramen Lab was the best food I ate in a week of great food. Get the pumpkin broth and go for all the spicy options. Amazing bowl. The most New York moment I had was when I grabbed lunch at a Japanese restaurant in Chinatown while I watched this great interview of Lawrence Ferlinghetti in celebration of his 100th birthday. Here’s a bit from the Democracy Now site:

Lawrence Ferlinghetti, a leading literary figure of the Beat Generation, turned 100 on Sunday. Ferlinghetti is a poet, bookseller, book publisher, artist and activist. In 1953, he co-founded City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco, the first all-paperback bookshop in the country. Two years later, Lawrence Ferlinghetti launched the City Lights publishing house. Both institutions are still running today. City Lights might be best known as the publisher of Allen Ginsberg’s landmark poem “Howl.” It revolutionized American poetry and American consciousness, but it also led to Ferlinghetti and his publishing partner being arrested and put on trial for obscenity.

This is an amazing interview with the great American writer and champion of free speech…

I also wanted to take a second to talk about the evolution of the blog. Insomnia is your spot for all things countercultural. While I haven’t been posting here daily, you might not know that I’ve been expanding the blog’s reach over multiple platforms in an effort to explore creating content on crypto-powered sites like Steemit. I’m also posting on a brand new platform called Narrative. I’m wrangling the Counterculture Niche on the site, and I want to encourage authors to add the niche to all of their scrawlings about sex, drugs, rock ‘n’ roll, the paranormal, the occult — you get the idea.

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Ida Craddock was a 19th century champion of free speech and women’s rights who is of particular interest to Insomnia due to the occult mysticism that permeated her voluminous, pioneering writings on human sexuality. Craddock is considered the first great hero of the sexual revolution — she can also be seen as its first martyr. Here’s the Wiki…

Craddock wrote many serious instructional tracts on human sexuality and appropriate, respectful sexual relations between husband and wife. Among her works were Heavenly Bridegrooms, Psychic Wedlock, Spiritual Joys, Letter To A Prospective Bride, The Wedding Night and Right Marital Living. Aleister Crowley reviewed Heavenly Bridegrooms in the pages of his journal The Equinox, stating that it was:

…one of the most remarkable human documents ever produced, and it should certainly find a regular publisher in book form. The authoress of the MS. claims that she was the wife of an angel. She expounds at the greatest length the philosophy connected with this thesis. Her learning is enormous….This book is of incalculable value to every student of occult matters. No Magick library is complete without it.[7]

These sex manuals were all considered obscene by the standards of her day. Their distribution led to numerous confrontations with various authorities, often initiated by Craddock herself. She was held for up to several months at a time on morality charges in five local jails as well as the Pennsylvania Hospital for the Insane.
Her writings on supernatural topics also continued throughout her life. One of her last books on this subject was Heaven of the Bible, published in 1897.

Here’s a short doc on Craddock, her revolutionary writings, and her untimely demise…

Stay Awake!

Please subscribe to my YouTube channel where I archive all of the videos I curate at Insomnia. Click here to check out more occult posts.