New book alert! The Occult Timothy Leary
Check out my conversation with George Noory on Coast to Coast AM
The Occult Timothy Leary: The Tarot, Magical States, and Post-Terrestrial Evolution will be published on April 7th from Destiny Books/Inner Traditions, and you can preorder it right now at Amazon or wherever you order books.
UPDATE (3/12): You can listen to an excerpt of my conversation with the legendary George Noory below:
Leary is mostly remembered as the guy who told a generation to drop acid and drop out of society, but his relationship to Western esotericism — the tarot, occult correspondence systems, consciousness as technology — runs much deeper than the countercultural mythology suggests. The book covers his theory of evolution, which he called “neurologic,” as well as his encounters with Ram Dass, Robert Anton Wilson, the Black Panthers, and the Palestine Liberation Organization, and his increasingly strange theories about post-terrestrial human evolution.
To mark the occasion, I’ll be appearing on Coast to Coast AM this Wednesday, March 11th at 10pm PT (a/k/a Thursday, March 12th at 1am Eastern).
“Timothy Leary was every bit as dangerous as Nixon and J. Edgar Hoover believed him to be, because he—the High Priest of LSD—could change people’s minds. Joseph L. Flatley’s The Occult Timothy Leary boils Leary’s lesser-known explorations of the Western esoteric tradition down to the good stuff. A volume like this has been long overdue!”
– Richard Metzger, founder of Disinformation and producer of The Magick Show
“The Occult Timothy Leary is a dazzling and brilliant look into one of the most powerful scientific minds to ever focus attention on the tarot, mysticism, and the transformative healing power of psychedelics. And, at the same time, few books can take us on such a wild and satisfying ride into 1960s intellectual bohemianism, high international revolutionary adventure, and even higher explorations of consciousness than Joseph L. Flatley’s vision of this sensitive and super fun maverick. Here is the momentous retelling of a rebel’s luminary, tenacious adherence to his vision of where the human race is meant to go next.”
– Paul Wyld, author of Jim Morrison, Secret Teacher of the Occult
“Timothy Leary used to tell me he was the reincarnation of Aleister Crowley, which always confused me because Crowley only died after Leary was born. But The Occult Timothy Leary reveals how the conspiratorial thread braiding DNA and LSD (and probably the CIA and OTO) may be more magickal than mechanical, more spiritual than scientific. Here’s the alchemical underbelly of Timothy’s otherwise pharmacological biography, told with gusto and grace.”
– Douglas Rushkoff, author of Team Human, Survival of the Richest, and Program or Be Programmed
“Flatley’s writing is conversational, journalistic, and rigorously researched, with plenty of footnotes for the insatiably curious. In a world that is frequently reducing psychedelics to piffling microdoses and granular pharmacological research, it’s a truly welcome reprieve to read a book that reminds us of the core issue of psychedelics: magical consciousness and the promise of personal and cultural transformation. If you’d like to know about Leary, Crowley, Robert Anton Wilson, Discordianism, tarot, acid, or the minute details of the American resistance movement of the 1960s, this book has it. ‘Turn on, tune in, drop out’ was a magickal formula, a description of initiation. Dive in and do magick.”
– Eliott Edge, international lecturer, multidisciplinary artist, and author of 3 Essays on Virtual Reality
“Peering deep into the fractals that made Timothy Leary such a charismatic character, Flatley goes beyond the smile and into the hidden layers of what made Leary one of the most compelling countercultural figures of the 20th century. This biography carves Leary’s place in the Mt. Rushmore of modern occultists with fellow travelers William Burroughs and Robert Anton Wilson.”
– Steven Intermill, director of the Buckland Museum of Witchcraft & Magick, Cleveland, Ohio