a review of
Hakim Bey: Real and Unreal by Th. Metzger. Motgus-sanlux, 2023
Hakim Bey: Real and Unreal is the newest entry in a growing genre of literature, books about having met anarchist author and poet Peter Lamborn Wilson/Hakim Bey (1945-2022) and how it changed the author’s life.
There was Michael Muhammad Knight and Jacob Rabinowitz before him. This is halfway to the reading list for a college course on the subject.
Wilson/Bey, who wrote frequently for the Fifth Estate, is perhaps best known for his book, T.A.Z.: Temporary Autonomous Zones, written under the latter name. He wrote countless books throughout his life, perhaps as many as 60, on subjects ranging from anarchist theory to comparative religion to media studies to poetry.
Thom Metzger’s book is about his introduction to Wilson, his reception of what he had to convey, and the intermingling of their morphic fields. Metzger has written several novels beginning with the avant-shock title, Big Gurl, in 1989. Several others issued by a mainstream publisher followed, as well as a social history of the electric chair. He wrote for the defunct Anarchy magazine and became associated with Autonomedia through Wilson and was an editor of Wilson’s Moorish Science Monitor.
Wilson had a knack for giving a special insight into whatever your current ideas or obsessions were. Some of this was that he had just read so many damned books that he could often provide shortcuts to a bibliography, suggesting titles of which you had previously been unaware. But it was also more than this, as he had a knack for providing a subtle new perspective on a subject, which would sometimes add a whole other depth to what you were looking at.
The text’s lack of distance from its subject weakens the book considerably since it would most likely make little sense to anyone who isn’t already familiar with Wilson’s work. There is little in the way of straight biographical explanation nor is there one provided here, but his life and travels are worth discovering.
Metzger describes Bey as “half magus and half mirage.”
There was a sense of illusion to Bey, as if he were performing an elaborate conjuring trick.
“Yet Hakim Bey did not really exist in the standard sense of the word,” Metzger tells the reader, “unless a real person can be conjured entirely out of words.” Bey was a literary hoax made flesh, from a master of literary hoaxes. The conjuring trick also worked as an escape act.
Metzger writes “Fact and fiction, for Hakim Bey, were opposite only in the way images in a mirror oppose the so-called real world.” In this, he per formed a Houdini act against the black iron prison that constrains imagination, an act complete with exotic imagery embedded within the stage design.
One theme of this book is what Wilson called “Mail-Order Mysticism.” Metzger and Wilson met through letters and often inhabited this world. The mysticism has to do with the ephemeral qualities of postal communications. Letters have a special aura to them. The placement of stamps, a ritual quality.
Metzger writes, “Voices from the unseen—documents as amulets.” Letters have a talismanic quality, something archaic. Metzger says of Wilson’s letters: “His letters were one of a kind and private in a way that digital communication can never be.” As this book is also a memorial, it is important how letters can function as a voice from the dead. When you have years of letters from a friend who has died, it can be like communicating with their spirit.
Mail-order mysticism relates to older tendencies in esoteric thought that are often disregarded by serious scholars. One is reminded of correspondence courses from mystical brotherhoods or mail-order catalogs. They are often considered declasse, crude, or even crass commercialism. Nonetheless, they had a great influence on a variety of esoteric tendencies, ranging from Neo-Paganism to ceremonial magic, from Afro-centric magic to chaos magick.
In order to give these currents respectability (as well as help to provide more of a sometimes falsified lineage) these disrespectable elements are minimized. However, I’d rather just look at the wild and gnarly lineage. Also, in the post-chaos magick world, it is important to look at the purely pragmatic element: Do these work? Yes, sometimes as well as other forms of magick.
Metzger and Wilson played up these mail order mystical tendencies by creating their own brand of snake oil: “Fez Brand Moorish Blessing Oil.” Made from water, food coloring, and a few gold flakes, these weren’t “to bilk credulous saps into buying scabrous crap. Our intention was far more esoteric. Like hoodoo root doctors, faith healers and snake-oil salesmen who traveled the back roads of America, we hoped to bring a whiff of the wondrous into otherwise banal lives.” There is an element of détournement to how they reappropriated this.
Another aspect that relates to the mail is Metzger and Wilson’s shared involvement with the zine network. Metzger first came into contact with Wilson, circa 1988, when he was asked to contribute to the anthology Semiotext(e): USA, a fat compendium of weirdness from the world of zines. By being included, Metzger was inspired to enhance and expand his participation in the zine network.
Much of the zine material is presented in a hard past-tense, which is unfortunate. There is a narrative that zines ended at the end of the 1990s, when in actuality they continue to thrive. Wilson/Bey stayed involved with zines up until the end of his life (when he got too sick to keep up with the mail). He sent me manuscripts of some of his later works, still typed on a manual typewriter. He never got online; never even had a computer. His submissions to the Fifth Estate also arrived in typescript.
Not all of the book is based upon distant communications through zines and letters. A great deal of it involves discussing during in-person visits, conviviality breast to breast. There is often a great sense of place in this book.
Both Metzger and Wilson had travel practices that related to psychogeography. Both loved to visit mysterious historical sites, from the 19th century popularizers of Spiritualism, the Fox sisters’ cabin to an island on which Aleister Crowley performed an occult ritual.
Metzger describes some of this magical psychogeography: “So, with a pen and some colored markers, I converted a standard travel map into an esoteric document. Doing magic to maps, Hakim Bey agreed, can change the real landscape. The map is not the territory—and yet it is.” Colorful descriptions of visits, urban neighborhoods, and Wilson’s disheveled living quarters fill this book.
There are very few criticisms of Wilson/Bey in the book, which might be unfortunate considering that there were problematic aspects to him. Nonetheless, this isn’t a systematic biography; it is about Metzger’s friendship with Wilson. It was written in the year after Wilson’s death, so there is an element of tribute to a friend.
One of the areas in which there is some clear criticism, but in a humorous and bemused fashion, is the reminiscence of the Hakim Bey fad of the 1990s. At this point, there were a great number of people latching onto Wilson, trying to become a follower.
Metzger wonders why Temporary Autonomous Zone “so ensorcell the minds of dissolute poseurs and wannabe revolutionaries?” One woman is described as wearing a t-shirt that read, “Hakim’s Baby” over her pregnant stomach. Metzger describes how a “gaggle of hipster twenty-year-olds literally sat at Hakim Bey’s feet.” To Wilson’s credit, he never allowed a cult to form around him though he didn’t mind soaking up adoration for short periods of time, such as being the center of attention at a dinner party.
Another criticism of Wilson is the discussion of his high level of speculation. He had a powerful imagination and was prone to speculation, flights of fancy, and exaggeration, which could sometimes mean the reader had to be cautious with his work. But if you were able to take things with a grain of salt, remain grounded, you would often find startling lines of speculation, leading to places you’ve never been before.
This turns out to be less of a fault and more of a virtue, Wilson’s greatest magic trick: attempting to arm the imagination. He created the unreal Hakim Bey in order to deploy crazy wisdom, illumination that undermined all authority, even his own.
Jason Rodgers is an autonomist critical theorist with a specialization in critical-paranoia, esoteric counterculture and mail order mysticism. Her most recent book is War of Dreams: A Field Guide to DIY Psy-Ops. Her previous book was Invisible Generation: Rant, Polemic and Critical Theory Against the Planetary Work Machine. Both are published by Autonomedia. She can be contacted at PO Box 701, Cobleskill NY 12043.
Related
Peter Lamborn Wilson’s writings in the Fifth Estate can be accessed at our website in Search/FE on the top menu. Enter both Peter Lamborn Wilson and Hakim Bey.