One of my old roommates boasted a collection of Dr. Timothy Leary’s works that included nearly every single work in first printing that he had published, including a beat-up old copy of Start Your Own Religion, a well-thumbed What Does Wo/Man Want?, and a rather abused copy of The Politics of Ecstasy, but he didn’t have Dr. Leary’s comic book. It was at the end of the seventies that Neurocomics (1979) was released in a print run of 10,000. It’s not even listed on the wikipedia entry of his works, and seems overlooked by most Dr. Leary’s fans. So when I was pointed to the torrent of this lost work, I was ecstatic. Download Timothy Leary’s Neurocomics from Alterati’s torrent tracker to check it out.

I’ve read a vast amount of Dr. Leary’s writings and of all of his work the most important seems to be the model he developed for consciousness, that is applicable both to the individual and to society. Other writers such as Antero Alli, Dr. Hyatt, and the late Bob Wilson carried the application and discussion of the 8 circuit model into today, and it remains a very stable framework onto which an individual can map their own experiences. But before those writers brought their knowledge to his model, detailing the importance while getting the ideas across simply was of paramount importance. That’s where this comic comes into play…

This work, while in black and white, was years ahead of the modern pop art comic of the time. The black and white line drawings and illustrations are easy
to digest and allowed the amazing depth of information Dr. Leary had synthesized to be delivered in 33 pages of psychedelic imagery and concise language. Other than Timothy

Leary, the creative talent involved included Pete Von Sholly, Tim Kummero, S. Riley, L. Ochi, B. Clark, and George DiCaprio. (George DiCaprio is, of course, the father of film star

Leonardo, who just happens to be scheduled to play Dr. Leary in an upcoming pic.

It all fits together in an acid sort of way.)

Anyway, as I was reading this work, I was struck by how similar the work is to that of Alan Moore, specifically Promethea. Not simply
the psychedelic nature of the work, but the way in which both of these works were about the underlying philosophical and metaphysical beliefs of the authors, and both presented in the most holistic way possible.

They’re more like modern alchemical texts, grimoires for the psychonaut, without the layers of metaphor that Mike Carey might throw in or the allegories Chris Claremont developed to spread occultic ideas through more mainstream comics.
(Granted, Grant Morrison does this in his own way as well, but not everyone is fully armed to read The Filth and his politics have raised more than a few eyebrows… )

All that aside, let’s take a look at what Promethea is actually about…
Download Promethea #1-32 off the torrents to follow along.

Promethea is a survey and summation of western occultism through a very self-conscious and post-modern lens, and the techniques that Alan Moore and the artists he works

with throughout the Promethea run appear in somewhat abbreviated form in Neurocomics, but they are there. I would not be surprised if Mr. Moore was at least aware of this

particular work, as the delivery of highly symbolic and succinct chunks of information in Promethea and the delivery of psychological models through astrological contexts are remarkably similar.

But where the 8 stages of evolution and the astrological model of personality types are condensed into a few short pages in Neurocomics, Alan Moore tackles the whole foundation of the occult tradition of the West.

Promethea is a child from 411 AD who, after the death of her father, was taken by Thoth and Hermes into the Immateria, a reality above and outside the material world. Over the years, her spirit has bonded and been evoked throughout history by applied imagination, and in some sense she is an avatar of the mothering energies of the sphere of Binah, as manifestation of the Shekhinah.

J.H.Williams III (pencils/paints) and Alan Moore created Promethea, with Mike Gray (Inks), Jeromy Cox and Jose Villarrubia (both colorists) helping bring her to life.
And that ‘bringing to life’ of a fictional entity is not only the job of this creative team, but in one sense it is also the plot of Promethea.

At one point I had most of the single issues. Sadly the single issues have vanished, mixed in (I suspect) to another of my ex-roommate’s collection…
but no matter. I now have the five graphic novels with the forward by Alan Moore explaining that Promethea was first recorded in print by Charleton Sennet(1751-1803) in his epic poem ‘A Fairie Romance.’
Of course, this is a reference to The Faerie Queene and those references to Charlton Sennet
online are all derived from people accepting this back story in the forward at face value. This kind of bleeding of fiction into history is a consistent plaything of Mr. Moore, showing up in other works like League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and Lost Girls,
but in Promethea he seems to have taken out all the stops. All the references to Promethea throughout history are fictional, while at the same time remain reflective of the literature of those respective periods, while his attention to detail and the corresponding artwork fleshes Promethea out to the point that she probably does become an evocable guide of sorts for the post-modern magus.

As the comic storyline opens in 1999, Sophie Bangs is researching the reoccurring sightings of Promethea for a college paper when she brings the essence of Promethea into herself through poetry.
From there, she’s led through a journey of discovery that reveals the essence behind all symbolic structures, first through a confrontation with the 72 demons of the Goetia, then a journey through the symbolism of the tarot, a crash-course in sex magic, a pathworking of the Tree of Life, and a bird’s eye view of the Enochian tables. Along the way she meets the spirits of John Dee, Aleister Crowley, and Austin Osman Spare. By the time she’s returned from this survey of the esoteric, she realizes consciousness is a continuum, something spread out across all minds rather than isolated within any one individual.

The narrative events are heavily overshadowed by the scope of the material presented, but there is a narrative. The city of New York is plagued by science-villains, and science-heroes are constantly struggling to prevent crime sprees. Meanwhile, the whole host of demons from the Goetia are running the city from within a possessed mayor. The FBI is struggling to stop what they see as a potentially earth-destroying terrorist attack being orchestrated by Promethea, and they call on Tom Strong and his team to bring her in and prevent this apocalypse.

All in all, it’s an amazing amount of detail and narrative that has been packed into 31 issues, with the final issue being bibliography, concordance, and footnotes all rolled into a two-sided poster that provides even deeper insight into what Alan Moore and J.H. Williams III were thinking when they took on this incredible project. This is much more than a superhero book, or a re-telling of folklore. So if you’ve ever been curious about how Kabbalah, Tarot, and Enochian magic all interrelate, start with Promethea. Let this work break open your head, then go put your head back together with the techniques in Timothy Leary’s Neurocomics.

I’m going to close this with a track from a Timothy Leary/Simon Strokes album called ‘Right to Fly’ that sort of ties together the themes of both… and as always keep your eyes open for The Yellow Sign.

 

 Right to Fly - Timothy Leary and Simon Strokes: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download