William S. Burroughs was one of the 20th century’s pre-eminent magicians, and spent a lifetime experimenting with obscure techniques for altering consciousness. Here’s his seven favorite occult techniques for destabilizing control and smashing reality.
One of my early magical heroes, who I read obsessively in high school and college, was the author William S. Burroughs.
Burroughs is known not only for his prolific literary output but for his lifelong heroin addiction, as documented in his novel Naked Lunch, a perverse, hallucinatory satire of 1950s America inspired by Burroughs’ addiction, his transient and often grim life, and the visions induced when Burroughs ventured to South America to try to kick heroin by quaffing Ayahuasca. Naked Lunch made Burroughs a household name when it was brought to trial for breaking obscenity laws, and Burroughs won, setting a new precedent for free speech in the US.
Naked Lunch only marked the beginning of William S. Burroughs’ career as a writer, however, and over the coming decades he began to produce stacks of novels aimed at “destablizing control,” created using the cut-up technique he had learned from his occult mentor Brion Gysin, and increasingly engaged in using the techniques of applied magic for breaking the boundaries of 20th century life—as Burroughs and Gysin put it, “storming the reality studio.” This makes Burroughs’ entire output—particularly his non-fiction books The Job and The Third Mind, critical reading for any magician. Burroughs, who dressed not in silly robes but in a sober gray suit, like a Midwestern bank manager, used his appearance to present a striking contrast to his dangerous ideas and the raw, homoerotic, occult chaos of his books.
It’s no wonder he ended up inspiring nearly half a century of counterculture.
By the time I had left college, I had absorbed everything William S. Burroughs had written, and had long since immersed myself in occult experimentation, rifling through the techniques not only of Burroughs and Gysin but of more traditional magick as well. It was only natural that my next step would be meeting Genesis P-Orridge and he/r wife Lady Jaye in Brooklyn—Genesis had studied magick under William S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin for years, and it was in part the application of their techniques to music that was responsible for Genesis’ band Throbbing Gristle, and therefore the birth of industrial music.
https://ultraculture.org/blog/2017/04/11...technique/
One of my early magical heroes, who I read obsessively in high school and college, was the author William S. Burroughs.
Burroughs is known not only for his prolific literary output but for his lifelong heroin addiction, as documented in his novel Naked Lunch, a perverse, hallucinatory satire of 1950s America inspired by Burroughs’ addiction, his transient and often grim life, and the visions induced when Burroughs ventured to South America to try to kick heroin by quaffing Ayahuasca. Naked Lunch made Burroughs a household name when it was brought to trial for breaking obscenity laws, and Burroughs won, setting a new precedent for free speech in the US.
Naked Lunch only marked the beginning of William S. Burroughs’ career as a writer, however, and over the coming decades he began to produce stacks of novels aimed at “destablizing control,” created using the cut-up technique he had learned from his occult mentor Brion Gysin, and increasingly engaged in using the techniques of applied magic for breaking the boundaries of 20th century life—as Burroughs and Gysin put it, “storming the reality studio.” This makes Burroughs’ entire output—particularly his non-fiction books The Job and The Third Mind, critical reading for any magician. Burroughs, who dressed not in silly robes but in a sober gray suit, like a Midwestern bank manager, used his appearance to present a striking contrast to his dangerous ideas and the raw, homoerotic, occult chaos of his books.
It’s no wonder he ended up inspiring nearly half a century of counterculture.
By the time I had left college, I had absorbed everything William S. Burroughs had written, and had long since immersed myself in occult experimentation, rifling through the techniques not only of Burroughs and Gysin but of more traditional magick as well. It was only natural that my next step would be meeting Genesis P-Orridge and he/r wife Lady Jaye in Brooklyn—Genesis had studied magick under William S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin for years, and it was in part the application of their techniques to music that was responsible for Genesis’ band Throbbing Gristle, and therefore the birth of industrial music.
https://ultraculture.org/blog/2017/04/11...technique/