Ed Note: Boingboing’s current guest blogger Gareth Branwyn writes on technology, pop and fringe culture. He is currently a Contributing Editor at Maker Media. Recent projects have included co-creating The Maker’s Notebook and editing The Best of MAKE and The Best of Instructables collections.
I was raised Catholic (thanks, I’m better now). I also spent my teen years studying meditation, yoga, and eastern religions. So maybe through this upbringing, I tend to think in terms of teachers, gurus, saints, heroes, muses, angels, and daemons — no longer in a theological sense, but I still find use for these concepts, at least in a poetic, symbolic sense.
When I was kid, I loved all of the trappings of the saints: the icons, the medallions, the miracle stories, the statues, relics, the veneration. I’m a pagan at heart, and when you think about it, this is nothing more than high paganism, ceremonial magick. I loved the idea that there are different saints that help, guide, and protect you under different circumstances. And I loved that they represent different virtues and qualities you could meditate on and try to emulate, as you lit candles and prayed to icons.
Recently, I’ve come to the realization that I still engage in something of this practice. I have various “teachers” in my life — writers, philosophers, artists, and scientists — whose work holds a powerful influence over me. They’ve become hugely symbolic in my life and have come to represent different aspects of myself that I wish to improve and magnify. I keep them close to me, mainly in collections of books in my library that I browse and “meditate” on whenever I am in need of a little inspiration.
Below is my list of “saints.” Do you have such a pantheon? These are more than your heroes. These are the people that you think have taught you the most, that you near-venerate in your love and respect for them, and whom you feel have helped form the bedrock of your beliefs and worldview.
My “Saints” (and what they represent to me)
William Blake – I venerate this guy above all others. He’s the closest thing I have to a guru. His entire mission in life was to use his art and ideas to wake us all up from the somnambulism he believed the State, organized religion, even our own sensoria, were cursed to induce in us. I use him as my constant reminder to stay awake and creative, keep my imagination expansive, and to “fight the power.”
Gregory Bateson – A father of cybernetics. Bateson was something of a saint to the Whole Earth folks and Whole Earth was a huge influence on me. Bateson was the one who introduced me to Blake. Bateson reminds me to look at relationships over objects and for patterns that connect. And to tie all of my ideas and beliefs with slipknots.
Robert Anton Wilson – In the CD interview series with Bob Wilson, Robert Anton Wilson Explains Everything, the interviewer states that RAW had spent a career collecting, trading in, and writing about conspiracy theories, the paranormal, and the like, but he doesn’t appear to buy into much of it. So why does he spend so much time exploring such things? “It keeps my mind supple” is Wilson’s reply. That elevates him to sainthood in my pantheon. Wilson also embodied the virtue of hilaritas to me. And he remind me to embrace the absurd. Wilson was also “open to anything, but skeptical of everything.”
Bucky Fuller – Fuller’s mission in life was to see how much a single “human intelligence unit” could create, learn, and experience — what one person could do to make the world a better place — in a lifetime. Amazingly, he embarked on that mission, on the other side of an aborted suicide attempt, in his mid-30s. Everything we know about Buckminster Fuller happened after that. I also venerate Bucky’s optimism, faith in human ingenuity, and in the transformative powers of science and technology.
Aleister Crowley – I hate “The Beast” as much as I love him. He represents my faith in the powers of thelema (will) and agape (love) and the notion of syncretism. And I try to live by his motto “The method of science, the aim of religion.” Say what you want against him (and there’s plenty to say), but his influence on modern, at least bohemian, culture and on alternative religions has been huge. He was such a significant influence on me in my youth it would be disingenuous to not include him. And every list of apostles needs a Judas.
(Sadly, there are no women on my list. I racked my brain. I could come up with women I greatly admire, lots of artists and musicians, but no one who’s risen to the level I’m thinking about here.)
So, who are YOUR saints? What lessons, virtues, ideas, or qualities do they represent for you?