Leary, Timothy

Psychedelic Prayers

Kerhonkson, NY: Poets Press, 1966. First Edition. Softcover. A sui generis volume of so-called “Psychedelic Prayers” by Timothy Leary (1920-1996), the enigmatic-&-notorious subject of “Legend of a Mind” by the Moody Blues (the psych-rock classic of 1968) among several other distinctions. In all seriousness, though: Leary’s legacy is one that’s complexified, not clarified, by the scope of his life and the sum of its elements. We pick up his story, to the extent that we know it at all, by finding him at Harvard University at the cusp of the 60s, and it’s in that year, 1960, that Leary begins his visionary oversight work on The Harvard Psilocybin Project. Roughly three years later, his penchant or proselytization and unchecked enthusiasm (put one way) got him into trouble with the administrators at Harvard — and he was summarily dismissed in May 1963. He was far more interested in the mediation (and in the mobilization of messages for the purposes of human optimization) than in ‘doing science’ by the time Harvard nixed him in Spring of ’63. He’d largely abandoned the clinical rigor that enabled the growth of his academic and professional life in the first place by the time of his firing: something notably attested to by the fact that he was allegedly ‘pressuring’ graduate students that he was instructing to take psychedelics as part of the experiments in his class. He also began performing experiments while on LSD and other psychedelics, claiming (hilariously but understandably) that these were experiments unto themselves and as key as anything ‘straight’ was to research. It’s this Leary, then — the one we know — who found his way into the arms (and circles) of Beat Generation authors & friends. In classic Beat-historical fashion, it’s Leary’s forerunning associations with Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997) that resulted, eventually, in the materialization of this volume. The volume’s title, in full, is Psychedelic Prayers: After the Tao te Ching — and alludes, of course, to the influential philosophical and religious book attributed to Laozi, a classic Chinese text that enjoyed considerable popularity during the mid-to-late 1960s, circulating esp. in various psychedelic sub-cultures. Back to Leary and Allen Ginsberg: Leary and Ginsberg worked as a unit to distribute psychedelics to major figures in art throughout America, and sometimes beyond. If you haven’t done any reading on this, we recommend The White Hand Society, by Peter Conners. At any rate, the cultural networks of the Mimeograph Revolution helped Ginsberg get that train rolling, and one wonders whether or not Leary would’ve ever had entry into the world of the Mimeograph Revolution in New York during the early-mid 1960s were it not for Ginsberg’s providing it. Leary was famous, of course, but he didn’t get just anyone to do his book: it was Diane di Prima (1934-2020), easily counted on the Mim-Rev’s “A-Team,” and her exquisite imprint, the Poets Press who did Dr. Leary’s Psychedelic Prayers. As is standard with most Poets’ Press offerings, this features the exquisite handmade paper associated with the best of the PP catalog — a fact which seems to grow all the more remarkable each & every time you pick up it up, because upon doing so, you reacquaint yourself with its voluminousness. The work contains a Foreword by Leary, which is alone almost worth the price of admission, but continues to unfurl a descriptive guide on how to use the book for LSD therapy sessions, but now in a new countercultural context: the emergence of the psychedelic underground, in New York. From the collection of Richard Cupidi (b. 1945), our esteemed mate in the UK who managed the fabled Unicorn Bookshop in Brighton, England with Bill Butler (1934-1977, the famed American-expatriate bookseller & publisher). From the late 1960s through the early 1970s, Unicorn proffered & published many outstanding productions by William S.Burroughs, J.G. Ballard et al., some of which have become the scarcest, all-but-unobtainable Beat-&-Beyond collectibles (see for example our item no.s 8217, 8366). After prevailing against censorious harassment efforts, Unicorn closed & Butler died in short order. Cupidi went on to found the Public House Bookshop in Brighton, which had a long & successful run but is also now closed, & he still resides there. We have been honored to obtain what Cupidi has termed "The Last Hurrah," all the remaining treasures of Unicorn & Public House, including this gem. Medium-format softcover: First Edition, First Printing with the rare red-on-yellow variation. In Fine condition with only minute-to-moderate edge-wear, some light bumping & a few generally understated exhibits of bump-creasing to fine-edges & corners of front, back covers & spine-edge at varying locales; light-to-moderate rubbing throughout; otherwise generally clean. Fine. [Item #8834]

Price: $200.00