Turn Your Life Into Art: Lessons in Psychomagic from the San Francisco Underground

by Caveat Magister

Overview

Over 30 years, San Francisco's underground art scene developed techniques to create magical, impossible, life-changing experiences. Today big corporations are trying to figure out how to spend millions of dollars to do what these artists and anti-artists did using nothing but time, space, and imagination. It was "a movement without a manifesto," with people discovering how it worked through trial and error. Very little was written down until now. Caveat Magister, Burning Man's Philosopher Laureate, has written this book to explain what these experiences were, why they worked, and how you can create your own.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781734965926
Publisher:	Burning Man Project
Publication date:	10/05/2021
Pages:	388
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Caveat Magister is frequently mistaken for a fictional character. He has lived in a Buddhist monastery in India, covered international nightlife for Playboy dot com, taught autobiographical writing to high school age students in prison, was a founding member of Burning Man's Philosophical Center, the founding board chair of The San Francisco Institute of Possibility, and covered regional politics for newspapers in upstate New York while he was the bar columnist for the San Francisco Weekly.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

Me and My Sources 9

Section 1 Who We Are and What We're Looking For 17

Ch. 1 Nightlife as a Spiritual Pursuit 25

Ch. 2 The Unexamined Psyche 33

Ch. 3 The World As We Live it is a Magical Place 44

Ch. 4 The Psyche Moves in Mysterious Ways, its Wonders to Perform 53

Ch. 5 Meet the Daimon 71

Ch. 6 An Introduction to Psychomagic 89

Ch. 7 Success Looks Like Serendipity 101

Ch. 8 Awe and Vulnerability 110

Ch. 9 Moving from "What" and "Why" to "How? 120

Section 2 How We Do It 131

Ch. 10 Infinite Gardens vs. Finite Robots 132

Ch. 11 Create Non-Fiction 143

Ch. 12 Engineer Disperfection 150

Ch. 13 Encourage Meaningful Choices 158

Ch. 14 Gardens Aren't Safe 171

Ch. 15 This Could Never Happen Twice 183

Ch. 16 You're Either in or Out, Except When You're Not 195

Ch. 17 The Holy Trinity - Art, Ritual, and Play 214

Ch. 18 Gary Warne's Chaotic Principles 224

Ch. 19 The Lazy Man's Guide to Starting a Cult 240

Ch. 20 Honesty is the Best Policy 258

Ch. 21 Let's Review 279

Dark Interlude - Psychomagic During A Pandemic 299

Section 3 Psychomagic and Society 329

Ch. 22 What Happened to Us? 330

Ch. 23 The Difference Between Mystics and Marketing 346

Ch. 24 Psychomagic, God, Therapy, and You 357

Acknowledgments 378

About the Author 380

Editorial Reviews

PRAISE FOR TURN YOUR LIFE INTO ART:

"If you're looking for more magical, peak experiences in your life, this book is a bible on how to find and create them." -Stuart Schuffman, aka Broke-Ass Stuart

"Somewhere between the wistful and the liminal, some truly enchanted experiences await you. By absorbing the lessons from San Francisco's potent underground scene, this book will reveal how to summon them for yourself and others. Hallelujah!" - Jennifer Raiser, Author, Burning Man: Art on Fire

"There is a problem with reading about the many magic moments crafted by San Francisco's long line of art pranksters, cacophonists, reality hackers, and high weirdos: if you weren't there, you did miss out. Luckily, Caveat Magister was taking notes and stealing blueprints that he now presents in this thoughtful, inspiring DIY guide. The man behind the curtain, you see, is you and your pals."- Erik Davis, Author, High Weirdness: Drugs, Esoterica, and Visionary Experience in the Seventies

"Burning Man's philosopher laureate has unearthed the philosopher's stone of transformative experience. Combining a deep understanding of jackassery and play with a scholar's command of psychological alchemy, Caveat has written the essential grimoire of experience design." - Stuart Mangrum, Director, Burning Man Philosophical Center

From the Publisher