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Title: Pastoral Letter
Author: Peter Lamborn Wilson
Date: 2004
Language: en
Topics: letter, Fifth Estate, utopianism
Source: Retrieved on 7th October 2021 from https://www.fifthestate.org/archive/367-winter-2004-2005/pastoral-letter/
Notes: Published in Fifth Estate #367, Winter 2004–2005.

Peter Lamborn Wilson

Pastoral Letter

Sion County is remote, rural, and poor, and always has been. Around 1870

a breakaway sect of German Amish-type farmers—the Sabbatarian

Anabaptists of the “Seventh Day Dunkers,” moved there from Pennsylvania

and settled down in the river valleys of the county’s northeast.

In the mountainous northwest lies the small reservation of a band of

Iroquois. The Indians and the Dunkers have always held to distant but

amicable relations though nowadays the Protestants tend to disapprove of

the bingo and fireworks concessions with which the tribe supplements its

income.

In the 1960s a number of hippies invaded Sion County. At first there was

some conflict with the locals, but by now the hippies have mellowed and

settled down. Some of them joined a small eccentric split-off sub-sect

of the Dunkers. Some practice permaculture or alternative agriculture; a

few of their farms are very serious and self-sufficient; others work in

“green” construction and trades, including black-smithing and

carriage-building, since so many locals use horses rather than cars. And

of course some grow hemp.

By the 1980s, the county had begun to rival the emerald Triangle, and

the Feds were beginning to sniff around. Something had to be done! A

“Combine” was organized among the hemp growers and smugglers, and an

interesting political force emerged based on anonymous funders and a

small libertarian faction of the local Republican Party. The Combine

managed not only to infiltrate the Republicans but also to win control

of the county, including the offices of sheriff, district attorney,

judge, etc. The Combine also earned the support of the Dunkers by

opposing “development” and transmuted under this weird

Libertarian/Welfarist coalition.

Everything possible is voluntarized—but funded by the County. The one

public high school in the region is privatized but taken over by a

non-profit alternative education group funded by the County. Zoning is

more-or-less abolished, but a Green Covenant is circulated, and any

non-signers are boycotted or otherwise driven out of the region. An

extremist vigilante group has vandalized or destroyed a few structures

deemed ecologically offensive; somehow the Sheriff never manages to

apprehend any of these mysterious eco-warriors.

The county capital, Sion City (pop. 18,000 or so), has the plastic rural

highway fast-food sprawl and rundown 19^(th) century backstreet gloom of

any similar sad place in the bioregion—but in a way this is mere

camouflage. The fast-food franchises have been bought-out by

whole-food/organic collectives, which are funded by the County. Still

they use names like Tastee Burgers or Salad Bar & Grill; the locals get

a lot of amusement out of this sly nomenclature. The Public Library

consists of four pink double-wide mobile homes, but contains amazing

collections. It’s as if the whole town was a disguise.

“The danger,” says the Sheriff, “is that the place could become too damn

picturesque. Dunkers in black hats in their buggies, a few Indians in

traditional gear, spaced-out tie-dye types: a tourist trap, Woodstock!

We don’t like tourists around here, do we! And as Debord would put it,

we don’t want to work at the job of representing some quaint notion of

authenticity just to become the Exotic Other for a media-poisoned shower

of zombie voyeurs!”

Up-country, however, there’s no presence of normalcy. The Dunkers are

living in the 18^(th) century; some of the hippies and Indians are

heading back toward the Stone Age. The remotest valleys are given over

to hemp plantations and/or bizarre drop-out cults. Over a third of the

County has no electricity, other than a bit of solar, and no mail

delivery. The Combine or the County own much of the wildest land in

various forms, including parks and preserves.

The Sheriff told me, “Naturally, we ‘deplore’ the idea of funding utopia

by crime. I admit that Sion County has some disagreeable aspects. But

how can you hope to maintain even such a flawed and low-level utopia in

a ‘time of war’ without some alternate economy? A Green Liberated Zone

would be impossible; we all know it wouldn’t be permitted. We try to

think global—but we have got to act local.”

Interview with the Sheriff

“Maybe you’d prefer some Jeremiah on thorazine stumbling out of the Time

Magazine of your head—hollywood jerusalem grand guignol cheapjack

prognostications of nuclear ho-hum & SciFi african plagues—Y2K, harmonic

convergence, yuppie Rapture—a culture gets the armegeddon it

deserves—fire ice whimper bang or eternal sit-com, no, it’s all far more

interesting than we deserve.”

(A Word from the Abbot)

A secret unknown to the wordly about the desert: it’s a positive pleroma

of pleasure compared to the arid deathscape of vespuccian/jerk kultur,

that bleeding Babylon without the courage of its convictions—seduction

without desire—the Universal Mall-safety rules, litigation,

crash-worship, spleen, worldwide surveillance. Yes by comparison a dank

cave, solitary pine barren, silent summer mountain—the “stupidity of

rural life” (Marx)—seems like wallowing in luxury billions couldn’t buy.

The real ascetics are gritting their teeth in traffic jams, TV/PC

screens bathing them in leprosy-light, other people’s music, vicious

boredom. Anyone who doesn’t go postal deserves beatification.

The Monastery of St. John-in-the-Wilderness was built in 1910 by a group

of Anglican Benedictine monks who intended to proselytize the nearby

Indian reservation. But after a dim career it burned down in 1963 and

the Church sold the ruin and the land (hundreds of acres) to an investor

who later sold it to the Combine.

The monastery gardens and greenhouses were taken over by the Society for

the Interiorization of Lost Knowledge (SILK), a small group of Combine

research “scientists” who began experimenting with ethno-botany and

bio-assay work. They constructed a secret underground “alchemical” lab.

The ruined monastery and the ramshackle but habitable Abbot’s House or

Abbey were turned over to another group that organized itself as the

Monastery of St. John-in-the-Wilderness, Order of the Resurrection,

Anglican Benedictine (Non-juring): the “Greenfriars.” The Christian

identity is useful as camouflage, but some of the members are into it

sincerely. They perform regular masses in the abbot’s Chapel, and in

summer organize “Sacred Concerts & Festivals” in the picturesque and

spruced-up ruins of the old monastery.

Some of these festivals are fuelled by the very potent liquors and

concoctions of SILK, and some of the monks work in SILK’s gardens (for

surprisingly healthy salaries paid in cash). The monks grow vegetables

and keep a few chickens and goats, but are not involved in subsistence

farming. Needless to say, the Order receives a grant from the County in

return for leasing some of their remoter acreage to the Combine.

About half the brothers and sisters live in the old Abbot’s House, and

half are scattered through the woods in various caves, Taoist huts,

Franciscan oratories, or prefab yurts. Besides the monks themselves

there is also a “tertiary order” of friends, associates, allies,

relatives, regular guests, and correspondents—maybe 20 fulltime live-ins

and 100 occasional “retreatants.”

Letter From the Abbot

The Rule of the Monastery is No Rule: anarcho-monachism. The monks have

adopted a Benedictine identity only because the original foundation was

Benedictine. But in fact, they’ve found some inspiration in St.

Benedict’s Rule. Once the bits about chastity, obedience, humility,

punishment, and excommunication were deleted, they still liked the basic

idea. In the original text, they found a description of the “four kinds

of monks” including the Sarabaites, which are the worst kind—unschooled

by any rule. Their only law is the pleasure of their desires; whatever

they wish or choose, they call holy. They consider whatever they dislike

unlawful.” Half-jestingly, the monks claim to follow the Sarabaite Rite.

They’ve retained Benedictine titles and forms of organization: an Abbot,

Canons to assist the Abbot, a Cellarer (logistics and supplies), Provost

(ritualist), and Porter (security). They follow the rules of weekly

kitchen service and weekly Reader, and also the Rule of One Hemina (1/4

liter) per day allowance of good wine. They wear, both sexes, an adapted

version of the Benedictine habit—homespun green—at least on formal

occasions.

But aside from monkish play and conviviality what hold them together are

common interests. The first and all-embracing one is negation—a desire

or need to escape from the vulgar materialist world; to retreat, whether

for spiritual or political or even “military” reasons; whether

permanently or periodically.

Militant monks know when to head for the mountains for a century of

boxing practice.

For various motives both practical and theoretical, the Greenfriars have

adopted a neo-Luddite approach to tech that owes much to the nearby

Dunkers—especially since the Anabaptists’ shops and workshops provide

the tools and skills needed for a comfortable low-tech life. Moreover,

“Whole Earth Catalogue”-styled tech can be used to supplement Dunker

resources since the monks have no religious injunctions to observe

against zippers or can-openers. They even keep an old pick-up truck for

emergencies, though they prefer horses.

SILK uses solar and other off-grid sources of electricity but the

monastery and Abbot’s House are un-powered and lit by candles and oil

lamps. The Sacred Concerts and other monastic events utilize daylight or

torchlight, etc. The basic rule of all Luddism, whether religious or

secular, is to use only technology that will not “injure the

commonality”—therefore they agree to have (on the premises anyway) no

computer, no TV, no telephone, nothing to replace human contact and

connection with mediated representation (as the Sheriff would say).

Perhaps there’s something a bit precious and artificial about this

luddery, since the monks are not self-sustaining like the Dunkers or the

more successful permaculturists. They’ve made certain choices on the

basis of pleasure and beauty. As the Abbot says, “We’re not really

renouncing anything…nice. All of us feel the absence of electricity as

an immense luxury. Our velvet nights are set with more than stars.” Some

of the hermits have their own hot tubs.

On the positive side, the Order’s common interests center on “lost

knowledge.” They believe that their research may help to inspire and

even direct the growth of a global green spiritual movement. As

Universalists, they nevertheless have no truck with any New-Age

multi-culti interpretations of “tolerance”; as the Unabomber said, “You

can do anything you want—as long as it’s unimportant.” Rather, they seek

certain non-negotiable constellations within all spiritual human

manifestations, and on these, they maintain strict intolerance and an

unwillingness to compromise.

They’re also very interested in secrets, which they define as anything

not found on TV or the Internet. The Abbot says, “We should cultivate

secrets against the day when the unknown might regain its power.”

The brothers and sisters follow their own interests but regular sessions

are held for discussion and development of group projects. One major

interest for some lies in the “Western occult tradition,” especially

serious Renaissance hermeticism and alchemy. Other shared research

includes Christian ritual, particularly chanting, which is practiced for

its “psychedelic” effects (and as rehearsal for Sacred Concerts). Fancy

gardening—flowers and herbs for tinctures and distillations—”spagyric

medicine.” There’s a fad for calligraphy and copying manuscripts, which

generates a bit of extra income as well. They spend most of their

“grant” on books, although they also have an excellent 2-inch telescope

that provides a lot of entertainment. This is an homage to Johannes

Kelpius, the German Rosicrucian who founded “The Woman in the

Wilderness” in Pennsylvania in 1694. He brought to America: the first

serious telescope, to scan the skies for signs of the coming End!; the

first harpsichord; one of the first printing presses. He admired the

Indians’ religion, and lived in a cave practicing alchemy and composing

hymns.

Quilting bees are held on winter evenings with readings from literature

and philosophy like the Benedictines—and monks are devoted to viva voce

reading—or like the old anarchist Egyptian and Cuban cigar workers, or

the radical tailors in 18^(th) century London. Dining well is another

shared obsession, at least with the group that cooks and eats in the

Abbot’s House, who claim inspiration from Rabelais, from Fourier’s

“Gastrosophy,” and chapter one of Brillat-Savarin’s Physiology of Taste.

By contrast, some of the hermits are strict vegetarians or raw foodists,

etc.

It may be that some of the monks are engaging in “revolutionary

activity”— but what exactly? since they could scarcely be preparing for

armed insurgency …who knows? Maybe they’re growing mushrooms for the

combine, or counterfeiting Euro-dollars, or providing safe caves for

anti-global activists on the lam. Maybe they’ve made a breakthrough in

occult science—say, the therapeutic use of hieroglyphic emblems to

“de-program” human awareness from media/consumer trance? Or maybe it’s

all another layer of camouflage, like the famous ghost that haunts the

monastery and keeps idle gawkers and tourists away.

The Greenfriars consider themselves committed to certain local things

and people because they’re living in a certain place and want to remain

there. They maintain collegially close relations with some of the elders

on the Reservation, and a few pious ecstatics amongst the Sabbatarians,

but they also see themselves in the American Romantic tradition, as

adherents of the “Religion of Nature” of the Transcendentalists and

Hudson River School painters. And needless to say, Sion County is

beautiful and relatively unspoiled, at least in the northern mountains.

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