[videolkif]

From Jim Johnson via Michael de Courcy:

Jim Johnson
Fellow Saturnites:

In a conversation with Arkestra drummer Samurai Celestial, I
mentioned an interest in the required reading list that Sun Ra issued
to his students when he taught his class at Cal Berkeley in the 1970s.

I have personally been interested in this list for some time, as I
have always wondered what Ra would recommend book- wise. Well, thanks
to Samurai's kindness, he was able to supply me with a copy of the
list to share with everyone.

The course was listed as "Sun Ra 171", in Afro-American Studies.
Supposedly, many students could not find a lot of the titles. Samurai
has read many of the books but also can't find some of them.


Sun Ra 171
Reference List

Albums
1. My Brother the Wind, vols. 1 & 2 Saturn
2. The Night of the Purple Moon Saturn
3. The Magic City Saturn
4. The Nubians of Pluto Saturn
5. Atlantis Saturn
6. Fate in a Pleasant Mood Saturn
7. Monorails and Satellites Saturn
8. Strange Strings Saturn
9. Nothing Is ESP Disc
10. Heliocentric, vols. 1 & 2 ESP Disc

Books, Title Author Publisher
1. Jazz Where it Came From, Where It's At John S. Wilson United States
Information Agency
2. Black Man of the Nile Yoseph Ben Jochannan Alkibu Ian Books
3. Stylus, 13:1 (Spring 1971) Temple University Student Pubications
4. Ark of Bones Henry Dumas
5. Poetry for my People Henry Dumas
6. Black Fire LeRoi Jones & Larry Neal
7. The Two Babylons Alexander Hislop
8. Missonary Travels Livingston
9. Radix Bill Looney
10. God Wills the Negro Theodore P. Ford
11. God's Children Archibald Rutledge
12. Ruins of Empire Volney
13. The Source Book of Man's Life and Death (i.e, The Bible, "King
James") God numerous
14. A New Model of the Universe P.D. Ouspensky
15. The Loom of Language Frederick Bodmer
16. Blackiesetymology published in London, England

Can anyone familiar with any of these works provide any additional
information?

Space,
Jim Johnson

An Addendum

The liner notes of the Evidence CD Soundtrack to the Film Space Is The
Place, ECD 22070 (1993), contain text by John F. Szwed (author of
Space Is the Place the biography of Sun Ra), in which we can read:
... in 1971 ... Sun Ra returned to California to become a lecturer at
the University of California at Berkeley. ... with class handouts,
assignments and a reading list which included The Egyptian Book of the
Dead, the Radix (a 19th century astrology journal), Alexander Hislip's
Two Babylons, books on etymology, hieroglyphics, color therapy, Afro-
American folklore, ex-slaves' writings, the theosophical works of
Madame Blavatsky, spiritually channeled tomes like The Book of Oahspe,
Henry Dumas' poetry and short stories, Dr. Livingston's travels in
Africa, the Bible, and accounts of the origins of the Rosicrucians.

These less detailed references do no match completely the Booklist
given here on the list above, - there are missing but also additional
works (apart from the question if it's Hislip, as on Evidence liner
notes, or Hislop, as on the list above).

Now, when thinking of our attempt to get additional information on
these works, I am getting some doubts when reading on what John F.
Szwed also mentions in the liner notes:

When distressed students told Sun Ra that the books were either
missing from the library or had never been there in the first place,
he merely smiled knowingly.
So what? ;-)

Dr. Anton J. Kuchelmeister

Moudry here:
The author's surname is, according to the Library of Congress and Amazon.com
, Hislop. The Two Babylons; or, the Papal Worship was reprinted in
1997 and has a few interesting readers' reviews about it @ amazon.com.

More Information on the Books

Dumas, Henry (1934-1968). Ark of bones and other stories. Edited by
Eugene B. Redmond. New York, Random House [1974].

Dumas, Henry. Poetry for my people. Edited by Hale Chatfield and
Eugene Redmond. With a pref. by Imamu Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones) and
an introd. by Jay Wright. Carbondale, Southern Illinois University
Press [1971, c1970].

Baraka, Imamu Amiri (1934- ). Black fire; an anthology of Afro-
American writing, edited by LeRoi Jones and Larry Neal. New York,
Morrow, 1968.

Hislop, Alexander (1807-1865). The two Babylons, or, The papal worship
proved to be the worship of Nimrod and his wife : with sixty-one
woodcut ilustrations from Ninevah, Babylon, Egypt, Pompeii, &c. / by
Alexander Hislop. 3rd ed. Edinburgh : J. Wood, 1862. Also from: New
York : Loizeaux Bros., 1956.

Livingstone, David (1813-1873). Missionary travels and researches in
South Africa : including a sketch of sixteen years' residence in the
interior of Africa, and a journey from the Cape of Good Hope to
Loanda, on the west coast, thence across... New York : Harper & Bros.,
1858. There are other publishers for this, too.

Looney, Bill. Radix / by Bill Looney. 2nd ed. Fort Worth, Tex. :
Branch-Smith, c1975.

Ford, Theodore, P. God wills the Negro; an anthropological and
geographical restoration of the lost history of the American Negro
people,. Chicago, Ill., The Geographical institute press, 1939.

Rutledge, Archibald Hamilton (1883-1973). God's children, by Archibald
Rutledge, illus. with photographs by Noble Bretzman. Indianapolis,
Bobbs-Merrill, c1947.
Richard J. Callahan, Jr.
Dept. of Religious Studies
University of California
Santa Barbara, CA 93106

[Galinastva]

Thanks Gregg.

(btw, I hope nobody gets this confused with The Sun Run Course)
http://www2.canada.com/vancouversun/...008_10kmap.pdf

[videolkif]

I guess the only problem is the students could get spaced out!

[HsSp82U8]

Quote:

[ServiceColas]

I've heard that Dr. Sun Ra is beginning new classes on February 2010 at the University of Saturn. Room and board is included but the student must provide their own transit. Cost is negotiable. Hurry, as spaces are being filled quickly. The courses are divided into 3 parts....Nothing Ventured......Nothing Gained......Nothing Is................