1/1 unique remix performed by Arduino Uno Radio and recorded at the cult compound

The Solar Ranch was the remote desert outpost of Georgina "Jean" Brayton’s Solar Lodge, a cult whose story is hard to believe. The group had a peripheral relationship to the Herman Ostrow School of Dentistry at the University of Southern California, which is, painful? Located in neighborhoods around USC, the cult owned mansions which were both a source of income, and home for cult members. Long term income came from one graduate’s dental practice, occult bookstores, and probably informal trade in lysergic acid diethylamide.

Founded in the mid 1960s and lingering into the 1980s, it was yet another cult that was likely innocuous, until it wasn’t. LSD was used as a sacrament in ritual magick. Early criminal activity involved the theft of original papers and manuscripts written by Aleister Crowley, the occultist and founder of the main Thelema sect, the Ordo Templi Orientis. In addition to businesses in Los Angeles, the cult also ran the small town of Vidal, California. Cult members toiled in the hotel, restaurant and gas station, while living in informal housing at the nearby Solar Ranch compound. The child of a cult member started a fire, destroying the stolen Crowley texts. What followed became known as the “Boy in the Box” scandal. The cult strictly confined the child, drawing the attention of local authorities. Many cultists were arrested and served some months, while others fled to Mexico, continuing their ritual magick practice and operating a pig farm. The remaining charges were eventually dropped or dismissed with a fine, after which the Solar Lodge entered an even darker period. Brayton moved any remaining cult members to Las Vegas where they now slaved away in lower key commerce, the contract catering business. It was during this time that thought, behavior, information and emotional control became most intense. Although labor abuse was certainly an aspect of the group while in Los Angeles and Vidal, previous members were largely free to communicate outside of the cult, and to come and go as they pleased. Once in Las Vegas, the cult pattern of limiting contact with families and friends became severe, and labor trafficking became more central to Brayton’s business. The cult dwindled over time, especially after Brayton’s death.

My arrangement remixes and transforms themes drawn from what little is known about songs used in Thelemic worship. For a culturally appropriative faith, drawing on ancient Egyptian and near east mysticism, Christian musical traditions are the primary sources for the Thelema songbook. At least to the degree said songbook is known. The music tends toward the magisterial, haughty, sententious, and ethereal veins of Christian music, yet also integrates cheerful popular tunes. The Cry of the Phoenix is drawn from Lutheran liturgical music and a Gregorian chant by Lowell Mason (1792-1872), as originally arranged by a Thelemic choral group known as Unknown Rivers. The Harlot, and The Horus Avenger, are also songs by this vocal group who were active in Austin Texas from the mid 1990s into the 2000s, as part of the Scarlet Woman Lodge O.T.O. The syncopatic, harmonic transition by myself is used between these songs as well, (see transition 26), with which I try to lend further grandiosity. There are some questioning bass growls as the three songs are generatively remixed by the C program on the Arduino FM Radio.

There was a real child involved in the Boy in the Box case, but that person did not want to be known in his adult life. Honoring this, my arrangement simply recalls the The Solar Lodge and their remote Solar Ranch: a reminder of dark clouds over a sunny place. Frator Shiva explains the history of The Solar Lodge convincingly in his wild book "Inside Solar Lodge - Outside the Law", 2007, defending the early days of the group as legitimate magical practice, and condemning the later Las Vegas days as a full blown cult phase. I note that Solar Lodge was not formally accepted as a charter by the O.T.O. My mention of the Scarlet Woman Lodge is not to make any such assertion, nor to associate that lodge with any kind of cult activity. It is only to give their musicians credit for their arrangements, which I have rearranged from multiple parts to counterpoint. (Counterpoint because that is all an Arduino Uno can practically handle, artificial constraints are something I am working though here.)

My interest is in the potential of situated music, pirate radio, reflecting on desert cult compounds, and in a broader sense a decorated experience of the remote American West, trying to think through a rich history of dreamers, risk takers, prophets, crossers, hermits, fugitives, miners, and everyone else who lives down a long dirt road on some kind of exodus. Their psychopathy, desperation, and illusions converging on delusion, and other desert weird.

proof of work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3023QbLvF88