El espíritu de Elías no se inventa.*
Like the alchemical Phoenix, “Bob” combusts every instant, he is slain by Time itself, yet reborn with every puff. His smoke curls upward into the Sephirotic Tree, tracing the lightning path of wisdom—Kether to Malkuth, Slack to Slack, Fool to Fool.
“Bob’s” image carries the old-time iconography of alchemy. His corncob pipe is Mercurius, the divine messenger, forever exhaling the sophic vapor that turns common sense to insight. The smoke curls upward in a column of smoke that suggests Jacob’s Ladder, uniting Yetzirah and Assiah on the Tree of Life. In one sly wink of logic, “Bob” is the Grail, the Stone and the formula all at once – the Rocking Chair of Ultimate Slack plus the Fountain of Youth rolled into a single eternal grin.
In Kabbalistic terms, “Bob” sits squarely in Tipharet, the central sphere of Beauty and Balance. His face – ornate with that trademark smile and thoughtful pipe – is the heart of the Subgenii Tree of Life. If the Sephiroth were reorganized to include Slack, “Bob” would occupy Tipharet as the living Solar Logos, with his yellow-flamed pipe as the shaft of the Tree itself. Some scribblings in the Liber Yud-Heh-Vav-Heh Null, v.13, describe “Bob” as the hidden Daʻat, the veiled knowledge that lies beyond the perceptible world: “His mouth reveals the qliphoth of laughter, yet conceals the full Name of Slack beyond all letters.” In this sense his pipe-smoke is like Shamir, fractal dust that chips away the illusions of the Conspiracy. The SubGenius mythos itself calls Dobbs the “Bridge between Heaven and Earth and Hell”– an apt metaphor for how he unites Chesed (Mercy) and Gevurah (Severity), blending order and chaos into balance (Tipharet) with a shrug and a smile.
“Bob” is also the Phoenix: eternally self-immolating and self-rebirthing each time a believer lights his pipe and finds renewal. “He is killed a million times per day and still manages to grin.” This mirrors the Gnostic motif of the self-sacrificial Redeemer who rises and resurrects). He is the Desert Marigold that blooms in the post-apocalyptic mind wasteland, the Camel’s toe that jokes at prophecy. Truly, “Bob” is a Hermetic Chaoist: his Religion (if you can call it that!) is to do no serious work – just scintillate the ego into a higher form of Slackesthesia.
Unsurprisingly, ceremonial magicians find familiar echoes in the Church of SubGenius. If Crowley had written in Liber 999 about a moustachioed clown-God, one can imagine it turning out much like the Church: Sub Rosa rituals to light cigars, cosmic derpings at unconscious conspiracies, a holy chalice of Electric KOOL AID. (One decadent occult book even suggests that “Bob” is the new Aeon’s Magus, wielding the Holy Pipe as his sword–cane) There are mythical nods to Hermetic teachers in SubGenius lore: in The Equinox of Doublespeak, “Bob” is sometimes conflated with Thoth and Hermes Trismegistus, signifying a bridge between Egypt, Atlantis and the Slackerverse. Rituals of Patripassian Slack are full of wink-wink references: the smoking pipe becomes an alchemical retort, where the initiation LSD mixture is unscrewed nose-first.
(13013: MWOWM)
Iglesia del Surf del Cristo Risueño de la Costa LTD. MMXXVI ©
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