I think it was 1969, so I was 11 or 12 years old. A conservative science teacher with a Marine-style buzzcut had just finished projecting an anti-drug exploitation film for us in class, in which teens were getting hit by cars and launching themselves from buildings as the result of bad acid trips. Just after this, Mr. Buzzcut excitedly announced that he would demonstrate to us what a burning marijuana cigarette smelled like, just so we'd know the odor and be able to avoid areas where it was present. He gathered all thirty students around as he lit up a colorless tablet. None of us could detect any sort of odor at all.

As they usually did for just about everyone who was subjected to them, these anti-drug presentations aroused my curiosity to try the real thing, consequences be damned.

That weekend, I hopped on my Schwinn Sting-Ray bicycle to scout out areas where I suspected longhairs would gather. Early one evening I detected an extremely fragrant scent outside a movie theater on Wilshire near La Cienega. Finally, I thought, I had experienced the real smell of "Mary Jane," pot, grass or whatever those exploitation films maintained was the current slang. Later, I discovered that particular odor was patchouli oil, a fragrance common to LA hippies. Continuing my search, I pedaled up Fairfax Avenue toward the strange Orthodox Jewish stores with fancy menorahs and gefilte fish, and on this block found a Free Press bookstore that emanated the strong hippie scent. Winding up my courage, I stepped through the hanging beads at the front door. Maybe, I thought, I would get lucky and ogle some dirty magazines.

The store's longhaired cashier seemed amused by my interest in leafing through the Playboy magazines and didn't stop me from doing so. In the rear of the store, the pinks and purples of weird, creepy posters were illuminated by an ultraviolet light. In the lit portion of that room were images of W.C. Fields playing cards, Huey Newton holding a rifle while sitting in a wicker chairs, and African-American women with strangely prominent breasts. A couple of shelves in this dark room featured comic books for 50 cents apiece, costlier than the usual Superman, Fantastic Four, or Batmans that my parents did not allow me to possess, having dismissed them as "crap."

By far, the most interesting comic I found there was called Zap. The issues were far weirder than I’ve ever seen, and curiously erotic as well, including satiric illustrations of “savage” women you'd see in National Geographic magazines.

Though it said ADULTS ONLY at the top, I was able to purchase a copy of Zap anyway. So, I bicycled it home and attempted to absorb its psychedelic insanity at the dining room table. A horny little guy with a long beard named Mr. Natural, a lengthy story about motorcyclists and a monster demon with checkered pants gassed me. Throughout the book were pages of strange nightmare scenes in an quasi-psychedelic art style I had never seen before and didn't really understand. There was one particularly weird, fascinating page of pirates talking about enormous penises, where one of them drew a knife, chopped a big cock in half, and started to chew it up as if it were dinner. Just as I was trying to wrap my head around this, my father came into the room, pointed at the comic and asked, "What the hell is that?"

"A comic book," I mumbled.

Dad grabbed the book, saying, "I'd like to have a look at that," and spirited the thing away, never to be seen or spoken of again.

Yes, it was Issue No. 2 of Zap Comix which introduced me to a weird world that whacked my head, a world that changed my life for good.

A decade and a half later I got to know Robert Williams and S. Clay Wilson and had the opportunity to include their art in a large-format comic & photographic collage book, Exit, that I edited in 1983 with fellow Strand Bookstore employee George Petros. Due to its use of totalitarian propaganda, alternative history versions of New York Times front pages, and other unsavory things, Exit got banned or sold secretly under the counter at the city's various comic store outlets.

Williams became famous for his extraordinary "Lowbrow" paintings and for introducing Juxtapoz magazine to the marketplace. I used Wilson's work when I reissued an ancient Catholic Martyology, as this was a guy who clearly understood how to visually express torture. Wilson was a lovely chap in person, and when he crashed at my house in East Hollywood, I also discovered that he was quite a drinker and tended to speak in tongues when he was loaded.

My encounter with Zap Comix was a game changer for me. (In an interesting coincidence, the cover of Issue 2 screamed "BOING" in the upper left-hand corner.)

Fantagraphics Books has announced they will publish a slipcased set of the complete Zap Comix this Fall.

A brief look behind Ritual America: Secret Brotherhoods and Their Influence on American Society, a Visual Guide. by Adam Parfrey

One of the most exciting secondhand store moments ever: discovering a beautifully preserved 19th century Masonic uniform with dozens of buttons, embroidered crosses, a skull and bones apron, official belt, and pointy "Chapeau" hat topped with white ostrich feathers.

"Chapeau"

The store owner told me the costume was from "Knights of Pythias," a 19th century fraternal order that loved its uniforms, and marching around in them. Like a couple other faux-Masonic Orders that referred to themselves as "Knights," the Pythians confused its historical inspiration. Damon and Pythias came from ancient Greek mythology, and the added "Knights" referred to medieval anti-Islam crusaders battling for the crown and Christianity.

Later I came to discover the uniform was in fact from the Knights Templar, a Masonic subset that also loved its uniforms, and marching around in them.

More recently Knights (or Knight) Templar uniforms were worn by the similarly anti-Islamic mass murderer Anders Brevik and a particularly murderous Mexican drug gang.

Anders Brevik in Templar costume:

In the '90s, my own Knights Templar costume saw action in a pictorial satire for The Nose magazine (a West Coast Spy magazine), which pictured me as conspiratorial Freemason whispering into Bill Clinton's ear in an elevator, and holding its apron on the moon, accompanied by 32-degree Scottish Rite Mason Jay Kinney's pug dog.

I guess you could say that I've had an obsession with things fraternal for decades. Fezzes, twilight language, obtuse rituals, bizarre initiations, all of it. I finally attempted make sense of all I had collected from both pro- and anti-Masonic perspectives. Author Craig Heimbichner helped me with it.

You might ask, why include the Anti-Masonic material? After all, isn't that the stuff of Papal vendettas, Third Reich anti-Semitism and other forms of tin-hatted lunacy? Perhaps, but whether we like it or not, the first third party in United States was the historically important Anti-Masonic Party, which for a time resulted in the near decimation of American Freemasonry.

With all the Dan Brown bestsellers and Nicolas Cage adventure movies this past decade, we've been subjected to a magic carpet ride of literary and filmic exploitation: dull reissues, crackpot conspiracies, and tomes that seem like directives from headquarters to deny involvement in many aspects of American history that freemasons had been delighted to take credit for not too long ago.

With designer Sean Tejaratchi (of Craphound fame) our goal was to produce a visually enhanced guide of a time when one out of every three male Americans belonged to a secret society. The book has more than four hundred images, and contributors who include the great Robert Anton Wilson (who wrote about Adam Weishaupt and The Illuminati a few months before he passed).

The Masonic Origins of Baseball

The original baseball stars number among the Who's Who of Baseball. The image below is of Babe Ruth receiving a shave in an Omaha Nebraska hotel room in 1922 when the Babe played an exhibition game for the Woodmen of the World, a popular fraternal order that later become an insurance company.

The Shriners, which at one time could only be joined by Masons who completed 32 degrees of the Scottish Rite, is considered a "fun" Masonic offshoot known for its yearly conventions in which good citizens became party monsters with impunity. The famous Laurel and Hardy movie, Sons of the Desert, was a hilarious take-off on Shriners whoring and drinking shenanigans. Shriners are also known for their Crippled Children Hospitals and clown competitions. The archetypal clip art below was taken from a 1928 copy of the long-running Shriners magazine, The Crescent.

The difficult esoterica demanded by some fraternal orders were made fun of by "burlesque orders," the source of Munchers of Hard Tack, seen below:

A page from this delightful 1905 catalogue of hazing pranks from the DeMoulin Brothers reveals the sort of humor prospective fraternal members were subjected to.

Cornerstone Ritual Ceremonies

Jim Tresner, a well-regarded Scottish Rite Mason, wrote in his book, From Sacrifice to Symbol: The Story of Cornerstones and Stability Rites, that the Cornerstone Ritual, seen below with a trowel-wielding president Franklin Delano Roosevelt, is a replacement ceremony for blood sacrifices that once blessed new buildings "into the 1700s."

Shriners Love Islam

In light of the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks, it's strange to see Shriners, represented by the American military below, celebrate participating an Order in which their initiation required their obligation to utter a bloodthirsty oath which one hand on a Koran.

Hating the Masons

Anti-Masonic books, this one below from the late 19th century, often displayed overt ridicule, particularly of initiation ceremonies.

Though many fraternal orders had bars and public drinking rituals, some were teetotalers, like this British temperance order, promoted in its publication below.

The Third Reich Joins Anti-Masonry

The conspiratorial pamphlet from the Third Reich, and an image from it in the next page accuses Freemasonry as being a Jewish front, one that required Goyim to demean themselves in lodges with a Mogen David hanging above the door.

Masonic groups often promoted themselves with postcards that pictured hot girls of the time who loved a Mason's discretion.

The Mason's humorous identification with the goat was in part a laugh at Catholic conspiracy and a means to make fun of the strange fraternal rituals and demands.

Some researchers claim that The Royal Order of the Jesters, which demands membership in the Shriners to join, is the highest level fraternal order of all. The Jesters' icon is The Billiken, an early 20th century good luck token. Lately some Jesters members were imprisoned for promoting prostitution.

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