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. ~Jim Johnson
The UBU WEB has posted a complete Sun Ra lecture from one of his classes.
“… 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” ~ John Szwed, biographer of Sun Ra, author of Space is the Place.
Sun Ra’s reading list comes through the website New Day.
The Egyptian Book of the Dead
Radix
Alexander Hislop: Two Babylons
The Theosophical works of Madame Blavatsky
The Book of Oahspe
Henry Dumas: Ark of Bones
Henry Dumas: Poetry for My People eds. Hale Charfield & Eugene Redmond, Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press 1971
Black Fire: An Anthology of Afro-American Writing, eds. Leroi Jones & Larry Neal, New York: William Morrow 1968
David Livingston: Missionary Travels
Theodore P. Ford: God Wills the Negro
Rutledge: God’s Children
Stylus, vol. 13, no. 1 (Spring 1971), Temple University
John S. Wilson: Jazz. Where It Came From, Where It’s At, United States Information Agency
Yosef A. A. Ben-Jochannan: Black Man of the Nile and His Family, Alkibu Ian Books 1972
Constantin Francois de Chasseboeuf, Comte de Volney: The Ruins, or, Meditation on the Revolutions of Empires, and the Law of Nature, London: Pioneer Press 1921
The Source Book of Man’s Life and Death (Ra’s description; = The King James Bible)
Pjotr Demianovitch Ouspensky: A New Model of the Universe. Principles of the Psychological Method in Its Application to Problems of Science, Religion and Art, New York: Knopf 1956
Frederick Bodmer: The Loom of Language. An Approach to the Mastery of Many Languages, ed. Lancelot Hogben, New York: Norton & Co. 1944
Blackie’s Etymology