{"id":16,"date":"2006-06-11T16:33:52","date_gmt":"2006-06-11T16:33:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/?p=16"},"modified":"2023-02-11T21:47:57","modified_gmt":"2023-02-12T02:47:57","slug":"sun-ras-reading-list","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/2006\/06\/11\/sun-ras-reading-list\/","title":{"rendered":"Sun Ra’s Reading List"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>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.<\/p>\n

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<\/p>\n

The UBU WEB has posted a complete Sun Ra lecture<\/a> from one of his classes. <\/p>\n

“… 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<\/i>.<\/p>\n

Sun Ra’s reading list comes through the website New Day<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Egyptian Book of the Dead<\/p>\n

Radix<\/p>\n

Alexander Hislop: Two Babylons<\/p>\n

The Theosophical works of Madame Blavatsky<\/p>\n

The Book of Oahspe<\/p>\n

Henry Dumas: Ark of Bones<\/p>\n

Henry Dumas: Poetry for My People eds. Hale Charfield & Eugene Redmond, Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press 1971<\/p>\n

Black Fire: An Anthology of Afro-American Writing, eds. Leroi Jones & Larry Neal, New York: William Morrow 1968<\/p>\n

David Livingston: Missionary Travels<\/p>\n

Theodore P. Ford: God Wills the Negro<\/p>\n

Rutledge: God\u2019s Children<\/p>\n

Stylus, vol. 13, no. 1 (Spring 1971), Temple University<\/p>\n

John S. Wilson: Jazz. Where It Came From, Where It\u2019s At, United States Information Agency<\/p>\n

Yosef A. A. Ben-Jochannan: Black Man of the Nile and His Family, Alkibu Ian Books 1972<\/p>\n

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<\/p>\n

The Source Book of Man\u2019s Life and Death (Ra\u2019s description; = The King James Bible)<\/p>\n

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<\/p>\n

Frederick Bodmer: The Loom of Language. An Approach to the Mastery of Many Languages, ed. Lancelot Hogben, New York: Norton & Co. 1944<\/p>\n

Blackie\u2019s Etymology<\/p>\n

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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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":68985,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music","category-reading"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68985"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}