CRAIG CONLEY (Prof. Oddfellow) is recognized by Encarta as “America’s most creative and diligent scholar of letters, words and punctuation.” He has been called a “language fanatic” by Page Six gossip columnist Cindy Adams, a “cult hero” by Publisher’s Weekly, a “monk for the modern age” by George Parker, and “a true Renaissance man of the modern era, diving headfirst into comprehensive, open-minded study of realms obscured or merely obscure” by Clint Marsh. An eccentric scholar, Conley’s ideas are often decades ahead of their time. He invented the concept of the “virtual pet” in 1980, fifteen years before the debut of the popular “Tamagotchi” in Japan. His virtual pet, actually a rare flower, still thrives and has reached an incomprehensible size. Conley’s website is OneLetterWords.com.
[Inexplicable images from generations ago invite us to restore the lost
sense of immediacy. We follow the founder of the Theater of
Spontaneity, Jacob Moreno, who proposed stringing together "now and then
flashes" to unfetter illusion and let imagination run free. The images
we have collected for this series came at a tremendous price, which we explained previously.]
We're honored and astonished that one of our books has been described as engendering the Magician archetype and allowing the reader to touch the face of God. (No kidding!) From "The Magician" chapter of Naked Tarot(coming this autumn):
In the laboratory of life, experimenting with words and meaning can yield incredible insights. My friend Craig Conley, who wrote the Foreword for this book, is someone I consider a modern Magician. I mean, the guy is awesomesauce. Not only is he the smartest person I know, he’s light years ahead of most people in terms of creativity. (Don’t believe me? Go to Amazon.com and put his name in the Search field. His books are just mind-blowing in their inventiveness.) One of those books is The Young Wizard's Hexopedia: A Guide to Magical Words and Phrases. I guarantee if you get that book, and experiment with the exercises, you’ll be as close to the Magician archetype you could possibly get. Who knows? You may even touch the face of God…or rearrange it altogether in a Cubist image of your liking.
(This qualifies as a Retroactive Lifetime Goal, as coined by literary scalawag Jonathan Caws-Elwitt.)