News from the Shamcher Archives

Welcome to the latest issue of The Shamcher Bulletin, bringing you snippets from Shamcher’s writings that might help frame and context our experience of the world we live in today. Special greetings to new subscribers!

It was quiet on the Shamcher Bulletin front over the winter, but some things have been cooking along in the Shamcher Archives - so it’s time for an update. As I compile this, I realize there’s lots more to come - this is just a brief digest featuring a few of the archival treasures coming to light.

Back in the late 1970s, Shamcher presented at one of the sessions for the All Species Council in San Francisco - listed here “Emergency Energy Problem - Bryn Beorse”

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New Website

At the end of last year, I redid the website for Shamcher.com, streamlining and consolidating older material about the books currently published and available. Here’s what it looks like now:

Still a work in progress, but you can check it all out at SHAMCHER.COM.

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More from the Archives

I was glad to help contribute to Wali Ali’s comprehensive book, Sunrise in the West, which is now finally released. I’d been in touch with Wali Ali early on with info and details on the Dunes, Luther Whiteman, Gavin Arthur, and OTEC (of course). It feels good to see Shamcher’s photo with the OTEC model, and it was interesting to read that Shamcher had articles published in the San Francisco Oracle. (Now I must look those up…)

Photo of Shamcher with the OTEC model, in Wali Ali's biography of Samuel Lewis

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Sorting and Surprises

Back at the archives, I’ve been sorting through some older papers that hadn’t been looked at for a time. Boxes of old papers that someone had roughly sorted in the past - OTEC details from the 1950s onward to the 1970s, along with articles and writing exercises.

Random addresses saved in an envelope

So many such old treasures of miscellany popping up here and there. Most of these boxes will be going back into storage until the next pass, unless they are called for somehow. I’m not sure exactly what should be done with the old OTEC Sea Water Conversion information. The correspondence is of interest, but many of the calculations and reports have been superceded by new technologies, and much of what had been saved were working documents and published reports.

Fat file folders full of carbon copies on fragile typed papers

Wow, surprise! This note from Pir Vilayat slipped out from a pile of papers from the 1950s on Sea Water Conversion. Written in 1957, before the founding of the Sufi Order as an organization separate from the Sufi Movement.

Letter from Pir Vilayat to Shamcher

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Location Location Location

Yes, Shamcher was in Geneva for a time. An interesting biographical thread emerged when I was looking at the inside addresses of Shamcher’s correspondence in the late 1940’s, early ‘50s and ‘60s. It was fun to follow from place to place and retrace his approximate locations using google maps, across space and time. Places have changed. Some weren’t easily found, or were PO boxes, eg. from Straatsburg NY; Sea Water letters were sent from the Dunes in Oceano, and try as I might, I couldn’t find an online trace of Hill House, Gavin Arthur’s home there.

Here are a few of Shamcher’s return addresses:

Some of Shamcher's return addresses: 115 Missouri Ave - Washington DC, rue de la Grenade - Geneva, 621 Esplanade - Redondo Beach, 532 Rustic Road - Santa Monica; UCLA; 218 E. 60th St - New York

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The Shamcher Institute: is it real?

If you’ve been reading my personal substack you’ll have seen this already, but I thought I’d let you know about it here, too.

For a long time now, I’ve played in the idea of the Liminal Shamcher Institute. If you’ve been following along in past years, you’ve seen me mention this as an imaginary location from which to launch various ideas and researches. I made AI dream images of it, and even had an imagined residency there.

Well, last week it came to me that I can give it even more of a physical reality boost by just putting a sign on the door, giving it a name. Now when I go into my office for writing, research, zoom calls or meditation, I walk through this portal and enter the Shamcher Institute. It is both real and not-real.

Yes, now I work in my office, the Writing and Communications Department of the Shamcher Institute. Still an ideal, an iteration of potential thought, a fun interplay.

Here I am taking a photo of the door with its sign.

Soon after this, I found myself sorting out more boxes of Shamcher’s papers. Coincidence? haha

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