LIFE IS FREE, Volume 0, Number 0, Winter 1988

A unique zine detailing the Philadelphia Squatter Scene. Published by [Karen Eliot] c/o The Wooden Shoe, Philadelphia 1988. Karen Eliot, Editor. Underground Anarcho-Squatters' Newsrag, softcover tabloid, printed on newsprint, 17" x 11.5", 8 pages, illustrated throughout with b&w drawings and collages, includes illustrated instructions for building a stove for your squat. VERY GOOD CONDITION: solid, bright, clean, and unmarked. Scarce, only four copies located in OCLC collections worldwide.

An underground zine made by and for anarchist squatters, filled with guidance on how to squat, where to squat, the steps needed to equip the squat, squatter support, and prescient revolutionary political commentary on gentrification. I found one source that stated Karen Eliot created this zine and paid for the 500 copies she had printed from the money she earned as a sex worker. Sounds completely plausible to me, there are no records of Karen Eliot and her cohort of fellow squatters except in the pages of this compelling zine.

ST. JOHN'S BREAD WEDNESDAY MESSENGER: Volume I, Number I. November 19, 1969. &

ST. JOHN'S BREAD WEDNESDAY MESSENGER AND PARANOID FLASH ILLUMINATOR Quarterly Journal: X-tree serious No. FOR [ca. 1970].

TWO ISSUES, published by St. John's Bread Church, Topanga / Venice, California, 1969, [1970], first and only printings. Edited by Paul Encimer. Zine, mimeograph, various paper colors, side staple bound, 8.5" x 11", 22 and 38 un-numbered pages. VERY GOOD CONDITION: with a fitting association to City Lights - both issues were originally mailed to City Lights bookstore in San Francisco with stamps, postmarks, address and penned printed matter on the rear covers, otherwise just some light edgewear, age toning, and the rear cover of one is pulling from the staples, overall tight, bright, clean and unmarked. Scarce.

This zine was without a doubt the most out there and influential counterculture voice of the late 1960s. A scarce primary source illuminating Discordia's hippie origins. An exploration of real and imagined spirituality, cabals, psychedelic drug fueled enlightenment, surrealistic esoteric confusion, poetry, fiction, comic paradoxical conspiracies, revealing secret knowledge of Discordianism for your perverse entertainment. Issued on multi hued paper printed on mimeograph machines, its ethos inspired the dawning of the zine age and spawned the Church of the SubGenius and the New Religious Movement.

St. John's Bread publisher Paul Encimer (1938-2021) Discordian name, Dr. Confusion was an early ordained minister of the Universal Life Church. His friend and contributor Kerry Wendell Thornley, Discordian name, Omar Khayyam Ravenhurst was the co-founder of Discordianism and author of Principia Discordia. The first 10 pages of Thornley's poem Illuminati Lady, which Robert Anton Wilson described in Illuminatus! as "an endless epic poem which you really ought to read," is printed herein.

HAIL ERIS! ALL HAIL DISCORDIA!