The Lyttle Death

Morgan Maher

 

Serenely let us move to distant places
And let no sentiments of home detain us
The Cosmic Spirit seeks not to restrain us
But lifts us stage by stage to wider spaces.

-H. Hesse, The Glass Bead Game

 

On September 5, 2008, Trickster Thomas Lyttle passed through to the other side. An early supporter of psychedelic literature and visionary art, Lyttle leaves with us a deep legacy.

At a time when mainstream publishing on the topic of  psychoactive substances had all but disappeared, Lyttle kept the fires stoked. He was the publisher and editor of Psychedelic Monographs and Essays, and his works were among the first to publically discuss DMT, Ibogaine, Ayahuasca, MDMA and the Holographic Paradigm.

Lyttle was an early collector and producer of LSD blotter art. He is the person who first conceived of asking people like Albert Hofmann, Timothy Leary, Sasha Shulgin, Annie Sprinkle, Peter Fonda, Allen Ginsberg, Alex Grey, Laurence Gartel, HR Giger, and others to autograph undipped sheets of blotter, inspiring and encouraging interest in blotter as an art form as well as fueling the now flourishing world of visionary art.

His articles were published by Feral Press, Disinformation, High Times, Boing Boing, New Times, Paranoia and many scholarly journals and underground zines. The final book Lyttle edited was Psychedelics Reimagined, which contained writings by Timothy Leary, Hakim Bey, Otto Snow, Chris Bennett, John W. Allen, Jochen Gartz, and others.

 

Pictured: Thomas Lyttle, photographers unknown.