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by Pablo Capra
The Children’s Guide to Astral Projection by J. A. Homes turns 20 this year! The LA Weekly called it a “local cult classic” (2008-05-16).
James Mathers pseudonymously created his children’s book as Lower Topanga was being bulldozed for parkland… or whatever. When protests failed to halt the introduction of herbicides, he told the Messenger, “It’s remarkable that the people who are being kicked out are actually the ones preserving the land, and not State Parks!” (2003-11-06).
“Everything felt temporal. There was an urgency,” he continued, “Next door, Pablo Capra started playing punk rock and making chapbooks. His Brass Tacks Press published my book so we could give them out as Christmas gifts.”
Mathers grew up on Hillside Dr., and was a teenager when Andy Warhol gave him his first art show in 1983. He lived in Indonesia and Ireland before moving to Lower Topanga in the 1990s. The idea for his book came when he noticed the swelling popularity of J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series.
“As an old school Topanga occultist, I was appalled at the diminished and frivolous portrayal of the great art of Magyck-O. So I whipped up a REAL guide with some actual tools for the incoming star-babies and kids already on the shining path. I remember being quite pleased to discover that my book was the most shoplifted item at Hi De Ho Comics because anarchy always….”
Since 2003, the book has found a devoted fan base, been reprinted in larger and more colorful editions, and translated into Spanish. Locally, it’s for sale at Café Mimosa, Corazón, and Topanga Home Grown.
What makes it so special? According to the LA Weekly, “Mathers’s real mojo is in his mind, perspective, presence, style, and above all else, his words, which he uses, through lolling leaps of intellectual gymnastics and lingual acrobatics, to stretch the paradigm to its outermost limit until it’s taut and transparent and provides glimpses of the transcendent beauty and magic that are Mathers’s everyday reality.”
