Master Wilburn Burchette

California mail-order mystic Master Wilburn Burchette was first known from his ads, hidden in the back pages of Fate Magazine, Beyond Reality, and Gnostica News. On offer: Burchette’s seven-part, block-printed “Psychic Meditation Course,” designed to teach people how to listen to music. To go along with his lessons, Burchette sold a series of instrumental guitar and electronic records featuring ornate hand-drawn cover designs, complete with listening instructions from the Master himself. Since just his twelfth year, Burchette had been transfixed by the parapsychological, spending as much time reading books on Tibetan mysticism fundamentals as he did practicing guitar, the vibrations of which he used to create tonal pictures and patterns. After time spent teaching classical guitar, Master Wilburn Burchette released seven albums in the seven years spanning 1971 through 1977, before abruptly burning and discarding everything related to his musical explorations.

A grimoire, of course, is a book of magic spells and invocations. The Master’s most evocative, cinematic work, this collection of seven reverberant charms clearly establishes Burchette as a master of guitar technique, and marks the Burchette Brothers’ fateful move to self-publishing. The otherworldly quality of Guitar Grimoire is hard to exaggerate; although each of Burchette’s seven LPs are special, Grimoire may be regarded as his masterwork.