Fortean Times issue 319 found some time to give Historia Discordia a great frogfall review:
A serious joke The countercultural Discordian religion is still culturally relevant — and amusing
Historia Discordia: The Origins of the Discordian Society. Get Your Copy Now!In the pre-Interweb era one’s entry to Discordianism was either through Illuminatus! by Robert Anton Wilson and Bob Shea, or Principia Discordia, the tract intended to reveal “not a complicated put-on disguised as a new religion but a new religion disguised as a complicated joke.”
Nowadays, when everything bad that happens is labelled a conspiracy, it’s only right that the Discordian conspiracy be reintroduced to the world to rebalance the dogma with the katma, even if the author’s investigation dispels some of the mystery fun by unmasking the true identities and methods of Malacalypse (The Younger), Lord Omar Khyyam Ravenhurst, Mordecai The Foul et al. But since the upside is a trove of rare primary sources: rubber stamps, membership cards, letters, tracts, edicts, cartoons, collages, photostatically reproduced in a generous A4 format, then so be it.
A most delightful web of connections and coincidences weaves around this group of iconoclasts and hierophants
whose antics to disrupt reality and automatic thinking with slyly surreal communiqués (Operation Mindfuck) have been more culturally influential than most people realise. The Discordian brainwashing conspiracy of presenting countercutural ‘serious’ jokes and ideas in letters and pamphlets purportedly from secret societies seems so quintessentially late-60s psychedelic, but we learn how the roots of the plot stem from the late 50s when West Coast humorists Kerry Thornley and Greg Hill teamed-up. Thornley knew Lee Harvey Oswald in the Marines, started writing a novel about him years before the Dallas event, and later testified to the Warren Commission.
As legend has it, the first edition of Principia Discordia (fully reproduced here) was clandestinely produced in the office of District Attorney Jim Garrison, who later indicted Thornley as part of a conspiratorial cabal that allegedly orchestrated JFK’s murder. Conspirator, yes, but wrong conspiracy. In some ways, Thornley and his fellow Discordians were even more dangerous than the JFK assassins.
Our go to guy for any Discordian related video work, Floyd Anderson had his mind blown by Arise! The SubGenius and then later by The Principia Discordia fnord. The revelation of the miraculous talking chimpanzee bringeth forth a most relevant religion. All hail Discordia. Fnord. We Discordians must stick apart. In conclusion, there is no conclusion. Hail Eris! floydanderson.com Under threat of Excommunication, Historia Discordia staff member Floyd Anderson finally came up with his Discordian Pope name:
An apparent ASCII computer generated photo from the late-70s or early-80s with Greg Hill and his wife Jeanetta…. Late-70s/Early-80s ASCII portrait of Greg Hill and his wife Jeanetta. Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.
A mysterious German-Discordian cabal known as Erisianisch Geistes Akrobatische Legion (EGAL)—who were at one time in direct communication with Lord Omar—went underground in 1996 after performing a “Discordian pope parade in a bowling alley in Eriskirch by the Lake of Constance.”
But now—all sudden and mysterious-like—EGAL has emerged once again (for how long only time will tell) with an outburst of curious correspondence and cool collages sent to yours truly for submission into The Discordian Archives, a sampling of which we display for you now.
Crowleymas, from Gitch25.In commemoration of the Anniversary of CROWLEYMAS, we bring you now announcements of a party—which could also be considered a ritual—that RAW organized with some fellow Pagan-Discordian friends during his Berzerkley daze 40 years ago.
IAO!
For further cosmic illumination refer to pages 159-166, Cosmic Trigger, Vol. 1, by RAW.
Robert Anton Wilson letter about Crowleymas, October 12, 1974, Page 00001. Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.Robert Anton Wilson letter about Crowleymas, October 12, 1974, Page 00002. Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.Greg Hill Crowleymas Party Invitation Announcement, October 12, 1974. Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.
Submitted for your approval, a postcard from Kerry Thornley (a.k.a. The Bull Goose of Limbo) to Greg Hill (a.k.a. Malaclypse the Younger) dated April 10, 1964.
Postcard from Kerry Thornley to Greg Hill, Front, dated April 10, 1964. Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.Postcard from Kerry Thornley to Greg Hill, Back, dated April 10, 1964. Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.
Caught In the Crossfire: Kerry Thornley, Lee Oswald and the Garrison Investigation is now available through both Amazon (Paperback, Kindle) and our publisher Feral House, who has set up a page for the book
which will include occasional excerpts, such as the chapter “A Homosexual Thrill Kill?” (Not that there’s anything fnord with that!)
Kerry Thornley never imagined that after starting a spoof religion in the 1950s dedicated to the worship Eris—the Greek Goddess of Chaos and Discord—that such an irreverent yet light-hearted endeavor would unleash, in the years to come, a torrent of actual chaos into his life and turn his world upside down.
In 1959, Thornley served in the Marines with Lee Harvey Oswald and was actually writing a novel based on Oswald three years before JFK’s assassination. These connections would later cause New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison to suspect that Thornley was one of the notorious Oswald doubles and part of a JFK assassination plot. Initially, Thornley denied these allegations, but later came to believe that he’d been used as an unwitting pawn in a conspiracy that ran far deeper than the JFK assassination and may also have included the RFK and MLK assassinations, as well as the disturbing specter of government sponsored mind control.
