Author: Gorightly

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The Battle Hymn of the Eristocracy

Over at twitter Daisy Eris Campbell tweets:

This reminded me of what was perhaps the first official Discordian Society song ever composed, “The Battle Hymn of the Eristocracy” (sung to the melody of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”), captured in the following memorandum dictated by Lord Omar (Kerry Thornley) in April of 1964.

Praise the Goddess and pass the ammo!

MEMORANDUM: Battle Hymn of the Eristocracy by Kerry Thornley, dated April 20, 1964.
Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.
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discordianism letters louise lacey robert anton wilson

A Letter From RAW To Lady L

Those Early Discordians were always sending humorous letters to one another, such as this little ditty from Mord Mal (short for Mordecai Malignatus aka RAW) to Lady L (aka Louise Lacey) sometime during the early-70s.

When I asked Louise permission to post it, she gave the A-OK under the proviso that she wanted to emphasize there was never any romantic relationship between she and RAW—or for that matter with any other of her fellow Discordian brethren—and that the letter was most likely meant as some sort of mystifying joke for future generations to ponder.

Letter from Robert Anton Wilson to Louise Lacey, early 1970s.
Courtesy of Louise Lacey from the Discordian Archives.
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audio book discordianism illuminati interview kerry thornley robert anton wilson subgenius video

RAW and Stang Discuss Discordianism on the Hour of Slack

Fellow HD staff member Floyd Anderson just recently posted to Vimeo an Hour of Slack interview the Honorable Rev. Ivan Stang conducted with RAW in 1987.

http://vimeo.com/89765498

In said interview, Stang notes that “…Kerry Thornley was a famous SubGenius.” It was statements such as these which led me to write—in The Prankster and the Conspiracy—the following:

By the late-80s, Kerry had become a major player in the Church of SubGenius, a spoof religion influenced to a great degree by its predecessor, Discordianism. Ever the sexual exhibitionist, Kerry once sent a photo of himself nude, fucking a chair, to Rev. Ivan Stang’s SubGenius mag Stark Fist of Removal. Stang, of course, published it, albeit with Kerry’s dick blacked out. As Stang later noted: “Kerry had love in his heart for all things, even chairs.” The Prankster and the Conspiracy, page 237.

During the course of penning The Prankster—and coming across the aforementioned photo of Kerry carrying on with a chair—I contacted Stang for permission to use the photo, which he graciously granted. For his assistance, I sent the good Reverend a copy of The Prankster. In return, he shortly after dissed the book whenever he got the chance, basically on account of the above paragraph. Now, don’t get me wrong, I have a pretty thick skin when it comes to criticism and tend to keep an open mind about such things. However, Stang’s main (only) bone of contention about The Prankster concerned this single paragraph and the remark that Kerry had been “a major player in the Church of SubGenius” which he apparently took as some sort of slight (I think) as it suggested (perhaps erroneously) that Kerry had done a lot of the heavy lifting in creating the myth of Bob Dobbs. To this end, Stang went off on yours truly in a recent interview on Greg Bishop’s Radio Misterioso radio show, even though, conversely, he suggested in his 1987 Hour of Slack interview with RAW that Kerry was “…a famous Subgenius.”

During the same Radio Misterioso episode, Stang suggested that I’d ripped off the title for my latest book, Happy Trails To High Weirdness: A Conspiracy Theorist’s Tour Guide from his 1988 book High Weirdness By Mail, which I must admit is one of my fav all time books. Perhaps if he hadn’t got his panties all in a bunch over The Prankster and The Conspiracy ten years or so ago, Stang would have cut me some slack over the apparent indignity of using the phrase “High Weirdness” in the title of my book. However, it should also be mentioned that my publisher at Feejee Press actually came up with “High Weirdness” as part of the title to replace the bland working title I’d suggested: “On The Road With Adam Gorightly.”

Anyway, enough of me venting about the diabolical Rev. Ivan Stang. At the end of the day I consider him a great American, even though he gets a bit whiny at times.

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book discordianism greg hill illuminati interview kerry thornley video writings

VIDEO: Kerry Thornley Discusses Zenarchy And Illuminati Lady

In the following video snippet taken from Rev. Wyrdsli’s 1992 interview, Kerry Thornley discusses Zenarchy and the poem “Illuminati Lady,” which Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea described in Illuminatus! as “an endless epic poem which you really ought to read.” Of course, they gave no indication how one would go about doing so.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtCl5sL4FOQ

Portions of “Illuminati Lady” originally appeared in the underground mag St. John’s Bread Wednesday Messenger around 1970—although no one has really seen it since then—and as Kerry mentions in the video clip, he lost track of the manuscript somewhere along the line.

But fear not, fellow Discordians, Greg Hill filed away a copy in The Archives, which at some point we’ll no doubt release in book form for your possible reading pleasure!

'Illuminati Lady' from May 1970, Page 00001. Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.

 

 
KERRY THORNLEY VIDEOS

VIDEO: Kerry Thornley Discusses Zenarchy and Illuminati Lady
VIDEO: Kerry Thornley on the Birth of Discordianism

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book discordianism illuminati illuminatus! robert anton wilson robert shea

Before Moving On To Week 4… A Little More On the RAWIllumination.net Week 2 Illuminatus! Reading

As RAW mentioned on numerous occasions, Illuminatus! was an exercise of mixing fact with fiction, and in particular the many conspiracy theories presented willy-nilly in the book. Years after its publication, RAW admitted that even he was unclear as to which of these theories—in the final analysis—were ultimately true or false, and that some might have been both true AND false at the same time. In this regard, the book is a mental exercise of sorts in unraveling the many mythologies swirling around the kooky conspiratorial landscape of the late-60s and 70s.

During the Week 2 RAWIllumination.net group reading, I neglected to mention a reference to the Berkeley Illuminati, which was indeed a real group based out of the U.C. Berkeley campus in the mid to late-60s that ran concurrent to the Discordian Society’s Bavarian Illuminati activities. Like RAW and Kerry Thornley, the Berkeley group sent out spurious announcements about far flung conspiracies just to see how people would react and possibly even piss themselves in the process. I’ve never actually seen any of the Berkeley Illuminati materials, but Jesse Walker in The United States of Paranoia: A Conspiracy Theory interviewed one of the members of the group, Sharon Presley, who stated that: “We actually had a recognized student group at Cal called the Bavarian Illuminati. The by-laws were a hoot; obviously no bureaucrat actually read them.”

So, in essence, they were a real group that put out false announcements, so they were both true and false at the same time, a prime example of Operation Mindfuck run amok.

As for the Week 4 reading, I don’t have a lot to comment on, other than to note that the Teenset article mentioned on Page 40 (“The Most Sinister, Evil, Subversive Conspiracy In The World”) was indeed a real article in a real magazine, written by someone named Sandra Glass (who was, most likely, Robert Shea), which documented an investigation into the mysterious Ancient Illuminated Seers of Bavaria (A.I.S.B.). This article was ominously prefaced with an editor’s note: “Before her recent death, Miss Glass was an expert on subversive affairs.” The source— for many of the revelations in the article—came allegedly from an anarchist named Simon Moon, who would later turn up as a character in Illuminatus!.

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A Sampling of Discordian Society Phenomena and Cabalablia

Here’s a one-page double-sided flyer Greg Hill put out in June 1970 listing all the different Erisian cabals that had emerged during this juncture in Discordian history, which included RAW’s Adam Weishaupt chapter, Camden Benares’ St. Gulik Iconistary among other such wonders.

Sampling of Discordian Society Phenomena and Cabalablia, Page 00001, June 1970. Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.
Sampling of Discordian Society Phenomena and Cabalablia, Page 00002, June 1970. Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.

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discordianism kerry thornley writings

A Little Bit of Buddhist Wisdom From Ho Chi Zen (aka Kerry Thornley)

Note from Ho Chi Zen (Kerry Thornley), dated July 19, 1971.
Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.

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And now, this important announcement from Mad Malik (aka Greg Hill)

Greg Hill, as Mad Malik, proposing a secure 'spiderweb' network for private communications,
late 1960s/early 1970s. Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.

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greg hill letters robert anton wilson writings

RAW’s Form Letters

Just like Greg Hill, Robert Anton Wilson had a penchant for using form letters, three of which I’ve included here for shits and giggles.

A couple are from around 1976, and another from 2002 or so when I was in contact with Bob regarding permissions for material to be included in my book The Prankster and the Conspiracy: The Story of Kerry Thornley and How He Met Oswald and Inspired the Counterculture.

RAW form letter, 1976. Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.
RAW form letter, 1976. Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.
RAW form letter, around 2002. Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.
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The Blivet and The Hodge/Podge Transformer

Greg Hill drawings of blivets, 1965, Page 00001. Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.
Greg Hill drawings of blivets, 1965, Page 00002. Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.
The two pages of images presented here called “The Blivit” [sic] were drawn by Greg Hill in 1965 and I would suspect were inspired by issue #93 of Mad magazine from March of that year which has a blivet on the cover.

Mad Magazine #93 with a blivet on the cover. More info on this issue at Doug Gilford's Mad Cover Site.
I make this assumption because Hill and Kerry Thornley were big fans of Mad, and in fact credited it as the inspiration for their own one-shot mag Apocalypse: A Trade Journal for Doom Prophets.

And, if you’re wondering what the hell a blivet is, we refer you now to the ever-handy and never-wrong Wikipedia for its entry on blivets.

The Hodge/Podge Transformer from the Principia Discordia. Shown here is Page 00052 of the Sacred PUD (the original Paste-Up Discordia) where Greg Hill's drawing (we assume) has been pasted on with other elements including a quotation from The Honest Book of Truth's 'The Book of Gooks.' Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.
Significantly to Discordianism, a blivet appears in the Fourth Edition of the Principia Discordia on Page 00052 as part of “The Hodge/Podge Transformer,” and I think it’s safe to assume that “The Hodge/Podge Transformer” was drawn by Greg Hill when compared to his other hand-drawn blivets shown above.

As a side note, there’s a weird online Flash game based on “The Hodge/Podge Transformer,” a demo associated with another game called Ossuary, which itself is based on Discordianism, though the game’s creator doesn’t necessarily want it to be known as “that Discordian game.” Here’s a puzzled review of The Hodge/Podge Transformer game demo which can be played online here.

Hail Eris!