For those with the time (about 40 minutes)
and the interest, here’s the Full Interview entitled
“UFOs, Cults & Charles Manson Connections + Conspiracy with Adam Gorightly”:
A great issue on a variety of subjects and with this slick piece of work tucked into it:
“Aside from David Ferrie, there was no other among Jim Garrison’s sordid cast of suspects more colorful than Kerry Wendell Thornley, who not only co-founded the spoof religion Discordianism in 1958, but was also writing a novel, The Idle Warriors, based on Lee Harvey Oswald three years before JFK’s assassination. Garrison claimed that The Idle Warriors—as well as Thornley’s non-fiction work, Oswald—were attempts to set up his old Marine Corps pal prior to the assassination. If that wasn’t enough, Garrison claimed that Thornley was a CIA agent who impersonated Oswald and had an affair with his wife Marina…”
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.
In the Roman Empire’s eternal era of superior gleaming, the Dog Days were popularly believed to be an evil time when “the Sea boiled, the Wine turned sour, Dogs grew mad, and all other creatures became languid; causing to man, among other diseases, burning fevers, hysterics, and phrensies. And then there was the perpetual godsawful smell of boiling cabbage.”
— Clavis Calendaria; or a Compendious Analysis of the Calendar: illustrated with ecclesiastical, historical, and classical anecdotes, 2 vols., 1812 by John Brady
Caught in the Crossfire: Kerry Thornley, Lee Oswald and the Garrison Investigation Pre-Order The Chaos Now! This Sirian Summer of Discontent has been revealed to be distinctly Discordian. Chaos Reigns!
Hail Eris!
Here’s the latest on what Eris has procured for Her Enjoyment:
Jesse Walker’s io9 review of Historia Discordia, “The Greatest Fake Religion of All Time.”
RAWIllumination.net review: “Adam Gorightly’s Historia Discordia is a very useful book for anyone who wants to understand Illuminatus! and/or Robert Anton Wilson’s literary career.”
ICYMI: John Higgs review: “Adam Gorightly’s new book is hardcore… But it was clear from his earlier biography of Kerry Thornley that if anyone was going to pull this off, it would be Adam Gorightly.”
Red Dirt Report Review of Historia Discordia: “I had a blast digging into all things Discordian and Adam Gorightly was just the guy to don the conductor’s cap on this smoke-belching loco-motive!”
Reason Magazine review of Historia Discordia, “The Prankster Politics of the Discordians.”
Now that I’ve gotten Adam Gorightly’s excellent Historia Discordia (Amazon), I’m starting to see some really intriguing parallels between the Discordians and the Gnostics (the latter of whom I’ve always been very interested in).
One of the central principles of Discordianism is that “the only thing you can know is that you cannot know anything…” reminds me of the gnostic concept of the nature of the “Source” or “Pleroma,” which was also ultimately unknowable as well. The Pleroma created from pure thought Sophia, or “knowledge,” the source of enlightenment for humans, who through the medium of the “fruit of the tree of knowledge” causes Adam and Eve (mankind) to become self-aware. Now it’s interesting that Sophia uses an apple, or that the fruit of the tree is most often represented as an apple; and the “original snub” of Discordianism is a golden apple with the word “Kallisti” (to the most beautiful) which Eris tossed into the wedding feast of Thetis and Peleus, and eventually would lead to the Trojan War as a result of a jealous tiff among the Greek Goddesses. Sophia was usually associated with the soul by the gnostics, and the soul was often thought to have its seat in the pineal gland. The Discordians speak to Eris via the pineal gland (coincidence? I think not…). 🙂
Old Greyface of the Discordians is really parallel with the demiurge, who the Gnostics associated with Jehovah or YHWH. Both of them try to convince mankind that there is an “order” to the cosmos, and they were responsible for creating it (which they were) but being imperfect themselves, their creation was inherently imperfect (thus, we get cruelty, ignorance, hot dog buns, and chiggers). What they really don’t want mankind to know is that Sophia actually created us (or our soul personalities), and that we are in fact closer to the Pleroma than they are. Of course, there were those who wanted to stick to orthodoxy, and for them the Church of the Sub Genius was created by Bob Dobbs, with JHVH-1 being essentially the embodiment of Greyface.
Then again, both the Discordians and the Gnostics may simply have been insane… but Eris tells me otherwise. 🙂
In the Roman Empire’s eternal era of superior gleaming, the Dog Days were popularly believed to be an evil time when “the Sea boiled, the Wine turned sour, Dogs grew mad, and all other creatures became languid; causing to man, among other diseases, burning fevers, hysterics, and phrensies. And then there was the perpetual godsawful smell of boiling cabbage.”
Guest post by Robert Denton