The front piece to the Paste-Up Discordia (The Sacred PUD). Courtesy the Discordian Archives.Here at Historia Discordia, we’ve be on a mission from Goddess to document the Origins, History & Chaos of the Discordian Society.
Hey, we even put this calling into the site’s masthead, so, you know, we’re like srsly Discordian zealots.
(DEATH TO ALL FANATICS!)
We enjoy this unique opportunity to have access to both Discordian Founders’ archives as well as other original materials. While Greg Hill and Kerry Thornley kept their stash of documents by very different methods, one Hodge and the other Podge, some clarity has been achieved regarding Discordian history.
Many New Old Truths have been discovered about the origination, growth, hilarity, and impact of Discordianism from this cache of source documents.
As such, we’ve tried to put a little sanity, Goddess forgive us!, on this library of madness:
As we glean new information and post articles about and from the Archives here, we include them into the Discordian Timeline, a linear year-by-year accounting of what was going on and when with the Early Discordians thru to current Modern Discordians.
The Discordian history is a murky maze and fraught with many Erisian contradictions, so we hope offering an understanding of its conception, history, and weirdness on a timeline will help every past, present, and future Discordian Pope better grasp these wonderful absurdities.
Kerry Thornley in the late-60s. Photo courtesy John F. Carr. Aside from Jim Garrison’s On The Trail of the Assassins (Amazon), the first book to address, in any depth, Kerry Thornley’s alleged role in the JFK assassination was Joe Biles’ In History’s Shadow: Lee Harvey Oswald, Kerry Thornley & the Garrison Investigation (Amazon).
Biles’ claimed that Thornley—on account to his supposed CIA affiliations—was well looked after by intelligence agency handlers as payment for his participation with a shadowy New Orleans cabal that conspired to assassinate JFK. According to Biles:
“Garrison investigator Jim Rose would later learn that Thornley had two homes in Florida, one in Miami and one in Tampa, as well as two cars. The Tampa residence, where Thornley lived, was a large white frame house on a one acre lot. Thornley was single and supposedly had only worked as a waiter and doorman at a few apartment houses.” 1
Yours truly has reviewed hundreds of letters in the Discordian Archives dating from the mid-60s until Thornley’s death in the late-90s, and in these letters one can trace his whereabouts and activities, in particular during the Garrison investigation period. Biles’ assertion that Thornley owned two homes in Tampa has no factual basis. Kerry lived on the edge of poverty most of his life (he never owned a house), and was homeless for extended periods. At one time he even made his home in a renovated chicken coop in Tujunga, California.
The only accurate statement—in the above passage from In History’s Shadow—is that Kerry lived in Tampa, and that his employment over the years included jobs as a waiter and doorman. Among other occupations, Kerry edited a Libertarian newsletter, The Innovator, during the mid-60s, in addition to working other odd jobs, including as a dishwasher, a job he performed at a variety of restaurants in Florida and later, Georgia.
Biles maintains that Kerry was single, another glaring goof-up. For the record, Kerry married Cara Leach in Palos Verdes, California in December 1965. They separated in the early 1970s.
Biles’ claim that Kerry owned two cars is also bunk. As was the hippie fashion of the day, he and Cara owned a VW van during the period they lived in Los Angeles, which they later sold to help fund their move to Florida in the autumn of 1967. From that point forward, Kerry never owned another vehicle.
After relocating to Florida, Kerry and Cara—with their infant son, Kreg—lived in an “inexpensive place” in the Palm River District on the outskirts of Tampa, settling there in late 1967 just as the Garrison investigation started heating up. Soon afterwards, they moved to a rented cottage on Marlin Street near the Yacht Club where Kerry worked as a dishwasher. Kerry’s mode of travel at this time was a used $8 bike he purchased from Goodwill. So much for the fantasy he was some sort of well paid CIA super spook. During this period, Greg Hill and Bud Simco visited Kerry in Tampa. According to Simco:
“The only real time we had to visit was while Kerry was at work. So Greg and I went with him and washed dishes at the Yacht Club for free—just to hang out in the kitchen to visit with Kerry… and it was a lot of fun—we did that for a day or two. And the management, they were really amazed that people would do that—these three guys back there washing dishes, two of them for free—all of them, by all appearances, over qualified to be washing dishes… And they couldn’t figure out why Kerry was back there washing dishes because he was obviously a very intelligent person, and they knew he was a writer—basically that’s what Kerry said: “I just want to write—I just want to cover the basic minimum daily requirements, and be left alone to write.” 2
Kerry Thornley and family circa late-60s or early-70s. Photo courtesy of John F. Carr.
Jim Rose’s entrée into the Garrison investigation came courtesy of former FBI guy William “Bill” Turner, who during this period was freelancing for Ramparts magazine and dabbling in JFK assassination research. At some point, Garrison passed on leads in the case to Ramparts editor Warren Hinkle, which Hinkle passed along to Turner. (Hinkle and Turner would later co-author The Fish is Red: The Story of the Secret War Against Castro (Amazon). Soon after, Turner inserted himself into Garrison’s investigation and brought with him Jim Rose, who had also freelanced at Ramparts.
Jim Rose aka Carl. E. McNab.
Although Rose used a number of aliases (Jim Rhodes, Vince Rose, Carl Davis and Steve Wilson) his real name was E. Carl McNabb (as far as I’ve been able to ascertain), but for clarity’s sake we’ll just call him “Jim Rose” because that’s how he’s most often identified in memos, letters and articles from the period. According to Warren Hinkle:
“We called him Jim Rose. At least that was the name by which he was known to everyone on the magazine, including one of the secretaries with whom he took up housekeeping between derrings-do. But he had a name for every day of the week. He was Jack Carter when he worked in Miami, until later he became too hot and decided to ‘kill off’ Carter by simulating a plane crash at sea, thus discouraging the spoilsports in the F.A.A. from inquiring further into the checkered history of Carter’s flight plans. He had several newspaper clippings reporting his own death, which he would exhibit with the eager shyness of someone showing you an appendix scar or bottled gallstone. He was also known as Dawes, also as McLeish, also as several other people, among which I was always partial to Rose, because of Gertrude Stein and all. But by any name he was, as Damon Runyan said about those types who stand out among other types of their type, the ‘genuine item.’ He loved adventure, and second only to that he loved talking about adventure.” 3
Ramparts editor Warren Hinkle.
Although Hinkle considered Rose a real deal soldier of fortune with intelligence agency connections up the wazoo, others connected to the Garrison investigation were less enthralled with the seemingly self created legends swirling around the enigmatic Mr. Rose. Rose claimed he’d worked as a CIA contract pilot, and had flown missions—at one time or another—with one of Garrison’s key suspects, the notorious David Ferrie of red wig fame. However, Rose said many things to many people that more often than not never really panned out. Just the same, there’s plenty of evidence to suggest that Rose was involved in paramilitary activities linked to the CIA.
Jim Rose with P-51 Mustang, Santa Barbara, 1967
Strange bedfellows such as Jim Rose suggest that Garrison showed little hesitation about recruiting into his investigation former intelligence agents or assets from the very same agencies that he theorized were behind JFK’s assassination—such “former” agents or assets that could potentially serve as moles and undermine his own investigation. And that’s exactly what Garrison later claimed: that his investigation had been infiltrated by former CIA spies and ultimately sabotaged. In particular, a character named Bill Boxley (aka William Wood), a former CIA spook who—prior to hooking up with Garrison—had apparently been booted from the agency due to frequent bouts with the bottle. Boxley and Garrison eventually had a falling out and Boxley jumped ship and ended up working on Clay Shaw’s defense team.
Bill Boxley aka William Wood.
Even though Garrison was knee deep in his belief that the FBI and/or CIA were attempting to sabotaged his case, he nonetheless possessed an almost fan boy fascination with former spooks. The first time Rose met with Garrison at the D.A.’s office, he was frisked by staffer Lou Ivon, who apparently overlooked a deadly ballpoint pen Rose was carrying. “It’s napalm,” Rose explained. “If I shot you, your face would go up in flames.” 4 Garrison endearingly dubbed Rose, “Winston Smith,” then later “Winnie the Pooh,” and “Rosalie.”
Too sexy for his shirt? Jim Rose on assignment.
Although Rose wasn’t officially on Garrison’s payroll, he was compensated through a slush fund called “Truth or Consequences” that set up by a group of wealthy right wing Garrison supporters. Among his many activities, Rose was paid a thousand dollars upfront to travel to Tacoma, Washington, to investigate Fred Crisman, another among the many colorful alleged JFK assassination conspirators targeted by Garrison.
Fred Crisman
On a trip in the Northwest in 1968, Fred Newcomb (a JFK assassination researcher and graphic artist commissioned by Harold Weisberg to touch up Kerry Thornley’s photo), spent a couple of days in Tacoma, following up leads on Crisman. While there, Newcomb learned that Rose had been snooping around town earlier that year and making claims that “Chrisman [sic] had been known to transport large sums of money to several cities in the country and that he had no visible means of support.” Rose later claimed that he had been shot at while in Tacoma and barely got out of town alive. 5
As for Crisman’s alleged role in Garrison investigation bingo, he was accused of being one of the three mystery tramps (presumably up to no good in Dealey Plaza) that had been picked up by Dallas cops in the aftermath of the assassination. This was a theory originally promoted by Garrison’s “photographic expert,” Richard Sprague, based on information developed by Jim Rose’s mentor, Bill Turner, and then subsequently “investigated” by Rose.
These allegations against Crisman were later debunked in 1977 by the House Select Committee on Assassinations who determined that—on November 22nd, 1963—Crisman had been filling in as a substitute teacher at Rainer Union High School in Rainer, Oregon, his whereabouts corroborated in affidavits provided by three teachers in attendance that day: Marva Harris, Norma Chase, and Stanley Peerloom. 6
In On the Trail of the Assassins, Garrison spoke glowingly of Rose:
“…an urbane, very bright young man who had grown up in Latin America and spoke Spanish like a native; he was useful in interviews with Cuban exiles… [Rose] was accepted after a strong recommendation from Boxley, who had known him back in his agency days. Rose had a number of photographs showing himself instructing anti-Castro guerrilla trainees at the no name key training camp in Florida back in the early-60s.”
Garrison’s puffery aside, there’s no evidence that Rose actually served with the CIA. According to Big Jim’s glowing prose, Rose had been involved with training anti-Castro exiles, something that Fred Newcomb discovered after coming across a series of photos taken of these training exercises. Newcomb passed the photos along to his circle of assassination researchers that included Penn Jones, Jr., who was able to verify that Rose was indeed the mystery man in the photos identified as “Steve Wilson.” These associations cast a cloud of suspicion over Rose that he had infiltrated the Garrison investigation for dubious reasons.
Arrest photo of Jim Rose (red circle around his head) with Cuban exiles involved in paramilitary training exercises in Florida, 1963.
1) Biles, Joe G. 2002 In History’s Shadow: Lee Harvey Oswald, Kerry Thornley & the Garrison Investigation. Writers Club Press. (Pages 66-67).
2) Author’s interview with Bud Simco, Feb 17, 2003.
3) Hinkle, Warren, April 1973, Esquire Magazine, “The Mystery of the Black Books”.
4) Mellen, Joan. 2005. A Farewell To Justice: Jim Garrison, JFK’s Assassination, And The Case that Should Have Changed History. Potomoc Books.
5) “Memo on Jim Rose/Jim Rhodes/Vince/E. Carl McNabb with sidelights on Turner/Jaffee/Crissman/Sprague” by Fred Newcomb (Harold Weisberg archives).
6) Report of the Select Committee on Assassinations of the U.S. House of Representatives. 1979. (Page 607).
February Eris of the Month 2018: DC Comics Ares from Wonder Woman.
CORRECTION: Some quick sloppy Internet research (is there any other kind?) by me got this Eris of the Month a little muddled. The above image is not of Eris, but Ares, God of War, brother to Eris. And from a different comic and timeline. Are we good or what? But we’ll keep it just the same. Story below has been updated with some interesting Erisian Mysteries. Caution as always with this knowledge for as it is commanded in the Pentabarf in the Principia Discordia, “A Discordian is Prohibited of Believing what he reads.” All errors were mine and I own them. Mine, mine, mine! –The MGT.
First appearance of Eris in Wonder Woman Vol 1 #183, Page 00005.The first appearance of Eris in DC Comics was in Wonder Woman Vol. 1 #183 (August, 1969), and in accordance with the Law of Fives, on Page 00005. All this takes place in the New Earth timeline.
Praise be to Our Lady of Discord, figuring out comic book universe timelines is all very confusing.
As I was trying to unmuddle this murky mess, Adam remembered seeing a copy of Wonder Woman Vol. 1 #183 in the Discordian Archives and upon review discovered some notes that Greg Hill had affixed to Page 00021 of the comic. The cypher at the top is the two Zwack Cyphers for classified Discordian communications as revealed on Page 00074 of the Principia Discordia. It reads:
CERTIFIED MIRACLE!
Certified Miracle: Wonder Woman #168 with notes attached by Greg Hill on Page 00021.
After realizing the snafu and mixup of Eris with Ares for this month’s EOTM, another Erisian Mystery of Great Importance was discovered in the artwork of Ares:
The Five Fingered Hand of Eris on Ares' helmet?
Could this be the source for the The Five Fingered Hand of Eris on Page 00021 (coincidence???) of the Principia Discordia, or, could this mean a certain DC Comics artist was an Early Discordian?
The latest issue of Psychedelic Press (No. 23, synchronistically) is dedicated to Discordianism and psychedelics, and features an essay by yours truly entitled “Sex, Drugs and Discordia.”
Other contributors include Nikki Wyrd, Havelock Ellis, John Constable aka John Crow, Ben Graham, Catherine Kneale, David Lee, Adrian Reynolds, Andy Gell, and Discordian Society co-founder, Gregory Hill.
Have a Kerry Christmas!Discordianism is well-known to tolerate the traditional holidays and holydays of other delusional systems of belief and Christmas is no exception.
To demonstrate, here are some festive reason-for-the-season articles from the Discordian Archives about the pasts of Discordian Christmas.
Among the more prodigious correspondents of the 1970s Discordian letter writing circle was a fellow named Stan Jamison (aka Coman Ra – Lt. Colonel, Commanding 1st Intergalactic Confederacy Advance Detail—Planet Shan) who was a rather enigmatic sort in that he didn’t fit the typical mold of what some might consider a Discordian. Of course, using the term “typical” to describe a Discordian is oxymoronic, as there was nothing close to typical about any of the Early Discordians.
The Stan Jamison files. All three and a half inches. Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.
Many have associated the early Discordians with the hippie movement (whatever that actually was) and it can’t be denied that Greg Hill and his fellow travelers were heavily immersed in and influenced by the 1960s counterculture, and were students and practitioners of its myriad forms of expression, including alternative religions, non violent political protest, Anarcho-Libertarianism, and an irreverent sense humor that permeated their colorful network of guerilla ontologists.
Even though he was described, at times, as a semi-fascist right wing kind of guy, Jamison was into what some might consider some pretty hippy dippy type shit himself, and to some degree his interactions with Discordian Society members certainly rubbed off on him in terms of being able to see different sides of an issue and immerse himself in different reality tunnels he might not have normally ventured into or engaged in.
Jamison was a self described “naturopath,” a practitioner of natural healing and out of the box therapies who ran a mailing list dedicated to a wide range of topics such as growing organic sprouts, how to cure cancer via oxidation, and other alternative healing cures.
The Stan Jamison Files: 'Doc Jamison Speaks'
In this circa 1970 memo to Louise Lacey, Greg Hill shared his thoughts about the semi-enigmatic Doc Jamison.
Page 00001 of memo on Doc Jamison from Greg Hill to Louise Lacey, circa 1970. Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.Page 00002 of memo on Doc Jamison from Greg Hill to Louise Lacey, circa 1970.Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.
To this end, Greg Hill’s comment (re Jamison supporting EPP) was emblematic of the sort of out of the box strategic thinking he often showcased in his writings. In this case the notion that Jamison could help promote a left leaning concept like EPP to a right wing audience who under normal circumstances might view EPP as a manifestation of Socialism. In reality, EPP slid more toward the anarchic side of the political scale, i.e. less government, which was the sweet spot where mutual interests between the left and the right sides of the political spectrum could find common ground.
Like his fellow Discordian conspirators, Jamison took part in many of the prank letter writing campaigns referred to as “jakes.” Once such jake was initiated by Discordian Thomas Patrick McNamara (aka Thomas the Gnostic) to The Rag, a counterculture mag out of Austin, Texas.
April 9, 1970: Thomas the Gnostic’s Illuminati letter to The Rag. Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.
Others, of course, soon joined in on the fun, including Jamison with his own Illuminati letter to The Rag that included an honest to goddess pope card for The Rag’s “Illuminati Editor.”
June 10, 1970: Doc Jamison's Illuminati letter to The Rag, page 00001. Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.June 10, 1970: Doc Jamison's Illuminati letter to The Rag, page 00002. Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.
During the late 1960s, Jamison resided in Irwin, California, or—as he called it—“The Free City of Irwin” where I guess he had his own branch of The Universal Life Church (ULC), a non-profit ministry whose headquarters were located in the nearby town of Modesto.
ULC became famous (or infamous, as the case may be) for ordaining ministers for a “free will love offering” and was a huge influence on The Discordian Society. Greg Hill, in fact, became an ordained ULC minister, and in the decades to follow thousands in the U.S. and abroad would receive their minister’s credentials through the organization.
Greg Hill's ULC Minister's card. Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.
One aspect of ULC that resonated with Greg Hill—and that became part of the Discordian ethos—was the idea that anyone anywhere at any given time could become a holy man or holy woman (a pope or mome.) ULC became popular during the Vietnam War era when many potential draftees from across this great land of ours obtained their very own ministerial credentials in the hopes it would help them steer clear of the war (on religious grounds), a notion that resonated deeply within the Discordian ranks and led to other like-minded correspondences/interactions, one of which was with Archbishop Gordon L. Cruikshank, an anti-gov/anti-tax advocate/militant of a certain stripe who had created his own religious organization called The Life Science Church in Rolling Meadows, Illinois.
Page 00001 of Archbishop Gordon L. Cruikshank's March 29, 1970 letter to Stan Jamison.Page 00002 of Archbishop Gordon L. Cruikshank's March 29, 1970 letter to Stan Jamison.
Greg Hill was also a card carrying member of this outfit. (Of course there was never an alternative religion that Greg Hill met that he didn’t like.)
Greg Hill's Certificate of Ordination from Gordon L. Cruikshank's Life Science Church, Inc.
Another colorful character who came into the orbit of Hill and Jamison was W. John Weilgart, an Austrian philologist/psychoanalyst and the mastermind/madman behind “aUI,” a so-called constructed language or what Weilgart referred to as “the language of space.”
According to Brad Steiger, as a child Weilgart learned about aUI from a literal “little green spaceman” who informed him that this “space language” was used by all sentient beings throughout the cosmos, and that if adopted by humankind it could cure every one of irrational thinking patterns.
Weilgart’s motivation for inventing the language was to create a form of communication based on what he proposed to be universal, basic elements of human thought and expression, and incorporated it into his psychotherapy work.
A good summary of aUI can be found at The Anomalist.
Jamison forwarded three items to Louise Lacey that included a one page explainer on aUI; a letter about aUI and how it could be used as the official language of Earth People’s Park; and a letter from Weilgart to Jamison and Doc Iggy (aka Greg Hill) that apparently was in response to material The Discordians were circulating about nudes in San Francisco that “were soldiers in the Om United New World Nude Brigade.”
One page explainer on aUI. Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.Stan Jamison's July 5, 1970 letter to Louise Lacey on aUI. Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.July 14, 1970 letter from John Weilgart to Stan Jamison. Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.
Jamison received a couple more letters from Weilgart detailing plans for a summer of 1970 West Coast visit that would be coordinated by Jamison and Hill to include speaking gigs and media appearances not to mention Weilgart trying to wrangle some nudie models for a body painting exhibit dedicated to his space language.
John Weilgart's letter to Stan Jamison. Date unknown. Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.July 17, 1970 letter from John Weilgart to Stan Jamison. Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.
There was more back and forth correspondence, but suffice it to say I could no evidence that this Discordian-Weilgart hook-up ever actually took place, though the vision of voluptuous nudes with aUI body paint shines bright in my mind’s eye.
Doc Jamison's official Declaration of War. Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.
In his 1986 broadsheet Kultcha Issue #28 entitled “Coman-Ra,” Jamison’s Discordian name, Kerry Thornley wrote:
Since 1970, though, Greg Hill and I both had been receiving from him everything from advice about how to grow organic sprouts to racist newspapers published by White Christians who were armed and quite dangerous. In reply to one of my memos about Kirstein [aka Brother-in-Law] that had fallen into his hands indirectly, he wrote me to say that the tragedy in Dallas [Kennedy’s assassination] was plotted by the Secret Order of Thule in such a way as to assure that no cover-up could remain convincing forever. Motive: to make the American public paranoid about their government and mass media. For paranoia, he told me, is a big step in the direction of mental health.
People who become paranoid, Coman-Ra [Stan Jamison] wrote, will not rest until they discover every last shred of truth. Among the devices used to encourage awareness of conspiracy were the many crude Oswald impersonations that occurred just previous to the assassination. Puzzled for more than a decade about exactly that mystery, I had to admit this was the first credible hypothesis to explain it without making the assassins look like idiots. And had they been less than geniuses, there’d have been no cover-up at all.
Coman-Ra further informed me that the conspiracy was constructed in concentric circles, like Chinese boxes, with descending levels, so that only the “man at the center” understood afterwards exactly what had happened. Of course, I could not ignore the possibility that man might have been the person I call Brother-in-law.
What brought the many loose ends in the John Kennedy murder mystery together for me was this realization that it was a maximum complicity crime. Various factions must have been deliberately implicated on a blind-alliance basis, so that once the event occurred, every group of conspirators was startled at evidence of participation by someone besides themselves.
What brought the many loose ends in the John Kennedy murder mystery together for me was this realization that it was a maximum complicity crime. Various factions must have been deliberately implicated on a blind-alliance basis, so that once the event occurred, every group of conspirators was startled at evidence of participation by someone besides themselves.
Like Brother-in-law, Jamison seemed morbidly fascinated with Hitler and Nazi Germany. Both men mentioned in particular little-known aspects of the Third Reich — such as the secret pagan rituals of the SS and the occult beliefs of Hitler’s cohorts. Both repeated a rumor that Nazi rocket scientists discovered energy secrets the oil companies were repressing to this day. And whether either or both were living some kind of macabre hoax or were absolutely fanatical was impossible to decide, since neither man was without humor. For instance, [Jamison] always signed off with: “Love is Alive and Well.”
As might be anticipated, it struck me that perhaps Jamison and Gary Kirstein were the same person, so in 1977 I dropped in on Jamison unexpectedly at his address in Turlock, California. Not only was he not the same man I had conversed with in New Orleans, but it was plain that the spine-chilling ranting in his letters was just a big put-on. That isn’t to say his information about the assassination could not have been valid. A warm, intelligent human being obviously unsympathetic to Fascism, he nevertheless seemed quite versed in secret society politics.
“I come on all hairy like that in my letters,” he told me, “to scare off government agents.”
Stanton Jamison: United States Social Security Death IndexEven though he put out a lot of articles about how to cure cancer with oxidation and live forever by eating wheat germ, it appears (according to the U.S. Social Security Index) that Jamison lived only to the age of 75, dying in California on April 29, 1996, around that same time period (give or take a year or two) that so many of his Discordian brethren likewise cashed in their chips: Thornley in 1998, Camden Benares in 1999, and Greg Hill in 2000.
The Original Sacred Chao (OSC). Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.One of the earliest documents charting the development of Discordianism is dated Feb 2, 1964, written by Kerry Thornley not long after he moved from New Orleans to Arlington, Virginia in the aftermath of the JFK assassination brouhaha.
Among the many discordant highlights to be found in this document includes the first ever (hand drawn) image of the Sacred Chao, which it now can be announced was the brainchild of our beloved Mr. Thornley!
Page 3 of the ancient Discordian document dated Feb 2, 1964 written by Kerry Thornley containing the origin of the Sacred Chao. Courtesy the Discordian Archives.
Not long after Thornley cooked up this chaos, Greg Hill gussied the image up and used it for the cover of the first edition of the Principia Discordia: Or How the West was Lost. And the rest, as they say, is Discordian History.
Greg Hill's adaption of the Sacred Chao, created sometime in 1964. Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.
On page 5 (of course) of this chaotic document, we find what I believe was the first ever reference to the Law of Fives, again straight out of Kerry Thornley’s curious brain:
“The Law of Fives is simply a Discordian law that says everything happens in fives. For example: the pentagon always has five sides; the five day work week has five days; there are five pillars of nonsense; five is a number often found in math books. Oh, the list is endless! At appropriate times therefore, for differentiation, we will refer to the Discordian pentagon as the Sign of Five. Rally ‘round the Five, boys!”
According to the June 11, 1970 edition of The San Francisco Chronicle:
“Two willowy blondes walked nude down Market street yesterday, hand-in-hand with a naked dwarf who had a peg-leg and a beard.
“The three of them, at the height of the evening rush-hour traffic, commanded considerable attention.
“They said they were soldiers in the Om United New World Nude Brigade, whose objective is to free mankind from 6000 years of sexual guilt…”
Article on the Om United New World Nude Brigade from the June 11, 1970 San Francisco Chronicle.Article on the Om United New World Nude Brigade from the June 11, 1970 San Francisco Chronicle.
This public display was all part of a “Go Nude Now” campaign sponsored by the OM United New World Nude Brigade (OUNWNB), overseen by the great religious leader, Baba Om, according to the group’s propaganda.
OUNWNB propaganda. Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.
Greg Hill (under the guise of Dr. Ignotum P. Ignotius) sent five pope cards to Baba Om, “the girls and the little fellow, plus one extra on general principles (to accord with the Law of Fives)…”
In addition to a sermon on the benefits of chaos, Doc Iggy congratulated “OUNWNB for your masterful positively–directed-disorder, by parading about the streets baldassed naked, with magnificent effect!”
Letter from Greg Hill to the OUNWNB. Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.
To commemorate this auspicious occasion, the Joshua Norton Cabal issued the following proclamation:
Official Joshua Norton Cabal proclamation concerning Go Nude Day. Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.
May Eris of the Month 2017, Eris Pepe. Eris/Pepe mash-up ripped from the pages of The Pepe Report.
One of the crazier rabbit holes to emerge from the 2016 Presidential campaign was the viral meme of a frowning frog named Pepe, who in the election’s aftermath all of the sudden got this shit eating grin on his face (his frown turned upside down) and MAGA cap planted on his head.
For those unfamiliar with Pepe the Frog (aka Kek), there’s a whole mythology around this meme that’s indeed quite mind warping. Long story short, Pepe became a sigil for 4chan trolls to focus on; a sort of mental image for a magickal working. It’s a story filled with more sordid synchronicities than you can shake a magick stick at, all of which ostensibly got Trump elected.
Pepe also had a hand (“some people are saying”) in creating—or giving some oomph to—the movement now identified as the Alt-right, which pretty much appeared out of nowhere not so long ago. And a faction of the Alt-right are those who frequent Reddit, 4chan and the deeper regions of the dark web doing whatever it is they do in dim-lit basements, their 400 pound fat guy faces illuminated by the eerie glow of computer screens. This, theoretically, included birthing Pepe into pop culture like some kind of right wing Rosemary’s Baby.
Many Cult of Kek enthusiasts were quick to make this Pepe/Discordian association, which is way off base IMHO, at least in terms of how I view the Early Discordian practice of Operation Mindfuck (OM).
Just the same, these Pepe/Discordian comparisons could be considered valid in a limited sense, or as its writ in Principia Discordia:
“All statements are true in some sense, false in some sense, meaningless in some sense, true and false in some sense, true and meaningless in some sense, false and meaningless in some sense, and true and false and meaningless in some sense.”
Discordianism (such as it is) has greatly morphed over the years. Some who nowadays identify themselves as Discordians bring all sorts of divergent political baggage to the party—left, right, or off the map—hence the old adage: “We Discordians must stick apart!” In other words, there’s no formal agreement as to what a Discordian is—let alone what the meaning of “is” is— other than Discordians often agree to disagree—or agree on some things, but not so much on others. Hence what might be true for one is false for another. Much of what presents itself these days as Discordianism (ala social media) comes in the form of the sort of shitposting that Discordian founder Greg Hill would have no doubt recoiled from in horror.
Some have also compared Pepe-ism to Chaos Magick, which itself is tangentially linked to Discordianism. The Early Discordians, for the most part, were never all that much involved in ritual magick—chaotic or otherwise—except of course for Robert Anton Wilson (RAW), easily the most famous Discordian of all who dabbled in various forms of ritual magick.
There was a network of chaos magicians that emerged in the 1970s (many of them influenced in part by RAW) who were likewise into Quantum Physics theories in terms of influencing physical reality and consciousness using memes akin to sigils; for instance, the Discordian practice of focusing on the number 23, and the more you concentrated on it, the more it would manifest, the same sort of mindfuck more recently observed with the whole 11:11 phenomenon. Seek and ye shall find…
These earlier Discordian practices
Send us your Eris of the Month Club submissions (more info here) by using the form at the bottom of The MGT. page. (ala the 23 Enigma) were conducted on an informal and often individual basis or through small group experiments—or simply by those who stumbled upon RAW’s Cosmic Trigger Vol. 1—all of this occurring long before the Internet was but a glint in Al Gore’s eye.
Back in the day, it was word-of-mouth-high-weirdness; the memes spread gradually over time in contrast to the Internet age information overload where a simple meme (posted to social media) can spread like wildfire over the course of a few hours.
To this end, the Cult of Pepe is, in essence, a sort of chaos magick working that took some elements from all of the above and projected them across a cyber landscape gone wild, making The Illuminatus! Trilogy look comparatively like a Sunday stroll through the park.
Another Pepe/Discordian connecting point concerns elements of the hacker community (aligned with Pepe) pushing Operation Mindfuck “fake news” memes as a magickal working ostensibly designed to alter physical reality or create a new paradigm; in essence planting a weird seed to see how it will sprout throughout culture and grow tentacles.
With the early Discordians such OM endeavors took the form of injecting into pop culture a fake or alternative Illuminati mythos that was partly true and partly false, fact mixed with fiction which—in turn—created a viral mutation of how we now, as a culture, collectively view the Illuminati.
When Hill, Kerry Thornley, Wilson et al. first launched their OM Illuminati conspiracy, it was uncertain (at least to those of us now on the outside looking back) whether they had any sort of end game in mind—or if OM was all just good fun.
Conversely, the Cult of Kek’s modern and—some might say—twisted form of OM took stories that were partly true—like John Podesta’s real emails—and OM’d them into such beasties as Pizzagate, which is—in essence—a mash up of several pre-Internet conspiratorial yarns, including the Hillary-satanic-lesbian story that was first rolled out in one of the weirder mind control/conspiracy books of the early 1990’s, Cathy O’ Brian’s Trance: Formation of America (archive.org TXT file / Amazon).
Add to that secret tunnels below Comet Pizza—a throwback to the alleged McMartin Pre-School tunnels where children were purportedly transported and used as sex slaves during the height of the Satanic Panic craze—all of which has been recycled into this lurid story of a modern day pizza parlor gone bad!
So the modus operandi was similar (re: Cult of Kek vs. the Discordian Society’s OM) where you take factual elements and conflate them with misinformation/disinformation thus turning these stories into viral Molotov cocktail’s launched into the body politic, the end design to burn it all to the ground—or at least deliver a fully loaded monkey wrench into the works and gum the fuck out of The System.
Perhaps the foremost Pepe chronicler these days is a fellow named A.T.L. Carter who maintains a twitter page called—appropriately enough—“The Pepe Report” where I recently posited that perhaps this whole Pepe craze was on its last (frog) legs. In response, one agitated pro-Pepe commenter suggested I was nothing more than a worthless sack of you know what (ouch, that hurt!) and that if we sorry lot of Discordian losers were as adept as the Cult of Kek in the art of doxing, trolling, and shit posting, we would have elected our very own Discordian President by now instead of talking smack about poor little Pepe.
The agitated tweeter in question also posted a mash-up of Eris meets Pepe—green skin and all—which I must admit is pretty cool and sort of reminded me of an Orion slave girl, and for these reasons we have selected her our Eris of the Month!
In any case, I immediately screen-capped this Eris/Pepe mash-up because you know how these things have a tendency to disappear. This turned out to be a wise move because shortly afterwards our Green Skinned Lady of the Golden Apple was deleted for some reason—by the agitated tweeter in question, I presume—or maybe A.T.L. 86’d it because he didn’t want his Pepe Report devolving into a flame war about who is the superior agent of chaos: Pepe or Eris?
Just the same, A.T.L. referred to me as a “cuck” for my crack about Pepe’s possible demise, which I guess suggests that being called a cuck isn’t quite as bad as being called a worthless sack of stuff.
Twitter exchange, Pepe Report vs. cuck Adam Gorightly.
Whatever the case, A.T.L. seems like an alright (A.L.T. right?) guy, the cuck comment notwithstanding. Of course, I wasn’t entirely clear what “cuck” meant at the time, aside from being a popular Pepe enthusiast putdown.
‘Cuck’, it turns out—after some master class googling—has multiple meanings related to ‘cuckold.’ However, the more recent Breitbartian application (often employed by that creepy Milo guy) seems to describe your average limp-wristed liberal types who get their jollies letting black men do it to their wives while voyeuristically watching from the sidelines. (For further information on the meaning of “cuck” consult your pineal gland and/or Roger Stone.)
Discordian social media forums have been infiltrated—to a certain extent—by this Cult of Pepe crew with the sort of shitposting that some consider hip cutting edge political incorrectness. This type of political incorrectness—it could be argued—eventually led to Milo’s (whatever his last name is) fall from grace due to remarks made on the Joe Rogan Show implying he was cool with underage gay sex—comments that turned out to be a bit much for the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) organizers who had scheduled our favorite Alt-right rock star for a speaking gig at their shindig, but thought better of it once his creepy comments made the rounds of social media. Soon after, CPAC withdrew their invite to Milo, who in short order got the boot from Breitbart, as well, probably because it’s kind of hard to promote cheesy Pizzagate stories when your fair-haired Aryan boy is endorsing the very same illicit activities that John Podesta was supposedly party to at Comet Pizza!
Speaking of CPAC, one of the more Discordian acts I’ve seen of late was perpetrated by a couple young pranksters who had a bunch of Russian flags made up with “Trump” printed on them, and then passed them out to clueless CPAC participants entering the event who either weren’t smart enough to know better—or just plain didn’t care that they were waving around Trump/Russia flags. When CPAC organizers caught wind of this gag, they sent their goons into the crowd to retrieve them, but even then some of the recipients refused to hand-over their prized blue, white, and (commie) red banners, the treasonous bastards.
Afterwards, the two pranksters who pulled off this jake were interviewed outside the event, employing mock Russian accents.
