Established in January 2002 in the aftermath of 9/11, the Information Awareness Office (IAO) was a short-lived agency that oversaw the U.S. domestic surveillance program.
In 2003, IAO was axed by Congress following public criticism that the agency was overstepping its Constitutional authority. What with the in-your-face all-seeing eye in the triangle seemingly torn straight from the pages of Illuminatus!, the IAO seal possessed imagery suggesting an Orwellian nightmare come true, replete with an ominous death ray shooting a malevolent beam over the planet.
Cover of Dell's The Illuminatus! Trilogy.During the period when IAO was going hot and heavy, Robert Anton Wilson made a habit of cc’ing his outgoing email to then IAO grand poobah, John Poindexter. To this end, Bob figured that by sending his email directly to Poindexter it would eliminate the need for anyone to maintain surveillance on him, thus eliminating a paid position and cutting down on government waste. “Besides,” Bob told me, “It amuses me to think of Poindexter reading my emails.”
In a May 2002 phone conversation, I asked Bob if “They” had intentionally lifted the IAO seal from the cover of The Illuminatus! Trilogy (Amazon). “I don’t know what the Hell’s going on,” Bob replied. “I think we’re being taken over by a bunch of surrealists.”
Nazi Eye illustration.The acronym, IAO—it should be noted—was a mystical formula used by Uncle Aleister Crowley in his Freemasonic based magick rituals, the same kind of hocus pocus that certain sinister factions of Nazi Germany dipped their spooky toes into. For example, here is a Nazi era illustration (provided courtesy of my good friend Vyzygoth) that once again summons up the surreal spectre of IAO.
1980 yellow covered Loompanics edition of Principia Discordia.
Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.Prepare thyselves, O Discordians…
The Truth Shall Set You Confused… in 2,500 words or less!
2015 (or 3181 on the Discordian calendar) marks the 50th anniversary (maybe!) of the first edition of Principia Discordia, or How the West was Lost, published in New Orleans, Louisiana in 1965, consisting of a mere five copies that—according to Discordian co-founder Greg Hill—“were mostly lost.”
The details surrounding this rare 1st edition are enshrouded in as much myth and mystery as the JFK assassination itself, which—it so happens—will be forever linked to Discordianism due to its association with Discordian Society co-founder Kerry Thornley who served with Lee Harvey Oswald in the Marines.
Curiously enough, Thornley was writing a book based on Oswald three years before the Kennedy assassination and afterwards testified before the Warren Commission and was later accused (ridiculously so) by New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison as being part of a JFK assassination conspiracy.
“A search through the Discordian Archives revealed that the earliest of the Discordian holy books—How the West Was Lost, by Malaclypse the Younger (Greg Hill) — was originally printed on the Xerox machine of D.A. Jim Garrison, in summer 1963. (Greg’s girlfriend was Garrison’s secretary.)”
Thus was birthed the legend of how this mostly missing 1st edition was copied on a Xerox machine belonging to the very same man, Jim Garrison, who would later link Kerry Thornley to a shadowy cabal that allegedly orchestrated Kennedy’s awful offing.
Although RAW was partly correct regarding Jim Garrison’s association with the 1st edition Principia Discordia (PD), it appears that he might not have had his facts quite right. In the Loompanics edition of PD, Greg Hill added an afterword in which he corrected RAW’s claim about the Garrison copying machine caper:
“…Bob [RAW] says that when Oswald was buying the assassination rifle, my girlfriend was printing the first edition of Principia on Jim Garrison’s Xerox. It wasn’t my girlfriend, it was Kerry’s; it wasn’t the First Ed Principia, it was some earlier Discordian thoughts; it wasn’t Garrison’s Xerox, it was his mimeograph; and it wasn’t just before Kennedy was shot but a couple of years before that… The First Ed Principia, by the way, was reproduced at Xerox Corp when xerography was a new technology. Which was my second New Orleans trip in 1965. I worked for a guy on Bourbon Street who was a Xerox salesman by day.”
Afterwards, Hill received further clarification from Kerry Thornley, which he added as a footnote to his Loompanics afterword:
“I checked this further with Mr. Thornley. He says that the woman in question was not his girlfriend, she was just a friend, and it wasn’t a couple of years before Kennedy was shot but had to be a couple of years after (but before Garrison investigated Thornley).”
To confuse matters more (Hail Eris!), Thornley’s introduction to the IllumiNet Press edition of PD states:
“…the First Edition of Principia rolled off District Attorney Jim Garrison’s mimeograph machine (without his knowledge) in New Orleans in 1964. That was the work of Gregory Hill and of Lane Caplinger, a Discordian typist in the DA’s office.”
During the course of researching The Prankster and the Conspiracy: The Story of Kerry Thornley and How He Met Oswald and Inspired the Counterculture (2003 Amazon), I exchanged email correspondence with Lane Caplinger’s sister, actress Grace Zabriskie. For some reason, it’d never dawned on me to ask Grace about the legend of the 1st edition—probably because Grace, by her own choosing, was never really part of the Discordian scene.
In December 2012, I contacted Grace via email with some follow-up questions for my then book in the works Caught in the Crossfire: Kerry Thornley, Lee Oswald and the Garrison Investigation (Amazon) and at that time asked: Was the Garrison copying machine caper “truth, legend, or a combination of both?” Grace passed on my query to her sister Lane who replied, quite simply: “Legend. I recall occasional Discordianism reading and giggling only.”
Lane’s response now leaves us in a quandary and seems to put the kibosh on this whole wonderful mythos that the PD was created right under Jim Garrison’s nose by a diabolical Discordian conspiracy.
But wait, let’s not be in a hurry to dismiss the Garrison mimeograph legend. If we examine each of the seemingly conflicting stories regarding the origins of the 1st edition PD, I think in the final analysis there’s some measure of truth to each story, or as the old Discordian saying goes:
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.
In the IllumiNet Press introduction to PD, Kerry Thornley identifies 1964 as the year of the publication of the 1st edition and that Greg Hill and Lane Caplinger were the culprits.
Thornley moved to Arlington, Virginia in late 1963 through 1964. Meanwhile, Greg Hill returned to New Orleans in 1964 and was there until mid-1965, which was the relevant period when the 1st edition was published.
My working theory is that Lane Caplinger did indeed run off some mimeograph copies of letters and writings by Hill and Thornley that later found their way into the first edition PD. However, it’s my impression that Lane had but a vague idea at best of what she was involved with—other than just copying some material for a couple of friends who were tinkering around with a joke religion called Discordianism.
As Greg Hill noted, only five copies of the 1st edition Principia Discordia were produced, most of which were lost. Later iterations of PD departed greatly from that long ago 1st edition, evolving into a collaborative art project that included the involvement of such notables as Robert Anton Wilson (Mordecai the Foul), Robert Shea (Josh the Dill), Camden Benares (The Count of Fives), Robert Newport (Rev. Hypocrates Magoun), Bob McElroy (Dr. Mungojerry Grindlebone)—and, of course, Thornley and Hill.
I first became involved in researching this craziness in the late-90s when I was overtaken with an obsession of writing a biography of Kerry Thornley, who had captured my imagination not so much due to my interest in Discordianism (that would come later) but because of all the other high weirdness surrounding his life.
In 2001, I initiated a Freedom of Information Act request for any Kerry Thornley related documents in the CIA and FBI files. Shortly after I was informed by the Feds that these Thornley FOIA materials had been previously released and were available through the National Archives. In short order, I obtained the materials, most of which had been assembled during the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) in 1977 and released to the public in 1992 through the Assassination Archives Research Center (AARC.)
In this Kerry Thornley-National Archives package were documents related to Jim Garrison’s investigation, including 36 Discordian related pages which didn’t mean a whole lot to me at the time as I was more interested in getting to the bottom of Thornley’s alleged Kennedy assassination associations than I was all of this Discordian doo-dah. If I’d been paying closer attention, I would have noticed that these Discordian related materials appeared to be the first edition of Principia Discordia, Or How the West Was Lost—or at least a collection of writings from the early days of The Discordian Society. These same materials were later identified in 2006 as the 1st edition PD by a fellow named Karl Musser, who came across the material during a visit to the National Archives.
National Archives version of Principia Discordia, Or How The West Was Lost. Download PDF
At the time, Musser shared these documents with Discordian historian Dr. Jon Swabey who afterwards transcribed this apparent 1st ed. PD and posted it on the Internet via Creative Commons.
At the time, I was unaware that the Musser/Swabey tag team had brought to the Discordian world this apparent 1st edition PD. A couple years later, Dr. Robert Newport passed on to me Greg Hill’s Discordian Archives, consisting of all 5 editions of PD. However, the discovery of these different PD editions wasn’t immediately apparent and it took me some time to sift through the Discordian Archives and identity exactly what was what. The most amazing discovery of all was an actual honest-to-Goddess copy of the first edition of Principia Discordia, Or How The West Was Lost, numbered one of five, written in Greg Hill’s own hand.
Last page of the Discordian Archives version of the 1st ed. Principia Discordia, numbered 1 of 5.
My discovery of the Holy Grail of Discordianism led to a period of intensive research into the history of PD. After a review of the Musser/Swabey/National Archives version of PD, I initially arrived at the conclusion (which I now consider erroneous!) that the National Archives version was a later and incomplete reproduction of the 1st edition PD. However, more recently I’ve come to suspect that the National Archives version is actually an early draft of PD.
For sake of clarity, I’ll henceforth refer to these two different versions of Principia Discordia, Or How The West Was Lost as: 1) the National Archives (NA) version, and, 2) the Discordian Archives (DA) version.
Although there are similarities between these two versions—the NA and DA—there are also a number of differences, one of which is the type font. Secondly, the NA version numbers only 36 pages while the DA version comes in at a whopping 60 pages including a number of illustrations that do not appear in the NA version.
My reasoning behind this theory—that the NA version is an early draft of PD—is based, in part, on the handwritten address on the front cover:
Kerry Thornley
5326 85th Street
Apartment T-3
Lanham, Maryland
At first glance, I was a bit befuddled by this address because Thornley’s Warren Commission testimony stated that he’d moved to Arlington, VA in late 1963 and lived there until late 1964. But after giving it some thought, I remembered correspondence in the Archives where Thornley noted that he’d stayed for a period of time—in late-1963/early–1964—with his friend Robert McDonald in Maryland before his Arlington move. This provides further evidence that the NA version actually predated the DA version, and that some of the content in the NA version (as my theory goes) were pages Lane Caplinger ran off on Jim Garrison’s mimeograph machine.
Cover page of National Archives version of the 1st ed. Principia Discordia.Cover page of Discordian Archives version of the 1st ed. Principia Discordia.
Additionally, my colleague Grouchogandhi pointed out that on the title page of the NA version the author is listed as “Malaclypse the Younger, H.C.” The curiosity, in this instance, is the title of “H.C.” In subsequent editions of the PD—including the 1st edition in the Discordian Archives (DA)—Malaclypse is referred to as “K.C.” (Keeper of the Chao) and in later editions as “K.S.C.” (Keeper of the Sacred Chao).
Title page of the National Archives (NA) version of the 1st ed. Principia Discordia.Title page of the Discordian Archives (DA) version of the 1st ed. Principia Discordia.
The third page of the NA version consists of a Legion of Dynamic Discord (LDD) certificate awarded to early Discordian Barbara Reid. Conversely, this certificate does not appear on the third page of the DA version. However, there is a blank LDD certificate on page 55 of the DA version, which suggests that the NA version was sent from Kerry Thornley (aka the Bull Goose of Limbo) to Barbara Reid in 1964 and included a signed LDD certificate as confirmation of Reid’s ordination into the Discordian Society.
Legion of Dynamic Discord certificate awarded to Barbara Reid which appears on page 3 of the National Archives (NA) version of the 1st ed. Principia Discordia. Blank copy of Legion of Dynamic Discord certificate that appears on page 55 of the Discordian Archives (DA) version of the 1st ed. Principia Discordia.
So how, pray tell, did this early Principia Discordia draft wind up in the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HCSA) files? My guess is that Barbara Reid provided the document to the HSCA in the late-70s when she testified before the committee regarding her claims that she saw Kerry Thornley in the company of Lee Oswald in New Orleans in September of 1963. However, another person who might have submitted this document to the HSCA was assassination researcher Harold Weisberg, who worked closely with Barbara Reid during the Garrison Investigation period and entertained the notion, at one time or another, that the Discordian Society was some type of CIA front organization involved in the Kennedy Assassination dance party.
Hail Eris, indeed!
Adam Gorightly presents a brief introduction to the 1st edition of the Principia Discordia, courtesy of Brenton Clutterbuck of Chasing Eris.
Adam Gorightly presents the 1st through 5th editions of the Principia Discordia.
An anti-Bavarian Illuminati membership card sent to Greg Hill from Arthur Hlavaty (aka Pope Guilty I) circa January 1980.
January 1980 Ewige Blumenkfraft card from Arthur Hlavaty to Greg Hill.Ewige Blumenkraft card.
Adam Gorightly at The Find The Others Conferestival, Liverpool, England, Nov. 23, 2014. Photo by Adam Clark. Last November, during the Discordian Holy Days of November 22nd and 23rd, I had the distinct and mind blowing privilege to attend the Cosmic Trigger Play and Find The Others Conferestival in Liverpool, England, the cradle of yellow submarine civilization.
I’d planned to do a write up of the Cosmic Trigger event, but each time I attempted to put pen to paper, I felt I could never do justice to the experience, as it had a profound effect on me—equally hilarious and heartbreaking—and each time I attempted to write about it, my words fell short.
Fortunately, Ian “Cat” Vincent did all the heavy lifting for me in his review of the event from the December 2014 issue of Fortean Times and gave us the go ahead to reprint it. Goddess willing, Daisy Eris Campbell and Her Band of Merry Pranksters will soon bring their glory to us from across the pond. Hail Eris and keep the rainbow knickers flying! —Adam Gorightly
The Cosmic Trigger Experience — Two Days That Shook The Wirrall
by Ian Vincent
“This is too important to take seriously.”
—Robert Anton Wilson (1932-2007 CE)
This is not, and could never have been, an objective review. Robert Anton Wilson matters too much to me.
Wilson – writer, philosopher, occasional past Fortean Times contributor and woefully unsung cultural influence on everything from conspiracy theory to comic books – matters to Daisy Campbell, too. She literally would not be the woman she is today without him.
Daisy Eris Campbell was conceived backstage at the Liverpool School of Language, Music, Dream and Pun, during her father Ken Campbell’s ground-breaking stage adaptation there in 1976 of Wilson and Robert Shea’s novel Illuminatus! (“It was a long play” noted her mother, actress Prunella Gee.) Unsurprisingly, theatre was in Daisy’s blood and drew her on to work with her father on his 24-hour-long adaptation of Neil Oram’s The Warp and other productions.
A while after Ken’s death in 2008, several people approached Daisy about the possibility of her directing a revival of Illuminatus! for the stage. This idea didn’t appeal – but the string of synchronicity which had begun at the moment of her conception seemed to be tugging her towards doing something connected to both Wilson and Ken’s work. Daisy’s idea was to create a stage version of Wilson’s autobiography, Cosmic Trigger: Final Secret of the Illuminati which, since it included scenes from when Wilson came over to London to meet Ken and make a cameo appearance in the notorious Black Mass scene in Illuminatus!, would allow her to pay homage to both Wilson and her dad alike. The fact that Daisy had just reached the same age as her father was when he mounted Illuminatus! was icing on the golden apple.
After getting both the blessing and the rights to the book from Wilson’s surviving daughter, Daisy (along with co-conspirator John Higgs, author of the recent splendidly Discordian biography of The KLF, whose Bill Drummond worked on the Illuminatus! sets) took to the road to both promote the entirely crowd-funded show and test out early scenes with a hopefully sympathetic audience. It’s here that I enter the story.
In October of 2013 (on the 23rd, of course), Daisy and Higgs appeared at London’s Horse Hospital venue with a pair of talks about both Wilson and the production, and to offer a couple of preview scenes to view – and I made a point of being there. Wilson had been a significant influence on me since my early teens, and I was delighted to see a revival of interest in his work, especially in times where rising dualistic us-and-them narratives trouble the globe… maybe a little of Wilson’s multi-model approach and Gnostic Agnosticism coming back into the cultural conversation could help, in some small way.
The preview scenes – a meeting between Wilson, William S. Burroughs, Alan Watts and his wife at Playboy Magazine in 1968, and an interview with Ken Campbell during the Illuminatus! production&mdashwere smart, funny and hinted that the final production would be something special. Adding further interest was the news that writer, magician and Wilson fan Alan Moore would be contributing his recorded voice and visage to the play in the role of the artificial intelligence FUCKUP.
Cut to February 23, 2014.
Daisy and Higgs brought their act to the Kazimer Theatre in Liverpool. With the crowdfunding well on course and the play close to having a finished script, the next question was: where to mount the play? Daisy’s first instinct was Liverpool – both for the connection to Ken’s original and the synchronistic echoes with both the production and the life-changing vision of C.G. Jung, who had once dreamed that Liverpool, a city he had never before visited, was the Pool Of Life. The Kazimer gathering was partly to share the progress, show some exclusive footage on Alan Moore talking about Wilson’s influence on both his attitude to conspiracy theory and magic, and to air another preview scene – a recreation of Wilson’s first LSD trip. All of these were spectacularly impressive – especially the LSD sequence, which successfully employed clever scene-changing, music and some heart-rending acting from Oliver Senton, the actor cast as Wilson. By the end, it was clear that Liverpool was going to be the right place.
Following the performance, a group of us went to Mathew Street, just down from where the old Cavern Club had stood, to conduct a small street ritual to the bust of Jung there, which had been commissioned by Peter O’Halligan, founder of the Liverpool School of Language, Music, Dream and Pun, many years before. Being not unfamiliar with the idea of street magic, I suggested we combine the ritual with a calling upon the synchronistic powers of Alan Moore’s Liverpool-born creation, John Constantine… and so we did.
By the time the play was ready for its first performance on November 22nd at the Camp And Furnace venue in Liverpool’s docklands, the weekend of its premiere had expanded considerably – Daisy and her cohorts not being the type to do things by halves, it was now going to be a two day celebration of the thought and works of both Wilson and Ken Campbell.
The play itself began by setting out a new standard instruction for theatre… “Start with a striptease, and then build to a climax”. The striptease is a recreation of the story of Ishtar, surrendering all her clothes and symbols before entering, naked and pure, into Hell. From there, Senton’s Wilson takes up the tale of how he entered that most illuminating of Hells, The Chapel Perilous – from which one can only emerge as a stone paranoid, or an agnostic.
There are many astonishing things about the play of Cosmic Trigger itself: the sheer range of emotion and theatrical styles (from hilarity to tragedy, from crisp two-person dialogue scenes to full-blown song-and-dance numbers); the dedication and enthusiasm of the cast (all were excellent, but stand-outs were Senton, Kate Alderton as his wife Arlen, Josh Darcy as Ken Campbell and 15 year old Dixie McDevitt, Daisy’s daughter, as Luna Wilson); the back-projected sets by Scott McPherson combined with recreation of Bill Drummond’s original Illuminatus! sets; Steve Fly’s music, songs and live drumming… but one thing I especially appreciated was the skill with which Daisy adapted Wilson’s book with great fidelity, while not allowing it to fall into hagiography – both Bob and Ken are shown as fragile, deeply human men, faults and all – and their work all the better for it.
It is also likely to remain the only stage production in which a woman, playing her own mother, recreates the moment of her own conception.
The rest of the festival was overflowing with joys. The evening show following the performance included outstanding work from a range of performers, including Ken’s former lover & protege Nina Conti, whose skilled and twisted ventriloquism routine had the audience crying with laughter, and music from T. C. Lethbridge and a DJ set from Youth of Killing Joke.
The Sunday – the 23rd, Harpo Marx’s birthday – was no less significant, with a range of talks, workshops and performances. It began with a powerfully moving ritual to the Ancestors, given by Rupert and Claire Callender of the Green Funeral Company (http://www.thegreenfuneralcompany.co.uk/). Speakers included Robert Temple (whose book ‘The Sirius Mystery’ had been such an influence on Wilson and who coined the term Cosmic Trigger), Discordian archivist Adam Gorightly and Robin Ince (who spoke movingly and hilariously of his love of Wilson’s angle on skepticism). The art show contained contributions from the likes of Jimmy Cauty, the other half of the KLF (who also designed the posters) and Melinda Gebbie. There were also bands, DJ sets and a film show (which included one of Wilson’s favourites, Orson Welles’ ‘F For Fake’ and the first showing of the video of Alan Moore’s ‘Moon and Serpent Grand Egyptian Theatre of Marvels’ performance/ritual of 1994).
And then there was one last twist for me… when Daisy asked if I happened to be an ordained priest (I am – thanks, Universal Life Church!) because she had decided that it was the perfect day to marry her long time partner, Greg Donaldson – “all my friends are here!”. It was half-improvised, a bit ramshackle in places… but, somehow, a glorious wedding. Much like the whole event.
‘Cosmic Trigger’ the play went on to a sold-out 5 performance run in London the following week. Plans are being made for an international tour. Keep an eye on cosmictriggerplay.com for details.
The Illuminatus! Trilogy, 'candy apple red' edition by Dell Trade Paperback, January 1984. Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.
On page 621 of Illuminatus!, Wilhelm—of the diabolical rock super-group, The American Medical Association—states that the “Eater of Souls” is still “imprisoned inside the Pentagon,” an apparent allusion to the March on the Pentagon, the October 21st, 1967 anti-war protest that included an exorcism intended to levitate The Five-Sided Temple in a ritual of cleansing and purification.
Some suggest that the Pentagon actually was levitated on this date, such as the ever reliable Abbie Hoffman in his auto-biography Soon To Be A Major Motion Picture—but who knows what Abbie was smoking that day!
In the early stages of the March on the Pentagon, event organizer David Dillinger—of the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam (The Mobe)—appointed Yippie rabble rouser Jerry Rubin to lead the march. Rubin, in turn, invited his buddy Abbie Hoffman to join in the fun, as well as such luminaries as Allen Ginsberg and Ed Sanders of The Fugs—and before you knew it this mad cap plan to levitate the Pentagon was set in motion.
Handbill written by Ed Sanders with instructions for the Pentagon levitation, October 21, 1967.
According to Rubin, Abbie Hoffman was the key figure who first came up with the Pentagon levitation bit, and in advance of the protest Abbie paid a site visit to the Pentagon with a two-fold purpose: 1) Drum up media interest in the march, and, 2) calculate how many bodies would be needed to completely encircle, hand-in-hand, the Five-Sided Temple during the course of the exorcism-levitation.
Apparently, Hoffman was fumbling around on the Pentagon grounds with a measuring tape (back in the days when one could actually show up unannounced on the Pentagon grounds) when he was informed by the National Guard to cease and desist and then escorted from the premises. On his way out, Abbie made a formal request for a permit for the proposed Pentagon levitation, which—according to Abbie—would lift the building 300 feet. In response, the military actually granted this surreal permit request with the following stipulations: Abbie and his hairy freaks would only be authorized to elevate the Pentagon a mere three feet off the ground (so as not to damage the foundation!) and that the protesters could not surround the Pentagon, but only gather in front of the building.
In total, 50,000 peaceniks descended on the Pentagon that long ago and very strange day brandishing all the accoutrements of the era: long hair, flowers and peace signs—including Eye-In-The-Pyramid banners which it appears the Yippies adopted as their own esoteric coat of arms during this period.
In response to this massive influx of anti-war demonstrators, 10,000 military troops were called in to “keep the peace.” One of the most iconic images from this confluence of Eristic vs. Aneristic forces was the photo of the hippie chick sticking a flower into the bayoneted barrel of a rifle poised to blow the smile from her face.
Where have all the flowers gone, anyway? October 21, 1967: March on the Pentagon Flower Child.
The Pentagon—as we’ve noted countless times here at Historia Discordia—is an integral part of the Discordian mythos, not to mention the V-for-victory peace sign which the Discordians had adopted years prior to it becoming synonymous with the counterculture. So all of these symbols loom large in the Discordian and Illuminatus! (Amazon) iconography and it seemed that a certain amount of cross pollination was going on during this period between the Discordians and Yippies—although the Discordians were largely (Greg Hill in particular) working in a somewhat subliminal and introverted manner as opposed to the Yippies who were right there in your face, taking their theatre to the streets and TV screens of America.
Peace in the Principia Discordia.The original Sacred Chao image created by Greg Hill circa 1964 incorporating the Pentagon (Aneristic) and Golden Apple (Eristic) in a yin-yang/hodge-podge counter push pull of opposing chaotic forces. Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.
RAW—as we well know—was out in the streets during the Chicago Democratic Convention demonstrations and witnessed up close and personal the heavy handed tactics of Mayor Daley’s goon squad, a narrative that wove itself in and out of Illuminatus! There’s also a good chance that RAW caught a glimpse of the Yippie “Now” freak flag flown during these demonstrations, which most likely had some influence on his fondness and subsequent use of Eye-In-The-Pyramid imagery and mythology.
Yippie NOW flag flown at the Chicago demonstrations, October 21, 1967.
The counterculture’s use of the Eye-In-The-Pyramid conjured evil spectres in the minds of John Birch Society members like John Steinbacher who authored an anti-Illuminati pamphlet entitled Senator Robert Francis Kennedy: The Man, The Mysticism, The Murder which contended that the founder of the Illuminati, Adam Weishaupt, had a profound influence on one Madame Helena Blavatsky of Theosophy fame. Due to this insidious influence, Blavatsky cooked up in her occult cauldron an ideological mix of Communism, Illuminism, and Satanism that insinuated itself into the 60s counterculture and ostensibly motivated Sirhan Sirhan to assassinate RFK. In the assassination’s aftermath—according to conspiratorial legend—Sirhan requested a copy of Blavatsky’s The Secret Doctrine which sent the heads of conspiracy buffs spinning with the sinister implications this implied.
The late, great John Steinbacher reveling in his trophies and awards. In Senator Robert Francis Kennedy: The Man, The Mysticism, The Murder, Steinbacher asserts that Blavatsky had penned a murderous tome entitled “Manual for Revolution” as a blueprint for the Communist Revolution which indoctrinated the gullible drug addled dupes of the 60s anti-war movement as part of a plot to bring about a One World Government controlled by Jewish Bankers. The only problem with this theory was that Blavatsky didn’t author “Manual for Revolution”—nor, for that matter, did the book even exist. In addition, Steinbacher claimed that Sirhan had infiltrated a branch of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), all part of a grand design to undermine the 60s counterculture and bring the United States to its knees.
Such speculations were prime fodder for Wilson and Shea who incorporated into Illuminatus! these elements of a vast conspiracy that was playing both ends of the political spectrum against the middle. RAW’s infamous letter and answer in the Playboy Forum was an initial outgrowth of these Illuminati conspiracy influences, later to be expanded upon in Illuminatus!
The Illuminatus! Trilogy. On page 591 of Illuminatus!, the “chart of the Illuminati conspiracy” (previously displayed on page 97) is referenced in relation to Robert Anton Wilson’s Discordian persona of “Mordecai the Foul” who is included among a group of Primus Illuminatus overseeing a vast conspiracy that includes Playboy (where Wilson and Bob Shea worked as editors during the 60s and 70s) and Bank of America where Discordian co-founder Greg Hil (Malaclypse the Younger) was employed from 1977 until his death in July of 2000. (A total of 23 years.)
Version of the 'Chart of the Illuminati Conspiracy' found in the Discordian Archives, possibly adapted for Illuminatus! on Page 00097.
In Illuminatus!, Joseph Malik describes this chart as “half-accurate and half deceptive” which, of course, was always the Discordian Society’s M.O.—or as the old Discordian saying goes:
“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.”
It’s unknown exactly who cooked up the “Current Structure of Bavarian Illuminati Conspiracy and the Law of Fives” chart. I suspect Robert Anton Wilson (RAW) had a hand in it, although it may have been a collaboration between RAW, Shea and other Discordian conspirators—including Hill and Thornley—all part of Operation Mindfuck, the Discordian Society’s clandestine campaign to illuminate the opposition.
'Chart of the World Revolution' discovered in the Discordian Archives.
Illuminati buster, Mrs. Nesta Webster.It appears that the “Current Structure of Bavarian Illuminati Conspiracy and the Law of Fives” chart was modeled after a “Chart of the World Revolution” which I discovered in the Discordian Archives; a chart that associated Communism with Illuminism, occultism, anarchy, and other diabolical turn of the century movements—the type of stuff Nesta Webster got her panties all in a twist about.
The “Current Structure of Bavarian Illuminati Conspiracy and the Law of Fives” chart first appeared in the June 4th, 1969 edition of the East Village Other (EVO) with no editorial explanation whatsoever. But as EVO catered to dope-smoking drug-dropping degenerate hippie types who entertained conspiratorial ideas from a sometimes satirical and psychedelic viewpoint, it wasn’t out of the ordinary to see such strangeness in its pages.
East Village Other, Conspiracy in America.Walter Bowart toward the end of his life.Many of the key players at EVO became steeped in the conspiracy culture of the period, such as EVO co-founder and publisher Walter Bowart.
After leaving EVO, Bowart went knee-deep into research about the CIA’s MK-ULTRA mind control program which led to his landmark tome Operation Mind Control (PDF), published by Dell Books in 1978 and—as legend goes—all copies were shortly after bought up by the CIA (or some other unspecified alphabet soup agency) then taken out of circulation and destroyed to suppress the story.
Ishmael Reed.Another key player at EVO was Ishmael Reed who went on to author Mumbo Jumbo which in many ways resembled Illuminatus! in its unorthodox stylistic approach and depiction of conspiracies run amuck. As Reed wrote in Mumbo Jumbo, “The real history of the world is a history of competing conspiracies.”
In the mid-70s, Reed relocated to Berkeley (where RAW was then residing) and taught at UC Berkeley until his retirement in 2005. UC Berkeley—as we’ve noted previously here at Historia Discordia—was home to a campus version of the Bavarian Illuminati that included Discordian Louise Lacey (Lady L., F.A.B.) in its ranks.
In a 1977 interview in Conspiracy Digest, RAW was asked if Reed’s Mumbo Jumbo was an inspiration for Illuminatus!, to which he replied:
“I didn’t read Mumbo Jumbo until about three years after Illuminatus! was finished. The same is true of Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow. The astonishing resemblances between those three books are coincidence, or synchronicity, or Higher Intelligence (take your pick). I love everything Ishmael Reed writes, and I once sent him an official Discordian certificate making him a Pope in the Legion of Dynamic Discord.”
In an interview from James Draper’s Black Literature Criticism, Reed confirmed this by stating that he “was made an honorary pope by the Savarian Illuminati, for the writing of Mumbo Jumbo…”
As Jesse Walker recently pointed out over at RAWIllumination.net, Reed’s reference to the Savarian Illuminati (as opposed to Bavarian) was probably a case of misremembering the name, or perhaps a typo. Hail Eris!
ADDENDUM: Just as we were going to press—as synchronicity would have it!—I came across the chart below which was posted at a facebook JFK Assassination forum. According to the poster of said post:
“This is something JFK wanted to show everyone (I believe so that we could find our way out of the current deflationary economical situation). I found it online whilst data mining. It explains quite a lot about the leadership we have had since. Please seed!”
Chart: The Conspiracy to Rule the World.
It just goes to show that—after all these years—people are still cranking out these silly charts.
Established in January 2002 in the aftermath of 9/11, the Information Awareness Office (IAO) was a short-lived agency that oversaw the U.S. domestic surveillance program.
