Category: kerry thornley

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More On The Illuminatus! Trilogy Group Reading and ‘The Honest Book of Truth’

Gorightly's copies of the 1975 edition of
The Illuminatus! Trilogy.
Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.
In advance of the Illuminatus! reading that kicked off on Feb 24th over at RAWIllumination.net (why it wasn’t launched on Feb 23rd is beyond me!), I had to do a little rummaging around to track down my Illuminatus! copies, which I’m glad to say I was able to locate amidst all the other quaint and curious volumes of forgotten lore lining my shelves.

Although yellowing and frayed, this almost now forty year old classic—published in the Year of Our Goddess 1975—continues to evoke a sense of wonderment ever since that immortal day back in the summer of ‘84 when I happened upon this “fairy tale for paranoids” during the wee, weird hours while passing by Bart’s Books in Ojai, California—as the spirit of Krishnamurti hovered nearby. (As a sidebar, an early and part-time Discordian named Alan Kishbaugh is now a high ranking muckety-muck with the Krishnamurti Foundation in Ojai. Kishbaugh’s Discordian handle back in the day was “The Earl of Nines,” a title concocted as an effort to combat the chaos unleashed by The Law of Fives.)

Bart's Books, Ojai, California.
As has been the honor system policy at Bart’s all these years, when the store is closed you can still buy books lining the outside shelves and toss money for them through a slot in the door, which explains my reference to “wee, weird hours.” Envision me then, a long haired reprobate, toking on the herb superb as I stumbled upon—in my intoxicated haze—this weirdo cover of the One-Eyed Pyramid with a dolphin swimming over it and such. Which takes us to the present…

So—as I reintroduce myself to Illuminatus! by way of the RAWillumination.net group reading—I plan to point out the many Discordian references I’ll encounter along the way, the first of which happens immediately in the dedication page to none other than Greg Hill and Kerry Thornley. (And if you don’t know who these dudes are by now, just start poking around here at Historia Discordia and all will be revealed!)

The next Discordian reference occurs on the first page of the opening chapter, an introductory quotation that is lifted directly from some obscure religious (or irreligious) tract called The Honest Book of Truth by an equally obscure character named “Lord Omar Khayaam Ravenhurst, K.S.C.”:

The Purple Sage opened his mouth and moved his tongue and so spake to them and he said:

The Earth quakes and the Heavens rattle; the beasts of nature flock together and the nations of men flock apart; volcanoes usher up heat while elsewhere water becomes ice and melts; and then on other days it just rains.

Indeed do many things come to pass.
—Lord Omar Khayaam Ravenhurst, K.S.C.,
“The Book of Predictions.” The Honest Book of Truth


First page of The Honest Book of Truth, March 1969. Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.
Omar Khayyam Ravenhurst, despite the misspelling in Illuminatus! of Khayyam as “Khayaam,” and more commonly seen as just “Lord Omar,” was, of course, Kerry Thornley’s Discordian name—or at least one of them, with the K.S.C. standing for Keeper of the Sacred Chao. As for The Honest Book of Truth, it has been commonly held over the years that no such book actually existed, because all that anyone had ever seen of it were short quotations from either Illuminatus! or the Principia Discordia.

During a conversation with RAW once, I asked him what he thought of Thornley’s writings, and he stated unequivocally that the best thing Kerry had written was The Honest Book of Truth. Of course, sometimes I’d wonder if RAW was pulling my leg about certain things, so I filed this anecdote away in my memory banks for future pondering. Later, after having acquired the Discordian Archives, I one day happened upon a most amazing discovery: none other than The Honest Book of Truth, which is 15 pages in length and includes “The Book of Uterus,” “The Book of Explanations,” “The Book of Predictions,” “The Book of Advice,” “The Book of Gooks,” and “The Gospel According to Fred.”

The Honest Book of Truth will appear in its entirety in the forthcoming book compilation, Historia Discordia: The Origins of the Discordian Society.

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camden benares kerry thornley writings

Kerry’s Bicycle Rider

Our previous post about Camden Benares’ Riding Buddha’s Bicycle reminded me of this short piece by Kerry Thornley regarding a bicycle rider from his youth.

For some reason, this story has always resonated with me and, in many ways, I find it one of the more memorable things that Kerry wrote. While it has no date on it, my guess is that Kerry composed it in the early to mid-70s.

Enjoy this bike ride down memory lane.

 

THE KERRY DANCE: A BICYCLE RIDER

Kerry Thornley - 1970s(?) - The Kerry Dance: A Bicycle Rider - Pg 00001. Courtesy the Discordian Archives.
To begin my story with anything but The Man on the Bicycle is by now nearly unthinkable to me.

The Man on the Bicycle probably had what by 1942 standards was long hair. He was certainly bearded fully—I remember that much clearly.

My mother says he always wore swimming trunks and carried somehow along with him a butterfly net.

Every morning and every evening of the Los Angeles summer. Up one way and down the other along the boulevard (Hoover Street).

The Man on the Bicycle had a deep sun tan and his hair was like burnished gold. Undoubtedly. Or maybe not. But he certainly seemed a superbly impressive phenomena to my four-year-old mind.

Even passing on a daily basis he managed to surpass in my eyes the occasional canvas-covered trucks of soldiers. And they waved. The Man on the Bicycle probably never gave us more than a passing, casual glance. But there were many soldiers in those days.

That Man on the Bicycle—he was one of a kind.

“If you depend on radios and record players for your music, you owe your soul to the power company.”
—The Secret Teachings of Paul Beihl

 

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discordianism greg hill kerry thornley postcards

A Postcard from the Five-Sided Temple

In a previous post, DS Documents A-Plenty!, I chronicled Kerry Thornley and Greg Hill’s creative collaborative period of ’64, which is further documented in this postcard that Kerry (aka Omar) then living in Arlington, Virginia, sent to Greg.

At one point, Kerry had even toyed with the idea of taking out a post office box at the Pentagon (if that’s even possible) and making it the official address of the Discordian Society headquarters. Grace Caplinger (Zabriskie) is also mentioned on the postcard.

Hail Eris!

Front of a postcard of the Pentagon from Kerry Thornley to Greg Hill, 1964.
Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.
Back of a postcard of the Pentagon from Kerry Thornley to Greg Hill, 1964.
Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.
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book discordian timeline discordianism greg hill jfk jim garrison kerry thornley lane caplinger lee harvey oswald warren commission

DS Documents A-Plenty!

Official Discordian Business.
Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.
The times they were a changin’ back in ‘64. JFK had just been takin’ out and shortly after The Beatles emerged on the landscape to breathe a little positive vibe into the National Downer that’d just gone down the rabbit hole. Against this backdrop, Greg Hill and Kerry Thornley entered into perhaps their most productive collaborative period, sowing the seeds of what would become the 1st edition of Principia Discordia: Or How The West Was Lost.

Back in ‘61, Thornley and Hill moved to New Orleans where they engaged in a number of early Discordian activities, some of which were covertly copied on New Orleans D.A. Jim Garrison’s mimeograph machine by a friend who worked in the D.A.’s office, Lane Caplinger, who just happened to be the sister of Grace Caplinger, later to become known to the world as actress Grace Zabriskie, none other than Laura Palmer’s mother among other notable roles. Garrison, of course, would play a larger and much weirder role in Thornley’s consciousness in the years to come, to be covered in greater depth in my forthcoming book, Caught In The Crossfire: Kerry Thornley, Oswald and Garrison’s JFK Investigation, coming later this year from Feral House.

In ’63 — after JFK’s assassination — Kerry moved from New Orleans to Arlington, Virginia for a number of reasons, one of which included being in closer proximity to D.C. where the Warren Commission had recently convened, and Kerry — looking for an angle to promote his novel in the works, The Idle Warriors (the main character of which was modeled on Oswald before the Kennedy assassination) — was hoping to wrangle an appearance before the Commission. The rest, as we know, is a weird slice of history.

The documents I’ve posted here would — in the following year, 1965 — greatly influence the 1st edition of the PD, which will soon appear in its entirely for the first time in 50 “odd” years in our forthcoming book project Historia Discordia: The Origins of the Discordian Society, coming soon from RVP Publishers.

In these early years, Hill and Thornley spent an inordinate amount of time developing a Discordian Society hierarchical structure that would eventually dissolve into nothingness when Greg Hill later decided to forgo any type of formal Discordian structure and turn the whole thing into an art collage project without rules and regulations, which led to a more free form approach to later editions of the Principia Discordia.

Some items to note include Kerry’s (Omar’s) mention that he sent a copy of “Why We Think The DS Is A Hot Item” to Grace Caplinger (Zabriskie), as well as what is perhaps the first formal mention of the fabled Law Of Fives, a document lovingly adorned with a slew of Greg Hill stamps, as he was wont to do.

 
Discordian Documents, April 1964 and May 1965

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discordianism illuminati kerry thornley zines

More On The Kabouters, Operation Mindfuck and the Lemuel P. Grant Influence Lodge

The Kabouters article in question.
When researching the roots of Discordianism, I’ve found that one rabbit hole inevitably leads down another and so it’s best to just keep on burrowing.

Such is the case of our last post about an article on the Kabouters that Lord Omar (aka Kerry Thornley) co-opted and redistributed (via kopyleft) under the auspices of the Ancient Seers of Bavaria, all of this part of Operation Mindfuck (OM), the Discordian Society’s covert campaign to illuminate the masses.

While reviewing the Kabouters article in question, I noticed that in the right margin Thornley wrote: “Stolen for you by the Erisian Liberation Front of the Lemuel P. Grant Lodge” which I figured was just some vague reference that popped out of Lord Omar’s pineal gland to confuse us all the more.

Kerry Thornley's Paranoid Flash Illuminator zine, July 1970. Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.
Kerry Thornley's Paranoid Flash Illuminator zine, June 1970. Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.
Afterwards — in the same section of the Discordian Archives where I’d discovered the Kabouters article — I came across a couple copies of Thornley’s Discordian newsletter The Paranoid Flash Illuminator, one of which stated: “Lemuel P. Grant Influence Lodge grows rapidly on both fronts presently active, E.L.F. and the Uncle Remus Chapter of the Black Lotus Society…” and that “…Operation Mindfuck is gathering momentus…”

Of course, none of this helped clarify what the Lemuel P. Grant Lodge actually was until I read through the next copy of Paranoid Flash Illuminator, which elaborated further:

In case you were wondering, Lemuel P. Grant Lodge of the Bavarian Illuminati is named after its founder: “At 327 St. Paul Avenue SE stands what remains of a house which survived the burning of Atlanta only to be consumed 100 years later by the ravages of neglect. It was built in 1858 by Col. L.P. Grant…When General William Tecumseh Sherman’s forces put the torch to Atlanta on November 14, 1864, they left the engineer’s mansion unscathed despite that fact that it had been used as a Confederate hospital because paraphernalia used in Masonic rituals had been found inside. They had instructions not to harm the homes of Masons.”

Kerry Thornley during his Sacred Mind Ashram period in Atlanta, 1972. Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.
All of which suggests a Freemasonsic conspiracy of epic proportions that continues to this very day!

Although it’s sometimes near impossible to separate fact from fiction with much Discordian Society propaganda, the Sacred Mind Ashram referred to later in the above newsletter was an actual concept that Kerry and his wife Cara entertained during the period they lived in Atlanta in the early-70s. However, this idea of a “hip school for little kids” apparently never progressed beyond the concept stage.

As for the Good Vibe Machine, I have no idea what that actually was, though it would have made a great name for a 1960s sex toy.

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art discordianism greg hill kerry thornley

The Church of the Laughing Christ

Another Greg Hill sketch for Kerry Thornley's Church of the Laughing Christ. Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.
A Greg Hill sketch for Kerry Thornley's Church of the Laughing Christ. Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.

For your general amusement, here are a couple of rough sketches Greg Hill produced inspired by a Discordian Cabal that Kerry Thornley cooked up called the Church of the Laughing Christ.

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The CalHi Pranksters

Kerry Thornley’s Senior Class photo, CalHi, 1957.
Photo courtesy of Sylvia Bortin.
In The Prankster and the Conspiracy, Kerry Thornley’s high school friend, Sylvia Bortin, recalled an infamous hoax which occurred in Drama Class at CalHi (Whittier, California).

Apparently the perpetrators — Kerry, Greg Hill and other unnamed cohorts — made a recording of what, at first, appeared to be a regular radio program, with music playing innocently from a radio positioned on the apron of the stage. In actuality, the sounds were projected from a reel-to-reel tape machine hidden backstage. Inserted into the seemingly mundane radio program, our merry pranksters had planted a series of interruptions, made by a newscaster, to the effect that Soviet planes were invading the U.S. and dropping bombs.

Photo of Greg Hill with the CalHi (Sophomore Class) Drama Club in 1957. Greg, who over the years cultivated a fetish for rubber stamps (featured prominently in the Principia Discordia), applied a stamp over his picture in the photo (center, top row).
Photo courtesy of Sylvia Bortin.
As Sylvia recalled:

“Somebody had told me early on that it was a joke, but some of the students didn’t know and got really scared… What made me feel bad was that one of the boys in the class was so scared that he was praying.”

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Chasing Eris: Tantra Bensko on Kerry Thornley

Brenton Clutterbuck of the worldwide Chasing Eris project quest poses with the original cover page of the Paste-Up Principia Discordia (known as the Sacred PUD). Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.
My young friend, Brenton Clutterbuck of Chasing Eris fame, is working on a book about contemporary Discordia, which I expect the Goddess will ultimately approve of.

Along the way I’ve tried my best to introduce him to a number of fellow Discordians, among them Rosemary Tantra Bensko, who in the following video describes her introduction to Kerry Thornley and the subsequent ritual the two engaged in concerning butter and cats licking thereof.

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book discordianism greg hill jfk jim garrison kerry thornley lee harvey oswald zines

The Origins of “Historia Discordia”: A Flashback Review of The Prankster and the Conspiracy

Back in 2004, Brian Doherty of Reason Magazine reviewed The Prankster and the Conspiracy (Amazon Kindle, Paperback) and titled his review “Historia Discordia,” a title that, with Brian’s consent, I’ve decided to use for this website, as well as the forthcoming book Historia Discordia: The Origins of the Discordian Society coming soon from RVP Publishers.

Reprinted with permission, here’s Brian’s article from Reason Magazine:

Continue reading “The Origins of “Historia Discordia”: A Flashback Review of The Prankster and the Conspiracy”
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greg hill kerry thornley zines

Apocalypse: A Trade Journal For Doom Prophets

Apocalypse: A Trade Journal for Doom Prophets, cover, 1960. Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.
Among the many curiosities discovered in the Discordian Archives is what appears to be the first collaboration between Greg Hill and Kerry Thornley, predating Principia Discordia by five years, which, of course, corresponds to the Discordian Law of Fives. (Hail Eris!)

In 1960 — following Thornley’s Marine Corps discharge — he returned to Whittier, California and reunited with Hill at that time and the two produced a humor zine called Apocalypse: A Trade Journal For Doom Prophets.

Hill and Thornley published only one issue of Apocalypse, mainly because no one else, besides them, found it the least bit humorous. As Thornley later noted: “Things we thought were funny, nobody else did.”

Apocalypse: A Trade Journal For Doom Prophets will appear in its entirety in the forthcoming Historia Discordia: The Origins of the Discordian Society available soon from RVP Publishers.