Letter: Greg Hill to Pat, May 13, 1970, front. Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.I really didn’t have much planned for this week’s Illuminatus! group reading until I happened upon a note by Greg Hill in the Archives which caught my attention because it’s addressed to someone named Pat. Having gone through a lot of Hill’s correspondence, I’m usually able to figure out (in most cases) to whom he was corresponding—but in this instance I haven’t a clue.
Letter: Greg Hill to Pat, May 13, 1970, back. Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.When I saw the name Pat, I immediately flashed on an enigmatic character by the same name who appears in Illuminatus! in relation to a series of Illuminati memos exchanged between she (or at least I think Pat is a she) and Joseph Malik, editor of Confrontation magazine, a character that is based—to some degree—on both Greg Hill and Kerry Thornley. In fact, you can see an upside down Mad Malik stamp on the note, which was Hill’s Bavarian Illuminati persona, further linking this curious little note to Illuminatus!
In Greg’s note to Pat, he encourages him/her to pass it on to BofA, and one can only assume he is referring to Bank of America, who—as synchronicity would have it—later employed Greg for 23 years (Hail Eris!), which we’ll no doubt discuss in more depth at some later date here at Historia Discordia.
Oddly enough, a web search for Joseph Malik, editor of Confrontation magazine, led me to this publication at bookfinder.com which appears to be something RAW and Shea probably cooked up prior to the publication of Illuminatus! as a promotional stunt. Here is the magazine’s description:
Published by Confrontation Magazine, New York, 1975. , 15 pages, includes interviews with ‘illuminatus’ authors Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson, plus poems by Joe Malik, black & white illustrations, appears to have been the only issue of the magazine ever published First Edition , light spots to covers, pages slightly yellowed at edges otherwise clean, in good+ condition , printed wraps 30 x 22 cm Paperback ISBN: Bookseller Inventory # 53469
An additional Joseph Malik web search left me even more perplexed.
A card dated April 1970 with some Erisian information about the LBJ Cabal. Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.I’ve been on the road of late and so finally getting around to commenting on the most recent Illuminatus! group reading (after a couple weeks MIA) reporting from an undisclosed location somewhere in Spook Central, VA where I’m using my ipad mini to read from a kindle version of the book—and it seems that the page numbers don’t always correspond with the paperized version, hail eris!, so bear with!
Laughing Buddha Jesus (short for LBJ) was a Discordian cabal Kerry Thornley cooked up back in the day, although I don’t know if Kerry ever referred to it with a “Phallus” added to the end—as the John Dillinger character does on page 127. For those versed in the alternate Dillinger legends, perhaps the addition of “Phallus” (to the end of LBJ) is associated with rumors that Dillinger was well equipped with a massive 23-inch you-know-what that was pickled for posterity and is now hidden away in the vaults of the Smithsonian.
To this end, Dillinger identifies himself as President of Laughing Buddha Jesus Phallus, Inc. (LBJP), a distributer of rock music LPs that Johnny D.—in cahoots with the Justified Ancients of Mummu (JAMS)—started as a front organization to counterattack the Illuminati’s strangle-hold on the rock music industry. In conjunction with this anti-Illuminati operation, Dillinger mentions that the LBJP had disseminated Illuminati revelations through certain unexpected channels such as The Christian Crusade, which—in “real life”—is exactly what the Discordian Society perpetrated via Operation Mindfuck (OM), a topic previously discussed here at Historia Discordia—so if you are still confused by the term “OM” (Don’t Leave OM Without It!) do a search of this site—or if all else fails, a pineal gland consultation has been known to work wonders.
Late-60s Bavarian Illuminati Hoax Letter to Rev. David Noebel. Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.
The Beatles: A Study in Drugs, Sex, and Revolution by David Noebel. (Amazon)Above is one of the famous Bavarian Illuminati hoax letters that RAW, Greg Hill, Thornley, et al, cooked up in the late, great Sixties. This one in particular is addressed to Rev. David Noebel who wrote a handful of somewhat provocative books (many of which inhabit my arcane library at Gorightly Hindquarters) including such startling titles as Rhythm, Riot and Revolution (Amazon) (mentioned in the Bavarian letter hoax letter)—as well as The Beatles: A Study in Drugs, Sex and Revolution (Amazon) and Communism, Hypnotism, and The Beatles (Amazon)—each of which includes, on their respective covers, some caricatures that bear uncanny resemblances to the Fab Four… sort of. The hoax letter, in this instance, was most likely composed by RAW (in the guise of Rev. Charles Arthur Floyd II) given the Evanston, Illinois mailing address, this during the period when RAW was under the employ of Hugh Hefner’s Playboy mag in Chicago.
Communism, Hypnotism, and The Beatles by David Noebel. (Amazon)Although Rev. Dr. Noebel wrote the above-mentioned titles way back in the 60s, he’s apparently still hard at it, penning additional classics along these lines and preaching from his pulpit situated somewhere deep in the heart of Texas. Noebel also has a presence on facebook but when I tried to friend him a couple years back he shined me on. 🙁
Below is a snippet from a lecture by Rev. Noebel on Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, which pretty much lays out his commies-infiltrating-rock-music thesis:
Emperor Norton Promissory Note, 50 Cents.On page 133, the “Norton Lodge in Frisco” is mentioned, which in the “real world” was Greg Hill’s pad in San Fran. A couple paragraphs later we see the first mention of flaxscript, an alternate form of currency that Dillinger and the JAMS are using to get over on the Illuminati’s Federal Reserve note scam, which is exactly what the real Discordians were up to when Greg Hill and his Discordian confederates—inspired by Emperor Joshua Norton (who had previously issued his own currency)—likewise followed the good Emperor’s lead with what became known as Flax Notes (or alternately, flaxscript.)
Flaxscript: Security Last Intergalactic, 30 tons of flax. Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.Included among those listed as taking part in this exchange of Discordian currency were Malaclypse The Younger (Greg Hill), Lord Omar (Kerry Thornley), Mungojerry (Bob McElroy), Mordecai Malignatus (RAW), Hypocrates Magoun (Robert Newport), Iona K. Fioderovna (Jeanetta Hill) and Harold Randomfactor (Tim Wheeler).
Flaxscript: Bank of Omar, 1 ton of flax. Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.Before Bitcoin: Security Last Intergalactic Bank Flaxscript. 2 Tons of Flax = 1 Principia Discordia. Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.
A John Dillinger Died For You Society Membership Card. Click image for 300dpi printable JPG (1.4MB). Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.In the Discordian Society’s early days, not only was it SOP to adopt your own unique Discordian Pope handle—such as Mordecai The Foul or Fang The Unwashed—but it was also assumed that you’d start your own Discordian cabal, which included such notables as Greg Hill’s Joshua Norton Cabal or Rev. Dr. Makuska’s Society for Moral Understanding & Training (SMUT) Cabal.
Another of the more infamous Discordian cabals was The John Dillinger Died For You Society (JDDFYS), which appears to have been primarily the brain-child of RAW—when he was working as an editor at Playboy—along with another editor there named William Helmer, who himself adopted the Discordian non de plume of Horace Naismith when engaged in JDDFYS operations. For all I know, Bob Shea (aka Josh The Dill) might have also played a part in this conspiratorial caper promoting the Dillinger legend, which further manifested itself in Illuminatus! along with more Discordian in-jokes than you could shake a magick stick at.
Letter sent to Dr. Ignotum Ignotius (aka Greg Hill) from Dr. Horace Naismith (aka William Helmer) of the John Dillinger Died For You Society, October 26th, 1970, Page 00001. Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.Letter sent to Dr. Ignotum Ignotius (aka Greg Hill) from Dr. Horace Naismith (aka William Helmer) of the John Dillinger Died For You Society, October 26th, 1970, Page 00002. Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.
Your humble author, in full Masonic regalia, delivering the signal of distress!One such in-joke appears on page 93 in a passage that recounts Dillinger’s first bank robbery and how the victim of the heist, a grocer named B. F. Morgan—when confronted during the robbery—summoned help by giving the Masonic signal of distress. The implication suggested in this scene is that Dillinger—from the very start of his so-called “criminal career”—was in reality a Discordian Robin Hood of sorts engaged in a covert war against the Freemasonic-Illuminati Conspiracy. The punch-line for this in-joke is that the Masonic signal of distress is given by holding both hands up in the air—although Wilson and Shea never informs the readers of this.
The Sacred Chao from Illuminatus!, page 00095.Page 95 features an illustration of that most significant of Discordian symbols, The Sacred Chao, a sort of twist on Taoism’s Yin and Yang, depicting the opposing forces of The Pentagon and The Golden Apple, also known in Discordianism as the Hodge and Podge. The Pentagon—according to the Discordian mythos—represents the Aneristic Principle (Apparent Disorder) in counterbalance to The Golden Apple, which represents The Eristic Principle (Apparent Order.) To find out more about this you will have to consult your pineal gland.
On page 96, the mystery of the Golden Apple is further revealed, which is at the center (core) of the whole Discordian mythos that runs through Illuminatus!
Elsewhere on page 96, ILLUMINATI PROJECT: MEMO #9 refers to a chart that the missing Joseph Malik identified as first appearing in an issue of The East Village Other, June 11, 1969 with the label “Current Structure of the Bavarian Illuminati Conspiracy and the Law of Fives.”
'Current Structure of the Bavarian Illuminati Conspiracy and the Law of Fives' chart shown on page 00097 of Illuminatus!
The chart in question was indeed published in a real underground newspaper, although once again Shea and Wilson were mixing fact with fiction into the Illuminatus! narrative, as the chart was an obvious put-on that—when it originally appeared in The East Village Other—did so without any type of editorial explanation, although in retrospect it was no doubt the handiwork of RAW and/or the usual Operation Mindfuck suspects.
The chart includes (in its diabolical Bavarian Illuminati organization) the likes of such Discordian illuminaries as Lord Omar (Kerry Thornley), Malaclypse the Younger (Greg Hill) and Mordecai the Foul (RAW)—not to mention a Discordian Society spin-off organization Greg Hill concocted called the Paratheo-Anametamystikhood Of Eris Esoteric (POEE, pronounced “pooey”).
Curiously enough, Bank of America is also listed on the chart, a company where—as fickle fate would have it—Greg Hill was later employed from the late-70s until his death in July of 2000, having worked for BofA a total of 23 (synchronistic) years.
On page 100, the Legion of Dynamic Discord (LDD) is introduced and identified as a group aligned with Hagbard Celine. In reality, the LDD was the creation of Lord Omar during a period when he and Malaclypse the Younger had some sort of theological falling out and decided to form opposing (tongue-in-cheek) Discordian factions. Malaclypse named his faction the Erisian Liberation Front, more commonly known as ELF.
I Ching divination cast by Greg Hill for Kerry Thornley, dated April 26, 1970. Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.
A very-long forty-four years ago, this very day, during the rapidly loss-of-hippie-innocence known as that infernal year of 1970, Greg Hill cast an I Ching, or the Book of Changes, hexagram for Kerry Thornley (aka Lord Omar), based on Thornley’s inquiry:
“Lord Omar desires guidance for this coming year.”
As seen in the letter above, Hill cast Hexagram 38, K’uie (Opposites, or Opposition) moving into Hexagram 64, the I Ching’s last hexagram, Wei Chi (Before Completion, or Unfinished Business) for Thornley, where Hill tells Thornley based on I Ching interpretation tradition:
“Before the fox makes it across the ice, his tail gets wet.”
We Chi is an interesting casting for Thornley at this time. Thornley was ascending into High Weirdness after being targeted as a possible “Second Oswald” by New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison’s JFK Assassination investigation. Thornley would soon, in the mid-70s and following years, order part of his life around the JFK Assassination based on his belief of recovered memories of involvement in the early-60s with the mysterious “Brother-in-Law” as he documents in his infamous The Dreadlock Recollections. As he tried to make sense of it all, Thornley could aptly be described as a “wet-tailed fox” during this time where his “transition from disorder to order is not yet complete,” although Thornley was trying his best to complete that transition with his increasingly conspiratorial speculations.
Not only did Hill cast hexagrams for fellow Discordians, but he also included exactly one reference to the I Ching in the Principia Discordia on the last proper canon page of the Fourth Edition of the book, Page 00074, entitled “Part Five: The Golden Secret.” This page is possibly the book’s most gung-ho positive message in the entire endeavor, giddily proclaiming:
And when men become free then mankind will be free.
My you be free of The Curse of Greyface.
May the Goddess put twinkles in your eyes.
May you have the knowledge of a sage,
and the wisdom of a child.
Hail Eris.
On the bottom-right of Page 00074 is pasted a black marker representation of Hexagram 11: T’ai (or Peace), shown below. This hexagram is also to be found in the July/August 1970 issue of Hill’s zine The Greater Poop #30 on Page 00004 discussing the Discordian Rev. Dr. Hypocrates Magoun, P.P., and his “antics” with LSD during his United States Air Force service. The Rev. Dr. Hypocrates Magoun is the Discordian name of Robert Newport, an Early Discordian and savior of Greg Hill’s Discordian archives.
As all these Greg Hill hexagrams occur around the same time in the late-60s/early-70s, shown above, below, and in previous posts, it’s clear Hill was at this time dabbling with the eternal mysticism of the I Ching and producing it in his literature and correspondences, as well as being called on by his fellow Discordians to cast their fates.
Now whether it did them any good? No Blame. Hail Eris!
Page 00074 of the Sacred PUD (the original Paste-Up Discordia): Part Five: The Golden Secret with I Ching Hexagram 11, T'ai or Peace. Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.
Greg Hill: Why I Am Not An Anarchist, cover mailing, June, 1975. Courtesy the Discordian Archives.
With the approaching release of Illuminatus! way back in 1975, Robert Shea was still producing underground zines, in particular Shea’s then-new endeavor NO GOVERNOR (issues of which can still be had as PDFs on bobshea.net thanks to Shea’s son, Mike).
During this pre-release era of Illuminatus!, Shea and Discordian co-founder Greg Hill were furiously exchanging letters and articles. Of course, “furious” being defined at this time, a decade before publicly available email, as maybe half-a-dozen letters over as many months. Crazy stuff.
“Why I am Not an Anarchist” will be a welcome addition to NO GOVERNOR #2. I like it. It says something that needs saying—at least once a year. Also, I am very grateful to you for sending me something I can publish.
For your pleasure and research purposes, here is the original article ‘Why I Am Not An Anarchist’ by Greg Hill, including the original proofing notes. Hail Eris!
Greg Hill: Why I Am Not An Anarchist for Robert Shea's No Governor, June 1975, Page 00001. Courtesy the Discordian Archives. About five years ago I considered myself an anarchist (anarchopacifist, in particular), because I believe that the highest authority available to any individual is one’s own honest experience and that any other authority provides only vicarious information at best.
I’ve not changed my opinion about this, but I have ceased referring to myself as an anarchist. The reason is basic and simple: TOO MANY DAMN RULES.
OK, it’s a joke. But it’s a TRUE JOKE. The incompatibility is not between my position and some anarchist theories, but between my position and the position of most of those who use the label “anarchist.”
It seems that Rule Number One of anarchy, as understood by authoritarians and by most who call themselves anarchists, is that a government is an enemy. Rule Number Two is that to gain freedom the individual is politically or morally or somehow obligated to fight this enemy.
Greg Hill: Why I Am Not An Anarchist for Robert Shea's No Governor, June 1975, Page 00002. Courtesy the Discordian Archives. In my opinion, these rules represent a position which would be better referred to as anti-archy. The prefix “a” means “without” and it need not imply “against.” There is an exact parallel with the word atheist—it is usually used and understood, by those for it and against it, as thought eh word was anti-theist.
I can respect the anti-archist position, but I don’t share it. The government is not my enemy because there is no government. OK, another joke, but still a TRUE joke. I know good and well that there are people with guns who restrict my free decisions, and I know about groups of people collecting taxes from me, and all of the rest of this government business. I perceive it in the same manner that I perceive (for example) a big rock in my path which necessitates stepping around and compromising myself. Frankly, I don’t believe in rocks either—I just step around and compromise (which is actually easier than is believing in them). I think that there is a big difference in degree between (a) existentially responding to a phenomenon and (b) conceptualizing it as an “enemy.” If everything in the universe that has ever thwarted my purpose is my enemy, then only nothing can be my friend—and that excludes even myself. But, still, I respect the anti-archist position. After all, if one does perceive a phenomenon to be an enemy then one would be a damn fool to do other than defend ones’ self.
Greg Hill: Why I Am Not An Anarchist for Robert Shea's No Governor, June 1975, Page 00003. Courtesy the Discordian Archives. Much of this essay is futzing around with labels. Still, I feel free to futz, and in any case what I’m trying to do is to avoid the assumption by others that I am at war with certain people just because those people think that they are a government and go out of their way to forcibly impose their notions on me.
I’m not at war with them or with them or rocks either. And insofar as anyone thinks that an anarchist is one who is supposed to believe something or another, or is obligated to do something or another, then there are too damn many rules for me and to hell with the whole business.
By the time Illuminatus! was published in 1975, Kerry began suffering severe bouts of delusional paranoia along with his growing belief that the shadowy character he’d met in New Orleans in the early-60s (referred to as “Brother-In-Law”) was actually legendary CIA spook E. Howard Hunt, and that Hunt had manipulated Kerry to later set him up as an unwitting dupe in JFK’s assassination. During this period, Kerry began to suspect that he’d also been a victim of MK-ULTRA mind control, that Robert Anton Wilson (RAW) was involved in a plot to deprogram him, and that Illuminatus! was at the root of a lot of the high weirdness then going down in his life. As RAW told me in The Prankster and the Conspiracy:
“(Kerry) had the impression that I came to Atlanta more than once and that I had given him LSD and had removed the programming the Navy had put into him when he was in the Marines—and that I was one of his CIA handlers.”
When RAW informed Kerry that he didn’t remember any of this taking place, Kerry said that was because they had brainwashed him (RAW), too. Because of these suspicions, the two eventually ceased communication because as RAW later explained:
”It’s hard to communicate with somebody when he thinks you’re a diabolical mind-control agent and you’re convinced that he’s a little bit paranoid.”
On page 69, the character of Atlanta Hope is introduced, leader of God’s Lightning, a group who are opposed (at least on the surface) to all things fun and immoral. Atlanta Hope has always reminded me as a sort of Anita Bryant type: a seeming Miss All America goody two-shoes who, in reality, is willing to sleep her way to the top of the Illuminati pyramid while using the trappings of Christian fundamentalism to further her own duplicitous ambitions.
Kerry came to believe that the Atlanta Hope character was actually modeled after a woman he knew in Atlanta, Georgia named Mary Jo Padgett who belonged to a group of Quakers that provided ministry and group counseling sessions. At the time, Kerry sought counsel through this group and, in time, came to believe that they had been infiltrated by the intelligence community. Mary Jo Padgett, Kerry surmised, was:
“…an extremely high-level intelligence community dirty work organizer for elements of the Southern Rim (military-industrial complex) of the ruling class, including very probably the Dupont family. I believe these elements have been conducting a virtual reign of terror in this area for some years, not to mention corruption of the various levels of government, and that they must have been involved rather deeply in the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr…. I’m rather strongly convinced that the Illuminatus! character, Atlanta Hope, is based substantially on Mary Jo Padgett…”
Letter: Kerry Thornley to Greg Hill, 1976. Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.
Back in 1966, Kerry was editing the libertarian newsletter, The Innovator, which had published an article entitled “Postman Against the State” dealing with various non-governmental postal systems throughout history that had functioned more effectively than government operated systems. As the “Playboy Forum” was then receiving a slew of complaints from readers about snooping on the part of the U.S. Postal Service, Kerry persuaded The Innovator’s publisher to send a copy of the “Postman Against the State” issue to Playboy. RAW—then an associate editor at Playboy—received this issue of The Innovator and, in turn, responded to Kerry, which initiated a longstanding correspondence between the two.
Kerry and RAW discussed, among other things, the American Letter Mail Company operated in New England in the mid 1800s by the individualist anarchist, Lysander Spooner. The American Letter Mail Company, at the time, offered cheaper postage rates than the U.S. Postal Service, gave more deliveries per day, and earned a profit to boot. Spooner was finally put out of business when Congress made it illegal to deliver a first class letter for profit. Both Kerry and RAW agreed that the U.S. Postal Service was once again ripe for change, and the concept Spooner had spawned one hundred years earlier was the direction the current mail system should go.
Thornley later described his correspondence with RAW as “one of the longest, most intense, most stimulating, rewarding, enriching, enlightening—and certainly the most unusual—of my entire life.”
“We began writing long letters to each other… astonished at how totally our political philosophies agreed—we were both opposed to every form of violence or coercion against individuals, whether practiced by governments or by people who claimed to be revolutionaries. We were equally disenchanted with the organized Right and the organized Left while still remaining Utopians, without a visible Utopia to believe in.”
During this period, Kerry was promoting the idea of “floating ocean utopias” where Anarcho-Libertarians—such as he fancied himself—could live high and free on the sea. This is a concept that RAW and Shea entertain in Illuminatus! embodied by the character of Hagbard Celine and his golden submarine, the Lief Erickson, which first emerges on page 71.
Celine—like many other Illuminatus! characters—seems a composite of much of the idealism after which Kerry aspired during those heady days of the 60s: the dream of living on the high seas—like swashbuckling Captain Celine—free of governments and any limitations on the individual, devoted to pursuing true freedom and sensual pleasures while engaged in a battle to free men’s minds.
'The Gypsies of the Sulu Sea,' Kerry Thornley’s short article on 'aqua-libertarians' from Ocean Living magazine, 1968. Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.
Submitted for your approval, a letter from Greg Hill (aka Malaclypse the Younger) to Timothy Leary, High Priest of LSD, from February 8, 1969.
Not sure if Greg enclosed anything else with the letter, or if there was any particular reason behind it other than to try to blow the mind of the very same man who had done so much to corrupt the youth of America.
Greg Hill letter to Timothy Leary, February 8, 1969. Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.
Discordian Guerrilla Ontology advert for the release of The Illuminatus! Trilogy. Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.Several posts ago, we presented a letter from Robert Shea to Discordian co-founder Greg Hill concerning the Illuminatus! book cover art proofs that proved quite interesting with some great background insights into that effort before the release of the book.
After the release of Illuminatus!: The Eye in the Pyramid, co-author Shea and Hill continued their correspondence through the fall of 1975, attached below for your reading pleasure. Shea is referenced and signs as “Josh” in two of these letters acknowledging his Discordian nom de plume “Josh the Dill.”
From this exchange, we learn some interesting tidbits about the publication of Illuminatus!, such as the book’s publisher, Dell, initially printed only 75,000 copies of The Eye in the Pyramid. We also gain some insights into how the book was being received and what efforts were being made by Shea and his co-author Robert Anton Wilson to market the book via radio interviews.
In the November 11, 1975 letter from Hill to Shea, Hill enclosed a copy of the fake Illuminatus! review he and Wilson had been working on under the name of Mordecai Zwack and were sending out to various newspapers like The New York Times as a part of their ongoing “Operation Mindfuck.”
This exchange of letters also contains an extensive discussion and analysis of Discordian co-founder Kerry Thornley’s recent-at-the-time state of mind, his growing paranoia, and his theories regarding his involvement in the JFK Assassination, including Thornley’s experiences with the mysterious “Brother-in-Law” Gary Kirstein. Shea and Hill’s take on Thornley and what he was personally going through around this time is quite revealing in context of what this whole era of realization would eventually mean for Thornley and his life in the years to come.
Also of note is Shea’s response to various Illuminati “true believers” during his promotional radio interviews leading him to confide to Hill, “We are definitely dealing with volatile materials.”
Indeed, Hail Eris! Enjoy.
Letters: Robert Shea and Greg Hill, Fall 1975
Letter: Robert Shea to Greg Hill, October 1, 1975, Page 00001. Courtesy of bobshea.net from the Discordian Archives.Letter: Greg Hill to Robert Shea, November 11, 1975, Page 00001. Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.
Letter: Greg Hill to Robert Shea, November 11, 1975, Page 00002. Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.Letter: Greg Hill to Robert Shea, November 11, 1975, Page 00003. Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.
Letter: Robert Shea to Greg Hill, November 22, 1975, Page 00001. Courtesy of bobshea.net from the Discordian Archives.Letter: Robert Shea to Greg Hill, November 22, 1975, Page 00002. Courtesy of bobshea.net from the Discordian Archives.
Those Early Discordians were always sending humorous letters to one another, such as this little ditty from Mord Mal (short for Mordecai Malignatus aka RAW) to Lady L (aka Louise Lacey) sometime during the early-70s.
When I asked Louise permission to post it, she gave the A-OK under the proviso that she wanted to emphasize there was never any romantic relationship between she and RAW—or for that matter with any other of her fellow Discordian brethren—and that the letter was most likely meant as some sort of mystifying joke for future generations to ponder.
Letter from Robert Anton Wilson to Louise Lacey, early 1970s. Courtesy of Louise Lacey from the Discordian Archives.
Robert Shea letter to Greg Hill, discussing Illuminatus! book cover proofs, Page 00001, dated June 25, 1975. Courtesy of bobshea.net from the Discordian Archives.
One of my favorite finds in the Discordian Archives is this letter from Robert Shea to Greg Hill sent the summer before the release of Illuminatus!.
The letter includes some great Erisian Mysteries insights. Such as Shea’s back-story on how cover artist Carlos Victor (Carlos Ochagavia) learned about Illuminatus! to create the individual book covers. I find this amusing as it must have been quite an endeavor by editor Fred Feldman and the interpreter to communicate to Victor such a strange and bizarre concept, which Victor nails solidly.
Another great nugget is Shea’s admiration for the latest in 1975 photocopier tech, provided by his employer, Playboy magazine, used to photocopy the Illuminatus! book cover proofs attached to the letter.
Photocopiers as hip-tech were something Shea and the Early Discordians used-well in the production of personal zines, like Shea’s No Governor mentioned in the letter, and various Erisian tracts, including the Principia Discordia.
Robert Shea letter to Greg Hill, The Eye in the Pyramid book cover proof attachment, June 25, 1975. Courtesy of bobshea.net from the Discordian Archives.Robert Shea letter to Greg Hill, The Golden Apple book cover proof attachment, June 25, 1975. Courtesy of bobshea.net from the Discordian Archives.
Greg Hill had, by the time of this letter, long-ago hacked how photocopiers could be used with paste-ups to produce artwork that left no cut-marks or seams when reproduced and liberally employed this production technique for Third and Fourth Editions of the Principia Discordia. Eventually this approach was ubiquitous in the mid-to-late-80s zine scene explosion, no doubt also helped along by Kinkos’ great photocopier equipment and liberal policies of photocopy production (while looking the other way on copyright infringement).
One can imagine “Faster/Clearer/More Gradients!” as a mantra that Shea and Hill would have embraced in their pursuit of top-notch photocopier tech of the time.
