I recently received a very generous care package (that synchronistically weighed in at exactly 23lbs) from the fine folks at Illuminated Brew Works, that included some cool swag along with a selection of their top-notch beer adorned with some of the coolest artwork/labels you’ll find on this or any other planet.
A selection of swag and brew from the Illuminated Crew.
My fav among this trove of tasty of whistle-wetter’s was “Your Soul, A UFO” which includes these illuminating words featured below from the renowned academic psychonaut, Dr. Jeffrey Kripal.
The Old Kripal
Not only does Illuminated Brew Works offer a rotating selection of great beers with ingenious packaging, but they also have their very own Lodge (in the Windy City) where you can be initiated as a club member if you pass through all the required rituals/degrees, which will then earn you a set of wings and a Passport to Magonia. Having already earned a 33rd degree grandmaster rating at several magical orders, the Illuminated Ascended Masters (ASM) at Illuminated Brew Works (IBW) went ahead and awarded yours truly my very own set of wings without ever having to actually cross the Abyss and travel to Chicago and down a pint of Adrenochrome in under 23 seconds.
My very own pair of Illuminated wings (on my very own bomber jacket from Spain) courtesy of the ASM at IBW.
Whatever the case, I definitely hope to travel to the windy city at some point in the near future to meet up with my illuminated beer enthusiast brethren and sistern.
A photo from inside the inner sanctum of Illuminated Lodge #1, ripped from the pages of Yelp.
Well our Lady Eris threw us a curve-ball in this last December of 2020, Hail Eris!, taking the Historia Discordia site down for about a month.
Now we’re back, we’re adjusting to a new server environment and a new publishing platfrom, you may see that some of the articles since September 2020 don’t have their images. Eris, what a fucker.
Since the last time we updated these Howth Castle and Environs was around 2013 to now 2021, it’s possible some older articles might also have issues. We will find them, correct them.
Anyway…
We’re absolutely hardcore causally working on these issues, often in between long and sea-side luxurious naps. With the kitties. We are very serious people obviously.
Recently I stumbled upon this artifact in the Discordian Archives, a clipping from the May 1976 edition of National Weed entitled: “Author Sues Acidheads For Saying Leary Wrote His Book!”
May 1976 National Weed article about Robert Anton Wilson suing the Neo-American Church for claiming Timothy Leary wrote The Illuminatus! Trilogy.
In essence, this article appears to have been a PR prank Robert Anton Wilson pulled as a pretext to promote Illuminatus! while at the same time taking a pot-shot (pun intended) at members of the Neo-American Church, who—on occasion—RAW was known to tussle with.
This article also mentions a Timothy Leary interview RAW was working on that had yet to be published at the time due to what he referred to as “perfectionist” editors at PLAYBOY. This “Lost Leary Interview” —which has yet to see the literary light of day—was among content included in the RVP-never-to-be-version of Starseed Signals, although I’ve been informed that our friends at Hilaritas Press may include it in their forthcoming iteration of the book.
Art Kleps with a trespassing captive named Wendy underfoot who tried to storm the Millbrook compound. Photo lifted from http://www.okneoac.org.
As for the “acidheads” mentioned in the article, RAW was referring to members of the Neo-American Church, founded by former Leary acolyte Arthur Kleps. It should be noted that if RAW was sincerely interested in suing the Neo-American Church, then said lawsuit would have included his friend, and Discordian Society founder, Greg Hill, who was an affiliate member of that august acidhead outfit as documented in this membership card below. Oh, what a tangled web we acidheads weave!
Greg Hill’s Neo-American Church membership card, courtesy of the Discordian Archives.
Kleps was fond of penning polemics to counterculture publications, one of which appeared in the November 14, 1975 edition of The Berkeley Barb with Kleps going on about how the “energy crisis” was a hoax that “fits in with the apocalyptic ideas so popular among the moron supernaturalists and occultists of the Robert Anton Wilson type…”
November 14, 1975 letter from Art Klebs to The Berkeley Barb.
In response, RAW fired back with the following letter published in the November 21, 1975 edition of The Berkeley Barb:
November 17, 1975 letter from Robert Anton Wilson to The Berkeley Barb, page 00001.November 17, 1975 letter from Robert Anton Wilson to The Berkeley Barb, page 00002.
I recently stumbled upon this oddity in the Discordian Archives, an obscure publication called The National Informer dated March 30, 1969. And no, this wasn’t a Discordian gag as far as I can tell, but an actual magazine or newsletter (published by an apparent crackpot named Hazel Mullins) featuring the conspiratorial meme that JFK was still alive. That’s right, he never died!
The March 30, 1969 edition of The National Informer.
The JFK-never-died school of assassinationology is among my all time favs, right up there with the-secret-service-driver-shot-JFK-with-a-poison-dart-filled-with-deadly-shell-fish-toxin. There have been variations on this JFK never died theme throughout years, such as the rumor that he was still alive though withering away in a secret room at the Mayo Clinic. Let’s look at a couple more variations of this theory now, because apparently I have nothing better to do with my time…
George C. Thomson’s The Quest for Truth
A rare copy of George C. Thomson’s The Quest for Truth.
My first whiff of this JFK-never-actually-died doo-dah came courtesy of a Southern California swimming pool engineer named George C. Thomson. The gist of Thomson’s theory was that Kennedy narrowly escaped with his life from Dealey Plaza and inserted in his place (in the Presidential limousine) was J.D. Tippit, the Dallas Police officer who had been allegedly shot and killed by Lee Harvey Oswald in the aftermath of the assassination (in front of Oswald’s apartment in the Oak Cliff section of Dallas). Some suggest that Tippit strongly resembled JFK; photos of the two men do reveal some similarities, although Tippit wasn’t a “dead ringer” by any stretch of the imagination.
J.D. TippitAs noted, part of Thomson’s theory included this body swap switcheroo of Tippit for JFK—and get this: the assassin, according to Thomson, was none other than soon to be President Lyndon Baines Johnson who used “a drum-fed, fully automatic weapon, two of them…” Approximately 22 bullets were fired (although 23 would have been ideal) and in the crossfire five (Hail Eris!) people were killed, all of which is documented in Thomson’s “Dallas Murder Map,” a fold-out included as part of his magnum opus, The Quest for Truth.
George C. Thomson’s 'Dallas Murder Map'
Thomson never really explained why JFK’s assassination was faked, and specifically what became of our supposedly dead President. However, Thomson alleged that JFK had been seen (wearing a mask) at the famous Truman Capote “black and white ball” that occurred in November of 1966.
The Bane In Kennedy’s Existence
Bernard M. Bane
Even farther out on a conspiratorial limb was a fellow named Bernard Bane, who authored such obscure JFK assassination classics as The Bane in Kennedy’s Existence (1967) and Is President John F, Kennedy Alive… And Well? (1973).
Adam Gorightly’s precious copy of The Bane in Kennedy’s Existence.
By and large, The Bane in Kennedy’s Existence is a ponderously inscrutable read, but the basic gist is that in October 1963, Bane was taken into custody and committed to a mental health facility where MK-Ultra like “spychiatrists”—or those he refers to as the “Social Engineers”—injected him with massive doses of LSD, all part of an insidious plot to drive Bane bananas.
Why Mr. Bane was treated in such an unseemly manner is never made entirely clear, although part of the reason, apparently, was due to a book he authored in 1962 entitled The Grand Model of the Mind that presented a psychological theory that appears to have made even less sense than his JFK assassination theory, which is saying quite a lot. I’ll let Bane tell the story in his own words:
“So, I got out [of the psych ward] October 15. And according to expectations, something was going to happen on my birthday. My birthday’s on November 21st. President Kennedy was supposed to be assassinated as a birthday present to me. So, on November 22, he was assassinated. So that’s how I got involved. I figured, there’s something going on here. There was a definite connection. So then, when I read an article in the Boston Globe that said, ‘HOAX IN DALLAS’ — somebody did something that had nothing to do with the Kennedy assassination—but to me, it meant something: “HOAX IN DALLAS” —it means the assassination’s a hoax. And I always felt there was something bizarre about the whole thing. So I concluded, OK. He never got killed. And I realize after concluding that, a lot of people around me knew that all along… but they didn’t admit it. So slowly I leaked out my belief that he wasn’t even killed…” (Donny Kossy’s 1991 interview with Bernard Bane, Kooks Magazine)
February Eris of the Month 2020 - Malaclypse's Valentine's Eris, 1977
Eris comes to us in many guises (“my father’s house has many mansions”), sometimes even in the form of St. Valentine’s Day cards, such as the one we see here sent to the founding father of the Discordianism, none other than Malaclypse the Younger aka Greg Hill in February 1977, apparently alerting him to a Discordian soiree of sorts. It’s not clear who the sender of said Erisian Valentine was, although the card says “Gnostic” on it, so I guess it’s possible it was sent from Thomas the Gnostic aka Tom McNamara.
February Eris of the Month 2020 - Malaclypse's Valentine's Eris, 1977
A year ago today, the idiot self-proclaimed ‘satirist,’ Andy Borowitz, a low-level employee of The New Yorker, for the first time ever finally composed some placeholder copy that was almost coy and mildly humorous. The New Yorker, presumably for a lack of deadline-filled column inches, actually published it. And we missed it at the time. Our apologies.
It was about Eris and President Trump. So be it, Goddess often uses lesser vessels for her OM mission’s goals. We will not judge her choice of conduit for stoking chaos.
Andy Borowitz's Eris Article About President Trump
'Is the School House the Proper Place to Teach Raw Sex?' authored by the honorable Gordon V. Drake in 1968, published by Christian Crusade Press. During our recent Raymond Broshears spectacular we featured a post on Rev. Billy Hargis and the Christian Crusade, a commie bashing evangelical outfit pretty much dead set against anything those dirty rotten liberals wanted to teach in school, particularly sex education and other “radical” ideas pushed by the Reds, who had apparently infiltrated not only the halls of congress, but your local PTA.
In 1968, around the same time the Discordians launched Operation Mindfuck, Rev. Hargis and his Christian Crusade propaganda mill pooped out a pamphlet called “Is the School House the Proper Place to Teach Raw Sex?” authored by the honorable Gordon V. Drake. According to our good friends at Wikipedia:
The 40-page document, described by Time magazine as, “an angry little pamphlet,” was originally distributed as part of a direct-mail fundraising campaign for the Christian Crusade, so that the organization could lobby against sex education in schools. It became a source of unfounded anecdotes about the supposed horrors of sex education for groups such as Mothers Organized for Moral Stability.
School House targeted the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS), and in particular its director Dr. Mary Calderone. It described her as the “SIECUS Sexpot”, and said that the group sought to “toss[…] God aside” and “to teach American youth a new sexual morality independent of church and state.” Besides arguing that sex education undermined Christian morality and promoted promiscuity, the document said it is part of a “giant Communist conspiracy.” It said, “[If] the new morality is affirmed, our children will become easy targets for Marxism and other amoral, nihilistic philosophies—as well as V.D.!” The pamphlet also identified the National Education Association as an enemy.
The pamphlet was the most widely circulated attack on sex education in the 1960s. Drake estimated that it sold over 90,000 copies in the three months after it was published, while Hargis claimed one million overall. A more conservative estimate is 250,000 copies…
In response to “Is the School House the Proper Place to Teach Raw Sex?”, Greg Hill issued a Discordian dispatch entitled “Is The Schoolhouse the Proper Place to Teach Raw Math?”
'Is The Schoolhouse the Proper Place to Teach Raw Math?', a Discordian dispatch propagated by Greg Hill to his cabal of Discordian conspirators circa 1969. Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.
Hill distributed the above dispatch to his network of Illuminati conspirators, who likewise propagated this polemic-parody under different names and Discordian disguises, one of which appeared in Playboy in October 1969 under the moniker of Arnold K. Ravenhurst of Chicago, Illinois, that was mostly likely planted by Robert Anton Wilson, then editing the Playboy Forum.
Playboy Forum letters section, October 1969. Click or tap image to Embiggen.
The above letter was pointed out to me by Martin Wagner who maintains a growing archive of RAW rarities at the Robert Anton Wilson Fans website. Not only did Martin point out the Ravenhurst letter, but also a follow-up response by James O’Malley of Brooklyn, New York, who was also most likely a Bob Wilson bot.
At the end of Greg Hill’s “Raw Math” dispatch he mentioned “the broken cross peace symbol,” a controversy that seems to have gathered a head of steam during this period, as documented in a New York Times article which you can view here—assuming you’re not thwarted by the dreaded pay wall effect.
The infamous 'Their Peace Symbol-The Broken Cross' flyer. Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.
In regards to the “broken cross peace symbol,” apparently Greg Hill (using the Mad Malik persona) considered it his patriotic duty to warn the GOP of a similar menace relating to the secret symbolism of “3 inverted pentagrams on your elephant’s riot helmet… specifically used to conjure evil spirits…”
Letter from Mad Malik of the Ancient Illuminated Seers of Bavaria (A.I.S.B.) to the GOP dated 43 Conf (Sri Syadasti), Y.O.L.D 3135 (July 8, 1969).
