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.
By the late-80s, Kerry had become a major player in the Church of SubGenius, a spoof religion influenced to a great degree by its predecessor, Discordianism. Ever the sexual exhibitionist, Kerry once sent a photo of himself nude, fucking a chair, to Rev. Ivan Stang’s SubGenius mag Stark Fist of Removal. Stang, of course, published it, albeit with Kerry’s dick blacked out. As Stang later noted: “Kerry had love in his heart for all things, even chairs.” The Prankster and the Conspiracy, page 237.
During the course of penning The Prankster—and coming across the aforementioned photo of Kerry carrying on with a chair—I contacted Stang for permission to use the photo, which he graciously granted. For his assistance, I sent the good Reverend a copy of The Prankster. In return, he shortly after dissed the book whenever he got the chance, basically on account of the above paragraph. Now, don’t get me wrong, I have a pretty thick skin when it comes to criticism and tend to keep an open mind about such things. However, Stang’s main (only) bone of contention about The Prankster concerned this single paragraph and the remark that Kerry had been “a major player in the Church of SubGenius” which he apparently took as some sort of slight (I think) as it suggested (perhaps erroneously) that Kerry had done a lot of the heavy lifting in creating the myth of Bob Dobbs. To this end, Stang went off on yours truly in a recent interview on Greg Bishop’s Radio Misterioso radio show, even though, conversely, he suggested in his 1987 Hour of Slack interview with RAW that Kerry was “…a famous Subgenius.”
During the same Radio Misterioso episode, Stang suggested that I’d ripped off the title for my latest book, Happy Trails To High Weirdness: A Conspiracy Theorist’s Tour Guide from his 1988 book High Weirdness By Mail, which I must admit is one of my fav all time books. Perhaps if he hadn’t got his panties all in a bunch over The Prankster and The Conspiracy ten years or so ago, Stang would have cut me some slack over the apparent indignity of using the phrase “High Weirdness” in the title of my book. However, it should also be mentioned that my publisher at Feejee Press actually came up with “High Weirdness” as part of the title to replace the bland working title I’d suggested: “On The Road With Adam Gorightly.”
Anyway, enough of me venting about the diabolical Rev. Ivan Stang. At the end of the day I consider him a great American, even though he gets a bit whiny at times.
As RAW mentioned on numerous occasions, Illuminatus! was an exercise of mixing fact with fiction, and in particular the many conspiracy theories presented willy-nilly in the book. Years after its publication, RAW admitted that even he was unclear as to which of these theories—in the final analysis—were ultimately true or false, and that some might have been both true AND false at the same time. In this regard, the book is a mental exercise of sorts in unraveling the many mythologies swirling around the kooky conspiratorial landscape of the late-60s and 70s.
During the Week 2RAWIllumination.net group reading, I neglected to mention a reference to the Berkeley Illuminati, which was indeed a real group based out of the U.C. Berkeley campus in the mid to late-60s that ran concurrent to the Discordian Society’s Bavarian Illuminati activities. Like RAW and Kerry Thornley, the Berkeley group sent out spurious announcements about far flung conspiracies just to see how people would react and possibly even piss themselves in the process. I’ve never actually seen any of the Berkeley Illuminati materials, but Jesse Walker in The United States of Paranoia: A Conspiracy Theory interviewed one of the members of the group, Sharon Presley, who stated that: “We actually had a recognized student group at Cal called the Bavarian Illuminati. The by-laws were a hoot; obviously no bureaucrat actually read them.”
So, in essence, they were a real group that put out false announcements, so they were both true and false at the same time, a prime example of Operation Mindfuck run amok.
As for the Week 4 reading, I don’t have a lot to comment on, other than to note that the Teenset article mentioned on Page 40 (“The Most Sinister, Evil, Subversive Conspiracy In The World”) was indeed a real article in a real magazine, written by someone named Sandra Glass (who was, most likely, Robert Shea), which documented an investigation into the mysterious Ancient Illuminated Seers of Bavaria (A.I.S.B.). This article was ominously prefaced with an editor’s note: “Before her recent death, Miss Glass was an expert on subversive affairs.” The source— for many of the revelations in the article—came allegedly from an anarchist named Simon Moon, who would later turn up as a character in Illuminatus!.
Here’s a one-page double-sided flyer Greg Hill put out in June 1970 listing all the different Erisian cabals that had emerged during this juncture in Discordian history, which included RAW’s Adam Weishaupt chapter, Camden Benares’ St. Gulik Iconistary among other such wonders.
Sampling of Discordian Society Phenomena and Cabalablia, Page 00001, June 1970. Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.Sampling of Discordian Society Phenomena and Cabalablia, Page 00002, June 1970. Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.
RAW form letter, 1976. Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.RAW form letter, 1976. Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.RAW form letter, around 2002. Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.
Letter by RAW to friends about Against The Wall flamewar, June 1978, Page 00001. Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.In June of ’79, RAW sent out the following letter regarding a little feud he got into with someone named Angela Douglas in the letters section of the libertarian mag Against The Wall, a copy of which he included with the letter.
As for the Communities Land Trust, no telling who they were—but don’t let that confuse you. Wilson and his fellow Discordians were fond of absconding letterheads, and it was cheaper that way, as well, as much of the stationary RAW used throughout the 70s he no doubt picked up for free, which saved a few bucks here and there, this during a period when he and his family were living from one royalty check to the next.
Anyway, enjoy this war of words provided courtesy of your friendly Discordian documenters.
Letter by RAW to friends about Against The Wall flamewar, June 1978, Page 00002. Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.Letter by RAW to friends about Against The Wall flamewar, June 1978, Page 00003. Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.
Greg Hill’s 'Bavarian Illuminati' business card, front. Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.Greg Hill’s 'Bavarian Illuminati' business card, back. Courtesy of the Discordian Archives. As we embark upon Week 2 of the RAWIllumination.netIlluminatus! reading, I will continue my obsessive quest to note any Discordian references I encounter along the way. So away we go…
What immediately jumps out is the character of Joseph Malik, who is at least a hat tip to Discordian Society founder, Greg Hill, as among Hill’s various Discordian personas was Mad Malik, an apparent member of the Bavarian Illuminati, as depicted in this Illuminati business card from the late-60s/early-70s.
In Illuminatus!, Joseph Malik is an underground magazine editor who has uncovered an apparent Illuminati plot, as documented in a number of written exchanges between Malik and someone named Pat.
The evolution of much of the Illuminati mythos depicted in Illuminatus! was initially inspired by Jim Garrison’s JFK assassination investigation of all things, which makes all of this even more convoluted, so bear with me. For those unfamiliar with Big Jim, he was the New Orleans District Attorney during the 1960s and the lead character played by Kevin Costner in Oliver Stone’s JFK. As fickle fate would have it, Discordian co-founder Kerry Thornley was identified by Garrison as being involved in the JFK assassination plot, which of course led to a lot of chaos in Thornley’s life (Hail Eris!) in the years to come, a topic I first broached in The Prankster and the Conspiracy and which will be the main theme in my forthcoming book Caught In The Crossfire: Kerry Thornley, Oswald and Garrison’s JFK Investigation coming soon from Feral House.
During the course of Garrison’s investigation, one of his unofficial investigators (otherwise known as the “Irregulars”) was a fellow named Allan Chapman who subscribed to the theory that JFK’s assassination had been orchestrated by (you guessed it!) the Bavarian Illuminati. After catching wind of Chapman’s Illuminati-JFK assassination theory, Thornley initiated—along with the support of some of his fellow Discordian Society pranksters—what became known as Operation Mindfuck (OM), a campaign designed to screw with Garrison’s head by sending out spurious announcements suggesting that he (Kerry) was an agent of the Illuminati. Among the culprits who helped perpetrate Operation Mindfuck was none other than RAW. As Kerry later noted:
Wilson and I founded the Anarchist Bavarian Illuminati to give Jim Garrison a hard time, one of whose supporters believed that the Illuminati owned all the major TV networks, the Conspiring Bavarian Seers (CBS), the Ancient Bavarian Conspiracy (ABC) and the Nefarious Bavarian Conspirators (NBC). —Kerry Thornley, Dreadlock Recollections
I suspect that the “Illuminati Project Memos” on pages 14, 15, 16 and 20 were actually exchanges between Wilson and Thornley during the period the two were conducting Illuminati research, and that Wilson inserted these exchanges into the Illuminatus! narrative. This research led both Thornley and Wilson to compose the infamous letter and answer that appeared in the April ’69 issue of Playboy.
On page 21, Peter Jackson tells Saul Goodman that the missing Malik—through his magazine, Confrontation—was attempting to re-open an investigation into the MLK and Kennedy brother assassinations, which is exactly what Kerry Thornley was attempting to do around the time of the publication of Illuminatus!
Thornley, as well, had been an underground magazine editor during the 1960s, so it can be further conjectured that Malik was a composite character based on Thornley and Greg Hill.
NOTE: After taking another gander at Illuminatus!, I noticed that the first “Project Illuminati Memo” was dated 7/23, the date of RAW’s otherworldly experience with certain denizens from Sirius as well as being the beginning of the Dog Days of Sirius.
I recently re-discovered a rarely seen video interview with Kerry Thornley from 1992, conducted by our friend Rev. Wyrdsli in the back room of A Cappella Books (in Little Five Points, Atlanta) where Kerry was living at the time.
Below is the first clip in the video series, focusing on the birth of Discordianism as well as RAW’s involvement in the early scene.
Special thanks to my partner in crime Floyd Anderson for editing this and the other clips of the interview that will be released in the days and weeks to come!
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.
Pope Card by St. Mae for the RAW Meme-Orial, front, 2007. Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.Pope Card by St. Mae for the RAW Meme-Orial, back, 2007. Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.Sticker: Lysergide by St. Mae. Courtesy of the Discordian Archives. While on the topic of Pope Cards, a fine addition to the theme was created a few years back by my friend St. Mae over at Discordian.com, a card made specifically for The Robert Anton Wilson Cosmic Meme-Orial back in 2007.
Mae passed on a bundle of these beauties to me during a visit last year to Emperor Norton’s groovy grave site which she orchestrated.
In addition, Mae gave me a few Lysergide stickers that she and her crew created a while ago, which in short order I stuck on the back of my keyboard synthesizer, just because it looked cool there.
Lysergide, for those not in the know, was the trademarked name for LSD back when a group of someones were trying to market the drug before it became illegal.
