Category: robert anton wilson

Standing in the Shade of Love By Brenton Clutterbuck

Post author By Clutterbuck
Post date February 17, 2019
5 Comments on Standing in the Shade of Love By Brenton Clutterbuck

The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author, although the command staff here at Historia Discordia has no reason to doubt the central thesis presented herein, based–as it is–on evidentiary documentation referenced by Mr. Clutterbuck, not to mention his own personal journey down the sock-puppet filled Rev. Loveshade rabbit hole. – The MGT.

I am writing this article not just as a Discordian, but as an Award Winning Discordian, having been granted the Order of the Pineapple, an award that has been bestowed (dare I say, imposed) on other Discordians including Professor Cramulus, Adam Gorightly, Sondra London, Miley Spears, Pope Hilde, Gypsie Skripto and Princess Unicornia.

The order of the Pineapple was first presented in 1982 by the Ek-Sen-Trik-Uh Cluborguild. Except it wasn’t – which is the problem. It wasn’t invented in ’82, more likely it was invented in 2015. And many of the recipients – Spears, Hilde, Skripto, Unicornia etc – are entirely fictional.

This is just one symptom of the problem that lives very, very deep in current day Discordianism. It is the problem of Reverend Loveshade.

The Loveshade Family Tree

How do you write the history of a serial liar? It doesn’t make sense to simply assemble their lies and present them. Loveshade is a difficult liar because he is a Discordian liar – he is always winking at the camera. Many of the claims he makes are tongue in cheek and ridiculous, but there are certain ‘facts’ that are presented repeatedly. For instance, Loveshade’s involvement in adult film when younger, or his commune, or his persecution by the government—all are consistent moments referenced both seriously and playfully in different places. But why bother? If we can trust anything about Loveshade, it’s that we can rely on him to be a liar.

Loveshade appears to be a member of a large and eclectic community of Discordians, whose brand of Discordianism is liberty driven, owing much to the free love movements of the hippie scene. The community involves a number of young, often related young girls, including some of the above recipients of the Order of the Pineapple. There’s the Spears clan, the Black family, and the Loveshades, and a sprinkling of outsiders. Interactions between what we might call ‘the Loveshade family’ and others tend to be fraught with tension; some on philosophical grounds, some because I can tell you from experience that Loveshade’s adventures in forums and comment sections can be a tad antagonistic, and some because he likes to namedrop.

We can trace Loveshade’s internet history back to somewhere between 1998 and 2000. Loveshade’s mythology often references a bygone figure called Bloodstar/Alien Loveshade. Bloodstar appears real (in some sense), a figure on Geocities around the turn of the millennium. Bloodstar had some interactions with another Geocities user, A.D. Lea.

Between the two, the evolution of the Loveshade family can be seen. Both websites (Bloodstar and Alien Loveshade) have a fixation on copyright and image use that resembles current Loveshade family pages. Both pages pay tribute (including photos) to a model skull referred to as Binky the Wonderskull. Both pages link to the five key beliefs and other writings of Loveshade. A.D. Lea writes about gender in a passage called Gender Genesis – this is now on ‘Alden Loveshade’s’ page, attributed to him.

A.D. Lea also has photos of a Halloween party, some of which appear now on pages run by Alden Loveshade. This involved a kind of spooky tour, with pictures of wizards, wackos and wolfmen. The aforementioned ‘wacko’ is a bearded cleaver wielding maniac named Dr Sinister Craven. The man in that picture will come up again soon. The ‘Wizard’ is also later referenced as ‘The Wizard Lea’. It is a picture many will recognise as the self-portrait of Alden Loveshade. Most pictures are copyright A.D. Lea, but this one is attributed to another person called Dan, who will also come up again.

Bloodstar has another classic Loveshade attribute; he puts forward an interest in nudism, linking to several pages. Those pages often have a focus on selling images of ‘family nudity’. He also shares a ‘self-portrait’–a photoshopped floating head with exaggerated facial hair. The unedited image is commonly used as a self-portrait by Alden Loveshade.

Both A.D. Lea and Bloodstar link to Loveshade’s page at different times, often with the suggestion that it is coming soon – both linked to the Loveshade page as a work in progress. In fact, Bloodstar may even have alluded to creating Reverend Loveshade in his 1998 end of year letter (a tradition Alden Loveshade continues) – I established a Secret Earth Identity this year. I can’t talk about that too much, either.

We can assume A.D Lea and Bloodstar/Alien Loveshade are the same, and that they’re both Reverend Loveshade.

SubGenius Revelations

It wouldn’t quite be a Discordian story without dramatic jumps through space and time, but I feel this is a good time to talk about ‘The Biography of Alden Loveshade’ because I will be making references to it from here on, and I want to give credit where due.

The current Loveshade preoccupation of Wiki editing has not made Loveshade (or his ostensible community members ‘Pope Hilde’ and ‘Miley Spears’) many friends. In the SubGenius community in particular, there has been push-back against Miley Spears’ hostile takeover of the Subgenius Fandom Wikia. I’m unclear of the specific details, but around two years ago some members did some digging into Loveshade, and made a host of accusations, and were told to come back with proof.

They did. This PDF documents Loveshade’s court records from 2002 and identifies a few things about those early Geocities pages that I hadn’t spotted — in particular, his use of meta descriptions that seem designed to attract a… questionable community of fans.

“…closer inspection of the HTML shows a trend that becomes all too frequent in Loveshade-related online materials. Meta Descriptions, such as those seen in the screenshot below, containing tags like, ‘pregnant, pics, children, preteens, teenagers,’ and so on.”

I stumbled across this PDF through a series of leads, each more tenuous than the last. This lead—a guy I’d seen fall out with Loveshade on Facebook—was deeply paranoid of me when I introduced myself. Even after I sent a video of myself, clearly stating my name, it didn’t stop his suspicions that I was–or was affiliated with–Loveshade. I have to say, I don’t blame him.

In the end though, he was kind enough to decide to trust me. His name was M. Otis Beard, and he was himself an internet celebrity of a kind, a member of the Ur-Internet Troll association of ‘Kibologists’, and in particular had become a kind of unofficial spokesperson for faking your own death on the internet, something he did in 1999. Beard mentioned ‘the PDF’ offhand, assuming I knew of it, before directing me to a Subgenius group where I could find it.

Around this same time, I received an email from another individual, stating simply:

Heard your asking about Loveshade. I can tell you shit.

This was followed by a completely different document with an aesthetically similar cover. However the title was ‘The Biography of Reverend Loveshade’, and the content was wildly different. Without going into full details, there’s a simple reason for this; the person who sent it to me is Reverend Loveshade and he’s trying to muddy the waters, so that the reaction to the Subgenius document is the same as the current reaction to the whole of the Loveshade saga– ‘this is a weird mess, so I’m just not going to think too hard about it.’ In total, the moral of this second document is as follows – the man you think is Loveshade is framed, the real Loveshade is another person, and all his sock-puppets are real, too.

Like I said, I don’t blame Beard for his paranoia.

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum

The first notable instances of Loveshade interacting with other Discordians is on a Yahoo group called Illuminatusinnersanctum. His first post is in July of 2001, and he speaks of being invited by user ‘Chezire_Katt’, who seems to have performed several membership runs to gather new users. His last is in 2012, by which point the forum was basically a wasteland of spambots.

This puts Loveshade as a participating member of Illuminatusinnersanctum forum at the time of his reported 2002 arrest by Texas Law Enforecement officials, which allows us to put together a timeline. Further details can be found in the PDF.

On March 19, 2002, Loveshade posts his last message on the Illuminatusinnersanctum forum, after being an incredibly active poster.

‘The Biography of Alden Loveshade’ lists March 29, 2002 as Loveshade’s arrest.

On May 13, 2002, Chezire_Katt mentions that they wonder where Loveshade is.

On Feb 14, 2003, George_W._Bust (could be Loveshade out on bail, or a friend) writes the following message:

Somebody brought up an old message of Reverend Loveshades so I thought I’d better comment.

For those who dont remember him, he used to be a frequent poster here. That was until he was investigated by the FBI and the Secret
Service and arrested on an imaginary charge. He’s currently being held in solitary confinement.

He’s been threatened many times with arrest because of his fights for freedom. Now that fundamental American freedoms are being
threatened in the name of security, we are all vulnerable.

His writings can be found on many web sites. Please read the first one below at least. It has suggestions for what you can do. Don’t bother emailing him now. He has no way to respond.

http://www.geocities.com/bloodstar84/stripfreedom.html
http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Zone/7971/panpleasant/apocrypha.html
http://www.neuroatomic.com/stealthis

We are hopeful that the Rev will soon be released. Remember his words when he said:

“Don’t wait for your grandchildren to ask you why you watched fundamental American freedoms being stripped away and did nothing.”

Loveshade’s sentencing date is April 12, 2003.

Suddenly, on October the 18th, 2005, Loveshade reappears:

As Mark Twain once said, “The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.”Yes, Ladies and Gentlemen, I’m back!

I’d like to clarify several things, but I won’t because other people are involved and everything is yet to be resolved. And frankly, I’m still a little scared myself (for a while, I was scared as hell). A lot of what I write is B.S., but the rest of this is as true as I can make it.

I and some of my associates were a part of a national investigation in the U.S.A. which may have extended internationally, we aren’t sure. This began not too long after Sept. 11, 2001. Part of that investigation, and perhaps only a small part, was an attempt to learn the true identity of the Discordian “BloodStar,” who still remains in “hiding,” and of “Reverend Loveshade.”

As I have no reason to want to pin down my “true” identity, I’ll leave it at this:

* we were investigated for a number of “crimes,” many having to do with freedom of speech. As one of our group is on the edge of having the last charge dismissed, I don’t want to go into details
* there were almost certainly bugs planted, and informants for government agencies planted as well (some of this was well done, and some was so clumsily handled as to be almost laughable)
* one of us was held for months in solitary confinement
* several of us were threatened by citizens/government agencies/police officers
* there were several searches conducted in various parts of the U.S.A.
* the work (writings, photos, etc.) of many of us were seized (including writings of some people who posted to this site, some of whom are likely still unaware of the investigations)
* at least two people who posted to this site were questioned in person by the authorities (we suspect more)
* at least a dozen agencies in the U.S.A. were involved in the investigation, including the FBI (we don’t have official documentation that the Secret Service was involved, and at this point their involvement seems doubtful. But an attorney said it appeared quite probable that a then-prominent person in the federal
government was our “enemy”)
* not a single agency found a single thing that agency identified as being illegal–except for a small-town police department. (Note that the “evidence” from this local cop was turned over to various agencies including the FBI, which had it for almost a year–after that cop held it for two years–before admitting they found nothing illegal).

As to posting “jokes” about Sept. 11, some of the postings almost certainly were a part of the investigation. Fortunately, some investigators had enough brains to realize the postings were jokes before more people who posted here were questioned.

Be careful what you kid about in a public forum; be careful what you take photos of (you never know what contemporary community standards are out there); be careful what you write in fiction that someone might think is true; and be careful claiming that the government is a bigger threat to freedom than terrorists–especially if they are.

Reverend Loveshade
discordia.loveshade.org

So the timeline is consistent. Loveshade was investigated, arrested, found guilty, went to jail, and came out again, to resume his online Discordian career where he left off.

Co-opting Wikis For Fun and Profit

One oft repeated piece of mythology is a variation of this: ‘Loveshade married a 15 year old girl to three grooms and everyone was naked.’ The truth of that matter is that a bunch of people had a goofy conversation in chat in November 2001. Loveshade has tendency to exaggerate the innocuous and downplay the serious. But there’s some things to note. One is that one of the three grooms, Danacasso, is known to Alden in the real world. Remember the Wizard photo? On his website, Alden attributes it to the photographer’s real name; on Facebook he attributes it to Danacasso. I contacted Danacasso, but received no reply.

Not so notable, but interesting to see, are Loveshade’s interactions with Shereed Volva on Illuminatusinnersanctum. There’s no speculation here – Shereed Volva, the editor of an edition of Discordian Open Source periodical ‘Intermittens’ outed himself as Loveshade, and gleefully pointed out that his name was an anagram for Reverend Loveshade. So when you see Volva and Loveshade interact remember – this is a man conversing with his own sockpuppet account.

One of Loveshade’s goals, in both Discordianism and Church of the Subgenius, is to rewrite the history of both to his liking. There’s a few tools he’s used to achieve these ends. The absolute control of basically all Discordian and SubGenius wikis is one. (The simplicity of this is almost admirable. Disused wikis lie around everywhere, waiting to be infiltrated with a sock army.) Another is presenting things as rumour from a sockpuppet, followed by a kind of smirking not-quite-denial from Loveshade. This is the method he’s used to suggest that he may be the child of Robert Anton Wilson’s murdered child Luna Wilson (it goes without saying, but no). And the final, most ambitious, is the wholesale construction of historical figures.

Richard Marshall. Gypsie Skripto. Mike Quinn ‘The MGT’. All historical figures. All bullshit.

Here’s the rule for working out if it’s a Loveshade sockpuppet. Can you draw lines between one verified human and another? If not, it’s a puppet. And the same is true of these ‘historical figures.’ There’s no evidence for Gypsie’s existence, outside of being a construction of Greg Hill in the 4th Edition afterword of the Principia Discordia. There’s no evidence of Mike Quinn/The MGT existing outside of the character created by Robert Anton Wilson. And the proof of Richard Marshall is that an obituary exists for a James Richard Marshall… but the links to Discordians? Nada.

One strategy Loveshade used to create these characters is through the purchase of the website kerrythornley.com, run under the pseudonym ‘Johnny Shellburn’ (the protagonist from Kerry Thornley’s Idle Warriors). Apart from all of the other painfully obvious clues I managed to avoid seeing at the time, I realised this connection when interviewing Shellburn for my book Chasing Eris, and my email bounced, delivering this message:

Your mail message to the following address(es) could not be delivered. This is a permanent error. Please verify the addresses and try again. If you are still having difficulty sending mail to these addresses, please contact
Customer Support at 480-624-2500.

<domains@loveshade.org>:
68.142.202.129 failed after I sent the message.
Remote host said: 554 Message not allowed – [PH01] Email not accepted for policy reasons. Please visit http://postmaster.yahoo.com/errors/postmaster-27.html [120]

The site exists to put ‘Shellburn’ in contact with seekers who he can baffle with bullshit. It also exists to muddy the waters of fact and fiction. Sondra London’s entirely credible interview with Kerry Thornley sits beside Richard Marshall’s fake interview with ‘Pope Hilde’. Possibly credible letters from Thornley sit alongside Thornley’s ‘Order of the Pineapple award.’

A Sea of Sock-Puppets

A few years ago, in a moment of astonishingly bad judgement, I agreed to do an interview with ‘Alden Loveshade’ for Yahoo News. (At the time, I regarded Reverend Loveshade as simply a troll, and Alden Loveshade as a separate person.) That news story never happened, and Alden instead, under the name ‘Johnny Shellburn,’ used my interview in his history-rewriting edition of Intermittens. In particular, he contrasted my entirely true allegations that ‘Gypsie Skripto’ and ‘Richard Marshall’ are bullshit, against his own evidence that they existed. It’s not enough for Loveshade to be able to make his own sandcastles in the sandpit – anyone who points out that the castles are made from sand must be punished.

Here’s another one: Reverend Loveshade developed a strong disagreement with a latter day Discordian who I refer to in my book Chasing Eris by the name ‘Smith’. Loveshade chased Smith around with a series of sock-puppets, and when Smith insulted Miley Spears, Loveshade looked up Smith’s address and mailed him cease and desist letter to demand a retraction for Smith’s supposedly defamatory statements. Then, in another scheme using sock-puppets, Loveshade tried to further entangle Smith into his web by posting in multiple places a lengthy conspiracy theory that he and Smith were the same person.

While googling Chasing Eris one day (vanity, darling), I discovered a website I hadn’t created called chasingeris.com. It had a decidedly Loveshadian look to it. Panicking, I contacted the webmaster to request they state clearly that they had no official connection to me, and to my great surprise they offered to transfer me the site. Phew! The owner then made a massive song and dance about how their name was a secret.

Now we’ll ask you a big favor. For me to do the transfer and for you to pay $30 into my paypal account, I’ll have to give you my real name. PLEASE don’t give this out. When you see my name, you may understand why. Or not.

Who am I.

Their first name was one that Loveshade commonly claims is his real name. Their surname was Smith’s real-life surname. I believe Loveshade was leaving breadcrumbs towards the theory that he and Smith were somehow connected. In fact, many of his schemes seem based on leaving little clues for internet detectives, surnames, anagrams, numbers, etc. It must be hard to be a big-brain genius that nobody appreciates.

Remember the trick to telling a human from a sock-puppet? A line between one flesh and blood human to another? I’ve only seen this twice – One between Alden and Daniel/Danacasso. The other is Alden and Doctor Sinister Craven.

Remember that Halloween party where many of Loveshade’s pictures come from? There’s a man with an evil grin and a meat-cleaver. He is the only person on that page that I’ve seen reappear over and over. He uses his real name, not Craven, however I won’t repeat it here. You’ve seen it though if you’ve viewed Loveshades’ blog – one clueless real human making comments in a sea of sock-puppets.

I bring up Craven because of what I’ve seen on his Facebook page. He writes a lot of poetry for Melissa Spears who is perhaps catfishing him, and has had disagreements online with members of the Loveshade clan. Craven posts online to say that his psychologist is telling him there is no such person as Melissa Spears, and Loveshade alts rush to contradict him. Alden warns Craven that MU Spears, who is defending Melissa’s honour, is a trained killer from the military. Bob Black scoffs at Craven, saying MU Spears could break his arm with his little finger. Of course, the Blacks, the Spears, the Loveshades; they’re all Alden.

Craven is not well, and Loveshade is using his army of sock-puppets to harass, threaten, gas-light and perhaps cat-fish him all at the same time.

It Gets Darker

By far the most creeped out I felt in the great Loveshade atrocity exhibition was in perusing the diary of Lorien Loveshade aka Princess Unicornia (but really, again, who cares – they’re all one person). Lorien’s diary, incidentally, is where scepticism about Loveshade’s sock-puppet army goes to die. Forget the ice-bucket challenge, forget the bird-box challenge, it’s time for the Loveshade challenge.

1. Spend 5 – 10 minutes perusing Lorien Loveshade’s page.
2. Look somebody in the eyes.
3. Repeat these words; “It’s totally plausible that this is the website of a 30 year old woman with a career in education.”

You just can’t do it.

The ‘Biography of Alden Loveshade’ covers this page quite well:

Lorien Loveshade is a webpage which began in 2005, presenting itself as that of an 18-year-old girl’s online diary, sharing intimate details of her life from pre pubescences forward, while simultaneously being heavily steeped in discussions of a sexual nature–Essentially erotic fiction geared towards pedophiles.

But this only gives a rough outline of the whole thing, and while I don’t want to be grotesque for the sake of it, I do want to give a sense of what’s there.

The diary entries are divided into three sections – preteen, teen and adult.

These diary entries include two preteen stories that are deeply uncomfortable to read. One is of a ten year old Lorien having her first tongue kiss while having her bottom fondled. Another is of a young Lorien having a fun day on the internet playing on chat with a stranger encouraging her and her friend to strip and touch each other (fortunately, that is not what happens).

There’s a narrative at play here. Compare to the story behind Miley Spears, or some of Lorien’s more vivacious friends. Lorien has been fondled, tongue kissed, exposed to internet perverts, visited the set of a porn shoot, and as a result? Has remained pure and virginal well past the legal age of consent. Miley Spears however was protected by her parents from sex, and as a result, had sex very early. Not only does exposure to sex apparently not harm a child, it actually is really good for them!

We don’t need to guess at this worldview – ‘Lorien’ spells it out for us in an article tastefully titled ‘Teen Sex.’

“One of my best friends was raised extremely strictly. Her father wouldn’t let her have email because he thought the Internet was a bad influence. She couldn’t even use it at school. He spied on her, searched her bedroom, called to check on her wherever she went, and wouldn’t let her go to parties unless it was all girls or there were a lot of adults there.

One day when she was 14, school was cancelled because of a teacher’s conference. She didn’t tell her parents school was closed that day. She left just like she always did. But she met her secret boyfriend near her school, then he took her somewhere and they had sex. All her father’s spying and trying to protect her meant nothing.”

We could get more examples from Alden’s various ‘community members’, but why bother? It’s there in black and white, for all to see, again, and again, and again.

It’s.

Fucking.

WEIRD.

It’s weird because, in case you forgot, NONE OF THESE PEOPLE EXIST. They are the creations of a 62 year old man who is writing the great American weirdo novel for people who aren’t allowed within 500 metres of schools or public parks.

But I’m sorry to say, dear reader, it gets darker. In 2013 Lorien’s diary went private. Alas, that doesn’t mean that ‘she’ took it offline like a normal person. If you access her diary in the conventional way, you’ll see mostly normal text titles, with a few hyperlinks that take you to stories, and a few hyperlinks that ask you to log in. Diary entry My and Beckys 14th b-day slumber party! Mar 15 2002 asks you to log in. So does the opinion piece I’M A VIRGIN AT A PORN SHOOT.

But then, that’s what you’ll see at http://lorien.loveshade.org/diary_public/selections.html, the page you end up at if you access the diary in the conventional way.

At http://lorien.loveshade.org/diary_public/special.html, the story is different. Every single diary entry is a hyperlink, and most invite the reader to log in. I’ve spent hours upon hours on Loveshade’s pages this week, and honestly don’t even remember how I found that this separate page existed, and was just fortunate to find it in again in my Internet history. My guess is that there’s some secret path in one of the many pages of utter crap. [My friends > Becky > Becky’s Mom’s Dog > Diary] or something. But the links on Lorien’s main page do not direct you to this page. It is hidden.

Who gets to log in? What do you think is on the other side of that login page? How do you get the login? Probably by sending a message to Lorien via the email ‘she’ puts on the front of her website. As stated on ‘her’ opinions page: “IF YOU WANT TO PRIVATE FILES, SEE SOME OF MY SEND ME A REQUEST EMAIL! MY ADDY IS ON MY HOMEPAGE”.

And then?

When a man who sees a diary filled with a young girl’s sexually charged experiences emails another man who fantasizes about young girls what happens? What do they talk about? What do they send each other? What plans do they make?

When All Else Fails Go Look At Goats

Very soon I will offer you a link to a funny goat compilation to shake off some of the worst vibes of this utterly horrible mess. But let’s go over it again.

Reverend Loveshade was arrested in 2002 for Obscene Wholesale Promotion. (Source: ‘The Biography of Alden Loveshade’)
Runs a massive sock-puppet army which essentially have full control over the SubGenius and Discordian wikis.
Actively constructs historical figures out of whole cloth and develops elaborate schemes to try to have them accepted as historical fact.
Runs ‘Lorien Loveshade’s Diary’ which contains a hidden page where all entries are accessible to persons who have obtained log-in credentials.
That is all. Here are your goats:

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Imaginary Sources Creating Imaginary History

Post author By Gorightly
Post date February 7, 2019
2 Comments on Imaginary Sources Creating Imaginary History

In 2015, a somewhat amusing bio of yours truly was posted at Discordia Wikia that is almost 23 percent accurate and presumably written by someone identified as Miley Spears, who in reality is a sock puppet of a self-styled Discordian named Reverend Loveshade who—it appears—has not only created this Miley Spears persona, but also a number of other phony Discordian characters such as Pope Hilde, Gypsie Skripto, not to mention a certain Johnny Shellburn (the same name of the protagonist in Kerry Thornley’s Idle Warriors) who operates KerryThornley.com where you can find an imaginary interview conducted by the aforementioned Pope Hilde with a supposed early Discordian named Richard Marshall who also probably never existed—or at least never existed in the sense that the interview suggests.

Confused yet?

Richard Marshall—it so happens—also has a Discordia Wikia page which is also probably 23 percent accurate (at best!) although there actually was a real Richard Marshall who lived in San Francisco during the same period as Discordian Society co-founder Greg Hill, although none of the real Early Discordians I’ve talked to have ever heard of the guy.

According to Richard Marshall’s Discordia Wikia page (written by Miley Spears), Marshall contributed to Principia Discordia and The Illuminatus! Trilogy although I’ve never come across anything in the Discordian Archives to even remotely suggest that these claims have the slightest relation to reality or that Marshall ever knew Greg Hill or Robert Anton Wilson or Kerry Thornley—let alone Michael Arthur Quinn (aka The Midget) who is another imaginary character (based on an Illuminatus! character) apparently cooked up (once again) by Rev. Loveshade, who—it should be noted—also has a Discordia Wikia page submitted by (you guessed it!) Miley Spears, who—as previously noted—is actually the one and only Rev. Loveshade. In other words, the whole thing is a giant sock puppet circle jerk perpetrated by somebody with a lot of spare time on their hands.

In 1970s—according to Loveshade— his mother was purportedly friends with Robert Anton Wilson’s daughter and because of this Loveshade and his hippie mom became acquainted with Wilson, who he affectionately referred to as ‘Grandbob’ and along the way Loveshade “became obsessed with meeting the original Discordians” and that inspired him to (supposedly) track down Greg Hill in the 1990s at a San Francisco watering hole, an account of which appeared in Loveshade’s Ek-sen-trik-kuh Discordia: The Tales of Shamlicht.

Some might suggest that a shaggy dog story about meeting Greg Hill is perfectly acceptable from an Operation Mindfuck standpoint, as a form of pranking and modern myth making. On the one hand—being a card carrying Discordian—I can appreciate this type of culture jamming. On the other hand—with Historia Discordia and related projects — I’ve taken seriously the task of chronicling, as accurately as possible, the early days of the Discordian Society and its influence on the 1960s counterculture and onward. So when imaginary sources create imaginary history, it certainly leads us down a slippery slope.

In 2012, I was contacted by an enterprising Australian lad named Brenton Clutterbuck (which totally sounds like another made up name, but no he’s an actual dude) who informed me that he was working on a book project about modern day Discordianism entitled Chasing Eris.

While discussing with Clutterbuck different latter-day Discordians during a 2012 midnight Skype session, he informed me that as part of his Chasing Eris project he was planning a tour of the U.S. to interview prominent Discordians, including someone going by the name of Gypsie Skripto who had been introduced to him by Johnny Shellburn of KerryThornley.com, who—as previously noted—is another one of Loveshade’s alter egos.

Using the email address given to him by “Johnny Shellburn,” Brenton started a correspondence with Gypsie Skripto, who claimed that she had been friends with Greg Hill and part of the early Discordian scene in San Fran in the 1970s. In response, I told Brenton that I thought someone was yanking his chain, that the Gypsie Skripto in Greg Hill’s Principia Discordia afterword was an obvious literary construct, and that this person posing as Gypsie Skripto had basically co-opted Hill’s imaginary character as a way to troll the internet and create phony Discordian street cred.

Ultimately, Brenton’s planned meeting with Gypsie Skripto in Austin, Texas failed to materialize when she stood him up, using the pretext that she had to attend some last minute political activist hippie rally fundraiser (or some-such) and Brenton soon came to the realization that I was correct in my assumption that “Gypsie Skripto” was just one among a host of other spurious Discordian sock puppets courtesy of Rev. Loveshade.

With all this in mind, we’ll soon have a post up from Mr. Brenton Clutterbuck himself regarding his take on adventures with the Rev. Loveshade and his various sock puppets.

Stay tuned!

UPDATE: Here is Mr. Clutterbuck’s post on Rev. Loveshade.

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Addendum to “The Raymond Broshears Files Part 00001”

Post author By Gorightly
Post date November 25, 2018
1 Comment on Addendum to “The Raymond Broshears Files Part 00001”

Rev. Billy James Hargis with a portrait of Jesus (with a haircut!) and miniature knight-in-armor (Christian Crusader?), not to mention an American flag to emphasize the point that Hargis was an anti-commie patriot.

Tom Jackson over at RAWIllumination.net recently posted “More wild JFK probe information from Adam Gorightly” which further fleshed out my Historia Discordia offering “The Raymond Broshears Files Part 1,” and, in specific, Broshears association with
Rev. Billy James Hargis, who during the 60s and early-70s operated a ministry called the Christian Crusade.

Rev. Broshears—as I previously noted—studied under Hargis, and was a member of his ministry until getting the boot after being arrested for groping a male youth in 1965, which resulted in Broshears serving six months in the Belleville, Illinois state pokey.

Despite Broshears’ falling out with Hargis, apparently the two remained in touch, at least on a professional level, as documented in this letter dated June 24, 1970, wherein Hargis grants Broshears the use of a rather long-winded quote about the scourge of “ultra-liberalism.”

June 24, 1970 letter from Rev. Hargis to Rev. Borshers — Letter from Rev. Hargis to Rev. Broshears dated June 24, 1970,
concerningthe scourge of “ultra-liberalism.”
(The Raymond Broshears Papers.
Courtesy of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Historical Society)

Tom Jackson points out that Hargis himself suffered a similar scandalous fate (as Broshears) in 1974 when it was discovered that he’d seduced two of his former students, one male, and one female. (Shades of “ultra-liberalism”!) These revelations forced Hargis to step down from his ministry under a cloud of sinful shame, subsequently turning over the Christian Crusade reins to his right hand man, Dr. David Noebel.

In 1965, Christian Crusade Publishing came out with a curious little commie bashing tome (by the aforementioned Dr. Noebel) entitled Communism, Hypnotism and the Beatles: An analysis of the Communist use of music, the Communist master music plan.

1964-book-david_a_noebel-communism_hypnotism_and_the_beatles — David Noebel’s *Communism, Hypnotism and the Beatles*.

As Tom Jackson noted, Communism, Hypnotism and the Beatles was mentioned in Illuminatus!, one of the many crazy influences that wormed its way into Wilson and Shea’s magnum opus.

In the Discordian Archives—filed under “Operation Mindfuck” —you’ll find a letter sent to Dr. Noebel from Rev. Charles Arthur Floyd II (aka Robert Anton Wilson) hipping Noebel to the fact that long before The Beatles were corrupting the youth of America, Ludwig von Beethoven had been up to the same sort of perfidy, basically using his compositions as part of an Illuminati plot that later brought us such iniquities as communism, ultra-liberalism and birth control pills.

It should be noted that this communism-conspired-to-influence-rock-music genre is a bit of an obsession with your humble Discordian author. Another Noebel classic in my collection is The Beatles: A Study in Drugs, Sex and Revolution that includes a somewhat hilarious cover because it seemed like the artist was going out of his way to make it NOT look like the Fab Four. I mean, Paul looks a little like Paul, but George looks more like Charlie Manson, and Ringo, well—I don’t know who he looks like—certainly not Ringo. And aside from the granny glasses, you’d never know it was John. But one thing’s for certain: they all look like a bunch of drug-addled hippies, and that’s all that counts!

The Beatles: A Study in Drugs, Sex and Revolution by Dr. David Noebel — *The Beatles: A Study in Drugs, Sex and Revolution* by Dr. David Noebel.

My initial exposure to this communism-influencing-rock-music-mind-rot was in a rock music anthology I owned many years ago, of which I unfortunately no longer have a copy—nor can I even remember the title of the darned thing—but it featured some of this Beatles communist conspiracy stuff. As I recall, this anthology *might* have included an excerpt from Dr. Noebel’s opus Rhythm, Riots and Revolution, which presented the theory that rock music put American youth into voodoo trance states and turned them into rockabilly zombies, and that black roots music was an influence on rock n’ roll which further ushered in multiculturalism, free sex and interracial coupling. (And all the other bad hootchie-kootchie that I guess the Illuminati is keen on, and of which Aleister Crowley would most assuredly approve!) To this end—according to Dr. Noebel—rock musicians were unwitting dupes spreading the message of peace, love and drugs, which is exactly what the commies wanted so they could bring the United States and capitalism to its knees.

Also in this mystery anthology was an essay about how Jim Morrison was the manifestation of Dionysus, and (as I recall) another essay about how Theodor Adorno had clandestinely composed a lot of The Beatles music as part of some grand plan to indoctrinate the masses. The reason I bring this anthology up is because I’d love to track down a copy. So if any of our readers have a clue as to the title of said book, please contact me at info@adamgorightly.com, and if you have the correct answer, I’ll send you your very own Discordian patch. (Pictured below.) Better yet, if you have a copy of the book, feel free to gift it to me, and I’ll be your pal forever. (That “pal” offer also includes a patch!)

Tell me the book title and get your very own Discordian patch! (While supplies last.)

For some additional Dr. David Noebel goodness check out “Marxist Minstrels – The Beatles” by Henry Makow, and also this video of Doc Noebel babbling about Bob Dylan and Joan Baez:

book discordianism greg hill kerry thornley letters monkey business photo robert anton wilson ufos writings

Discordianism Meets Ufology Part 00004: Were Gray Barker and Jim Moseley Original Discordians?

Post author By Gorightly
Post date November 2, 2018
No Comments on Discordianism Meets Ufology Part 00004: Were Gray Barker and Jim Moseley Original Discordians?

Although their hoax letter writing hijinks occurred nearly a decade before the Early Discordians got busy with similar shenanigans, Gray Barker and Jim Moseley could certainly be considered pranksterish precursors to Greg Hill, Kerry Thornley, RAW, et al.

Gray Barker (Gray Barker Collection, Clarksburg-Harrison Public Library)

The most notable Barker-Moseley letter prank was pulled on famed UFO contactee George Adamski with what became known as the Straith Letter Hoax, a party that got started in December 1957 when Barker got his paws on a batch of absconded State Department stationery, and during a weekend of heavy boozing, he and Moseley concocted the Straith Letter out of whole cloth.

Jim Moseley, The Clown Prince of U-fool-ology. (Photo credit: Greg Bishop)

The letter in question—signed by the fictitious R.E. Straith, a member of the State Department’s “Cultural Exchange Committee”—informed Adamski that his 1952 encounter with Orthon the Venusian in Desert Center, California, had been confirmed by government officials, and Straith encouraged Adamski to drop by the Cultural Exchange Committee’s D.C. offices whenever he was in town.

Professor George Adamski holding the beloved scout ship that transported his Venusian pal Orthon to Earth.

Adamski all but wet his pants over this phony State Department endorsement, trotting out the Straith Letter at every opportunity to support his ET contact claims. This prompted an investigation by the real State Department and FBI, who ordered Adamski to stop pimping this cockamamie letter as it was an obvious hoax and there was no such department as the “Cultural Exchange Committee.” Of course this didn’t dissuade Adamski, who claimed that the government was trying to suppress the Straith Letter from the public. But he would not be deterred!

Letter to Adamski from Straith — The infamous 1957 Straith Letter (Gray Barker Collection, Clarksburg-Harrison Public Library)

At some point the feds grew to suspect that Barker was the brains behind the Straith Letter, and they questioned both he and Moseley on a number of occasions, although each denied involvement in the caper. Barker—worried that he was going to end up doing hard time in Leavenworth—destroyed the typewriter on which the Straith Letter was composed and buried its remains in wet cement at a construction site in his hometown of Clarksburg, West Virginia. The feds—unable to uncover any tangible evidence linking Barker to the letter—eventually dropped the case, probably viewing it as a rather harmless stunt. Following Barker’s death, Jim Moseley came clean about his involvement with the Straith Letter hoax in a 1985 issue of Saucer Smear.

Another memorable Barker/Moseley prank occurred in 1966 when the two concocted the “Lost Creek, West Virginia, UFO film” which basically consisted of attaching a miniature flying saucer to a fishing pole line and dangling it around. Moseley later used this fake film during college lecture gigs to astound and amaze his audiences, presenting it as authentic UFO footage.

Hail Eris! All Hail the Saucers!

This article was sort of ripped off from a forthcoming book by me and my pal Greg Bishop called ‘A’ is for Adamski: The Golden Age of the UFO Contactees, which should be available before too damn long. Here’s a video promo for the book…

Also check out Greg’s interviews with Jim Moseley here.

And for you to catch up, read previous episodes in the Discordianism Meets Ufology series.

art book brenton clutterbuck discordian timeline discordianism eris of the month greg hill illuminatus! interview kerry thornley lee harvey oswald letters monkey business photo principia discordia robert anton wilson robert newport robert shea ron bonds ufos warren commission writings

May Eris of the Month 2018: Chasing Eris by Groucho Gandhi

Post author By themgt
Post date May 25, 2018
No Comments on May Eris of the Month 2018: Chasing Eris by Groucho Gandhi

Got my super-duper THICK copy of the Chasing Eris book by Historia Discordia’s very own Brenton Clutterbuck!

Get yer copy of this wonderful book documenting one man’s world-wide travels to discover what’s up and what’s not with the Modern Discordian scene!

All Hail Eris! All Hail Discordia!

Send us your Eris of the Month Club submissions (more info here) by using the form at the bottom of The MGT. page.

book brenton clutterbuck discordian timeline discordianism interview monkey business official business principia discordia robert anton wilson video writings

New Discordian Book Released! Chasing Eris by Brenton Clutterbuck

Post author By themgt
Post date May 5, 2018
5 Comments on New Discordian Book Released! Chasing Eris by Brenton Clutterbuck

As we recently celebrated this past March, it has been FIVE years since Historia Discordia contributor Brenton Clutterbuck visited the Discordian Archives (both West and East Archive locations!) on his world-wide quest to document Modern Day Manifestations of Discordianism and meet the Discordian Popes around the world who keep Eris fnording.

Brenton Clutterbuck and the PUD — Brenton Clutterbuck visiting the Discordian Archives East for his *Chasing Eris* book project. Here he's holding the front-piece to the original Paste-Up Discordia known as the Sacred PUD.
Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.

And now his crazy idea has come to perfect Golden Apple fermentation on the auspicious Erisian date of May 5, 2018 (on the Kalendae Discordium date known as Setting Orange Discord 52nd, YOLD 3184), also coincidancing on Early Discordian Camden Benares‘ Discordian Holiday known as St. Gulik’s Day, with the publication of his years-long efforts now known as his newly released book Chasing Eris!

Go grab your very own copy via Lulu.com immediately.

I asked Clutterbuck for a few of his thoughts on the occasion of the release of Chasing Eris:

After years of horrifying experiments and strongly-worded letters from the Ethics Committee, my secret laboratory has finally produced the most significant marvel of International Chaos Science—my book Chasing Eris.

A note that I am totally wiped-out, weirded-out, and bedazzled by how willing people have been to get excited about this release—it’s very sweet and overwhelming to have my excitement and joy shared by so many of you weirdos, and I hope you know how simply humbled and delighted I am.

I have an e-book and some other tasty treats on the way, and if you’d like notification of when they arrive, you can sign up to my mailing list.

Keep the Lasagna Flying!

Congratulations, Clutterbuck! Eris abides on Chaos well done.

Check out a recent interview with Clutterbuck about writing Chasing Eris, some great deep-mind RAW stuff here:

art book brenton clutterbuck daisy eris campbell discordian timeline discordianism illuminatus! interview music play robert anton wilson robert shea writings

Chaos in the UK: From the KLF to Reclaim the Streets

Post author By Clutterbuck
Post date April 7, 2018
2 Comments on Chaos in the UK: From the KLF to Reclaim the Streets

Brenton Clutterbuck and the Illuminatus! play manuscript. — Brenton Clutterbuck and the *Illuminatus!* play manuscript.

Discordianism is the most influential parody religion you’ve never heard of. However, the half-century old “joke disguised as a religion” is experiencing something of a resurgence, with events such as Daisy Eris Campbell’s Cosmic Trigger play and the ‘Find the Others Festival’ organized by a team of chaotic pranksters including Ben Graham.

Now that chaos is returning to the UK (in style!), I talk to Ben Graham to look back on the long strange journey it’s taken to get here. From the pop sensation that burned a million pounds, to the reclaim the streets movement, Graham tracks chaos from comics to the Cosmic Trigger play.

Chaos culture is coming to you;
here’s where it’s coming from.

In 2015 trend forecaster K-Hole made a bold prediction; the next big thing would be Chaos Magic. To their credit, they seemed to have their finger firmly on the pulse of the zeitgeist—bit by bit, Chaos seemed to start waking up. A sudden resurgence of interest in Discordianism—a chaos worshipping ‘joke religion’—saw multiple book releases from names such as Adam Gorightly and John Higgs. John Higgs also began to do a tour to promote the legacy of famous Discordian author Robert Anton Wilson. Robert Anton Wilson’s family regained copyright to his works and began publishing under the name Hilaritas press. Meanwhile his book Cosmic Trigger (Amazon) was adapted into a play by Daisy Eris Campbell, and a Discordian festival was announced in ‘a south Yorkshire woodland’.

Suddenly, Chaos seemed to be creeping out from nowhere. But of course it hasn’t come from nowhere—in fact, while Anarchy may get all the attention, Chaos in the UK has a long and appropriately complicated history.

On a cold evening in London, I spoke to writer Ben Graham, an organizer of Festival 23 and author of A Gathering of Promises: The Battle for Texas’s Psychedelic Music From the 13th Floor Elevators to the Black Angels and Beyond (Amazon), who agreed to guide me through the strange trajectory of British Chaos.

I meet him at a pub up the top of Paddington Station. He has a kind of geeky manner to him, and that delightful British politeness that we see in Hugh Grant movies, shaggy sandy hair framing a friendly face well speckled with rough stubble.

From Magic Manual to Comic Book

Ben starts his tour of the chaotic in his childhood; his first forays into these concepts of chaos came as a child reading comic books. Specifically, a hugely popular series called 2000AD—the series that spawned the character Judge Dredd.

First issue of 2000AD — First issue of *2000AD*,
February 26, 1977.

“Basically 2000AD was a British kids comic starting 1977,” he says. “It’s still going today. It started as a fairly kind of violent high-end kids comic with science-fiction themes off the back of Star Wars… it was also a primer in Chaos Magic for a few years there because the guys who were writing it were slipping all this stuff in. Alan Moore, you had Grant Morrison very into it. You also had people who never really got out—like Pat Mills did a comic strip called Slaine which had a lot of Celtic mythology—very into magic ideas. I would have been reading it as a kind of 15/16 year old.”

Grant Morrison, would go on in the late-80s to publish a strip named Zenith, notable for its themes of Chaos Magic. Here, he took influence from Chaos Magician Peter Carroll, the founder of the Chaos Magic organization Illuminates of Thanateros. The inspiration was quite overt—too overt perhaps—at one point Carroll threatened legal action against Morrison.

“You had a kind of a mainstream kids comic where three out of five strips in it would be kind of Chaos Magic primers for kids,” Ben tells me. This early transferal of Chaos Magic ideas from Carrol’s somewhat obscure special interest publications, into mainstream youth popular culture was perhaps one of the first big steps that Chaos took into the mainstream of the British public’s imagination.

Chaos Magic has another notable influence; the ostensibly jocular religion of Discordianism. In his work Oven-Ready Chaos Phil Hine describes this influence:

An important influence on the development of Chaos magic was the writing of Robert Anton Wilson & co, particularly the Discordian Society who revered Eris, the Greek goddess of Chaos. The Discordians pointed out that humor, clowning about and general light-heartedness was conspicuously absent from magic, which had a tendency to become very ‘serious and self-important’. There was (and to a certain extent remains) a tendency for occultists to think of themselves as an initiated ‘elite’ as opposed to the rest of humanity.

Unlike the variety of magical systems which are all based in some mythical or historically-derived past (such as Atlantis, Lemuria, Albion, etc), Chaos magic borrowed freely from Science Fiction, Quantum Physics, and anything else its practitioners chose to. Rather than trying to recover and maintain a tradition that links back to the past (and former glories), Chaos magic is an approach that enables the individual to use anything that s/he thinks is suitable as a temporary belief or symbol system. What matters is the results you get, not the ‘authenticity’ of the system used. So Chaos magic then, is not a system—it utilizes systems and encourages adherents to devise their own, giving magic a truly Postmodernist flavor.

The Illuminatus! Trilogy. — The *Illuminatus!* Trilogy, 'candy apple red' edition from Dell Trade Paperback, January 1984. Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.

Robert Anton Wilson was himself one of the original Discordians, and is probably single-handedly the person most responsible for the spread of Discordian ideas through the series of books he wrote with his friend Robert Shea—The Illuminatus! Trilogy (Amazon). This strange trilogy featured Discordians fighting against the evil plans of the Illuminati, and proposed that nearly every conspiracy theory popular at the time of writing was simultaneously true.

Epic Productions: Illuminatus! on Stage and the KLF

The event that bought Wilson’s ideas across the pond from the USA was the adaption of his Illuminatus! Trilogy into a play in 1977. Such a feat seemed impossible to do; luckily the discovery of the trilogy came to Ken Campbell; a man who regarded nothing as worth doing unless it was impossible. He was also the father Daisy Eris Campbell, who recently produced the play of Wilson’s book Cosmic Trigger.

Campbell was a theatre legend. His production of Illuminatus! into a play was a testament to his drive and creativity—the final presentation was performed as five acts across five nights, followed by an epic 10 hour presentation of all acts together. The opening date—November 23, 1976—took advantage of the Discordian obsession with the number 23.

As part of Ben’s writing career, he had the opportunity to interview one of the participants in this epic scale caper—Bill Drummond, who had developed the visionary set design of the play, creating surreal sequences with sets out of proportion to the actors, and using innovative techniques to position audiences in surprising ways, such as presenting actors horizontally to allow for a birds eye view of a tarot reading.

“So when I interviewed him, it wasn’t long after Ken Campbell had died,” Ben tells me. “So I wanted to ask him about that. And he was very effusive about the influence Ken Campbell had had on him when he worked on the 1977 production of Illuminatus! at the Liverpool Theatre and how he introduced him to those book and those ideas. Also I didn’t realize that Ken Campbell had been a lifelong friend. He would go to his house, keep in touch, for dinner, stayed like a friend with his family, more or less up to the point where he died. He said he was like a friend, not just a mentor from way back. He’d lost somebody who was an important guiding light.”

“He was always working in the now, he wasn’t thinking in terms of making films, writing books; it was always like, the event, what’s actually happening in the room,” Graham’s 2010 Quietus interview quotes Drummond as saying. “That was one of the big things I learnt from Ken Campbell. And taking risks, and just making things happen. That continued to inspire me about what he does, what he did do, right up until he died. And so I always got a lot out of getting together with Ken Campbell, or going to see a Ken Campbell production.”

Drummond is actually more famous for his role in music than for his role in the Illuminatus! play. He, together with Jimmy Cauty, founded The KLF, a sample based pop outfit. Their original name was The JAMS, a name alluding explicitly to a group in Wilson and Shea’s Illuminatus! Trilogy.

By the time Ben had had his interview, the band had been long broken up. They ended their career in an extraordinary way—by announcing their retirement, shutting down their record catalogue and traveling out to a small island on Jura to burn the money they made—an entire million pounds. (For those interested, aforementioned author John Higgs has brought this strange tale back into the spotlight with his book, The KLF: Chaos, magic and the band who burned a million pounds (Amazon.)

When the band first burned the money, they followed up with a tour where they invited audiences to ‘tell them’ why they burned the money. Ben was in attendance at one of these nights in 1995, and detailed it for his fanzine News From Nowhere.

“They came to Bradford where I was staying and did a showing, a Q&A. I took part in the Q&A, so I had some interaction with the guys but it wasn’t an interview. I did write up the piece. I kind of tied it in with a lot of Discordian Illuminati type thing to sort of put my spin on why they’d done that. It did kind of get back to the KLF chaps, and I gathered that they thought that that was kind of the best piece on it at the time.”

Ben later sends me a copy of it. It is a good piece. The mood of the gathering is palpable, an audience frustrated at being asked questions rather than being given answers, in parts angry, congratulatory and indifferent.

“It was at the One in Twelve Club, Bradford, which was the kind of Anarchist underground club there, so the quotes from the people watching it were that these were kind of rich pop-stars that were burning money that could have gone to a good cause—that it was kind of an indulgent, decadent act. The guys, when they were talking, they weren’t really trying to defend themselves. Their approach was that they were trying to say, ‘we’re trying to find out why we did it, you tell us why we did it, we want to hear your stories,’ so they were being a bit of a kind of blank canvas.”

At one point Graham describes some of the outbursts of the crowd, describing the reaction of a group of punks unhappy that no explanation would be forthcoming.

“How do you get rid of piles,” they demand, amidst assorted jeers and heckles.

“Grab ‘em in your hand, right, and shove ‘em back up yer arse and hold ‘em there,” demonstrates Bill.

“It was a hostile night for them I think at the One in Twelve. My take on it; I suppose I kind of thought that one thing—it was their money. People have wasted that amount of money, music people have made that amount of money and wasted it on far more frivolous things, not many people give it to a charitable cause—they spend it on cars, houses, drugs, whatever with that money. They chose to make an art project by burning it. And I think it was quite a good reaction, they did make people think about the notion of money, money is the relationship between the paper and whatever it is you value in the world.”

His article also quotes the following passage from The Illuminatus! Trilogy:

“And you know what they do with Federal Reserve notes. Every time they get one, they burn it. Instant demurrage, they call it.”

“I doubt that it’s literal that they kind of saw this reference in the book and either it gave them the idea or said that it justifies that. You know, it’s not like the Bible where you’re looking for quotes to justify or base your actions on. But I think the action of doing that was sort of in line with the ideas that came from Discordia and the Illuminatus!…”

“And the burning of the money—it is a random act in the sense that they—they sort of knew why they were doing it I think, but you don’t really know what the consequences are going to be. You know you’re taking this money and you’re burning it and it’s a big—it’s sort of a magical ritual. In that way I think it’s very much a Discordian thing to do. And they deleted their back catalogue. Seemed sort of very much, let’s destroy the idea of the KLF but also you’re sort of creating more of a myth you know, beyond the sort of money making, the actuality of the music business, actuality of the KLF—you’re actually furthering its mythical life.”

At one point in the article Graham quotes one of the pair saying they weren’t trying to make a big statement like “chopping off our hands or something.” The joke would have been lost on the audience—Bill publicly admitted seriously considering that mad idea in his book 45, released in 2000.

One interesting point made towards the end of the article is Graham quoting Bill talking about a gender divide; men were more likely than women to support the burning.

Temporary Autonomous Zones and Radical Rave Culture

“After the KLF, some of the Illuminati stuff did spread into more general rave culture for a few years when it was in its peak,” Graham tells me. He pronounces it Illumin-ar-tai. “Kind of in the early-90s people kind of talked on—sort of around ’87, ’88 but then it went more widespread. It was also in that period when you had in the UK, the kind of club, the rave sort of techno clubs crossed over with the older traveling free festival scene that sort of came with the guy in the 60s and 70s, Hawkwind, that had been traveling hippy dreadlocked guys, because of the ravers that had been having free festivals out in fields, they ended up teaming up with guys who’d been having hippy rock festivals in fields forever. Those guys ended up getting into a lot of techno music, but they would have been guys who were reading the Illuminatus! books in the early 70s. It had the whole kind of esoteric hippy knowledge and stuff behind it, and guys who’d been living outside society for like a decade or so, going around in buses and all sorts of stuff.”

“I don’t know how much you know about this stuff; the whole peace bus in the UK, the battle of the Beanfield at Stonehenge where police smashed up, destroyed buses and a whole community, then you had the Castlemorton Festival which led to the Criminal Justice Bill which is a law in the UK outlawing repetitive beats in public places which basically killed the outdoor bass scene. But when you had that whole scene going in the 90s, you had the club rave kids meeting the hippy travelers, one side being electronic techno music and ecstasy, and the other bringing this kind of like hippy philosophy and ethos and knowledge and it all kind of crossing over. And certainly I think a lot of the kind of Illuminati ideas. Suddenly it became cliché to be referencing the number 23 and something, for one thing.”

I mention to Ben the prevalence of the concept of the Temporary Autonomous Zone, in the rave scene. This idea came from Hakim Bey, a philosopher, who described this concept of a space in which the usual laws did not apply in his 1991 book of the same name.

“Yeah,” says Ben. “And in practical terms that sort of crossed over into the reclaim the streets movement doesn’t it. What they were doing certainly kind of early on, there was a lot of theory behind it and the notion of Temporary Autonomous Zone was very much to do with what they were doing, going into the business area of London and having a big party and stopping the traffic. It wasn’t really a protest. Maybe a protest against business or car culture or whatever but at the same time it was the notion of the Temporary Autonomous Zone. It’s like the Situationist idea of beneath the pavements, the beach and in the heart of the city we can have a party, we can bring flowers, we can have a fete in the middle of the road, and that came out of that sort of politicized and radicalized rave culture. You know, they became the reclaim the streets movement and the anti-road protesters, it’s really the same people who’ve moved on from music just into protesting. They’re outdoors and they’re reclaiming their environment, on a kind of Utopian Situationist principle.”

He describes the recent Occupy as a natural outgrowth of reclaim the streets movement.

“It’s like William Burroughs says,” he tells me. “Artists legislate the world, they’re more powerful than politicians because artists create ideas and politicians just put things into action; good artists come up with something new and put it into the world and that kind of changes things.”

Ben Graham has joined forces with a number of other co-conspirators to be part of a contemporary Discordian celebration—Festival 23—that in part formed itself through the energies of the motley crew that came together for the ‘Conferestival’ that marked Daisy Eris Campbell’s opening of Cosmic Trigger. Festival 23 hosted a giant artwork by Jimmy Cauty—an industrial container filled with an epic post-riot miniature landscape. Ben Graham provided the writing on a leaflet that accompanied the artwork:

Both festivals and riots aspire towards freedom; both ultimately are only temporary negations of a stultifying status quo, but may lead to more long-term solutions catalysed by their unfettered expression of energy, anger, love and/or ecstasy. There is freedom in the heart of a riot; a wild abandon and a sense that suddenly anything is possible. Do what thou wilt is quite literally the whole of the law, for the law as defined by policemen, judges and politicians is shown to have no empirical natural authority. It is an assumed condition imposed by those temporarily in power, and can be overthrown both within and without by the will of the people, if only for a limited time and space. But if it can be done once, even for a few seconds, can such glorious lawlessness not be achieved again?

Festival 23 flyer.
Courtesy of Ben Graham.

* * *

So did chaos jump from magic manual to comic book, find itself in fiction, transferred to stage before implanting itself in the minds of future pop superstars, whose rave hits implanted it into the culture of rave, and ultimately protest and party culture?

Well, of course not—such a story is far too clean for the messy madness that is chaos. But if there’s a lesson here, it’s that every strange step of history sets off another twenty-three steps in all sorts of directions. With so many chaotic steps bouncing off each other, how long do you think it will be before you too have the pleasure of being plunged into chaos?

My forthcoming book Chasing Eris will be released next month. The book documents my worldwide adventure to experience modern Discordian culture, meet its personalities, and the discovery of many elusive Erisian mysteries.
—Brenton Clutterbuck

art book discordianism illuminatus! interview kerry thornley letters monkey business robert anton wilson video writings

Emails from the Acidman

Cover of The Adventures of Acidman by Ian S. Garlington — Cover of
*The Adventures of Acidman*
by Ian S. Garlington.

I recently received an email from a fellow named Ian Garlington, who goes by the handle of the Acidman. Ian wrote:

…I did my doctoral research at Osaka University’s American Literature department on the influence of psychedelics on American sf and comics and started reading a lot about Bob Wilson and then Thornley and then you. I write about Alan Moore and Grant Morrison and Thomas Disch as well and I was strongly influenced by the temperament of all of this.

I like your version of Kerry Thornley much more than his own version. You got him from all the best angles. I keep a picture of him next to my desk and used to tell my students that I was his reincarnation.

Thank you very much for the Historia Discordia… I read every page in extreme detail and took notes. I explained about it in my American history class at Kansai Gaidai University…

I found a copy Prankster and Conspiracy on a book shelf in a witch store in Osaka but when I asked they told me that none of the books were for sale. I found a note inside that said in English “Never show or tell anyone about this book.” I don’t know why anyone would say that.

Your message in that book about how greyface got Thornley in the end, may be the warning that may save my life not too far off.

No way, fate is like iron rails, right? We can only affirm that we don’t have any clue what is about to happen next but it will happen in spite of and maybe as a result of our best efforts to escape it.

And then I had a mystical vision in which Robert Williams (comix artist) appeared to me at the same time that I felt experiential knowledge of the fourth dimension. There was a lot downloaded and I tried to record what was happening with a camera and a mic but the main message of it was, “your mission is to study Spinoza. I lost interest in all else and eventually quit lecturing and moved back to devote myself to founding Portland Weed Church, Portland Association of Deleuze Studies, Oxford Cognitives, and the Adventures of Acidman (as a household brand).

I published my dissertation as a book while in Japan but have not distributed it until now. I would like to send a copy to you if you are interested in seeing any of it…

Ian did indeed send me his book, the cover of which includes his psychedelic acrylic art. The full title is The Adventures of Acidman: Psychedelics and the Evolution of Consciousness in Science Fiction and Superhero Comics from the 1960s Onward (Amazon), including chapters like “An Anatomy of Cosmic Conspiracy: The Function of Fragmentation in the Illuminatus! Trilogy” and “Comics’ Cosmic Poetry: Pyshcedelics, Chaos and the Poetics of Comics in Grant Morrison’s The Invisibles.”

When I emailed Ian back asking if I could share his emails, he replied:

Yes, of course you can share that story. I was trying to find the VICE TV documentary about erotic witches in Tokyo where there are some interviews with the guy who is most likely the owner of the books on that shelf.

I met this man in person only once in a shower room in a psychiatric clinic where both patients and the doctor’s club friends were partying all night, mingling in an uninhibited environment (I believe I was invited as a “club friend” because the patients all said that they were visiting the clinic on a weekly basis, but you never know).

The warlock was completely naked. He asked me a few questions and then told me he thought it was my mission to balance the cosmic scales by forming a new branch of Discordianism capable of defeating the newest incarnations of Greyface (in Japanese). That is what I am doing now. I paraphrase this sometimes these days as “getting the heroic dose of psychedelics to the center of the singularity before Google Flesh Cyborg self lobotomizes.” Kind of a John Lilly level of cosmic dualistic struggle.

Sincerely,

Ian

Here’s a YouTube of the Acidman creating some of his acrylic psychedelic art: