In the Roman Empire’s eternal era of superior gleaming, the Dog Days were popularly believed to be an evil time when “the Sea boiled, the Wine turned sour, Dogs grew mad, and all other creatures became languid; causing to man, among other diseases, burning fevers, hysterics, and phrensies. And then there was the perpetual godsawful smell of boiling cabbage.”
— Clavis Calendaria; or a Compendious Analysis of the Calendar: illustrated with ecclesiastical, historical, and classical anecdotes, 2 vols., 1812 by John Brady
Caught in the Crossfire: Kerry Thornley, Lee Oswald and the Garrison Investigation Pre-Order The Chaos Now! This Sirian Summer of Discontent has been revealed to be distinctly Discordian. Chaos Reigns!
Hail Eris!
Here’s the latest on what Eris has procured for Her Enjoyment:
Jesse Walker’s io9 review of Historia Discordia, “The Greatest Fake Religion of All Time.”
RAWIllumination.net review: “Adam Gorightly’s Historia Discordia is a very useful book for anyone who wants to understand Illuminatus! and/or Robert Anton Wilson’s literary career.”
ICYMI: John Higgs review: “Adam Gorightly’s new book is hardcore… But it was clear from his earlier biography of Kerry Thornley that if anyone was going to pull this off, it would be Adam Gorightly.”
Red Dirt Report Review of Historia Discordia: “I had a blast digging into all things Discordian and Adam Gorightly was just the guy to don the conductor’s cap on this smoke-belching loco-motive!”
Reason Magazine review of Historia Discordia, “The Prankster Politics of the Discordians.”
Chasing Eris by Brenton ClutterbuckThe following is another draft excerpt from my forthcoming book Chasing Eris. The book documents my worldwide adventure to experience modern Discordian culture, meet its personalities, and discover elusive Erisian mysteries.
We’ve reached part two of the Chasing Eris adventure. I’ve taken my accommodation in Bristol, a city full of artistic energy, close to my intended interviewees. On one of my first days in the city, I jump on a train to London.
There are two great stories of Discordia waiting to be told here. One is of The KLF, the superstar band that took the world by storm, before quitting the music business and burning a million pounds of cash. The starting point of that first story grows out of the fertile, imaginative ground of our second story—the Illuminatus! Play of November 23, 1976.
Robert Anton Wilson first discovered Discordianism through his mail correspondence with Kerry Thornley in 1967. In a 1992 interview with Reverend Wyrdsli, Thornley discussed Wilson’s interest in Discordia:
He said, very early in our relationship that one of the things we needed were God models that were appropriate to anarchism. And he had written some stuff about Taoism and the spirit of the Valley Lady: the eternal female, and about Shang Dynasty matrism and so on and so forth. So I suggested to him Eris Discordia and told him about the Discordian Society, and he was just very enthused about it, plunged into it, got very active in it, and was responsible for a lot of our creeds and dogmas and so on and so forth.
Robert Anton Wilson would become involved in Operation Mindfuck that next year, participating in various Discordian shenanigans, including the development of a large mythos built-up around the Bavarian Illuminati. This mythos would appear to have gone on to influence the modern pop-cultural idea of the Illuminati, from books such as Umberto Eco’s conspiracy classic Foucault’s Pendulum (Amazon) to the pop-culture runaway successes of Dan Brown’s novels The Da Vinci Code (Amazon) and Angels and Demons (Amazon), and the film adaptation of Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (Amazon Instant Video), though Wilson’s influence is seldom credited.
Robert Shea, the editor of anarchist zine No Governor was Wilson’s partner in crime. The pair were working together editing the Playboy Forum letters section. A number of the letters they received were from paranoids (or most likely letters Shea & Wilson planted), alleging that they were the target of various conspiracies. Using the concept that perhaps every single one of the alleged conspiracies was true, they began work on the Illuminatus! Trilogy (Amazon).
One of the plot devices of Illuminatus! was that it featured a long-running feud between the Discordians and the Illuminati. This was a theme that had previously been carried through a number of Discordian writings in the zine scene, and was invoked in the Illuminatus! Trilogy at Shea’s suggestion.
The first volume of Illuminatus! was released in 1975, and did a great deal to popularize Discordianism. Readers mistakenly assumed the mysterious Principia Discordia mentioned in Illuminatus! was one of the many fabrications of Shea and Wilson, and were later often stunned to learn the Principia Discordia was, in fact, real.
* * *
Brenton Clutterbuck and Ken Campbell's daughter, Daisy Eris Campbell. Check out her production of RAW's Cosmic Trigger. Courtesy of Brenton Cluttberuck.In 1976 Ken Campbell went into Compendium, a bookshop in Camden town. He was looking for a work to perform at the Liverpool Theatre of Language, Music, Dream and Pun, the site founded by poet Peter O’Halligan, who based the location of the theatre on a dream recounted by Carl Jung. In this store he spotted a copy of Illuminatus!, a yellow submarine on the cover. This was a possible synchronicity to the Liverpool music scene that spawned The Beatles who once sang about such a submarine. He opened it to a random page to see what he’d find, and the line he read was all about Jung. Synchronicities were plentiful.
As a result, Illuminatus! became the first project to be performed in Liverpool Theatre of Language, Music, Dream and Pun.
Anyone who has seen a copy of Illuminatus! has had the sheer size of the work impressed upon them. Completing it is no mean feat. Adapting it down to the size of a typical play would be an even more daunting feat. However Campbell took it a step further; instead of cutting out huge chunks of the text he kept the work at largely its original size, and developed eight-and-a-half hours of performance. In Liverpool he presented five plays over five nights, with the fifth being a presentation of all five; one after the other in a mammoth all day performance.
The creative team behind the play included Chris Langham—who helped produce the play alongside Campbell—as lead role George Dorn, Jim Broadbent in a number of minor roles including biological weapon designer Dr. Charles Moncenigo and the sadistic Sheriff Jim Cartwright, Bill Nighy as magazine editor Joe Malik, David Rappaport as Markoff Chainey, and the work of Bill Drummond, later of The KLF fame, as a set designer.
I walked up to the National Theatre. After the Liverpool shows the play moved on to performances in Amsterdam, before finally coming to London. I had come here just to stand in front of the theatre and do a small video talking about the play, but thought I’d try my luck wandering on in and asking at the theatre shop if they knew anything about the Trilogy. They referred me to the National Theatre Archive which, in my ignorance, I had not known about.
Brenton Clutterbuck and the Illuminatus! play manuscript. Courtesy of Brenton Clutterbuck. The next day I went to the archive and was given a large case full of documentation from the play. The most voluminous (and for reasons of copyright, the most off-limits, with no photocopying permitted) was the play itself, an enormous pile of A4 paper resembling more a Joycean manuscript than any play I’d ever seen. Sketches of Eye-in-the-Pyramid and designs of sets or advertising were scrawled across the backs of several of the pages.
I pulled out several newspaper articles. Most were reviews, but a small number stood out in particular as bizarre oddities that contributed an additional layer of weirdness to the already larger than life Illuminatus! saga.
One article was titled “Horror Mission of an Actor Obsessed with the Occult” from the Daily Mail, dated September 7, 1982 about Illuminatus! cast member Chris Taynton whose roles included the pimp Carmel and Robert Putney Drake, the head of the American Crime Syndicate. The article told of how Taynton, believing he had been overcome by alien forces, attacked Adrena Smith, a 57-year-old lady, by stabbing her multiple times. He blinded her in one eye, and killed her pets, including cutting the ears off her dog. Taynton’s involvement in the Illuminatus! play was raised in court by his defense lawyer, Patricia May, specifically in regard to the play’s supernatural and occult themes.
“Having taken an extremely exciting part in a somewhat bizarre play he became more and more involved in the principles that were propounded in that play,” said May.
It seems a number of the cast went on to have troubled futures. David Rappaport, a dwarf actor, who also played a main role in Terry Gilliam’s movie Time Bandits (Amazon Instant Video), struggled with depression in his later life and ended up shooting himself fatally in the chest in 1990, in Laurel Canyon Park, California.
Chris Langham too was jailed for 10 months in 2007 for possessing Level Five child pornography, which he claimed was both part of researching a character and helping himself deal with his own abuse as an eight year old child.
Before we enter into The Curse of Tutankhamen territory, it’s worth noting not all actors in Illuminatus! had such tragic futures waiting for them. Jim Broadbent and Bill Nighy continue to enjoy prosperous acting careers, and Ken Campbell left a legacy of genius (as well as a record for longest play ever—not in fact for Illuminatus!—but for his 22-hour long The Warp). He was remembered by Liverpool Everyman Theatre and Playhouse Artistic Director Gemma Bodinetz as “The door through which many hundreds of kindred souls entered a madder, braver, brighter, funnier and more complex universe.”
Another, less ghoulish article I read was titled “Raising School Fees for Gorilla,” and was published in The Guardian on April 19, 1977.
Brenton Clutterbuck on the Illuminatus! play. Clutterbuck: 'I mix-up facts and say LSD where I should say MDMA. I mix two stories from Gorightly and Higgs together.' Hail Eris!
In Illuminatus!, our intrepid heroes encounter a group of gorillas. Hagbard Celine, played by Neil Cunningham, has a conversation with them in Swahili (the gorillas all speak English, but are much more comfortable with Swahili). When Malik (Bill Nighy) asks if Celine taught the gorillas to speak, he responds that the gorillas have always been able to speak, but have largely kept their abilities secret:
“…the gorillas themselves are too shrewd to talk to anybody but another anarchist. They’re all anarchists themselves, you know, and they have a very healthy wariness about people in general and government people in particular. As one of them told me once, ‘If it got out that we can talk, the conservatives would exterminate most of us and make the rest pay rent to live on our own land; and the liberals would try to train us to be engine-lathe operators. Who the fuck wants to operate an engine lathe?’ They prefer their own pastoral and Eristic ways, and I, for one, would never interfere with them.”
Meanwhile in the “real” world at Stanford University, apparently unaware of the gorillas’ long term bluff, Miss Penny Patterson was busy trying to teach English to Koko the Gorilla.
Koko, according to the book Drawing the Line: Science and the Case for Animal Rights (Amazon), knew 2000 spoken English words and 1000 words in American Sign Language as of 2003. However, in 1977, the project was in very real danger of running out of money, the result to be that Koko would find herself returned to the San Francisco Zoo.
Perhaps because of the plot connection, or perhaps for other more incomprehensible and possibly synchronistic reasons, the Science Fiction Theatre of Liverpool (the organization run by Campbell and Langham specifically to produce the play) decided to support the project, even going as far as to consider adding an optional 50p levy to the audience in addition to setting up a stall to raise money.
“It was exactly the sort of research we think should be continued,” said Nighy.
“You never know what might be found out,” Campbell was quoted as saying.
* * *
The complete version of this article will appear in my forthcoming book Chasing Eris.
Early Discordian Roger Lovin, photo from his classic book The Complete Motorcycle Nomad. Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.During Saul Goodman’s visit to the Playboy Club in Illuminatus! (Page 173, Week 18)—where he was apparently drugged, abducted and subjected to all sorts of MK-ULTRA-style perversions straight out of A Clockwork Orange—Saul (or Barney Muldoon, or whoever he actually is now) finds himself in a hospital room (Page 189, Week 19) attended to by a doctor who informs him that he’s really Barney and that ‘Saul Goodman’ was actually a dual identity that Barney created to compensate for never being promoted to detective.
The doctor further informs Saul/Barney about certain details of his life, one of which is that his children are named Roger, Kerry and Greg, which is a certain nod to not only the founders of Discordianism—Greg Hill and Kerry Thornley—but also to Roger Lovin, who could be considered the third member of the Holy Trinity of Discordianism that haunted the New Orleans French Quarter during the early 1960s. The Discordian business card below illustrates that Lovin (aka Fang the Unwashed) had a major role in spreading the Discordian Gospel during this period and oversaw the French Quarter Cabal after Thornley and Hill returned to Cali in late 1965.
Discordian Card of Thornley, Lovin, and Hill, 1965. Not a law firm. Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.
In many ways, Illuminatus! authors Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea seemed to be describing what happened to Kerry Thornley in the following passage:
…A few years ago, you started a game with your wife; she thought it was harmless at first and learned to her sorrow that it wasn’t. The game was, that you pretended to be a detective and, late at night, you would tell her about the important cases you were working on. Gradually, you built up to the most important case of all—the solution to all the assassinations in America during the past decade. They were all the work of a group called the Illuminati, who were surviving top level Nazis that had never been captured… —Illuminatus!, Page 189
This description of Saul/Barney’s apparent mental deterioration certainly relates to Kerry Thornley. During the late-60s, Kerry—in his writings—often parodied what he considered “paranoid” conspiracy theories, including the various Illuminati conspiracies at which he and RAW had such a high time poking fun. But after going through the Garrison meat grinder, Kerry came out on the other end with his head spun, at first thinking Garrison was totally off his rocker for believing that he (Kerry) was part of an insidious CIA funded homosexual thrill-kill plot (or something of that sort.)
However—as time passed—and Kerry began to reflect on his past (while enhancing those reflections with an occasional dose of LSD!), he started toying around with different theories to explain what had gone down with the JFK assassination, and how this related to his association with Oswald and the other disturbing string of synchronicities that occurred during his time in New Orleans—until eventually certain far-flung theories about Nazis and the Illuminati began to make more and more sense to him. And while he didn’t turn into Barney Muldoon per se, Kerry did develop a more paranoically inclined personality, as opposed to younger years when he was prone to be dismissive of “paranoids.”
Kerry’s growing paranoia (starting in the early-70s) was an outgrowth of his belief that he’d discovered the true assassins of JFK—or at least certain individuals that were involved in a plot to kill JFK, namely Gary Kirstein (aka Brother-in-Law) and Roderick “Slim” Brooks, a couple of shadowy characters Kerry met during the New Orleans period. According to a letter from Greg Hill to RAW dated September 1975, Slim Brooks was also an early member of the Discordian Society and was one of The Chosen Five who received the rare 1st edition of The Principia Discordia of which only five copies were produced (in accordance to the Law of Fives!).
It was long-held and universally believed that most—if not all—of those original sacred Five Copies were lost with the passage of time to mankind; that is until your humble author discovered the only surviving copy—Greg Hill’s personal copy—tucked away in the Discordian Archives for all these years and which now has been re-published, at long last, in the companion volume to this website, Historia Discordia: The Origins of the Discordian Society (Amazon). So get your copy now before it disappears again!
Hill and Thornley—as Discordian history instructs—moved to New Orleans in 1961, and at some point became friends with Roger Lovin, who Kerry later remembered as “…a dashing, talented and handsome con artist who was too shallow to settle into any one thing. But for years and years after he read the Principia, under his Discordian name of Fang the Unwashed, he consistently and with unswerving devotion to the task excommunicated every new person any of the rest of us initiated into the Discordian Society.”
On his first sojourn in New Orleans, Greg Hill only lived there a few months before moving back to Southern California, but Kerry lived in NOLA (for the most part) over the next three-and-a-half years before relocating to Arlington, Virginia in late 1964.
Sometime in ’64, Hill moved back to The French Quarter, which led to one of the most intense and productive periods in the early evolution of the Discordian Society—1964 and 1965—as documented in several dozens of letters in the Discordian Archives exchanged between Hill and Thornley.
The Early Discordians become famous for their humorous letters, and one of the funniest I’ve come across is this missive dictated by Roger Lovin (aka Fang The Unwashed) dated December 17, 1964, addressed to Greg Hill (aka Malaclypse The Younger), who appears to have been staying with Bob Newport in Chicago at the time.
Letter: From Roger Levin to Greg Hill, December 17, 1964, Page 00001. Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.Letter: From Roger Levin to Greg Hill, December 17, 1964, Page 00002. Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.
While I’ve shared quite a bit in my books—and on this website—about Hill and Thornley, I’ve been reluctant to tackle Roger Lovin’s Discordian legacy just because it’s a pretty tangled web to attempt to unravel some of the more sordid aspects of his life.
Like Thornley, Lovin became ensnared by the Garrison investigation—although briefly and to a much lesser degree than Thornley. Garrison’s interest in Lovin was partly due to his association with the Discordian Society, which the New Orleans D.A. came to suspect was some sort of CIA front organization that had a hand in orchestrating Kennedy’s assassination. Hail Eris!
Lovin—from the stories I’ve heard—was a man of many talents: a writer, poet, musician—a silver-tongued devil and con man—who operated a French Quarter art gallery during the early-60s. From 1968/69, Lovin published a weekly New Orleans newspaper, The Ungarbled Word, that from time to time ran Discordian recruitment advertisements, in addition to articles by Hill and Thornley, and in particular, an ongoing series by Greg Hill entitled Etcetera Pacifica that gave a monthly run-down of what was happening with the West Coast counterculture scene.
The Ungarbled Word, Revelation of Eris, August 1968. Courtesy of Tim Cridland.The Ungarbled Word, Zenarchy, August 21, 1968. Courtesy of Tim Cridland.
The Ungarbled Word, Ecetera Pacifica, September 12, 1968. Courtesy of the Tim Cridland.
Lovin later moved out West and worked as the environmental editor for the Los Angeles Free Press from 1969-73, as documented in this article from 1971.
During that same period, Lovin wrote and published pornography, maintaining contact with Greg Hill throughout. I found one letter in the Archives where Lovin offered his services to help Greg publish a mass market edition of Principia Discordia, although nothing ever came of this.
Letter: Roger Lovin to Greg Hill, June 6, 1970. Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.
For the most part, though, Lovin was pretty much a Mystery Man to me, and the correspondences between he and Hill over the years—while colorful—were few and far between. When I asked some of the Early Discordians about him, they only vaguely remembered the name. At some point, I came across the following clipping which appeared in a 1979 edition of the Science Fiction fanzine Locus and hinted at certain darker aspects associated with Lovin.
Locus zine: Roger Lovin. Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.
While scouring the web, I came across other information which suggested that Lovin had gone to prison for these activities, although there was conflicting information, which of course can always be expected when the sources are various people posting different accounts to web forums.
At one point in the thread someone claiming to be Lovin’s sister said that the charges against her brother were true, and then posted a photo of herself with Lovin in his later years—after he had been released from prison—and stated that he had died of a heart attack in 1991. The photo indeed looked to be Roger Lovin, however these posts from his alleged sister (which I think legit) were later removed from the thread.
Letter: Greg Hill to Pat, May 13, 1970, front. Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.I really didn’t have much planned for this week’s Illuminatus! group reading until I happened upon a note by Greg Hill in the Archives which caught my attention because it’s addressed to someone named Pat. Having gone through a lot of Hill’s correspondence, I’m usually able to figure out (in most cases) to whom he was corresponding—but in this instance I haven’t a clue.
Letter: Greg Hill to Pat, May 13, 1970, back. Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.When I saw the name Pat, I immediately flashed on an enigmatic character by the same name who appears in Illuminatus! in relation to a series of Illuminati memos exchanged between she (or at least I think Pat is a she) and Joseph Malik, editor of Confrontation magazine, a character that is based—to some degree—on both Greg Hill and Kerry Thornley. In fact, you can see an upside down Mad Malik stamp on the note, which was Hill’s Bavarian Illuminati persona, further linking this curious little note to Illuminatus!
In Greg’s note to Pat, he encourages him/her to pass it on to BofA, and one can only assume he is referring to Bank of America, who—as synchronicity would have it—later employed Greg for 23 years (Hail Eris!), which we’ll no doubt discuss in more depth at some later date here at Historia Discordia.
Oddly enough, a web search for Joseph Malik, editor of Confrontation magazine, led me to this publication at bookfinder.com which appears to be something RAW and Shea probably cooked up prior to the publication of Illuminatus! as a promotional stunt. Here is the magazine’s description:
Published by Confrontation Magazine, New York, 1975. , 15 pages, includes interviews with ‘illuminatus’ authors Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson, plus poems by Joe Malik, black & white illustrations, appears to have been the only issue of the magazine ever published First Edition , light spots to covers, pages slightly yellowed at edges otherwise clean, in good+ condition , printed wraps 30 x 22 cm Paperback ISBN: Bookseller Inventory # 53469
An additional Joseph Malik web search left me even more perplexed.
Eternal Flower Power!: Anti-Illuminati Discordian business card created by Arthur Hlavarty. Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.No time to lose, so diving right into The Illuminatus! Trilogy (Amazon) book’s Group Reading.
Let’s fnord! On page 108 (more or less depending on how my ipad kindle reader syncs up with the paperized version), the ’68 Chicago riots were first introduced into the kaleidoscopic Illuminatus! narrative:
…Liberalism, clubbed to death by Chicago’s heroic peace officers.
Surreal street scenes such as these reappear periodically throughout Illuminatus!, as Simon Moon and Hagbard Celine stumble through the teargas madness and good-ol’ fashioned ass whuppins doled out by the Chicago cops during the ’68 Democratic Convention.
There was a sound from the crowd, like a subway opening all its doors with a suck of air, and I saw the police coming, crossing the street to clear the park.
“Here we go again,” I said. “All hail Discordia.”
Scenes such as the above snippet from page 150—where we currently reside in the Illuminatus! reading group timeline—illustrate the autobiographical nature of the series.
Chicago Mayor Daley in a fez.RAW participated in the ’68 Democratic Convention demonstration, marching (and sometimes running!) shoulder-to-shoulder with counterculture figures such as Ginsberg, Hefner, Mailer and Burroughs. This event no doubt had a profound impact on him, as it did to so many other millions of Americans (either witnessing the confrontation firsthand on the front lines in the streets of Chi-town or viewing the mayhem from their TV screens); a nation outraged by the heavy-handed tactics of Democrat Mayor Daley, who was meanwhile supposedly shouting “Ewige Blumenkraft!” from the convention floor, all part of an apparent Illuminati plot to Immanentize the Eschaton, which can never be a good thing—especially if it’s happening during your lifetime!
Illuminatus! often seems a collection of composite characters sewn together from those Robert Shea and RAW met, and corresponded with, during those heady days of the 60s-and-70s, and in many ways Simon Moon resembles RAW (or at least certain aspects of RAW) as well as others, such as Neil Rust, another of the purported Simon Moon composites who was featured in a recent RAWIllumination.net blog post.
Page 151 introduces ILLUMINATI PROJECT: MEMO #16, (for a second time!) as another ILLUMINATI PROJECT: MEMO #16 previously appeared on page 146 which could perhaps be chalked up to some sort of mix-up on the part of RAW or Shea or both… or perhaps our heroes did this intentionally for Goddess knows what reasons… or maybe it was a mistake on the part of the Patricia Walsh character… or maybe Pat was intentionally messing with Joe Malik’s mind, although JM didn’t seem to notice the MEMO #16 duplication and I’m starting to think that perhaps I’m the only one who has noticed this anomaly—if this second memo does indeed actually exist—as meanwhile fnords march across the page and my ruminations about all this are making me suspect that I’m the person (what’s my name… Barney Muldoon?) who actually created this second ILLUMINATI PROJECT: MEMO #16—although I have no actual memory of creating it which can only mean that I was brainwashed to forget it!
(Now back to our regular “programming…”)
Los Angeles Free Press, July 26, 1968: RFK: Sirhan Blavatsky Capote. Clipping courtesy the Discordian Archives.ILLUMINATI PROJECT: MEMO #16 (on page 150) concerns a rumor Truman Capote spread claiming that Sirhan Sirhan had been negatively influenced by the writings of Madame Blavatsky—to the point that it blew Sirhan’s mind, which is what he literally (or allegedly) did to RFK—all part of an insidious Illuminati/Communist plot that somehow got mixed up with Madame Blavatsky and Theosophy.
Apparently Capote got hipped to this Blavatsky trip from a couple of John Birch Society members—Anthony Hilder and John Steinbacher—who shortly after RFK’s assassination held a press conference exposing this aforementioned Illuminati-Commie-Madame Blavatsky plot. In subsequent talk show interviews, Hilder created further confusion (Hail Eris!) by alleging that Sirhan was a Eugene McCarthy supporter, which ostensibly connected elements of the political Left to RFK’s assassination.
Previously, Hilder self-published It Comes Up Murder which outlined a vast conspiracy starring Adam Weishaupt in the leading role, who in Bavaria in 1776 organized “the secret and evil cult of the Illuminati in order to wage Satan’s war against Christian civilization.” In due time—according to Hilder—the Illuminati coalesced into the modern International Communist Conspiracy which, in turn, evolved into such evil New World Order fronts as the United Nations and the Council of Foreign Relations. Such worldviews as these became an easy target of Operation Mindfuck as documented in Bavarian Illuminati hoax letters that the Discordian Society sent to leaders of The John Birch Society during this period.
Hilder’s Hens from Conspiracy Con 7. Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.As for Hilder, he remains active on the current-day conspiracy research scene appearing at such events as Conspiracy Con held each year in San Jose, CA where you can find him holding court while peddling DVDs along with an occasional Rotisserie chicken or two!
Here’s a current vid of our man Hilder still bustin’ the Illuminati’s chops! Hail Eris! (Editors Note: He makes some good points.)
In The Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy (1978),
authors William Turner and Jonn Christian suggest that Steinbacher and Hilder’s Illuminati-Commie assassination plot theory was actually a well-orchestrated disinformation campaign designed to create a general theme that stuck in the public mind, whether people accepted the theory or not. According to Turner and Christian, one effect of this Commie-Illuminati disinformation campaign was that it permitted the LAPD to suppress evidence leading in the opposite direction of the true assassin, toward the Far Right of the political spectrum from whence the authors suspected that the assassination plot had been hatched.
All of this, of course, is almost as convoluted as some of the conspiratorial scenarios that Shea and RAW played around with—a case of life imitating art or vice versa, perhaps—as, throughout Illuminatus!, the authors seemed to have been channeling the rampant paranoia that became so prevalent following the almost endless parade of political assassinations that assaulted America in the late-60s.
Hilder and Steinbacher, as it turns out, had been protégés of another famous Bircher named Myron Fagan. Fagan was a prominent player in the McCarthy Era Hollywood blacklisting brigade. Curiously enough, Hilder and a band of brother Birchers had visited the Ambassador Hotel the night before RFK’s assassination, passing out anti-RFK handbills.
This story gets even more curious with the involvement of a fellow named Ed Butler, a former Army intelligence officer who was the person that arranged the Hilder-Steinbacher press conference. Earlier in the 1960s—it so happens—Butler had been based out of New Orleans, LA during the period that future alleged JFK assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, was going around handing out pro-Castro leaflets and coming across like some sort of commie symp.
On August 16th, 1963—as Oswald was handing out his leaflets in front of the New Orleans Trade Mart, he was physically confronted by a surly anti-Castro Cuban named Carlos Bringuier—who supposedly just happened on scene—thus inciting a shoving match which a local news camera crew from WSDU-TV also just happened to capture on film. Not long after, WSDU’s sister radio station, WSDU-AM, conducted a live radio debate between Oswald and Bringuier, which was “moderated” by the aforementioned Ed Butler. It’s a small world after all…
In the aftermath of JFK’s assassination, the Oswald/Bringuier radio debate was pressed to vinyl on the recording Self-Portrait In Red, which presented posthumous evidence that Oswald was inspired to blow the proverbial crown from Camelot’s head due to his Marxist affiliations. The organization that produced Self-Portrait In Red was the Information Council of the Americas (INCA), with whom Ed Butler was associated. In retrospect, many now suspect that the Oswald/Bringuier confrontation was staged, the ultimate design of which was to build a false history around Oswald that could later be used against him.
The theory that a red herring Commie-Illuminati-Blavatsky plot was orchestrated to muddy the RFK assassination waters (and divert attention from the Right side of the political spectrum) seems not so far-fetched a notion when one delves deeper into the involvement of the LAPD, who set up a unit named “Special Unit Senator” (SUS) to investigate RFK’s assassination. SUS included in its ranks a couple of former CIA agents named Manny Pena and Hank Hernandez, who are alleged to have destroyed crucial RFK Assassination evidence, including door jambs and ceiling panels containing multiple bullet holes, suggesting that more than one shooter was involved. (Enter Thane Eugene Cesar…) It was SUS who put together the evidence that later formed the basis for the prosecution’s case against Sirhan.
SUS discovered, among Sirhan’s possessions, Healing, the Divine Art (Amazon) by Manly Palmer Hall, founder of the Philosophical Research Society which was tangentially connected to Blavatsky’s Theosophy, Freemasonry and other mystical schools, and it was alleged that Sirhan attended Hall’s Institute of Reflection in Los Angeles. Among Hall’s clients was Los Angeles Mayor Sam Yorty, which provides another strange twist to this caper, as it was Yorty—following Sirhan’s arrest—who branded Sirhan a commie-influenced occultist who had been brainwashed by Leftist and New Age propaganda.
During the RFK Assassination investigation, Mayor Yorty visited LAPD’s field command post set up near the Ambassador Hotel where the dirty deed had gone down. While rooting around through evidence there, Yorty discovered some Rosicrucian literature and a pair of spiral notebooks belonging to Sirhan which provided alleged evidence that he’d been involved in the occult.
Afterwards, Yorty informed the press that Sirhan was “…a member of numerous Communist organizations, including the Rosicrucians.” When it was pointed out to Yorty that the Rosicrucians were not Communists, he amended his miscue by stating: “It appears that Sirhan Sirhan was a sort of loner who harbored Communist inclinations, favored Communists of all types. He said the U.S. must fall. Indicated that RFK must be assassinated before June 5, 1968.”
As it turns out for us, this was today in RFK Assassination history.
A John Dillinger Died For You Society Membership Card. Click image for 300dpi printable JPG (1.4MB). Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.In the Discordian Society’s early days, not only was it SOP to adopt your own unique Discordian Pope handle—such as Mordecai The Foul or Fang The Unwashed—but it was also assumed that you’d start your own Discordian cabal, which included such notables as Greg Hill’s Joshua Norton Cabal or Rev. Dr. Makuska’s Society for Moral Understanding & Training (SMUT) Cabal.
Another of the more infamous Discordian cabals was The John Dillinger Died For You Society (JDDFYS), which appears to have been primarily the brain-child of RAW—when he was working as an editor at Playboy—along with another editor there named William Helmer, who himself adopted the Discordian non de plume of Horace Naismith when engaged in JDDFYS operations. For all I know, Bob Shea (aka Josh The Dill) might have also played a part in this conspiratorial caper promoting the Dillinger legend, which further manifested itself in Illuminatus! along with more Discordian in-jokes than you could shake a magick stick at.
Letter sent to Dr. Ignotum Ignotius (aka Greg Hill) from Dr. Horace Naismith (aka William Helmer) of the John Dillinger Died For You Society, October 26th, 1970, Page 00001. Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.Letter sent to Dr. Ignotum Ignotius (aka Greg Hill) from Dr. Horace Naismith (aka William Helmer) of the John Dillinger Died For You Society, October 26th, 1970, Page 00002. Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.
Your humble author, in full Masonic regalia, delivering the signal of distress!One such in-joke appears on page 93 in a passage that recounts Dillinger’s first bank robbery and how the victim of the heist, a grocer named B. F. Morgan—when confronted during the robbery—summoned help by giving the Masonic signal of distress. The implication suggested in this scene is that Dillinger—from the very start of his so-called “criminal career”—was in reality a Discordian Robin Hood of sorts engaged in a covert war against the Freemasonic-Illuminati Conspiracy. The punch-line for this in-joke is that the Masonic signal of distress is given by holding both hands up in the air—although Wilson and Shea never informs the readers of this.
The Sacred Chao from Illuminatus!, page 00095.Page 95 features an illustration of that most significant of Discordian symbols, The Sacred Chao, a sort of twist on Taoism’s Yin and Yang, depicting the opposing forces of The Pentagon and The Golden Apple, also known in Discordianism as the Hodge and Podge. The Pentagon—according to the Discordian mythos—represents the Aneristic Principle (Apparent Disorder) in counterbalance to The Golden Apple, which represents The Eristic Principle (Apparent Order.) To find out more about this you will have to consult your pineal gland.
On page 96, the mystery of the Golden Apple is further revealed, which is at the center (core) of the whole Discordian mythos that runs through Illuminatus!
Elsewhere on page 96, ILLUMINATI PROJECT: MEMO #9 refers to a chart that the missing Joseph Malik identified as first appearing in an issue of The East Village Other, June 11, 1969 with the label “Current Structure of the Bavarian Illuminati Conspiracy and the Law of Fives.”
'Current Structure of the Bavarian Illuminati Conspiracy and the Law of Fives' chart shown on page 00097 of Illuminatus!
The chart in question was indeed published in a real underground newspaper, although once again Shea and Wilson were mixing fact with fiction into the Illuminatus! narrative, as the chart was an obvious put-on that—when it originally appeared in The East Village Other—did so without any type of editorial explanation, although in retrospect it was no doubt the handiwork of RAW and/or the usual Operation Mindfuck suspects.
The chart includes (in its diabolical Bavarian Illuminati organization) the likes of such Discordian illuminaries as Lord Omar (Kerry Thornley), Malaclypse the Younger (Greg Hill) and Mordecai the Foul (RAW)—not to mention a Discordian Society spin-off organization Greg Hill concocted called the Paratheo-Anametamystikhood Of Eris Esoteric (POEE, pronounced “pooey”).
Curiously enough, Bank of America is also listed on the chart, a company where—as fickle fate would have it—Greg Hill was later employed from the late-70s until his death in July of 2000, having worked for BofA a total of 23 (synchronistic) years.
On page 100, the Legion of Dynamic Discord (LDD) is introduced and identified as a group aligned with Hagbard Celine. In reality, the LDD was the creation of Lord Omar during a period when he and Malaclypse the Younger had some sort of theological falling out and decided to form opposing (tongue-in-cheek) Discordian factions. Malaclypse named his faction the Erisian Liberation Front, more commonly known as ELF.
Letter from Camden Benares to Louise Lacey, September 8, 1976. Courtesy of Louise Lacey.In this 1976 letter to Louise Lacey, Camden Benares reflects on his life as a writer—of both Zen and porn—noting that Zen Without Zen Masters was scheduled for release in the spring of 1977. In addition, Camden mentions a science fiction collaboration in the works between he and his Discordian pal John F. Carr, a book that was finally published in the futuristic faraway year of 2013 and chronicled in my previous post “The Discordian Sci-Fi Series That Almost Never Was.”
Camden congratulates Louise on the recent publication of Lunaception, her landmark work on a natural method to conception, using the phases of the moon as a guide, a concept later explored by Tom Robbins in Still Life With Woodpecker.
Camden also floats the idea of putting together a list of Discordian books then in publication. With that theme in mind, here is just such a list, a snap shot in time of books in print by Discordian authors as of 1977.
Greg Hill: Why I Am Not An Anarchist, cover mailing, June, 1975. Courtesy the Discordian Archives.
With the approaching release of Illuminatus! way back in 1975, Robert Shea was still producing underground zines, in particular Shea’s then-new endeavor NO GOVERNOR (issues of which can still be had as PDFs on bobshea.net thanks to Shea’s son, Mike).
During this pre-release era of Illuminatus!, Shea and Discordian co-founder Greg Hill were furiously exchanging letters and articles. Of course, “furious” being defined at this time, a decade before publicly available email, as maybe half-a-dozen letters over as many months. Crazy stuff.
“Why I am Not an Anarchist” will be a welcome addition to NO GOVERNOR #2. I like it. It says something that needs saying—at least once a year. Also, I am very grateful to you for sending me something I can publish.
For your pleasure and research purposes, here is the original article ‘Why I Am Not An Anarchist’ by Greg Hill, including the original proofing notes. Hail Eris!
Greg Hill: Why I Am Not An Anarchist for Robert Shea's No Governor, June 1975, Page 00001. Courtesy the Discordian Archives. About five years ago I considered myself an anarchist (anarchopacifist, in particular), because I believe that the highest authority available to any individual is one’s own honest experience and that any other authority provides only vicarious information at best.
I’ve not changed my opinion about this, but I have ceased referring to myself as an anarchist. The reason is basic and simple: TOO MANY DAMN RULES.
OK, it’s a joke. But it’s a TRUE JOKE. The incompatibility is not between my position and some anarchist theories, but between my position and the position of most of those who use the label “anarchist.”
It seems that Rule Number One of anarchy, as understood by authoritarians and by most who call themselves anarchists, is that a government is an enemy. Rule Number Two is that to gain freedom the individual is politically or morally or somehow obligated to fight this enemy.
Greg Hill: Why I Am Not An Anarchist for Robert Shea's No Governor, June 1975, Page 00002. Courtesy the Discordian Archives. In my opinion, these rules represent a position which would be better referred to as anti-archy. The prefix “a” means “without” and it need not imply “against.” There is an exact parallel with the word atheist—it is usually used and understood, by those for it and against it, as thought eh word was anti-theist.
I can respect the anti-archist position, but I don’t share it. The government is not my enemy because there is no government. OK, another joke, but still a TRUE joke. I know good and well that there are people with guns who restrict my free decisions, and I know about groups of people collecting taxes from me, and all of the rest of this government business. I perceive it in the same manner that I perceive (for example) a big rock in my path which necessitates stepping around and compromising myself. Frankly, I don’t believe in rocks either—I just step around and compromise (which is actually easier than is believing in them). I think that there is a big difference in degree between (a) existentially responding to a phenomenon and (b) conceptualizing it as an “enemy.” If everything in the universe that has ever thwarted my purpose is my enemy, then only nothing can be my friend—and that excludes even myself. But, still, I respect the anti-archist position. After all, if one does perceive a phenomenon to be an enemy then one would be a damn fool to do other than defend ones’ self.
Greg Hill: Why I Am Not An Anarchist for Robert Shea's No Governor, June 1975, Page 00003. Courtesy the Discordian Archives. Much of this essay is futzing around with labels. Still, I feel free to futz, and in any case what I’m trying to do is to avoid the assumption by others that I am at war with certain people just because those people think that they are a government and go out of their way to forcibly impose their notions on me.
I’m not at war with them or with them or rocks either. And insofar as anyone thinks that an anarchist is one who is supposed to believe something or another, or is obligated to do something or another, then there are too damn many rules for me and to hell with the whole business.
In the Roman Empire’s eternal era of superior gleaming, the Dog Days were popularly believed to be an evil time when “the Sea boiled, the Wine turned sour, Dogs grew mad, and all other creatures became languid; causing to man, among other diseases, burning fevers, hysterics, and phrensies. And then there was the perpetual godsawful smell of boiling cabbage.”
