of Professor Cramulus.
I’m going to get up on my soapbox to try and address one of the most serious and pressing issues of our modern age.
The Wikipedia page on Discordian Works is a joke.
I don’t have the time and inclination right at this second to edit what has time and time again been a bloodbath of edit wars, but I do want to start a discussion on what knowledge of Discordian works represents an essential overview. I’ve tried to build a list based on what A) connects directly to the original Discordians, and B) has had an immediate, measurable impact on the Discordian community, or C) contributes to an enhanced academic understanding of Discordianism.
The page references a number of works. It adds information that has no place in the article, it mentions works (Liber Malorum? Infinite Conception?) that I have literally never heard any of the Discordians I’ve met—and I’ve traveled all over the world meeting Discordians—mention even once. Then there are names that never appear; Adam Go-Where-Now?
My suggestion is thus:
First Principia Discordia. I’m sure you’ve heard of it. This section should be expanded to outline the development of the work from First Edition, to what we see now; cover the Loompanics, IllumiNet, Steve Jackson Games, Synapticlipse and other such editions.
Then we should progress immediately to The Illuminatus! Trilogy by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson in considerably more detail than is offered. RAWIllumination.net is posting a shit-tonne of info on this book as it goes thorough the reading club. It should go in. Other works of RAW that deal with Discordianism such as Cosmic Trigger which have contributed significantly to many aspects of modern Discordia (relationship to Aleister Crowley, etc) should be mentioned too.
Zen Without Zen Masters by Camden Benares. Also The Crying Clown Saga by Benares and John F Carr. Benares was a contributor to the Principia Discordia.
Kerry Thornley’s work Zenarchy needs to be in and discussed as well.
Then, we should have the Apocrypha Discordia. This is notable for being really the first new non-zine Discordian work since the original bunch came around (afaik), and I suspect is a good chronological marking point for “New Discordian Works.”
Then we need to see Adam Gorightly’s The Prankster and the Conspiracy, the best existing guide to the early days of Discordia. (His other projects maybe could be listed as coming soon, but each of the four promises to offer a lot to the academic understanding of Discordianism and should be included when released.)
Principia Entropius is a terrible mess that makes one’s head hurt, but as it’s a rare and valuable (historically if not creatively) snapshot of Discordianism in the 90s, it deserves mention.
The Wholly First Edition isn’t really the first edition at all, but it was the first snapshot that many new gen Discordians had of the contents of what was in the Kennedy Archives. The history of that is in the book, though it’s not always easy to find. It’s notable enough to be mentioned.
Condensed Chaos by Phil Hine makes explicit references to Discordia, and may well be part of the cause of the crossover of Chaos Magic and Discordia.
Black Iron Prison was a work that has been highly influential (to the point where it’s influenced Discordian communities as far as Brazil) and thus deserves mention.
We should have a section at the bottom with academic works that explore Discordianism. Drawing Down the Moon by Margot Adler and Authentic Fakes by David Chidester come to mind. Also Carol Cussak’s Invented Religions: Imagination Fiction and Faith.
Additionally KLF: Music, Magic and the Band That Burned a Million Pounds is a valuable examination of the KLF and their Discordian links and lives in this section most comfortably.
Other works, while often good, while sometimes notable, don’t need full articles but do deserve mention and context as notable and important—mostly my measure for this has been either “I’ve seen a lot of Discordians own them,” or “I’ve heard a lot of Discordians discuss them,” or often both. Hardly an academic test, but there you go. I tried to do a scratch list and gave up on it as I was bound to snub someone (and we all know how that turns out!)
Does anyone else have some thoughts on the matter?
10 replies on “Discordian Works [Citation Needed].”
The work of Adam Possamai in regard to what Cussak calls ‘Invented Religions’ and he calls ‘Hyper-real Religions’ is especially interesting: although he doesn’t go into Discordianism et al in great depth in his own work, the collection of essays he edited, ‘Handbook of Hyper-real Religions’, included one called “Occultural Bricolage and Popular Culture: Remix and Art in Discordianism,the Chrch of the Sub-genius and Thee Temple Ov Psychick Youth” by Danielle Kirby.
Possamai’s theories on postmodern religion are particularly useful for the alert Discordian – I’ll be covering them in some depth in the upcoming Darklore, vol. 8.
darklore.dailygrail.com
Thanks Cat, I wasn’t familiar with Possamai until now.
What about the Summa Discordia?
I think “Bratislav Metulevskies – Grundkurs Humanoide Metaphysik” was an importend Text for german Discordians. He was the inventor of Aktion 23.
You left off a book that has blurbs (short reviews) by Alan Moore, Sondra London, Adam Gorightly, R. Crumb, Rev. Pee Kitty, Rev. Ivan Stang, Robert Anton Wilson, and more. It’s Ek-sen-trik-kuh Discordia: The Tales of Shamlicht. You probably haven’t heard more of it because it was pulled shortly after it was published because of a Jake. But I heard it’s coming back. 🙂
There’s another book that should be added. Historia Discordia. It has some of the early Discordian books you mentioned and is probably the biggest collection ever published of early Discordian work. It has a blurb by Alan Moore who was friends with Robert Anton Wilson and was put together by Adam Gorightly with added material by Rev. DrJon Swabey.
Some of these books are in the article but maybe they weren’t at the time this was written. Apocrypha Discordia, Ek-sen-trik-kuh Discordia, Principia Discordia, Principia Entropius, Zen Without Zen Masters, Zenarchy are all in there now.
But oh yes, books about Discordianism should be there too.
Brenton, El sjaako linked to this article at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:List_of_Discordian_works#Post_about_this_page_as_a_source_for_this_page
Those who want to spread the word elsewhere can help edit at http://discordia.wikia.com and http://www.s23.org
I stumbled on this discussion while crawling on the Interweb. I don’t edit Wikipedia very much because of other commitments (i.e. I like getting paid for my writing), but will try filling in a few holes. I’m going to try adding anther work or two to the article starting with Historia Discordia (although I think I’m forbidden from mentioning my own review of the work). Some of these works are, as far as I know, only peripherally Discordian as they discuss the religion among other topics, so they probably won’t stay. There are others, such as The Prankster and the Conspiracy, that’s about a Discordian without really being Discordian. Maybe works like that could be covered in a subsection.
If you could fix my italics goof, i.e. the italics should end at the end of the title The Prankster and the Conspiracy, I would appreciate it.