Inspired by last year’s production of Daisy Campbell’s Cosmic Trigger Play and Find the Others Festival, an intrepid group of Discordians across the pond are crowdsourcing a Disco free-for-all called Festival 23 slated for the weekend of July 23rd, 2016 that is described as “An interactive celebration of literature and the arts; of theatre, playshops and music inspired by the Discordian movement; a society of philosophers, theologians, magicians, scientists, artists, clowns and similar maniacs who are intrigued with Eris, Goddess of Confusion, and with her doings.”
One of the organizers of the Festival 23 event recently appeared on the Cult of Nick which you can hear here.
Hear, hear!
Word on the street is that Daisy Campbell and her band of merry misfits will also be involved with Festival 23, all of which will presumably keep the Golden Apple rolling in a positive direction all the way to Santa Cruz, California where Daisy and the troops intend to stage the Cosmic Trigger play in 2017—on July 23rd to be exact—the same date of the annual Robert Anton Wilson Day in Santa Cruz as well as the day when RAW originally pulled the cosmic trigger back in 1973, which is what all this fuss is about.
To coincide with all these Cosmic Trigger related happenings, the RAW estate has just announced the official launch of its publishing arm Hilartius Press and re-release of a whole slew of RAW titles. First out of the chutes will be—you guessed it!—Cosmic Trigger I: The Final Secret of the Illuminati with a brand spanking new intro by John Higgs author of the fabulous Discordian title KLF: Chaos Magic Music Money that if you haven’t read, you really should, and quickly.
Brunswick Shrine: A Sign From Eris. Courtesy Discordian Archives.And if all of that wasn’t enough jolly good news to keep all you greyfaces out there from totally immanentizing the eschaton, Tom Jackson over at rawillumination.net just the other day reported that the fabled Brunswick Shrine has apparently been rescued from the wrecking ball!
An anti-Bavarian Illuminati membership card sent to Greg Hill from Arthur Hlavaty (aka Pope Guilty I) circa January 1980.
January 1980 Ewige Blumenkfraft card from Arthur Hlavaty to Greg Hill.Ewige Blumenkraft card.
Left to right: Camden Benares and John F. Carr at Camden's cabin in Tujunga, California circa late-70s. Photo courtesy of John F. Carr.One of the absolute gems I discovered in the Discordian Archives is the following short story by Camden Benares entitled Candle and Censer.
According to Camden’s good friend and writing partner, John F. Carr, Candle and Censer—which was never published—was later retitled The Girl with Karma Colored Hair. —Adam Gorightly
Download a scan of the original Discordian Archives document as a PDF here.
Candle and Censer
by
Camden Benares
When his mental clock registered five o’clock, Martin Tuscan awoke, put on his terrycloth robe, and went into the kitchen to heat the coffee. He shaved, showered, and dressed in denim before preparing a cheese and egg sandwich to eat with the coffee. After washing the dishes, he sat down with his third cup of coffee and reread the letter he had written before going to bed:
Dear Paula,
You are very much in my thoughts today.
I spent several hours this morning rewiring a ’55 MG, a red one, just like the one you used to have. It made me remember the many adventures we had in it together when I was studying engineering. There are many more adventures in. our future.
Although I don’t know where you are or when we will see each other again, I know that I love you. You are always in my heart.
Love,
Martin
Martin sat quietly until six o’clock. Then he lit the red candle. He held a stick of incense over the flame and inserted it in the ceramic censer that Paula had made. Being careful to hold the letter over the metal bowl in which the candle sat, he let the flame lick one corner of the letter. The letter crinkled and burned. The ashes dropped into the bowl. Martin waited patiently for fifteen minutes for an answer. None came.
The green Porsche hugged the curved streets as Martin drove from Playa del Rey to his garage, opened the big double doors, and went into the office to make some coffee. He had almost finished a cup of coffee when his first customer of the day left his car to be serviced and walked across the street to the plant where he worked.
It was late afternoon when Martin closed his garage. He drove slowly through the traffic until he got to the beach where he parked and sat watching the sunset, wishing that Paula were there to share it with him. Through the twilight, he mentally composed the letter that he would write to Paula that evening and send to her at six o’clock in the morning through the red candle.
After parking the Porsche in the garage, he looked in his mail box. There were three letters: one from a friend in Atlanta, one from an insurance company, one from a fellow occultist. There were also two circulars addressed to occupant, which he dropped into the trash can, and the latest issue of the magazine, Arcane Events.
Martin read the letters before preparing dinner. During dinner he read Arcane Events. The feature article, “Precognition in Primitive Societies,” ended on the page facing the classified advertisements. Martin read them all until he came to the third ad under personals. It read:
Martin who corresponds with Paula daily at 9 a. m. E. D. S. T. send home address and telephone to Dr. R. E. Benroy, 868 Overton St. Millis, Massachusetts 02054.
Martin wrote the name and address on a piece of paper. He closed his eyes and held the paper in his hands. He attempted to clear his mind of all its thoughts and concentrate on an imaginary, gray screen in his mind, the kind of screen a motion picture would be projected on. When his mind was focused on the screen he held the paper firmly in his hand and watched the gray screen for images. A hazy image began to form—a man sitting at a desk writing. Martin tried to sharpen his focus. He saw a man with dark-rimmed glasses looking through a stack of magazines. Then the screen went blank.
Martin went to the garage and got into his car. Thirty minutes later he was at the corner of Hollywood Boulevard and Las Palmas. He found a parking place about two blocks away and walked back to the large newspaper and magazine stand. He looked through Fate, Other Worlds, The Occult Reader, and Fantasy and Science Fiction. The same ad from Dr. Benroy was in every one of them.
When Martin got back home he wrote:
Dear Dr. Benroy,
I send a daily letter via augmented telepathy to Paula Deering at 6 A.M. Pacific Daylight Saving Time. I would appreciate any- information you could give me about her, You can reach me during the day at (213) 393-3427 or at (213) 370-7874 in the evening. Mail will reach me at 122 Leach St., Playa del Rey, California 90218.
Yours truly,
Martin Tuscan
Martin put an airmail stamp on that letter. Then he wrote his nightly letter to Paula without mentioning Dr. Benroy. In the morning, after sending Paula’s letter through the candle flame, he drove by the post office and mailed the other letter.
On Thursday afternoon Dr. Benroy called Martin from Massachusetts.
“Mr. Tuscan, this is Dr. Richard Benroy. I just received your letter and I’d like to talk to you about Paula Deering.”
“How is she? Is she a patient of yours?”
“Yes. She’s a patient of mine and she is seriously ill.”
“What’s wrong with her?”
“Be assured that she is being well cared for. She’s under my care in the hospital.”
“What hospital? I’ll fly there tonight. ”
“Mr. Tuscan, I don’t think that your coming here would be the best thing for her.”
“What’s wrong with her?”
“She’s a mental patient. I’m a psychiatrist.”
“What kind of mental patient? What’s the problem she has?”
“She is virtually catatonic.”
“I’d still like to see her.”
“Mr. Tuscan, I would like to discuss Miss Deering’s case with you face to face. I can take a plane tomorrow to Los Angeles….”
“I’ll fly to Massachusetts tonight. I want to see Paula.”
“No, Let me fly there and talk to you first. Then if you feel it’s the thing to do you can fly back with me. I will arrive at the Los Angeles International Airport on American Airlines Flight 243 at 6:18 P.M. your time. Can you meet me there?”
“Yes I’ll be at the information booth just to the left of where you’ll pick up your baggage. I’ll be wearing a green jump suit.”
“Thank you, Mr. Tuscan, I’ll see you tomorrow. Try not to worry about Miss Deering. She’s getting the best possible care.”
“Thank you, Dr. Benroy, I’ll see you tomorrow. I’ll be at the airport by six.”
Flight 243 was ten minutes early. Dr. Benroy had no trouble identifying Martin Tuscan by the green jump suit he was wearing.
“Mr. Tuscan?”
“Yes. Dr. Benroy?”
“Yes, I’ll get my bag. Then we can go somewhere to talk.”
“We can go to my house. It’s only ten minutes from here.”
On the way to his house, Martin asked the doctor about the details of Paula’s illness. Dr. Benroy said, “As I told you on the telephone, she’s virtually .a catatonic. The only time she shows any animation is when she’s receiving those letters from you. For a short time after that she appears near normal and I have been able to establish some communication with her but sooner or later each conversation touches upon something that threatens her and she retreats behind the wall of catatonia.”
“Why didn’t you get my address and phone number from her? She knows them.”
“She retreats if I ask her about you. When Paula receives your letters her lips form each word but no sound comes out. I have a speech therapist who reads her lips and records the letters for me. I found it very hard to accept the possibility that she was actually receiving letters by telepathy.”
“Yes. I can understand that you would.”
“Your letter said augmented telepathy. What is augmented telepathy?”
“Just doing everything to make certain that all the conditions are as good as possible for thought transmission. I keep all the conditions as similar as I can—the same time, the same fragrance of incense. The incense is her favorite and the censer is one she made in ceramics class and gave to me. The candle is always her favorite shade of red. And I picked an early morning hour to transmit because we are both early morning risers and mentally more alert in the mornings.”
Inside Martin’s house the conversation continued with Dr. Benroy asking, “How long have you been in love with Paula?”
“From about the third time in my life that I saw her. I knew then, as only a romantic and a mystic can know, that I had found a woman to share my life with. And that it didn’t matter very much what kind of a life it was just as long as it was together. Everything that happened would be better if it happened with Paula as part of it. I don’t know if you know of that kind of love…. ”
“I’m neither a romantic nor a mystic, but I know of love. I am a widower. I loved my late wife very much, but not in the Romeo-Juliet way that you speak of love.”
“Yes we would talk about love; we’re both in love with the same woman, aren’t we Doctor?”
“Miss Deering is my patient…”
“Whom you think of as Paula. Whom you love., Doctors don’t fly across the country to see someone who is in love with a patient unless they have a very personal interest. You are in love with her, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Is that why you didn’t want me to fly there and see her?”
“No. I don’t want you to see her because I think it would worsen her condition. I know how much you love her from your letters to her. The way you love her is awesome; it’s the kind of love that a saint has for his god. She can’t respond to it: The demand on her is too much. You don’t realize what you’ve done to her.”
“All I’ve done is love her. Her happiness is the most important thing in the world to me. She’s the most important person in existence.”
“That’s what females in our society often believe they want. But that’s an ideal; the reality of it demands the identical ideal response. Few are capable of it. Paula is not capable of it. Her dilemma is a double bind. She can’t respond to your love and she can’t admit that she does not want such an ideal love. Therefore, she keeps limiting her responses to few more than those necessary to continue living.”
“What can I do to help her?”
“Let go of her. As much as you love her, let go of her.”
“If you can make me believe that I can help her by giving her up, I’ll do it. I only want the best for Paula.”
At a few minutes before six o’clock in the morning, Martin lit the red candle and the incense. Dr. Benroy sat across from him with the telephone pressed to his ear. At six o’clock Martin let the flame consume a letter that read:
Dear Paula,
Dr. Benroy is here with me; he is talking on the phone to Dr. Tarnek there in the room with you. They both know that you are receiving this letter and they know what it says.
Dr. Benroy has convinced me that there is a strong possibility that my daily letters to you while you are in the hospital may not be good for you. So I have agreed not to write to you while you are under Dr. Benroy’s care unless you ask me to.
I love you as much as ever. If it seems to be the right time to talk to me, ask Dr. Tarnek for the phone.
Love,
Martin
As the letter was burning, Dr. Benroy said, “Is she receiving it, Dr. Tarnek?… She is. Good. How is she responding…. What?” Turning to Martin, he said, “She’s dead.”
“Is there anything you’d like me to tell her in my next letter?”
Download a scan of the original Discordian Archives document as a PDF here.
September 2015 Eris of the Month, 'An Apple A Day' by Pope Dan Ammon (the Twenty-) III
The fall (bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonner-
ronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthur-
nuk!) of a once wallstrait oldparr is retaled early in bed and later
on life down through all christian minstrelsy.
Kerry Thornley and family circa late-60s or early-70s. Photo courtesy of John F. Carr.During the psychedelic 60s, Kerry Thornley and his wife Cara lived for a period of time in the former home of his grandparents in the Watts section of Los Angeles.
The Watts house became a blend of memorabilia and psychedelia. Antique window glass was decorated with pieces of translucent contact paper, to give it the effect of stained glass, as multicolored sunlight streamed through the strips of dangling paper. An ornately carved wooden mantle clock had the word “NOW” written on a round placard which covered its face. An old-time radio stood in the corner of the dining room, but now instead of playing Amos ‘n Andy and Fibber McGee and Molly, the big old box was tuned into Peter Bergman’s Radio Free Oz, booming music by Ravi Shanker, Simon and Garfunkel, and The Beatles.
With plenty of room for guests to roam around, the Watts house became a psychedelic social club. One frequent visitor was Bud Simco who recalled:
“Kerry was charismatic and had the ability to attract diverse personalities, people who would normally not be associated with each other, except by the force of Kerry’s personality. For example, there were so-called hippie types tripping under the dining room table, holding burning candles in their hands, while right-wing types were holding forth in the kitchen. One such character I recall had never been to Watts before, and showed up wearing a bullet proof vest and armed with a .45. He seemed reasonable enough, in conversation, but he was taking no chances (having never been around hippies before). There were people from all walks of life… including a pilot for the Flying Tiger Airlines, a student from MIT, some swingers, a fashion model, some writers, some SDS student types, and various and sundry others whom I did not know. One of my guests at one particular gathering was a former motorcycle gang member who lost his foot in a motorcycle accident, and his beautiful American Indian wife, who was at the time a co-worker of mine. He had never seen such an assorted group of people in his life, for example, but with his tambourine, magic mushrooms and a Donovan LP loudly playing, asserted his presence along with all the diverse others in one righteous happening. The thing is, everyone was tolerant of the other, regardless of individual inclinations and/or politics. At such an event, many people would never even interact with other groups, in other rooms, although many did. That was the one universal factor re: being present at one of Kerry’s gatherings, either at his home in Watts, or perhaps at one of the original ‘Be-Ins’ at Griffith Park.”
Photo of Kerry Thornley in Los Angeles in the company of several young ladies. Although the development date on the photo is 1970, it was probably shot in 1967. Photo courtesy of Louise Lacey.
At the Griffith Park Be-In, Kerry Thornley cut a singular swath, equipped with a sign bearing a perfectly surreal statement that seemed to say one thing while also saying something else entirely, just the sort of irreverent psychedelic koan that Kerry became famous for throughout his life. His sign read:
Stamp out quicksand.
Ban LSD.
Fellow Discordian Louise Lacey also attended the Griffith Park Be-In. She recalled:
“The weather was perfect. We were all stoned. A single engine plane came and circled, and I thought it was the media, keeping track of us, but then a man all in white dropped down with a parachute and the crowd roared with approval. Later I learned that an old friend of mine from Marin County was the pilot. He got that plane out fast, because it was illegal to parachute within the city limits.
“The Be-In was fascinating because I had never seen such a large collection of freaks. I couldn’t keep from grinning. I was particularly interested because some hard-assed sociologist had said that when you were on LSD you were extremely susceptible to being led. I was watching for people being led.
“I saw a group of people organized into a crack-the-whip game. Twenty or twenty-five people formed and a man with a megaphone was giving them instructions. (Definitely planned.) ‘Move up the hill, move down. Hang on tight. Join with more people.’ I couldn’t tell if anyone was listening or just all having fun. The people at the end of the line were moving so fast they kept being thrown off, tumbling down the hill in the grass, laughing hysterically. Then some of the crack-the-whip people let go of the hands of the people around them and drifted off. The megaphone man yelled more loudly. ‘Hang on, don’t let go.’ More people drifted away. He was screaming now. The group all dropped hands and disappeared in the crowds and the megaphone man was screaming at the top of his amplified voice, ‘Come back! We are playing a game here!’ But the people were gone. I didn’t worry any more about what that sociologist had said.
“Many groups of people were gathered as families of friends. It was the first time I had seen this form of organization. So there were tents, and lean to’s and lots of signs pounded into the dirt, describing one thing or another to identify who the friends were. (This is where Kerry’s sign fit in.) As I didn’t live in LA, I didn’t recognize anyone other than Kerry’s friends, who didn’t stay around his sign, but it didn’t matter. I ‘knew’ the strangers as friends, and we laughed and hugged and shared doobies, and listened to music and I moved on. Nobody got hurt, everyone had a good time (except, I imagine, the man with the megaphone). As the day progressed, I gravitated back to Kerry’s sign and others did, too, and we shared what we have experienced, eventually gathered our stuff and drove home to Kerry’s. A most successful day.”
Louise Lacey, in the late-60s, during her green period.
In March 1967, the Los Angeles Free Press ran an article about how you could get high from smoking banana skins, including instructions on how to prepare the stuff. Kerry decided to give this new craze a go, and in the company of co-conspirator Louise Lacey visited the local Safeway supermarket, as the two of them cleaned out the produce section of their banana supply, then brought home the banana bounty, removed the fruit and baked the inner portions of the skins on cookie sheets just as the Los Angeles Free Press article had instructed.
While this cosmic concoction was cooking, Kerry and Louise went around the Watts neighborhood, ringing door bells and offering skinned bananas to any interested parties. As Louise recalled: “This was a mostly black neighborhood, who knew Kerry, at least by sight, but still they weren’t interested. He explained that it was an experiment, and that no one had messed with the bananas (which were getting brown), but they thanked him and shut the door, again and again, so we gave up.”
Kerry’s friend Becky Glaser remembered walking into Kerry’s house and discovering that every container conceivable was filled with peeled bananas. Becky said she will always remember the wild look in Kerry’s eyes, when she walked in and asked him:
“And what the hell are we gonna do with all these fucking bananas?!”
“Well, I’m urging you all to eat them.”
“And what’s gonna happen if we eat them?”
“I’ll get rid of them!”
“Yeah, but what are you going do with the peels?”
“Aha! That’s the important part!”
As Kerry’s brother, Dick Thornley, remembered: “Kerry enthusiastically invited me over for some Mellow Yellow that night. The invitation came after they had baked it. I recall the stuff was essentially powdered charcoal by the time it came out of the oven. It was nearly impossible to light, let alone smoke.”
The Mellow Yellow craze is now considered an urban legend that was promoted by the Los Angeles Free Press article and Donovan’s groovy tune of the same name. According to the liner notes of Donovan’s Greatest Hits, the rumor you could get high from banana peels was started by Country Joe McDonald of Country Joe and the Fish.
Whatever the origin of the Mellow Yellow mythos, Louise Lacey remembers that inhaling the banana skins was anything but mellow. As for copping a buzz, the only one who got off on the stuff was Kerry, who after toking down on a Mellow Yellow reefer, proclaimed, “I’m high!” Leave it to Kerry to be the only person in the history of the Mellow Yellow craze to actually get off on the stuff. Of course, this wasn’t out of the ordinary, because—as Becky Glaser recalled—“Kerry got high off of everything.”
Hear the Mellow Yellow story from an interview I conducted with Louise Lacey in 2007. Play below or download the MP3 here.
I recently received this announcement from Mark Philip Steele:
“Good news, folks, the ILLUMINATUS! comic I published back in 1987 is now in e-comic format, including text commentary. It’s a zip file available for download, and may end up at other sites in other formats. If you’re interested, download the comic and contact me about it. Some of the comments MAY be posted in further editions. There was one self-published issue, then 3 with Rip Off Press, and an unpublished 4th issue. Plans are for us to release one a month from now till we’re done.”
Inspired by last year’s production of Daisy Campbell’s Cosmic Trigger Play and Find the Others Festival, an intrepid group of Discordians across the pond are crowdsourcing a Disco free-for-all called Festival 23 slated for the weekend of July 23rd, 2016 that is described as “An interactive celebration of literature and the arts; of theatre, playshops and music inspired by the Discordian movement; a society of philosophers, theologians, magicians, scientists, artists, clowns and similar maniacs who are intrigued with Eris, Goddess of Confusion, and with her doings.”
To coincide with all these Cosmic Trigger related happenings, the RAW estate has just announced the official launch of its publishing arm Hilartius Press and re-release of a whole slew of RAW titles. First out of the chutes will be—you guessed it!—Cosmic Trigger I: The Final Secret of the Illuminati with a brand spanking new intro by John Higgs author of the fabulous Discordian title KLF: Chaos Magic Music Money that if you haven’t read, you really should, and quickly.
