The illuminatus! trilogy (114 page)
Read The illuminatus! trilogy Online
Authors: Robert Shea,Robert Anton Wilson
Tags: #Science fiction; American, #General, #Science fiction, #Fiction, #Fantasy, #Visionary & Metaphysical
In essence, then, the basic symbols, of magic, mythology, and religion—whether Eastern or Western, ancient or modern, “right-hand” or “left-hand”—are so simple that only
the pernicious habit of looking for alleged “profundities” and “mysteries” prevents people from automatically understanding them almost without thinking. The meaning of the hexagram—the female equivalent of the male pentagram —was explicated by Freud himself, but most students, convinced that the answer could not be so elementary and down-to-earth, continue to look into the clouds.
The same principles apply to written symbols. The all-important name YOD HE VAU HE, for instance, has traditionally been scanned in various ways, of which the most significant correlations are given in the following table:
The traditional lion-man-eagle-bull symbolism also fits this table,
*
as do Joyce’s Four Old Men in
Finnegans Wake
;
†
it can also be found in the Aztec codices and Buddhist mandalas.
The essential and original meaning, of course, is a program for a ritual, and the ritual is magick. The four letters are simply the four beats in Wilhelm Reich’s formula: muscular tension → electrical charge → electrical discharge → muscular relaxation. In short, as Freud once noted, every
sexual act involves, at a minimum, four parties. The father and son provide a “fist” and a “nail;” the mother and daughter provide two “windows.” The case of the Chicago schizophrenic killer William Heirens, who experienced orgasm when climbing through windows, demonstrates that this symbolism does not have to be taught and is inherent in the human mind, although always subject to the distortion exemplified by the Saures.
Finally, the universal blessing given on page 218 is intimately involved with the YHVH formula:
I bless Ra, the fierce sun burning bright
I bless Isis-Luna in the night
I bless the air, the Horus-Hawk
I bless the earth on which I walk
The fiery father, the watery mother, the airy son, and the earthy daughter are all there, just as they are in every alchemical formula.
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But we say no more at this point, lest the reader begin seeking for a 5 = 4 equation to balance the 5 = 6.
We conclude with a final warning and clarification: Resort to mass sacrifice (as among the Aztecs, the Catholic Inquisition, and the Nazi death camps) is the device of those who are incapable of the true Rite of the Dying God.
*
The basic Christian Science mantra, known as “The Scientific Statement of Being,” no less, is as follows: “There is no life, truth, intelligence nor substance in matter. All is infinite mind and its infinite manifestation, for God is all in all, Spirit is immortal truth: matter is mortal error. Spirit is the real and eternal; matter is the unreal and temporal. Spirit is God and man is His image and likeness. Therefore man is not material, he is spiritual.” The fact that these statements are, in terms of the scientific criteria, “meaningless,” “non-operational,” and “footless” is actually totally irrelevant.
They work
. Try them and see. As Aleister Crowley, no friend of Mrs. Eddy’s, wrote, “Enough of Because! May he be damned for a dog!”
*
Look up the etymology of that word some time and see if it means anything.
*
A glance at the end of Appendix Beth will save the reader from misunderstanding the true tenor of these remarks.
*
Aleister Crowley again, under another pen-name.
†
See the anthology
Perception
, edited by Robert Blake, Ph.D., and especially the chapter by psychologist Carl Rogers, which demonstrates that people’s perceptions change while they are in psychotherapy. As William Blake noted, “The fool sees not the same tree that the wise man sees.”
*
Do you believe that?
*
These two signs of growth often appear at the same time, being DNA-triggered openings of the fourth neural circuit.
*
They were quite good friends, though, and he did fuck her occasionally.
*
This book has stated it as clearly as possible in a number of places, but some readers are still wondering what we are holding back.
*
This being has more in common with the ordinary nocturnal visitor, sometimes called a “ghost,” than is immediately evident to the uninitiated. Cf. the well-documented association of poltergeist disturbances with adolescents.
*
This association, attributing diabolism to the left-hand path, is oversimplified, prejudiced, and superstitious. In general, it can be said that the left-hand pentagram is suitable for both invocations and evocations, whereas the right-hand pentagram is suitable only for evocations, and that is the only important difference. (It is assumed that the reader understands the pentagram as an exclusively male symbol.)
†
Cf. the Tarot trumps II and III—the Magus, holding one arm upward and one downward, and the High Priestess, sitting between the pillars of Day and Night. (The Priestess is also associated with the Hebrew letter
gimmel
, the camel, and part of the meaning of this symbolism is contained in the shapes of the camel’s back and the Hebrew letter.)
‡
This makes it quite useless for summoning werewolves. The Sacred Chao, however, is intended to teach a philosophical lesson, not to attract individuals with dubious pastimes.
*
Fewer than seventy, according to a classical enumeration.
*
The magician must always identify fully with the victim, and share every agonized contortion to the utmost. Any attitude of standing aside and watching, as in a theatrical performance, or any intellectualization during the moments when the sword is doing its brutal but necessary work, or any squeamishness or guilt or revulsion, creates the two-mindedness against which Hagbard so vehemently warns in
Never Whistle While You’re Pissing
. In a sense, only the mind dies.
*
See Israel Regardie,
The Tree of Life
.
*
YOD, the fiery father, is the lion (fire-sign); HE, the watery mother, is man as humanity; VAU, the air spirit, is eagle; final HE, earth, is bull.
†
Marcus Lyons (i.e., the lion) is the fiery father; Matt Gregory (i.e., the ego) is the watery mother; John McDougall (i.e., eagle) is the airy son; Luke Tarpey (taur, the bull) is the earthy daughter.
*
In this connection—and also,
en passant
, as an indication that Adolf Hitler’s link with the Illuminati was not invented for this work of “fiction”—we suggest that the reader look into
The Morning of the Magicians
, by Pauwels and Bergier.
OPERATION MINDFUCK
OM was originally instigated by Ho Chih Zen, of the Frisian Liberation Front, who is the same person but not the same individual as Lord Omar Khayyam Ravenhurst, author of
The Honest Book of Truth
. The guiding philosophy is that originally proposed in
The Theory of Games and Economic Behavior
by von Neumann and Morgenstern: namely, that the only strategy which an opponent cannot predict is a random strategy. The foundation had already
been laid by the late Malaclypse the Younger, K.S.C., when he proclaimed, “We Discordians must stick apart.” This radical decentralization of all Discordian enterprises created a built-in random factor even before Operation Mind-fuck was proposed. To this day, neither Ho Chih Zen himself nor any other Discordian apostle knows for sure who is or is not involved in any phase of Operation Mindfuck or what activities they are or are not engaged in as part of that project. Thus, the outsider is immediately trapped in a double-bind: the only safe assumption is that anything a Discordian does is somehow related to OM, but, since this leads directly to paranoia, this is not a “safe” assumption after all, and the “risky” hypothesis that whatever the Discordians are doing is harmless may be “safer” in the long run, perhaps.
Every aspect of OM follows, or accentuates, this double-bind.
*
OM projects vary from the trivial to the colossal.
An example of the former is a rubber stamp owned by Dr. Mordecai Malignatus, which says SEE MENTAL HEALTH RECORDS. (Dr. Malignatus casually picked this up from a public-health clinic while nobody was looking.) Any mail which Dr. Malignatus considers impertinent or insulting— especially if it comes from a government office—is stamped with this motto and sent back, otherwise untouched. This causes considerable puzzlement to various bureaucrats.
An example of the latter is Project Jake, instigated by Harold Lord Randomfactor. Once or twice a year, a public servant who has distinguished himself by more than common imbecility is selected as target for a Jake and all Discordian cabals are alerted—including the various branches of the Erisian Liberation Front, the Twelve Famous Buddha Minds, the St. Gulik Iconistary, the Earl of Nines, the Tactile Temple of Eris Erotic, the Brotherhood of the Lust of Christ, Green & Pleasant Enterprises, Society for Moral
Understanding and Training, the In-Sect, the Golden Apple Panthers, the Paratheo-Anametamystikhood of Eris Esoteric, Sam’s Café, the Seattle Group, the Stone Dragon Cabal, the Universal Erisian Church, and the Young Americans for Real Freedom.
*
On Jake Day, the public servant being honored receives mail from
all
of these, on their official letterheads (which are somewhat weird, it must be granted), asking for help in some complicated political matter that passes all rational understanding. The official so honored can conclude either that he is the target of a conspiracy composed entirely of lunatics, or that the general public is much more imaginative and less stodgy than he had previously assumed.
Between the trivial and the colossal there is a variety of OM which can be called the chronic.
Most notable is the honorary membership. Not wishing to exclude anybody from membership in the Erisian movement for such a technicality as being non-Erisian, the legendary Malaclypse the Younger invented several honorary Aneristic groups. It is now the tradition for any Discordian cabal to appoint anybody to one of these groups if his or her behavior is notably Aneristic. For instance, a high-school principal who has given a particularly stirring assembly speech on some such topic as “The Draft as a Protection for Our Freedoms” (or “Taxation as a Protection for Our Property” or any of the other oxymorons beloved by educators) might thereafter receive some such mailing as this:
House of Apostles of Eris
(✓) Safeguard this letter; it is an important historical document.
( ) Burn after reading—subversive literature.
( ) Ignore and continue what you were doing before opening this.
Dear (✓) Sir ( ) Madam ( ) Fido:
It has recently come to Our ears that you, in your official capacity as principal of Aaron Burr High School, said in a public meeting, with your bare face hanging out, that death by napalm is “really no more painful than a bad cold” and that Orientals have “tougher epidermi than whites and feel less acutely.”
In Our official capacity as High Priest of the Head temple of the House of Apostles of Eris, We congratulate you for helping to restore American education to its rightful position as the envy and despair of all other (and, hence, lesser) educational systems.
You are hereby appointed a five-star General in the Bureau of the Division of the Department of the Order of the Knights of the Five-Sided Castle, Quixote Cabal, with full authority to shrapnel your friends and bomb your neighbors.
If you have any answers, We will be glad to provide full and detailed questions.
In the Name of La Mancha,
Theophobia the Elder, M.C.P.
High Priest, Head temple
Hail Eris—All hail Discordia—Kallisti
This document will be stamped with such legends as OFFICIAL—DO NOT USE THIS PAPER AS TOILET TISSUE; SE-CREDIT—FOR YOUR EYES ONLY; QUIXQTE LIVES, etc., all in the most tasteful blues and reds, together with Easter Bunny seals, ribbons, and whatever other decorations it pleases the local cabal to attach. Often it will be accompanied by a button or an armband, making the possessor a five-star General, adorned with a classic rendition of the Knight of the Mournful Countenance. Copies, of course, will be sent to the radical students at the school to guarantee that the principal being honored will see and hear many references to Don Quixote in following days, lest he think he is dealing with a single “harmless lunatic.” (The official signal of the Knights of the Five-Sided Castle, needless to say, is a pentagon with a golden apple inside.)
Other groups to which individuals may be given honorary membership for conspicuously Aneristic behavior are:
the Hemlock Fellowship—for academic leaders who have taken strong actions to protect students from disturbing ideas and/or to deny tenure to controversial teachers or professors;
the St. Famine Society for War Against Evil—for people who have exhibited unusual concern for the moral behavior of their neighbors;
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the Flat Earth Society—for legislators or citizens’ groups
dedicated to preventing the dissemination of “modernistic” ideas in education;
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