The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick

by Philip K. Dick

  VALIS is a fusion of the political theme of Tears, the religious theme of Deus Irae, and the street patois and split personality and dope themes of Scanner—it logically follows the three previous novels.

  and other aspects: death and loss, friends. So I am right; 2-3-74 represented a flash in which the independent areas of my thinking fused into one great new synthesis in which everything I had thought before was subsumed beneath a vision of God. [...]

  VALIS is composed of:

  (1) My 10 volume meta-novel

  (2) Politics

  (3) Religion

  (4) My actual life

  (5) History

  all fused together into a total vision that is a structure emanating out of the mutual exchange of (between, among) these five elements up to then existing independent of one another in my mind.

  [89:119] The fifth Savior Fat is looking for will lead the resistance against the regime (the BIP). (Like Che.) This time it won't just be a deposing of the regime; the revolution of the 60s will take over the government and rule in its place; this did not happen in the 60s; once Nixon was out, the counterculture dissolved—because all its leaders had been killed (as the Sibyl pointed out); so the fifth Savior replaces them and leads the revolution to overthrow the regime (the BIP), Reagan himself. This is what VALIS is all about; it preaches revolution. [...]

  I see VALIS as the Bible, a political handbook, a basic text like Mao's Red Book. Copping to the fact that I saw Christ is in order to show my authority for preaching political revolution: we must not only overthrow the regime, we must seize power in its place. I must come out of the closet. I already have in VALIS; in confirming the suspicions raised by Tears!!

  Progress is taking place. Deposing Nixon was not enough; we melted away; it was "business as usual," now we will take over, after a terrible battle with the regime. I must stand behind VALIS theologically and politically: a wholly new thing: the invisible secret true Christians are surfacing, and I am one of them! They've existed for some time but in secret; now they come into the open. VALIS is a manifesto.

  [89:137]

  (1) You cannot apprehend the eide and still employ space, time and causation as ordering categories.

  (2) You cannot employ space, time and causation as ordering categories and still apprehend the eide.

  This is what I finally realized: twin realizations; or rather, twin aspects of one realization. The mind (brain) must choose. (I've read so many articles on philosophy that I finally learned to reason, not just to guess.)

  [89:139] I just reread Flow My Tears. The mystery deepens. Obviously it is The Bacchae retold. Felix Buckman is King Pentheus, the "King of Tears." Jason Taverner is the stranger, the priest of Dionysus, who is imprisoned by Pentheus, and who bursts the prison and causes Pentheus to become insane and dress up in women's garb (alluded to by the character of Alys who "is Felix Buckman's twin"). "King Felix" is Dionysus, "the joy God," who was shown to me to be Christ by the dream I had in which I was shown the book page on which the name "Jesus" split apart into Zeus-Zagreus. Beyond doubt "King Felix" is a cypher and refers to the God who will—and does—pull down the King of Tears, the police tyranny; Dionysus does this (as that U.K. article described). So I am saying that "King Felix" refers primarily to Dionysus, and it was Dionysus who overthrew Nixon. My enthusiasmos in 2-3-74 was by Dionysus; I was intoxicated; it was Dionysus' stoned magic that permitted me to see what I saw in 3-74. Greek—hence I heard Thomas thinking in Greek; hence the Sibyl and Cyclops. By the cypher Dionysus identified himself and his presence, but you had to be "mad" or intoxicated to read the cypher. Hence I dreamed of the maze at Minos, saw Crete beyond the 1:618034 doorway and Aphrodite. I was possessed—and saved—by Dionysus; he saved me from the Xerox missive trap; this is why I was manic—intoxicated. Dionysus! My equation is correct:

  Dionysus inspired the counterculture's overthrow of Nixon. And inspired VALIS in 2-3-74. The joy God—King Felix. The injury done Felix Buckman (the death of Alys) symbolizes the mortal blow to soon be struck at the tyranny by Dionysus.

  Then when I was slipped the hit of STP in '74 it was Dionysus I saw: the grapevines growing up around the figure of the Catholic priest, my little icon of the saint.2 And all the pranks, games and riddles (e.g., re Erasmus). Hence I heard the word dithyramb3—the dance of Dionysus.

  [89:141] I do discuss Dionysus in VALIS, but he has occluded me with Christian material—a diversion that I fell for—until I reread Tears tonight; Dionysus caused me to see all that I saw in 3-74; it was his magic—it wasn't really Christ and God; Dionysus can take any form—he fooled me. Of course, now that VALIS is in print, Dionysus lets me see the truth; since it doesn't matter.

  [...]

  "This, too, is sooth." Yeats. It is magic. Pagan magic. This explains Diana, the AI voice. Pagan magic come to our rescue.

  [89:142] Entry #12 in the tractate:

  The immortal one was known to the Greeks as Dionysus; to the Jews as Elijah; to the Christians as Jesus. He moves on when each human host dies, and thus is never killed or caught. Hence on the cross Jesus said ... etc. Elijah had left him and he died alone.

  I rest my case.

  [...]

  The joyous (happy—Felix) Christians blowing up the BIP and running away—this is Dionysus' perception of the grim King of Tears, his rule, and the bursting of his prison by Dionysus. To Dionysus, this is the basic perception of the dialectic of history: Dionysus, the running, joyous "secret Christians blowing up the black iron prison" versus the King of Tears. And of course I never flashed on this: BIP versus joyous Christians equals prison versus Dionysus. Dionysus equals freedom. BIP and King of Tears equals slavery. This is the underlying struggle.

  Tears is a Greek tragedy, but more than that it is the birth of Christianity out of tragedy: out of the loss and grief at the end, agape is born. So not only is Dionysus there (tragedy) but Christ (Christianity); it is as if Christ is born (at the end). This is truly an extraordinary novel! It is the passing of one age (antiquity) and the birth of the next (Christianity!!). So as a proto-history it goes from B.C. to A.D. The madness induced in Pentheus by Dionysus (Taverner) is converted (by the dream, which is of Christ) into agape, which is sane—the solution to Dionysus and madness and grief and loss is found in Christian agape, which appears as the solution to the ancient world itself. It is as if Dionysus has evolved into Christ. Dowland—because of his lute music—is obviously Orpheus, the link between Dionysus and Christ historically.

  [89:148] Dream: the Parousia is here. RC (Rosy Cross) is controlled by the Roman Catholic church; subliminal messages so that the true Christians will identify themselves. The Holy Mother Church knows Christ is here. Hence VALIS. We are totally under the control of God (Valis) now. The separation of the sheep from the goats has begun.

  [89:186] Surely someone in the world who knows about the Holy Spirit will recognize that this is what VALIS is about (but the humble author did not). Look at their stance at the end; it is that of the Eleven at the time of "Acts"—in fact VALIS is a retelling of the story of the spirit of the risen Lord returning to the grieving disciples; Horselover Fat's grief is over the death of a friend—he seeks this dead, lost friend in and as the Savior; to this lowly grieving man, a paradigm of the Eleven after the crucifixion, there suddenly returns the spirit, turning grief and loss into joy and recovery. The Rhipidon Society is the Eleven. The death of Gloria is the death of Jesus. No one has noticed this, including me. The spirit inspires Fat with faith so that he looks forward to the Parousia not backward to the crucifixion. Without intending it, in VALIS I retold "Acts." So for a second time, "Acts" appears in my writing as the Urwelt, the real world.

  How can it be that I, even I, did not notice this: that I had depicted the grieving disciples (Horselover Fat) after the death of Jesus (Gloria) to whom the Holy Spirit returns, changing grief to joy and loss to recovery, and, most of all, turning him toward the future to wait overtly for the Parousia?

  [89:219] I dreamed t
hat I wrote down that what we call "world" is a program in a meta-computer; the program is arranged conceptually and not in time, space, or by causation; we call this meta-computer that our world is in "God."*

  Folder 59*

  Early 1981

  [59:8]† In VALIS in terms of style I satisfied the most ultra-correct literary standard. From my years of the late 40s and early 50s, when I understood what true literature was especially as I was affected by Norman. Who in turn had been affected by Henry Miller. There is tremendous social, revolutionary and political purpose in the style, as well as the content.‡

  [59:12] VALIS: an artifactual analog of reality being deceptive, paradoxical, resisting analysis as to which parts are true—some parts are true, certainly. Consisting primarily of information, but not such that adds up to a coherent picture. Thus VALIS is the thing it itself describes (analyzes!). Thus primarily VALIS is a creation, not an analysis. It itself poses the very mystery and puzzle that it itself deals with. To understand VALIS, then, is to understand reality in toto itself.

  Reality (as is said in VALIS) is a living maze that constantly changes. VALIS, which analyzes this maze-reality, is itself a maze, and it, like reality, constantly changes.

  My analysis of the logical paradox posed by VALIS is that the narrator is sane and therefore did see Christ: this is the solution to the maze VALIS and can at once be extrapolated to the macrocosmic maze reality; viz: Christ is present, but concealed within and by layers of paradoxical camouflage—exactly as in VALIS.

  [59:43]

  [59:50] Late at night, stoned and drunk, glancing at VALIS: it is highly experimental: absolutely unofficial, anti-official junk art (i.e., protest art); made of the garbage of the vernacular, informal in structure, incorrect in viewpoint: it speaks for and in the language of, the fashion of, a segment of society normally so disenfranchised that even Binky Brown doesn't act as its voice—a certain kind of troubled young isolate asking schizophrenic questions like, "Is the universe real? Is God good?" Superstitious and artless and crude? Is that what VALIS is? Or is it very deliberate and careful, carefully fashioned by the most advanced artistic devices possible, in order to give voice to these, the final frontier of disenfranchised people—as my mail shows! Psychotic or nearly so, alone and brilliant. No one has ever spoken for them—and in their own way of expressing themselves. This is an artifact, not a sincere (naïve) confession; John Clute is wrong! And it will someday so be recognized. It is a cunningly, professionally contrived artifact, i.e., work of protest art, anti-bourgeois and anti-official, but anything but naïve. It is evident that I spent years figuring out how to write it. It is not spontaneous autobiography; it is a forgery, a very artistic forgery; only someone knowing about modern nonobjective protest art—especially that of Weimar!—would know what VALIS really is. It is like a Warhol painting of a Campbell's soup can. It is very avant-garde. It is not what it seems to be—it is not quasi-psychotic confession; it is an artifact. Look out; it will delude you. Yes, it is picaresque! And it is a maze; it deliberately deceives—for the highest possible reason: not an artistic one, but to raise die rote fahne.4 It is of the 30s. It is dada out of antifascist Weimar. It is, in the final analysis, revolutionary (and does not have to do with religion; it has to do with revolutionary action against the state!).

  Scanner gave voice to the 60s street people. VALIS provides a voice to yet another—and even more despised—group—the adolescent loner intellectual, very much like Jack Isidore! This is a very Christian deed on my part, but its main implications are (1) artistic; and (2) revolutionary. It is true modern art—that of the refuse stratum of the computer hacker and Dungeons & Dragons era. (Post dope, as it itself states.) It is as if Jack Isidore has been revealed as secretly wise: a fool in Christ. And Horselover Fat is no schizoid, as was Jack Isidore; he grieves over lost and dead loved ones. His is the apotheosis of Isidore—Isidore grown into tragic maturity, yet still himself: and it is to him that is granted the vision of Christ, as if by Christ, of Christ, to Christ.

  Folder 60

  [60:A-1] "The sacred mushroom and the cross."

  Elijah sending a portion of his spirit back to Elisha.

  The Zadokite scrolls. Superior to Christianity, in relation to which the Gospels are a somewhat attenuated derivation (secondhand).

  Nothing to do with Roman Catholic suppression. And no U.S. G-2 intrigue. Not set in the 60s and nothing to do with civil rights nor antiwar. No seances. Nothing to do with vulgar, popular credulity.

  In a sense this will be about: what it should have been like, i.e., Qumran and a brilliant translator with a totally new and radical concept as to the real meaning of Christianity, in conjunction with a truly profound professional theologian. Episcopalian, not Roman Catholic.

  This will not be Zoroastrian nor Kabbala, since (1) both are known; and (2) I used them in V and VR. This is new.

  But possibly Malebranche and Sankara and Kant? And Spinoza? And Plato—the meta-abstraction; i.e., what I have figured out since I wrote V and VR. I.e., from October 1980 on. All consigned to the Zadokite scrolls. Orphism and Pythagoreanism.

  Sacraments: mushroom bread and broth. In conjunction with the Orphic rites described by Jane Harrison. Zagreus? The miraculous child—the toys. Light, gold. Jacob Boehme's pewter dish—the translator has connected this with the Orphic golden tablets.

  The infancy of Zadok. Miraculous child of light. The Hebrew Zagreus.

  The miraculous child of light, Zadok, is killed, dismembered and eaten; the messianic banquet; this confers (1) immortality; and (2) godlike knowledge. (The translator associates this with [1] Zagreus; and [2] the two trees in the garden of Eden.)

  The communicants are "restored to their pre-fallen state before the soul fell into earthly incarnation in the tomb that is the body"—obviously a mixture of Hebrew and Orphic, hence Platonist and Pythagorean thought; this fusion is what interests both the translator and the Bishop.

  Zagreus to Zadok to Jesus. The translator who is an atheist believes that "Zadok" is a cypher for the hallucinogenic mushroom bread and broth. But the Bishop believes otherwise. (Here I have to take into account The Road to Eleusis.5 I should probably explicitly refer to it.) (But not to John Allegro's book.6) The effect of the flash of light on or from the gold object (toy? vessel?) is viewed as crucial. It induces (?) memory of having been a—God? Well: prefallen man (cf. The Book of Adam and Eve7)—the "Cave of Treasures"—the augmented vision/eyesight,➊ whatever "prefallen man" may signify. Man who ate of the tree of knowledge and acquired the knowledge that "the Elohim" have.

  Their theory: at one time ("in the beginning," as with Julian Jaynes' bicameral mind) we (humans) could see these "primordial archetypal ideas" but no longer can—quite a modification of Malebranche. This is what the eating of the miraculous child of light confers (in conjunction with a flash of light from the golden toys or vessel): ability to see these "primordial archetypal ideas used as the basis of creation—i.e., Plato's eide. (Here the meta-abstraction is understood and presumed.) (I.e., the percipient no longer empirically sees the particular; the lens optic percept system provides a clue that triggers off the appropriate a priori eidos.)

  All this light business relates to the fourth gospel. (And to Zoroastrianism.) The translator figures out (or speculates) based on the use of light in Orphic rites that literal light is involved—something to do with eyesight and the optic nerve and a jolt to the brain and triggering off selective phosphene activity. The phosphenes—optic neurons—are a primordial sense system by which the "archetypal ideas or eidei" were originally a priori perceived, but like the bicameral mind, it has atrophied. Why, the hallucinogenic mushroom bread and broth sets off phosphene activity! As mescaline, peyote, LSD, etc., do.

  ➊ This augmented eyesight the translator and Bishop connect with Malebranche's concept of "primordial archetypal ideas used by God in creating the universe"—probably Plato's eide.

  [60:A-9]

  [60:A-15]

  VALIS is
a titanic work of art based on a titanic artistic vision (2-3-74). I have completely rendered the fool in me (H. Fat the evolved Jack Isidore) onto paper, and this fool is Christ; so I have rendered Christ onto paper; the Savior is in VALIS but not where it says—i.e., the cosmic Christ—no: as Fat. And what does this say of me? I contain Christ—Horselover Fat/Jack Isidore/Thomas.

  It's an extraordinary novel qua novel—about an equally extraordinary experience; and these two interrelate, don't just run parallel; they interact.

  I.e., the vision (2-74 to 2-75) put in artistic form—made into a work of art. So VALIS is more important than 2-74 to 2-75! That was just the vision; what remained was the essential next half: putting it into (converting it into) a work of art.

  [60:A-34] God everywhere! The cat and the music. Each cat's mind is a complete universe; how could this be without the infinity of God?

  I know God through doubt ("you are not the doubter—you are the doubt").

  Here is it all: each atom of reality yields an infinity: and where infinity is, there is God.

  [60:A-35] In VALIS I transmuted myself and my life into a picaroon character: my victory, to artistically render a judgment on my—the artist's—own life! And here's how it comes out: