Final Secret of the Illuminati

by Robert Anton Wilson

  Every day in 1973 the Watergate story made headlines. Every day it appeared that the worst, the most absurd, the most incredible, the most depraved ideas in Illuminatus were the actual policies of the Nixon regime. We had tried to imagine Total Evil combined with Total Stupidity, but Nixon had actually lived out our fantasies.

  The Shaman began to wonder: were all the paranoids right, or was his ESP more highly developed than he had ever dared imagine?

  Meanwhile, I was getting poorer and poorer, and began to regret bitterly that I had quit Playboy. I had been on unemployment for six months once, in my early 30s, and that was unpleasant. I always knew that I would be employed again, soon, and would be a great author some day. Now, the Poor Fool found himself unemployed, not selling any of his writings for months on end, and forced to apply for Welfare. I was brutally turned down, and spent nearly a whole day seriously considering the possibility that I, my wife and our four children might actually starve to death. It could happen; it did happen occasionally in this great and prosperous nation; and it was commonplace in Asia.

  The Fool appealed and got on Welfare. It was not only bloody unpleasant but Goddamned frightening. A man in his 40s does not have the optimism of a man in his 30s. The Fool began to wonder if he would ever get off Welfare . . . if Illuminatus would ever be published . . . if he had finally arrived at the bottom of the heap in America, the True Failure (Americanus Nondesirabilis).

  I was continuing to investigate the Illuminati, now filtering the evidence through the hypothesis that they were a group of mystics who functioned as secret societies, not only because they were using sexual yoga (as I had deduced from Crowley’s writings in 1971) but also because they had contact with Higher Intelligences elsewhere in space-time. Naturally, Metaprogramming Center found evidence to support this.

  Akron Daraul, in his History of Secret Societies, traces the Illuminati back to the Ishmaelian sect of Islam, a quasi-Sufic organization which used sex-and-hashish to program higher states of consciousness. Louis Culling also traces Crowley’s magick tradition back to medieval Sufis who were contemporaries of, and presumably influenced by, the Ishmaelians. Francis King, the leading (non-paranoid) occult historian of our time, quotes official Ordo Templi Orientis documents, written either by Crowley or under Crowley’s supervision, which claim that the O.T.O. was founded by Mansur el Hallaj, a medieval Sufi saint.48

  The Sufis have always claimed to be in communication with Higher Intelligences, just like the early Gnostics, from whom many historians believe Sufism derives. A Sufi philosopher, Idries Shah, in a book of strange parables called The Dermis Probe, says his purpose is to illustrate “some of the peculiarities of thought in the country which is today’s world, seen by its inhabitants and by those who call themselves visitors. ” (Italics added.)49

  As soon as the Fool entered the belief-system in which the Illuminati were Sufis living in the Western world and continuing this millennia-old contact with Higher Intelligence, the phenomenon intersecting his life adjusted itself to support this theory. He had a weird experience with a Sufi.

  My son Graham went to Berkeley to visit with friends for the summer. He was supposed to phone home once a week, but of course he didn’t always do so. One day, I got a lecture engagement at the First Unitarian Church in Berkeley and Arlen asked me to try to find Graham and insure that he was not in any trouble. Finding one 14-year-old boy in a city the size of Berkeley is not easy, but after my lecture I tried wandering around, hoping my ESP would click into action and direct me on the right path.

  Greg Hill, Bill Broadbent and I wandered into Tilden Park, watching some clowns perform. Graham was not in the crowd, so I wanted to move on. Bill insisted that we wait a while. The Shaman became interested in one particular clown, Parcifal, recognizing some of his stunts as Sufi exercises to activate higher-circuit consciousness.

  The Sufis are notorious for disguising themselves as clowns, but this was the first time I had actually seen it done.

  “That guy’s a Sufi,” I said to Greg and Bill.

  After the act, Greg went up to Parcifal and asked directly, “Are you a Sufi?”

  “Are you also on the Path?” Parcifal rejoined.

  “No,” Greg said, indicating me, “he said you’re a Sufi.”

  Parcifal turned. “Are you on the Path?” he asked.

  “Well, I’m on some Path or other,” I said. We got into a rap about Sufism and the Western occult tradition and how both link up with Gnosticism and the Egyptian mysteries. Finally, the Father said, “I have to leave. I’m looking for my son.”

  “You’ll find him,” Parcifal said.

  The Father walked about ten paces and saw Graham sitting in Hardcastle’s restaurant on Telegraph Avenue.

  “We’re going back to Telegraph,” I told Bill and Greg.

  The trip took a half-hour. When we arrived, Graham and two friends had just entered before us. Graham was not in Hardcastle’s when I saw him there. The Oracle had seen across time as well as across space.

  Graham, Greg Hill and Bill Broadbent will all confirm this story. Good old Martin Gardner, spokesman for the Fundamentalist wing of the Materialist church, will say they’re all liars. So it goes.

  That evening, the Numerologist looked up “Parcifal” in Crowley’s Cabalah, just for the hell of it. Cabalah, of course, is all superstition and nonsense, but it is alleged, by those who believe in it, to be a decoding system for discovering the occult meaning of strange events. By Cabalah, Parcifal = 418 = “The Great Work Accomplished,” i.e., the total awakening of all humanity.

  When I tried to find Parcifal again, he had left America, He was in Israel, other Sufis told me, operating a home for Jewish and Arab children orphaned in the continuous Israeli-Arab wars.

  A message from Cosmic Central?

  In October 1973, I finally received permission to begin corresponding with Dr. Leary at Folsom Prison. I started out with a letter about the general philosophical implications of tuning the nervous system to higher fidelity of signal-reception and very carefully did not mention my July 23 experience with Sirius. (I was fairly sure that my July-August impressions that Timothy was doing telepathic experiments had been accurate, but I had no idea yet that he was attempting interstellar telepathy.) Tim’s answer was full of characteristic humor:

  The prison administration is perfect. They act as a Van Allen belt protecting my privacy, screening out distractions . . . The people they refuse visiting privileges are exactly those people who come to exploit me or whose love for me is flawed.

  (My gratitude toward the prison warden must not be misunderstood. They are too possessive and jealous — terrible states to be in. Their love and dependence on me are too restricting. They are terrorized that I might leave them . . . in the lurch, so to say. This is unhealthy for them . . .)

  I wrote back, but remained mum about Sirius. Instead, just for the hell of it, I used my official Discordian Society letterhead.

  The stationery bears the imprint of the Joshua Norton Cabal, this being a Cabal of the Discordian Society located in the Bay Area — other Cabals including the Tactile Temple of Eris Erotic in Los Angeles, the Colorado Encrustation in Denver, the John Dillinger Died for You Society in Chicago, etc. Timothy, however, seems to have thought Joshua Norton Cabal was the name of a living person. Actually, Joshua Norton — or Norton I, as he preferred — was a San Franciscan of the last century who elected himself Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico. Bay Area historians still argue as to whether Norton was a psychotic or a clever con-man; in any event, he was “humored” by the citizenry of the time and, in effect, lived like an Emperor. As Greg Hill, co-founder of Discordianism, has written, “Everybody understands Mickey Mouse. Few understand Herman Hesse. Hardly anybody understands Einstein. And nobody understands Emperor Norton.” (The Discordian Society, we repeat again, is not a complicated joke disguised as a new religion but really a new religion disguised as a complicated joke.)

  Timothy replied:
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  Dear Bob . . .

  Quick response . . . to indicate that transmission is working well from this galaxy to yours.

  Your stationery amazed me . . . could you explain any of it? Like ODD3140Aft1 1bii? And who is Joshua Norton Cabal?

  Actually the Warden here is very protective of me. He is like a gruff Zen abbot: He doesn’t want me to be bothered with visits or correspondence which would bring me down, slow up my scientific work etc. As long as I sit in my cell and write science fiction books . . . everyone is happy.

  Yes, G.I. Gurdjieff is my direct predecessor. I have never doubted that his baraka was transferred to me . . . perhaps by some intermediary. I love Him and I resonate to his wisdom more than anyone else’s.

  Crowley . . . the coincidences-synchronicities between my life and His are embarrassing. Brian Barritt and I had a visionary experience Easter Sat-Sun in Bou Saada, the Algerian town where C. had his. Etc.

  The Libertarian wrote back discussing the odd links between Leary’s work and that of Crowley and Gurdjieff, and mentioning the evidence that the latter two were both taught certain advanced techniques of consciousness-expansion by the Sufi lodges of the Near East. He also mentioned that Rasputin might have had the same sort of Sufi training during his wanderings.

  Leary’s reply blew his mind:

  Dear Bob . . .

  Loved your letter . . .

  Are you in touch with teachings, methods, teachers, etc. that transmit Higher Intelligence that you are totally hooked into?

  If so, would you tell me.

  I don’t believe in secrets . . .

  I believe that Higher Intelligence can be contacted and have described how to do it and what They transmit, etc. Have you contacted Joanna? Ask Her to send you a copy of Terra II.

  You mention that Crowley, G. and Rasputin may have had contact with some Sufi lodge. Do you think this “lodge” actually exists in the human sense of Masters in the Middle East who send G and C and R out as emissaries? This is the most exciting idea I’ve puzzled over for ten years.

  I have seen what can be transmitted through one unit. The one that I belonged to. Where are the others? . . .

  I am amazed that you haven’t contacted Michael Horowitz.

  Mike Horowitz, a thin, intense, brilliant guy, is Director of the Fitzhugh Ludlow Memorial Library in San Francisco — a psychopharmacological archive full of rare literature on drugs — scientific, propagandistic (government), literary, or just journalistic. When the Investigator got in touch with Mike Horowitz, he heard, for the first time, about the Starseed Transmissions.

  Meanwhile, Dr. Leary was shifted from Folsom to Vacaville and communication with him temporarily shorted-out. Once again, I had to apply for permission to correspond, fill out the right forms when they were finally mailed, and then wait for the new warden’s decision. The Libertarian felt increasingly like one of the scholars of the Middle Ages, trying to keep up communication with a fellow investigator while the Holy Inquisition created as much static as possible.

  It should be remembered, in evaluating the Starseed signals, that, a few months before this experience, three government psychiatrists testified (at the escape trial) that Dr. Leary was perfectly sane and possessed a high I.Q. Since so many extremists of Left and Right have impugned Dr. Leary’s sanity, it should also be entered in the record that Dr. Wesley Hiler, a staff psychologist at Vacaville, who spoke to Dr. Leary every day (often to ask Tim’s advice) emphatically agrees with that verdict. “Timothy Leary is totally, radiantly sane,” he told me in a 1973 interview.

  As recounted in Terra II, during July-August 1973, Dr. Leary had formed a four-person telepathy team in an attempt to contact Higher Intelligences elsewhere in the galaxy. (This was in the middle of the “dog days,” when I was having my first (real or hallucinatory) Contacts with Sirius.) The persons involved were: Dr. Leary and his wife, Joanna; fellow prisoner Wayne Benner: and Wayne’s girlfriend, a journalist who prefers to be known as Guanine.

  The Starseed Transmissions — “hallucinations” or what-ever — were received in 19 bursts, seldom in recognizable English sentences, requiring considerable meditation and discussion between the four Receivers before they could be summarized, eventually, into the following message:

  It is time for life on Earth to leave the planetary womb and learn to walk through the stars.

  Life was seeded on your planet billions of years ago by nucleotide templates which contained the blueprint for gradual evolution through a sequence of biomechanical stages.

  The goal of evolution is to produce nervous systems capable of communicating with and returning to the Galactic Network where we, your interstellar parents, await you.

  Life on planet Earth has now reached this halfway point, established itself, and evolved through larval mutations and metamorphoses to the seven brain stages.

  At this time the voyage home is possible.

  Assemble the most intelligent, advanced, courageous of your species, divided equally between men and women. Let every race, nationality, and religion be represented.

  You are about to discover the key to immortality in the chemical structure of the genetic code, within which you will find the scripture of life. The time has come for you to accept the responsibility of immortality. It is not necessary for you to die.

  You will discover the key to enhanced intelligence within the chemistry of the nervous system. Certain chemicals, used wisely, will enable your nervous system to decipher the genetic code.

  All life on your planet is a unity. All life must come home.

  Total freedom, responsibility and interspecies harmony will make the voyage possible. You must transcend larval identities of race, culture and nationality.

  Your only allegiance is to life. The only way you will survive is to make the voyage home.

  The Japanese people are the most advanced race on your planet and will give protection to the company.

  We are sending a comet to your solar system as a sign that the time has come to look to the stars.

  When you arrive back home you will be given new instructions and powers. Your sperm ship is the flower of terrestrial life. As soon as the company is formed and the voyage begun, war, poverty, hatred, fear will disappear from your planet and the most ancient prophecies and celestial visions will be realized.

  Mutate!

  Come home in glory.

  In the following months. Comet Kohoutek, as predicted in the Transmissions, arrived in the solar system and sped inward toward the sun, while astronomers announced an unprecedented spectacle and Leary’s disciples chortled at the confirmation.

  Then the comet fizzled, leaving us wondering.

  Some Egyptian gods intrude on the narrative and Our Lady of Space speaks again

  In 1904, in one of the most extraordinary magickal experiences of his life, Aleister Crowley contacted a Higher Intelligence named Aiwass, who dictated to him The Book of the Law. In what follows, we will show some imagistic links between this Book and the Starseed Signals — but first, a few details about how Crowley received this strange document:

  Aleister and his first wife, Rose, were in Cairo, Egypt, when Rose began going spontaneously into trances and muttering “They are waiting for you,” and similar urgent but unintelligible phrases. Crowley did not like this at all, since it is typical of the uncontrolled, quasi-hysterical trances of spiritualist mediums (whom he despised) and lacked the elements of willed concentration and rational control that he demanded of his magick experiments. Nonetheless, despite his attempts to banish the phenomenon, it kept coming back, and finally, in one of Rose’s trances, Crowley set a series of tests for the alleged communicating entity. He asked Rose, for instance, to describe the aura of the being, and she said “deep blue”; he asked the character of the being, and she said “force and fire”; he asked her to pick the being from drawings of ten Egyptian gods, and she picked Horus. She also identified Horus’ planet (Mars), and so forth for a series of similar questions. Crow
ley then calculated the odds against her being right in all cases — for instance, guessing Mars had a 1/9 probability, there being 9 planets, picking Horus out of 10 drawings had a 1/10 probability, etc. The chance of her guessing right on the whole series by chance was, mathematically, 1/21,168,000. (The long-suffering skeptical reader may resist the “reality” of Horus by accepting the less bizarre theory that Rose was simply reading Aleister’s mind.)

  The next day, Crowley took Rose to the Boulak Museum and asked her to identify the communicant from the statues and paintings there. She walked past several depictions of Horus — the ever-cynical Aleister watching, he says, in “silent glee” — and then stopped at a stele showing a dark woman bending over a winged globe, a hawk-headed god and a human male. “This is the one,” she said, pointing to the hawk-headed god, Horus. The stele was numbered 666 by the museum officials, and that was a synchronicity that got Aleister’s immediate attention. He had been using 666 as his own magick number for years.50

  Graphic above: Stele 666 from the Boulak museum, Cairo. The goddess is Nuit, the deity Horus, and the human appears to be one Ankh-f-na-Khonsu, a priest, whose tomb this originally adorned. Note the winged globe, and see the next illustrations some paragraphs from here.

  Crowley decided to cooperate, and back at his hotel accepted a light trance in which The Book of the Law was dictated to him in a “rich baritone” by an invisible being. The book opens:

  Had! The manifestation of Nuit.

  The unveiling of the company of heaven.

  Every man and every woman is a star.

  Nuit, the Egyptian divinity of the stars, seems to tell us, in these opening verses, that we are Her children. She goes on to declare:

  I am above you and in you. My ecstasy is in yours.