Final Secret of the Illuminati

by Robert Anton Wilson

  On a beach in Sonoma County, after taking LSD the day before and programming an opening of the self to higher beings or energies. Dr. H. (no longer under the direct influence of the drug) had an experience with Something from the sky. “It wasn’t exactly a Higher Intelligence,” he said carefully, “or, at least, I didn’t receive that aspect of it, if it was Higher Intelligence. To me, it was just energy. Terrible energy. My chest was sore for hours afterward. I thought it would kill me, but I was absolutely ecstatic and ego-less at the peak of it. If the chest-pain weren’t so intense, it would have been a totally positive experience.”

  (MacGregor Mathers, Outer Head of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, and the first occult teacher of such worthies as Aleister Crowley, poet William Butler Yeats and novelist Arthur Machen, once recorded a meeting with the Secret Chiefs. These ambiguous entities, known in several schools of occult training, are variously believed to be discarnate spirits of the great Magi of the past, living Magi who can teleport themselves about as easily as you or I telephone a friend, “angels” in the traditional sense, or merely “beings we cannot understand.” In any case, Mathers noted that the meeting, although pleasant, left him feeling as if he’d been “struck by lightning” and he also suffered chest pains and extreme difficulty in breathing. Dr. Israel Regardie has also noted that Alan Bennett, who was Crowley’s chief teacher for many years, developed asthma, a chest disease. Crowley developed asthma himself as his contacts with the Secret Chiefs occurred more often; and Regardie finally “caught” asthma for several years after studying with Crowley, a condition which was only cured when he went through the bio-energetic therapy of Wilhelm Reich.)

  Dr. H. went on to describe a second experience of the Energy and Light explosion, about a year after the first. This was also ecstatic and strangely frightening. Since then he has felt “healing power” in his hands and has experimentally tried a sort of Reichian-Rolfian massage on some of his patients, with favorable results.

  It occurred to me that, if less prepared for such experiences and less committed to scientific method as a habit of mind, Dr. H. might well have remembered each of these experiences as an encounter with an angel or a UFO . . .

  I remembered Crowley’s discussion of Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, St. Paul and Moses in Book One of Magick. Jesus, Crowley points out, says nothing about the source of his Illumination; Buddha speaks of being tempted by various demons and then seeing the Clear Light; St. Paul tells us he had been “caught upon into Heaven and seen and heard things of which it is not lawful to speak”; Mohammed claims he was visited by the Archangel Gabriel; and Moses simply says he “beheld God.” Crowley comments:

  Diverse as these statements are at first sight all agree in announcing an experience of the class which fifty years ago would have been called supernatural, today may be called spiritual, and fifty years hence will have a proper name based on an understanding of the phenomenon which occurred.76

  Leary emerges from darkness and Sirius rises again

  My goodness, Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas any more.

  – L. Frank Baum

  Early in 1975, I began to receive letters from Dr. Leary again. We communicated at length about many subjects, including the Sirius mystery. Here’s a selection of what Tim had to say (and note that only later did he reveal to me that he was being held in solitary confinement during these months):

  I felt great compassion and affection to realize that you have been worried about me — and that you have trusted me without understanding . . .*

  I am only interested in conversation with Higher Intelligence — and know that Higher Intelligence is not the least interested in politics . . .

  By the way, I have always felt that Crowley’s “Do What Thou Wilt” is good . . . The question then becomes “What do we will to do.” Most of the Crowleyites I’ve met (yourself excluded) seem to have decided they will make pompous asses of themselves. Which is fine with me. But I’m delighted that we’ve found the three obvious steps that a reasonably educated God takes: SMI2LE.

  ~•~

  * Dr. Leary is naïve here. The Metaprogrammer hadn’t exactly “trusted” him but had kept an open mind, balancing the charges of informing made against him with his denials of those charges and deciding that one would gamble with him rather than his accusers. But one always knew one was gambling.

  ~•~

  (SMI2LE was Leary’s new acronym for the Futurist scenario he had derived from the Starseed Transmissions. It means Space Migration + Intelligence2 + Life Extension.)

  As soon as Illuminatus was published in September 1975, people started sending me letters about weird 23s in their own lives; and quite a few thought it worthwhile to inform me that the Morgan Guaranty Trust (an Illuminati hotbed, according to Birchers) is at 23 Wall Street. The most interesting of these communications came from an English flying saucer journal, Fortean News, and was forwarded by a Mr. W.N. Grimstad of St. Petersburg, Florida. The context concerns some mediumistic Contactees (persons allegedly in contact with extraterrestrial Higher Intelligences by means of a trance medium). Here’s the passage that the Wizard enjoyed most:

  “An entity that frequently communicated with the group called himself JIRO — a ludicrous appellation of the sort that seems common to many contactee accounts. The number 23 was communicated repeatedly both in the writings and through the medium, but the members of the group could never understand why. We listened to one tape that consisted of the medium’s transformed voice referring one constantly to 23 and (phonetically) “Leer” (Lear, Leire, Llyr?) . . . One entity claimed it came from LEHRA or LEHAR (Llyr etc. again) . . . The communications contain references to the numbers 666 and 33 (sometimes 333) as well as 23.”

  Shortly after the Wizard received this tidbit, Dr. Leary wrote to me from prison that he and a visitor, novelist Ken Kesey, had thrown the I Ching together, asking when Tim would be released from Durance Vile.

  They received as answer Hexagram 23, “Breaking Apart.”

  (666, of course, is Crowley’s favorite number, the Number of the Beast and of the Stele of Revealing. 333 is the Cabalistic number of “that mighty devil, Choronzon,” who once afflicted Dr. Dee in the 17th Century and gave Aleister himself a rough time in Bou Saada, North Africa, 1909, as recounted in The Vision and the Voice, by Aleister Crowley. 33 has so many mystical meanings in freemasonry that I could write a book about it.)

  Mr. W.N. Grimstad, who sent me that clipping about Lear-23-666-333, mentioned in an accompanying letter that Florida anti-Illuminati groups (I assume he means Birchers) are spreading the theory that Illuminatus is a diabolical attempt to confuse the anti-Illuminati forces and that Shea and I are actually high-ranking Illuminati ourselves.

  That did not surprise the Suspect; I had expected from the beginning that people of a certain cast of mind would regard a satirical treatment of the Illuminati theme as part of the Illuminati’s cover-up effort.

  Later, Mr. Grimstad sent me a tape, entitled “Sirius Rising,” in which he and another conspiracy buff named Downard set forth the most absurd, the most incredible, the most ridiculous Illuminati theory of them all. The only trouble is that, after the weird data we have already surveyed, the Grimstad-Downard theory may not sound totally unbelievable to us.

  According to “Sirius Rising,” the Illuminati are preparing Earth, in an occult manner, for extraterrestrial contact. Part of the magical preparation, which only Illuminated Ones can understand, included:

  (a) The founding of Cal Tech at 33° of latitude. (This was actually partially the work of aerospace engineer and occultist Jack Parsons, who was indeed a disciple of Crowley, as we have seen. In fact, so many of the scientists at Cal Tech were involved in Crowleyan magick, according to some reports, that the government grew concerned and sent in agents to infiltrate the O.T.O. and find out how subversive it might be. L. Ron Hubbard, founder of Scientology, was admittedly a member of that lodge of the O.T.O. at that time, and later claimed he had infiltrated it f
or Naval Intelligence.)

  (b) The assassination of John F. Kennedy at 33° of latitude, to fulfill the alchemical ritual of “the killing of the divine king.”

  (c) The firing of the moon rockets from Cape Kennedy, again at 33° latitude.

  (d) Arranging that the first man to walk on the moon would be a 33° Mason, which Neil Armstrong, it so happens, was. (Mr. Grimstad and Mr. Downard seem to share the notion, widely held by anti-Illuminati buffs, that all 33° Masons are Illuminati initiates.)

  I emphatically don’t believe that rigmarole myself, although it is similar to the kind of Cabalistic-numerological magick to which the Illuminati would be inclined, if they really exist. And the locations given are not all exactly on the 33° of latitude, although I must admit they are all close.

  If you want to hear more of the Downard-Grimstad numerological evidence, write to W.N. Grimstad at P.O. Box 14150, St. Petersburg, Florida, and ask how much he wants for the tapes. (He sent me mine free, evidently hoping I would publicize them. See how obliging I am, Mr. Grimstad?)*

  ~•~

  * The Suspect also suspects that Mr. Grimstad suspects him of being in the real Illuminati and hopes he will give himself away in commenting on all this.

  ~•~

  The Grimstad-Downard theory shows again how different nervous systems picking up the same signals will organize them into different tunnel-realities. Most curious to me was Grimstad and Downard’s rap on the Phoenix, beginning with the facts (already quoted from Kenneth Grant in our chapter Sirius Rising) that “Phoenix” was Crowley’s secret name in the Ordo Templi Orientis and that the Egyptians put Sirius in their constellation of the Phoenix. Messrs. Grimstad and Downard find it significant that the bird on the other side of the Great Seal of the United States (behind the Eye in the Pyramid) is identified as a phoenix by some heraldists (most insist that it is merely an eagle). They then find magick meaning in the coincidence-synchronicity that one of the Symbionese Liberation Army communiques, when they were holding Patty Hearst prisoner, was released through the San Francisco Phoenix.

  That connection is, of course, absurd and, of course, only coincidental. Of course. But it had “meaning” in the Jungian sense, for me. I had been Book Editor of the San Francisco Phoenix when that tape was given to us by the S.L.A., and I was writing an article with Leary about Patty Hearst’s brainwashing when the Sirius tapes arrived from Grimstad.

  Cosmic Coincidence Control Center is still working overtime on my case, I decided.

  The Horus Hawk and Uri Geller

  In September 1975, I was finally allowed to see Timothy Leary in the flesh again, in the office of a U.S. Marshal.

  Timothy was conspicuously unbrainwashed, I would say; although he had been in solitary confinement for 19 months, he was still the same high-energy, high I.Q., high-exuberance individual he had been since I first met him in 1964. He seemed more toughened than aged, and had a grim determination about himself and about the Terra II goals (space migration, higher intelligence, life extension) that reminded me of other ex-cons and their goals.

  “The universe is an intelligence test,” he said at one point — adding later, “Prison is an intelligence test, too. If a mutant can’t survive severe testing, it doesn’t deserve to instigate the next evolutionary stage. That’s a Darwinian law.”

  Tim has testified against four entrepreneurs who he feels betrayed his trust, attempted to implicate him in their own crimes, and exploited him financially. He denies testifying against anyone else, and is emphatic in denying that he testified against Weather Underground (“I know nothing that can be used against them, actually”) or against the alleged worldwide drug conspiracy known as “The Brotherhood of Eternal Love.” He says his talks with narcotics agents about that “conspiracy” convinced the Drug Enforcement Administration that it never existed and led to the dropping of charges against himself and others who had been accused of profiting from it. “Nobody has gone to jail because of me, and nobody will,” he stated flatly; none of his critics have refuted this by producing a case of a person convicted and sentenced because of Tim’s testimony.

  The four persons against whom Tim testified could not be sentenced to prison anyway (the statute of limitations on the one crime he could nail them for ran out in 1975). Tim was satisfied that these individuals no longer control his finances and that their fear about his testimony caused them to take a public role as leaders of a campaign to discredit him. That, he says delightedly, prevented them from pretending to be part of his defense staff again.

  Five months later, in February 1976, the Parole Board met to decide on Dr. Leary’s fate. They “downed him for a deuce” in the argot of his current peer group — that is, they sent him back for two more years in prison. His next hearing, they ruled, would be in February 1978, when he would be 59-going-on-60 years of age. This, you have to admit, is pretty ungrateful treatment if Tim really had testified against myriads of old associates.

  At this point, PEN — the Poets, Essayists, and Novelists Club — re-entered the case and drew up a letter to Congress, asking for a Congressional hearing on the Leary case, to investigate charges of conspiracy to violate Leary’s civil liberties, which Leary claimed might include high-ranking Justice Department officials. Leary wished Congress to inquire into: why a government agent (Dennis Martino) was placed in Leary’s legal defense organization against Supreme Court rulings making such infiltration illegal; why Tim served so much time for an offense usually punished with no more than 6 months; why he was placed in solitary confinement with no charges of violence against him; why government agents cooperated with unfriendly witnesses (the four entrepreneurs) in spreading inaccurate reports that Tim was a wholesale informer who had testified against “hundreds” of innocents and was about to be assassinated; and evidence that two other members of his defence team (besides Martino) might be government double-agents. These two, Tim claims, have incited left-wing crimes, a COINTELPRO operation since 1968.

  COINTELPRO — Counter-Intelligence Program — was an FBI project that involved infiltrating civil rights groups, peace groups, New Left groups and other dissident organizations, in a deliberate attempt to incite violence, destroy the reputation of those opposing the Establishment, and spread paranoia against dissidents. Jane Fonda, the Black Panther Party and the Trotskyists, among others, have sued the government for conspiracy to violate their civil rights through COINTELPRO operations. The family of assassinated Black Panther leader Fred Hampton are also suing, claiming to have evidence that the man who drugged Hampton before Hampton was shot was an FBI agent.

  “The truth is much funnier than the myths,” Tim told me. “It’s all exactly like your novel, Illuminatus. At least two of my public representatives were government agents involved with underground terrorist groups also. But that’s not anything odd or special — it’s quite normal, I’ve found. The Weather people could surface tomorrow without being prosecuted, because the case against them is equally tainted.”

  Four weeks after PEN published these charges, the Parole Board had an unscheduled meeting, reversed themselves, and ordered Tim released on the following day. He departed for the mountains of New Mexico with Joanna for a vacation and delayed honeymoon.

  The whole story of what actually went on behind the scenes with Leary, the dozens of lawyers involved, the Justice Department, Weather and COINTELPRO are not fully known to me. But Weather has several times since then discussed surfacing, as if convinced that Tim is right and they cannot be prosecuted.

  “I’ve learned a lot about mammalian politics,” Tim says. “I’ve held my own in dealing with the Justice Department, the narcs, the FBI, the CIA, Weather Underground, Al Fatah in Algiers, the local cops in dozens of states, prison guards and administrators in 29 prisons on 3 continents, and all the prison gangs of the California Archipelago — the Manson crowd, the Aryan Brotherhood, the JDL, the Black Muslims, the Mexican and Sicilian Mafias . . . No other social psychologist has had this kind of practical field e
xperience with groups who will kill you in a minute if you show weakness. This has been the greatest educational experience of my life.”

  Even before Leary was out of prison, I began meeting and corresponding with various scientists who had been drawn into his SMI2LE scenario despite the potential risk to their own reputations involved in association with an allegedly insane convict. Most of them, like Dr. Paul Segall, were longtime Immortalists and concerned chiefly with life extension research. Others were psychologists fascinated by Tim’s neurological model to explain the higher consciousness states. One group that held special interest for me were California physicists concerned with parapsychology and Leary’s work in relation to their own theories on quantum mechanics.

  This group included Dr. Jack Sarfatti (co-author of Space-Time and Beyond), Dr. Fred Wolf, Saul-Paul Sirag and Dr. Nick Herbert.

  Sirag, in particular, soon became a close friend.

  “I have four quantum models that cover that,” Saul-Paul says whenever I tell him a new occult adventure. And he always does have (at least) three models. Once I asked him if there wasn’t one model that he especially likes.

  “Well,” he said, “maybe it’s all happening at once . . .” By “all” he meant the models we had been discussing that evening (extraterrestrials, time-travelers and a mutation in human neurology).

  Saul-Paul, when Uri Geller was in the United States in 1973, being investigated, once tried to “contact” SPECTRA, the alleged extraterrestrial entity that supposedly communicates through Geller and enables him to read minds and bend metal.

  Geller said that Sirag could see SPECTRA, if he were properly attuned, by looking into his (Geller's) eyes.