The Illuminatus! Trilogy

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The Illuminatus! Trilogy Page 16

by Robert Anton Wilson


  Storming, he charged back to the bedroom. I'll just get dressed, he thought furiously, including my smoke bombs and Luger and laser ray, and toddle over to this Starry Wisdom church and see what I can nose out. But when he tore open the bedroom door he stopped, momentarily stunned. Concepcion still lay in the bed but she was no longer sleeping. Her throat was neatly cut and a curious dagger with a flame design on it stuck into the pillow beside her.

  "Damn, blast and thunder!" cried 00005. "Now that absolutely does tear it. Every time I find a good piece of ass those fuckers from BUGGER come along and shaft her!"

  Ten minutes later, the GO signal came from the White House, a fleet of SAC bombers headed for Santa Isobel with hydrogen bombs, and Fission Chips, fully dressed, toddled over to the Starry Wisdom church where he encountered, not BUGGER, but something on an entirely different plane.

  BOOK TWO: ZWEITRACHT

  "It must have a 'natural' cause."

  "It must have a 'supernatural' cause."

  Let these two asses be set to grind corn.

  –Frater Perdurabo, O.T.O., "Chinese Music," The Book of Lies

  THE FOURTH TRIP, OR CHESED

  Jesus Christ On A Bicycle

  Mister Order, he runs at a very good pace

  But old Mother Chaos is winning the race

  –Lord Omar Khayaam Ravenhurst, K.S.C., "The Book of Advice," The Honest Book of Truth

  Among those who knew that the true faith of Mohammed was contained in the Ishmaelian teachings, most were sent out into the world to seek positions in the governments of, the Near East and Europe. Since it pleased Allah to decree this task for them, they obeyed willingly; many served thus for their whole lives. Some, however, after five or ten or even twenty years of such fealty to a given shah or caliph or king, would receive, through surreptitious channels, a parchment bearing the symbol: That night, the servant would strike, and disappear like smoke; and the master would be found in the morning, throat cut, with the emblematic Flame Dagger of the Ishmaelians lying beside him. Others were chosen to serve in a different manner, maintaining the palace of Hassan i Sabbah himself at Alamout. These were especially fortunate, for it was their privilege to visit more often than others the Garden of Delights, in which the Lord Hassan himself would, through his command of magic chemicals, transfer them into heaven while they still lived in the body. One day in the year 470 (known to the uncircumcised Christian dogs as 1092 A.D.) another proof of the Lord Hassan's powers was given to them, for they were all summoned to the throne room and there sat the Lord Hassan in all his glory, while before him on the floor lay a plate bearing the head of the disciple Ibn Azif.

  "This deluded one," the Lord Hassan declared, "has disobeyed a command- the one crime that cannot be forgiven in our Sacred Order. I show you his head to remind you of the fate of traitors in this world. More; I will instruct you on the fate of such dogs in the next world." So saying, the good and wise Lord Hassan rose from his throne, walking with his characteristic lurching gait, and approached the head. "I command thee," he said. "Speak."

  The mouth opened and the head emitted a scream such that all the faithful covered their ears and turned their eyes away, many of them muttering prayers.

  "Speak, dog!" the wise Lord Hassan repeated. "Your whine is of no interest to us. Speak!"

  "The flames," the head cried. "The terrible flames. Allah, the flames…" it babbled on as a soul will in extreme agony. "Forgiveness," it begged. "Forgiveness, O mighty Lord."

  "There is no forgiveness for traitors," said the all-wise Hassan. "Return to hell!" And the head immediately silenced. All bowed down and prayed to Hassan and Allah alike; of the many miracles they had seen this was certainly the greatest and most terrible.

  The Lord Hassan then dismissed everyone, saying, "Forget not this lesson. Let it stay in your hearts longer than the names of your fathers."

  ("We want to recruit you," Hagbard said, 900-odd years later, "because you are so gullible. That is, gullible in the right way.")

  Jesus Christ went by on a bicycle. That was my first warning that I shouldn't have taken acid before coming down to Balbo and Michigan to see the action. But it really seemed right, on another level: acid was the only way to relate to that whole Kafka-on-a-bummer example of quote democratic process in action unquote. I found Hagbard in Grant Park, cool as usual, with a bucket of water and a pile of handkerchiefs for the teargas victims. He was near the General Logan statue, watching the more violent confrontations across the street at the Hilton, sucking one of his Italian cigars and looking like Ahab finally finding the whale… Hagbard, in fact, was remembering Professor Tochus at Harvard: "Damn it, Celine, you can't major in naval engineering and law both. You're not Leonardo da Vinci, after all." "But I am," he had replied, poker-faced. "I recall all my past incarnations in detail and Leonardo was one of them." Tochus almost exploded: "Be a wise-ass, then! When you start flunking half your subjects, perhaps you'll come back to reality." The old man had been terribly disappointed to see the long row of As. Across the street, the demonstrators advanced toward the Hilton and the police charged again, clubbing them back; Hagbard wondered if Tochus had ever realized that a professor is a policeman of the intellect. Then he saw the Padre's new disciple, Moon, approaching… "You haven't been clubbed yet," I said, thinking that in a sense Jarry's old presurrealist classic, "The Crucifixion of Christ Considered as an Uphill Bike Race," was really the best metaphor for the circus Daley was running. "Neither have you, I'm glad to see," Hagbard replied: "Judging from your eyes, though; you got teargassed in Lincoln Park last night." I nodded, remembering that I had been thinking of him and his weird Discordian yoga when it happened. Malik, the dumb social-democratic-liberal that John wanted to recruit soon, was only a few feet away, and Burroughs and Ginsberg were near me on the other side. I could see, suddenly, that we were all chessmen, but who was the chessmaster moving us? And how big was the board? Across the street, a rhinoceros moved ponderously, turning into a jeep with a barbed-wire crowd-sticker on the front of it. "My head's leaking," I said.

  "Do you have any idea who's picking it up?" Hagbard asked. He was remembering a house lease in Professor Orlock's class. "What it amounts to, in English," Hagbard had said, "is that the tenant has no rights that can be successfully defended in court, and the landlord has no duties on which he cannot, quite safely, default." Orlock looked pained, and several students were shocked, as if Hagbard had suddenly jumped up and exposed his penis in front of the class. "That's putting it too baldly," Orlock said finally… "Itmight be somebody years in the future," I said, "or the past." I wondered if Jarry was picking it up, in Paris, half a century before; that would account for the resemblance. Abbie Hoffman went by just then, talking to Apollonius of Tyana. Were we all in Jarry's mind, or Joyce's? We even have a Sheriff Wood riding herd on us and Rubin's horde of Jerry men… "Fuller's car is a stunt, a showpiece," Professor Caligari fumed, "and, anyway, it has nothing to do with naval architecture." Hagbard looked at him levelly and said, "It has everything to do with naval architecture." As in law school, the other students were disturbed. Hagbard began to understand: they are not here to learn, they are here to acquire a piece of paper that would make them eligible for certain jobs…

  "There are only a few more memos." Saul said to Mul-doon. "Let's skim them and then call headquarters to see if Danny found this 'Paf who wrote them,"

  ILLUMINATI PROJECT: MEMO #15

  8/6

  J.M.:

  Here's the weirdest version of the Illuminati history that I've found so far. It's from a publication written, edited and published by somebody named Philip Campbell Argyle-Stuart, who holds that the conflicts in the world are due to an age-old war between Semitic "Khazar" peoples and Nordic "Faustian" peoples. This is the essence of his thinking:

  My theory is that an extremely devilish imposed overcrust was added to the Khazar population consisting of humanoids who arrived by flying saucer from the planet Vulcan, which I assume to be not in intra-Mercurial o
rbit around the sun, but rather in the earth's orbit, behind the Sun, forever out of sight to earthlings, always six months behind or ahead of the earth in orbital travel…

  Likewise for the Gothic Faustian Western Culture. The previously comparatively inert and purposeless migrating population streams known as Franks, Goths, Angles, Saxons, Danes, Swabians, Alemani, Lombards, Vandals, and Vikings suddenly had an overcrust added consisting of Norman-Martian-Varangians, arriving from Saturn by way of Mars in flying saucers…

  After 1776 it (the Khazar-Vulcanian conspiracy) used the Illuminati and Grand Orient Masons. After 1815 it used the financial machinations of the House of Rothschild and after 1848 the Communist movement and after 1895 the Zionist movement…

  One more thing needs to be mentioned. Mrs. Helena Petrovna Blavatski (nee Hahn in Germany), 1831-1891, founder of Theosophy… was both hypocritical and devilish, a true witch of great evil power allied with Illuminati, Grand Orient Masons, Russian Anarchists, British Israel Theorists, Proto-Zionists, Arabian Assassins and Thuggi from India.

  Source: The High I.Q. Bulletin, Vol. IV, No. 1, January 1970. Published by Philip Campbell Argyle-Stuart, Colorado Springs, Colorado. I

  Pat

  "What was that word?" Private Celine asked eagerly.

  "SNAFU," Private Pearson told him. "You mean to say you never heard it before?" He sat up in his bunk and stared.

  "I'm a naturalized citizen," Hagbard said. "I was born in Norway." He pulled his shirt away from his back again; the Fort Benning summer was much too hot for the Nordic half of his genes. "Situation Normal, All Fucked Up," he repeated. "That really sums it up. That really says it."

  "Wait'll you've been in This Man's Army a little longer," the black man told him vehemently. "Then you'll really appreciate the application of that word, dads. Oh, man, will you appreciate it."

  "It's not just the army," Hagbard said thoughtfully. "It's the whole world."

  Actually, after they immanentized the Eschaton, I found out where my head was leaking that night (and a few other nights, too.) Into poor George Dorn. The leak almost gave him water on the brain. He kept wondering where all that Joyce and surrealism was coming from. I'm seven years older than he is, that we're on the same valence because of similar grammar school experiences and revolutionary fathers. That's why Hagbard never really understood either of us, fully: he had private tutors until he hit college, and by that stage Official Education is beginning to make some partial concessions to reality so the victims have at least a chance of surviving on the outside. But I didn't know any of that in Grant Park that night or how the Army helped Hagbard understand college, because I was working out this new notion of the total valence of the set remaining constant. It would mean that I would have to leave when George came on, or say, Marilyn Monroe and Jayne Mansfield had to do the pill or auto-wreck shticks before there was room for Racquel Welch's vibes.

  ILLUMINATI PROJECT: MEMO #16

  8/7

  J.M.:

  I think I've found the clue as to how Zoroaster, flying saucers and all that lunatic-fringe stuff fits into the Illuminati puzzle. Dig this, boss-man:

  The Nazi Party was founded as the political appendage of the Thule Society, an extremist fringe of the Illuminated Lodge of Berlin. This lodge, in turn, was made up of Rosicrucians -high Freemasons- and its preoccupation was mourning the death of the feudal system. Masons of this time were, like the Federalist Party in post-revolutionary America, working diligently to prevent "anarchy" and preserve the old values by bringing about Christian Socialism. Indeed, the Aaron Burr conspiracy, which Professor Hofstadter notes was allegedly Masonic in origin, was an American prototype of German intrigues of a century later. To their external scientific socialism these Masons added mystic concepts which were thought to be "gnostic" in origin. One of these was the concept of "Gnosticism" itself, called Illumination- which held that heavenly beings directly or indirectly gave humanity its great ideas and would come back to Earth after mankind had achieved sufficient progress. Illumination was a brand of Pentecostalism which was persecuted by orthodox Christianity for centuries and had become lodged in Freemasonry through a complex historical process which is impossible to explain without a major digression. It is sufficient to say that the Nazis, being "Illuminated," felt themselves to be divinely inspired and therefore felt justified in rewriting the rules of good and evil to suit their own purposes.

  (According to Nazi theory) the heavenly beings, before the present Moon was captured, had lived on the highest ground, in Peru, Mexico, Condor (Ethiopia), Himalaya, Atlantis and Mu, forming the Uranian Confederation. This was taken quite seriously and British intelligence actually combated it with the Tolkien fantasy called the "Silmarillion," basis for the famous "Hobbit" books…

  Both J. Edgar Hoover and Congressman Otto Passman are high-ranking Masons and both, significantly, reflect this philosophy and its Manichean attitude. The chief danger in Masonic thinking aside from the "divine right of government" is, of course, Manicheanism, the belief that your opponent is opposing God's will and is therefore an agent of Satan. This is the extreme application and Mr. Hoover usually reserves it for "Godless Communism" but it is almost always present to some degree.

  Source: "The Nazi Religion: Views on Religious Statism in Germany and America" by J. F. C. Moore, Libertarian American, Vol. III, No. 3, August 1969.

  Pat

  They were using Mace now, and I saw one photographer snapping a picture of a cop while the cop was still Macing him (Heisenberg rides again! From out of the west come the thundering hooves of the great hearse, Joint Phenomenon! Except that I was on acid; if I'd been on weed, then it would really, royally, be a Joint Phenomenon). And I heard later that the photographer got an award for that shot. Right then, he didn't look like he was getting an award. He looked like they had just taken off his skin and touched each raw nerve with a dentist's drill. "Christ," I said to Hagbard, "look at that poor bastard. I hope I come out of this with just another teargassing or two. I don't want any of that Mace." But acid is placid, you know, and a minute later I was on Joyce's juices again and thinking of a drama called 'Their Mace and My Gripes." I made the first line fruity, in honor of Padre Pederastia: "What a botch of a pair to plumb this hour's gripes."

  "Bism'allah," Hagbard said. "Our karma is made by our deeds, not by our prayers. You're on the set, so you take the action as it comes."

  "Oh, cut out that Holy Man craperoo and stop reading my mind," I protested. "You don't have to go on impressing me." But I was off on another tangent, which went something like this: If this set is Mayor Daley's circus, then Mayor Daley is the ringmaster. If the things below are the things above, as Hermes hermetically hinted, then this set is the bigger set. Mr. Microcosm, meet Mr. Macrocosm. "Hi, Mike!" "Hi, Mac." Conclusion: Mayor Daley, in a small way, is what Krishna is, in a large way. QED.

  Just then some SDS kids who'd been teargassed across the street came running our way, and Hagbard got busy handing out wet handkerchiefs. They needed them: they were half-blind, like Joyce splitting his Adam into wise hopes. And I wasn't much help, because I was tod busy crying myself.

  "Hagbard," I gasped in ecstasy. "Mayor Daley is Krishna."

  "Worse luck for him," he said curtly, distributing the handkerchiefs. "He doesn't suspect it."

  I thought, suddenly:

  Hubert the Hump has coughed and hawked And spat on the streets that Lincoln walked

  The water turned to blood (Hagbard was a joking jolting Jesus: you expected wine maybe?) and I remembered my mother's story about Dillinger at the Biograph. We all sit there, like him, in the Biograph Theatre, dreaming the drama of our lives, then walk outside to the grandmotherly kindness of the lead kisses that wake us back to our slipping beatitude. Except that he found a way to come back. What was it Charley Mordecai said: "First as tragedy, then as farce?" Marxism-Lennonism: Ed Sanders of the Fugs, the night before, talking about fucking in the streets as if he had read my mind (or had I read his?) and Lennon's "Why
Don't We Do It in the Road" was recorded a year in the future. The Marx and our groupies. The bloody handkerchiefs dipped into water, or wine, and the mass rite went on, the mass went Right On, the Mace they rowed. Capone set it up for the Feds, but John was fed up and left the set, so an extra named Frank Sullivan got the bullets. The Autobiograph Theatre, a drama house and a trauma, yes. I maybe should have taken only half a tab instead of the full 500 mikes, because at that point the SDS kids, all of them siding with RYM-I at the split next year, looked like they had altarboy robes on and I thought Hagbard was distributing communion wafers, not handkerchiefs. He looked at me, suddenly, with that hawk-faced Egyptian glare, and I observed that he had observed, Hopalong Horus Heisenberg, just where I was at You don't have to be a waterman, I thought, to know which way my mind is blowing.

  There was a sound from the crowd, like a subway opening all its doors with a suck of air, and I saw the police coming, crossing the street to clear the park.

  "Here we go again," I said. "All hail Discordia,"

  "Snafu ueber alles," Hagbard grinned, starting to trot beside me.

  We headed North, figuring that the ones who retreated eastward would get trapped against the wall and creamed. "Democracy in action," I said, panting along.

  'There thou might'st behold the very image of Authority," he quoted, shifting his water bucket to keep it in balance. I caught the Shakespearean reference and looked back: my mind had already: each policeman indeed looked like Shakespeare's dog. I remembered the frantic semantics at the LBJ anti-birthday party, when Burroughs insisted Chicago Cops were more like dogs than pigs, in contradiction to the SDS rhetoric. Terry Southern, taking his usual maniacal middle course, claimed they were more akin to the purple-assed mandrill, most surly of the baboon family. But most of them hadn't discovered writing yet.

 

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