The Illuminatus! Trilogy

by Robert Anton Wilson

  She stood up smiling at him, the broad grin of a woman whose lover has thoroughly satisfied her.

  "I'm glad you liked it," said George, his wildly disparate emotions gradually coalescing as anger. "What was the idea of that last little gag? To turn me off permanently on sex?"

  Stella laughed. "George, admit it. Nothing could turn you off sex, right? So don't be such a bad sport."

  "Bad sport? That sick trick is your idea of sport? What a goddam rotten dirty motherfucking thing to do to a man!"

  "Motherfucking? No, that's for when we ordain deacons."

  George shook his head angrily. She absolutely refused to be shamed. He was speechless.

  "If you have any complaints, sweet man, take them to Episkopos Hagbard Celine of the Lief Erikson Cabal," said Stella. She turned and started walking back toward the pyramid. "He's waiting for you back the way you came. And there's a change of clothes in the next room."

  "Wait a minute!" George called after her. "What the blazes does Kallisti mean?"

  She was gone.

  In the anteroom of the initiation chamber he found a green tunic and tight black trousers draped over a costumer. He didn't want to put them on. It was probably some sort of uniform of this idiotic cult, and he wanted no part of it. But there weren't any other clothes. There was also a beautiful pair of black boots. Everything fit perfectly and comfortably. There was a full-length mirror on the wall and he looked at himself and grudgingly admitted that the outfit was a gas. A tiny golden apple glinted on the left side of his chest. The only thing was that his hair needed washing. It was getting stringy.

  Through two more doors and he was facing Hagbard.

  "You didn't like our little ceremony?" said Hagbard with exaggerated sympathy. "That's too bad. I was so proud of it, especially the parts I lifted from William Burroughs and the Marquis de Sade."

  "It's sick," said George. "And putting the woman inside the apple so I couldn't have any kind of personal sex with her, so I had to use her as a receptacle, as, as an object. You made it pornographic. And sadistic pornography, at that."

  "Dig, George," said Hagbard. "Thou art that. If there were no death, there would be no sex. If there were no sex, there would be no death. And without sex, there would be no evolution toward intelligence, no human race. Therefore death is necessary. Death is the price of orgasm. Only one being on all this planet is sexless, intelligent and immortal. While you were pumping your seeds into the symbol of life, I showed you orgasm and death in one image and brought it home to you. And you'll never forget it. It was a trip, George. Wasn't it a trip?"

  George nodded reluctantly. "It was a trip."

  "And you know- in your bones- a little more about life than you did before, right, George?"

  "Yes."

  "Well, then, thank you for joining the Legion of Dynamic Discord."

  "You're welcome."

  Hagbard beckoned George to the edge of the boat-shaped balcony. He pointed down. Far below in the blue-green medium through which they seemed to be flying George could see rolling lands, hills, winding riverbeds- and then, broken buildings. George gasped. Pyramids rose up below, as high as the hills.

  "This is one of the great port cities," Hagbard said. "Galleys from the Americas plied their trade to and from this harbor for a thousand years."

  "How long ago?"

  'Ten thousand years," said Hagbard. "This was one of the last cities to go. Of course, their civilization had declined quite a bit by then. Meanwhile, we've got a problem. The Illuminati are here already."

  A large, undulating, blue-gray shape appeared ahead of them, swam toward them, whirled and matched their speed so it seemed to drift alongside. George felt another momentary leap of fright. Was this another of Hagbard's tricks?

  "What is that fish? How does it keep up with us?" George asked.

  "It's a porpoise, not a fish, a mammal. And they can swim a lot faster than submarines can sail underwater. We can keep up with them, though. They form a film around their bodies that enables them to slide through the water without setting up any turbulence. I learned from them how to do it, and I applied it to this sub. We can cross the Atlantic under water in less than a day."

  A voice spoke from the control panel. "Better go transparent. You'll be within range of their detectors when you've gone another ten miles."

  "Right," said Hagbard. "We will maintain present course until further notice, so you'll know where we are."

  "I'll know," said the voice.

  Hagbard slashed his hand through the air disgustedly. "You're so fucking superior."

  "Who are you talking to?" said George.

  "Howard."

  The voice said, "I've never seen machines like this before. They look something like crabs. They've just about got the temple all dug up."

  "When the Illuminati do something on their own, they go first class," said Hagbard.

  "Who the hell is Howard?" said George.

  "It's me. Out here. Hello, Mr. Human," said the voice. "I'm Howard."

  Unbelieving, yet knowing quite well what was happening, George slowly turned his head. The dolphin appeared to be looking at him.

  "How does he talk to us?" said Hagbard.

  "He's swimming alongside the prow of the submarine, which is where we pick up his voice. My computer translates from Delphine to English A mike here in the control room sends our voices to the computer which translates into Delphine and broadcasts the correct sounds through the water to him."

  "Lady-oh, oh de-you-day, a new human being has come my way," Howard sang. "He has swum into my ken. I hope he's one of the friendly men."

  "They sing a lot," said Hagbard. "Also recite poetry and make it up on the spot. A large part of their culture is poetry. Poetics and athletics- and, of course, the two are very closely related. What they do mostly is swim, hunt, and communicate with each other."

  "But we do all with artful complexity and rare finesse," said Howard, looping the loop outside.

  "Lead us to the enemy, Howard," said Hagbard.

  Howard swam out in front of them, and as he did so, he sang:

  Right on, right on, a-stream against the foe

  The sallying schools of the Southern seas make their

  course to go. Attack, attack, with noses sound as rock

  No shark or squid can shake us loose or survive our dour shock.

  "Epics," said Hagbard. "They're mad for epics. They have their whole story for the past forty thousand years in epic form. No books, no writing- how could they handle pens with their fins, you know? All memorization. Which is why they favor poetry. And their poems are marvelous, but you must spend years studying their language before you know that. Our computer turns their works into doggerel. It's the best it can do. When I have the time, I'll add some circuits that can really translate poetry from one language to another. When the Porpoise Corpus is translated into human languages, it will advance our culture by centuries or more. It will be as if we'd discovered the works of a whole race of Shakespeares that had been writing for forty millennia."

  "On the other hand," said Howard, "your civilizations may be demoralized by culture shock."

  "Not likely," said Hagbard grumpily. "We've a few things to teach you, you know."

  "And our psychotherapists can help you over the anguish of digesting our knowledge," said Howard.

  "They have psychotherapists?" said George.

  "They invented psychoanalysis thousands of years ago as a means of passing the time on long migrations. They have highly complex brains and symbol-systems. But their minds are unlike ours in very important ways. They are all in one piece, so to speak. They lack the structural differentiation of ego, superego, and id. There is no repression. They are fully aware, and accepting, of their most primitive wishes. And conscious will, rather than parent-inculcated discipline, guides their actions. There is no neurosis, no psychosis among them. Psychoanalysis for them is an imaginative poetic exercise in autobiography, rather than a healing art. T
here are no difficulties of the mind that require healing."

  "Not quite true," said Howard. "There was a school of thought about twenty thousand years ago that envied humans. They were called the Original Sinners, because they were like the first parents of your human race who, according to some of your legends, envied the gods and suffered for it. They taught that humans were superior because they could do many more things than dolphins. But they despaired, and most ended up by committing suicide. They were the only neurotics in the long history of porpoises. Our philosophers mostly hold that we live in beauty all the days of our lives, as no human does. Our culture is simply what you might call a commentary on our natural surroundings, whereas human culture is at war with nature. If any race is afflicted, it is yours. You can do much, and what you can do, you must do. And, speaking of war, the enemy lies ahead."

  In the distance George could make out what appeared to be a mighty city rising on hills surrounding a deep depression which must have been a harbor when Atlantis was on the surface. The buildings marched on and on as far as the eye could see. They were mostly low, but here and there a square tower reared up. The sub was heading for the center of the ancient waterfront. George stared at the buildings; he was able to see them better now. They were angular, very modern in appearance, whereas the other city they'd flown- sailed- over had a mixed Greek-Egyptian-Mayan quality to its architecture. Here there were no pyramids. But the tops of many of the structures were broken off, and many others were heaps of rubble. Still, it was remarkable that a city which had sunk so many thousands of feet to the bottom of the ocean in the course of what must have been an enormous earthquake should be this well preserved. The buildings must be incredibly durable. If New York went through a catastrophe like that there'd be nothing left of its glass-and-alloy skyscrapers.

  There was one pyramid. It was much smaller than the towers around it. It gleamed a dull yellow. Despite its lack of height, it seemed to dominate the harbor skyline, like a squat, powerful chieftain in the center of a circle of tall, slender warriors. There was movement around its base.

  "This is the city of Peos in the region of Poseida," said Hagbard, "and it was great in Atlantis for a thousand years after the hour of the Dragon Star. It reminds me of Byzantium, which was a great city for a thousand years after the fall of Rome. And that pyramid is the Temple of Tethys, goddess of the Ocean Sea. It was seafaring that made Peos great. I.have a soft spot in my heart for those people."

  Crawling around the base of the temple were strange sea creatures that looked like giant spiders. Lights flashed from their heads and glinted on the sides of the temple. As the submarine swept closer, George could see that the spiders were machines, each with a body the size of a tank. They appeared to be excavating deep trenches around the base of the pyramid.

  "Wonder where they had those built," muttered Hagbard. "Hard to keep innovations like that a secret."

  As he spoke, the spiders stopped whatever work they were doing around the pyramid. There was no motion among them at all for a moment Then one of them rose up from the sea bottom, followed by another, and another. They formed quickly into a V shape and started toward the submarine like a pair of arms outstretched to seize it. They picked up speed as they came.

  "They've detected us," Hagbard growled. "They weren't supposed to, but they have. It never pays to underestimate the Illuminati. All right, George. Button up your asshole. We're in for a fight."

  At that moment but exactly two hours earlier on the clock, Rebecca Goodman awoke from a dream about Saul and a Playboy bunny and something sinister. The phone was ringing (was there a pyramid in the dream?-she tried to remember- something like that) and she reached groggily past the mermaid statue and held the receiver to her ear. "Yes?" she said cautiously.

  "Put your hand on your pussy and listen," said August Personage. "I'd like to lift your dress and-" Rebecca hung up.

  She suddenly remembered the hit when the needle went in, and all those wasted years. Saul had saved her from that, and now Saul was gone and strange voices on the phone talked of sex the way addicts talked of junk. "In the beginning of all things was Mummu, the spirit of pure Chaos. In the beginning was the Word, and it was written by a baboon." Rebecca Goodman, twenty-five years old, started to cry. If he's dead, she thought, these years have been wasted, too. Learning to love. Learning that sex was more than another kind of junk. Learning that tenderness was more than a word in the dictionary: that it was just what D. H. Lawrence said, not an embellishment on sex but the center of the act. Learning what that poor guy on the phone could never guess, as most people in this crazy country never guessed it. And then losing it, losing it to an aimless bullet fired from a blind gun somewhere.

  August Personage, about to leave the phone booth at the Automat on Fortieth Street and the Avenue of the Americas, catches a flash of plastic on the floor. Bending, he picks up a pornographic tarot card, which he quickly shoves into a pocket to be examined at leisure later.

  It was the Five of Pentacles.

  And, when the throne room was empty and the believers had departed in wonder and redoubled faith, Hassan knelt and separated the two halves of the vessel which held the head of Ibn Azif. "Very convincing screams," he commented, slipping the trapdoor beneath the plate; and Ibn Azif climbed out, grinning at his own performance. His neck was thick, bull-like, undamaged, and quite solid.

  THE FIFTH TRIP, OR GEBURAH

  Swift-Kick, Inc

  And, behold, thusly was the Law formulated:

  IMPOSITION OF ORDER = ESCALATION OF CHAOS!

  –Lord Omar Khayaam Ravenhurst,

  "The Gospel According to Fred," The Honest Book of Truth

  The lights flashed; the computer buzzed. Hagbard attached the electrodes.

  On January 30, 1939, a silly little man in Berlin gave a silly little speech; among other things, he said: "And another thing I wish to say on this day which perhaps is memorable not only for us Germans: in my life I have many times been a prophet and most of the times I have been laughed at. During the period of my struggle for power, it was in the first case the Jews that laughed at my prophecies that some day I would take over the leadership of the State and thereby of the whole folk and that I would among other things solve also the Jewish problem. I believe that in the meantime the hyenalike laughter of the Jews of Germany has been smothered in their throats. Today I want to be a prophet once more: if the international-finance Jews inside and outside Europe should succeed once more in plunging nations into another world war the consequence will be the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe." And so on. He was always saying things like that. By 1939 quite a few heads here and there realized that the silly little man was also a murderous little monster, but only a very small number even of these noticed that for the first time in his anti-Semitic diatribes he had used the word Vernichtung-annihilation- and even they couldn't believe he meant what that implied. In fact, outside of a small circle of friends, nobody guessed what the little man, Adolf Hitler, had planned.

  Outside that small- very small- circle of friends, others came in intimate contact with der Fuhrer and never guessed what was in his mind. Hermann Rauschning, the Governor of Danzig, for instance, was a devout Nazi until he began to get some hints of where Hitler's fancies were tending; after fleeing to France, Rauschning wrote a book warning against his former leader. It was called The Voice of Destruction and was very eloquent, but the most interesting passages in it were not understood by Rauschning or by most of his readers. "Whoever sees in National Socialism nothing but a political movement doesn't know much about it," Hitler told Rauschning, and this is in the book, but Rauschning and his readers continued to see National Socialism as a particularly vile and dangerous political movement and nothing more. "Creation is not yet completed," Hitler said again; and Rauschning again recorded, without understanding. "The planet will undergo an upheaval which you uninitiated people can't understand," der Fuhrer warned on another occasion; and, still another time, he remarke
d that Nazism was, not only more than a political movement, but "more than a new religion"; and Rauschning wrote it all and understood none of it. He even recorded the testimony of Hitler's physician that the silly and murderous little man often awoke screaming from nightmares that were truly extraordinary in their intensity and would shout, "It's HIM, it's HIM, HE'S come for me!" Good old Hermann Rauschning, a German of the old school and not equipped to participate in the New Germany of National Socialism, took all this as evidence of mental unbalance in Hitler…

  All of them coming back, all of them. Hitler and Streicher and Goebbels and the powers behind them what look like something you can't even imagine, guvnor….

  You think they was human, the patient went on as the psychiatrist listened in astonishment, but wait till you see them the second time. And they're coming-By the end of the month, they're coming…

  Karl Haushofer was never tried at Nuremberg; ask most people to name the men chiefly responsible for the Vernichtung (annihilation) decision, and his name will not be mentioned; even most histories of Nazi Germany relegate him to footnotes. But strange stories are told about his many visits to Tibet, Japan, and other parts of the Orient; his gift for prophecy and clairvoyance; the legend that he belonged to a bizarre sect of dissident and most peculiar Buddhists, who had entrusted him with a mission in the Western world so serious that he vowed to commit suicide if he did not succeed. If the last yarn is true, Haushofer must have failed in his mission, for in March 1946 he killed his wife Martha and then performed the Japanese suicide-rite of sepukku upon himself. His son, Albrecht, had already been executed for his role in the "officer's plot" to assassinate Hitler. (Of his father, Albrecht had written in a poem: "My father broke the seal/He did not feel the breath of the Evil One/He set It free to roam the world!")

  It was Karl Haushofer, clairvoyant, mystic, medium, Orientalist, and fanatic believer in the lost continent of Thule, who introduced Hitler to the Illuminated Lodge in Munich, in 1923. Shortly thereafter, Hitler made his first bid to seize power.