The illuminatus! trilogy

by Robert Shea; Robert Anton Wilson

  “Who you from?” a voice asked in the murk.

  “AISB,” I answered carefully, “And I’m to speak to Hassan i Sabbah X.”

  “You’re speaking to him,” said the tallest and blackest character in the bunch, passing me a reefer. I took a quick, deep draw and, Christ, it was good. I’d been half addicted ever since the March on the Pentagon in 1967, where I walked right behind Norman Mailer part of the way, and later fell in with some hippies who were sitting on the steps smoking it. I say I was half addicted since then, because two of me believe, as a loyal government employee, that the old government publications claiming marijuana is addicting must be true or the government wouldn’t have printed them. Fortunately, the other two of me know that it isn’t addicting, so I don’t go through very bad withdrawal when it’s scarce.

  I started to outline the situation to Hassan i Sabbah X but the other joint came around, widdershins, and I took a drag on that. “A man could get stoned doing this,” I said facetiously.

  “Yeah” a satisfied black voice agreed in the gloom.

  Well, by the time I explained the problem to Hassan, I was so bombed that I immediately let him recruit me for the next step, on his rationalization that a white man could handle it easier than a black man. Actually, I was curious to contact this group of heroin pirates.

  Hassan wrote the address carefully. “Now, here’s the passwords,” he said. “You say, ‘Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.’ Don’t say ‘Do what you will’—they can’t stand anybody fucking around with the words, it has something to do with magic. She replies, ‘Love is the law, love under will.’ Then you finish it with ‘Every man and every woman is a star.’ Got it?”

  You can bet your ass I got it. I was almost goggle-eyed. It was the passwords of the

  “One more thing,” Hassan added, “be sure to ask for Miss Mao, not Mama Sutra. Mama isn’t cleared for this.”

  (As the Braniff jet took off from Kennedy International, Simon was already deep into Telemachus Sneezed again. He didn’t notice the preoccupied-looking red-headed young man who took the seat across the aisle; if he had, he would have immediately made the identification, cop. He was reading, “Factory smog is a symbol of progress, of the divine fire of industry, of the flaming deity of Heracleitus.”)

  HARRY KRISHNA HARRY KRISHNA HARRY HARRY

  Harry Coin didn’t know what the drug was; Miss Portinari had merely said, “It takes you further than pot,” and handed him the tablet. It might be that LSD the hippies use, he reflected, or it might be something else entirely that Hagbard and FUCKUP had concocted in the ship’s laboratory. Miss Portinari went on chanting:

  HARRY RAMA HARRY RAMA HARRY HARRY

  Obediently, he continued to stare into the aquamarine pool between them; she wore a yellow robe and sat placidly in the lotus position.

  (“I’ve gotta know,” he had told her. “I can’t go around with two sets of memories and never be sure which are real and which Hagbard just put in my head like a man puts a baby into a woman. Did I kill all those people or didn’t I?”

  “You must be in the proper frame of mind before you can accept the answer,” she had replied remotely.)

  HARRY COINSHA HARRY COINSHA HARRY HARRY

  Was she changing the chant or was it the drug? He tried to keep calm and continue staring into the pool, as she had ordered, but the porcelain design around it was changing. Instead of two dolphins chasing each other’s tails like the astrological sign of Pisces (the age that was ending, according to Hagbard), it was now one long serpentlike creature trying to swallow its own tail.

  That’s me, he thought. A lot of people have told me I’m as thin and long as a snake.

  And it’s everybody else, too (he realized suddenly). I’m seeing what George told me the Self pursuing the Self and trying to govern it, the Self trying to swallow the Self.

  But as he stared, fascinated, the pool turned red, blood red, the color of guilt, and he felt it reach out and try to pull him down into it, into red oblivion, a void made flush.

  “It’s alive,” he screamed. “Jesus Motherfucking Christ!”

  Miss Portinari casually stirred the pool, remote and calm, and its spiral inward slowly turned back to aquamarine. Harry felt himself blushing, it was only a hallucination, and muttered, “Pardon my language, ma’am.”

  “Don’t apologize,” she said sharply. “The most important truths always appear first as blasphemies or obscenities. That’s why every great innovator is persecuted. And the sacraments look obscene, too, to an outsider. The eucharist is just sublimated cannibalism, to the unawakened. When the Pope kisses the feet of the laity, he looks like an old toe-queen to some people. The rites of Pan look like a suburban orgy. Think about what you said. Since it has five words and fits the Law of Fives, it is especially significant.”

  This is a weird bunch, but they know important things, Harry reminded himself. He looked deep into the blue spiral and silently repeated to himself, “It’s alive, Jesus Motherfucking Christ, it’s alive …”

  Jesus, looking strangely hawk-faced and Hagbardian, rose from the pool. “This is my bodhi,” he said, pointing. Harry looked and saw Buddha sitting beneath the bodhi-tree. “Tat TVam Asi,” he said, and the falling leaves of the tree turned into millions of TV sets all broadcasting the same Laurel and Hardy movie. “Now look what you made me do,” Hardy was saying … In a previous incarnation, Harry saw himself as a centurion, Semper Cuni Linctus, driving the nails into the cross. “Look,” he said to Jesus, “nothing personal. I’m only following orders.” “So am I,” Jesus said, “My Father’s orders. Aren’t we all?”

  “Look into the pool,” Miss Portinari repeated. “Just look into the pool.”

  It was like each Chinese box had another Chinese box inside it; but the best of all belonged to Miss Mao Tsu-hsi. We were reclining in her trim but elegant pad on West Eighty-seventh Street, passing a joint back and forth and comparing multiple identities. We were naked on a bearskin rug, a dream come true, for she was my ideal woman. “I got into the first, Tobias,” she was saying. “They recruited me at a Ba’Hai meeting—they have cruisers out, looking for likely prospects, in every mystical group from Subud to Scientology, you know. Then Naval Intelligence contacted me and I reported to them on what the was up to. I’m not flexible as you, though, and my loyalties tend to stay fairly constant—chiefly I was reporting to what I gleaned from Naval Intelligence. I did believe in the basically. Until I met Him”

  “That reminds me,” I said, jealous of the worshipful way she said Him as if talking about a god. “If he’s coming soon, shouldn’t we get up and put some clothes on?”

  “If you want to be bourgeois,” she said.

  While we were dressing, I remembered something. “By the way,” I asked casually, “who are you spying on Mama Sutra for—the , Naval Intelligence, or Him?”

  “All three of them.” She was starting to pull her panties on, and I said suddenly, “Wait.” I knelt and kissed her pussy one last time, “For the nicest Chinese box I’ve opened in this whole case,” I said gallantly. That was my Illuminati training; as an FBI man, I was ashamed of such a perverted act.

  We finished dressing and she was pouring some wine (a light German vintage from, of all places, Bavaria) when the knock came.

  Miss Mao sidled over to the door in her slinky Chinese dress and said softly, “Hail Eris.”

  “All hail Discordia,” came a voice from outside. She slipped the lock and a little fat man walked in. My first reaction was astonishment; he didn’t look anything like the superintellectual superhero she had described.

  “Hagbard couldn’t come,” he said briefly. “I’ll handle the sale, and initiate you,” with a glance at me, “into the Legion of Dynamic Discord, if you’re really ready, as Miss Mao says, to battle every government on earth and the Illuminati to boot.”

  “I’m ready,” I said passionately. “I’m tired being a puppet on four sets of strings.” (Actually, I know I just want
ed a fifth set.)

  “Good,” he said. “Put her there,” and he held out his hand. As we shook, he said, “Episkopos Jim Cart-wright of the Mad Dog Cabal.”

  “Tobias Knight,” I said, “of the FBI, the CIA, the and the Illuminati.”

  He blinked briefly. “I’ve met double agents and triple agents, but you’re the first quadruple agent in my experience. I guess this was inevitable, by the Law of Fives. Welcome to the fifth ring of the world’s oldest continuous Five Ring Circus. Prepare for Death and Rebirth.”

  JESUS MOTHERFUCKING CHRIST IT’S ALIVE …

  The mutation from terrestrial to interstellar life must be made, because the womb planet itself is going to blow up within a few billion years…Planet Earth is a stepping stone on our time-trip through the galaxy. Life has to get its seed-self off the planet to survive …

  There are also some among us who are bored with the amniotic level of mentation on this planet and look up in hopes of finding someone entertaining to talk to.

  —TIMOTHY LEARY, Ph.D., and

  L. WAYNE BRENNER, Terra II

  THE NINTH TRIP, OR YESOD

  (WALPURGISNACHT ROCK)

  SINK is played by Discordians and people of much ilk. PURPOSE: To sink object or an object or a thing … in water or mud or anything you can sink something in. RULES: Sinking is allowed in any manner. To date, ten-pound chunks of mud have been used to sink a tobacco can. It is preferable to have a pit of water or a hole to drop things into. But rivers—bays—gulfs—I dare say even oceans—can be used.

  TURNS are taken thusly: whosoever gets the junk up and in the air first.

  DUTY: It shall be the duty of all persons playing SINK to help find more objects to sink, once one object is sunk. UPON SINKING: The sinker shall yell, “I sank it!” or something equally as thoughtful.

  NAMING OF OBJECTS is sometimes desirable. The object is named by the finder of such object, and whoever sinks it can say (for instance), “I sank Columbus, Ohio.”

  —ALA HERA, EX., N.S., Rayville Apple Panthers,

  quoted in Principia Discordia, by Malaclypse the

  Younger, K.S.C.

  For over a week the musicians had been boarding planes and heading for Ingolstadt. As early as April 23, while Simon and Mary Lou listened to Clark Kent and His Supermen and George Dorn wrote about the sound of one eye opening, the Fillet of Soul, finding bookings sparse in London, drove into Ingolstadt in a Volvo painted seventeen Day-Glo colors and flaunting Ken Kesey’s old slogan, “Furthur!” On April 24 a real trickle began, and while Harry Coin looked into Hagbard Celine’s eyes and saw no mercy there (Buckminster Fuller, just then, was explaining “omnidirectional halo” to his seatmate on a TWA Whisper-jet in mid-Pacific), the Wrathful Visions, the Cockroaches, and the Senate and the People of Rome all drove down Rathausolatz in bizarre vehicles, while the Ultra-Violet Hippopotamus and the Thing on the Doorstep both navigated Friedrich-Ebert-Strasse in even more amazing buses. On April 25, while Carmel looted Maldonado’s safe and George Dora repeated “I Am the Robot,” the trickle turned to a stream and in came Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, the Glue Sniffers, King Kong and His Skull Island Dinosaurs, the Howard Johnson Hamburger, the Riot in Cell Block Ten, the House of Frankenstein, the Signifying Monkey, the Damned Thing, the Orange Moose, the Indigo Banana, and the Pink Elephant. On April 26 the stream became a flood, and while Saul and Barney Mul-doon tried to reason with Markoff Chaney and he struggled in their grip, Ingolstadters found themselves inundated by Frodo Baggins and His Ring, the Mouse That Roars, the Crew of the Flying Saucer, the Magnificent Ambersons, the House I Live In, the Sound of One Hand, the Territorial Imperative, the Druids of Stonehenge, the Heads of Easter Island, the Lost Continent of Mu, Bugs Bunny and His Fourteen Carrots, the Gospel According to Marx, the Card-Carrying Members, the Sands of Mars, the Erection, the Association, the Amalgamation, the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, the Climax, the Broad Jumpers, the Pubic Heirs, the Freeks, and the Windows. Mick Jagger and his new group, the Trashers, arrived on April 27, while the FBI was interviewing every whore in Las Vegas, and there quickly followed the Roofs, Moses i and Monotheism, Steppenwolf, Civilization and Its Discontents, Poor Richard and His Rosicrucian Secrets, the Wrist Watch, the Nova Express, the Father of Waters, the Human Beings, the Washington Monument, the Thalidomide Babies, the Strangers in a Strange Land, Dr. John the Night Tripper, Joan Baez, the Dead Man’s Hand, Joker and the One-Eyed Jacks, Peyote Woman, the Heavenly Blues, the Golems, the Supreme Awakening, the Seven Types of Ambiguity, the Cold War, the Street Fighters, the Bank Burners, the Slaves of Satan, the Domino Theory, and Maxwell and His Demons. On April 28, while Dillinger loaded his gun and the kachinas of Orabi began the drum-beating, the Acapulco Gold-Diggers arrived, followed by the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Second Law of Thermodynamics, Dracula and His Brides, the Iron Curtain, the Noisy Minority, the International Debt, Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex, the Cloud of Unknowing, the Birth of a Nation, the Zombies, Attila and His Huns, Nihilism, the Catatonics the Thorndale Jag Offs, the Haymarket Bomb, the Head of a Dead Cat, the Shadow Out of Time, the Sirens of Titan, the Player Piano, the Streets of Laredo, the Space Odyssey, the Blue Moonies, the Crabs, the Dose, the Grassy Knoll, the Latent Image, the Wheel of Karma, the Communion of Saints, the City of God, General Indefinite Wobble, the Left-Handed Monkey Wrench, the Thorn in the Flesh, the Rising Podge, SHAZAM, the Miniature Sled, the 23rd Appendix, the Other Cheek, the Occidental Ox, Ms and the Chairperson, Cohen Cohen Cohen and Kahn, and the Joint Phenomenon.

  On April 29, while Danny Pricefixer listened raptly to Mama Sutra, the deluge descended upon Igolstadt: Buses, trucks, station wagons, special trains, and every manner of transport except dog sleds, brought in the Wonders of the Invisible World, Maule’s Curse, the Jesus Head Trip, Ahab and His Amputation, the Horseless Headsmen, the Leaves of Grass, the Gettysburg Address, the Rosy-Fingered Dawn, the Wine-Dark Sea, Nirvana, the Net of Jewels, Here Comes Everybody, the Pisan Cantos, the Snows of Yesteryear, the Pink Dimension, the Goose in the Bottle, the Incredible Hulk, the Third Bardo, Aversion Therapy, the Irresistible Force, MC Squared, the Enclosure Acts, Perpetual Emotion, the 99-Year Lease, the Immovable Object, Spaceship Earth, the Radiocarbon Method, the Rebel Yell, the Clenched Fist, the Doomsday Machine, the Rand Scenario, the United States Commitment, the Entwives, the Players of Null-A, the Prelude to Space, Thunder and Roses, Armageddon, the Time Machine, the Mason Word, the Monkey Business, the Works, the Eight of Swords, Gorilla Warfare, the Box Lunch, the Primate Kingdom, the New Aeon, the Enola Gay, the Octet Truss, the Stochastic Process, the Fluxions, the Burning House, the Phantom Captain, the Decline of the West, the Duelists, the Call of the Wild, Consciousness III, the Reorganized Church of the Latter-Day Saints, Standard Oil of Ohio, the Zig-Zag Men, the Rubble Risers, the Children of Ra, TNT, Acceptable Radiation, the Pollution Level, the Great Beast, the Whores of Babylon, the Waste Land, the Ugly Truth, the Final Diagnosis, Solution Unsatisfactory, the Heat Death of the Universe, Mere Noise, I Opening, the Nine Unknown Men, the Horse of Another Color, the Falling Rock Zone, the Ascent of the Serpent, Reddy Willing and Unable, the Civic Monster, Hercules and the Tortoise, the Middle Pillar, the Deleted Expletive, Deep Quote, LuCiFeR, the Dog Star, Nuthin’ Sirius, and Preparation H.

  (But, on April 23, while Joe Malik and Tobias Knight were setting the bomb in Confrontation’s office, the Dealy Lama broadcast a telepathic message to Hagbard Celine saying It’s not too late to turn back and Joe hesitated a moment, blurting finally, “Can we be sure? Can we be really sure?” Tobias Knight raised weary eyes. “We can’t be sure of anything,” he said simply. “Celine has popped up at banquets and other social occasions where Drake was present five times now, and each conversation eventually got around to the puppet metaphor and Celine’s favorite bit about the unconscious saboteur in everybody. What else can we assume?” He set the timer for 2:30 A.M. and then met Joe’s eyes again. “I wish I could have given George a few more hints,” Joe said l
amely. “You gave him too damned many hints as it is,” Knight replied, closing the bomb casing.)

  On April 1, while God’s lightning paraded about UN Plaza and Captain Tequila y Mota was led before a firing squad, John Dillinger arose from his cramped lotus position and stopped broadcasting the mathematics of magic. He stretched, shook all over like a dog, and proceeded down the tunnel under the UN building to Alligator Control. OTO yoga was always a strain, and he was glad to abandon it and return to more mundane matters.

  A guard stopped him at the AC door, and John handed over his plastic eye-and-pyramid card. The guard, a surly-looking woman whose picture John had seen in the newspapers as a leader of the Radical Lesbians, fed the card into a wall slot; it came out again almost at once, and a green light flashed.

  “Pass,” she said. “Heute die Welt.”

  “Morgens das Sonnensystem” John replied. He entered the beige plastic underworld of Alligator Control, and walked through geodesic corridors until he came to the door marked MONOTONY MONITOR. After he inserted his card in the appropriate slot, another green light blinked and the door opened.

  Taffy Rheingold, wearing a mini-skirt and still pert and attractive despite her years and gray hair, looked up from her typing. She sat behind a beige plastic desk that matched the beige plastic of the entire Alligator Control headquarters. A broad smile spread across her face when she recognized him.