The illuminatus! trilogy

by Robert Shea; Robert Anton Wilson

  Queen of the angels

  Queen of the May

  and a buenos dias to the one wit in every frat house at every college who hailed this morn by reciting to his friends a bit of doggerel as ancient and as deeply religious as that hymn to the Mother of God

  Hurray, hurray—

  It’s the first of May!

  Outdoor fucking starts today!

  and yes the California earthquake, as you guessed, was the worst in history and Hagbard and Miss Portinari and Mavis-Stella-Mao suffered it all in horrible detail (the price they paid for their vision was the possession of that vision, as we, Mr. and Mrs. FUCKUP-Leviathan, are also learning), and before the end auf weidersehen to Mary Lou, who is also becoming something more than the accidents of heredity and environment had programmed her for, and now we look at last at Smiling Jim: He was freezing, the sky was still empty, and Hali One still hadn’t appeared.

  And then without warning it was there: a dark shape against the sun moving on silent wings, not flying but gliding: embodiment of some arrogance or innocence that surpassed fear and surpassed even the suggestion of any pride in its own fearlessness. “Oh my God,” Smiling Jim whispered, raising the Remington and starting to sight, and then it banked, flapped its wings wildly, and uttered one shriek that seemed like the very sound of life itself. “Oh my God,” he repeated: that sound seemed to outlast its own echo, it had entered into his brain and couldn’t be dislodged, it was the sound of his own blood pumping in his veins: the primary, the only, the single sound that was the bass and treble of every organic pulsation and spasm, “Oh my God,” he had it in the sight, the head was in profile, only one diamond-hard eye staring back and recognizing him and his weapon, but that sound still moved in his blood, moved the seminal vesicles, moved the secretion of every gland. It was the sound of eternal and unending clash between I and AM and their unity in I AM, he even thought for a flash of the critics of hunting and how little they understood of this secret, this mystic identity between the killer and the killed, then it uttered that Sound again and started to rise, but he had it, it was in the sight, he breathed, he aimed, he slacked, he squeezed, and for the third time the Sound came to him, death in life and life in death, it was falling, he thought he felt the earth stir below him and the word “earthquake” almost formed, but the Sound went on and on to the roots of him, it was the sound of the killer and he had killed the killer, he was the greater killer, and still it fell, faster and faster, dead now and subject only to the law of gravity not to the law of its own will, 32 feet per second per second (he remembered the formula of the fall), plunging downward, the most heartbreaking beautiful sight he had ever seen, every hunting club in the world would be talking about it, it would last as long as human speech survived, and he had done it, he had achieved immortality, he had taken its life and now it was part of him. His nose was running and his eyes were watering. “I did it,” he screamed to the mountains, “I did It! I killed the last American eagle!”

  The earth below him cracked.

  THE APPENDICES

  (which are most instructive)

  GREATER POOP: IS Eris true?

  MALACLYPSE THE YOUNGER: Everything is true.

  GP: Even false things?

  MAL-2: Even false things are true.

  GP: HOW can that be?

  MAL-2: I don’t know, man, I didn’t do it.

  —Interview with Malaclypse the Younger, K.S.C., Greater Metropolitan Yorba Linda Herald-News-Sun-Tribune-Journal-Dispatch-Post and San Francisco Discordian Society Cabal Bulletin and Intergalactic Report and Poop

  Note: There were originally 22 appendices explaining all the secrets of the Illuminati. Eight of the appendices were removed due to the paper shortage. They will be printed in Heaven.

  APPENDIX ALEPH

  GEORGE WASHINGTON’S HEMP CROP

  Many readers will assume that this book consists of nothing but fiction and fantasy; actually, like most historical tomes, it includes those elements (as do the works of Gibbon, Toynbee, Wells, Beard, Spengler, Marx, Yerby, Kathleen Windsor, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., Moses, et. al.); but it also contains as many documented facts as do not seriously conflict with the authors’ prejudices. Washington’s hemp crop, for instance, is mentioned repeatedly in Writings of Washington, U.S. Government Printing Office, 1931. Here are some of the citations:

  Volume 31, page 389: October 1791, letter from Mount Vernon to Alexander Hamilton, Secretary of Treasury: “How far…would there be propriety, do you conceive, in suggesting the policy of encouraging the growth of cotton and hemp in such parts of the United States as are adapted to the culture of these articles?”

  In the next three years, Washington evidently settled the matter in his own mind, whatever Hamilton thought of the “proprieties.” Volume 33, page 279, finds him writing from Philadelphia to his gardener at Mount Vernon to “make the most you can of the India Hemp seed” and “plant it everywhere.” Waxing more enthusiastic, on page 384 he writes to an unidentified “my dear doctor,” telling him, “I thank you as well for the seeds as for the Pamphlets which you had the goodness to send me. The artificial preparation of the Hemp from Silesia is really a curiosity …” And on page 469 he again reminds the gardener about the seed of the India Hemp: “[I] desire that the Seed may be saved in due season and with as little loss as possible.”

  The next year he was even more preoccupied that the seeds be saved and the crop replenished. Volume 34, page 146, finds him writing (March 15, 1795) to the gardener again: “Presuming you saved all the seed you could from the India hemp, let it be carefully sown again, for the purpose of getting into a full stock of seed.”

  Volume 34, page 72, undated letter of Spring 1796, shows that the years did not decrease this passion; he again writes to the gardener: “What was done with the seed saved from the India Hemp last summer? It ought, all of it, to have been sewn [sic] again; that not only a stock of seed sufficient for my own purposes might have been raised, but to have disseminated the seed to others; as it is more valuable than the common Hemp.” (Italics added)

  Volume 35, page 265, shows him still nagging the gardener; page 323 contains the letter to Sir John Sinclair mentioned in the First Trip.

  The Weishaupt impersonation theory, congenial as it may be to certain admirers of the General, cannot account for all of this. A diary entry of August 7, 1765 (The Diaries of George Washington, Houghton-Mifflin, 1925), reads: “Began to seperate [sic] the Male from the Female hemp at Do—rather too late.” This is the passage quoted by Congressman Koch, and remembered by Saul Goodman in the novel; the separation of male from female hemp plants is not required for the production of hemp rope but is absolutely necessary if one wants to use the flowering tips of the female for marijuana. And at that time Adam Weishaupt was very definitely still in Bavaria, teaching canon law at the University of Ingolstadt.

  All of this data about General Washington’s hobby, originally researched by Michael Aldrich, Ph.D., of Mill Valley, California, was rediscovered by Saul Goodman while he and Barney Muldoon were employed as investigators by the American Civil Liberties Union on test cases seeking to have all remaining anti-marijuana laws repealed as unconstitutional. The Goodman-Muldoon Private Investigations Agency (which had been formed right after those two worthy gentlemen had resigned from the New York Police Department amid the international acclaim connected with their solving the Carmel disappearance) was offered a lion’s share of the best-paying business accounts possible. Saul and Barney chose, however, to take only the cases that really interested them; their most notable work was performed as investigators for lawyers defending unpopular political figures. Goodman and Muldoon, it was agreed everywhere, had an uncanny knack for finding the elusive evidence that would demonstrate a frame-up to even the most hostile and skeptical jury. Many political historians say that it was in large part their work which kept the most eccentric and colorful figures of the extreme right and extreme left out of the prison-hospitals during the great Mental Health/S
ocial Psychiatry craze of the late 1970s and early 1980s.

  In fact, Rebecca Goodman’s memoir of her husband, He Opened the Cages, written during her grief after his heart attack in 1983, is almost as popular in political-science classes as is her study of comparative mythology, The Golden Apples of the Sun, the Silver Apples of the Moon, in anthropology classes.

  APPENDIX BETH

  THE ILLUMINATI CIPHERS, CODES, AND CALENDARS

  These following ciphers were found in the home of the lawyer Hans Zwack during a raid by the Bavarian government in 1785. Letters from Weishaupt (signed “Spartacus”), written in the code and outlining most of the plans of the Illuminati, were also found, and led to the suppression of the Order, after which it went underground and regrouped.

  These cyphers are given (curiously, without their code names) in Daraul’s History of Secret Societies, page 227. The purpose of the code names was to make breaking the cypher more difficult. All messages begin in the Zwack cypher, but the fifth word is always “Weishaupt” or “De-Molay,” and the message then switches to whichever of these cyphers is thus indicated; whenever either of these words (or “Zwack”) appears again, the system again switches. Breaking the cypher by the usual statistical methods is, therefore, virtually impossible, at least before the invention of the computer—for the uninitiated cypher-breaker is confronted with, not 26, but 3 × 26, or 78, separate symbols, whose regularity has little to do with the celebrated formula (EATOINSHRDLU…etc.) for the regularity of the 26 letters.*

  In addition, any of the 78 symbols can be replaced by the abbreviation for the corresponding Tarot card, thus further befuddling the uninitiated. The Tarots are arranged in the sequence: Wands, Cups, Swords, Pentacles, Trumps. Thus, the first symbol can be replaced by AcW (Ace of Wands), the second by 2W (two of Wands), and so on, through Cups, Swords, and Pentacles. The last 22 symbols are represented by the 22 trumps: TF (The Fool), TM (The Magus), THP (The High Priestess), and so forth. Since there are five groups in the Tarot (the four suits and the trumps), and the alphabet is repeated only three times, this leaves two null sets for transmission of Zen telegrams. “Once you’ve seen the Great Vision,” Hagbard once said, “you look at everything else in life twice.”

  The Illuminati calendars, finally, are all based on five seasons (due to the Law of Fives.) The names of the seasons, their meanings, and the Christian equivalents are as follows:

  Verwirrung Season of Chaos January 1-March 14

  Zweitracht Season of Discord March 15-May 26

  Unordnung Season of Confusion May 27-August 7

  Beamtenherrschaft Season of Bureaucracy August 8-October 19

  Grummet Season of Aftermath October 20-December 31

  Everything is dated from year 1 A.M. (Anno Mung), which is 4000 B.C. in the Christian calendar—the year Hung Mung first perceived the Sacred Chao and achieved illumination. Thus, Hassan i Sabbah founded the Hashishim in 5090 A.M., Weishaupt reformed the Illuminati in 5776 A.M., and—to take a year in the middle of our novel— 1970 in the Christian calendar is, to the Illuminati, 5970 A.M., just as it is in the calendar used by Royal Arch masons. (The reader can decide for himself whether this fact represents coincidence, complicity, or synchronicity.)

  The Illuminati date for anything is always a higher number than that in any other calendar, since the Jews (and, oddly, the Scotch Rite masons) date everything from 240 A.M., Confucians from 312 A.M., Christians from 4000 A.M., Moslems from 4580 etc. Only Bishop Usher, who dated everything from 4004 B.C. (or -4 A.M.), produced an older starting point than the Illuminati.

  For instance, here are some random dates as they appear on the Illuminati system of reckoning:

  First Egyptian dynasty 1100 A.M.

  The Rig-Veda written 2790 A.M.

  First Chou dynasty 3000 A.M.

  Founding of Rome 3249 A.M.

  Hassan Sabbah illuminated 5090 A.M.

  Indians discover Columbus 5492 A.M.

  Pigasus nominated for

  President of the U. S. 5968 A.M.

  Returning to the yearly round, each of the five seasons is divided, of course, into five months, thus producing a year of 5 × 5 or 25 months. The first three months of every season (known as the tricycle) each have 15 days, which fits the law of five because 1 × 5 = 5. The last two months of each season each have 14 days, which also fits the law of fives because 1 + 4 = 5. Each season has 73 days, because (a) you have to get 73 when you divide 365 by 5; (b) 7 + 3 = 10, the first multiple of 5 after 5 itself; and (c) this corresponds, as Dr. Ignotius pointed out in the novel, to the 73 parts of the Illuminati pyramid (counting the Eye as a part). The last day of each season is known as Eye Day and is celebrated in ways too foul to be mentioned in a book such as this, intended for family entertainment.

  The mystic 23 appears in the calendar in the following ways:

  (1) The bicycle has 2 months and the tricycle has 3.

  (2) The bicycle has 28 days (two months of 14 days each), and when you subtract the all-important 5 this leaves, again, the mystic 23.

  (3) When 5 is multiplied by its own first product, 10, the result is 50; and when this, in turn, is subtracted from the days in a season, 73, the significant 23 once again appears.

  (4) The tricycle has 45 days; add one for Leap Year’s Day and you get 46—exactly 2 × 23.

  (5) 2 + 3 of course equals the all-important 5, the number on which the calendar is based and, even more significant, the number of this proof.

  As Weishaupt said to Knigge after explaining all this, “Could Aquinas do better?” (Actually, the mystic meaning of these numbers is sexual. The male sex cycle is, as Tantrists know, 23 days; add the mystic five and you get 28 days, the female cycle. It’s that simple. Or is it?)

  The sanctification of the number 5 antedates Atlantis itself and goes back to the intelligent cephalopods who infested Antarctica about 150,000,000 years before humankind appeared on earth; see H.P. Lovecraft’s work of “fiction,” At the Mountains of Madness (Arkham House, 1968), in which it is suggested that 5 was sacred to these creatures because they had five tentacles or pseudopods. In this connection, the reader might find some food for thought in a conversation which took place between Hag-bard Celine and Joe Malik in the late autumn of 1980. Joe, at the time, had just received the Pulitzer Prize. (He was also under investigation by a Congressional Committee, in connection with the same achievement: publication of certain governmental secrets.)

  “Five of the Senators voted to cite me for contempt, for not revealing my source,” Joe said. “Three voted against it. So I’ll be cited, and the Grand Jury will draw up an indictment. There’s that Law of Fives again.”

  “Are you worried?” Hagbard asked, relaxing in one of the heavy leather chairs that were part of Confrontation’s new, more ornate offices.

  “Hell, no. I can always seek sanctuary in Panama, or someplace, if they convict me. And Peter can keep this operation going.”

  “You’re not afraid to start a new life as an exile?”

  Joe grinned. “At my age, any new experience is an adventure.”

  “You’re doing fine,” Hagbard said. “Here’s your latest revelation from the .” He reached into his pocket and took out a photo of a female infant with six fingers on each hand. “Got this from a doctor friend at Johns Hopkins.”

  Joe looked at it and said, “So?”

  “If we all looked like her, there’d be a Law of Sixes.”

  Joe stared at him. “You mean, after all the evidence I collected, the Law of Fives is an Illuminati put-on? You’ve been letting me delude myself?”

  “Not at all.” Hagbard was most earnest. “The Law of Fives is perfectly true. Everybody from the JAMs to the Dealy Lama agrees on that. But you have to understand it more deeply now, Joe. Correctly formulated, the Law is: All phenomena are directly or indirectly related to the number five, and this relationship can always be demonstrated, given enough ingenuity on the part of the demonstrator.” The evil grin flashed. “That’s the very mode
l of what a true scientific law must always be: a statement about how the human mind relates to the cosmos. We can never make a statement about the cosmos itself—but only about how our senses (or our instruments) detect it, and about how our codes and languages symbolize it. That’s the key to the Einstein-Heisenberg revolution in physics, and to the Buddha’s revolution in psychology much earlier.”

  “But,” Joe protested, “everything fits the Law. The harder I looked, the more things there were that fit.”

  “Exactly,” said Hagbard. “Think about that. If you need quick transportation to Panama,” he added, heading for the door, “call Gold and Appel Transfers and leave a message.”

  * The reader should be reminded that a true code can never be broken, although all cyphers always can be (given enough time and manpower). A cypher has a serial, one-to-one correspondence with the alphabet letters of the message being transmitted; a code proper has no such correspondence. Thus any computer can break the cypher but only the Illuminated can read the code behind the cypher and know what (or who) the Rising Hodge is.

  APPENDIX GIMMEL

  THE ILLUMINATI THEORY OF HISTORY

  And to this day, the proverb is still repeated from the Danube to the Rhine: “It is dangerous to talk too much about the Illuminati.”

  —VON JUNTZ, Unausprechlichen Kulten

  Theoretically, an Age of Bureaucracy can last until a paper shortage develops, but, in practice, it never lasts longer than 73 permutations.

  —WEISHAUPT, Konigen, Kirchen and Dummheit

  In a well-known passage in the Necronomicon Abdul Alhazred writes, “They ruled once where man Riles now; where man rules now, they shall rule again. After summer is winter, and after winter, summer.” Weishaupt, who possessed only the Olaus Wormius translation, in the 1472 Lyons edition with its numerous misprints and errors, found this text scrambled into “They ruled once where man rules now, summer. Where man rules now, after summer is winter. They shall rule again, and after winter.” Thoroughly confused, he wrote to his good friend the Kabalist Kolmer in Baghdad for an explanation. Kolmer, meanwhile, dispatched a letter to him answering a previous question. When this epistle arrived, Weishaupt had been experimenting with a new strain of Alamout black and was in no condition to realize it was a reply to an earlier query; he was, thus, ready to accept enlightenment in the words: “Concerning your rather thorny enquiry: I find that, in most cases, ergot is the best remedy. Failing this, I can only suggest the path of Don Juan.”