The illuminatus! trilogy

by Robert Shea; Robert Anton Wilson

  Weishaupt assumed that Kolmer meant the passage would become clear if he read it while under the influence of ergot. He promptly went down to his laboratory and tossed off a jigger; then, for good measure, he chewed a few peyote buttons. (He was under the misapprehension that the Don Juan referred to was the same Yaqui Indian magician of the twentieth century whose mind he had been tapping through the Morgenheutegesternwelt. Peyote was that Don Juan’s great “teacher,” and Weishaupt had imported some from Mexico at great trouble and expense.)

  It should be explained at this point that the question which Kolmer was answering happened to be not philosophical but personal. Weishaupt had sought his advice on a problem much perplexing him that month: the fact that his sister-in-law was somewhat pregnant and circumstantial evidence seemed to mark him as the father. He wasn’t at all sure how to explain this to Eve. Kolmer had intended to convey that Adam should give his paramour the ergot, since it often functions as an abortifacient; the alternative referred to the path of an earlier Don Juan and meant splitting the scene entirely. However, the stoned Ingolstadt sage misunderstood totally, and so came to the Necronomicon full of hashish, peyote, and a substantial quality of ergot, which had, under the influence of the other drugs and his own intestinal juices, mutated into ergotine, a close chemical cousin of LSD. The result was that the words seemed to leap out of the page at him, shouting with intense meaning:

  THEY RULED ONCE WHERE MAN RULES NOW SUMMER WHERE MAN RULES NOW AFTER SUMMER IS WINTER THEY SHALL RULE AGAIN AND AFTER WINTER

  Abdul Alhazred’s concept of the Great Cycle, which derived actually from the Upanishads, took on kinky edges in Weishaupt’s flipped-out cortex. Five kinky edges, to be exact, since he was still obsessed with the profound new understanding of the Law of Fives he had achieved the night he saw the shoggoth turn into a rabbit. He quickly fetched Giambattista Vico’s Scienze nuovo from his shelf and began reading: He saw that he was right. Vico’s theory of history, in which all societies pass through the same four stages, was an oversimplification—there were, when you looked closely at the actual evidence behind Vico’s rhetoric, five distinct stages each time the Italian listed only four. Weishaupt looked very closely, and, like Joe Malik, the harder he looked the more fives he found.

  It was then that the man’s truly unique mind made its great leap: He remembered that Joachim of Floris, a proto-primus Illuminatus of the eleventh century, had divided history into three stages: the Age of the Father, dominated by Law; the Age of the Son, dominated by Love; and the Age of the Holy Spirit, dominated by Joy. Where most philosophers rush to publish their insights, Weishaupt saw the advantage of an alternative path. The Law of Fives would be kept secret, so that only Illuminati Primi would know about it and could predict events correctly, but the Joachimite theory would be revived and publicized to mislead others. (He, Kolmer, Meyer Amschel Rothschild, DeSade, and Sir Frances Dashwood—the original Five—had some discussions about possibly pushing Vico instead of Joachim, but, as Weishaupt argued, “Four is a little bit too close to five …” Even so, it was quite a spell of years before they found the ideal front man to push the three-step theory, G. W. F. Hegel. “He’s perfect,” Weishaupt wrote in the De Molay cipher from Mount Vernon. “Unlike Kant, who makes sense only in German, this man doesn’t make sense in any language.”) The rest of the story—the exoteric story, at least —is history. After Hegel was Marx; and after Marx, the Joachimite three-step was permanently grafted onto revolutionary tactics.

  The esoteric story, of course, is different. For instance, in 1914, when the fifth and final stage of Western Civilization was dawning, James Joyce published A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. The five chapters of that novel not only suggested five stages in the hero’s growth, but by the alteration of styles from chapter to chapter suggested analogies with other five-stage processes. This was too much for the Illuminati Primi of the time, who warned Joyce to be more careful in the future. A battle of wills ensued, and all through the writing of Ulysses Joyce was still considering a novel built entirely around the Law of Fives. When the Illuminati gave him what they call “the Tiresias treatment” —blindness—he finally compromised. Finnegans Wake, when it appeared, broke with the Joachim-Hegel-Marx three-step but did not include the funfwissenschaft. Instead, the Viconian four-stage theory was resurrected, a middle path that appealed to Joyce’s sense of synchronicity, since he had once taught at a school on Vico Road in Dublin and later also lived in a house on Via Giambattista Vico in Rome.*

  Now for a few words about the “real truth,” at least as the Illuminati understand “real truth.”

  Every society actually passes through the five stages of Verwirrung, or chaos; Zweitracht, or discord; Unordnung, or confusion; Beamtenherrschaft, or bureaucracy; and Grummet, or aftermath. Sometimes, to make comparison with the exoteric Hegel-Marx system more pointed, the esoteric Illuminati system is defined as: Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis, Parenthesis, and Paralysis. The public Hegel-Marx triad is also called the tricycle, and the arcane latter two stages are called the bicycle; one of the first secrets revealed to every Illuminatus Minore is “After the tricycle it comes always the bicycle.” (The Illuminati are rather prone toward literal translations from Weishaupt’s German.)

  The first stage, Verwirrung or chaos, is the point from which all societies begin and to which they all return. It is, so to speak, the natural condition of humanity—an estimation which the reader can confirm by closely observing his neighbors (or, if he has the necessary objectivity, himself).

  It is, therefore, also the fundamental Thesis. The Illuminati associate this with Eris, and also with other goddesses from Isis to Ishtar and from Kwannon to Kali—with the Female Principle, yin, in general. This correlates with hexagram 2 in the I Ching: that is, K’un, which has the meanings of receptivity, nature (in contrast to spirit), earth (in contrast to sky), female (in contrast to male). Thus, although this is the first stage chronologically, it has the mystical number 2, which is always associated with the female in magic; and it correlates with the 2nd trump in Tarot, the High Priestess, who represents not only maternity and fertility but gnosis. The sign of the horns represents Verwirrung because the fingers make a V shape; and the planet or the symbol of Venus, , also designates this stage. On the Zodiac: Aquarius, .

  The second stage, Zweitracht, begins with the appearance of a ruling or governing class. This is the Antithesis of chaos, of course, and leads directly into discord when the servile class discovers that its interests are not the same as the interests of the ruling class. This correlates with Osiris, Jehovah, and all masculine deities; with the symbol of the All-Seeing Eye; with hexagram 1 in the I Ching: Ch’ien, the creative, the heavenly, the strong, the powerful; with the male principle, yang, in general; with the number 3, symbolizing the all-male Christian trinity; with the 12th trump of the Tarot, the Hanged Man, symbolizing sacrifice, schism and schizophrenia; and with the planet or symbol of Mars, . Naturally, a Zweitracht period is always replete with “internal contradictions,” and somebody like Karl Marx always arises to point them out. On the Zodiac: Pisces, .

  The third stage, Unordnung or confusion, occurs when an attempt is made to restore balance or arrive at the Hegelian Synthesis. This correlates with Loki, the Devil, Mercury (god of thieves), Thoth in his role of Trickster, Coyote, and other spirits of illusion or deception; with hexagram 4 in the I Ching, Meng, youthful folly or standing on the brink of the abyss; with the number 11, signifying sin, penance, and revelation; with the 21st trump in the Tarot, the Fool who walks over the abyss; and with the planet or sign of Mercury, . It represents that attempt to restore the state of nature by unnatural means, an annihilation of the biogram by the logogram. On the Zodiac: Cancer, .

  The fourth stage, Beamtenherrschaft or bureaucracy, represents the Parentheses that occur when the Hegelian Synthesis does not succeed in reconciling the opposites. This correlates with Void (absence of any divinity); with I Ching hexagram 47, K’un, oppression or exhaustion
, superior men held in restraint by inferior men; with the number 8, indicating balance and the Last Judgment; with the 16th Tarot trump, Falling Tower, representing deteriorations and the Tower of Babel; and with the planetoid or sign of the moon, . On the Zodiac: Libra, .

  The fifth stage, Grummet or aftermath, represents the transition back to chaos. Bureaucracy chokes in its own paperwork; mind is at the end of its tether; in desperation, many begin to deny the logogram and follow the biogram, with varying degrees of success. This correlates with Hermaphrodite; with I Ching hexagram 59, Huan, dispersion, dissolution, foam on the water; with the number 5, union of male and female; with the 6th trump of the Tarot, the Lovers, indicating union; and with the sun or its symbol, On the Zodiac: Virgo,

  Since the association of these references, and their bearings on history, may be a bit unclear to some readers, we will give further details on each stage.

  VERWIRRUNG

  In this chaotic period, the Hodge and the Hodge are in dynamic balance. There is no stasis: The balance is always shifting and homeostatic, in the manner of the ideal “self-organizing system” of General Systems Theory or Cybernetics. The Illuminati, and all authoritarian types in general, dislike such ages so much that they try to prevent any records of their existence from reaching the general public. Pre-Chou China was one such period, and its history (except for some fragments in Taoist lore) is largely lost; we do know, however, that the I Ching was reorganized when the Chou Dynasty introduced patriarchal authoritarianism to China. It was then that the hexagram K’un, , associated with this period was moved from the first place to its present, second place in the Ching. Every line in K’un is broken (yin), because this is a feminist and prepatriarchal form of society, and because yin correlates with the agricultural rather than the urban. Always linked to darkness by mystics, this K’un style of sensibility is also linked, by the Illuminati, with dreck (dung) and everything they find messy and intolerable about ordinary human beings. (The Erisians, of course, take the opposite position, connect this with Eris, the primordial goddess, and regard it as ideal.)

  Verwirrung is numerologically linked with 2, not only because of K’un’s shift from first to second place in the Ching, but because it is the balance of Hodge and Podge. Thus, even though it is the first stage chronologically, it is never linked with 1 in magic sense, because 1 signifies the erect penis, the male principle in isolation, and such authoritarian games as monotheism, monopoly, monogamy, and general monotony. This dynamic 2-ness of Verwirrung is also implicit in its Tarot card, the 2nd trump or High Priestess, who sits between a black pillar and a white one (cf. The Hodge and Podge) and who represents mystery, magic, mischief, and Erisian values generally. She wears the balanced (solar) cross, rather than the unbalanced (Christian) cross, to emphasize the unity of opposites in such a historical period.

  Typical Aquarians who have manifested Verwirrung values are Aaron Burr, Christopher Marlowe, Hung Mung, Charles Darwin, Willard Gibbs (who incorporated chaos into mathematics), Mrs. Patrick Campbell, Elizabeth Blackwell (pioneer woman physician), Anna Pavlova, Mozart, Lewis Carrol, Robert Burns, James Joyce, Lord Byron, David Wark Griffith, and Gelett Burgess, author of the classic Erisian poem:

  I never saw a purple cow

  I never hope to see one

  But I’ll tell you this anyhow:

  I’d rather see than be one.

  The Verwirrung phase of European history is identified with the Danubian Culture, so called because most of its relics have been found along the shores of the Danube. According to archeologists, the Danubian culture was agricultural, pre-urban, worshipped a female rather than a male god, and never invented anything remotely like a state. The pre-Inca society of Peru, the Minoan civilization, the pre-Chou period of China already mentioned, and many American Indian tribes still surviving also represent a Verwirrung social framework. The synthesis of Hodge and Podge, and especially of biogram and logogram, in such cultures is indicated by the amazement of explorers from authoritarian societies when first encountering them. The usual words about the “grace” and “spontaniety” of the natives merely represent the lack of authoritarian conflict between biogram and logogram: These people sit, like the Tarot High Priestess, between opposite poles, without tilting one way or the other.

  But the fact that this is a dynamic and not a static balance means that eventually (after 73 permutations, according to Weishaupt) the second stage must evolve.

  ZWEITRACHT

  In this discordant period, the Hodge and the Podge are in conflict, because a ruling class emerges which attempts to control the others. This correlates with hexagram 1, , Ch’ien, the all-powerful, in the I Ching. The six unbroken lines represent the severity and monotony of such a period, which is, above all, the age of the T-square, the building of fences, the division of lands by “boundaries” drawn on maps, and the imposition of one man’s (or one group’s) will upon all others. Typically, the earth is regarded as both flat and finite by the Zweitracht mentality, and there is much concern with dividing it up into portions (among themselves, of course). The “superstitious” terror of American Indians when first confronting maps was merely the reaction of a Verwirrung mentality to a Zweitracht mentality: The Indians could not conceive of people treating earth as a thing to be exploited rather than a mother to be respected.

  Zweitracht associates with 3 numerologically because 3 is the totally male number, because all-male Trinities (Brahma-Vishnu-Siva, Father-Son-Spirit, etc.) are invented in such ages, and because the discord always has a minimum of 3 vectors, not merely 2. That is, the division into a propertied ruling class and an unpropertied governed class immediately sets in motion further cupidity; the ruling class soon falls to fighting over the spoils. Contrary to Marx, most of the strife in Zweitracht ages is not the conflict between proprietors and proles but between various proprietors over who gets the biggest share of the pie.

  The governing Tarot card is trump 12, the Hanged Man. The cross on which he hangs is blossoming, to show that it is still organic and alive (the biogram); he hangs upside down, to show the reversal of nature. He represents both the burden of omniscience in the owning-governing class and the burden of nescience in the servile-submissive class: the total crucifixion of desire by Realprinzip and Realpolitik.

  The astrological sign of this period is Pisces, the two fish swimming in opposite directions indicating the conflict of logogram and biogram (“body” and “spirit,” astrologers say.) Typical Pisceans who have shown the Zweitracht personality are E. H. Harriman, the railroad magnate (who covered the United States with Ch’ien-style unbroken straight lines), Cardinal John Henry Newman, Sir Robert Baden-Powell, founder of the Boy Scouts (an attempt to instill Piscean authoritarianism even in childhood), Admiral Chester Nimitz, John Foster Dulles, Anna Lee (founder of the world’s most antisexual religion, the Shakers), industrialists like Kruger and Pullman, financiers like Cambell and Braden, Grover Cleveland, John C. Calhoun, Neville Chamberlain, Andrew Jackson (whose expulsion of the Cherokee Nation from its traditional lands onto the “trail of tears,” where most of them perished, is the archetypal Zweitracht land-grab), William Jennings Bryan, and Frank Stanton of CBS.

  Since all Illuminati with any academic leanings at all are encouraged to major in history, the tendency in most textbooks is not only to black out Verwirrung periods but to glorify Zweitracht periods as ages of Light and Progress. Indeed, they make entertaining reading: They are ages of expansion, and there are always new people being discovered to be subjugated, “civilized,” and converted to tax-payers and rent-payers. Almost any age described in glowing and admiring language in a history text will prove, on examination, to be a Zweitracht era, and the foremost butchers and invaders are treated as the outstanding heroes of humanity. A sympathetic reading of the biographies of these empire-builders almost always indicates that they were homo neophile individuals who turned their talents to destruction rather than creativity because of bitterness engendered by years of torment and b
aiting by homo neophobe types during their childhoods.

  The ever-present conflict in a Zweitracht period eventually leads to the third stage.

  UNORDNUNG

  Humanity has been transformed during a Zweitracht age, by placing logogram in governing authority over biogram. Unordnung is an attempt to restore balance by revolutionizing the logogram; there is no thought about the biogram, because contact with this somatic component of personality has been lost. (This loss of contact has been variously described by pre-Celinean observers: It is “the veil of Maya” in Buddhism, the “censor band” or “repression” in psychoanalysis, the “character armoring” and “muscular armoring” in Reichian psychology, etc.)

  The I Ching hexagram for this stage is Meng, , or Youthful Folly. The yang line at the top indicates the continued supremacy of logogram, even though some biogram elements (the yin lines) begin to reassert themselves. The traditional reading is “mountain above water;” that is, the rigid logogram still repressing the Aquarian element as it seeks to liberate itself. The usual Chinese interpretation of this hexagram is “The young fool needs discipline,” and the leaders of all rebellions at this stage always heartily agree with that and demand unquestioning obedience from their followers. This is a time of turmoils, troubles, and tyrannies that appear and disappear rapidly.