The illuminatus! trilogy
Page 86
The pentagram comes in two forms but always represents the fullest extension of the human psyche—the male human psyche in particular. The pentagram with one horn exalted is, quite naturally, associated with the right-hand path; and the two-horned pentagram with the left-hand path. (The Knights Templar, very appropriately, inscribed the head of Baphomet, the goat-headed deity who was their equivalent of Pan or the Devil, within the left-handed pentagram in
such wise that each “horn” contained one of Baphomet’s horns.) It is to be observed that the traditionally sinister* left-hand pentagram contains an internal pentagon with one point upward, whereas the right-hand pentagram contains an internal pentagon with one point downward; this nicely illustrates the Law of Opposites.† The pentagon in the Sacred Chao is tilted from the perpendicular so that it cannot be said to have any points directly upward or directly downward—or perhaps can be said to have 1 1/2 points up and 1 1/2 points down‡—thereby illustrating the Reconciliation of Opposites.
All that can be said against the method of the left-hand pentagram, without prejudice, is that this form of the sacrament is always destructive of the Holy Spirit, in a certain sense. It should be remembered that the right-hand pentagram method is also destructive in most cases, especially by those practitioners so roundly condemned in Chapter 14 of Joyce’s Ulysses—and this group is certainly the majority these days. In view of the ecological crisis, it might even be wise to encourage the left-hand method and discourage the right-hand method at this time, to balance the Sacred Numbers.
Very few readers of the Golden Bough have pierced Sir Prof. Dr. Frazer’s veil of euphemism and surmised the exact method used by Isis in restoring life to Osiris, although this is shown quite clearly in extant Egyptian frescoes. Those who are acquainted with this simple technique of resurrecting the dead (which is at least partially successful in all cases and totally successful in most) will have no trouble in skrying the esoteric connotations of the Sacred Chao—or of the Taoist yin-yang or the astrological sign of cancer. The method almost completely reverses that of the pentagrams, right or left, and it can even be said that in a certain sense it was not Osiris himself but his brother, Set, symbolically understood, who was the object of Isis’s magical workings. In every case, without exception, a magical or mystical symbol always refers to one of the very few* variations of the same, very special variety of human sacrifice: the “one eye opening” or the “one hand clapping;” and this sacrifice cannot be partial—it must culminate in death if it is to be efficacious. The literal-mindedness of the Saures, in the novel, caused them to become a menace to life on earth; the reader should bear this in mind. The sacrifice is not simple. It is a species of cowardice, epidemic in Anglo-Saxon nations for more than three centuries, which causes most who seek success in this field to stop short before the death of the victim. Anything less than death—that is, complete oblivion—simply will not work.* (One will find more clarity on this crucial point in the poetry of John Donne than in most treatises alleging to explain the secrets of magick.)
A. YIN-YANG; B. SACRED CHAO; C. OUROBOROS, THE SERPENT EATING ITS OWN TAIL; D. ASTROLOGICAL SIGN OF CANCER; E. SWASTIKA; F. ROMAN CATHOLIC SACRED HEART; G. HEXAGRAM.
The symbolism of the swastika is quite adequately explained in Wilhelm Reich’s Mass Psychology of Fascism.
Ouroboros, the serpent eating its own tail, is chiefly emblematic of the Mass of the Holy Ghost.*
The Roman Catholic symbolism of the Sacred Heart is strikingly overt, especially to readers of Frazer and Payne-Knight. In essence, it is the same notion conveyed by the cartoonist’s conventional rendering of Cupid shooting his arrow into a red pulsating heart. This is the basic meaning of the Dying God and the Resurrection. The identification of Christ with the pelican who stabs its own heart with its beak (to feed its young) is an analogous rendering of the same motif. We repeat that it was only because the Saure family so misread these simple symbols that they became cruel and sadistic.
In essence, then, the basic symbols, of magic, mythology, and religion—whether Eastern or Western, ancient or modern, “right-hand” or “left-hand”—are so simple that only the pernicious habit of looking for alleged “profundities” and “mysteries” prevents people from automatically understanding them almost without thinking. The meaning of the hexagram—the female equivalent of the male pentagram —was explicated by Freud himself, but most students, convinced that the answer could not be so elementary and down-to-earth, continue to look into the clouds.
The same principles apply to written symbols. The all-important name YOD HE VAU HE, for instance, has traditionally been scanned in various ways, of which the most significant correlations are given in the following table:
The traditional lion-man-eagle-bull symbolism also fits this table,* as do Joyce’s Four Old Men in Finnegans Wake;† it can also be found in the Aztec codices and Buddhist mandalas.
The essential and original meaning, of course, is a program for a ritual, and the ritual is magick. The four letters are simply the four beats in Wilhelm Reich’s formula: muscular tension → electrical charge → electrical discharge → muscular relaxation. In short, as Freud once noted, every sexual act involves, at a minimum, four parties. The father and son provide a “fist” and a “nail;” the mother and daughter provide two “windows.” The case of the Chicago schizophrenic killer William Heirens, who experienced orgasm when climbing through windows, demonstrates that this symbolism does not have to be taught and is inherent in the human mind, although always subject to the distortion exemplified by the Saures.
Finally, the universal blessing given on page 218 is intimately involved with the YHVH formula:
I bless Ra, the fierce sun burning bright
I bless Isis-Luna in the night
I bless the air, the Horus-Hawk
I bless the earth on which I walk
The fiery father, the watery mother, the airy son, and the earthy daughter are all there, just as they are in every alchemical formula.* But we say no more at this point, lest the reader begin seeking for a 5 = 4 equation to balance the 5 = 6.
We conclude with a final warning and clarification: Resort to mass sacrifice (as among the Aztecs, the Catholic Inquisition, and the Nazi death camps) is the device of those who are incapable of the true Rite of the Dying God.
* The basic Christian Science mantra, known as “The Scientific Statement of Being,” no less, is as follows: “There is no life, truth, intelligence nor substance in matter. All is infinite mind and its infinite manifestation, for God is all in all, Spirit is immortal truth: matter is mortal error. Spirit is the real and eternal; matter is the unreal and temporal. Spirit is God and man is His image and likeness. Therefore man is not material, he is spiritual.” The fact that these statements are, in terms of the scientific criteria, “meaningless,” “non-operational,” and “footless” is actually totally irrelevant. They work. Try them and see. As Aleister Crowley, no friend of Mrs. Eddy’s, wrote, “Enough of Because! May he be damned for a dog!”
* Look up the etymology of that word some time and see if it means anything.
* A glance at the end of Appendix Beth will save the reader from misunderstanding the true tenor of these remarks.
* Aleister Crowley again, under another pen-name.
† See the anthology Perception, edited by Robert Blake, Ph.D., and especially the chapter by psychologist Carl Rogers, which demonstrates that people’s perceptions change while they are in psychotherapy. As William Blake noted, “The fool sees not the same tree that the wise man sees.”
* Do you believe that?
* These two signs of growth often appear at the same time, being DNA-triggered openings of the fourth neural circuit.
* They were quite good friends, though, and he did fuck her occasionally.
* This book has stated it as clearly as possible in a number of places, but some readers are still wondering what we are holding back.
* This being has more in common with t
he ordinary nocturnal visitor, sometimes called a “ghost,” than is immediately evident to the uninitiated. Cf. the well-documented association of poltergeist disturbances with adolescents.
* This association, attributing diabolism to the left-hand path, is oversimplified, prejudiced, and superstitious. In general, it can be said that the left-hand pentagram is suitable for both invocations and evocations, whereas the right-hand pentagram is suitable only for evocations, and that is the only important difference. (It is assumed that the reader understands the pentagram as an exclusively male symbol.)
† Cf. the Tarot trumps II and III—the Magus, holding one arm upward and one downward, and the High Priestess, sitting between the pillars of Day and Night. (The Priestess is also associated with the Hebrew letter gimmel, the camel, and part of the meaning of this symbolism is contained in the shapes of the camel’s back and the Hebrew letter.)
‡ This makes it quite useless for summoning werewolves. The Sacred Chao, however, is intended to teach a philosophical lesson, not to attract individuals with dubious pastimes.
* Fewer than seventy, according to a classical enumeration.
* The magician must always identify fully with the victim, and share every agonized contortion to the utmost. Any attitude of standing aside and watching, as in a theatrical performance, or any intellectualization during the moments when the sword is doing its brutal but necessary work, or any squeamishness or guilt or revulsion, creates the two-mindedness against which Hagbard so vehemently warns in Never Whistle While You’re Pissing. In a sense, only the mind dies.
* See Israel Regardie, The Tree of Life.
* YOD, the fiery father, is the lion (fire-sign); HE, the watery mother, is man as humanity; VAU, the air spirit, is eagle; final HE, earth, is bull.
† Marcus Lyons (i.e., the lion) is the fiery father; Matt Gregory (i.e., the ego) is the watery mother; John McDougall (i.e., eagle) is the airy son; Luke Tarpey (taur, the bull) is the earthy daughter.
* In this connection—and also, en passant, as an indication that Adolf Hitler’s link with the Illuminati was not invented for this work of “fiction”—we suggest that the reader look into The Morning of the Magicians, by Pauwels and Bergier.
APPENDIX YOD
OPERATION MINDFUCK
OM was originally instigated by Ho Chih Zen, of the Frisian Liberation Front, who is the same person but not the same individual as Lord Omar Khayyam Ravenhurst, author of The Honest Book of Truth. The guiding philosophy is that originally proposed in The Theory of Games and Economic Behavior by von Neumann and Morgenstern: namely, that the only strategy which an opponent cannot predict is a random strategy. The foundation had already been laid by the late Malaclypse the Younger, K.S.C., when he proclaimed, “We Discordians must stick apart.” This radical decentralization of all Discordian enterprises created a built-in random factor even before Operation Mind-fuck was proposed. To this day, neither Ho Chih Zen himself nor any other Discordian apostle knows for sure who is or is not involved in any phase of Operation Mindfuck or what activities they are or are not engaged in as part of that project. Thus, the outsider is immediately trapped in a double-bind: the only safe assumption is that anything a Discordian does is somehow related to OM, but, since this leads directly to paranoia, this is not a “safe” assumption after all, and the “risky” hypothesis that whatever the Discordians are doing is harmless may be “safer” in the long run, perhaps. Every aspect of OM follows, or accentuates, this double-bind.*
OM projects vary from the trivial to the colossal.
An example of the former is a rubber stamp owned by Dr. Mordecai Malignatus, which says SEE MENTAL HEALTH RECORDS. (Dr. Malignatus casually picked this up from a public-health clinic while nobody was looking.) Any mail which Dr. Malignatus considers impertinent or insulting— especially if it comes from a government office—is stamped with this motto and sent back, otherwise untouched. This causes considerable puzzlement to various bureaucrats.
An example of the latter is Project Jake, instigated by Harold Lord Randomfactor. Once or twice a year, a public servant who has distinguished himself by more than common imbecility is selected as target for a Jake and all Discordian cabals are alerted—including the various branches of the Erisian Liberation Front, the Twelve Famous Buddha Minds, the St. Gulik Iconistary, the Earl of Nines, the Tactile Temple of Eris Erotic, the Brotherhood of the Lust of Christ, Green & Pleasant Enterprises, Society for Moral Understanding and Training, the In-Sect, the Golden Apple Panthers, the Paratheo-Anametamystikhood of Eris Esoteric, Sam’s Café, the Seattle Group, the Stone Dragon Cabal, the Universal Erisian Church, and the Young Americans for Real Freedom.* On Jake Day, the public servant being honored receives mail from all of these, on their official letterheads (which are somewhat weird, it must be granted), asking for help in some complicated political matter that passes all rational understanding. The official so honored can conclude either that he is the target of a conspiracy composed entirely of lunatics, or that the general public is much more imaginative and less stodgy than he had previously assumed.
Between the trivial and the colossal there is a variety of OM which can be called the chronic.
Most notable is the honorary membership. Not wishing to exclude anybody from membership in the Erisian movement for such a technicality as being non-Erisian, the legendary Malaclypse the Younger invented several honorary Aneristic groups. It is now the tradition for any Discordian cabal to appoint anybody to one of these groups if his or her behavior is notably Aneristic. For instance, a high-school principal who has given a particularly stirring assembly speech on some such topic as “The Draft as a Protection for Our Freedoms” (or “Taxation as a Protection for Our Property” or any of the other oxymorons beloved by educators) might thereafter receive some such mailing as this:
ORDER OF THE PEACOCK ANGEL
House of Apostles of Eris
(✓) Safeguard this letter; it is an important historical document.
( ) Burn after reading—subversive literature.
( ) Ignore and continue what you were doing before opening this.
Dear (✓) Sir ( ) Madam ( ) Fido:
It has recently come to Our ears that you, in your official capacity as principal of Aaron Burr High School, said in a public meeting, with your bare face hanging out, that death by napalm is “really no more painful than a bad cold” and that Orientals have “tougher epidermi than whites and feel less acutely.”
In Our official capacity as High Priest of the Head temple of the House of Apostles of Eris, We congratulate you for helping to restore American education to its rightful position as the envy and despair of all other (and, hence, lesser) educational systems.
You are hereby appointed a five-star General in the Bureau of the Division of the Department of the Order of the Knights of the Five-Sided Castle, Quixote Cabal, with full authority to shrapnel your friends and bomb your neighbors.
If you have any answers, We will be glad to provide full and detailed questions.
In the Name of La Mancha,
Theophobia the Elder, M.C.P.
High Priest, Head temple
Hail Eris—All hail Discordia—Kallisti
This document will be stamped with such legends as OFFICIAL—DO NOT USE THIS PAPER AS TOILET TISSUE; SE-CREDIT—FOR YOUR EYES ONLY; QUIXQTE LIVES, etc., all in the most tasteful blues and reds, together with Easter Bunny seals, ribbons, and whatever other decorations it pleases the local cabal to attach. Often it will be accompanied by a button or an armband, making the possessor a five-star General, adorned with a classic rendition of the Knight of the Mournful Countenance. Copies, of course, will be sent to the radical students at the school to guarantee that the principal being honored will see and hear many references to Don Quixote in following days, lest he think he is dealing with a single “harmless lunatic.” (The official signal of the Knights of the Five-Sided Castle, needless to say, is a pentagon with a golden apple inside.)
Other groups to whi
ch individuals may be given honorary membership for conspicuously Aneristic behavior are:
the Hemlock Fellowship—for academic leaders who have taken strong actions to protect students from disturbing ideas and/or to deny tenure to controversial teachers or professors;
the St. Famine Society for War Against Evil—for people who have exhibited unusual concern for the moral behavior of their neighbors;*
the Flat Earth Society—for legislators or citizens’ groups dedicated to preventing the dissemination of “modernistic” ideas in education;*
the Fat Jap Anti-Defamation League—for Women’s Liberationists and others who have found good ideological reasons to object to the English language;