Robert Wilson - The Illuminatus! Trilogy

Feeling paranoid? Good: illumination is on the other side of absolute terror. And the only terror that is truly absolute is the horror of realizing that you can't believe anything you've ever been told. You have to realize fully that you are "a stranger and afraid in a world you never made," like Houseman says.

Twenty-two big rhinoceroses, twenty-three big. rhinoceroses…

The Illuminati basically were structure-freaks. Hence, their hangup on symbols of geometric law and architectural permanence, especially the pyramid and the pentagon. (God's Lightning, like all authoritarian Judeo-Christian heresies, had its own share of this typically Occidental straight-line mystique, which was why even the Jews among them, like Zev Hirsch, accepted the symbol first suggested by Atlanta Hope: that most Euclidean of all religious emblems: the Cross.) The Discordians made their own sardonic commentary on the legal and scientific basis of law V order by using a 17-step pyramid-17 being a number with virtually no interesting geometric, arithmetic or mystic properties, outside of Java, where it was the basis of a particularly weird musical scale- and topping it with the Apple of Discord, symbol of the un-rational, un-geometrical, and thoroughly disorderly spontaneity of the vegetable world of creative evolution. The Erisian Liberation Front (ELF) had no symbol, and when asked for one by new recruits, replied loftily that their symbol could not be pictured, since it was a circle whose circumference was everywhere and its center nowhere. They were the most far-out group of all, and only the most advanced Discordians could begin to understand their gibberish.

The JAMs, however, had a symbol that anyone could understand, and, just as Harry Pierpont showed it to John Dillinger midway through a nutmeg high in Michigan City prison, Dr. Ignotius showed it to Joe midway through his first acid trip.

"This," he said dramatically, "is the Sacred Chao."

"That's a symbol of technocracy," Joe said, giggling.

"Well," Dr. Ignotius smiled, "at least you're original. Nine out of ten new members mistake it for the Chinese yin-yang or the astrological symbol of Cancer. It's similar to both of them- and also to the symbols of the Northern Pacific Railroad and the Sex Information and Education Council of the United States, all of which is eventually going to lead to some interesting documents being produced at John Birch headquarters, I'm sure, proving that sex educators run the railroads or that astrologers control the sex educators or something of that sort. No, this is different. It is the Sacred Chao, symbol of Mummu, God of Chaos.

"On the right, O nobly born, you will see the image of your 'female' and intuitive nature, called yin by the Chinese. The yin contains an apple which is the golden apple of Eris, the forbidden apple of Eve, and the apple which used to disappear from the stage of the Flatbush Burlesque House in Brooklyn when Linda Larue did the split on top of it at the climax of her striptease. It represents the erotic, libidinal, anarchistic, and subjective values worshiped by Hagbard Celine and our friends in the Legion of Dynamic Discord.

"Now, O nobly born, as you prepare for Total Awakening, turn your eyes to the left, yang side of the Sacred Chao. This is the image of your 'male,' rationalistic ego. It contains the pentagon of the Illuminati, the Satanists, and the U.S. Army. It represents the anal, authoritarian, structural, law 'n' order values which the Illuminati have imposed, through their puppet governments, on most of the peoples of the world.

"This is what you must understand, O newborn Buddha: neither side is complete, or true, or real. Each is an abstraction, a fallacy. Nature is a seamless web in which both sides are in perpetual war (which is another name for perpetual peace). The equation always balances. Increase one side, and the other side increases by itself. Every homosexual is a latent heterosexual, every authoritarian cop is the shell over an anarchistic libido. There is no Vernichtung, no Final Solution, no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, and you are not Saul Goodman, when you're lost out here."

Listen: the chaos you experience under LSD is not an illusion. The orderly world you imagine you experience, under the artificial and poisonous diet which the Illuminati have forced on all civilized nations, is the real illusion. I am not saying what you are hearing. The only good fnord is a dead fnord. Never whistle while you're pissing. An obscure but highly significant contribution to sociology and epistemology occurs in Malignowski's study "Retroactive Reality," printed in Wieczny Kwiat Wtadza, the journal of the Polish Orthopsychiatric Psociety, for Autumn 1959.

"All affirmations are true in some sense, false in some sense, meaningless in some sense, true and false in some sense, true and meaningless in some sense, false and meaningless in some sense, and true and false and meaningless in some sense. Do you follow me?"

(In some sense, Joe mutters…)

The author, Dr. Malignowski, was assisted by three graduate students named Korzybski-1, Korzybski-2, and Korzybski-3 (Siamese triplets born to a mathematician and, hence, indexed rather than named). Malignowski and his students interviewed 1,700 married couples, questioning husband and wife separately in each case, and asked 100 key questions about their first meeting, first sexual experience, marriage ceremony, honeymoon, economic standing during the first year of marriage, and similar subjects which should have left permanent impressions on the memory. Not one couple in the 1,700 gave exactly the same answers to 100 questions, and the highest single score was made by a couple who gave the same answers to 43 of the questions.

"This study demonstrated graphically what many psychologists have long suspected: the life-history which most of us carry around in our skulls is more our own creation (at least seven percent more) than it is an accurate recording of realities. As Malignowski concludes, 'Reality is retroactive, retrospective and illusory.'

"Under these circumstances, things not personally experienced but recounted by others are even more likely to be distorted, and after a tale passes through five tellers it is virtually one hundred percent pure myth: another example of the Law of Fives.

"Only Marxists," Dr. Iggy concluded, opening the door to usher Joe into the chapel room, "still believe in an objective history. Marxists and a few disciples of Ayn Rand."

Jung took the parchment from Drake and stared at it "It's not to be signed in blood? And what the hell is this yin-yang symbol with the pentagon and the apple? You're a fucking fake." His lips curled tightly in against his teeth.

"What do you mean?" said George through a throat that was rapidly closing up.

"I mean you're not from the goddam Illuminati," said Jung. "Who the hell are you?"

"Didn't you know that before I came here- that I'm not from the Illuminati?" said George. "I'm not trying to fake anybody out. Honest, really, I thought you knew the people who sent me. I never said I was from the Illuminati."

Maldonado nodded, a slight smile bringing his face to life. "I know who he is. The people of the Old Strega. The Sybil of Sybils. All hail Discordia, kid. Right?"

"Hail Eris," said George with a slight feeling of relief.

Drake frowned. "Well, we seem to be at cross purposes. We were contacted by mail, then by telephone, then by messenger, by parties who made it quite clear that they knew all about our business with the Illuminati. Now, to the best of my knowledge- perhaps Don Federico knows better- there is only one organization in the world that knows anything about the AISB, and that is the AISB itself." George could tell he was lying.