Category: Illuminatus Trilogy

  • The tale of the ‘high’ tribe

    The tale of the tribe

    High Time and the Counter-cultural hall of fame.

    “A ganachakra (Sanskrit: gaṇacakra, or ‘gathering circle’; Tibetan: tshogs kyi ‘khor lo) is also known as tsog, ganapuja, chakrapuja or ganachakrapuja. It is a generic term for various tantric assemblies or feasts, in which practitioners meet to chant mantra, enact mudra, make votive offerings and practice various tantric rituals as part of a sadhana, or spiritual practice. The ganachakra often comprises a sacramental meal and festivities such as dancing; the feast generally consisting of materials that were considered forbidden or taboo in medieval India, where the tantric movement arose. As a tantric practice, forms of ganachakra are practiced today in both Hinduism, Bön and Vajrayana Buddhism. —TSOG

    I like the idea of the Counter-cultural Hall of Fame, as developed by High Times and Steven Hager, and I’m happy that the legendary characters from America’s exulted tradition of counter-cultural revolutionaries, artists, poets, musicians and humanitarian activists in the fullest sense of that term: revolutionary. High Times magazine seem to have developed a good selection process for the Hall Of Fame and the Celebrity Cup judges, besides all the weed, the poetry and scholar activism blooms.

    In his essay – T.A.Z – from the book TSOG: The thing that ate the constitution. Robert Anton Wilson writes about being picked to be a celebrity judge for the High Times Cannabis Cup in 1999 and his experiences in Amsterdam. I read this essay again recently and found all sorts of cross links and descriptions of the Cannabis Cup and Amsterdam that I find irresistible to share.

    1. T.A.Z or Temporary Autonomous Zone invokes Peter Lamorn Wilson, another brilliant bearded anarchist ‘scholar activist philosopher’ of the American tradition, who RAW often criss-crosses paths with when musing upon cultural revolution. Peter Lamborn Wilson’s TAZ seems to be used here as the title of Bob’s essay [see excerpt below] to help describe the unique red-light and coffeeshop Zones of Dutch tolerance here in Amsterdam, and some other parts of the Netherlands, and a generally intelligent and exemplary model.

    2. William S. Burroughs was inducted into the High Times Hall of Fame in 1999, and RAW participated in the induction ceremony by reading parts from NOVA EXPRESS, a small clip of this event can be found on you tune in a video compiled based on the induction of the Beat generation into the High Times Countercultural Hall Of Fame. It was Burroughs who turned Wilson onto the 23 enigma’ and Wilson compared WSB with James Joyce as the two greatest literary entities of the 20th century.

    3. The name Simon Vinkenoog was familiar to me by way of Dr. Robert Anton Wilson, like so many things; who noted Simon’s work in his books, such as the tale of the Sage of Dalkey in his last published work – email to the Universe. When I arrived in Amsterdam Simon was active and a strong part of the Dutch resistance to Bullshit, mediocrity and Tsarist Occupation Government. Simon passed onwards into outer-hyperspace July 12th, 2009. Simon was recently featured upon John’s 10 show holiday extravaganza, and for me this fact makes yet another loop between American and European counter-cultural anthropology, bound together by John’s choice of musical artefacts, that continue to delight the air-waves.

    Big Chief: Getting High With John Sinclair And The Fly

    by Steven James Pratt et al.

    Link: http://a.co/czUbrSA

    (more…)

  • IE is for Interview by Email: They shall come to know Go(o)d

    Every yin needs a yang. Every Hodge
    needs a Podge. We should be united.–Illuminatus Trilogy! Page 423!

    Fly: Could you explain a little bit about your holographic prose?

    RAW: No. I’m struggling to write a whole book about
    that right now and can’t imagine how to
    condense it. Besides, it’s the hardest
    part of my work to translate…
    I’ll give you two related samples from the Illuminatus and see what you
    can make of them: “They shall come to gno gods.”
    “They shall come to gnu godz.”

    email from–Tue, 8 Jan 2002, 11:10:54-0800.

    I have slept on this small riddle Bob spun for me, or i shd/ say i have not communicated my thoughts very much, and in retrospect i think it helps us in our continued investigative and independently minded research into RAW and his communications. So here i will expand a little on my research into these related samples.

    “SIMON MAGUS. You will come to know gods.”–Illuminatus Trilogy, Page 183.

    And then a little further down the page we find:

    “The note said:
    “Machen’s dols = Lovecraft’s dholes?”

    VECTORS. You will come to no gods.”

    Near the end of the bugguiness of Finnegans Wake (page 615) we find the line

    “Mucksrats which bring up about uhrweckers they will come to
    know good.”

    I suspect Bob might of sailed across this line on one or two of his many readings of Finnegans Wake. And he put it into I.T! ?

    While researching this small puzzle that Bob left for me to unravel, i discovered something else that grabbed me like T-Rex or King Kong, out of my seat. Typical of RAW in many ways, or typical of the ever expanding infinite-flux of being? On Page 183 of Illuminatus, the page on which we find Simon Magus saying: You will come to know gods, also features a dialogue about Amanita Muscaria (fly agaric) in the context of the investigation of Professor J. N. Marsh, who appears to have gone missing, in the novel?

    Maybe Bob was actually answering the question directly without being consciously aware that his example from Illuminatus! was right next to a passage describing fly agaric intoxication and some of its background history. (Amanita Muscaria appears as the 24th entry of the INDEX to Cosmic Trigger, and this is where i first came across it in the context of RAW. I had however read a little of Terence Mckenna around about the same time who also writes of Amanita in his book “Food of the Goods”. But the point here is that i was still unaware of Amanita and its use and ab-use within Illuminatus Trilogy! (!). Up until re-reading the book in the class Illuminatus! with Bob himself.)

    As this communication with Bob was facilitated by email, he might have noticed fly agaric@hotmail.com, my email address, and then so maybe he did choose the line from Simon Magus especially for fly, as an answer to my question about Hologramic Prose?

    With a fully searchable PDF version of Illuminatus Trilogy! you can find thousands of Joycean like–coincidances of contraries–but often on a different level of magnification to Joyce’s Finnegans Wake and its maximal condensation. Hodge-Podge seems to have Viconian, Joycean, Zen-Koan like qualities tied-up-with-it.

    During lunch (which always ended with golden apfel-strudel), Galley and Eichmann danced for her,
    a complex ballet which Hagbard called “Hodge-Podge”; as many times as she saw this, she never
    was able to determine how they changed costumes at the climax, in which Hodge became Podge and
    Podge became Hodge. –Page 412.

    And just like the DANCE of Hodge-Podge described, the Illuminatus Trilogy itself comes to a climax with the Appendix and its greater explanation and exploration of Hagbard’s Hodge-Podge principle in a more Geo-political, Historical, cybernetic language.

    In this chaotic period, the Hodge and the Podge 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. –434.

    I find a new beauty in the fact that Illuminatus Trilogy! combines these literary principles, in action (Captured by Theartre) and also with a CODEX, or appendix that begins to divulge the methods by which the author created the “Action” of the novel itself, and also being bound into the novel itself in a self-referncing or “hologramic Prose” technique; unique to Uncle Bob and his magikal communications.

    I have started a piece called the Unkle Bob principle”which uses a term i read by Hugh Kenner in his book Joyce’s Voices to describe James Joyce’s technique of using a general principle, that i understand to mean: The voice of the narrator need NOT always be the narrator him or her-self. Kenner’s Uncle Charles Principle honors the character called uncle Charles who sits in his outhouse reading and doing his bog business, and maybe also narrating parts of Ulysses?

    Anyhow, i’ll be putting these bits of research together and then applying them to I.T! Plus adding some source’s and sauces.

    –DJ Fly Agaric 23
    MPHDJ

  • TTOTT is for The Tale of the Tribe: v1.0

    TTOTT is for The Tale of the Tribe: v1.0

    The Tale of the Tribe. [TOTT.]

    An ambiguous and widely missunderstood grouping of FIVE words, or four if you miss off THE’

    I think the phrase “A Poem including History” works as a helpful pointer. Finnegans Wake and the Cantos’

    Are each “The Tale of the Tribe” in their respective ways. “Illuminatus! Trilogy” too!

    These 3 texts when considered together may constitute a triangular structure, from which RAW’s TOTT SHINE most

    Brightly?

    Also the book by Michael Berstein [1980] “The Tale of the Tribe: The Modern verse epic of Ezra Pound.”

    Steers us once more toward uncle [EZ] who with [JJ] become the two primary exhibitors of

    RAW’s TOTT. [which i figure is NOT his final published book “email to the Universe”, but something much bigger

    woven and threaded throughout his books, and sombunall of his literary influences, an invisible landscape. ]

    So what i refer to as [RAW’s TOTT], as opposed to anybody else’s idea or conception/perception

    of the TOTT remains something we have yet to define. But he left us many clues. [rising drums and Cello’s]

    Maybe it requires a total revision of RAW’s entire catalogue

    With the new TOTT gloss, [best condensed at the back of his bookTSOG]

    To move closer to lifting this great ball of TOTT crystal IMHO.

    …the alphabet vs. the equation….?

    …language as Class Warfare…?

    Here’s a condensed paragraph from RAW, giving us
    Further clues:

    **I hereby acknowledge the debts my works owe to Remy de Gourmont,
    for his method of dissociation of ideas, to Alfred Korzybski, for his
    formulations of general semantics; to Richard Bandler, for his
    invension of neurolinguistic Programming; to Buckminster Fuller for his
    synergetics, to Claude Shannon and Norbert Weiner for their studies of
    control and communication between animals and/or machines; and to
    Ezra Pound for Ideogrammic Method.
    None of them deserve any blame for my errors or blunders.** -Robert Anton Wilson, email to the Universe.

    I would like to echo Bob’s sentiment here, as he does not deserve any blame for my earaws or blunterz.
    !

    And here we have a neat introduction to [RAW’s TOTT]compiled by the sparkling MLA.

    “==Tale of the Tribe==
    The first of Wilson’s MLA courses bridging the political,
    the social and the psychological, [[Tale of the Tribe]] promises to be a landmark
    journey with our dear Dr. Bob. Starring **Giordano Bruno, Giambatista Vico,
    Friederich Nietzsche, Ernest Fenollosa, Ezra Pound, Alfred Korzybski,
    James Joyce, Buckminster Fuller, Claude Shannon** and **Marshall McLuhan** —
    the nucleus of the extraordinary minds that have helped shape the
    information age of 21st century and the mindscape of **Robert Anton Wilson.**
    Join Wilson as he explores the themes, minds and ideas of his forthcoming book, The Tale of the Tribe.–A.A MLA Admin.

    And here is a question by BOB,
    from the back of his book TSOG: The thing the ate the constitution,

    That i think crystalizes RAW’s TOTT,
    And deserves DAILY revision…

    What do Giordano Bruno, Giambatista Vico,
    Friedrich Nietzsche, Ernest Fenollosa, Ezra Pound
    Alfred Korzybski, James Joyce, Buckminster Fuller,
    Claude Shannon, Marshall Mcluhan and Internet all have in
    common? You”ll find out. -TSOG.

    I have started doing this new work, condensing the nodle clusters

    From RAW’s work’s [the names of the characters to begin with]

    And started arranging them in different ways. [having searchable source’s has greatly inspired this posting]

    I feel that i have stepped over/through some boundaries in some sense,

    By cutting bits from RAW’s writing and sticking them together. [byte-ing RAW]

    But, with the strictest supervision, and with a community who can FEEDBACK

    with each other while doing so, we can basically continue RAW’s work,

    And study his structure, technique and methods?

    In some sense this new work of mine is nothing more than a collection of Robert Anton Wilson quotes.

    But unlike any other collection of RAW quotations,

    This one focuses on RAW’s Tale of the Tribe, the historical characters,

    who “make it new”.

    I hope the MLA, TRIBE, and everybody else can join this great

    Work in conception/perception.

    But for me this is just the beginning, the bare bones, an historical

    Kind of invetigation. [phase I]

    I wish for audio/visual components, and hyperlinking which help

    Make the words NEW.

    Maybe email is the best way to work this out in the initial stages?

    axistao@yahoo.com

    Sinceritas.

    Fly Agaric/Acrillic
    Steven James Pratt

    Sharing Pound’s ‘Ideogramic method
    Sharing Joyce’s ‘Hologramic Prose & Epiphany & Finnegans Wake’
    Sharing Bucky’s ‘Synergetics and Planetary design-science
    Sharing Shannon’s ‘Information Entropy and BITS
    Sharing Nietzsche’s ‘Eternal Return and influence upon Existentialism’
    Sharing McLuhan’s ‘Global Village & The medium is the messsage
    Sharing Bruno’s ‘Pantheism and Decentralized Multiverse
    Sharing Vico’s ‘New Science & Ricorso’
    Sharing Orson’s ‘Cinematic Methods
    Sharing Fenollosa’s ‘Chinese Written Character Poetry
    Sharing Yeats’s ‘Gyres, Symbolism & humanitarianism’
    Sharing Gesell’s ‘Natural Economic Order
    Sharing Popper’s ‘Open Society
    Sharing Remy De Gournmont’s ‘Dissosociation of Ideas’
    Sharing von Neumann’s ‘Theory of Games and Economic Behavior
    Sharing Leary’s ‘Eight Dimensional model of consciousness
    Sharing Reich’s ‘Bioenergetic Force
    Sharing Crowley’s ‘System of practical Magick
    Sharing Korzybski’s ‘General Semantics & English-prime
    Sharing Alfred Jarry’s ‘pataphysique’

    RAW transfers a torrent of open ideas
    Wrapped up in cutting satire, oozing Hilaritas
    Sharing ideas that have shaped the 21st century,

  • CYS is for The Cult of the Yellow Sign & 23.

    Cult of the yellow Sign appears 23 times in Illuminatus Trilogy!

    .

    “He began with the Marsh disappearance in Arkham four years earlier, his perusal of the missing professor’s notes, his reading in the books mentioned in those notes and his conclusion that a drug cult was involved.” –Illuminatus!

    Of all the rich characters in Illuminatus i have discovered “Mama Sutra” seems the most attractive for three main reasons:

    1. She gives a complete encyclopedic version of the history of a version of the history of the ‘Illuminati”

    2. She seems to be steeped in psychedelic history and scientific knowledge of drugs and their influence on mankind. Especially the Golden Apple. (She is also Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea in costume behind the curtain, but within the texts of Illuminatus! she has become for me an attractive gloss, and one of many, equally valid and important and real and unreal, but Mama Sutra has a little extra something fly agaric is drawn toword.)

    3. I played turntables LIVE with a band called “Mama Sutra” from California on a number of occasions. I’m not joking. This synchronicity of meeting and jamming with “Mama Sutra” (Who when asked about the name by me seemed to be totally unaware of their mysterious namesake from “Illuminatus!”), has confirmed temporarily – while i continue this investigation, that i should investigate this character more closely, with a fine tongue-comb, like any aspiring detective ventriloquist would investigate synchronicity when it strikes like that when your following your instinct and gathering what you can from coinn-see-dance.

    In the spirit of Bob’s great interneting compendium of Conspiracy throughout the ages: “Everything is Under Control,” i’ll accent certain terms and theories which i feel appropriate for the context of these flypothesis’. Illuminatus Trilogy IT, achieves a high density information content by an unusually large external reference database, comparatively for a Novel, that when compiled electronically on Web 2.0can create an impressive encyclopedia of world history. More recent data and better information to base predictions upon. Not an alternative but several, hundred! History, War, literature, Occultism, Philosophy, Religion, Psychology, MagiK, individualist anarchism, Poetry, Jokes on dupes and those who take writing too seriously, are all woven into the encyclopedic and epic Novel, as Dr. Timothy Leary referred to it.


    The main sequence under investigation by fly agaric 23 is from “THE EIGHTH TRIP, OR HOD (TELEMACHUS SNEEZED)” providing a microcosm of these “Illuminati” themes in a cheeky, Hagbardian’ authoritative narrative, an alternative History of the world delivered as mythic fairy tale or legend concerning an international drug-cult and a mysterious “nameless” entity called the Illigor, which paradoxically also seem to have Karmic attributes of a typically Taoist Buddhist God, or non-god.

    “The Cult itself, like the lloigor, is of pre-human origin. It began among the snake people of Valusia, the peninsula that is now Europe, and then spread eastward to be adopted by the first humans in Carcosa. Always the purpose of the Cult has been to serve the lloigor, at the expense of other human beings. Since the rise of the Illuminati, the Cult has also acted to combat their work and discredit them.” – Illuminatus, page 302.


    “fly agaric” is mentioned by name only once in the text of “Illuminatus!”, referenced by “Mama Sutra,” but possibly described in various other ways though, substituted with fruit, other drugs, apples and maybe the Illigor themselves? “Amanita Muscaria” however appears 6 times in a text so something worth looking into, a HIT! you could say. This may all seem wishful thinking from Fly Agaric 23, the name/word i hijacked into my creative avatar world commonly used as a word/name for a particular species of mushroom/toadstool now has a definite affinity with the book, along with 10’000 other things, but its there, and workable if we wish to investigate thoroughly thoroughly through the rubble of confrontation magazine offices methodically as scholars would, diving for pearls and anyhting shinning. Plus myself diving for notes from the ship that sunk in my head. The “Mama Sutra” synchronicity in the non-book world is such a pearl for me, so i wish to polish it, reflect myself in it. And then give it everybody. The Movie “The Number 23” covers some of this territory but without the shinning pearls and scholarly weight for me, as this book-word-magic stuff was happening to me too in the late 1990’s, before i had fully read “Illuminatus! trilogy!” or heard ever of a band called “Mama Sutra”. Yet, i must admit that due to an ever increasing curiosity and due to the strange adventures i have had on the road that taking on the cloaking of Fly Agaric 23 was directly related to Wilson‘s book of footnotes to ‘Illuminatus! Trilogy”: Cosmic Trigger, and the recurring and haunting fact that Amanita Muscaria appears in the index of Cosmic Trigger as the 24th entry of the index and first references page 42. Fly Agaric appears there in a reference attributed to Robert Graves classic and essential text “The White Goddess” in the context of describing a “Mushroom Cult of the Goddess”. And another 10’000 things. This bit of research on my behalf shows a simple link between Cosmic Trigger and Illuminatus Trilogy! that indicates how interrelated RAW’s works are, and so the world of his works. They reflect off so many heretic philosophies and furtive ideas.

    “I suspect that Baal Zabul was an autumnal Dionysus, whose devotees intoxicated themselves on amanita muscaria, which still grows there; the Biblical name for these toadstools being either ‘ermrods’ or ‘little foxes’. By the time of jesus, who was accused of traffic with Beelzebub, the Kingdoms of Israel and Philistia had long been suppressed and the shrines of Ekron and Tabor destroyed; and Baal-Zebul’s functions having been taken over by the archangel Gabriel, he had declined to a mere devil mockingly called Baal-Zebub, ‘Lord of Flies’.” – Robert Graves, The White Goddess P. 440

    Graves‘ book is a good helpful book, providing some guidance when looking into some of the religious historical elements traced within Illuminatus! Hastur, the Illigor and the Cult of the Yellow sign all share attributes entities from“The White Goddess” indeed Mama Sutra has the attributes of the White Goddess in many respects, despite of course her been of asiatic origins and so dark skinned, she tells a mothers tale. Terence Mckenna, Christian Ratsch, Ralph Meztger and others have compiled very concise and convincing bodies of first hand experiential evidence that the ancient Mushroom cults were ‘Goddess” cults gernerally that worshipped mostly feminine type deities and always engaged in full community, full communication and often direct P2P dialogue with nature’s mind through the medium of the tele-communicating, interactive mushroom complex. Or the spirit contacted by way of the Lovecrafted “Illigor” .The Mushroom complex functions a bit like the golden apples in the Greek myths function. A chaotic attracter. They provide a possible hidden variable for the story, something that is powerful, sacred, magical, beautiful. Allatonce.

    “I believe that Soma was a mushroom, Amanita muscaria (Fries ex L.) Quel, the fly-agaric, the Fliegenpilz of the Germans, the fausse oronge or tue-mouche or crapaudin of the French, the mukhomor of the Russians – R. Gordon Wasson.

    Thankfully we have a narrative to contain these questions and to help explicate in a playful and poetic way. You might say the “Illuminati” are very much a drug production and distribution cult, but totally transforming itself from circuit’s 4 and upwards into the 8-Dimensional circuit model of consciousness (Of Leary and Wilson’s devices), using Marijuana, Peyote, Psilocybn, Hash and some of the various properties of Amanita Muscaria into a gangster mob mentality of a Circuit 1-3 “Illuminati” that deals Heroin around the world. Guns and Killingry too, such is the thick headed and Ape like actions. See the brilliant “Brief History of Drugs by Antonio Eschatado.This transformation of the “Illuminati” parallels the history of the decline of “Goddess” cults in the west, slowly making way for more patriarchal cults and our more modern patriotic male “Illuminati” groups, who you might say stole magical knowledge from the older “Goddess” cults and religions and used it in a greedy fashion to enslave humanity into their world. The decline of the use of psilocybn among peoples may also be a contributing factor in the rise of agriculture and the beginnings of religion and language.


    One of the things i can recall that came out of the course with me was the concept that their are many different “Illuminati” and many different “Illuminati” histories, good/bad. Angels and Cowboys. All of which seem more plausible to me in many respects. And give spave for change. Differing in historical acceptance only by the number of publications and authors who have echoed them in published works and the availability of these texts. Illuminati can literally mean those whom have particular access to unique “Illuminating” manuscripts which has an attractive hermeneutic ring to it, and could also i would argue include a particular “method” of reading, to illuminate and cast light on a text in a unique and Occult way. Modern Illuminati histories are often concerned with esoteric texts and rare manuscripts and once again we can see a brilliant parody on this by Shea and Wilson throughout the post-modem’ holo-novel.

    Panspermia theory pioneered by Francis Crick, extended by Dr, Leary and Philip K. Dick (Crick and Dick!) proposes an extraterrestrial origin of DNA RNA that would provide a possible vehicle for the Illigor from Illuminatus! Trilogy to invade earth. This also reflects bits of what you might call the Vril conspiracy networks that run through Occult circles and Intelligence Agency locker rooms. The naturalistic philosophy of Bruno and Neitzche reflects the rational approach to the question of the Illigor (The Tao) and their relationships with mankind and with nature. Together as one whole interacting system. Dr. Marsh – Van Daniken, Velikovsky, John Allegro, Atlantis and the lost gods are all of interest to fly agaric technologies and GUCT.

    “Not only were Marsh’s theories now beyond all scientific credibility, but his methods— such as quoting Allegro’s The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross or Graves’ The White Goddess as if they were as reputable as Boas, Mead, or Frazer— seemed to indicate senility. This impression was increased by the eccentric dedication “To Ezra Pound, Jacques De Molay and Emperor Norton I.” The real scientific scandal was not the theory of Atlantis (that was a bee that had haunted many a scholarly bonnet) but Marsh’s claim that the gods of Atlantis actually existed; not as supernatural beings, of course, but as a superior class of life, now extinct, which had preexisted mankind and duped the earliest civilization into worshiping them as divine and offering terrible sacrifices at their altars. – Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson, Illuminatus, Page 181.

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