The Illuminatus! Trilogy

by Robert Anton Wilson

  There was more of it, much more, and Joe patiently listened to all of it, determined to continue his experiment in applied schizophrenia at least for this one evening. They retired to a nearby restaurant, the Seminary, on Fullerton Street, and Simon rambled on, over beers, proceeding to the mystic significance of the letter W-23rd in the alphabet- and its presence in the words "woman" and "womb" as well as in the shape of the feminine breasts and spread-eagle legs of the copulating female. He even found some mystic meaning in the W in Washington, but was strangely evasive about explicating this.

  "So, you see," Simon was explaining when the restaurant was starting to close, "the whole key to liberation is magic. Anarchism remains tied to politics, and remains a form of death like all other politics, until it breaks free from the defined 'reality' of capitalist society and creates its own reality. A pig for President. Acid in the water supply. Fucking in the streets. Making the totally impossible become the eternally possible. Reality is thermoplastic, not thermosetting, you know: I mean you can reprogram it much more than people realize. The hex hoax- original sin, logical positivism, those restriction and constriction myths- all that's based on a thermosetting reality. Christ, man, there are limits, of course- nobody is nutty enough to deny that-but the limits are nowhere near as rigid as we've been taught to believe. It's much closer to the truth to say there are no practical limits at all and reality is whatever people decide to make it. But we've been on one restriction kick after another for a couple thousand years now, the world's longest head-trip, and it takes real negative entropy to shake up the foundations. This isn't shit; I've got a degree in mathematics, man."

  "I studied engineering myself, a long time ago." Joe said. "I realize that part of what you say is true…"

  "It's all true. The land belongs to the landlords, right now, because of magic. People worship the deeds in the government offices, and they won't dare move onto a square of ground if one of the deeds says somebody else owns it. It's a head-trip, a kind of magic, and you need the opposite magic to lift the curse. You need shock elements to break up and disorganize the chains of command in the brain, the 'mind-forg'd manacles' that Blake wrote about. That's the unpredictable elements, dads: the erratic, the erotic, the Eristic. Tim Leary said it: 'People have to go out of their minds before they can come to their senses.' They can't feel and touch and smell the real earth, man, as long as the manacles in the cortex tell them it belongs to somebody else. If you don't want to call it magic, call it counter-conditioning, but the principle is the same. Breaking up the trip society laid on us and starting our own trip. Bringing back old realities that are supposed to be dead. Creating new realities. Astrology, demons, lifting poetry off of the written page into the acts of your daily life. Surrealism, dig? Antonin Artaud and Andre Breton put it in a nutshell in the First Surrealist Manifesto: 'total transformation of mind, and all that resembles it.' They knew all about the Illuminated Lodge, founded in Munich in 1923, and that it controlled Wall Street and Hitler and Stalin, through witchcraft. We gotta get into witchcraft ourselves to undo the hex they've cast on everybody's mind. All hail Discordia! Do you read me?"

  When they finally parted, and Joe headed back for his hotel, the spell ended. I've been listening to a spaced-out acid-head all night, Joe thought in his cab headed south toward the Loop, and almost managing to believe him. If I keep on with this little experiment, I will believe him. And that's how insanity always begins: you find reality unbearable and start manufacturing a fantasy alternative. With an effort of will, he forced himself back into his usual framework; no matter how cruel reality was, Joe Malik would face it and would not follow the Yippies and Crazies in the joy ride to Cloud Cuckoo Land.

  But when he arrived at his hotel door, and noticed for the first time that he had Room 23, he had to fight the impulse to call Simon on the phone and tell him about the latest invasion of surrealism into the real world.

  And he lay awake in his bed for hours remembering 23s that had occurred in his own life… and wondering about the origin of that mysterious bit of 1929 slang, "23 Skidoo…"

  After being lost for an hour in Hitler's old neighborhood, Clark Kent and His Supermen finally found Ludwigstrasse and got out of Munich. "About forty miles and we'll be in Ingolstadt," Kent-Mohammed-Pearson said. "At last," one of the Supermen groaned. Just then a tiny Volkswagen inched past their VW bus, like an infant running ahead of its mother, and Kent looked bemused. "Did you check out that cat at the wheel? I saw him once before, and never forgot it because he was acting so weird. It was in Mexico City. Funny seeing him again, halfway around the world and umpteen years later." "Go catch him," another Superman commented. "With the AMA and the Trashers and other heavy groups we're going to get buried alive. Let's make sure that at least he knows we were in Ingolstadt for this gig."

  JUST LIKE A TREE THAT'S STANDING BY THE WAAAAA-AATER

  The morning after the Wobbly meeting Simon telephoned Joe.

  "Listen," he asked, "do you have to fly back to New York today? Can you possibly stay over a night? I've got something I'd like you to see. It's time we started reaching people in your generation and really showing you instead of just telling you. Are you game?"

  And Joe Malik-ex-Trotskyist, ex-engineering student, ex-liberal, ex-Catholic-heard himself saying, "Yes." And heard a louder voice, unspeaking, uttering a more profound "yes" deep inside himself. He was game- for astrology, for IChing, for LSD, for demons, for whatever Simon had to offer as an alternative to the world of sane and rational men who were sanely and rationally plotting their course toward what could only be the annihilation of the planet.

  (WE SHALL NOT BE MOVED)

  "God is dead," the priest chanted.

  "God is dead," the congregation repeated in chorus.

  "God is dead: we are all absolutely free," the priest intoned more rhythmically.

  "God is dead," the congregation picked up the almost hypnotic beat, "we are all absolutely free."

  Joe shifted nervously in his chair. The blasphemy was exhilarating, but also strangely disturbing. He wondered how much fear of Hell still lingered in the back corridors of his skull, left over from his Catholic boyhood.

  They were in an elegant apartment, high above Lake Shore Drive-"We always meet here," Simon had explained, "because of the acrostic significance of the street name"-and the sounds of the automobile traffic far below mingled strangely with the preparations for what Joe already guessed was a black Mass.

  "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law," the priest chanted.

  "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law," Joe repeated with the rest of the congregation.

  The priest- who was the only one who had not removed his clothes before the beginning of the ceremony- was a slightly red-faced middle-aged man in a Roman collar, and part of Joe's discomfort derived from the fact that he looked so much like every Catholic priest he had known in his childhood, It had not helped matters that he had given his name, when Simon introduced Joe to him, as "Padre Pederastia"-which he pronounced with a very campy inflection, looking flirtatiously directly in Joe's eyes.

  The congregation divided, in Joe's mind, into two easily distinguishable groups: poor full-time hippies, from the Old Town area, and rich part-time hippies, from Lake Shore Drive itself and, no doubt, also from the local advertising agencies on Michigan Avenue. There were only eleven of them, however, including Joe, and Padre Pederastia made twelve- where was the traditional thirteenth?

  "Prepare the pentad," Padre Pederastia commanded.

  Simon and a rather good-looking young female, both quite unselfconscious in their nakedness, arose and left the group, walking toward the door which Joe had assumed led to the bedroom area. They stopped to take some chalk from a table on which hashish and sandal-wood incense were burning in a goats-head taper, then squatted to draw a large pentagon on the blood-red rug. A triangle was then added to each side of the pentagon, forming a star- the special kind of star, Joe knew, which was known as pentagram,
symbol of werewolves and also of demons. He found himself remembering the corny old poem from the Lon Chancy, Jr., movies, but it suddenly didn't sound like kitsch anymore:

  Even a man who is pure of heart

  And says his prayers by night

  Can turn to a wolf when the wolf bane blooms

  And the autumn moon is bright

  "I-O," the priest chanted raptly.

  "I-O," the chorus came.

  "I-O, E-O, Evoe," the chant rose weirdly.

  "I-O, E-O, Evoe," the rhythmic reply came in cadence.

  Joe felt a strange, ashy, acrid taste gathering in his mouth, and a coldness creeping into his toes and fingers. The air, too, seemed suddenly greasy and unpleasantly, mucidly moist.

  "I-O, E-O, Evoe, HE!" the priest screamed, in fear or in ecstasy.

  "I-O, E-O, Evoe, HEr Joe heard himself joining the others. Was it imagination, or were all their voices subtly changing, in a bestial and pongoid fashion?

  "Ol sonuf vaoresaji," the priest said, more softly.'

  "Ol sonuf vaoresaji," they chorused.

  "It is accomplished," the priest said. "We may pass the Guardian."

  The congregation arose and moved toward the door. Each person, Joe noticed, was careful to step into the pentagram and pause there a moment gathering strength before actually approaching the door. When it was his turn, he discovered why. The carving on the door, which had seemed merely obscene and ghoulish from across the room, was more disturbing when you were closer to it. It was not easy- to convince yourself that those eyes were just a trick of trompe I'oeil. The mind insisted on feeling that they very definitely looked at you, not affectionately, as you passed.

  This-thing-was the Guardian which had to be pacified before they could enter the next room.

  Joe's fingers and toes were definitely freezing, and auto-suggestion didn't seem a very plausible explanation. He seriously wondered about the possibility of frostbite. But then he stepped into the pentagram and the cold suddenly decreased, the eyes of the Guardian were less menacing, and a feeling of renewed energy flowed through his body, such as he had experienced in a sensitivity-training session after he had been cajoled by the leader into unleashing a great deal of pent-up anxiety and rage by kicking, screaming, weeping, and cursing.

  He passed the Guardian easily and entered the room where the real action would occur.

  It was as if he had left the twentieth century. The furnishings and the very architecture were Hebraic, Arabic, and medieval European, all mixed together in a most disorienting way, and entirely unrelieved by any trace of the modern or functional.

  A black-draped altar stood in the center, and upon it lay the thirteenth member of the coven. She was a woman with red hair and green eyes- the traits which Satan supposedly relished most in mortal females. (There had been a time, Joe remembered, when any woman having those features was automatically suspected of witchcraft.) She was, of course, naked, and her body would be the medium through which this strange sacrament would be attempted.

  What am I doing here? Joe thought frantically. Why don't 1 leave these lunatics and get back to the world I know, the world where all the horrors are, after all, merely human?

  But he knew the answer.

  He could not- literally could not -attempt to pass the Guardian until all those present gave their consent.

  Padre Pederastia was speaking. "This part of the ceremony," he said, camping outrageously, "is very distasteful to me, as you all know. If only Our Father Below would allow us to substitute a boy on the altar when I'm officiating -but, alas, He is, as we all know, very rigid about such things. As usual, therefore, I will ask the newest member to take my place for this rite."

  Joe knew, from the Malleus malificarum and other grimoires, what the rite was, and he was both excited and frightened.

  He approached the altar nervously, noting the others forming a pentagon around the nude woman and himself. She had a lovely body with large breasts and fine nipples, but he was still too nervous to become aroused physically.

  Padre Pederastia handed him the Host. "I stole this from the church myself," he whispered. "You can be sure it is fully consecrated and completely potent. You know what to do?"

  Joe nodded, unable to meet the priest's lascivious eyes.

  He took the Host and spat upon it quickly.

  The greasiness and electrically charged quality of the air seemed to increase sharply. The light seemed harsher, like the glint of a sword, just as schizophrenics often described light as a hostile or destructive force.

  He stepped forward and placed the Host upon the thighs of the Bride of Satan.

  Immediately, she moaned softly, as if the simple touch were more erotic than one momentary contact could possibly be. Her legs spread voluptuously and the middle of the Host crumpled as it sunk slightly into her red pubic hair. The effect was, at once, powerful; her whole body shuddered and the Host was drawn farther into her obviously moist cunt. Using his ringer, Joe pushed it the rest of the way in, and she began breathing in a hoarse staccato rhythm.

  Joe Malik knelt to complete the rite. He felt like a fool and a pervert; he had never performed oral sex, or any kind of sex, in front of an audience before. He wasn't even turned on erotically. He went ahead just to find out if there was any real magic in this revolting lunacy.

  As soon as his tongue entered her, she began heaving and he knew her first orgasm would arrive rapidly. His penis finally began swelling; he began licking the Host caressingly. Inside his temple, a drum seemed to be beating hollowly; he hardly noticed it when she came. His senses spun and he licked more, aware only that she flowed more heavily and thickly than any woman he had known. He put his thumb in her anus, and his middle finger in her vagina, keeping his tongue in the clitoral area, doing it up right- this was the technique occultists call the Rite of Shiva. (Irreverently, he remembered that swingers call it the One-Man Band.) He felt an unusual electrical quality in her pubic hair and was aware of a heaviness and tension in his penis more powerful than he had ever known in his life, but all else was drowned out by the drumming in his head, the cunt-taste, cunt-smell, cunt-warmth… She was Ishtar, Aphrodite, Venus; the experience was so intense he began to feel a real religious dimension to it. Hadn't some nineteenth century anthropologist argued that cunt-worship was the earliest religion? He didn't even know this woman and yet he had an emotion beyond love: true reverence. Trippy, as Simon would say.

  How many times she came, he never knew; he came himself, without once touching his penis, when the Host was finally dissolved.

  He staggered back dizzily, and the air now seemed as resistant to motion as brackish water.

  "Yogge Sothothe Neblod Zin," the priest began chanting. "By Ashtoreth, by Pan Pangenitor, by the Yellow Sign, by the gifts I have made and the powers I have purchased, by He Who Is Not to Be Named, by Rabban and by Azathoth, by Samma-El, by Amon and Ra, vente, vente, Lucifer, lux fiat!"

  Joe never saw it: he felt it- and it was like chemical Mace, blinding and numbing him at once.

  "Come not in that form!" the priest screamed. "By Jesu Elohim and the Powers that You fear, I command thee: come not in that form! Yod He Vah He-come not in that form."

  One of the women began weeping in fear.

  "Quiet, you fool," Simon shouted at her. "Don't give it more Power."

  "Your tongue is bound, until I release it," the priest said to her- but the distraction of his attention had its cost; Joe felt It growing in potency again, and so did the others, judging from their sudden involuntary gasps.

  "Come not in that form!" the priest shouted. "By the Cross of Gold, and by the Rose of Ruby, and by Mary's Son, I command and demand it of thee: come not in that form! By thy Master, Chronzon! By Pangenitor and Panphage, come not in that form!"

  There was a hiss, like air pouring into a vacuum, and the atmosphere began to clear- but it also dropped abruptly in temperature.

  MASTER, CALL NO MORE UPON THOSE NAMES. I MEANT NOT TO ALARM THEE.

/>   The Voice was the most shocking experience of the night for Joe. It was oily, flattering, obscenely humble, but there was still within it a secret strength that revealed all too well that the priest's power over it, however obtained, was temporary, that both of them knew it, and that the price of that power was something it longed to collect

  "Come not in that form either," said the priest, more stern and more confident. "Ye know full well that such tones and manners are also intended to frighten, and I like not such jokes. Come in this form which thou habitually wearest in thy current earthly activities, or I shall banish thee back to that realm of which you like not to imagine. I command. I command. I command." There was nothing campy about the Padre now.

  It was just a room again- an odd, medieval, mideastern room, but just a room. The figure that stood among them could not have looked less like a demon.

  "OK," it said in a pleasant American voice, "we don't have to get touchy and hostile with each other over a little theatrics, do we? Just tell me what sort of business 'transaction you went and dragged me here for, and I'm sure we can work out all the details in a down-home, businesslike, cards-on-the-table fashion, with no hard feelings and mutual satisfaction all around."

  It looked like Billy Graham.

  ("The Kennedys? Martin Luther King? You are fantastically naive still, George. It goes back much, much farther." Hagbard was relaxing with some Alamout Black hash, after the Battle of Atlantis. "Look at the pictures of Woodrow Wilson in his last months: The haggard look, the vague eyes, and, in fact, symptoms of a certain slow-acting and undetectable poison. They slipped it to him at Versailles. Or look into the Lincoln caper. Who opposed the greenback plan- the closest thing to flaxscript America ever had? Stanton the banker. Who ordered all roads out of Washington closed, except one? Stanton the banker. And Booth went straight for that road. Who got ahold of Booth's diary afterward? Stanton the banker. And turned it over to the Archives with seventeen pages missing? Stanton the banker. George, you have so much to learn about real history…")