The Illuminatus! Trilogy

** 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.

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.

* 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.

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.

APPENDIX YOD: OPERATION MINDFUCK

OM was originally instigated by Ho Chih Zen, of the Erisian 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.*

* The double-bind, first defined by anthropologist Gregory Bateson, is a situation in which you must choose between two alternatives both of which are unpleasant. A beautiful example, suggested by Mr. William S. Burroughs: Condition a draftee so that he will immediately obey either the order 'Stand up" or the order "Sit down," if given by a superior officer, then have two officers simultaneously order him to stand up and sit down. Obeying the first order means disobeying the second, and obeying the second means disobeying the first. Presumably, the subject would wig out.

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.