Illuminatus!: Weekly assignments

Week One – Kether

Read the first trip, Kether

Read my article about Adam Weishaupt

Contribute to Forum up to 3 questions —
if I get too many to answer this week, I’ll catch up eventually


Week Two – Chokmah

Read the second trip, Chokmah
Who is Hopalong Horus?

Read the neo-Decembrist agitprop in
http://www.gunsanddope.com/

Program your search engine for Decembrist + Illuminati
See what you find

Contribute to Forum up to 3 questions and/or
comments about Chokmah and/or neo-Decembrism


Week Three – Binah

Read the third trip, Binah

Why does this trip not have a title?

If you didn’t do it last week,
Read the neo-Decembrist agitprop in gunsanddope
and set your search engine for Decembrist + Illuminati See what you find.

Forum Questions

Why did Shea and I write so much about The Dutchman?
Discuss the difference between The Dutchman and Dillinger?
“Is” The Dutchman “bad,” a “sociopath,” “confused,” an agent of the illuminati? etc.?

Re: Simon and Joe’s discussion about anarchism (pg. 112-113) What do you know about anarchism?
Does it have any role in our planet’s future?

Why do the first 3 trips end with the words “point,” “line’ and “plane”?

Contribute to Forum up to 3 questions and/or comments about Binah


Week Four – Chesed

Read the fourth trip, Chesed,
and discuss in the Forums

Read Tucker article and discuss in the Forums

If you feel sure that ‘anarchism can’t work,”
explain why in the Forum. Don’t be afraid — I won’t bite.

Review all the memos. Discuss which theories about the Illuminati seem most plausible, relatively plausible, relatively whacko, totally whacko, etc. Please discuss in the forum.

Discuss whether my opinion about the Illuminati theories should have greater weight than yours?, if they should, why — just because I wrote a book on the subject?


Week Five – Geburah

Read the fifth trip, Geburah
and discuss in the forums

Read
http://www.madsci.org/%7Elynn/juju/surr/paranoia/CP.html
and discuss in the Forums as a key to this chapter and, maybe, the whole trilogy…..

Why does this trip end with the word “motion”?
How does this relate to Geburah on the Tree of Life?


Week Six – Tiphareth

Read the sixth trip, Tiphareth
and discuss in the forum

Review all the memos. Discuss which theories about the Illuminati seem most plausible, relatively plausible, relatively whacko, totally whacko, etc.
Please discuss in the forum. Read and cuss or discuss
The Celtic Roots of Quantum Theory


Week Seven – Netzach

Read the seventh trip, netzach
and discuss in the forums

Do the following exercize —

If you can, watch the U.S. presidential debate and check off, after each speech, which type of argument the candidate used most.

If you ain’t done it yet, review all the memos.

Discuss which theories about the Illuminati seem most plausible,
relatively plausible, relatively whacko, totally whacko, etc.
Please discuss in the forum, as guided or goaded by the following notions:

Let us consider the U.S. Congress for a moment. I have chosen this body, not with the satirical intent of exhibiting a Horrible Example and not with the Platonic intent of showing an Ideal Form, but with the empirical intent of looking at how persuasion actually operates in the normal world of ordinary experience.

A new bill is before Congress, and to avoid any prejudice on my part or the reader’s, we will assume that this is a bill to distim the frammisgoshes. Since we know nothing about the frammisgoshes and cannot guess what effect distimming will have on them, we can consider this case with some objectivity.

Some Congresscritters (I am trying to avoid the human chauvinism of writing “Congresspersons”) will vote to distim the frammisgoshes because they have been bribed with money or with more intangible rewards. This is sad, but we all know it happens on occasion. For convenience, we will call this Argument by Self-Interest; it has the form

The frammisgoshes should be distimmed because you will profit from it Outside Congress, many people make important decisions on this basis. Although there is a great deal of “sincere” racism and sexism in the United States, there can be little doubt that the most outrageous racist and sexist institutions exist because certain persons are making a profit out of them; nobody who can pay Black or female workers half the salaries of white males is very eager to listen to arguments that conflict with this very potent Argument by Self-Interest.

Presumably, there would be hearings on an issue as important as the frammisgoshes and various interested parties would give testimony. Perhaps the Archbishop of Chicago, the Chief Rabbi of Los Angeles and the Celestial Yap of Cleveland will inform the legislators what the Catholic God, the Jewish God and Yog the Almighty think about distimming the frammisgoshes. In one sense, this is the classic form of Argument by Authority:

The frammisgoshes should be distimmed because various well-known deities and divinities say so.

Outside Congress, we also find many persons making decisions on this basis. Falwell hates homosexuals, for example, because the Old Testament god is on record for disliking that group.

Cynics will say that, since deities and divinities do not appear in person, this is not only Argument by Authority but also Argument by Imposture:
The frammisgoshes should be distimmed because certain witnesses declare that they have been informed that various deities and divinities have that opinion.

In fact, there is also Argument by Intimidation involved here, since the Archbishop, Chief Rabbi and Celestial Yap control several million voters; so such testimony also includes Argument by Self-Interest:
The frammisgoshes should be distimmed because you will lose the next election if they aren’t distimmed.

There will probably be expert legal testimony as well, and this amounts to Argument by Precedent:
The frammisgoshes should be distimmed because a frammisgosh is like a farble and distimming is like gosketing and our ancestors always gosketed the farbles.

Again, many people decide matters that way outside Congress as well as inside. The doctrine of eminent domain, which allows the government to steal anything it wants, is regarded with repugnance by most people, but lawyers say it is legal and proper, because government has been stealing things for a long time.

There will also be scientific evidence heard on such a socially important decision as frammisgoshes. Ideally, in accord with scientific method, this will take the form of Argument by Evidence:
The frammisgoshes should be distimmed because in 186 studies, 66.34 percent of all frammisgoshes found undistimmed were also suffering from hangnail, poor school attendance and abuse of controlled substances.

With what some will regard as incredible optimism, I assume that some Congressentities will examine this evidence and form their own opinions of whether the statistical techniques used really “prove” the conclusions alleged. With what some will regard as dark cynicism, I also assume that some Congressentities will not bother with that at all but will accept what they heard as another form of Argument by Authority:
The frammisgoshes should be distimmed because 186 scientists say so.

Again, outside of Congress many people make decisions on the basis of scientific evidence, either because they understand it, or because they think it is another form of Argument by Authority and they are conditioned to accept whatever Authority tells them. That’s why there are so many nuclear plants around these days.

There is also the Argument by Logic. This can sometimes be combined with scientific experiments and if the two mesh we have a “fit” of theory with fact and scientists are delighted. Pure Argument by Logic, however, does not require this experimental backup and only demands that the conclusions be reached by the game-rules of an abstract symbol system. In our hypothetical case, some witness might inform Congress:
All mome raths need to be distimmed
All frammisgoshes are mome raths.
Therefore, all frammisgoshes need to be distimmed.

This method of logic can lead to some remarkable results, and Lewis Carroll once employed it to demonstrate that some dowagers are thistles. It is for that reason that Pure Logic is in rather low repute in scientific circles thes days and a scientific proof is regarded as requiring not only logical coherence but experimental, sensory-sensual or instrumental verification in the space-time world of ordinary perception.

There is also the method of argument ad hominem, which consists of variations on “The frammisgoshes should be distimmed because the people who deny this are all sons of bitches.” This is a favorite form of argument with demagogues and hysterics but it has no validity. E.g., even if it were proven that Darwin was a child molester or Einstein an axe-murderer, this one would not disprove their scientific theories which still have to be judged on empirical evidence.

The Argument of guilt-by-association is the Argument ad hominem one step removed and even more obviously invalid. This is the position which holds “the frammisgoshes should be distimmed because the leader of the anti-distimmation movement was seen at a saloon in 1957 where known Communists and Satanists were also drinking.”

There do not appear to be any other methods of argument ever invented; what seem to be other methods generally turn out to be variations on these basic forms. For instance, “You better believe it or God or Allah or Yog or some other deity will throw you in Hell” is a combination of Argument by Self Interest and Argument by Intimidation. “You better believe it (or pretend to believe it) or you’ll lose your job” is a secular equivalent of this combination of Self-Interest and Intimidation.

Einstein’s equations are Argument by (Mathematical) Logic; the empirical confirmations of Relativity are Argument by Experiment; and the agreement of the two is a typical example of the synthesis of logical validity and sensory-sensual experience that science always seeks to find.

I believe that everything admirable in the modern world results form the use of Argument by Experiment together with Argument by Logic (without making an Idol of either), whereas everything heinous and terrible results from the persistence of the older habits of Arguments by Authority, Intimidation, Self-Interest and Legal Precedent, or the various forms of calling the other side sons of bitches. This logical-experimental bias in my thinking is as old-fashioned and almost quaint as my Jeffersonian notion that “no laws” means “no laws,” and I realize that I sound like a reactionary to those New Age people who much prefer Authority (if it comes from the East), Intimidation (if it is called the politics of confrontation) and Self Interest (if it is called getting in touch with your real feelings)……


Week Eight – Hod

Read the eighth trip, Hod
and discuss in the forums

Discuss the Snafu law and any conspicous examples you have noted

Discuss:

Conspiracy Digest interview

CD: How seriously are we to take your fascinating and entertaining trilogy, Illuminatus!, which you wrote in collaboration with Robert J. Shea?

Wilson: I would hate to be taken seriously. Serious people are always so grim and uptight that they make me want to dance naked on the lawn playing a flute. Of course, as Mavis says in the first volume of the trilogy, nothing is true unless it makes you laugh, but you don’t really understand it until it makes you cry. The basic situation of humanity is both tragic and comic, since we are all domesticated apes with marvelous 30-billion-cell brains, which we seldom use efficiently because of domination by the older mammalian parts of the back brain. I mean, we’re living on the Planet of the Apes, man. Is that funny or serious? It depends on how broad your sense of humor is, I guess.

CD: Specifically, are we really to believe that competing secret societies initiate and guide the various intellectual, religious, artistic, and mind-warping trends of the world? Or was the secret-society scenario just a parody of right-wing theories, a way of dramatizing authoritarian vs. libertarian trends, or simply your own brainwashing technique?

Wilson: To quote Lichtenberg, “This book is a mirror. When a monkey looks in, no philosopher looks out.” Illuminatus!, like Linda Lovelace, is all things to all men. It’s the first novel deliberately written from the viewpoint of the multi-model agnosticism of modern quantum physics. The novelist sitting on a pedestal watching the world with the allegedly Objective Eye of God is as obsolete as the tinhorn preacher bawling, “Come to my church, I’ve got the true true religion.” The only philosophy one can honestly embrace at this stage of evolution is agnosticism, or ontological pluralism. The mosaic of competing conspiracies in Illuminatus! is a parody of popular demonology on both Right and Left. It’s also a serious proposal for a more Einsteinian, relativistic model than the monistic Newtonian theories most conspiracy buffs favor. One of the readers who really seems to have understood Illuminatus! is Dr. Timothy Leary, who told me last year that his experiences with the DEA, FBI, CIA, PLO, Weather Underground, Mansonoids, Aryan Brotherhood, Al Fattah, etc., were precisely like the most absurd parts of Illuminatus!. Tim says you meet the same 24 conspiracies wherever you go. Specifically, he mentioned that he identified the same 24 paleolithic gangs fighting over the turf in Folsom Prison that he had recognized at Harvard University. The ones at Harvard speak better English, of course….

I see the power game resting on three levels of force and fraud. First, earliest and still most powerful is the government racket itself, the monopoly on force (military power, police power, etc.) which allows the governing group to take tribute (taxation) from the enslaved or deluded masses. Second, derivative from this primordial conquest, is the landlord racket, the mammalian monopoly on territory which allow’s the king’s relations (lords-of-the-land) or their successors, today’s “land-lords,” to take tribute (rent) from those who live within the territory. Rent is the daughter of taxation; the second degree of the same racket. Third, the latest in historical time, is the usury racket, the monopoly on the issue of currency which allows the money lords to take tribute (interest) on the creation of money or credit, and on the continuous circulation of the money or credit every step of the way. Interest is the son of rent, the rent of money. Since most people engaged in nefarious practices are, in my opinion, very loathe to acknowledge what they are doing, and are addicted to the same hypocrisies as the rest of humanity, I think all power groups quite sincerely believe that what they are doing is proper, and that anybody who attacks them is a revolutionary nut. Outside of the Klingons on Star Trek, I have never encountered a real predator who justifies himself on Stirnerite or Machiavellian grounds. I really think Saroyan was right, naïve as it sounds, in saying that “every man is a good man in his own eyes.”

(Preceding was written in 1976; following was written in 1979)

The difference between Conspiracy Digest and myself is that CD defines the Power Elite as somebody else. I always define the Power Elite as myself and my friends. CD and I are in basic agreement that certain kinds of power are vested in (a) those who monopolize weaponry, i.e. governments, (b) those who monopolize land, i.e. landlords, and (c) those who monopolize currency, i.e. banks of issue. We disagree in that CD regards these traditional monopolies as possessing the only kinds of power that matters on this planet; and I recognize another kind of power, Brain Power. Brain power (the work of all artists, scientists, and symbolizers since the dawn of humanity, but particularly those of the Nineteenth Century) created the “real world” over which monopolists fight each other in the Twentieth Century. Similiarly, Brain power right now, today, is creating the “real world” of the Twenty-First Century, over which the monopolies will then be struggling. The Brain people create the realities over which the Power people fight each other, and the Brain people even create the techniques of the fight…


Week Nine – Yesod

Read the Ninth Trip, Yesod

Read T.S.O.G. & cuss and/or discuss in the forum
http://www.rawilson.com/tsog.shtml

Week TenMalkuth

Read the Tenth Trip, Malkuth
Why does the novel end with the shooting of the last American eagle?
Do you regard this as rather corny and obvious symbolism?
Why does the last sentence have exactly five words?
More too-obvious symbolism?
If Joe and the others live in a novel, how about George Bush and Osama bin Laden? How about you and me?

Read, ponder and [if you feel inclined] discuss:

“There are only two kinds of artists: the plagiarists and the revolutionaries.”
— Paul Gauguin

I love this quote because it sums up my own philosophy of art so neatly.

To say it in my own jargon, Gauguin’s “plagiarists” consist of those who do relatively good or relatively bad work within “the style of the period”– the dominant paradigm or current reality-tunnel– and the “revolutionaries” create an entirely new style, i.e a new reality-tunnel (or, in the case of Picasso, a new reality-labyrinth.)

These “plagiarists” (remember: this pejorative term comes from Gauguin, not from me) may provide light entertainment but they have low information in the sense of Shannon’s “Mathematical Theory of Communication.” (where information = the negative of the probability that you can predict the “signal” in advance. If you can always predict it, it ain’t information.)

In general, dogma always produces low information; see, the Fundamentalists (Xtian, Judaic, Moslem etc.), Marxists, Objectivists, Aryan Nation, CSICOP etc.) You always know what such True Believers will say even before they say it, and they all say it in the same words as their Fuhrer. In art, the “style of the period” = an equivalent of (perceptual/conceptual.) dogma, a rigid and familiar reality-tunnel This kind of art reaches a large public immediately, because the mass consists mostly of (in Houseman’s phrase) “fellows whom it hurts to think.” People in general love the familiar and predictable and have “crawly” sensations at the unfamiliar and unpredictable. The “revolutionaries” contain high information and a whole new “style” of reality-tunnel (high unpredictability) and annoy or infuriate the general public. Later, with time, they get consigned to “starters of crazes” or elevated to Masters (those who really did enrich of experience of Universe.)

In my opinion, the primary “revolutionary” Masters of our past century include Picasso, Klee, Pound, Joyce, Faukner, Ginsberg, Frank Lloyd Wright, D.W. Griffith, Chaplin, Welles, Clint Eastwood,, Stravinsky, Gershwin, Epstein, Brancusi, Carlin : the man or woman who doesn’t know their work deeply and richly still lives in the 19th Century while the rest of us have entered the 21st. The artists on that list haven’t become familiar enough to stop surprising us. We still need to interpret our interpreters, as Ellman said of Joyce.

The “plagiarists” appear on popular magazine covers and the NY Times best-seller lists. God bless them, they live happily and sincerely in the same world as the mass audience.

Or — ignore all these leads and discuss what thou wilt…..


Week Eleven

Read appendices aleph, beth, daleth, tzaddi, vau, zain, and cheth

The novel proper mixed fact and surrealism.
Discuss the elements of each of these in the appendices.

Read and discuss
Schrödinger’s Jew

97 years ago today Leopold Bloom, a fictitious man, wandered the streets of Dublin, a real city; and Joyce scholars still argue about his odd odyssey. I would like to add to the confusion with a note about Bloom’s “Jewishness.”

“Is” Leopold Bloom a Jew?

Not according to Orthodox Rabbinical law, which defines a Jew as the child of a Jewish mother. Bloom as the child of a Protestant mother “is not” a Jew.

According to Nazi law, however, a Jew “is” a person with a known Jewish ancestor. Bloom as the son of Rudolph Bloom [born Rudolph Virag], “is” a Jew.

See how easily a person can “be” and “not be” a Jew at the same time?

On the third hand, most humanists define a Jew as one who believes in and practices the Judaic religion. By this definition, Bloom who neither believes in nor practices any religion “is not” a Jew. But Marilyn Monroe, who practiced and probably tried to believe in Judaism while married to Arthur Miller, “was” a Jew by that definition– for those few years, if not before or after.

Extensionally or phenomenologically, a Jew “is” somebody considered Jewish by all or most of the people he meets. By this standard the multi-ordinal Bloom “is” a Jew again.

Once more: in terms of pure existentialism a Jew “is” somebody who chooses to consider themselves Jewish. Bloom obviously doesn’t consider himself Jewish but Irish, most of the time. Only when under verbal assault by the anti-semitic Citizen in Barney Kiernan’s pub does Bloom define himself as Jewish [“And Jesus was a Jew too. Your god. He was a Jew like me.”] Here he obviously has in mind the “known Jewish ancestor” rule, because he adds “And so was his father,” to which the Citizen replies, as a correct Catholic, “He had no father,” and Bloom, unfamiliar with that theology — logic played with deuces, eights and one-eyed jacks wild — can only pragmatically reply, “Well, his uncle then.”

But recalling the incident later, Bloom says “And he called me a Jew, which as a matter of fact I’m not.” Here he returns to his customary “believer in Judaic religion” definition.

I suppose Joyce made Bloom such a tangled genetic and cultural mixture to expose the absurdities of anti-semitism; but I also suspect that he wanted to undermine that neurolinguistic habit which postmodernists call “essentialism” and which Korzybski claimed invades our brains and causes hallucinations or delusions every time we use the word “is.”

For more on Korzybski’s criticisms of “isness,” click
http://www.generalsemantics.org/about/ak-intro.htm


Week Twelve


The Appendices – Part Two

Read and discusss–

The Illuminatus! Play interview

http://www.paradise-engineering.com/

http://www.geocities.com/gwbushart/gallery65/gallery65.htm

Read final appendices

I’m just learning to use my new computer….more comments, farewells
Will follow–
and a chat
Tomorrow!

Ideogram Chat

16:32:28 RWelt enters this room
16:32:29 >[RWelt] Welcome to our chat. Please obey the net etiquette while chatting: try to be pleasant and polite.
16:34:39 RAW enters this room
16:35:22 [RWelt] Well hello there!
16:35:40 [RAW] test one two
16:36:07 [RWelt] receiving you five by five
16:36:41 [RAW] hello there ,I’ll be back in 15 minutes
16:37:03 [RWelt] no problem, still trying to finish dinner
16:49:16 acrillic enters this room
16:49:59 [RWelt] welcome, acrillic
16:50:01 [acrillic] Namaste
16:50:59 [RAW] hi there!
16:51:46 [RAW] refresh/30
16:51:52 [acrillic] waves hands frantic
16:52:27 [RWelt] maybe it’s still a little early, but I was expecting more of a turnout
16:53:06 [acrillic] umm, me too. thought the whole planet
16:54:10 [RAW] i just heard a few hours ago that bush and kerry are not only related to eachother (nineth cousins) bet they are also related to vlad dracul–the historical prototype for dracula
16:54:19 Matt enters this room
16:54:36 [RWelt] that’s awesome
16:54:39 [acrillic] Im reading about guts above, ive a steady hand and step. whoops, tripps and rolls off stool.
16:55:01 bandito enters this room
16:55:09 [RAW] the village voice this week has pitcture of george bush with fangs sucking the blood ofthe statue of liberty in the classic bela lugosi pose , this must mean something ?
16:55:17 [acrillic] Ooo the Impaler, they both look like they got pockers up the booty
16:55:57 [acrillic] Vampires suck.
16:55:58 [bandito] banditos in tha house
16:57:12 [acrillic] matt/bandito – hi y’all, welcome, greetings.
16:57:15 [RAW] this means bush and kerry are also related to the Usual Suspects—bonnie prince charly, the von hapsbergs, the jacobites, and the whole priory of scion genealogy, what next?
16:57:51 [Matt] Hi everyone
16:58:10 [bandito] hello…
16:58:11 [acrillic] Bloody hell, Bush and Kerry related by blood….clot!
16:58:34 [RWelt] do you think any notable figure can have figures like this in their ancestry, or is this really a special case?
16:59:20 [acrillic] I remeber a gameshow on T.V – family fortunes, where your family can compete wid others for Cash prizes, and cars and shit.
16:59:36 [RWelt] though i admit, either way, it’s fascinating
17:00:28 [bandito] sometimes I just think it’s old money types just staying within their own circle
17:00:59 [RAW] babys suck by the way, welcome bandito and matt and everyone
17:01:18 [RWelt] i think that’s probably a big part of it, bandito
17:02:19 [RAW] in an old european proverb: royals only mary royals, seems true this side of the atlantic too
17:02:49 [bandito] my baby (5.5 months) puts everything in his month – oral-survival right in front of me
17:03:21 [RAW] where are all of you on the earth?
17:03:40 [bandito] Golden, Colorado
17:04:10 [Matt] I’m in Munster, Indiana
17:04:12 [RWelt] Albuquerque, New Mexico… where Bugs Bunny makes all his wrong turns
17:04:23 [RAW] ive been there to CO, i lectured at an engineering college there once
17:04:30 [bandito] LOL
17:04:48 [bandito] No kidding! Colorado School of Mines???
17:04:51 [RAW] never been to either of those places …sorry
17:04:59 [acrillic] Brooklyn, NY
17:05:10 [RAW] YES that was it !
17:05:32 [RAW] i was born in brooklyn and proud of it!
17:05:45 [RWelt] you haven’t really missed much by not having been here
17:06:01 [bandito] I’m stunned! I have a BS and MS from Mines. My wife has a BS. We just had our 10 year reunion of sorts.
17:06:14 [bandito] small world
17:06:31 [Matt] Munster is close to Crown Point…
17:06:34 [acrillic] Yeah, i was born in Wordsley
17:07:12 [RWelt] was in brooklyn for a family wedding a few months back
17:07:15 [acrillic] Wordsly, Mid Westlands, UK
17:07:44 [RAW] can any of you guess why Simon Moon’s first words in Illumintus! are : crown point?
17:08:27 [RWelt] it has something to do with kether, right?
17:08:58 [Matt] Dillinger and the jail?
17:09:23 [acrillic] Kings. Sepheroph. wearing the crown. Kether. Top Hat
17:09:36 [bandito] Moon’s tantric practices?
17:09:47 [RWelt] all of the above?
17:09:50 [RAW] yeah kether means crown and is symbolized geometricly by a point, crown point was also the escape proof jail that dillinger blashemously escaped from in defiance to the laws of physics and the United States.
17:10:37 [acrillic] Right on Mat.
17:10:42 [RAW] yea verily
17:10:45 [RWelt] man, i’m so far behind in the illuminatus course
17:11:09 [bandito] me too, about two chapters back..
17:11:13 [RAW] since this is the end of the course are there any questions you want to ask?
17:12:02 [bandito] how do you see ideograms in relation to internet?
17:12:08 [RWelt] i still have troubles expressing what ideogrammic method “means” in words… is there a short simple way you can sum it up?
17:12:22 [bandito] montage? feedback? organism-as-whole?
17:12:34 [RWelt] i have lots of people who give me a “what the fuck” look when i say i’m taking a course on id. method
17:13:03 [bandito] I meant that as a follow up to my question, not as a reply to RWelt’s question…
17:13:21 [acrillic] what did you eat for breakfast?
17:13:31 [RWelt] lol, i assumed that… both of us hurriedly typing away…
17:13:39 [Matt] Me too, RWelt
17:13:49 [RAW] the ideograms define by giving concrete particulars , where as western philosophy defines by abstractions
17:15:02 [RAW] for example energy is the capacity to do work (western) or as against energy equals man with shovel , horse pulling cart, electric generator, waterfall, atomic bomb, etc.
17:15:11 [RAW] is that clear?
17:15:43 [acrillic] Concrete like “Root” similarity with natural phenomena
17:15:49 [RWelt] makes sense to me, looks clear enough to satisfy my friends
17:15:49 [RAW] second ex: western defines individualism as the doctrine that blah blah blah
17:17:04 [RAW] as pound defines individualism as odyseus , sigasmundo malatesta, confucius, thomas jefferson, etc.
17:17:04 [bandito] makes sense. Seems like it would go a long way in clearing lines of communication. less noise.
17:17:48 [RAW] yeah
17:18:14 [RAW] as far as internet see all of the above
17:19:14 [RAW] concrete as specific
17:19:25 [bandito] internet certainly seems like montage
17:19:45 [RAW] as william blake said : he who would do good to other must do so in concrete particulars
17:19:52 [acrillic] how does the Ideo meth in China, differ from our western “Interpretation” of the methd – of chi/ written character?
17:19:59 [RWelt] internet seems like all bandito said earlier… montage, feedback, organism-as-whole…
17:20:15 [RAW] general good is a plague of the hipocrite , scoundrel and flatterer- Blake
17:20:28 [RAW] as a poet Blake thought in ideograms
17:21:10 [RWelt] general good meaning a blanket goodness… to the whole but not necessarily to the individual?
17:21:13 [acrillic] and all the hills echoed>>>>>>>
17:21:39 [RAW] acrilic – i dont get the question, can you redefine?
17:21:56 [bandito] I remember introducing my wife to internet several years ago. She typed in the same phrase in various search engines and got different answers from each one which she found frustrating. Now we seem to have interalized the inheirent “choas” of internet
17:22:04 [RAW] general good meaning what george carlin calls bullshit!
17:22:45 [RAW] bandito – yes that what i like about internet
17:22:47 [RWelt] i love the inherent chaos of internet!
17:23:13 [RAW] i once that certitude who inly look in one encyclopedia, with internt we have various encyclopedias
17:23:22 [acrillic] How do you think the Ideo method, as practised in China “Assimilates” with our English interpretation, how can we improve the communication medium? erm…. acrillc /..drowns in his drink
17:25:12 [RWelt] i think acrillic is after… how does “our” version of id. method differ from how those in China use/see it?
17:25:33 [RWelt] or something akin to that
17:25:37 [RAW] still not sure i understand but i dont expect to become a frenchman by studying french lit or a chinese by studying ideograms yet i think studying french and chinese makes more than an ordinary american, which is worth striving for
17:25:49 [acrillic] Thanks Rwelt.
17:26:43 [Matt] Any suggestions for further study?
17:26:53 [RWelt] more than an ordinary anything is worth striving for, i think
17:27:02 bogusmagus enters this room
17:27:09 [bandito] I would guess that language has an influence on culture and that a study of Chinese culture shed some light on your question…
17:27:17 [acrillic] well Bob your about the most Chinese, irishman i can think of, can i retract the question? he he Oops
17:27:34 [RAW] matt- science and sanity by korzybski
17:28:39 [acrillic] Greetings Bogus
17:28:48 [bandito] any Korzybski popularizations you recommend before plunging into the masterwork?
17:28:50 [RAW] a friend years ago said everytime I took a psychedlelic that i looked chinese
17:28:56 [Matt] Thanks!
17:29:02 [RAW] not sure what that means
17:29:20 [RWelt] did this course give you any new perspectives or ideas that you’ll include in Tale of the Tribe?
17:29:54 [bogusmagus] Hi – just back-tracking and lurking a while
17:30:00 [RAW] welt – it certainly gave me a lot of new ideas and perspectives..yes!
17:30:16 [RWelt] wonderful
17:31:30 [RAW] you could say the use of concrete particulars vs vague generalizations
17:31:38 [RWelt] in regards to all the classes, not just this one, how much do they change from what you originally envisioned?
17:31:57 [RWelt] do they flow pretty much as you expected? or are you constantly altering?
17:32:26 [RAW] they evolved in ways I could not expect or predict. thats why enjoyed them so much and hope to teach more online
17:33:10 [RAW] like everything else in the universe they continually surprise me ( well everything except G.Bush)
17:34:00 [RWelt] I don’t know… Bush continually surprises me, but never in a good way
17:34:08 [bogusmagus] I have greatly enjoyed this particular course because so much was unfamiliar (more surprise, more information?)
17:34:26 [bandito] bogus – any new mcluhan-ideogram insights…
17:34:59 [bogusmagus] that’ll be tomorrow!
17:35:22 [RAW] bandito – there several good ones, but i dont know what is still in print….explorations in awareness by samuel bois, language in thought and action by sam hayakawa
17:35:22 [bogusmagus] Sorry people – got a tooth abcess, brain out of gear
17:35:38 [RAW] and quantumn psychology by me , still in print
17:35:52 [bandito] aha!
17:36:41 [bandito] wish we could all get together and play the world game online.
17:36:50 [RAW] ive had an abcess, god pity you sir!
17:37:06 [bogusmagus] Thanks, Bob
17:37:10 [RWelt] me too! i looked at the world game a few months ago, and was filled with a desire to play
17:37:45 [bogusmagus] Hey, how much does it cost, and how do we set up a team?
17:38:24 [bandito] $3500 for them to come to you. Didn’t see an online option.
17:39:07 [bandito] Bois’ book out of print, hayakawa available at amazon.com
17:39:48 [RAW] in that case i recommend hayakawa
17:40:10 [acrillic] Hayakawa has a great essay in Ecetera ecetera compendium.
17:40:32 [RAW] while youre at it check and see if the ‘power of words’ by stewart chase is till in print
17:41:24 [bandito] Power of words out of print. I found Bois at half.com
17:42:15 [bandito] Power of words @ half.com as well….
17:42:20 [RAW] look for operational philosophy by anatole rapoport
17:42:59 [RAW] i also recommend the open society and its enemies by Karl Popper
17:43:14 [RAW] and selected prose by Ezra Pound
17:44:05 [RWelt] I’ve already got a list of over 60 books to read….looks like it might be growing
17:44:23 [bandito] Whee! this is fun! Operational philosophy out of print, but amazon has 10 used copies. Bless internet.
17:44:24 [bogusmagus] I just got hold of a ‘popular’ book – Drive Yourself Sane – anyone know it?
17:45:02 [RWelt] bogus- i’ve heard the name, but that’s about all i know of it
17:45:21 [RAW] Ive read it…its ok, the guy who wrote it supports G.Bush, so be warned!
17:46:10 [RAW] He should try driving himself sane.
17:46:29 [bogusmagus] OK – but he’s quoting you as a ref on this website http://www.driveyourselfsane.com/dysbook/dysbook.html
17:47:08 [bandito] lol!
17:47:10 [RAW] he has a right to do that if he wants to
17:47:19 [acrillic] I picked up the Trial of Ezra Pound. Bob, do you find Julian Cornell’s book a fair, balanced work? book?
17:48:05 [RAW] acrili – almost, not entirely….balanced but far from complete
17:49:07 [bandito] I must say that reading Pound has finally put some pleasure into poetry (for me)
17:49:38 [RAW] lol
17:49:47 [acrillic] my heart raced as i read the transcripts/broadcasts, wow – MC Pound really got the party jumpin and hearts pumpin.
17:49:53 dalryada enters this room
17:50:04 [RWelt] i’ve really enjoyed Pound also…
17:50:15 [bogusmagus] Me too
17:50:31 [RWelt] most poetry i’ve read has either been poorly written, or has a message no more complex than “flower pretty”
17:50:55 [bogusmagus] It’s been hard when friends say “why are you reading a Fascist and an anti-Semite?”
17:51:01 [acrillic] Pound is a currency ?
17:51:25 [RAW] Non Illuminati carborundum
17:52:05 [bandito] hello dalryada
17:52:19 [dalryada] oh hi, i’m lurking. i know i’m really late. sorry.
17:52:25 [bogusmagus] Even when I say “he was doing broadcasts against American involvement in the war” (which those same friends should approve, maybe?)
17:52:34 [RAW] challenge the is of identity and read korzybski for christ sake!
17:52:37 [bogusmagus] Hi Dal
17:52:51 [dalryada] hi bogus
17:53:15 [RAW] signing off soon
17:53:35 [RWelt] ok, i haven’t been saying it so far, but hi to everyone who’s joined in, glad you’re here
17:54:00 [RWelt] korzybski is high on my list of books to read next (science & sanity)
17:54:01 [RAW] sorry we missed you Dalryada
17:54:03 [acrillic] A pound of currency maybe a pound of Ezra Pound’s flesh.
17:54:21 [dalryada] me too….it rained in arizona and everything went all to HELL!
17:54:48 [bandito] kinda like snow in Texas?
17:54:58 [dalryada] exactly
17:55:19 [RWelt] same way here in new mex… wonder if you got the storm that passed thru last night? not sure which way that was headed
17:55:29 [RAW] thank you all for the inspiration you have provided and the ideas you have jostled.
17:55:34 [Matt] Even though I just lurked, I found the forums very helpful. Thanks to everyone who posted. Your questions and answers helped clear up lots of things for me.
17:55:53 [RAW] See you in the Academy!
17:56:06 [bogusmagus] Be Seeing You!
17:56:09 [bandito] mutual inspiration all around
17:56:13 [dalryada] hi and bye!
17:56:16 [bandito] see you on campus
17:56:22 [RWelt] thank you Bob for giving us this wonderful opportunity
17:57:16 [acrillic] greetings
17:58:02 [RWelt] and thank all the rest of you too, for making this a pleasant experience of exploration
17:58:33 RAW exits from this room
17:59:47 [RWelt] sorry you missed most of it, dalryada
18:00:13 [bogusmagus] I’ve had a great time, but I found this the hardest course – perhaps the most rewarding – I am not sure yet…
18:00:24 [dalryada] yeah, me too. i won’t ask what you guys talked about. i’ll hopefully wait till it’s posted in the forums..
18:00:50 [RWelt] if anyone needs it, i’ve got the whole chat in a Word document
18:00:54 [bogusmagus] more good book titles!
18:01:03 [RWelt] including this stuff… hehehe
18:01:09 [dalryada] oh yeah! oh no.
18:01:16 [dalryada] including this stuff?
18:01:52 [bandito] I love that guy!
18:01:53 [RWelt] yeah, i’m getting everything until i go, which will probably be soon
18:02:06 [RWelt] i know how you feel, bandito
18:02:19 [dalryada] i’d love a copy.
18:02:36 [bogusmagus] I thought I came in after a few minutes – did you start earleir?
18:02:49 [dalryada] so….bogus, you mentioned this was the hardest course for you….me too. Others as well?
18:02:52 [RWelt] anyone who wants a copy, email me at yellowsign@comcast.net
18:02:53 [bogusmagus] I’d like a copy of the earlier stuff, too
18:03:01 [RWelt] let me know if you want a format other than .doc
18:04:49 [bogusmagus] For future reference, how did you save it?
18:04:54 [RWelt] yeah, looks like there’s a good bit before you showed up, bogus
18:05:21 [RWelt] i’ve just been copying & pasting into an open Word document
18:05:45 [bogusmagus] OK
18:06:23 [acrillic] great fun ppl, thanx.
18:06:43 [bogusmagus] Thanx for the pix
18:06:51 [RWelt] yes, again thank all you guys
18:07:23 [acrillic] thanks for the trix
18:07:56 [RWelt] i’ll probably be back online in a few hours… will send out the log to anyone who’s requested it by then
18:08:10 [RWelt] if you request later, you’ll get it within a day at most
18:08:26 [RWelt] bye!

The Ideogrammatic Method: Weekly Assignments

WEEK ONE ASSIGNMENTS

Canto 1 from The Cantos of Ezra Pound and my commentary
[Editors note: all Canto commentary here]

Read Fenollosa’s THE CHINESE WRITTEN CHARACTER

Read opening matter & Chapter One of Pound’s ABC OF READING

Read my commentary on Copulating Currency [source unknown]

In the first 2 weeks buy or rent or somehow view DW Griffiths INTOLERANCE and study it as continuous montage — i.e. Ideogrammic Method

Meditate [& if you will, contemplate] upon:

Midnight Haiku

Mottled blueblack sky.
A sudden moon — briefly!
Then: Blueblack mottled sky…


WEEK TWO ASSIGNMENTS

Read Cantos 8 to 11 with my commentaries —
an ideogrammic presentation of one
typically atypical Renaissance man,
Sigismundo Pandolfo Malatesta

Consider ideogrammic method in relation
to the concept of extensional orientation
in General Semantics —

In extension we do not define humans as
mammals, mammals as vertebrates,
vertebrates as life forms etc
as caricatured by Fenollosa.

In extension we define humans as Odysseus,
Helen of Troy, El Cid, Lorenzo de Medici,
Eleanor of Aquitaine, Tom Jefferson,
Cunizza daRomano, John Adams, Kungfutse,
Tai Tsong, Andy Jackson, Yong Ching,
JP Morgan, etc etc as in the ideograms of the Cantos.

Pound & Fenollosa consider ideogram the
heart of poetry. Korzybski thought extensionality
the essence of science. Think about this
and cuss and discuss in the forums.


WEEK THREE ASSIGNMENTS

Read Canto 12 & 13 & my commentaries

Discuss in forums the treatment of “individulism”
in the Cantos as represented thus far by Odysseus [Canto I],
Malatesta [Cantos 8-11], the usurers [Canto 12]
and Kung fu Tse. [Canto 13]

Does the poem seem pro-individalism or anti?

Or does it display a “hierarchy of values”– e.g. great,
good enough, bad, terrible?

Read posted article on language and thought.

Discuss in relation to ideogrammic method and EP’s changes in style between & within Cantos.


WEEK FOUR ASSIGNMENTS

Read chapters 2 to 5 in ABC OF READING

Discuss the equation “dichten=condensare” in the forums

Compare EP’s definitions with my own, “Greatness in writing signifies high INFORMATION.”
Do I disagree with Ez
or have I merely restated his view in cybertalk?

DARE to make your OWN personal list of Inventors, Masters etc. without reference to Ez’s list

Continue discussion in forums the treatment of “individulism” in the Cantos as represented thusfar by Odysseus [Canto I], Malatesta [Cantos 8-11], the usurers [Canto 12] and Kung fu Tse [Canto 13]


WEEK FIVE ASSIGNMENTS

Read Canto II with my commentary. Discuss
or just cuss in Forums.

Read the following selection from
Uncle Bob’s Treasury of Great Poems.

Read commentary below.  Cusss or discuss. [material unonwn]


WEEK 6 ASSIGMENTS

Read Canto 17 with my commentary.
Discuss or just cuss in Forums.


Since you didn’t do it last week,
read and comment on the selection from
Uncle Bob’s Treasury of Great Poems (now in Assignment Archive).

Read updated commentary below. Cuss or discuss.

Norbert Weiner, co-creator of Information Theory
and thus of the Net on which we speak to each other,
wrote in 1948 that great poetry contains more information than political speeches.

We cannot measure or define Information without
including the Receiver in the measurement or definition.
This PRECISELY mirrors the observer/observed
synergy in quantum mechanics but has received less publicity.

The only Information scenically and mathematically
measurable = the inability of the Receiver to guess
what’s coming next [the next “signal.’] In political
speeches, measurable information runs very near
the theoretical infinitesimal; you always know
what’s coming next.
In a “good” poem you don’t
know what’s coming next;
the greatest poems
[or fragments of poems]

consist of those that
have the faintly “spooky” quality of never
losing something of their original unpredictability,
for at least some Receivers.

These “fragments I have shelved [shored]” wd not illustrate
this so well if I had attached the author’s name
to each, thereby triggering conditioned reflexes.

How does each poetry selection illustrate —
or fail to illustrate — Weiner’s definition of high information?

If you have no ideas on any of these topics,
discuss something else, so I’ll at least know you’re alive.


WEEK 7 ASSIGMENTS

 Canto 20 with commentary

read, meditate and write your own comments in the Forum


WEEK 8 ASSIGMENTS

an ideogrammic
approach
to the ideogrammic age….. [source unknown]


Read and discuss article in the forum


WEEK 9 ASSIGMENTS

Be sure to see the movie of the week, Educating Rita,
and note isomorphisms with
Frankenstein, Simone and My Fair Lady.

Compare isomphisms of King Kong and Behind the Green Door

Based on the definitions given earlier,
write extensional/ideogrammic definitions of
men
women
pornography
Christians
Moslems
Buddhists
democracy
terrorism
government
science
energy
wealth
entropy
feedback

Guide: an extensional/ideogrammic definition of US presidents:
Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Jackson, Bush, Clinton, Carter, Roosevelt, Adams, Bush, Harrison, Harrison, Roosevelt etc

Read and discuss in forum:
an ideogrammic
approach
to the ideogrammic age…..


WEEK 10 ASSIGMENTS

Read E and E-Prime

and do the exercizes


WEEK 11 ASSIGMENTS

Study and discuss Cantos 31 & 32
[Commentary in the course forum…]

Compare this ideogram [Jefferson/Adams] with those concerning Odysseus, Malatesta, the Medici, Confucius, Baldy Bacon.

How much commentary seems really necesary?
How much does each ideogram ‘comment’ on the others?
Do you begin to grok ideogammic method?

Closing thoughts…..


WEEK 12 ASSIGMENTS


Well, this course ended more quickly than
I expected. I hope you all enjoyed yourselves
as much as I did — and maybe even learned as
much as I did!

Some final notions —
go to the World Game and explore [& have fun!]:

http://www.worldgame.org/wwwproject/

Does ideogrammic method help you strategize in this game?

Compare this ideogram [Fullerworld] with Pound’s Cantos
concerning Odysseus, Malatesta, the Medici, Confucius, Baldy Bacon, Jefferson/Adams.

Fuller and Pound knew and appreciated each other’s work.
How many points of isomorphism can you detect?

Hope to hear from you again, maybe in another course!

murkily,


grandpaw

Eight Dimensions of Mind: Weekly Assignments

WEEK ONE

I seem to have 44 of you in this seminar — 42 students, our Beloved Academy Admin, and an anonymous invited guest. By holy Qabala 44 = Horus. Does this mean something?

I don’t know; but according to Aleister Crowley we entered the Aeon of Horus 100 years ago — 100 years, 3 months and 20 days ago, if I calculate correctly. But perhaps that merely indicates whimsey on my part….

I hope and expect this seminar will prove a Learning Experience for all of us, especially me. I also hope we will all find it a lot of fun….

150 years ago, more or less, Emerson synthesized the barely emerging science of neuro-linguistics into a memorable mantra:

“Every word is a fossilized poem.”

That sentence ignited a flaming perception in the brain of a Harvard student named Ernest Fenollosa, and when Fenollosa died in 1914 his notebooks, turned over to Ezra Pound, ignited what some literary historians call the Revolution of the Word. One result: we all respect words a lot more and trust them a lot less.

Thus, while Freudians and Jungians speak of “levels of consciousness” or “unconsciousness,” Gurdjieff of “vibration levels,” Leary of neurological “circuits,” etc. and currently I speak of “dimensions,” this mostly represents a choice of metaphors and not a difference in subject matter.

If you grok that in its fullness, you will also dig why I call this workshop The 8 Dimensions of “Mind” and NOT The 8 Dimensions of Mind. If you don’t get it, hang in there: it will become clear as we proceed.

And just in case that bloody 44 does mean something, read and contemplate Chapter 44 from Crowley’s Book of Lies [falsely so called]:

44

Kappa-Epsilon-Phi-Alpha-Lambda-Eta Mu-Delta

THE MASS OF THE PHOENIX

The Magician, his breast bare, stands before an altar on which are his Burin, Bell, Thurible, and two of the Cakes of Light. In the Sign of the Enterer he reaches West across the Altar, and cries:
Hail Ra, that goest in Thy bark
Into the Caverns of the Dark!

He gives the sign of Silence, and takes the Bell, and Fire, in his hands.

East of the Altar see me stand
With Light and Musick in mine hand!

He strikes Eleven times upon the Bell 3 3 3-5 5 5 5 5- 3 3 3 and places the Fire in the Thurible.
I strike the Bell: I light the flame:
I utter the mysterious Name.
ABRAHADABRA

He strikes Eleven times upon the Bell.

Now I begin to pray: Thou Child,
Holy Thy name and undefiled!
Thy reign is come: Thy will is done.
Here is the Bread; here is the Blood.
Bring me through midnight to the Sun!
Save me from Evil and from Good!
That Thy one crown of all the Ten.
Even now and here be mine. AMEN.

He puts the first Cake on the Fire of the Thurible.

I burn the Incense-cake, proclaim
These adorations of Thy name.

He makes them as in Liber Legis, and strikes again Eleven times upon the Bell. With the Burin he then makes upon his breast the proper sign.

Behold this bleeding breast of mine
Gashed with the sacramental sign!

He puts the second Cake to the wound.

I stanch the blood; the wafer soaks It up, and the high priest invokes!

He eats the second Cake.

This Bread I eat. This Oath I swear As I enflame myself with prayer:
“There is no grace: there is no guilt:
This is the Law: DO WHAT THOU WILT!”

He strikes Eleven times upon the Bell, and cries

ABRAHADABRA.
I entered in with woe; with mirth
I now go forth, and with thanksgiving,
To do my pleasure on the earth
Among the legions of the living.

He goeth forth.

COMMENTARY [by Crowley]

(Mu-Delta)

This is the special number of Horus; it is the Hebrew blood, and the multiplication of the 4 by the 11, the number of Magick, explains 4 in its finest sense. But see in particular the accounts in Equinox I, vii of the circumstances of the Equinox of the Gods.
The word “Phoenix” may be taken as including the idea of “Pelican”, the bird, which is fabled to feeds its young from the blood of its own breast. Yet the two ideas, though cognate, are not identical, and “Phoenix” is the more accurate symbol.
This chapter is explained in Chapter 62. It would be improper to comment further upon a ritual which has been accepted as official by the A.’.A.’.

COMMENTARY BY RAW

PLEASE NOTE that I suggested that you “contemplate” this ritual, NOT that you perform it. Unless you have at least 10 years experince in Magick ritual of the Thelemic sort, you should not try performing any invovation of Horus. Reasons exist why occultists call him the Lord of Force and Fire.


READING:

PROMETHEUS RISING:
Preface to Second Edition*
Chapter One
Chapter Two

*If you only have the first edition, you may skip this and just meditate on how to make fire out of ice.

MAGICK AND CURSES


EXERCIZES

Do all exercizes in Chapers 1 and 2

1. How many of these exercizes relate to the meta-model? How many to the Milton model? Do any of them comingle the meta-model with the Milton model?

2. Whether you’ve tackled Finnegans Wake before or not, open to the first page [numbered page 3] and write down all the overt or covert references to the Bible you can find. [Next Tuesday I’ll send you my own list.]

3. Why, of all the teachers in the world, did you seek out me? Why of all the years in your life, this year? Try to think of “all” possible answers again…..

4.Contemplate this haiku:

All is cloaked in fog;
The world seems empty, until —
Far off, a gull shrieks.

5. Go to www.gunsanddope.net Study and discuss. [“We are operating on many levels here.”]

6. Rent a DVD or Video of our Movie of the Week, D W Griffith’s masterpiece, INTOLERANCE, and feel free to join the Academy Forum and the discussion of it.

7. Record your exercize results in your Academy Journal


WEEK TWO

What a delightfully intelligent crew we have here…
I’m enjoying this dia-[or multi]-log immensely,
and I hope all of you enjoy it, too

For this week:

Read chapters 3 & 4 of Prometheus Rising

Do at least SOME of the exercizes

Continue at least some of last week’s exercizes

Read my Introduction to Weishaupt

Read the excerpt from the Wilson/Brown interview (full interview)

Read page 3 of FINNEGANS WAKE again, this time looking for
a) Mark Twain
b) Jonathan Swift
c) Lewis Carroll

Read the forum discussions of Bible links on page 3 of Finnegans Wake

Bring forth a Theory of why Joyce left the apostrophe out of Finnegan’s


Week Three Assignments

Read chapter 5 PromRis
Do the exercizes
Add to subjects:
George W Bush
John F Kerry
Try again on exercizes from Chapters 3 and 4

Read Protecting Biblical Marriage

Re-read page 3 of FINNEGANS WAKE looking for possible references to
a. geography & history of Dublin, Ireland
b. geography & history of Dublin, Georgia

Make 4 copies of the Leary Interpersonal Grid [PromRis p 76] using yr scanner or going to a xerox shop
Black out with pencil or crayon all wodges that describe your habitual interpersonal reactions [“games.”]
This represents a profile of the first two dimensions of yr ‘mind.’
Have 3 critters who know you fill out the same grid giving their profiles on you.
PREPARE FOR SHOCKS.


Week Four Assignments

Read chapter 6 PromRis and
DO THE EXERCIZES
Try again on exercizes from Chapters 3 and 4


Re-read page 3 of FINNEGANS WAKE looking
for wot Monty Pythin calls “the naughty parts”–
a. sex and sex organs
b. urination and defecation

If you hain’t already done this, make 4 copies of the Leary Interpersonal Grid [PromRis p 76] using yr scanner or going to a xerox shop

Black out with pencil or crayon all wodges that describe
your habitual interpersonal reactions [“games.”]
This represents a profile of the first two dimensions
of yr ‘mind’
Have 3 critters who know you fill out
the same grid giving their profiles on you.

Compare the different filters we have used on the
opening of FINNEGANS WAKE with different
filters used on “the world” — Christianity, Islam,
Marxism, Buddhism etc etc

Compare LSD with seeing all possible filters at once…..


Week 5 Assignments

Read PM chapters 7 and 8
DO the exercizes

Contribute to Forum with examples
of the acceleration/deceleration dialectic —
using recent or past history

Re-read page 3 of FINNEGANS WAKE looking
for possible references to
a. geography & history of Rome, Italy
b. the Three Stooges


Week 7 Assignments

Read chapter 11 PR

DO the exercizes especially the Christian Science
texts for the month. You can now find them online
www.cssentinel.com

If they seem like gibberish,
that’s okay; just do more pranayama and/or
smoke more pot, until you can decipher them.

Contribute to Forum, if you can, any interesting results of exercizes.

Note that Mrs Eddy entangles the meta-model
with the milton-model. Attempt disentanglement.

Read the attached article on Sexual Alchemy
and discuss in the Forum.


Week 8 Assignments

Read chapter 12 PR

DO the exercizes especially 3, 4, 5 and 6

Contribute to Forum, if you can, any interesting results of exercizes.

Read the attached article on Dreams of Flying and discuss in the Forum.

Forum Topics

Discuss one of your own experiences with the the neurogentic dimension and/or Jungian Collective Unconscious

Write down at least one dream this week just upon waking and examine Jungian Unconscious insights

Do you think the Jungian Collective Unconscious has been too heavily emphasized?

What other models are useful for these type of consciousness?

If you’ve read Rupert Sheldrake, discuss his “morphogenetic field” as a model for this data.


Week 9 Assignments

Read chapter 13 PM

DO the exercizes

Contribute to Forum, if you can, any interesting results of exercizes.

Read the attached article on CSICON
and discuss in the Forum.

Forum Topics
Discuss one of your own experiences with the abnormal or paranormal.
Any UFO experiences?


WEEK TEN

Read chapters 14 and 15 PM

DO the exercizes

Contribute to Forum, if you can, any interesting results of exercizes.

Read following story and assume it is literally true:

Stephanie and her friend walked into the music store after lunch.
Stephanie wanted to buy the new CD by the group, “No Girls Allowed”.
There was only one other person in the store when Stephanie and her friend arrived.
Stephanie asked, “How much is this CD?”
Stephanie’s friend said, “Here, let me see it.
I don’t think he heard you.
This tag says it costs $11.99.”

Check each of the following inferences as T [true], F [false] or ? [maybe]

1. Stephanie wanted to buy a CD.
2. Stephanie and her friend ate lunch together.
3. Stephanie owns a CD player.
4. There was only one boy in the store.
5. Two girls walked into a music store.
6. There are no boys in the “No Girls Allowed” group.
7. Stephanie and her friend are teenagers.
8. The store’s owner didn’t hear Stephanie because the music was too loud.
9. Stephanie had enough money to buy the CD.
10. The “No Girls Allowed” CD cost $11.99.
11. The owner of the store is a woman.
12. Stephanie wanted to buy a CD as a gift.
13. One of the CDs costs $11.99.
14. There were two boys in the store.
15. The clerk was hard of hearing.

Discuss the tricky ones in the Forum.


WEEK ELEVEN

Read chapter 16 and attempt the exercizes

Consult http://www.velvet.net/~starchy/ [dead link}
for the Key to Efas Taem

Read and discuss The Relativity of “Reality” in the forum


WEEK TWELVE

Assignments — none!!

Altho’ I suggest that you read the last 3 chapters
of PR and discuss in the forum

And I wd/ feel happy if you write short [one sentence]
comments about
what you liked most about the course
and what you liked least about the course
Teaching online feels like a new and exciting art
but one which I need to learn by doing. All
feedback will help.

I want to thank all of you for what I have learned,
and I hope you all feel that you have learned
something too.

Non illuminati carborundum,


grandpaw

Conspiracy, Coincidence, and Code: Weekly Assignments

WEEK ONE ASSIGNMENTS

Read Chapters 1-5 in Cosmic Trigger III

Read entries on Howard Hughes Forgeries and
Hughes vs. Rockefeller in Everything Is Under Control
and follow as many of the links as you can until you get tired of turning pages

Read “Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary” essay

Try the following gedakenexperiment:

Why does the opening sentence of James Joyce’s Ulysses have 22 words? Not 21 or 23, but exactly 22?
Why does the Cabalistic Tree of Life have 22 “paths”?
Why does the Tarot have 22 Trumps?
Why does Aleister Crowley’s Magick in Theory and Practice have 22 chapters?
Why does the last book of the Christian Bible [“Revelations”] have 22 chapters?
Why does Revelations appeal strongly to so many serial killers?
Why does the 22-word opening sentence of Ulysses contain “state” in its first word and “cross” in its last?
Have I given you A Vital Clue in these questions or just bamboozled you with coincidences???


WEEK TWO ASSIGNMENTS

Read Chapters 6-10 in Cosmic Trigger III
and discuss in the forum.

Read p3-16 in Saharasia and use the chart on p 5
to classify the vibe of the Republicans;
the Democrats;
the Greens;
the Libertarians;
the Guns&Dope party;
and discuss in the forum.

Read entry on ‘Hawthorne Abendsen’ in Everything is Under Control
Try the following gedakenexperiment:

“Maybe” is a thin reed to hang your life on but it’s all we’ve got.
–Woody Allen

This may not seem startling to gamers, but it sure woke me up; I learned about it on Law and Order last Sunday.

A type of program called a”bot ” can play a computer game “just like a human” and in the style of any chosen human, given enough skill on the part of the bot-maker.

It seems to me this surpasses virtual reality and approaches electronic cloning. After all, the bot can go on playing after the human has “died.”

A bot can also exist which, like an art forgery, seems to have the style and habits of a certain human but actually emerged from the brain of a clever faker.

This seems to me like virtual virtual reality and electronic immortality of a sort. If a bot plays chess like Alekhine, in what sense can we call Alekhine totally “dead”?

More: computer tech in general as brought us to the stage where producing a photo of a crime or even a moving picture of it does not prove a damned thing anymore. “I saw it with my own eyes” has become a bad joke.

I begin to feel that Maybe Logic will soon replace the Aristotelian either/or, not because of my books or Korzybski’s or von Neumann’s. but because virtual reality and artificial intelligence have destroyed certitude and left us with only degrees of probability.

BTW, do you feel absolutely sure “Robert Anton Wilson” wrote this and not some gol-danged bot?


WEEK THREE ASSIGNMENTS

Read Chapters 11-19 in Cosmic Trigger III
and discuss in the forum.

go to
http://www.lysanderspooner.org/bib_poll.htm [dead link]
and discuss in the forum
[via the Wayback Machine, Wilson seems to be pointing to No Treason by Lysander Spooner]

go to
http://www.madsci.org/%7Elynn/juju/surr/images/surr-imagery.html
and discuss in the forum


WEEK FOUR ASSIGNMENTS

Discuss in the forums,
in the order listed

One
http://www.madsci.org/%7Elynn/juju/surr/paranoia/CP.html

Two
From EVERYTHING IS UNDER CONTROL:
Language as Conspiracy
G I Gurjieff
James Jesus Angleton
Principia Discordia
Knights of Malta
OM
David Ferrie
The Con

Three
[Introduction to THE PRANKSTER AND THE CONSPIRACY]


WEEK FIVE ASSIGNMENTS

If conspiracies never happen, why do so many states and nations have laws against them?

Have our laws resulted from paranoids in power?

Discuss

In EVERYTHING IS UNDER CONTROL, read and discuss
Bisociation
Gordon Brown
Giordano Bruno
Timothy Leary
Wilhelm Reich
American Dynasty

Consider what I call The Jumping Jesus Phenomenon

Our psychic universe is expanding even more rapidly than the physical universe. Let us define the measurement of known scientific facts in the year 1 A.D. as “one jesus,” using the name of the celebrated philosopher born that year.

Before going any further, let us ask how long it took to arrive at one jesus. One way of estimating is to take the estimated age of homo sapiens, in which case it took 40,000 to 100,000 years.

How long did it take to double this accumulation of knowledge, to achieve two jesuses? It required 1500 years – until 1500 A.D. How long did it take to double again and obtain four jesuses? It required 250 years, and we had four jesuses in our larder by 1750.

The next doubling took 150 years, and by 1900 A.D. humanity had eight jesuses in our information account. The next doubling took 50 years, and by 1950 we had 16 jesuses. The next, ten years, and by 1960 we had 32 jesuses. The next doubling took seven years, and by 1967 we had 64 jesuses. And the next doubling took 6 years; by 1973 we have 128 jesuses.

There is no reason to imagine that the acceleration has stopped. Thus, we almost certainly reached 256 j around 1978-79 and 512 j in 1982.

In short, we are living in a mental transformation space; that is, an omnidimensional halo expanding toward infinity in all directions. And the electronic center of this halo of mentation is possibly everywhere. It is all available to you right where you are sitting now. Just plug in a terminal. The machine doesn’t care who or what you are.

Infophobia/Infophilia Quiz

Add the next term to the series:
1.walk
2.ride horseback
3.fly by jet
4.__

A certain job can be performed either by a human or a machine. We should
1.employ the human because “the devil makes work for idle hands.”
2.employ the human because otherwise he or she might be bored
3.employ the human because there is no way to organize society except by having most people work for wages
4.employ the machine because technology has no function other than to free people from toil.

Add the next term to the series:
1.hunt and gather
2.farm
3.industry-commerce
4._______

There is a magic machine with two buttons, each of which will create equality among humans. You will push
1.the button that makes everybody equally poor
2.the button that makes everybody equally rich

Working for wages
1.has always existed and always will exist
2.is ordained by God
3.did not appear on large scale until the Enclosure Acts drove the serfs off the land in the past 300 years
4.will become obsolete in the next 100 years
5.will become obsolete in the next 10 years

The best way to search for Higher Intelligence is to
1.find the right religion
2.support Carl Sagan’s Project Cyclops, which is searching for radio signals from advanced civilizations in the galaxy;
3.investigate UFO’s
4.research our own nervous system
5.build a starship and go looking.

Add the next term to the series:
1.Black Pride
2.Women’s Lib
3.Gay Pride
4.___

How much of the changes now happening result from conspiracies?

How much from the Jumping Jesus Phenomenon?

Ponder and discuss Lenin’s words on his deathbed:

“THE MACHINE CONROLS THE ENGINEERS!”


WEEK SIX ASSIGNMENTS

Read “Malthus, Machiavelli, and Pop-Ecology” from my 1982 book,
RIGHT WHERE YOU ARE SITTING NOW
Cuss and/or discuss in the forum.

Ponder Bucky Fuller’s claim that “we”
remain hooked on mideastern oil because the
corporate state hasn’t figured out how to put a METER
between us and the sun.

In EVERYTHING IS UNDER CONTROL, read and discuss
Gerard de Sede
Merovingians
Kenneth Grant
Golden Apple Corps
Holy Order of the Lemon
The Sirius Mystery


WEEK SEVEN ASSIGNMENTS

Read and discuss
http://www.infowars.com/print/Secret_societies/vladtree.htm
http://www.bridgeoflove.com/bookstore/bol/rept-agenda1.html

Read Cosmic Trigger III, Chapter 22. “Beneath the Planet of the Priory of Sion.”

How much of this stuff seems “real’?
How much seems like fantasy or science fiction?
Could some of it make sense as metaphor?
As code?

In EVERYTHING IS UNDER CONTROL, read and discuss
Abductees Anonymous
Demonic Duck
Aiwass
Philip K Dick
Robert Morning Sky
Philip J Corso
Crying of Lot 49

Do you think this course intends to teach you new ways of reading and evaluating,
or to gradually reveal the Most Monstrous Conspiracy in the Galaxy?


WEEK EIGHT ASSIGNMENTS

In EVERYTHNG IS UNDER CONTROL read & discuss
John Birch Society
LAWCAP
MMAO
In Banks We Trust
The Naked Pope
Noble Drew Ali
World War II Deniers

Read and discuss–

A John Birch View:
The Red/Blue Map vs. Conspiracy Theories [source unknown]


WEEK NINE ASSIGNMENTS

http://www.geocities.com/gwbushart/gallery65/gallery65.htm

EVERYTHING IS UNDER CONTROL
President George Bush
The Second George Bush
Skull and Bones
Collier Brothers
Flight 553

I’m just learning to use my new computer….more comments Will follow later!

You are the most complicated thing in the cosmos. You can’t figure you out.
–Alan Watts


WEEK TEN ASSIGNMENTS

A basic crack will split the GOP’s Christian/Capitalist coalition apart.

Xtianity, a faith-based system, does not have to accept ANY facts at all, at all, and wd like to ban research-based groups.

Capitalism, a profit-based system, has to recognize SOME facts [those related to profit] and cannot afford to ban all research-based groups.

Out of this tiny crack an earthquake will emerge

What do you think? and how does this relate to conspiracies in general?

Read and discuss from EIUC
John Adams on Banking
Bank of England
Great Pirates
Desovereignization
LAWCAP
MMAO
Ezra Pound


WEEK ELEVEN ASSIGNMENTS

Read. Worry about. Discuss:

EVERYTHING IS UNDER CONROL
John F Kennedy Asssassination
Martin Luther King Assassination
MMAO
Murder of Marilyn Monroe
Marina Oswald
Mary Pinchot Meyer
David Ferrie
Clay Shaw
Hale Boggs
Buddy Walthers
Sam Giancana
Eladio del Valle
“The Whole Bay of Pigs Thing”
Louis Lomax
Lee Bowers
ALBERT Guy Bogard
Mona Chaen
George de Mohrenscholdt’
The Three Tramps
Robert Kennedy Assassination

Does this look like coincidence? Happenstance? or–Something Sinister?

Meditate upon Ian Fleming’s aphorism “Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action.”

Consider and discuss synchronicity as yet another alternative…


Week Twelve Assignments

Divide all the groups we have examined into two groups – those fundamentally faith-based and those basically research-based. Does history make sense as a long quarrel between these two forces?

Does our society seem more faith-based or more research-based?

From what you know about Jefferson and our founders, do they seem more on one side or the other?

Read in EVERYTHING IS UNDER CONTROL –
LORD ACTON
THE ANTI-BOB
THE ANTI-CHRIST
NICHOLAS BOURBAKI
CHARLIE CHAPLIN
THE CON
THE UMRELLA MAN
THE 23 ENIGMA
SATAN CLAUS
PROJECT DUMBO

HAPPY HOLIDAYS and I hope to chat with you all Thursday!

bob

34 Years After Bell’s Theorem: A Whole New Ball Game

Bell’s Theorem, a mathematical demonstration by physicist John Stewart Bell published in 1965, has become more popular than Tarot cards with New Agers, who think they understand it but generally don’t. Meanwhile it remains controversial with physicists, some of whom think they understand it but many of whom frankly admit they find it as perplexing as a chimpanzee in a Beethoven string quartet.

In a [hazardous] attempt to translate Bell’s math into the verbal forms in which we discuss what physics “means,” Bell seems to have proved that any two “particles”once in contact will continue to act as if connected no matter how far apart they move in “space” or “time” [or in space-time.] You can see why New Agers like this: it sounds like it supports the old magick idea that if you get ahold of a hair from your enemy, anything you do to the hair will effect him.

Unfortunately, things “aren’t” that simple.

Most physcists think a long series of experiments, especially those of Dr Alain Aspect and others in the 1970s and Aspect in 1982 have settled the matter. Particles once in contact certainly seem “connected,” or correlated, or at least dancing in the same ballet….But not all physicists have agreed. Some, the AntiBellists, still publish criticisms of alleged defects in the experiments. These arguments seem too technical to be summarized here, and only a small minority still cling to them, but this dissent needs to be mentioned since most New Agers don’t know about it. You can find more about this here. [See also, for general problems associated with Bell’s Theorem]

The most daring criticism of Bell comes from Dr N. David Berman of Columbia, who believes he has refined the possible interpretations of Bell down to two: (1) non-locality [“total rapport”] and (2) solipsism. We will explain non-locality below, but Dr Berman finds it so absurd that he prefers solipsism. [“Is The Moon There When Nobody Looks?”Physics Today, April 1985. He says it isn’t.]

Among those who accept Bell’s Theorem, Dr David Bohm of the University of London offers three interpretations of what it means:
‘It may mean that everything in the universe is in a kind of total rapport, so that whatever happens is related to everthing else [non-locality]; or it may mean that there is some kind of information that can travel faster than the speed of light; or it may mean that our concepts of space and time have to be modified in some way that we don’t understand.”(London Times, 20 Feb 1983)

Bohm’s first model,”total rapport,” also called non-locality, brings us very close– very, very close — to Oriental monism: “All is One,” as in Vedanta, Buddhism and Daoism. It also brings us in hailing distance of Jungian synchronicity, an idea that seems “occult” or worse to most scientists, even if it was once endorsed by Wolfgang Pauli,a quantum heavyweight and Nobel laureate. You can see why New Agers like this; it is argued with unction and plausibility in Capra’s The Tao of Physics. It means the particles “are” correlated because everything “is” correlated.

The strongest form of this non-local model is called super-determinism and means that everything”is” one thing, or at least one process. From the Big Bang to the last word of this sentence and beyond, nothing can be other than it is,since everything is part of a correlated whole. Nobody has openly endorsed this view but several (Stapp, Herbert et al) have accused others, especially Capra, of unknowingly endorsing it.

Bohm’s second alternative, information faster-than-light, brings us into realms previously explored only in science-fiction. Bell’s particles may be correlated because they are parts of an FTL (faster than light) cosmic Internet. If I can send an FTL message to my grandpa, it might change my whole universe to the extent that I wouldn’t be here at all. [E.g., he might be so shocked that he wouldn’t survive to reproduce.] This must either be rejected as impossible, or else it leads to the “parallel universe” model. I’m here in this universe, but in the universe next door the message removed me, so I never sent it there.

Even more radical offshots of this notion have been offered by Dr John Archibald Wheeler and Dr Jack Sarfatti. Dr Wheeler has proposed that every atomic or sub-atomic experiment we perform changes every particle in the universe everywhichway in time, back to the Big Bang. The universe is in constant creation, as in Sufism, but atomic physicists “are” its creators.

Dr Sarfatti is working on the theory of information-without-transportation and hopes to develop an FTL system which will indeed allow me to send an email (or its equivelant) to Julius Ceasar with all the paradoxes that might result producing multiple parallel universes.

Dr Bohm’s third alternative, modification of our ideas of space and time, could lead us anywhere…including back to the Kantian notion that space and time do not exist, but are only human projections, like persistent optical illusions.(Some think Relativity already demonstrates that…) The particles are correlated because they never moved in space or time, because space and time are just “in our heads.”

And there are other alternatives. Harrison (see URL above) suggests that we may have to abandon Aristotelian logic, i.e give up classifying things into only the two categories of “true and real” and “untrue and unreal.” In between, in Aristotle’s excluded middle, we may have the “maybe” proposed by von Neumann in 1933, the probabilistic logics (percentages/gambles) suggested by Korzybski, the four-valued logic of Rapoport (true, false, indeterminate and meaningless) or some system we haven’t found yet.

Others would rather give up “objectivity” — the basic pre-Bell axiom that we can describe an external world apart from our experiments or meddlings. Some say this rejection of objectivity was always meant by the Copenhagen Interpretation (invented by Neils Bohr long before Bell appeared,c 1926 in fact.) Generally, the Copenhagen view is stated as, We can only describe observer-observed interactions; we can never know anything about any hypothetical “observed” without an observer. Sounds like Zen to some, but others fear this is opening the door to Dr Berman’s solipsism and the moon that “is” only there when we look at it….

Bell’s Theorem “means a whole new ball game,” physicist Saul Paul Sirag told the present author once. Unfortunately, as we have seen, nobody feels really sure about the rules of the new game.

All we can say for sure is that “reality” ain’t what it used to be.

Introduction to Diogenes’ Lamp

Introduction to Adam Weishaupt’s  Diogenes’ Lamp

by Robert Anton Wilson

 

Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?  –George W. Bush

The only book you’ve got to read is The Godfather.  That’s the only one that tells how the world is really run.  –Roberto Calvi, President, Banco Ambrosiano; stretched, London, 18/6/1982

Adam Weishaupt founded — or revived — the secret Order of the Illuminati on May 1, 1776; that much seems like Historical Fact. All else remains disputed and heatedly controversial.

Most historians believe the Illuminati originally recruited only high degree Freemasons, and every generation since 1785 — when the Bavarian government discovered and outlawed the Illuminati — Freemasons have faced the charge that they remain “under Illuminati control.”

They all deny it, of course.

Well, not all of them; a Scotch Freemason, John Robison, in his Proofs of a Conspiracy [1801], claimed the damned Illuminati had taken over Continental European Masonry; he wrote chiefly to warn the lodges of England, Scotland and Ireland against a similar coup.

Ever since Robison, the Masonic/Illuminati debate has included those who think the Weishauptians have taken over all Freemasoic lodges, those like Robison who think they’ve only infiltrated some, and those, including the Encyclopedia Britannica, who see Illuminism as a “short-lived movement of Republican free thought” which never had a major influence on Masonry — or on anything else.

But the Illuminati debate covers a lot more ground than that.

For example: Kris Millegan in his Fleshing Out Skull & Bones presents that Yale society as a branch of the Illuminati. In case you don’t know, some prominent Bonesmen have included Bush I, Bush II, Henry Luce of Time, Justice Potter Stewart, an all-star cast of the Captains of American banking, publishing and politics, and most of the directors of the C.I.A….. oh, yes, and John Kerry.

Sure you really want to know more about this?

From another angle, Akron Daraul, in his History of Secret Societies, argues that Weishaupt did not invent but only refurbished the Illuminati, which he relates to earlier movements known as the Holy Vehm (Germany), Allumbrados (Spain),Roshinaya (Persia) etc.; while the more exuberant John Steinbacher in Novus Ordo Seclorum traces them all the way back to the Garden of Eden! They were founded, he says, by Cain, the son not of the holy marriage of Adam and Eve but of an illicit and Satanic coupling between Eve and the Serpent.

How’s that for Hot Stuff? Bestiality, Satanism and all the themes for a new X Files movie……

Meanwhile, Eliphas Levi’s History of Magic traces the Illuminati back to Zarathustra and claims its secret doctrine came down to Weishaupt via Manichaeism, the Knights Templar and Freemasonry. This places them as part of the same occult tradition as Giordano Bruno, Dr. John Dee, Aleister Crowley and the Sufis of Islam.

But on the fourth or fifth hand, a British researcher named Nesta Webster sees the Illuminati as the brains behind socialism, communism, anarchism, and the Prussian government from 1776 to 1918. [She wrote shortly after England’s first war with the latter.]

On the sixth hand, J.F.,C. Moore argues that the Illuminati, a secret source of fascist occultism, inspired such odd birds as Aaron Burr, Adolf Hitler and J. Edgar Hoover; but Philip Campbell Argyle-Smith clams they are extraterrestrial invaders from the planet Vulcan. They call themselves “Jews” on this planet, he adds.

Whether that means all Jews “are” Vulcans or only some of them seems unclear to me, but the most famous Vulcan, Mr. Spock, “is” Jewish insofar as being performed by a Jewish actor makes one at least partially “Jewish,” whatever that means.

Maybe Argyle-Smith has looked at too many Star Trek movies.

He also credits the Illuminized Vulcans with managing the Thugs of India, the Zionists in Israel, the Rothschild banks, the Communist International, the Theosophical Society, Freemasonry and the Assassins of medieval Afghanistan. I don’t know why he left out George Bush and Al Qaeda; probably he just wrote too soon.

Another Cosmic Illuminati theory appeared in the East Village Other June 1969; it included Skull & Bones, the Rothschilds, the Nation of Islam [“Black Muslims”], Richard Nixon, the Black Panthers, the Bank of America, the Rosicrucians, the Holy Vehm, the Federal Reserve and the Combine’s Fog Machine. That one must contain some hidden jokes [I hope].

According to the RogerSpark, a radical Chicago newspaper [July 1969] Weishaupt actually murdered George Washington and served in his place for his two terms as president.[Then who wrote Weishaupt’s books? Hegel maybe; they sounds like him at times……]

The John Birch Society, of course, has a different slant on all this. According to Gary Allen, the editor of their news magazine, American Opinion, Adam Weishaupt “was” a “monster” but the Illuminati only got really monstrous after its capture by English adventurer/billionaire Cecil Rhodes, who used it to establish British domination of the world. The Council on Foreign Relations acts as its most important “front” in the U.S. today, according to Allen.

Sandra Glass, however, thinks of the Illuminati as a group of clandestine pot-heads [cannabis abusers] which included the medieval Assassins, Weishaupt, Goethe, Washington, the first mayor Richard Daly of Chicago and Ludvig van Beethoven.

“Beethoven?” you may gasp. Well, oddly enough, a recent, scholarly and non-conspiratorial biography of the great Ludwig van, by Maynard Solmon, says Mr B wrote some of his music under commission from the Illuminati and had many friends in the Order itself. Solomon doesn’t mention the pot, though; maybe Ludvig, like a recent president with a perpetual hard-on, didn’t inhale.

Then again, Adam Gorightly in The Prankster and the Conspiracy claims that all recent Illuminati research [post-1960s] has become confused and chaotic because of a hoax conspiracy, also called the Illuminati, founded by one Kerry Thornley, a man accused of involvement in the JFK assassination by New Orleans D.A. Jim Garrison. According to Gorightly, this neo-Illuminati aims only to bedevil and mock the efforts of sincere conspiracy researchers, and he even accuses the author of this essay [me, R.A.W.] of involvement in this Fiendish Plot!

I, of course, refuse to dignify this absurd charge with a denial, which nobody would believe anyway. Besides, as Rev. Ivan Stang of the Church of the Sub-Genius says in Maybe Logic, “Well, if I was a member of the Illuminati, I wouldn’t say so, would I?”

ANTICHORUS

We are not victims of the world we see, we are victims of the way we see the world.
— Dennis Kucinich

I think God is sending us a message: “If you can’t take a joke, go fuck yourselves.”
–Woody Allen

What does this book reveal about the “real” Adam Weishaupt and the “real” Illuminati?

A book works like a mirror, somebody said once: when a monkey looks in, no philosopher looks out. I can only tell you what this book seems to me; others, I feel certain, will find other things in it — including coded references to Vulcans, Skull & Bones, Zarathustra, the Holy Vehm, communism, Mary Magdalene, the Federal Reserve, the Combine’s Fog Machine et.al.

To me, this book seems to support the most cautious and conservative of my sources, the Encyclopedia Britannica, and old Adam looks much like a weary defender of “Republican free thought,” 18th Century style. In other words, he seems a distant relative, philosophically speaking, of Adam Smith, Hume, Voltaire, Jefferson, Franklin, Tom Paine — i.e. of all those libertarian ideas currently as unfashionable in this country as in the Bavaria in Weishaupt’s day. I know why he seems weary to me: trying to teach liberation to people who feel reconciled to their slavery can really grind you down, in 1804 or 2004…

I also think I see an influence of Kant, and perhaps a foreshadowing of Hegel, in the semantic structure used continually by Weishaupt — “X seems true; not-X also seems true; we’ll have to think more about that.” Aquinas did the same trick, but always comes down on the side of safe orthodoxy, Papist flavor. Weishaupt throws the ball back to the reader,although you may not always catch him doing that.

I do not see any conclusive proof that the Illuminati plotted anything nefarious or even illegal, except insofar as free thought itself remained illegal in southern Europe. But I also don’t see any conclusive proof that they wouldn’t and couldn’t and didn’t do nasty things. As a secret society hidden inside the secret society of Freemasonry, the Illuminati will always remain somewhat mysterious, and pedants and paranoids will argue about it until the last galoot’s ashore.

Perhaps Tom Jefferson got it right, when he said that secret societies seemed necessary in Europe, haunted by monarchy and Papism, but not in the United States. Certainly, when the Constitution remained the law of the land [i.e. before the Supremes (s)elected Bozo] no sane person would feel the need for secret societies here. Do I dare add “But now with the Constitution in cryonic suspension –“?

No: I better not….better safe than sorry….

On the other hand, not just secret societies but secrecy itself or even privacy seem increasingly impossible under the reign of George III.

They have hidden cameras everywhere.

They bug our phones.

If they want to, they can “read” every keystroke on my computer, including this one:

They can even pry into the contents of our bladders, in random tests explicitly forbidden by that wonderful, moribund Constitution. Sweet grieving Jesus, there’s no place we can escape or hide or feel alone, is there?

Sometimes, tossing and trying to sleep in the wee hours, I explore the ideas rejected by my skeptical waking mind. Maybe the most paranoid fantasies about the Illuminati contain some truth. .. maybe….

Maybe the All-Seeing Eye on the dollar bill does represent the totally fascist state those bastards want.

Maybe all those Internet rants about Skull and Bones serving as a recruiter for the Illuminati have some foundation in fact, after all.

Maybe we should really worry when the choice in the next election remains limited to two rich Bonesmen…What is it Weishaupt wrote?– “Whoever is rich — very rich — can do anything….”

Maybe we should regard “Illuminati” as a generic term, or a metaphor?

Maybe every Power Structure acts a lot like the most paranoid fantasies about the Illuminati, especially when it feels threatened.?

No, no — that way lies madness, schizophrenia and Usenet trolls. After some sound sleep, I wake, the shadows flee, and I remember that “all’s for the best in this best of all possible worlds.”

Voltaire didn’t intend that as sarcasm, did he?

Robert Anton Wilson
Deep Underground
Somewhere in Occupied U.S.A.
23 February 2004

Recommended Reading and viewing:

Argyle-Smith, Philip Campbell — High IQ Bulletin, Colorado Springs 1970, IV, 1

Bauscher, Lance — MaybeLogic, http://www.maybelogic.com

Daraul, Akron — History of Secret Societies, Citadel Press NY, 1961.

Ellul, Jacques — Violence, Seabury Press, NY,1969.

Glass, Sandra — “The Conspiracy,” Teenset, March 1969.

Gorightly, Adam — The Prankster and the Conspiracy, ParaView Press, NY, 2003.

Gurwin, Larry — The Calvi Affair, Pan Books, London, 1984.

Knight, Stephen — The Brotherhood, Grenada, London, 1984.

Levi, Eliphas — History of Magic, Borden Publishing, Los Angeles, 1963.

Millegan, Kris — Fleshing Out Skull & Bones,Trineday, Walterville, OR, 2003.

Moore, J.f.C. — “The Nazi Religion,” Libertarian American, August 1969.

Morals, Vamberto — Short History of Anti-Semitism, Norton, NY, 1976.

Robison, John — Proofs of a Conspiracy, Christian Book Club, Hawthorn, CA, 1961.

Solomon, Maynard — Beethoven, Schirmer Books, NY, 1977.

Vankin, Jonathan — Conspiracies, Cover-Ups and Crimes, IllumiNet Press, Lillburn,GA, 1996.

Webster, Nesta — World Revolution, Constable, London, 1921.

Wilgus, Neal — The Illuminoids, Sun Press, Albuquerque NM, 1977.

Hang the TSAR!

Robert Anton Wilson
In Conversation With R.U. Sirius

from Neofiles @ LifeExtention.com

In a smarter world, Robert Anton Wilson would be widely acknowledged as one of the most important writers and thinkers in America. Of course, there is a smarter world within this one, and Wilson has a huge following both nationally and internationally. Most of our culture, indeed, operates beneath or beyond the mainstream media’s radar.

For many of us, Wilson is a subversive sage. He didn’t coin the phrase “guerrilla ontology” but he has been the world’s most valuable practitioner (MVP). The guerrillaontologist is a kind of memetic warrior who lives to dynamite people’s static reality tunnels (belief systems or b.s.). Since The Illuminatus Trilogy, a fictional tour de force published in 1975, he has managed to combine the most extravagant surrealism with unimpeachable logic; sometimes leaving us guessing as to which of these tactics he was employing.

Favorite books include the aforementioned Illuminatus Trilogy, Cosmic Trigger, and The Illuminati Papers, Masks of the Illuminati, The Earth Will Shake, and Prometheus Rising. (Many of you have your own list of faves, no doubt). NeoFiliacswho are willing to risk having the walls fall down around their own belief systems should read (or re-read) The New Inquisition: Irrational Rationalism and the Citadel of Science, published in 1986.

Now at 71-years-old, Wilson has spent the last few years fighting off Post-Polio Syndrome with a little help from medical marijuana. At the same time, he wrote T.S.O.G.: The Thing that Ate the Constitution, a coruscating and hilarious rant against the current rulers of the USA, which he calls the “Tsarist Occupation Government.” T.S.O.G. rips into the drug war, imperial militarism, and a million or so other absurdities in a land ruled by “the Bush crime family.” And he appeared in a superb documentary about his life and philosophy called Maybe Logic.

Four of us gathered in Marin for a drive down to Santa Cruz to see the Wizard. The caste of characters that participated in this conversation includes:

Will Block: CEO of Life Enhancement Products and a long time friend and fan of Bob

Severe Tire Damage: Part of the original cast of characters around Mondo 2000 and another BobManiac

Videobrain (a.k.a. Eve): She goes all the way back to “The Network,” a group who would gather at Wilson’s Berkeley home to SMI2LE. She’s been confusing Mr. Wilson at regular intervals ever since.

RU Sirius: That’s me. I stole my pseudonym from RAW’s hallucinations. ‘Nuff said.

NEOFILES: Stem cell research, gay marriage … can panicky neophobes block the future?

ROBERT ANTON WILSON: They can’t stop scientific research. They keep on trying. Throughout all history they tried, but scientific research continued even during the inquisition. They can slow it down but they can’t stop it. Stem cell research will just continue in other countries.

NF: William Burroughs used to say that “the mark of a basic shit is that he can’t mind his own business.” I’ve been thinking about that during this gay marriage controversy. I mean, why in the world would anyone think that what those people over there are doing ruins it for me?

RAW: Yeah … what the hell is with that?! I saw Bob Barr debating Barney Frank on TV and Barr said that gay marriage will dilute the meaning of marriage. And Frank was saying, “I can’t understand. What would someone else’s marriage have to do with your marriage?” And Bob Barr said, “I don’t mean my marriage, I mean the institution of marriage.” It’s so damn stupid. Talk about “diluting” an “institution” makes as much sense as asking “Why is a duck?” Barr lives in the 13th Century. Next he’ll inquire into how many angels can dance on the head of a Pookah.

NF: I was trying to figure it out the other day and I realized it’s not even so much about bigotry, it’s just these people saying “the world is changing too fast. Make it stop.” Maybe we should take the state out of marriage entirely.

RAW: Have you looked at my Guns & Dope website?

NF: I have.

RAW: My new mantra is “Everybody for President.” Everybody can write in their own name and take responsibility forthemselves. We’re not going to pass on our responsibility to some asshole like George Bush or a Congress of assholes and corporate whores. We’re going to take our own responsibility. We don’t need a czar. Who the hell needs a fucking czar? Why should 21st century America be like 19th century Russia? My doctor and I can make our own medical decisions for me. The whole idea of the TSOG — the Tsarist Occupation Government — is that the Tsar is in communication with God just like in 19th Century Russia. He knows how to handle my health problems better than me and my doctor and my friends and family. And he does it without even seeing me! He knows because he’s in direct communication with God. And this horseshit is what the American people are supposed to believe? I don’t believe it. I think he’s a political hack. I don’t think he knows anything about my health at all. I’d like to debate him. Or I’d like to ask him about my health problems … “Do you think I can go back to eating chocolate now that I’m no longer officially borderline diabetic?” (my doctor changed my status to non-diabetic six months ago.) Does the Tsar and his God want to over-rule that medical opinion too?

NF: What do you think of the Barr McClellan scandal? One of this guy’s sons is press secretary to President Bush; another is head of the FDA. And their dad, a lawyer for LBJ, has written a book claiming that LBJ shot JFK … had him shot.

RAW: I have a copy of the TV special about that on video. They have about four or five inside figures who say he did it. It’s pretty interesting. It’s kind of a fringe theory. Most people think it was the CIA or the Mafia, and the worst most people say about LBJ is that he knew about it. But that’s the way LBJ worked. He got rid of people he didn’t like. And now the whole LBJ family is all screaming about slander and libel. I don’t know but it’s interesting.

NF: So what’s happening with the medical marijuana situation here in Santa Cruz?

RAW: Well, we’ve decentralized it. They’ll have to raid 100 gardens next time or maybe 200. It’s very decentralized. It’s working very well. I mean, what the hell are they going to do, arrest everybody in Santa Cruz County? 85%support medical marijuana. And it’s pretty much the same in San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley, and the Counties of Mendocino, Humboldt, Marin, and Los Angeles … everybody knows that California is the marijuana capital of the country. They can’t really do anything about it. All the Tsar and his God can do is huff and puff.

NF: It always wins wherever it gets on the ballot so why don’t any mainstream politicians back medical marijuana?

RAW: I have three theories on this one. In the first place, if you’re of a superstitious nature, you’re afraid of marijuana. Politicians want to appeal to people who are of a superstitious nature. That’s the largest voting bloc in the whole country. And then there are the pharmaceutical companies. If anybody can treat their own pain by growing a plant in their own house or on their own balcony … you could see a very sudden drop in the use of very expensive painkillers that are legal and addictive. And people will go with this example and look into other herbs as well. That’s a real threat to the pharmaceutical monopoly that gives a lot of money to both the parties in every election.

NF: I always thought baby boomer “liberals” like Al Gore were just being hypocritical about medical marijuana but I was thinking about it recently and realized that they’re probably actually genuinely offended by the idea of routing around the regulatory process through a populist vote.

 RAW: I read a book about ten years ago that said that seventy million Americans are pot smokers. How can you keep something that seventy million people do illegal? We’re the largest persecuted minority in the country. Eventually they’re going to have to back down.

If you look at the Dreyfus Case, then you know how governments work. They wouldn’t back down. Everybody inEurope knew he was innocent. Still they held him on Devil’s Island much longer than seems humanly possible. Governments hate to admit mistakes. People for years were lead to believe that the pope was infallible. Governments make more mistakes than anybody else because they don’t have to make a profit. Any other business that operated like the government would go bankrupt. They don’t go bankrupt; they just borrow more money and charge us the interest on it. They borrow more money from the Federal Reserve, the Federal Reserve prints the money, and then we all have to pay the interest on it forever. My children and great grandchildren and great great grandchildren will still be paying this debt that Bush has run up for his war in Iraq.

NF: One thing that makes me scratch my head are things that slip by, such as galantamine, a grandfathered nutritional supplement that’s also being sold as a drug called Reminyl for Alzheimer’s disease by Johnson and Johnson. Now, J & J is a big pharmaceutical company … yet neither they, nor the FDA, have been able to do anything about its sale as a supplement despite a huge and potentially huger multi-billion dollar market. From everything that you know, you would think that J & J is so powerful that no one could bump heads with them without getting blown out of the water, and ditto for the FDA. Yet they didn’t choose to do that despite their disgruntlement and admission, through the grapevine, that they screwed up. So here is a very powerful pharmaceutical company backed by a very powerful regulatory agency that appears to have its power very unevenly distributed on some levels ….

RAW: It’s my famous SNAFU principle — those on top don’t get accurate honest views from everybody else. Wherever I go I ask audiences if anybody there would swear that they would tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth to someone who was a government employee. Nobody ever raises their hand! Everybody lies to the government. We all want as little to do with them as possible. So that’s the first level of government corruption; theaccumulation of all the lies people tell to people just above them in the hierarchy. They make sure they don’t say anything to the one above them so they don’t have to write up reports or whatever and those above them lie a bit more to please the one above them so by the time the information gets up to George Bush, who knows what he’s getting? So they’re all running around asking, “How did we believe in the weapons of mass destruction when there aren’t any?” And the answer is that when you’re in a hierarchy of that sort, people won’t tell you what they know you don’t want to hear.

NF: Bush the other day was talking about how he met with a group of Iraqis who all told him how thankful they were that America had invaded their country and I thought … “ah hah … the burden of omniscience”

So what gives you the most hope in the midst of all this madness?

RAW: I don’t think politics is all that important. Spending too much time focused on politics leads to total despair with the state of the human race. But if you look at the whole spectrum of human behavior, I think the science and the arts are driving it. I think the sciences and the arts relate to a lot more of human behavior than politics does. They’re going to try to stop developments in science but they’re not going to stop it and it’s going to change everything. I think we’re going to have major breakthroughs in biotech in the next five-ten years and they can’t do a damned thing to stop it. It’s going to change the whole world. Meanwhile the Japanese are planning on building hotels in space.

NF: We just interviewed some people who are planning to build some space hotels.

RAW: Of course. It’s just a game these politicians play. It’s a permanent anchor on development but it never stops it.

NF: So we can just wait ‘em out?

RAW: I don’t know, but the acceleration of change is coming faster and faster all the time. There are more patents every year; more internet website opening every month … change is happening faster and faster everywhere.

Hey, I’ve got a replay TV. I didn’t even know they existed until a couple of months ago. I can set the replay TV and it will record anything I want. I can go to sleep and it will record a movie at three o’clock in the morning that I can watch the next evening. And I don’t have to ever look at a commercial if I don’t want to ever again. Now I can enjoy the TV as much as anybody in the country. I love TV.

NF: Back in the late ‘70s you wrote about the coming immortality pill …

RAW: Oh yeah … heh ….

NF: Are you optimistic about something like that?

RAW: Oh yeah, something like that. I don’t think it will be a single pill but there’s so much going on in biotech. Even now, the number of people on this planet over 100 is more than it’s ever been, and the average age of death inAmerica has gone from 73 to 77 just in the last few years. We’re getting closer to it all the time.

In that film, Maybe Logic, you said that you didn’t think I was really an optimist because you’re not an optimist … so I can’t be an optimist, I must be putting you on. Look in my condition. If I was a pessimist I wouldn’t be walking today. I have to be an optimist. Pessimism is a luxury that only the comfortable can afford.

NF: A recent article in Science by a demographer named James Vaupel has concluded that if there was a limit to the increment in average lifespan — which increases in the world’s healthiest countries by about 2.5 years every ten years — that increment would start to decline indicative of an approaching ceiling. But Vaupel says that the data indicates that there’s no ceiling … or that lifespan is going to shoot right through the presumed ceiling.

RAW: Yeah, Buckminster Fuller points out that most people in the 19th Century died after fifty years … that was the average lifespan … it was 27 in Europe during the French Revolution.

NF: That was an averaging out though wasn’t it?

RAW: Yeah, you have to account for crib deaths.

NF: … there appears to be something happening to increase the probability of longer life for every decade we live … that will tend to enable more of us who hold out to live to100 or more in better, more vibrant health..

RAW: Hell, when George Burns reached one hundred the whole country paid attention. When Bob Hope recently turned 100 hardly anybody noticed.

NF: They’re saying that the universe isn’t even entropic now. Starting with the big bang it just expands ….

Do you feel a rapport with young people?

RAW: It seems to me that every ten years I get a new audience among young people. It seems to me that some of my books are rather dated by now but they keep on selling so I guess they’re not as dated as they seem to me.

NF: I just re-read The Illuminati Trilogy. It was actually only the second time I read it all the way through. I think maybe references to stuff like SDS might be a little bit obscure but that’s about it. The names of the bands are right up to the moment.

RAW: [Laughter] Well, when I write a novel I set it somewhere definite, not in never-never land. So there will always be references specific to whatever time I’m setting it in. That’s not what I mean. I wasn’t thinking about Linda Lovelace or SDS. I was thinking of the scientific knowledge, but I can’t do anything about that.

NF: Is there anything specific that you can think of that you feel has been superceded?

RAW: I can’t think about it right now. You can’t be a generalist in this world. So many things I’ve written about have changed by now I don’t know how out-of-date I am. I just know I must be out-of-date.

NF: Do you follow the cosmological discussions about the origins of the big bang and all of that?

RAW: Nah. I don’t believe in any of it. They keep changing it every few years. It’s all guess work.

NF: I read somewhere recently someone saying that most of the versions of what Bell’s theorem could mean have been eliminated … disproved.

RAW: Yeah, that’s what I mean. I was doing an article about Bell’s Theorem about five years ago. I found out a new interpretation of Bell’s Theorem that I’d never seen before and I wanted to do some more research before writing the article. I had no idea that most of the theories had been discarded. You can’t keep up with everything. I can’t even keep up with Joyce scholarship.

NF: In the process of doing this site, dealing with biotech, brain science, nanotech … it seems like it’s increasingly difficult when you read the literature to distinguish between stuff that has actually happened and stuff that just inevitably will happen.

Do you follow the idea of the Singularity at all?

RAW: No. I know what it is … but I feel that cosmology is not of great interest to me because the models are changing so rapidly. By the time I learn about a model to the point where I can talk about it I have to replace it with a new one. It gets harder as you get older. Isaac Asimov wrote an article called “The Sound of Panting.” It’s about how it’s harder and harder to just keep up with his own field which is biochemistry.

NF: Do you think artificial intelligences … robots … will become smarter than human beings? Do you follow that discussion?

RAW: Definitely. I think they have to. In some ways some of the equipment I have around here is smarter than me. The Replay TV in some respects…

NF: One of the things that always touched me deeply in your work is the level of optimism.

RAW: Well you see I had polio at the age of four. I had to learn to be an optimist or I never would have walked for most of my life. Now I have return [Ed.: Post-] Polio Syndrome and now I’m walking again. If I wasn’t an optimist I’d still be in the goddamned wheelchair. I don’t understand how pessimists survive. If they all believed what they say, they would all sit down and starve to death. You have to have some optimism to accomplish something. When I was a child I just kept falling down. I wouldn’t believe that I couldn’t walk. Eventually I walked…

Now I’m for a war against pain. Medical marijuana laws are a great victory in the war against pain. All you’ve got to do is hang the goddamned TSAR. Let everybody and their doctor decide for themselves what to do with their pain. I don’t see why pain can’t be abolished. I think we could abolish both starvation and pain in the next ten years.

NF: We had an interview with David Pierce who wrote this online book, The Hedonistic Imperative. He talks about abolishing pain and ….

RAW: Yeah, yeah. I’ve seen it. “The Biology of Paradise.” Beautiful stuff ….

NF: Not just eliminating pain but eliminating negative mind states ….

RAW: I’m all for it. Leary was all about that.

NF: You’ve noted before that all the messages that spiritualists get when they channel seem really obvious and banal.

RAW: Yeah, I guess spirits are boring. At least I got something more interesting when I tried it. I got Harvey the rabbit, Olga the Ostrich, the talking dogs from Sirius … a Chinese alchemist, an Irish bard … now I’m channeling Olga. [Laughs]

NF: What are the great scientific paradigms of recent times?

RAW: Well, quantum physics and general relativity and the emerging one I think is neuroscience. We’re receiving billions of signals all the time all over our brain and our brain processes all that. Talk about paradigms. So in my next book, Tale of the Tribe, I deal with Leary’s eight dimensions … I don’t use brain circuits. Brain circuitry is a little bit too mechanistic.

NF: As we lose track of the changes in fields like quantum mechanics how do you keep track of what’s influencing the general culture? How is the general culture being supplied with information?

RAW: I can only talk about the United States. I’ve lived and traveled in Europe but mostly I’ve been in the United States. Most of the culture here is running on a sheer terror of how rapidly things are changing. George Bush might have won the election, it’s at least possible. People are screaming “Go back go back! Let’s have simple answers.” It’s very difficult to have useful answers to everything that’s going on. There aren’t simple answers. Things are complex. We need precise knowledge of complex systems. We don’t need simple answers. Most of the public wants simple answers like let’s stop gay marriage.

Right now the most poplar belief systems or BS in the country are, in descending order, Protestant, Catholic, Agnostic, Buddhist, Jewish, Islam, Mormon, atheist, Sikh, Hindu — I remember the descending order with the mnemonic P-CAB-JIM=ASH. This country is so damn ignorant most of them don’t even know what a Muslim looks like. Four nuns were turned off an airline flight today because they looked like Muslims. They were Hindus! I heard it on CNN.

NF: Have you been to Burning Man?

RAW: The Guns & Dope Party is going to be there. The Guns & Dope party is going to have a presentation at BurningMan. I keep on saying if the gun people and the dope people could get together they would be a majority of the country. All they have to do is get over their paranoia about each other. Really, if the gun owners and dopers could get together we could really overthrow this whole system. After all, anybody who takes your money without your consent and then will try to throw you in prison if you don’t pay up … they’re not going to use the money to do anything for you obviously. They’re going to try to use the money to enslave you. And of course the next step after stealing our money is to take away our guns so we can’t fight back.

Live From Chapel Perilous

reason dec 2003

We’re living in Robert Anton Wilson’s world

 from the December 2003 issue of Reason Magazine

In 1973 Thomas Pynchon published an enormous experimental novel called Gravity’s Rainbow. In 1975 Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson published an enormous experimental trilogy called Illuminatus! Both were written at about the same time, and both offered panoramic perspectives on history, liberty, and paranoia.

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