My Discordian Adventure

Last printed

My Discordian AdventureOR

How I found Eris and what She did to me when I found Herby Mark P. (Icarus!) Steele

31 Chaos3181 YOLD

To paraphrase one of the classics, it’s been more than 23 years since that day in September when I went into the bookstore and first saw the ILLUMINATUS! Trilogy on the racks. In fact, it’s been more than 23 years since the short lived and incomplete comics adaptation of that work first saw print. This year is the 40th anniversary of the publication of the original Trilogy. To the best of my knowledge, the 1st 2 volumes of the Trilogy were released in paperback in September, 1975 CE, with the 3rd following in October. And nothing’s been quite the same since.

For those who are unaware, the Illuminatus! Trilogy was written by 2 Playboy editors, Robert J. Shea and Robert Anton Wilson. Now acknowledged by some as 2 of the 4 Pillars of Discordianism, the authors had been receiving letters for the Playboy Forum outlining various Conspiracy Theories on a range of subjects, some focusing on the Bavarian Illuminati, others focusing on more recent events such as the assassination of President Kennedy. After a time of reading these missives, the Bobs (the name they told me they preferred to be called) wondered, “What if they’re all true? What kind of a world would that be?” And thus was the seed from which the Trilogy grew born.

The Bavarian Illuminati, as near as has been documented, was founded May 1, 1776, by Adam Weishaupt and others as a secret society linked to the European Freemason Fraternity. Some links to older organizations do appear to exist.

The Illuminati were soon suppressed by the government of Ingolstadt due to some supposedly subversive papers that were discovered. But many believe that it merely went underground, and is responsible for much of the unsolved world problems to this day.

Shea and Wilson used this group, and the rumors about it, as the initial starting point for their paranoid fantasy of conspiracies, imagining the worst possible world they could where behind-the-scenes powers were manipulating events for their own benefit, to the possible detriment to the rest of mankind. They poured these paranoid fantasies into the initial manuscript of what would become their greatest work, believing their imaginations were coming up with theories so unbelievable that it would shock the public.

And Then Came Watergate.Watergate, for those unaware, was a hotel where some Conspirators, apparently

working for President Nixon, indulged in dirty deeds against the Democrats, his political opponents, in order to help ensure his reelection in 1972. When these illegal activities were discovered, it eventually led to Nixon’s resignation and Gerald Ford’s ascension to the Office of President.

Undaunted, the authors continued developing their Trilogy, writing far more than was ever eventually published, and were rewarded by Dell Publication’s release of the Trilogy a mere 8 months before the futuristic events described are alleged to have happened, on the 200th anniversary of the founding of Weishaupt’s Illuminati.

document.doc by Mark P. Steele

Last printed More details on the events described can be found in Wilson’s “Cosmic Trigger”

book and in various issues of Shea’s zine, “No Governor”. Please locate these and peruse for more information on their work on the Trilogy.

My own entry into their paranoid delusions, as near as I can tell, was when I saw and picked up “The Eye In The Pyramid”, the 1st volume of the Trilogy, and purchased it. As I remember, it came from Jerry’s Book Nook, a book store near Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, Michigan, the midpoint (more or less) to the Detroit/Chicago Axis. I was, at the time, 16 years old, just out of High School, and attending the local Liberal Arts College, Kalamazoo College. I had little knowledge of what I wanted to do with my life, outside of the desire to be a comic book writer, and had entered college due to the offering of various grants and loans to do so, and with few other options reasonably available at the time.

My family has been in the area near there since some time in the early to mid 19th century, in just about all the branches I’ve been able to trace. My father was a Methodist minister of note, and had spent much time in the aforementioned Masonic Fraternity in various locales across the State and beyond. So of course the theories in the Trilogy seemed intriguing to me, to say the least. I read the books, and was greatly impressed by the non-linear narrative’s inclusion of a wide range of material, and knocked out by the sex scenes and the dramatic Ingolstadt Rock battle for the world.

And thus might it have remained, a great story of a fascinating other world.But…….

Cut to 1978 CE. The Wilson book, “Cosmic Trigger”, had just recently been released. Largely an autobiography of Robert Anton Wilson, the book also covered many metaphysical, or “magick”, theories on some of his experiences in life. At about this time, I left K College (for the 2nd time), and first made the acquaintance of the Whizzard of OM.

OM, in Illuminatus! rhetoric, is short for Operation: Mindfuck, or as I was to call it (to keep on the R rather than X rated part of the spectrum) Mindtwist. It was a Discordian Operation to try and short circuit what is called the metaprogrammer in human consciousness by a bit of, hopefully creative, cognitive dissonance. In other words: they messed with your head to try and clear your brain of bull.

The Whizzard I refer to ran a mystical book store called Esoterica, and held a weekly meeting for interested folks called the Quicksilver Club to explore various theories and ideas about the Hidden World. Some of these were the ideas Wilson wrote about. Among other things, I got my 1st copy of the Loompaniacs edition of the Principia Discordia (PD from now on here) from the Whizzard.

The PD is the major work (other than ILLUMINATUS!) outlining the Discordian religion, focusing on Eris, the Greek Goddess of Discord and Confusion. According to the Story, the other 2 Pillars, Greg Hill and Kerry Thornley, experienced a gnosis in a bowling alley in Yorba Linda, CA, some time around when Sputnik was launched. In this vision, they saw a green monkey acting as an avatar of Hermes and delivering to them the Sacred Chao, a symbol very like the yin-yang symbol, only with a golden apple and a pentagon in place of the 2 inner spots. The golden apple refers to the apple of Eris, which in old legends triggered the Trojan War, and the Pentagon the structures of Order,

2


Last printed as illustrated by the US Military. Together with the space between the two sides, the Hodge and the Podge, it is intended to represent every thing that exists.

Now Discordianism isn’t a serious religion, but a humorous one, which doesn’t mean it’s not real. Hill and Thornley (also known as Malaclypse and Omar), when they found the reference to Eris, thought the idea of a Goddess of Confusion was hilarious, founded the Discordian Society, and promptly excommunicated each other. {fnord}

Shea and Wilson used the Discordians as a major set of opponents to the Illuminati in their Trilogy, and brought to the public knowledge of this small fringe group. Now, due to the Kopyleft nature of the PD, there are versions of it all over the web and beyond, in over 5 languages, and the Movement just keeps growing.

During this time I was undergoing what could be referred to as my own Gnosis, or opening of the Third Eye according to some Tibetan texts. Whether a real experience or not, it was subjectively a form of rebirthing, using a lot of the ideas I’d been exposed to over the last few years. And at the end of it, after much pain and consciousness exploration, I ended up becoming a Born Again Discordian.

Now, the Discordian view points are not very dogmatic. In fact, the beliefs are expressed as Catmas, relative beliefs that seem right for now till later information can better expand them. To many this is too flexible a belief system to handle, but in a changing world, it can work well.

My life partner at that time was one Kalishna, or “Running Fawn”, as her Ojibwa name was rendered. She was descended from one of the notables of the Tribe here, one Truman Duane Bush.

Mr. Bush was a member of the tribes known as Anishenabe, which includes the Chippewa, Ojibwa and Potawatomi. In discussions with a member of the local Indian Bureau, the official recognized the name. But there was no documentation linking Kalishna, through her mother, to her Grandfather, a not unusual situation.

Bush was, according to the tales passed down, supposed to be the Chief of his particular tribe or band, but married outside the tribe, and thus forfeited this. He taught Kalishna spiritual and other things that normally were reserved for the males of the line, as there were none other of his descendants interested in them. Some of this was passed on to me in a combination of discussions, trance workings, and other means.

One tale goes that, in their early days, a band of Hell’s Angels camped on Bush’s land, something that created fear in some of those living there. Bush went to the camp of bikers, and stayed with them several days, teaching them things he felt they needed to know. Some of these teachings may still be found among some of the biker crowd.

Perhaps the best known of the Anishenabe tribes is one Tonto, the partner of the Lone Ranger of early radio and television fame. Though recent accounts trace his lineage to other tribes, the words “Ke-mo-sab-hay” which Tonto called the Ranger, translated usually as “trusty scout”, are part of one of the Anishenabe languages. In fact, there was a camp by those names which some believe Fran Striker, and others of the early chroniclers of the duo, knew of when they used the term.

The Anishenabe also had a Medicine Lodge called the Midewiwin, a healing lodge whose members used the White Rabbit as the archetype on which they focused. Its origins are old, but I’ll save that part of the story for later.

3


Last printed

Eris, the Greek Goddess (known by the Romans as Discordia) is the major figure in Discordianism, but her tale is not that well known to the general public, though the Trojan War which she helped trigger is. To better understand Her, I present the following tale, revealed to me by Episkopotic Revelation by Her, and release this portion of the document to the Kopyleft, Public Domain region:

How Eris Came To BeBy Episkopos Icarus!

32 Chaos XXXX Anno MungKopyleft – Do What Thou Wilt with this

In the old days of the Greek Gods and Goddesses, Zeus was know for his mating with various mortal women and goddesses, much to the humiliation of his sister/wife, Hera. She persecuted many of these and their offspring, such as Hercules, during their time on Earth.

Now some claim that this was the result of the Greek Pantheon absorbing the tales of other Deities during the span of history, and other deities becoming aspects of Zeus, but regardless of this, the tales we have say this is what he did, and who are we to argue?

Some time shortly after Athena emerged from Zeus’ brow, his daughter with no mother, Hera decided that she needed to do something about this grave injustice and insult to Her, the Goddess of marriage and an incarnation of the Mother Goddess Herself. Known also as Titania, the name she later used in her time among the fae, and as Juno, Hera was, by right of marriage to Zeus, the leader of the Goddesses of Olympus. Her sacred garden of the Hesperides, where golden apples grew, may have been located on an island called Junonia on the earth plane, in what is now known as the Canary Islands, remnants, possibly, of Atlantis lying west of the Pillars of Hercules and Mount Atlas.

Deciding she must do something, Hera went to Flora, another Goddess, and asked for her help. Together, they created a serum and ceremony by which Hera conceived a child without a male. The child grew in her womb, and eventually was born. This child was Ares, or Mars, the God of War, an expression of her anger at the treatment by Zeus.

Now in human genetics, the males are produced by something not present in female genes, but the Deities work in other ways. Perhaps the serum contained the Y chromosome of Hera’s father, Chronos, which would have been passed to all of his sons as well.

Be that as it may, Ares had a twin sister, Eris, who would become the Goddess of Discord and Confusion, and spent much time with her brother on the battlefields of the Mortal Plane.

Now Eris, as should be obvious to those with some biological background, would have been an exact genetic copy of her mother, Hera, if genes are used among the deities. As she grew, the resemblance became more and more pronounced.

Zeus, according to some mortal laws, would have been her father because of his marriage to her mother at the time of her birth, but mortal laws mean little, if anything, to the deities. All he could see was Eris becoming more and more like her mother as she

4


Last printed grew, until she resembled a younger aspect of Hera as he’d first known her, before the years of marital strife. Deciding that he possessed her as well, he made his moves on her.

Eris didn’t want any part of Zeus, having grown up seeing some of the ways he treated her mother, and rebuffed him. But Zeus was persistent, and reached out for her.

She fled, but he chased her. As he grabbed for her, he pulled an article of her clothing off her, something that happened over and over again as the chase continued, until her clothes were gone, in a fashion reminiscent of Ishtar’s entry into her sister’s underworld. Finally, she decided to hide in her mother’s sacred Garden of the Hesperides, figuring Zeus wouldn’t follow her into her mother’s sacred place. But she was wrong.

In the garden, unable to escape her pursuer, Eris tried climbing a tree. But he caught her, grasping her ankle and pulling her down just as she grasped one of the sacred apples on the tree. There, in the garden, beneath the boughs of the apple tree, he had his way with her until he was sated, and then left her there.

Angry, Eris vowed somehow, she knew not how, to gain her vengeance on Zeus. She retraced her path, reclaiming her garb, the apple still in her hand as she did so. Then, finally, she retired to seclusion to an underground region in the Carpathian Mountains and made her home there, eventually becoming a Goddess important to some of the local tribesmen who lived in that region.

When rumors of this reached Tethys, one of the Titans, she decided that she didn’t want to risk trouble at her approaching wedding by having Eris, Zeus and Hera all there at the same time. Since Zeus was head of the gods regardless of all, he and his wife had to come, so Eris wasn’t invited.

Eris wasn’t insulted by the slight. On the contrary, she understood it well. But she saw in this the opportunity to begin her plans against Zeus, and though she regretted the thought of creating turmoil at Tethys’ wedding party, she could not just let it go by. Engraving the word “Korhhisti”, generally rendered now as “Kallisti”, on the apple, she threw it into the wedding banquet, where it cracked the golden punch bowl and made the nectar leak, bounced off Zeus’ chin, and fell in the midst of the assembled Goddesses.

Now some tales say that all the Gods and Goddesses, not just the women, fought over the apple, and that it gave off fumes that gave them a series of visions of the future and of other worlds, something that aided them in deciding to leave the mortals alone. But in the more traditional aspects of the story, 3 Goddesses had the strongest claim to the apple: Athena, Aphrodite and Hera.

As the apple had come from Hera’s garden originally, she could be seen as having the strongest claim to it. Also, as it was tossed into a wedding it could have been considered a wedding present and been presented to Tethys. But Zeus didn’t want to face the wrath of the 3 Goddesses by deciding himself, so he chose a mortal, Paris, to decide the issue.

Paris was offered great wisdom by Athena, but he decided that that wasn’t his thing. Hera offered him great rulership over a part of the world of the time, but again, not wanting the responsibility, he declined her offer. Then Aphrodite offered to have the most beautiful woman in the world fall in love with him and he went for that.

Helen was the wife of Menelaus, the King of one of the confederation of Kingdoms making up Greece at the time. When she saw Paris, she went with him, and they fled to his city of Troy. Menelaus, unable to let this slight and insult go

5


Last printed unaddressed, assembled a mighty army of his relatives and of heroes, and assaulted the city of Troy, a siege that lasted around 10 years, and resulted in the deaths of many noble warriors.

The Gods and Goddesses, of course, joined in and worked on both sides for their favorites, having a grand old time in their style. Eventually, things got so hot and bothered that Zeus forbade them to assist any more. This went for the entire Pantheon….. except for Eris. Her he “allowed” continuing her involvement.

Eventually, when the Trojan Horse allowed Greek troops inside the city, Troy was razed, and Helen brought back to Menelaus, who may have been disappointed at how 10 years in a besieged city had changed her. Ulysses, or Odysseus, had his adventures on the return trip, and rumors exist that some of the Trojans managed to escape through the Mediterranean Sea, and eventually settled in Ireland.

Eris, dissatisfied with this war, spent much time meditating on the incident in her home. True, there had been some aspects that were good. The Northern Pantheon, curious about the uproar in or near what they called the Realm of Surtur, had had some folks come down, and she had enjoyed her time with Logi and the Vanir Elder Niord, sometimes known as Nuada, or Nodens. Her mother was now involved with Frey, also known as the Elf Lord, Auberon. But for the most part she decided that war, though inevitable, wasn’t really fun, and that she wanted more of that in her life. So, after thousands of years, She revealed Herself to Omar and Mal2, giving a portion of her now mellowed philosophy to them, and found a mortal host for her new incarnation, an actress that faked her death, and eventually created a Triple Aspect for Eris to work on Earth against the Illuminati and the Undead Nazis. Though there was war, in Viet Nam and other places, Her teachings began being spread across the globe, and now are part of the world we know.

Do you believe that?

End the Kopyleft, Public Domain section

Now most of this I didn’t know at the time, but I did know one thing: that I now had a Mission. What that mission was I didn’t know, but I knew it was there. And how would I learn of this mission?

Well, for one, I attended the Midwest Pagan Festival held at Lake Eliza. There, I met Gwydion Penderwen, a musician of note, helped the Whizzard of OM in his ceremonial “We Stand in Defense of Wood, Wind, and Stone”, and got to see such luminaries in that community as Richard Clarke.

Now Clarke was the “Papa Pan” in the Chicago Pagan community, and passed into the Summerrealm several years after this event. There were many different organizations from Chicago and other areas involved in the event, and the attendance was, I believe, around 500 – far larger than the Wiccan tradition of 13, or even that of a Grand Coven, 13 x 13, or 169. The temperature difference at the edge of the circle cast was palpable, and there was joy amongst all.

6


Last printed One single tragedy marked the excellence of this event, the death, by drowning, of

a small child. It caused sorrow in that community that remains till this day.Now the circle was led by one Selena Fox, of Circle Network News and of Circle

Sanctuary in the Madison, WI area. Her sense of timing in the circle was great, letting the circle chanting and dancing continue to create an immense and powerful cone of power before continuing with the vocal part of the ceremony.

Unfortunately, this gathering, after the festival, shortly broke up over differences of opinion, giving rise to other festivals, such as the Pagan Spirit Gathering, in its wake. But the idea of doing something like this, in a festival setting, appealed to me so much that I made plans for the next year. But the plans were not obviously Discordian, but of Comicology.

Comicology is generally used to refer to a scholarly system involving comic books. But I also used it in a religious sense, in a belief system related to those comic books. For instance, one of its so called catmas is the belief that such narratives are reflections of actual events in parallel worlds. This theory was put forth by Gardner Fox, John Broome, and others in a series of stories that began in “Flash”, moved to “Justice League of America”, and continued on to “Crisis on Infinite Earths” and its 4 sequels. And since one of the prime functions of Pagan Magick is to contact the archetypes of Deities, I decided to do something involving a pantheon unique to comics at the time: the New Gods.

The New Gods were created by Jack “King” Kirby for DC in the early 70s, when he left Marvel Comics after having created the visuals and the plot lines, with Stan Lee, of a large part of the Marvel Universe. These New Gods were born in the aftermath of the Old Gods’ Ragnarok, when the planet they lived on split into two, Apokolips and New Genesis. Apokolips was ruled by the despot, Darkseid, and New Genesis by Highfather, AKA Izaya. Their initial tales were told in Jimmy Olsen, The Forever People, The New Gods, and Mister Miracle, all of which Kirby wrote and drew.

Now the intent of this ceremony was to call on the New Gods at the cardinal points to summon Scott Free, Mr. Miracle, the Super Escape Artist and son of Izaya. Scott had been traded in a peace treaty for Orion, son of Darkseid, and was raised on Apokolips.

To try this, I had 5 cards I drew, inked, and colored: Lightray, Orion, Highfather, and Metron, representing the 4 Elements, and Mr. Miracle himself on a larger piece of art board. I got 4 people to help me by channeling the Forever People: Mark Moonrider (myself), Beautiful Dreamer (Kalishna), Vykin the Black, Serifan, and Big Bear – played by one Richard Maas, eventually to become one of the early elves of Lothlorien.

The theory on the working was twofold: First, if the New Gods really did exist in a parallel continuum, this was a means of contacting them to call their godly powers further into our realm. Second, if they really didn’t exist, the psychokinetic energy of the adolescents that read of them might be stored somewhere in the region that the archetypes that they represent exist.

This took place at the only Pan Pagan not sponsored by the MPC, in a land sanctuary just Northeast of where I live called Circle Pines. It took place in a kind of gazebo area on the land. We went there, and the ceremony began. Maas, as Big Bear, told the crowd of who he was and started running in a circle, driving the Super-Cycle in a

7


Last printed manner similar to how the Great Bear drives the Wheel of the Year around Polaris. One by one we introduced ourselves, and then summoned the Infinity Man by the Mother Box and the use of the word “Taaru!”

Now the Infinity Man, as originally portrayed, was a composite being of no origins formed by the Forever People joining together. He had incredible power to manipulate reality, and carried on the work that they couldn’t then do on their own. The Mother Box was the New Gods’ link to the Source, the place where all came from. Most of the New Gods had their own Mother Box they wore on their person, but the Forever People had a single one, much larger than the others.

Later chroniclers revealed that the Infinity Man was Izaya’s brother, and that the Forever People’s Mother Box channeled the spirit of Maya. But these weren’t part of the original conception.

With the Infinity Man, or his spirit, if you will, being present, we proceeded to summon Scott Free, Mr, Miracle. We did, revealed the poster, and all danced and had a good time, the crowd chanting “Dionysus”, or “Dion-Isis” toward the poster, revealing an aspect of Mr. Miracle that I hadn’t known till then. The poster also had Oberon and Big Barda, Scott’s manager and later wife, to his sides, their arms all forming the letters “LVX”, or Light, a symbolism important in the Golden Dawn’s Rosicrucian tradition.

The Rosicrucians are a Christian like group revolving in the legends of one Christian Rosenkreux. The term means the Rose and the Cross, referring to the Crucifixion. The tales of this Christian began being circulated about the time of the Ascension of the last King of Bohemia, and are believed by some to be propaganda, trying to gain popularity of the King’s beliefs and philosophies. But the King, along with his wife, the daughter of the King of England, were shortly deposed and killed.

Be that as it may, the tales of the Alchemical Wedding passed into the heritage of Christian Mystics, and eventually were used in the formation of the Golden Dawn in the late 19th Century.

A manuscript that certain British Masons found from a German group, linked to the Rosicrucian philosophies, was the genesis. But much of the ceremonial aspects, enhanced by studies of Egyptian papyri in the British Library, was the product of Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers, and of his wife, Moina. Together they formed the nucleus of the first Golden Dawn Lodge, one later joined by Aleister Crowley, Bram Stoker, George Bernard Shaw, and others. Stoker’s character of Mina Harker, nee Murray, may have been named after Mrs. Mathers, for her name was Mina before she changed it.

Moina later was a teacher of one Dion Fortune before Fortune’s own revelations, and may be one of the models for Vivien LeFay Morgan.

After the New Gods ceremony, the woman playing Vykin the Black for ethnic reasons (who may have been Priestess Miriam of a New Orleans Voudon Temple on Ransom St.), pointed out to me that the word “Taaru” was very similar to “Tarot”, one heightened by the use of imagery in comics and in the posters I’d made.

The Forever People had one other formal ceremony that we did, this one at a Punk Rock night in a local loft in downtown Kalamazoo. The organizers asked Richard to get

8


Last printed something going during an engineering change in the program, and he felt that the New Gods ceremony would be it. So we went.

I made a slight change in the posters before this. Seeing the lack of a symbolic spirit, I did a new Lightray poster, a larger one, and replaced the original with Jezebelle of the Fiery Eyes, a non-Kirby character added later. And I also added some Gate patterns to the backs from the Simon Necronomicon.

The Necronomicon is a book first publicized by H. P. (“Hip”) Lovecraft in his tales, and one involved with the Illuminatus! Trilogy, when Joe Malik gets off on the porno in it. As it’s considered fantasy, it seemed right for what we were doing. Well, I was right and wrong.

At the Punk Rock Event, we started out with the woman then playing Beautiful Dreamer, a member of Cleveland’s Chameleon Club, going all sweetness and light and telling folks we were the Pagans, which was billed in the publicity. At the time, the crowd seemed to react with hostility. I thought it was to the sweetness and light, but it was actually because there was a band called the Pagans, and much of the audience believed from the promos that they would be there. But it was us instead.

The presenters said call it off, but it was started anyway by the Whizzard, then playing Vykin, going out with the Mother Box and going ahead. The others followed suit after him, leaving me as the final entry.

By this time I was p*ssed as hell over the whole things, so I grabbed the mike and screamed into it, “I’m Mark Moonrider and I have the Megaton Touch….” …I raised my other hand. “H-Bombs! Hiroshima! Nagasaki! And I can destroy you all if I want!”

Brow lowered, I looked around the room at the crowd, now silent and staring at me in a way not like that they’d done to the others. Undaunted, I continued:

“Or I can take you back to Earth and heal you! It’s up to you, you m*therf**kers!”

Replacing the mike, I walked away from the staging area. A number of faces of folks in the crowd indicated they were pleased with my handling of that. As far as I was concerned, that was the end. But it wasn’t.

The man playing Serifan and the Whizzard were both jamming on drums, setting up a rhythm that didn’t match at all with the canned music the organizers had started. Hearing this discordant diaphony, I went to one of the teks working on the equipment and asked if I should try and shut them down, like we were asked. He said, “You’re doing fine, keep it up”. So I did. I went to Serifan and told him to listen to the tape being played and match his rhythms to that. And he did, pulling the whole thing together.

One of my sisters and another woman grabbed the posters and began dancing with them, so that the audience could see them. We continued like that, free form, for the rest of the time we had. And it went well.

Afterward, I noticed the Scott Free poster was missing. I found it at a bar one story below the theater loft, but still part of the same event. It had a hole in it, which went through the silver Lunar Gate from the Necro that I’d painted on the back.

Later, I found that, after I left the staging area, a musician named Scott had been harassed by some folks and shoved down into an area that they’d broken a beer bottle, causing him to bleed all over that staging area.

Coincidence? Or Co-Incidence?

9


Last printed The Forever People, as a performance art group, never did any thing else, though

there was one festival in Lothlorien where the 5 appeared spontaneously by a bunch of us who resembled them all being together. This happened with Prince Tchala (AKA Bennu the Phoenix and Orion) being Vykin. As he was as into comics as I was, he realized what had happened, and I gave him the large Mother Box that I’d constructed, as Vykin was the traditional carrier of the box.

And so it…ended? Well not quite, I did mention it to one Jack “King” Kirby years later, but I’ll save that account for Part II.

Now you might be wondering what all this comic book mythos and theatrical psychodrama have to do with the Illuminati, the Discordians, and the Trilogy, and I can see that the linkages haven’t yet been set forth. So here they are:

The Chicago Comicon, now known as Wizard World Chicago, had at one time met in a Hotel off Grant Park. This area was used in ILLUMINATUS!, but set during the Chicago Riots. I attended one of these cons with my father, and brought the Mother Box along with me, as is not unusual at cons. I once saw a rolling Tardis accompanying a female Doctor at a convention, and many convention goers are constantly seeking boxes.

One of the guests at that con was Marshall Rogers. He had recently done some Dr. Strange issues, and had also working on Batman in Detective Comics with Steve Engelhart, one of my major comics’ influences. He had some posters behind him, among them one of the Batman with no yellow circle (the standard of that time) around the bat. Studying it, I had a revelation, and thought, “Oh, that must be the Earth 2 Batman then, who never had that.” At that, Rogers looked at me and said, “What was that?” Then, realizing something, he said, “Oh, never mind, I was just hearing things, don’t pay any attention, it happens all the time”. Being of the opinion at that time that telepathy, under certain conditions, worked, I thought he had heard my thoughts when they became stronger, something I still think is a possibility, though there are other explanations.

Later, he was on one of the panels held there, discussing with others their works and other topics I can’t now remember. During the question and answer period I stood in line (a rarity for me) and, after commending him on the accurate portrayal of Tantra he did in Dr. Strange asked him about the use of the Marduk Seals from the Simon Necronomicon in the comic. He confessed that he’d done border work for that book when it was being prepared.

The only border I could find in the book was on the cover, a twisting effect that surrounded the words and an image on the cover. But there’s another theory that we didn’t get into, the one that the book itself is a hoax. If this were the case, then the sigils inside the book had to be rendered by someone, possibly by Rogers himself. If so, this makes him the Khem Set Rising listed in the book’s credits. Since Marshall, unfortunately, passed on several years ago, after being able to do a sequel to his Engelhart Batman sequence, we may never know.

Also during this convention, I took the Mother Box to the 4 cardinal points and, silently, did the quarter invocations around the place. After this, I took in some of the animated features airing there. One of them was a Warner Brothers cartoon, featuring Porky Pig.

10


Last printed The Warner Brothers emblem is a large W, the 23rd letter of the alphabet. 23 is a

sacred number to Eris, and the letter W also is what Weishaupt, the founder of the Illuminati, had his name begin with. Now the Warner Brothers were Jewish in origin, and while it’s unlikely the Germanic Illuminati might have Jewish recruits, who knows?

The cartoon itself was partially live action, and featured Porky trying to get into the Warner Brothers studio past the gate guard. It was announced before airing that the guard was portrayed by one Michael Maltese. Michael is, of course, the Archangel of Fire used for that element in many circle invocations, but Maltese implies connected to the Island of Malta, where the Hospitallers had once had their main headquarters, located in the Mediterranean.

Michael Maltese himself was one of the main writers of the Warner Brothers cartoons. And the Guardian of the Gate is an old mystical symbol, a figure trying to keep the profane away from the Mysteries, usually associated on the Tree of Life with the region of Daath, a non-sphere between the Supernal Triad and the spheres of existence.

Out of these experiences with the Mother Box two types of conceived organizations emerged: The Diskordian Devas of Dirty Deeds (helped, in the mortal plane, by their Doers), and the Knights of the Falcon of Malta.

As originally conceived, the DDDD was supposed to be a widespread group, focusing on purifying negative vibes and cleaning the cosmic cesspools. The Deva spirits were like those in Islamic traditions, only with links to Eris in their background.

The first was Mary Lou Mirage, who in the imaginary plane lives in a monolith in Bronson Park in Kalamazoo. She was the spirit imagined emerging from the Gate at the Punk Fest, and shares characteristics with Jezebelle of the Fiery Eyes. She is the spiritual daughter of me and Kalishna.

The second is Peter Petrock, who lives at Stone Mountain, Georgia, and was the result on the 5th of July of the CE Year 1986, I believe, when the Lady Liberty lamp was relit, and was the spiritual child of myself and a Discordian Priestess from the Atlanta area, manifesting on a trip where I was actually able to meet and speak with Kerry Thornley in Little Five Points.

A third Deva should be stationed near Joplin, Missouri, at the 3rd corner of the Grand Triad, a huge triangle of manifestation (intended to invoke the Spirit of Freedom) whose points are there, and at the places in Georgia and Michigan previously mentioned. This triangle’s center is somewhere around the Garden of the Gods near Metropolis, Illinois. If this Deva exists, I know little about it, but did have contact with a Priestess and coven from that area once at one of the Pan Pagan Festivals. They may know of this from their own activities.

The KFM was supposed to be an elite group related to the DDDD that used popular culture archetypes in its exploration of the mental world. Sam Spade was designated Knight of the Path of the Hermit, and Ororo, or Storm of the X-Men, the African Queen, years before Marvel documented her marriage to T’Challa, the Black Panther. The quarters called on were Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, the Road Runner, and of course, that Oscar winning rabbit, Bugs Bunny. However, it was this group that caught on in the popular imagination and ended up growing quite a bit…. especially after the discovery of the Coyote Cabal.

11


Last printed The Coyotes were a family of women from the Chicago area, a mother and 2 adult

daughters, and the 2 daughters of one of the sisters. They came to my attention at a Beltane ceremony held by the Heartland Pagan Association. And the HPA had let me come there to that ceremony so that I might meet with Robert Anton Wilson.

The HPA was headed by one Jack Armstrong, who I met with others of the group at one of the festivals held by the Elf Lore Family before they purchased the land they called Lothlorien. And the trip to Georgia where I met Thornley, the year Lady Liberty regained her flame and the 2nd Diskordian Deva was manifest, had included a stopover at a conjoined ELF and HPA festival that didn’t work out too well. As a matter of fact, the Atlanta Priestess and I never made it to the Fest itself, but due to some bad turns ended up in a secluded part of the park where we spent part of the night.

But the linkages to the HPA had formed before this, at one of the Festivals. I’d already come up with the idea of doing ILLUMINATUS! as a comic, and the Whizzard and Michael, the 2 main founders of the Elf Lore Family, knew of this, and introduced me to the HPA people. As it turned out, there was an event coming up where Wilson was supposed to be speaking to their people.

At that time, Wilson was doing a lecture tour circuit run by Jeff Rosenbaum, of Cleveland. He and others in the Association for Consciousness Exploration (ACE), which may have grown out of the aforementioned Chameleon Club, sponsor the Starwood Festivals in western New York, which has grown into one of the larger festivals of the country. Wilson also made some appearances at that Festival during his lecture circuit days.

When I first met Jack and Hans, I was told of Wilson’s upcoming appearance, and invited to stay at their main center, a residence where many people congregated, including Bob Wilson. I first saw him in the church that they used, where the Beltane ceremony later happened. He was giving a lecture on the appearance through history of three archetypes called Larry, Moe, and Curly, also known as the Three Stooges. It sounded very serious and was accompanied by chalk or marker board diagrams that he made, and I never was able to determine exactly what to think of this presentation.

Also there at the HPA HQ, I met a woman later to be known among the KFM as Lady Sheanna, the secretary of the HPA. Like many others mentioned here, she has passed to the Summerland since then. She was, however, quite helpful in helping me get used to the Chicago crowd’s ways.

The two Bobs were both at the HPA HQ at one point, as they were going together to a radio interview with them. I briefly discussed the comic project with them, and may have shown them some early rough sketches of the idea. They told me to contact their agent, Al Zuckerman of Writer’s House, and told me they both preferred being called Bob, rather than the more formal Mister so-and-so.

On contacting Mr. Zuckerman, I was given permission to begin contacting interested publishers for the work, so I wrote a number of inquiry letters. The main response I got was from Mike Gold, of First Comics out of Chicago.

In those days, the early days of the comics shops, there was a large number of independent publishers who were challenging the DC, Marvel and Archie dominance of the field. First Comics started with an adaptation of Warp, which had been a long, 3 part stage play that ran in Chicago. Warp was similar in its production over time to the ILLUMINATUS! stage version that Ken Campbell and the Liverpool Science Fiction

12


Last printed Theater did, so the connections to me were pretty obvious. On the strength of the idea, I managed to get an interview with Mr. Gold.

I went to the interview, I believe, with my script and with sketches by Eric Burza, the first penciller for the ILLUMINATUS! project. He’d done some sketches of the ideas and concepts involved, and the deal looked promising. I also used the trip to show some of the material to Bob Shea, who at the time lived in Glencoe, IL, just north of Chicago. This may have been the first of my trips there; the memory has faded with time.

The interview with Gold was promising enough that we negotiated a contract with Writer’s House to do the book, and got a generous offer, considering that we had no cash to offer. There was, of course, a time deadline attached, and things went from there. More meetings with Bob Shea were held (Wilson at that time was living in Eire, or Ireland as it’s called), and the project developed.

Two things of note were learned from Bob Shea. First, the sketches we did of Reporter George Dorn looked, without any references, like the actor who played him in the stage production. Second, Hagbard Celine was supposed to look exactly like Anthony Quinn in “The Magus” a movie for which photo reference was very difficult to find. We did find one still, and used that, only with more hair and a stronger chin, as the basis for Hagbard’s appearance.

More contact with Gold resulted in the drawing of the entire 1st issue, and the production of a rough draft script that extended into the third volume of the Trilogy. The narrative in the books was such that I was trying to do some experimental things, including some pages with a 9 panel, sometimes 12 panel, grid, for the pages, at a time when the 6 panel grid was the standard. This was, of course, years before Alan Moore’s Watchmen, which was constructed entirely around a 9 panel grid structure, and was somewhat influenced by Jim Starlin’s use of small panels in some of his works.

One of Gold’s comments on looking through my scripts was, “You can’t do that! No one in comics can do that except Alan Moore, and that’s only because he’s Alan Moore!” To which I promptly responded, “Who’s Alan Moore?”

Moore at the time was writing Swamp Thing, a revival that I refused to look at, as I’d collected that title during its original Len Wein/Berni Wrightson run, and didn’t want to give the new crew a chance, not knowing that Wein was also editing the revival. I still haven’t read most of this run of the series, but have read many other works of Alan Moore over the years.

Gold, at one point, told us to do the whole book over, something that didn’t set well with Eric, a graduate of WMU’s art department. But he did it, and to my own eye the earlier work was better, something I later used to good advantage.

Finally, we tried to speak to Gold at a Chicago Comicon, only to have time scheduling problems. Gold was also in charge of the Con at the time, and said he was busy, but might have some time tomorrow, and asked if we were going to be there. Instead of responding, “What time tomorrow?” I responded with “Well, we weren’t planning on it,” which promptly blew the deal. We were referred to a packager of comics that was nearby, the publisher of Star*Reach, who was unaware of the history of the work, and after a series of talks with him, had him lose interest in the project’s development.

In the meantime, I’d gained the contract, and was watching the time limit imposed within it.

13


Last printed Gold, shortly after this, was hired by DC Comics to assist in the new conceptions

of their Universe developing in the wake of “Crisis on Infinite Earths”.The Crisis was a story where infinite worlds were destroyed by the Anti-Monitor,

and the DC heroes all teamed together with heroes from other worlds, including the Shazam Family and the Charlton heroes, who DC had just bought, to keep their worlds from being destroyed. At the climax, 5 worlds were fused into one for the survival of the inhabitants, something that didn’t set well with me at the time.

Wilson’s comments on the event helped clarify some things however. He said that it was an expression of the Collapse of the State Vector, something important to observer-created Universes, where the act of observation actualizes one reality from a series of possibilities that existed in the quantum continuum before that. So there was a scientific rationale to the Crisis ending after all.

Gold quickly made his presence known at DC. When asked in a panel why, when he was in charge of a company he founded, he went to DC, Gold’s answer was, “Well, they offered me my own private jet”. If, indeed this is true, it could be said that the Illuminati got Gold transferred to Time-Warner to prevent their further exposure in comics form.

One of the projects that Gold helped introduce was "Time Lords", written by Lou Shiner. In it, one Rip Hunter, a time traveler DC has had since the early 1960s, met Adam Weishaupt and other members of the Illuminati, here revealed to be a plot by Vandal Savage, an immortal cave man in their universes. The series began with the bombing of an office and the discovery of material related to the Illuminati, just like the Trilogy starts, a clear case of homage being done.

With Gold gone from First, the negotiations didn’t proceed well. Laurel Fitch, who replaced him there, had some interviews with me over the project, but didn’t have the same enthusiasm for it Gold had had, and it became obvious with time that we wouldn’t be placing the book there. With time running out, I decided to self publish the book myself, asking for help from members of WMU’s Quicksilver Club.

At the time, I had returned to school and was pursuing an Electrical Engineering degree, focusing on the parts not included in the Computer Sciences concentration, in other words, all the peripheral devices that attach to computers. During this, I brought the Quicksilver Club, with the Whizzard’s permission, to WMU as an organization. The original club had lasted a while after the Whizzard’s leaving Kalamazoo in the home of a couple of the members, but was soon abandoned for the Gnostic Circle of Light, whose book collection I was given when it folded.

The WMU Quicksilver Club attracted a number of fascinating folks, some of which helped me to finish the art on the first issue by lettering and inking Eric’s penciled pages, the 2nd version that Gold had suggested. The printing was done by Southern Dutchess, a company out of, I believe, New York who had advertised in one of the fanzines I was following.

The print run was 5,000, and I had orders from many of the independent distributors then in existence, before most merged with Diamond in the wake of Marvel’s attempt at having their own independent, and exclusive, distributor.

The only problem was the up front money for the printing.

14


Last printed Southern Dutchess sent the issues out COD, which was not how they’d been

solicited. While most of the distributors accepted the issue’s copies, there were a number that didn’t. Enough money was gained to pay for the printing, but not enough for me to even pay Shea and Wilson or the artists. The copies returned I was unable to place with the distributors, as Dutchess had all the records of who returned the books, and I was unable to get those copies. I suspect they were either destroyed or are languishing somewhere in a warehouse overflow storage area.

But the book was published in time to honor the contract, giving us a window to find another publisher.

This first first issue is the version printed in this edoc, and is very uneven. It’s the “Number Zero”, or Garage Band, version of the work. It was met by acclaim in the Discordian circles, and the copies I did get from Southern Dutchess enabled me to attend cons and sell the book for a while. One of the notables who saw it was one Karen Berger, an editor for DC Comics.

Ms. Berger’s reaction on seeing it was, “Alan Moore would really like to see this”. Now knowing who he was, I responded by noting I’d noticed Moore’s fascination with the ILLUMINATUS! Trilogy, by the material in Watchmen that used their symbolism for Ozymandias. I also mentioned to Karen that knowing about Transcendental Illumination greatly altered the ending of Watchmen, which I found fascinating. Her comment? “Yes, isn’t it?”

Now I won’t expose this little known interpretation of Watchmen here, leaving it for the Illuminated to look up that ending and the Watchmen fans to look up Transcendental Illumination, but this little known interpretation is something I’ve seen nowhere in any text, or heard discussed outside my circles, so I may be the only one to have seen this variation on Moore’s work.

Did he intend it? I think so. And with Dr. Manhattan’s existence on their world, the possibility that it might have happened is strong.

Several years after the publication of the original first issue, I found another publisher, Rip Off Press, run by the Todds. The most notable publications that they had done were the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers and Fat Freddy’s Cat, from the 1960s Underground Comics. Larry Todd told me that back in those days to publish a comic they had to sell weed to get the money together and then print the magazine, something not done these days. He also told me that one of the editions of the Principia Discordia was printed on the Rip Off photocopy machine back in the old days, something I haven’t seen or heard anywhere else.

Perhaps Mr. and Mrs. Todd actually knew the mysterious Greg Hill, the only one of the Four Pillars I didn’t get the chance to meet during their lifetime.

The Todds provided the great colors for the covers to the 3 issues that they published. We redid much of the first issue, using some of the 1st version of the art drawn, and it was far more consistent.

Unfortunately, due to the temporary closing of my studio we were unable to provide a copy of that issue in this release, though a copy of the cover is included.

Also included are the unpublished 4th issue, and other material that was prepared for the book over its development. The 4th issue, thanks to inker Jeff Haas (AKA Jeffro Antithesis) is far more consistent than the others. Barker, the 3rd pencil artist on the book,

15


Last printed rendered the characters consistent with how we portrayed them and used dynamism in the layouts consistent with the story.

The 3rd issue had some problems. We worked over rough layouts for the first half of the book, with various artists doing finishes similar to the inkers’ jam in the original 1st

issue, but with less success. Artist Eric Piccione, who was to have been the regular artist from then on, made his debut halfway through the book, and also contributed the cover pencils and inks to this issue and the revised 1st issue. He has since moved on to a gaming company.

The Rising Mojos (inspired by Jim Morrison’s Mr. Mojo Rising) were a varied crew, and hopefully in the future they will give permission to give more full credits to the work. One of the inkers, John Kovach, has since passed on, a loss felt greatly by both me and the community at large. Possibly some of his work for the studio and other sources might be printed in a benefit portfolio for AIDS research.

The Rip Off Press issues were released during one of the bust periods in the history of the Independent Publishers, and unfortunately in those early days of the Internet neither I nor Rip Off Press was able to give it the publicity it deserved. Print run dropped due to poor orders from 5000, as contractually mandated, to a low or 3,500, so if you have that issue you have somewhat of a rarity that hopefully will increase in value due to this release.

After the Rip Off issues were finished, I once again used the window to find another publisher. And I did, Chiasmus Publishing, publisher of, among other things, Bulk Comics, which began as an oversized local publication featuring a variety of local artists. We helped build this into a national publication, and the book was ready to go. Aaron, of the local newspaper strip “The Adventures of Aaron” (reprinted in magazine form) was slated to be the new artists, and a number of script consultants were called in to enhance and polish my work.

Unfortunately the deal fell through, and though Chiasmus had a few other publications, it was short lived.

This was almost the end of the publication history of the comic version, as by this time the contract window expired, terminating my rights to publish the work. Plans had been to reprint, with enhanced art, the 1st three issues, possibly in color, in a graphic novel and to expand the scope by including backup stories, beginning with #6, of short stories relating to the plot lines.

For instance, Robert Bloch, author of Psycho among other works, had written 2 stories featuring a version of Lovecraft and the manifestation of Nyarlathotep. Between these bookends, Lovecraft himself had written a story featuring Robert Blake, in which the Starry Wisdom Church, used in ILLUMINATUS! on the island of Fernando Poo, was introduced.

There was also a short story of Eochain Goll Mc Othna which we, due to trademark considerations, used in place of King Kull. The character of King Goll was based on a noted poem from the 19th century. Similarly, Conan, or Konan, was slated to be replaced by Cu Chullain, the Irish Hero. But this was not to be.

HOWEVER:

16


Last printed Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea both passed on, leaving the tales that

they’d written separately behind them, and also the plot outline to a sequel to ILLUMINATUS!, set 50 years after the events of their collaboration. Though they never found a publisher, it did give some idea of where the characters were slated to go from there. As I don’t have permission to reveal any of this work (which I heard Bob Shea read at a con), I won’t give any more information on it, except that it’s rumored to have been published in an issue of a Wilson publication.

And when Wilson died, his daughter, Trichster (designated Princess Trichster, a Discordian American Princess by the Knights of the Falcon of Malta, an honor it’s been reported Miley Cyrus shares) wanted pictures relating to her father’s work to show at his Meme-Orial service. My response? “Pictures? I’ll give you pictures!” I prepared a selection of the best art from the comics and sent ecopies along to her. Then, spontaneously, other Meme-Orial services sprang up around the world, and I offered the pictures to them as well. To my knowledge, the art was used in Germany, Australia, and in Philadelphia, where a band that ran Temple Eris printed large sized posters that they hung in their performance site. Thus the art became globally displayed.

Later, I put the art, as a slide show, on my MySpace account, in the days before Facebook took over the online “Friend” concession. And then something very strange happened.

Stephen Colbert, the celebrity, had not one, but 2 skits on his humorous news show the week after the art was released on the web. In one, they were discussing a modern living goddess, and her trials with her religion. At the end of this, he pulls out a golden apple and goes through a routine on the 3 goddesses that wanted the apple before the Trojan War. His parting words were along the line of “Aphrodite? Call me!”

Also during that week he did a news article about the Illuminati, wherein he begged to join them, claiming he’d used every secret handshake he knew with various people suspected of being members, with no result.

Now 2 in one week after the art was released is a bit much for mere coincidence, so I contacted the studio, and arranged for some of my stuff to be considered by them. Unfortunately, as far as I know, none of it was used.

There was more to the Colbert connection, but that I’ll get into in Part II, the “After ILLUMINATUS!” section.

Of course, the Illuminati later appeared in a Dan Brown book that was made into a movie and in the Lara Croft movie as well.

In comics, in addition to the “Time Lords” comic mentioned earlier, “The Invisibles” was released and was DC's version of the Illuminati. Moore, in addition to the aforementioned connection in “Watchmen”, used the 5 fold Illuminati history theory to good effect in “V for Vendetta”. He also contributed his own eulogy for Robert Anton Wilson, months after the Meme-Orials happened. Strangely enough, he hinted that Wilson’s wife, Arlen, had been a writer herself, for The Shadow radio series, something I’ve seen or heard in no other source. I don’t know if that’s true, or simply my own projection on something that means something else.

And, of course, Marvel Comics came up with their own Illuminati, where it was revealed that some of their major characters were all part of the group.

17


Last printed And now the ecopy of the book is available for folks to read, enjoy, and perhaps

study. Though my writing career has been limited, there’s stuff here I hope makes it worthwhile.

I was given permission by Shea and Wilson’s heirs to do what I wanted with the art to the comics version, as long as I made no money, so here it is. I retain the copyright on it, it’s not Public Domain (except the very 1st page, which comes from the Principia Discordia, which I hereby release, and perhaps the High Chapperal page…Wilson’s heirs might know more than I do).

And I release the following rights on the work: Send it, as a whole file, to whom you want, including this preface and the afterword: Print a copy for your own work if you wish; Post up to 5 pages from the work on line, with links to a downloadable copy of this file and no links to other online pages of the work. Post a copy of this whole file, downloadable, on the web, and let me know where it’s at. That’s it. I know more may be done with it, but that’s what I give permission for.

As for this document, “My Discordian Adventure”, I save what rights I’m releasing for Part II, the Afterword.

Now I’m done with my long winded explanation on How It Came To Be and other subjects related to it. Enjoy!

18

Documents

My Discordian Adventure