Every few years, I find it necessary to re-read (or listen to) the great Illuminatus! Trilogy. Always more wisdom to be gleamed from the psychedelic mEvery few years, I find it necessary to re-read (or listen to) the great Illuminatus! Trilogy. Always more wisdom to be gleamed from the psychedelic masterpiece...
And moreover, the Schrodinger's Cat Trilogy is an excellent companion to further explore these ideas. So very many ideas.
This one only written by Robert Anton Wilson, without co-writer Robert Shea, it is a tighter read yet incredibly dense. The short chapters jump around from hysterical satire to the mind-boggling cosmic like a crazed A.D.D. prophet on methamphetamine. Ever entertaining.
I have found my latest read in 2020 particularly timely. Ostensibly, the novel as the title states is about various alternate realities of what might have been in the familiar nation of "Unistat" as all those iconic RAW characters affect and are affected by the worlds they inhabit. Because y'know quantum physics.
The politics are incredibly ahead of their time. I can't even believe this was written before I was born:
In one universe, an irrational ecological party wins the presidency and institutes extreme austerity. This results in mass poverty and oppression against the scientists of Unistat, although there is a hopeful underground resistance of voodoo occultists and nuclear terrorists.
In another universe, get this. A brilliant pro-science presidentess is elected and institutes Universal Basic Income of all things. Automation replacing jobs is embraced, space travel, and glorious utopia as humanity (us primates, we are always reminded) quickly evolves. Sadly, real life thirty years later still isn't there but what a concept to aspire to!
And so on. There's quite a bit more prescience, such as on the subject of transgendered politics for example. Much of the writing is sexually graphic, something about learning to reprogram our circuits by rejecting taboos, and also very literary references to Jocye's Ulysses/Homer's the Odyssey by way of a legendary dismembered penis.
Robert Anton Wilson readers will enjoy returning to these ideas, and digesting and reinterpreting new ones. Preferably, read Illuminatus! first and maybe jump into the Cosmic Trigger nonfiction series while you're at it.
It would be nice if more people took these concepts seriously. For now, however, this remains a book for the fringes.
Cosmic Trigger is an excellent companion piece for the RAW reader, essential but also part of a larger picture. Obviously, read Illuminatus! first. AnCosmic Trigger is an excellent companion piece for the RAW reader, essential but also part of a larger picture. Obviously, read Illuminatus! first. And if you want to utilize metaprogramming 'magikal' powers, Prometheus Rising may be more useful.
But for a summary and rehash of all the essential philosophical takes by the great Robert Anton Wilson, enjoy this. All over the place, it covers Crowley and telepathy theories and much autobiography (sad at the end, but is what it is). Learn about the Timothy Leary 8 circuit model and how all psychedelics fit in that. Tragically, when the book gets into life-extension medical optimism the book sure feels dated as we've definitely not made the progress that was expected.
In a way, the book is a window into what was cutting edge in the 1970s, and there is value in that.
Perhaps it's still too ahead of its time, and perhaps it's not always best to be that ahead of your time that 40 years later readers are still waiting for the world to catch up to all those post-2012 space migration theories.
It is fun to refresh on Wilson every so often, because there's still no mind quite like his after all this time!...more
Every so many years or so, the world becomes and unrecognizably strange place and I am drawn to Illuminatus! once again.
ThiHail Eris!
Hail Discordia!
Every so many years or so, the world becomes and unrecognizably strange place and I am drawn to Illuminatus! once again.
This current misinformational and confusingly conspiritorial age isn't quite what RAW may have predicted, but at least he tried to go there. Oh how he (and Shea) went there. On so many levels.
The tale of Hagbard Celine and all the contradictory theories of just what the hell is really going on, and what a ride it is.
Hmm I do wonder how it would play out if written today... if every conspiracy theory online was true, how would that work? Someone should write that version and make it a prestige cable drama.
Anyway, whether it's 2018 or 1975 don't ever stop the mindfuck and keep re/reading!
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