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Illuminatus!
Sunday, March 27th, 2005 02:36 amI first encountered the wacky world of Robert Anton Wilson in 1980, when a friend lent me the Illuminatus! trilogy. The blurb on many books claims that this book will change your life, but this one, despite the absence of such a claim, really did. It made me laugh, it made me see the absurdity behind political, religious and occult dogmas, it pretty much converted me to Discordianism (if that weren't a contradiction in terms) and above all it meant that I could take no conspiracy theory seriously again. For the uninitiated, I should mention that Wilson wrote Illuminatus! as a parody of conspiracy theories, working them all into one master conspiracy, the Illuminati (though while researching it he found that the mundane workings of government were more worrying than any theory about JFK being assassinated by freemasons to appease cattle-mutilating aliens).
I was thus most pleased to find that Illuminati conspriacy theories are still going strong. Take, for example, Ritual Abuse - the European Roots of the Illuminati, which accuses the Illuminati of ritual abuse (which you may remember was fashionable in the 1980s) and worse, of being European. I think the idea is that they use ritual abuse and brainwashing to convince Americans that their real home is in Europe, or something like that. More dastardly Illuminati practices are revealed in Illuminati Sex Slaves Paint Horrifying Picture, which I assumed was a Discordian put-on, until I checked out the author's website. He's into male rights (you know, the usual "Feminists have cut off our balls so we need to go into the woods and bang drums" stuff) which precludes his having a sense of humour.
I was thus most pleased to find that Illuminati conspriacy theories are still going strong. Take, for example, Ritual Abuse - the European Roots of the Illuminati, which accuses the Illuminati of ritual abuse (which you may remember was fashionable in the 1980s) and worse, of being European. I think the idea is that they use ritual abuse and brainwashing to convince Americans that their real home is in Europe, or something like that. More dastardly Illuminati practices are revealed in Illuminati Sex Slaves Paint Horrifying Picture, which I assumed was a Discordian put-on, until I checked out the author's website. He's into male rights (you know, the usual "Feminists have cut off our balls so we need to go into the woods and bang drums" stuff) which precludes his having a sense of humour.
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