Illuminatus!

[robinturner]

I 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.

Comments

[ironed_orchid]

It always puzzled me how people could read Illuminatus!, and also Eco's Foucault's Pendulum and come away from them believing in conspiracy theories. Finally, it struck me that people are capable of willful stupidity.

I suppose that lacking a sense of humour may be a factor in those cases, too.

[solri.livejournal.com]

I suppose it's because Wilson documents so many real conspiracy theories ("real" in the sense that they are things some people actually believe in, as opposed to the ones he just made up, like the Justified Ancients of Mummu) you start thinking "Well some of this has to be true." After all, the Bavarian Illuminati really did exist, and there is no shortage of people who would like to dominate the world.

What conspiracy theorists don't get is that it is perfectly possible - in fact, normal - for disparate groups and individuals pursuing their own ends to behave very much as though they were an organised conspiracy. This is actually explained, for those who can read between the lines, in the appendices to Illuminatus!. As a former CIA director said, "Never attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence."

[drx.livejournal.com]

This is so spot on, or should I say that I agree with you so thoroughly that I can't believe I am not nodding at the screen.

The trilogy is one of my favorite books, btw. If for no other reason than to bring comedy to an otherwise humorless subject. Humor, is what I think Foucalt's Pendulum really lacks.

[ironed_orchid]

Oddly, I find Illuminatus! really hard to read, and have devoured FP over and over. Guess it helps that I find academia and publishing and occultism to be amusing topics.

[ironed_orchid]

What conspiracy theorists don't get is that it is perfectly possible... for disparate groups and individuals... to behave very much as though they were an organised conspiracy.

Yes, absolutely.

Sometimes I think that contingency is horribly overlooked when people stand around asking "Why? Why oh why did this have to happen?". And the answer "it didn't have to happen at all, it just did" is not regarded as an explanation at all, whereas a group of secret operatives plotting the destruction of the world is seen as perfectly feasible and explains all one's woes.

[senryu.livejournal.com]

On one message board I have haunted for a few years, there's a crazy woman in Scotland who keeps ranting about the "Killuminati" in a definitely not tongue-in-cheek fashion. Johann Valentin Andrae started quite the enduring fad of fake secret societies. They must provide perfect cover for the real ones.

My favorite Wilson book was "Masks of the Illuminati."

[solri.livejournal.com]

I forget - was that the one set in the eighteenth century, or the one where the main characters were Crowley, Joyce and Jung?

[senryu.livejournal.com]

Masks is the Crowley/Jung/Joyce story. In the middle of the initiatory journey, Wilson breaks off to tell a wonderful zen parable. I also confess to having a weakness for someone who can do fictional justice to historic persons (like the amazing film Kafka with Jeremy Irons). The Historical Illuminatus is the series set in the past and actually consists of 4 books, the fourth being unpublished.

[cf.livejournal.com]

i had a great laugh from that book, but then i got to turkey and found that almost all of my friends take it seriously. it's just too baroque...

[solri.livejournal.com]

Actually, there are a lot of serious messages in Illuminatus!, but they are cleverly buried in the satire. As I said elsewhere, the main message that I get from the book is that human greed and stupidity can produce the same effect as control by an evil conspiracy, without anyone having to actually conspire, though that could be just my take. The stuff wilson is serious about is largely in the appendices, or slipped into speeches by Hagbard Celine (the SNAFU principle, for example).