Illuminatus!

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Illuminatus! is a trilogy ofnovels bythe American authors Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson . It was written between 1969 and 1971. The three novels contain a satirical adventure story full of literary quotations and allusions. They tell a journey enriched with sex and drug experiences through several historical and fictional conspiracy theories that the authorsspinaround the Bavarian secret society of the Illuminati ,which was banned in 1785. The narration is not chronological, often alternating between narrative perspectivesand covers various topics, such as the counterculture of the 1960s, the problem of free will , Zen , numerology and Discordianism .

The three volumes of the trilogy, The Eye in the Pyramid, The Golden Apple and Leviathan, which are now also combined in one volume, were published from September 1975. In 1986 the novel won the Prometheus Hall of Fame award .

Wilson and Shea then wrote other novels and non-fiction books that deal with the themes of the trilogy, but are not to be understood as immediate sequels.

The book's influence on pop culture in the US and other Western countries is great. A stage version was created, Traces of the Illuminatus! -Reading can be proven by numerous writers, musicians and authors of games. The novel established the genre of fictional conspiracy literature; the widespread (alleged) secret of the 23 is essentially due to the trilogy.

content

The plot shows the reader the thoughts, hallucinations and the partly real, partly delusional inner voices of the numerous protagonists and alternates between the present, past and future, sometimes even in the middle of a sentence. Much of their background is conveyed in conversations with the characters in the novel, who tell each other more or less reliable , sometimes even directly contradicting, versions of the global conspiracy they are trying to uncover. There are also passages in which the novel reflects itself and deconstructs itself in a playful way .

Summary of the plot

The actual plot (if one can speak of an actual plot in a novel with so many digressions ) begins with two New York police detectives. Saul Goodman and Barney Muldoon are supposed to solve a bomb attack on Confrontation, a left wing magazine, in 1976 and find its missing editor Joe Malik. They discover that Confrontation was researching the murders of John F. Kennedy , Robert F. Kennedy, and Martin Luther King ; the two then investigate the traces, notes and clues they have found, all of which indicate that powerful secret societies were involved in the three attacks. They are slowly becoming entangled in a web of increasingly complex conspiracy theories.

At the same time, George Dorn, a reporter for the magazine, is arrested in a godforsaken Texas town called Mad Dog for drug possession. In prison, he is threatened by right-wing backwoodsmen and hallucinates his own execution. Finally, in a bomb attack on the prison, he is freed by a group of anarchists , who use rather drastic means to help him achieve an enlightenment in the sense of their doctrine, Discordianism . The leader is the enigmatic Hagbard Celine, commander of the Lief Erikson, a golden submarine that he built himself (obviously a reference to the famous Beatles song Yellow Submarine , which concealed a story of drug experiences). FUCKUP ( F irst U niversal C ybernetic- K inetic U ltra-Micro P rogrammer ) is also on board , a giant computer that uses a virtual I Ching to determine the probability of the outbreak of World War III on a daily basis .

Hagbard's group is embroiled in an ongoing battle against the Illuminati, the group of conspirators who secretly control the world. This fight is funded with the gold the Discordians found in the undersea ruins of Atlantis .

The story moves around the globe as the novel progresses to locations as diverse as Las Vegas (where a deadly strain of anthrax was released that was genetically modified on behalf of the US government ), Atlantis (where Howard, the talking bottlenose dolphin) , helping Hagbard fight the Illuminati with his fellows), Chicago (where someone who looked astonishingly like John Dillinger was shot many years ago); Ingolstadt (at whose university the historical Illuminati order was founded) to the island of Fernando Poo (the scene of the next great confrontation between the Soviet Union, China and the USA during the Cold War , where, surprisingly, Yog-Sothoth also appears, a being from the Cthulhu myth HP Lovecrafts ).

The sinister plan of the Illuminati, who is revealed trilogy novel in the course of, is "the eschaton to immanentisieren ", a formulation of the German-American philosopher Eric Voegelin , the effecting of the end of the world or the creation of a paradise on earth designated. After the nuclear war over Fernando Poo and the worldwide anthrax epidemic were prevented, the secret plan of the American Medical Association (AMA), an evil rock band, represents the third attempt: They want to organize a massive human sacrifice with the purpose of getting enough "life Energy ”in order to give a small group of initiates (including Adolf Hitler ) eternal life. The AMA consists of the siblings Werner, Winifred, Wolfgang and Wilhelm Saure, who are four of the five mysterious Illuminati Primi. The identity of the fifth remains initially unknown. A rock festival, which is to take place on May 1, 1976 (exactly 200 years to the day after the founding of the historical Illuminati Order) as a counterpart to the one in Woodstock in Ingolstadt , Bavaria , is the planned site of the mass murder that a battalion of Nazis is supposed to carry out lie in hibernation at the bottom of the nearby Totenkopfsee. This plan is thwarted with the help of an epiphany of the Greek goddess Eris , the patron goddess of the Discordians, over fifteen meters tall . The four upper Illuminati are killed in the process.

The protagonists, who are now all gathered on board the submarine, are threatened by the leviathan , a giant pyramid-shaped unicellular organism that has grown incessantly in the sea for thousands of years. This encounter, exaggerated into the bizarre, leads some of the characters in the novel temporarily to the metafictional question of whether they are not just characters in a novel, but the monster immediately takes their full attention again. The danger is averted by the fact that the lonely Leviathan FUCKUP, the on-board computer of the submarine, is made available so that he can finally have a conversation partner. Finally, Hagbard reveals that he himself is the fifth Illuminatus Primus - he played a double game, pitting both sides against each other to maintain the balance. He is actually a member of an even more secretive society behind the warring secret societies, whose aim is to spread the idea that everyone is free to do what they want at any time.

Title and structure

bone of contention

The book titles of the three volumes refer to recurring symbols that are explained in the course of the plot:

  • The eye in the pyramid refers to the all-seeing eye , which the novel claims to have been the symbol of the Bavarian Illuminati. It appears in various places in the novel, as an altar, as a tattoo, but not least on the dollar bill .
  • The golden apple refers to the apple of contention that is at the center of the judgment of the Paris of Greek mythology. In the novel it is used as a symbol of the "Legion of Dynamic Discord", a subgroup of the Discordians. The apple appears repeatedly in the novel, e.g. B. on the black flag of the anarchists, as an initiation object and as a badge on a uniform.
  • Leviathan refers on the one hand to the biblical primeval world monster , on the other hand to the eponymous state-theoretical text by Thomas Hobbes , in which the all-encompassing state with its monopoly of force is meant.

The three parts of the trilogy are in turn divided into five books named after the five seasons of the Discordian calendar. These books are in turn divided into a total of ten “trips”, which are named after the Kabbalistic Sephiroth . The last “trip” is followed by fourteen appendices, headed by the names of the letters of the Hebrew alphabet . On the first page of the appendices is the mysterious note: “Originally there were 22 appendices explaining the secrets of the Illuminati. Eight attachments were removed due to lack of paper. They will be printed in heaven. ”While“ Appendix Mem ”clarifies,“ Where are the missing attachments? Answer: Censored. ”This seems to be another joke by the authors, even if it is true that the appendices are missing eight parts to get the number of letters in the Hebrew alphabet and that the publisher asked Shea and Wilson to cut five hundred pages out of the book.

Origin and publication history

The trilogy was written between 1969 and 1971 when Wilson and Shea were on the editorial board of Playboy . They were also responsible for the letters to the editor, many of which had paranoid fantasies about conspiracies and secret societies on the subject. They began writing a novel on the premise that "all these morons were right, and every single conspiracy they complain about really exists". In an interview he gave in 1980, Wilson stated that the novel was also intended to build a myth around the worldview that they both contributed to, Discordianism .

There was no specific division of labor in writing the novel. Wilson stated in an interview in 1976:

“In general, the melodrama is Shea and the satire is me; but some of the satire is definitely him and some of the melodrama is certainly me. 'When Atlantis Ruled the Earth' is 99% Shea. The sections about Simon Moon, Robert Putney Drake and Markoff Chaney are 99% me. Everything else is impossible to untangle. "

“In general, the melodramatic comes from Shea and the satire is mine, but some satirical passages are definitely from him, some melodramatic is definitely mine. 'When Atlantis ruled the earth' is 99% Shea. The sections on Simon Moon, Robert Putney Drake, and Markoff Chaney are 99% mine. Everything else is impossible to unravel. "

Actor Ken Campbell , who adapted the trilogy for the stage, said in an interview that the two practiced the process of writing as some kind of fun sport or competition:

“They had a lot of access to research staff. And so under the guise that it would be helpful writing articles for Playboy (I don't think it was really) they got into the Illuminati. Wilson would bung these memos to Shea as material came in from the researchers — like the memos in the book. When they got to memo 23, Shea said, 'If we imagine a New York cop came across these memos, I think we've got the basis for a fine thriller!' So the next one Wilson wrote what episode one of the thriller. Shea replied with episode two. They were playing a game really. Like, I bet you can't continue this! The answer is, 'No I can't, so we'll continue with this!'. "

“You had the opportunity to let the editorial staff do the research for you. On the pretext that it would be helpful for the articles they wrote for Playboy (I don't think it was), they became more interested in the Illuminati. As soon as the materials came in from the auxiliaries, Wilson passed these memos on to Shea - much like the memos in the book. When they got to Memo 23, Shea said, If I imagine some New York cop gets these memos, I think we'll have a foundation for a great thriller . So next, Wilson wrote the first chapter of this thriller, and Shea responded with chapter two. It was actually a game for them, like, 'Bet you won't find a sequel to this!' The answer was then: 'No, I can't think of anything, so let's get on with this!' "

The unusual end product found no favor with the publishers, and a publisher was found only after several years. Wilson later explained the classification of Illuminatus! in three volumes was a commercial decision by the Dell publishing house - the authors, on the other hand, created the novel as a unit and not as a trilogy. Dell also asked them to shorten the text by 500 pages in order to reduce the printing costs of what appeared to be a risky company at the time. Much of the cut material was used in later books. The thought that the Illuminati, of all things, the deepest secrets of the Illuminati would have fallen victim to the cost-related cancellation is one of Wilson and Shea's typical jokes.

The individual volumes were published by Dell in the USA in 1975, received mostly positive reviews and sold quite well. Illuminatus! soon achieved cult status, but was not a bestseller in the true sense of the word. In 1978 the three volumes were published in Great Britain by Sphere Books . The trilogy sold steadily and came out in 1984 as an edition in one volume. The summarizing introductions to the golden apple and leviathan are missing here. Some of these introductions as the self-destructive Minah -Birds is nowhere else in the novel before, which is probably due to the forced Dell cuts. In the USA, the novel has since been distributed mostly in the one-volume edition.

The trilogy was published in German in 1977 and 1978 by Sphinx Verlag , a Swiss publishing house that specializes in esotericism . The book covers of this hardback form a triptych that shows the face of J. R. “Bob” Dobbs, an idol of the Church of the SubGenius , even though this San Francisco religious parody does not appear in the book. It was founded by Illuminatus! Fans and it is widely believed that "Bob" refers to Wilson himself.

subjects

conspiracy theories

The "All-Seeing Eye" (back of the 1 dollar note)

Wilson and Shea express the conspiratorial-paranoid worldview, which is the first main theme of their novel, right at the beginning of the first volume with a quote from the novel Mumbo-Jumbo by the Afro-American writer Ishmael Reed : “The history of the world is the history of wars between secret societies. ”Although most of the conspiracy theories in the book are fictional, they are mixed up with reasonably proven facts to be plausible. The title of the first volume, The Eye in the Pyramid, for example, refers to the All-Seeing Eye , a symbol for God and the Trinity , which was used by mystics and in the Enlightenment by church critics and deists and thus also by Freemasons. It is often mistakenly referred to as the symbol of the Illuminati and is also part of the state seal of the United States , which nourishes the myth that some of the founding fathers of the USA were themselves Illuminati. Almost on every page of the three volumes there are allusions to the Illuminati, gnostic secret doctrines, various conspiracy theories and alleged plans to achieve world domination . Some of the stranger theories expounded in the book, such as the thesis that Adam Weishaupt , the founder of the Illuminati Order, murdered George Washington and unnoticed his identity as President of the United States, come from letters to the editor to Playboy for the Shea and Wilson were responsible at the time the book was written.

Fnord

→ Main article: Fnord

Fnord lettering

One of the most famous ideas of the novel are the "Fnords", a word that was coined by the inventors of the Principia Discordia and to which Shea and Wilson gave the meaning we know today. When it is first mentioned in the book, it is not yet explained ("The only good Fnord is a dead Fnord."); further mentions, necessarily incomprehensible to the reader, follow until the secret is revealed in the second volume. Hagbard Celine hypnotizes Joe Malik to give him access to repressed consciousness, and he remembers being trained to ignore the fnords in first grade: "If you don't see the fnord, it can't eat you, don't see the fnord, don't see the fnord… ”It appears to be a kind of conditioning that most of the population was subjected to in early childhood: they were drilled to ignore a printed word (and both the drill and the, of course The fact that they ignore the word, to forget), so that when reading the word there is only a vague feeling of alarm: If the word appears, the readers react immediately with panic, to which they unconsciously react by suppressing the fact that they are Have seen word, but the feeling of panic remains at least partially. Fnords are said to be randomly scattered in the editorial text of newspapers and magazines, causing anxiety when reading. However, there are no fnords in advertisements, which promotes consumerism in society. The concept of the fnords can thus be understood as a metaphor for social control and brainwashing. "To see the Fnords" thus means an enlightenment, the end of social conditioning through education and socialization, a step on the way back to individual autonomy.

Numerology

Sacred Chao of Discordianism . The Pentagon stands for the Law of Five ( Pentabarf )

Many characters in the novel believe in numerology . Above all, the “Law of Five ” ( Pentabarf ) of Discordianism is frequently mentioned, which Hagbard Celine explains in the appendix Gimmel as follows: “All phenomena are directly or indirectly connected with the number five”. Fictional character Simon Moon discovers what he calls the "principle of synchronicity of the twenty-three ", which Robert Anton Wilson was made aware of by William S. Burroughs . Both “laws” are arithmetically linked by the fact that five is the checksum of 23 . Moon points out, among other things, that all great anarchists should have died on the 23rd day of a month. It also defines a “23/17 phenomenon” : Both numbers are closely linked to the “law of five” , because 2 + 3 = 5, and 1 + 7 = 8 = 2³. Robert Anton Wilson claimed in an interview in 1988 that the

“23 is part of the cosmic code. It's related to so many synchronicities and strange coincidences that it all just has to mean something - I just couldn't figure out what! "

The number has demonstrably nothing to do with the Bavarian order, which was banned in 1785. Rather, Shea and Wilson's mystification of the number can be understood as a "mindfuck", an illuminating experiment on one's own consciousness that is intended to illustrate its manipulability: Since the book emphasizes again and again the great and ominous meaning the number supposedly has, the reader pays more attention to this number, without consciously realizing it, so that the uncanny impression arises that it appears disproportionately often both in his own life and in world history. This effect is not based in reality, but in the selective perception focused on the number through reading the book .

Counterculture

The novel was written in the heyday of the hippie movement in the late 1960s and many ideas and concepts from the counterculture of the time can be found in it. The German “ Ewige Blumenkraft ” alludes to the hippie slogan “Flower Power” , which Shea and Wilson claim is a slogan of the Illuminati, who are portrayed as apparent enemies of the hippie ideals. The book's position on the American counterculture of the 1960s and the New Age movement is ambiguous. Wilson explained in an interview:

“I'm some kind of antibody in the New Age movement. My function is to raise the possibility, hey, you know, some of this stuff might be bullshit. "

“I'm something of an antibody to the New Age movement. My function is to draw attention to the possibility, hey, you know, some of this stuff could also be huge nonsense! "

The frequent description of unusual sexual practices in the course of the plot reflects the hippie ideal of "free love". The characters in the novel have very liberal sexual morals and behave promiscuously. The authors are well aware that this also provides a pretext for sexually stimulating passages: In one of the typical self-referential jokes, a character in a novel suspects that these passages only exist “in order to sell a bad book full of flat characters chasing a bullshit conspiracy ". At the same time, the book advocates the use of drugs for the purpose of expanding consciousness. In this respect, the novel agrees with the beliefs of Timothy Leary , one of the key figures in the hippie movement. Leary himself called the trilogy " more important than Ulysses or Finnegans Wake " - this quote can be found as a sticker on several American editions of the book.

Cognitive dissonance

Any view of reality that occurs in the course of the action will sooner or later be made fun of in some way, regardless of whether it is traditional or radical, new and countercultural. The trilogy is an exercise in cognitive dissonance , since a rather absurd plot is constructed around apparently plausible but unprovable theorems. Wilson himself defines cognitive dissonance in his volume of essays Cosmic Trigger as "an abrupt contradiction in a person's model of reality". Those who have been exposed to cognitive dissonance become either "very flexible and agnostic" or "very rigid in their beliefs and schizophrenic". Ultimately, it is up to the reader to interpret whether the contradicting viewpoints presented by the characters in the novel are valid and plausible or whether it is just satire and joke. The novel itself provides extremely contradicting information, on the one hand being recognizable from the hippie movement and the drug-savvy counterculture of the American left, but on the other hand constantly spreading conspiracy theories that at the time of its publication could only be found on the extreme right of the political spectrum. The result of this contradiction aimed at by the reader is precisely the expansion of consciousness described through "Mindfuck".

Wilson describes his approach of first establishing a reasonably convincing system of claims and then tearing it down to replace it with another as a "guerrilla ontology".

This postmodern lack of actual beliefs is central to the half-joking chaos- based religion of Discordianism . Excerpts from its supposedly sacred text, the Principia Discordia by Malaclypse the Younger, are quoted in detail in the trilogy, which also deals with many topics and contexts of Discordianism. Shea and Wilson also dedicated the first part of their book to Gregory Hill and Kerry Thornley, the founders of this religion. The central Discordian practice of “Mindfuck” is exemplarily demonstrated by the fictional character Markoff Chaney (the name is a play on words with the so-called Markov chain , with which random changes in the state of a system are mathematically modeled). He is an anti-social dwarf who deliberately tries to create confusion in society with subtle pranks. For example, he likes to swap official signs with the signature “The Mgt.” For his own forged ones, which contain absurd messages such as “Risk of slipping when wet. Top speed 80 km / h ". He gives the impression that they come from the "management" instead of the "midget" (English for dwarf).

“The only real conspiracy described in the book,” the authors write, is the book itself, which as part of Operation Mindfuck “programs the reader in ways that he or she will not understand for months (possibly years) becomes". So reading is not just a description of conspiracies, it is one itself. The aim is a revolution, not by imposing new, this time anarchist, norms of thought on the reader, but by destroying the old norms - the belief in time, logic, and objective reality.

Self-referentiality

In several passages, the novel makes itself a topic and jokingly deconstructs itself. B. relates that a journalist named Epicene Wildeblood was asked to review a book that the Illuminatus! -Trilogy resembles on in many ways:

“It's just a hideous monster of a book [...] and the time is far too short to read it in full; but I'll leaf through it thoroughly. I consider the two authors to be completely incompetent - not a trace of sense of style or structure. It starts as a detective novel, then jumps to science fiction, then slips into the supernatural and is overloaded with the most detailed information on dozen of excruciatingly boring topics. In addition, the passage of time is completely confused, which I see as a presumptuous imitation of Faulkner and Joyce . Worst of all, it has the most obscene sex scenes you can imagine. I'm sure that's the only reason it's being sold. Words of that sort of thing always get around the fastest. And, I mean, I find the two authors just impossible; not a bit of good taste; Imagine they actually involve living political figures in order, as they would have you believe, to expose a real conspiracy. "

Several fictional characters come to the realization that they are only fictional characters, or at least begin to doubt the reality of their situation. At the beginning of the novel, George Dorn asks himself “if I'm in a crazy surrealistic film where I go from telepathic sheriffs to gay murderers, to nymphomaniac female Freemasons, to psychotic pirates, and the script was written by two LSD swallowers and a comedian written by Mars ”.

Hagbard Celine, as the plot nears its climax, claims that the whole story is a computer-generated synthesis of random conspiracies:

“It works for you, but I can't fool the reader. FUCKUP worked all morning, correlating all the data about this little joke and its historical origins, and I programmed him to spit out all of the stuff in the form of a narrative to make it easier to read. Given what a lousy job he does with poetry, I suspect it will be an over-the-top hit with a novel, intentionally or unintentionally. "

Allusions

Illuminatus! contains a great many allusions and references to songs, films, newspaper articles, novels and other media. This is partly because the characters in the novel are busy doing research, and partly because it is characteristic of Wilson's writing style.

The book Telemachus Sneezed (" Telemachos nieste") by the fictional character Atlanta Hope with its slogan: "What is John Guilt?" Is for example a parody of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged (literally translated: " Atlas shrugged his shoulders", title of the German edition : Who is John Galt? ). Ayn Rand is even named several times in Illuminatus! mentions Hagbard alluding to her novel when he says:

"If Atlas can shrug his shoulders and Telemachus sneeze, why can't Satan repent?"

There are also allusions to Thomas Pynchon's novels The Auction of No. 49 and The Ends of the Parable , the latter a similarly large-scale novel experiment that also deals with the subjects of personal freedom and paranoia. It appeared two years before Illuminatus! . Wilson claims that Illuminatus! almost finished by the time he and Shea read Pynchon's novel, but that they made some changes with allusions to The Ends of the Parable in the final editing.

There are also many references to H. P. Lovecraft , for example with the names of people (Robert Harrison Blake, Henry Armitage, or Klarkash-Ton), with monsters (e.g. Tsathoggua, Yog-Sothoth and the Lloigor), with fictional book titles ( Necronomicon , Unspeakable Cults ) and places like the equally fictional University of Miskatonic, all of which come from the Cthulhu myth . Lovecraft even appears in the novel himself, as do his aunt Annie Gamwell and his acquaintance Hart Crane.

The texts by William S. Burroughs , from whom Shea and Wilson borrowed not only the "Secret of the 23", but also the fantasies about the ejaculations of hanged people from Naked Lunch , which are used at a Discordian initiation ceremony, also play an important role. The great literary role model of the authors, James Joyce , is also honored with a guest appearance as a fictional character: Here the Illuminati threaten the author, who, as is well known, had to wear an eye patch due to illness, if he continued to reveal their secrets, they would also give him his other eye cut out.

Effects and aftermath

Reviews

Illuminatus! received very positive reviews when it appeared in magazines as diverse as Playboy , Publishers Weekly , Philadelphia Daily News , Berkeley Barb, and Rolling Stone . The Village Voice called it "the ultimate conspiracy book ... the greatest science fiction cult novel since The Desert Planet ... erotic and maddeningly funny!"

The British magazine Fortean Times was quite enthusiastic, pointing out that many readers would have problems with the clutter of storylines:

“Be prepared for streams of consciousness in which not only identity but time and space no longer confine the narrative, which zips up and down time-lines and flashes into other minds with consummate ease […] A damned good read. Has to be read to be believed (and even then I'm not sure — it really is preposterous in parts). "

Illuminatus! has attracted attention outside of literary criticism as well, as shown by several pages in George Johnson's study of the role of conspiracy theories in American politics ( Architects of Fear: Conspiracy Theories and Paranoia in American Politics, 1983)

Shea and Wilson

Wilson and Shea remained very productive in the aftermath, but never wrote a book together again. Wilson wrote a number of pre, post and side stories to the plot of Illuminatus! First another trilogy appeared with the title Schrödinger's Cat . Several themes and characters from Illuminatus popped up here! up again, e.g. B. Markoff "The Midget" Chaney and Epicene Wildeblood. This was followed by a single work called Masks of the Illuminati, in which the fictional but possible meeting of James Joyce , Albert Einstein and Aleister Crowley in Zurich in 1914 was described, and finally the five-volume series The Illuminati Chronicles, of which three volumes were published are. In this work, located in the 18th century, Sigismundo Celine, an ancestor of Hagbard, gets caught in a thicket of conspiracies that, among other things, result from the proto-form of the Mafia , the Prieuré de Sion (here Wilson processes material from The Holy Grail and his heirs ) and the Count Cagliostro .

Wilson and Shea planned in the early 1990s to jointly write a sequel called Bride of Illuminatus , which would take place in 2026, fifty years after the events described in the trilogy. Rumors want to know that a resurrected Winifred Saure (the only female member of the evil AMA) should influence the world by means of virtual reality . However, Robert Shea died in 1994 before this project could be realized. An excerpt was published in 1995 by Robert Anton Wilson. In an interview from that year, Wilson indicated that he could imagine writing a Son of Illuminatus ("Son of Illuminatus") afterwards . Wilson died in 2007.

Shea, however, did not write a book directly related to Illuminatus! more, although several of his later novels such as B. his two Saracen novels contain allusions to themes from the trilogy.

Influences

The German hacker Karl Koch was heavily influenced by Shea's and Wilson's trilogy. He used the pseudonym “Hagbard” and named his computer “FUCKUP”, after the submarine's on-board computer, which plays a central role in the novel. He did business with foreign secret services (see KGB hack ), became addicted to cocaine and developed such extreme paranoia that led him to believe that the novel portrayed reality and that the Illuminati were after him as well as the namesake it describes. In 1987 he wrote something like a hacker manifesto on seven pages, in which he also included his theories about Hagbard Celine and the Illuminati. The film 23 is based on Koch's life, in which Robert Anton Wilson has a brief appearance as himself. In 1990 the trilogy was included in the bibliography of a dictionary for hackers, as it could help the reader to “understand their way of thinking”, although it did before the invention of the personal computer .

Daniel Kulla complained in Jungle World in 2004 that a misinterpretation like the Kochs, who took the conspiracy theories presented in the trilogy at face value, instead of enjoying them as satire or experiment on one's own brain, was widespread among German readers: “That is natural [...] probably also because of the local lack of reason and humor ”.

The trilogy encouraged a large number of direct adaptations including a play and a comic series (Eye N Apple Productions) , and numerous indirect adaptations took up topics from the book. It has also inspired several games such as: B. the card game Illuminati , in which the Illuminati, the Discordians and other secret societies and conspiracies compete against each other, the collectible card game Illuminati. New World Order , a GURPS role- playing game for whose rulebook Robert Shea wrote a small contribution. In 2005 another role-playing game was released with the meaningful title Discordia !: A Little Game about a Lot of Chaos .

The Illuminatus! Trilogy is full of allusions to the rock music scene of the late 1960s - at one point a list of 200 partly fictional band names is printed, all of which were supposed to appear at the equally fictional Walpurgis Night Rock Festival. For example, the hit of the American rock band MC5 from 1968, Kick Out The Jams , is given a completely new meaning: Instead of being understood as “Throw away your inhibitions!”, The title line is interpreted as “Throw the JAMs out!”, Whereby the JAMs (ie the Justified Ancients of Mu Mu) represent a particularly evil conspiracy in the novel, which is certainly not poor in evil conspiracies.

The novel has accordingly influenced many musicians. The anarchist house band The KLF from London released their first recordings under the name Justified Ancients of Mu Mu , and the band name KLF also alludes to one of the secret societies from Illuminatus! on. The group also released the song Justified And Ancient (Stand by The JAMs) in 1991 with country singer Tammy Wynette , which became a worldwide chart success. Further allusions to the contents of the trilogy can be found, for example, with the doctors in the song Ewige Blumenkraft, with the German hip-hop groups Die Firma ( Cape of Good Hope and Message to Utopia ) and Torch (Tomorrow), with the metal band Kataklysm ( Illuminati) or the Machines of Loving Grace, who painted a pornographic depiction of a black mass in the title song of their album Rite of Shiva - allegedly with the declared aim of getting the extremely obscene novel passage on the radio without anyone noticing what it was about went.

In general, the Illuminatus! Trilogy is said to have had a decisive influence on the constitution of the genre of conspiracy literature, which includes such well-known bestsellers as Umberto Eco's The Foucault Pendulum and the novels of Dan Brown . The X-Files TV series, created by Chris Carter , is also heavily influenced by Wilson's and Shea's trilogy. The British skeptics organization UK-Skeptics stated not uncritically:

"The surge of interest in the Illuminati and claims that they are still there today began after the Illuminatus! Trilogy was published."

Awards

expenditure

  • The Illuminatus! Trilogy. Constable & Robinson, London 1998, ISBN 1-78033-757-4 (one volume edition)
German
  • Illuminatus! German by Udo Breger . Sphinx-Verlag, Basel
    • The eye in the pyramid. 1977.
    • The golden apple. 1978.
    • Leviathan. 1978.
  • Illuminatus! Hugendubel, Kreuzlingen / Munich 2002, ISBN 3-7205-2320-9 (edition in one volume)

literature

  • Marcus LiBrizzi: The Illuminatus! Trilogy . In: Peter Knight (Ed.): Conspiracy Theories in American History. To Encyclopedia . ABC Clio, Santa Barbara, Denver / London 2003, vol. 1, p. 339 ff.

Web links

References and comments

  1. ↑ The Illuminatus saga stumbles along by Robert Anton Wilson ( Memento of the original from September 15, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.rawilsonfans.com
  2. ^ "Robert Anton Wilson: Searching For Cosmic Intelligence" by Jeffrey Elliot ( Memento from February 6, 2005 in the Internet Archive )
  3. ↑ Science Fiction Review # 17, 1976, Interview with Robert Anton Wilson - by Neal Wilgus ( Memento of the original from February 19, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.rawilsonfans.com
  4. ↑ Interview with James Nye, first published in Gneurosis 1991, available from Frogweb: Ken Campbell . The quotes are from Recollections of a Furtive Nudist by Ken Campbell, published as part of The Bald Trilogy by Methuen, 1995.
  5. ↑ Bill Forman, Metro Santa Cruz August 12, 2005, available at rawilson.com ( memento of the original from January 18, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.rawilson.com
  6. ↑ Cf. Do The Illuminati Really Exist? by Massimo Introvigne , Center for Studies on New Religions.
  7. ↑ Robert Anton Wilson in the Fortean Times: The 23 Phenomenon ( Memento of the original from April 12, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . May 2007 (first published in Fortean Times No. 23, 1977)  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.forteantimes.com
  8. ↑ a b Daniel Kulla in Jungle World : Think for yourself or go nuts ( memento of the original from September 7, 2005 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . August 25, 2004.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.jungle-world.com
  9. ^ Robert Anton Wilson: Robert Anton Wilson Explains Everything, or Old Bob Exposes His Ignorance. Edition Sounds True, 2001 (Audiobook)
  10. ↑ media.hyperreal.org
  11. ↑ Fabian Bross: Caught in the world of signs. - About communication guerrillas and other attempts to escape 'the system'. An investigation into the Illuminatus! - and the Matrix trilogy . (PDF; 999 kB) In: Helikon. A Multidisciplinary Online Journal 1 (2010), pp. 48–67.
  12. ↑ Marcus LiBrizzi: The Illuminatus! Trilogy . In: Peter Knight (Ed.): Conspiracy Theories in American History. To Encyclopedia . ABC Clio, Santa Barbara, Denver and London 2003, Vol. 1, p. 341.
  13. ↑ Eric Wagner: An Insider's Guide to Robert Anton Wilson, 2004, p. 98.
  14. ^ Robert Anton Wilson interview
  15. ↑ The Fortean Times, 17 (August 1976) pp. 26-27.
  16. ^ George Johnson: Architects of Fear: Conspiracy Theories and Paranoia in American Politics. 1983, ISBN 0-87477-275-3 .
  17. ↑ FringeWare Review: RAW Circuits - Surviving With Robert Anton Wilson ( Memento of the original from December 15, 2005 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (Interview)  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.rawilsonfans.com
  18. ↑ Erik Davis: Robert Anton Wilson. In: Christopher Partridge (Ed.): The Occult World. Routledge, New York 2015, p. 332.
  19. ↑ What are conspiracy theories? ( Memento of the original from October 12, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , www.ukskeptics.com, 2004.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.ukskeptics.com
  20. ↑ lfs.org