Illuminatus group reading, Week Three

 Sir John Sinclair (1754-1835)

Page 23 "Hagbard Celine's gigantic computer" to Page 32 "Clark Kent and his Supermen swing into a reprise.". I'm using quotes as well as page numbers to make things easier for folks who may be using ebooks. -- The Mgt.

Page 23. Hagbard Celine's computer uses the I Ching, among other systems/sources of information. Philip K. Dick's famous science fiction novel, The Man in the High Castle, made extensive use of the I Ching. Robert Anton Wilson was a big fan of Dick's writing; I'm guessing Shea was, too, but I can't confirm that.  The Man in the High Castle was published in 1962 and won the Hugo Award in 1963. RAW may have known that John Cage used the I Ching when composing "Music of Changes" in 1951.

Page 26. "By golly," the President said. "By golly. We won't use that out in the open. My speech'll just talk Bomb, but we'll leak it to the boys in the Kremlin that we've got this anthrax gimmick in cold storage, too."


This passage is not as satiric as some might imagine, although Wilson and Shea may not have realized it at the time. When the Illuminatus! trilogy was written, the president of the United States was Richard Nixon, who utilized what has come to be known as the Madman theory in his foreign policy. This is how Nixon explained his theory to one of his trusted aides:

I call it the Madman Theory, Bob. I want the North Vietnamese to believe I've reached the point where I might do anything to stop the war. We'll just slip the word to them that, "for God's sake, you know Nixon is obsessed about communism. We can't restrain him when he's angry—and he has his hand on the nuclear button" and Ho Chi Minh himself will be in Paris in two days begging for peace.

Page 26, "and he genuinely loved children and dogs, unless they were on the site of something that had to be bombed in the National Interest." Don't you love that line?

Page 27 "Rock Around the Clock" by Bill Haley and the Comets is considered one of the earliest rock and roll songs. It was written in 1952  and recorded in 1954.

Page 27, "George Dorn." Notice how his last name resembles the last name of the famous radical Bernardine Dohrn, who is married to Bill Ayers. She was one of the founding members of the Weather Underground, which in 1970 helped Timothy Leary escape from a California prison.

Page 29, Harry Pierpoint, friend and mentor of John Dillinger. He outlived Dillinger by a few months, but was executed in Ohio in 1934.

Page 30, It Can't Happen Here, Sinclair Lewis, 1935 novel which warned about the possibility of fascism in the U.S., considered by some Lewis' last important novel. It won the Prometheus Hall of Fame award in 2007, the same award Illuminatus! won in 1986.

Page 31, "It is forbidden to dream again" etc., from "Why I Write" by George Orwell.

Page 32, Mark Rudd, another famous Weather Underground member.

Page 32, Sir John Sinclair,  according to Wikipedia he made important contributions to scientific agriculture. For more on George Washington and hemp, see the first item in the Appendix.

Next week: Page 32 "George's cellmate in Mad Dog County Jail had a skull-like face" to Page 42, "the monster who founded the order of the Illuminati on May 1, 1776."