The Illuminatus! Trilogy
Encyclopedia
The Illuminatus! Trilogy is a series of three novels
written by Robert Shea
and Robert Anton Wilson
first published in 1975. The trilogy is a satirical
, postmodern
, science fiction
-influenced adventure story; a drug
-, sex
-, and magick
-laden trek through a number of conspiracy theories
, both historical and imaginary, related to the authors' version of the Illuminati
. The narrative often switches between third and first person perspectives and jumps around in time. It is thematically dense, covering topics like counterculture
, numerology
, and Discordianism
.
The trilogy comprises The Eye in the Pyramid, The Golden Apple, and Leviathan. They were first published as three separate volumes starting in September 1975. In 1984 they were published as an omnibus edition, and are now more commonly reprinted in the latter form.
In 1986 the trilogy won the Prometheus Hall of Fame Award
, designed to honor classic libertarian
fiction.
The authors went on to write several works, both fiction and nonfiction, that dealt further with the themes of the trilogy, but they did not write any direct sequels.
Illuminatus! has been adapted for the stage, and has influenced several modern writers, musicians, and games-makers. The popularity of the word "fnord
" and the 23 enigma
can both be attributed to the trilogy. It remains a seminal work of conspiracy fiction
, predating by years such novels as Foucault's Pendulum
and The Da Vinci Code
.
s and inner voices (both real and imagined) of its many characters, as well as through time (past, present, and future)— sometimes in mid-sentence. Much of the back story is explained via dialogue between characters, who recount unreliable
, often mutually contradictory, versions of their supposed histories. There are even parts in the book in which the narrative reviews and jokingly deconstructs
the work itself.
The trilogy's rambling story begins with an investigation by two New York City
detectives (Saul Goodman and Barney Muldoon) into the bombing of Confrontation, a leftist
magazine, and the disappearance of its editor, Joe Malik. Discovering the magazine's investigation into the assassinations of John F. Kennedy
, Robert F. Kennedy
, and Martin Luther King, Jr., the two follow a trail of memos that suggest the involvement of powerful secret societies
. They slowly become drawn into a web of conspiracy theories. Meanwhile, the magazine's reporter, George Dorn — having been turned loose without support deep in right-wing
Mad Dog, Texas
— is arrested for drug possession. He is jailed and physically threatened, at one point hallucinating about his own execution. The prison is bombed and he is rescued by the Discordians
, led by the enigmatic Hagbard Celine
, captain of a golden submarine. Hagbard represents the Discordians in their eternal battle against the Illuminati
, the conspiratorial organization that secretly controls the world. He finances his operations by smuggling illicit substances.
The plot meanders around the globe to such far-flung locations as Las Vegas
(where a potentially deadly, secret U.S. government-developed mutated anthrax epidemic has been accidentally unleashed); Atlantis
(where Howard, the talking porpoise
, and his porpoise aides help Hagbard battle the Illuminati); Chicago
(where someone resembling John Dillinger
was killed many years ago); and to the island of Fernando Poo
(the location of the next great Cold War
standoff between Russia
, China
and the USA).
The evil scheme uncovered late in the tale is an attempt to immanentize the eschaton
(a catchphrase coined by Eric Voegelin
), a secret scheme of the American Medical Association, an evil rock band, to bring about a mass human sacrifice
, the purpose of which is the release of enough "life-energy" to give eternal life to a select group of initiates, including Adolf Hitler
. The AMA are four siblings who comprise four of the five mysterious Illuminati Primi. The identity of the fifth remains unknown for much of the trilogy. The first European "Woodstock
" festival, held at Ingolstadt
, Bavaria
, is the chosen location for the sacrifice of the unwary victims, via the reawakening of hibernating Nazi
battalions from the bottom of nearby Lake Totenkopf. The plot is foiled when, with the help of a 50-foot-tall incarnation of the goddess Eris
, the four members of the AMA are killed: Wilhelm is killed by the monstrous alien being Yog-Sothoth
, Wolfgang is shot by John Dillinger, Winifred is drowned by porpoises, and Werner is trapped in a sinking car.
The major protagonists, now gathered together onboard the submarine, are menaced by the Leviathan
, a giant, pyramid-shaped single-cell sea monster
that has been growing in size for hundreds of millions of years. The over-the-top nature of this encounter leads some of the characters to question whether they are merely characters in a book. This metafiction
al note is swiftly rejected (or ignored) as they turn their attention to the monster again. The threat is neutralized by offering up their onboard computer as something for the creature to communicate with to ease its loneliness. Finally, Hagbard Celine reveals himself as the fifth Illuminatus Primus; he has been playing both sides against each other in order to keep balance. He is a representative of the "true" Illuminati, whose aim is to spread the idea that everybody is free to do whatever they want at all times.
The titles of the three volumes or parts (the front covers were titled Illuminatus! Part I The Eye in the Pyramid, Illuminatus! Part II The Golden Apple and Illuminatus! Part III Leviathan) refer to recurring symbols of elements of the plot.
The Eye in the Pyramid refers to the Eye of Providence
, which in the novel represents particularly the Bavarian Illuminati, and makes a number of appearances (for example, as an altar and a tattoo).
The Golden Apple refers to the Golden apple
of discord, from the Greek myth
of the Judgement of Paris
. In the trilogy it is used as the symbol of the Legion of Dynamic Discord, a Discordian
group; the golden apple makes a number of appearances, for example, on the cover, on a black flag, and as an emblem on a uniform.
Leviathan refers to the Biblical
sea monster Leviathan
, which is a potential danger to Hagbard's submarine Leif Erickson (from the name of the Icelandic discoverer of America
).
The three parts of the trilogy are subdivided into five "books" named after the five seasons of the Discordian calendar
. These books are also subdivided into ten "trips" named after the ten Sephirot. The last trip's conclusion is followed by fourteen appendices named after letters of the Hebrew Alphabet
, which share their names with paths on the Tree of Life. The first page of the Appendix includes this mysterious note: "There were originally 22 appendices explaining the secrets of the Illuminati. Eight of the appendices were removed due to the paper shortage. They will be printed in heaven", while "Appendix Mem
" states: "Where are the missing eight appendices? Answer: Censored." This appears to be another of the authors' jokes, although it is true that eight letters of the Hebrew Alphabet are missing, and the publisher required the authors to cut 500 pages from the book.
magazine. As part of the role, they dealt with correspondence from the general public on the subject of civil liberties
, much of which involved paranoid rants about imagined conspiracies. The pair began to write a novel with the premise that "all these nuts are right, and every single conspiracy they complain about really exists". In a 1980 interview given to the science fiction magazine Starship, Wilson suggested the novel was also an attempt to build a myth around Discordianism
:
There was no specific division of labor in the collaborative writing process, although Shea's writing tended towards melodrama
, while Wilson's parts tended towards satire
. Wilson states in a 1976 interview conducted by Neal Wilgus:
According to Ken Campbell
, who created a stage adaptation of Illuminatus! with Chris Langham
, the writing process was treated as a game of one-upmanship between the two co-authors, and was an enjoyable experience for both:
The unusual end product did not appeal to publishers, and it took several years before anybody agreed to take it on. According to Wilson, the division of Illuminatus! into three parts was a commercial decision of the publisher, not the authors, who had conceived it as a single continuous volume. Shea and Wilson were required to cut 500 pages to reduce printing costs on what was seen as a risky venture, although Wilson states that most of the ideas contained therein made it into his later works. The idea that the top secrets of the Illuminati were cut from the books because the printer decided to trim the number of pages is a joke typical of the trilogy.
Dell Publishing
first released these individual editions (with covers illustrated by Carlos Victor Ochagavia) in the USA in 1975
, to favorable reviews and some commercial success. It became a cult favorite but did not cross over into large mainstream sales. In Britain
, Sphere Books
released the individual editions (with different cover art) in 1978
. The individual editions sold steadily until 1984
, when the trilogy was republished in a single omnibus volume for the first time. This collected edition lost the "what has gone before" introduction to The Golden Apple and the "Prologue" to Leviathan. Some of the material in that foreword, such as the self-destruct mynah birds (taught to say "Here, kitty-kitty-kitty!"), appears nowhere else in the trilogy, likely a result of the 500 pages of cuts demanded by Dell. The omnibus edition gave a new lease of life to flagging sales, and became the most commonly available form of the trilogy from then on.
The trilogy was translated and published in German, again both as separate volumes (the three covers of which formed a tryptych) and an omnibus. The face of J. R. "Bob" Dobbs was split across the first two volumes, despite the Church of the SubGenius
not being featured in the novel (although Wilson had become a member). The Church was founded by Illuminatus! fans, and the image of "Bob" is widely considered to be a representation of Wilson himself.
Although the many conspiracy theories in the book are (presumably) imaginary, these are mixed in with enough truth to make them seem plausible. For example, the title of the first book, The Eye in the Pyramid, refers to the Eye of Providence
, a mystical symbol which derives from the ancient Egyptian Eye of Horus
and is rumored to be the symbol of the Bavarian Illuminati. Some of America's founding fathers
are alleged by conspiracy theorists to have been members of this sect.
The books are loaded with references to the Illuminati, the Argenteum Astrum
, many and various world domination
plans, conspiracy theories and pieces of gnostic
knowledge. Many of the odder conspiracies in the book are taken from unpublished letters to Playboy
magazine, where the authors were working as associate editors while they wrote the novels. Among the oddest, the suggestion that Adam Weishaupt
, founder of the Bavarian Illuminati, killed George Washington
and took on his identity as President of the United States
is often noted in Illuminati-conspiracy discussion. Proponents of this theory point to Washington's portrait on the United States one-dollar bill
, which they suggest closely resembles the face of Weishaupt.
fnord
, invented by the writers of Principia Discordia
, is given a specific and sinister meaning in the trilogy. It is a subliminal message technique, a word that the majority of the population since early childhood has been trained to ignore (and, of course, trained to forget both the training and the fact that they are ignoring it), but which they associate with a vague sense of unease. Upon seeing the word, readers experience a panic reaction. They then subconsciously suppress all memories of having seen the word, but the sense of panic remains. They therefore associate the unease with the news story they are reading. Fnords are scattered liberally in the text of newspapers and magazines, causing fear
and anxiety
in those following current events. However, there are no fnords in the advertisements, thus encouraging a consumerist
society. Fnord magazine equated the fnords with a generalized effort to control and brainwash the populace. To "see the fnords" would imply an attempt to wrestle back individual autonomy.
The word makes its first appearance in The Illuminatus! Trilogy without any explanation during an acid
trip
by Dr. Ignotum Per Ignotius and Joe Malik: "The only good fnord is a dead fnord". Several other unexplained appearances follow. Only much later in the story is the secret revealed, when Malik is hypnotized by Hagbard Celine to recall suppressed memories of his first-grade teacher conditioning his class to ignore the fnords: "If you don't see the fnord it can't eat you, don't see the fnord, don't see the fnord..."
is given great credence by many of the characters, with the Law of Fives in particular being frequently mentioned. Hagbard Celine states the Law of Fives in Appendix Gimmel: "All phenomena are directly or indirectly related to the number five." Another character, Simon Moon, identifies what he calls the "23 synchronicity principle
", which he credits William S. Burroughs
as having discovered. Both laws involve finding significance in the appearance of the number, and in its "presen[ce] esoterically because of its conspicuous exoteric
absence." One of the reasons Moon finds 23 significant is because "All the great anarchists died on the 23rd day of some month or other." He also identifies a "23/17 phenomenon." They are both tied to the Law of Fives, he explains, because 2 + 3 = 5, and 1 + 7 = 8 = 2³. Robert Anton Wilson claimed in a 1988 interview that "23 is a part of the cosmic code. It's connected with so many synchronicities
and weird coincidences that it must mean something, I just haven't figured out yet what it means!".
ideas of that time. For instance, the New Age
slogan "flower power
" is referenced via its German form, Ewige Blumenkraft
(literally "eternal flower power"), described by Shea and Wilson as a slogan of the Illuminati, the enemies of the hippie
ideal. The book's attitude to New Age philosophies and beliefs are ambiguous. Wilson explained in a later 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."Interview given to EST magazine in 1991, available at ESTWeb . Retrieved 4 March 2006.
The prevalence of kinky sex in the story reflects the hippy ideal of "free love
"; characters are both liberal-minded and promiscuous. The authors are well aware that it also provides an excuse for mere titillation: in a typically self-referential
joke, a character in the story suggests the scenes exist: "only to sell a bad book filled with shallow characters pushing a nonsense conspiracy". Similarly, the books espouse the use of mind-altering substances to achieve higher states of consciousness, in line with the beliefs of key counterculture figures like Timothy Leary
, who is mentioned throughout the three novels. Dr. Leary himself called the trilogy "more important than Ulysses
or Finnegans Wake
," two novels by author James Joyce
- who appears as a character in The Illuminatus! Trilogy and is a favorite author of Robert Anton Wilson
. This quote is blurb
ed on the covers or front page of its various printings.
that is introduced in the story is later derided in some way, whether that view is traditional or iconoclastic. The trilogy is an exercise in cognitive dissonance
, with an absurdist plot built of seemingly plausible, if unprovable, components. Ultimately, readers are left to form their own interpretations as to which, if any, of the numerous contradictory viewpoints presented by the characters are valid or plausible, and which are simply satirical
gags and shaggy dog jokes. This style of building up a viable belief system, then tearing it down to replace it with another one, was described by Wilson as "guerrilla ontology
".1995 CCN interview, available at Deep Leaf Productions . Retrieved 11 March 2006.
This postmodern
lack of belief in consensus reality
is a cornerstone of the semi-humorous Chaos
-based religion of Discordianism
. Extracts from its sacred text, the Principia Discordia
by Malaclypse the Younger
, are extensively quoted throughout the trilogy. It incorporates and shares many themes and contexts from Illuminatus. Shea and Wilson dedicated the first part "To Gregory Hill and Kerry Thornley
", the founders of the religion. The key Discordian practice known as "Operation Mindfuck
" is exemplified in the character of Markoff Chaney (a play on the mathematical random process called Markov chain
). He is an anti-social dwarf who engages in subtle practical joking in a deliberate attempt to cause social confusion. One such joke involves the forging and placing of signs that are signed by "The Mgt." (leading people to believe they are from "The Management" instead of "The Midget") that contain absurdities like "Slippery when wet. Maintain 50mph."
Several protagonists come to the realization that they are merely fictional characters, or at least begin to question the reality of their situation. George Dorn wonders early on if he "was in some crazy surrealist movie, wandering from telepathic sheriffs to homosexual assassins, to nympho lady Masons, to psychotic pirates, according to a script written in advance by two acid-heads and a Martian humorist". Hagbard Celine claims towards the climax that the entire story is a computer-generated synthesis of random conspiracies: "I can fool the rest of you, but I can't fool the reader. FUCKUP has been working all morning, correlating all the data on this caper and its historical roots, and I programmed him to put it in the form of a novel for easy reading. Considering what a lousy job he does at poetry, I suppose it will be a high-camp
novel, intentionally or unintentionally."
The novel Telemachus
Sneezed by the character Atlanta Hope with its catchphrase "What is John Guilt?" is a spoof of Ayn Rand
's Atlas Shrugged
. Ayn Rand is mentioned by name a few times in Illuminatus!, and her novel is alluded to by Hagbard who says, "If Atlas can Shrug and Telemachus can Sneeze, why can't Satan Repent?" Rand is also disparaged in one of the appendices concerning property, ostensibly written by Hagbard, which serves as an explanation of anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
's views on the subject. There are also references to Thomas Pynchon
's The Crying of Lot 49
and his Gravity's Rainbow
, an equally enormous experimental novel concerning liberty and paranoia that was published two years prior to Illuminatus!. Wilson claims his book was already complete by the time he and Shea read Pynchon's novel (which went on to win several awards), but they then went back and made some modifications to the text before its final publication to allude to Pynchon's work. The phrase "So it goes" is repeatedly used in reference to death, a deliberate echoing of Kurt Vonnegut
's Slaughterhouse Five.
Author H. P. Lovecraft
is alluded to often, with many mentions of characters (e.g., Robert Harrison Blake
, Henry Armitage, Klarkash-Ton), monsters (e.g., Tsathoggua
, Yog-Sothoth
), books (Necronomicon
, Unaussprechlichen Kulten
) and places (Miskatonic University
) from his Cthulhu Mythos
. He even appears himself as a character, as does his aunt Annie Gamwell and one of his acquaintances, Hart Crane
. Interest in Lovecraft reached new heights in 1975, with two full-length biographies
published in the same year as The Illuminatus! Trilogy.
The books have received laudatory reviews and comments from Playboy
, Publishers Weekly
, the American Library Association
's Booklist
magazine, Philadelphia Daily News
, Berkeley Barb
, Rolling Stone
and Limit. The Village Voice
called it "The ultimate conspiracy book ... the biggest sci-fi-cult novel to come along since Dune
... hilariously raunchy!" John White of the New Age Journal
described it as:
The Fortean Times was also enthusiastic, whilst acknowledging the difficulties many readers would have attempting to follow the convoluted plot threads:
Illuminatus! even garnered some attention outside of literary criticism, having several pages devoted to it in a chapter on the American New Right
in Architects of Fear: Conspiracy Theories and Paranoia in American Politics by George Johnson (1983).
In more recent years, it was complimented in the bibliography to the New Hackers Dictionary as a book that can help readers "understand the hacker
mindset." The Dictionary described it as:
It was also included in the "Slack Syllabus" in The Official Slacker Handbook by Sarah Dunn
(1994), a satirical guide aimed at Generation X
.
s, sequel
s and spin-offs
based upon the Illuminatus! concept, including an incomplete pentalogy called The Historical Illuminatus Chronicles
, a standalone work entitled Masks of the Illuminati
and The Illuminati Papers
, in which several chapters are attributed to the trilogy's characters. Many of Wilson's other works, fictional and nonfictional, also make reference to the Illuminati or the Illuminatus! books. Several of the characters from Illuminatus!, for example, Markoff Chaney ("The Midget") and Epicene Wildeblood, return in Wilson's Schrödinger's Cat Trilogy
, which also carries on some of its themes. The third book of the Cat trilogy, The Homing Pigeons, is actually mentioned as a sequel to Illuminatus! in "Appendix Mem". In 1998, Wilson published an encyclopedia of conspiracy theories called Everything is Under Control, which explains the origins of many of the theories mentioned in Illuminatus!.
Wilson and Shea did plan to collaborate again on a true sequel, Bride of Illuminatus, taking place in 2026. It was rumored that it would feature a resurrected Winifred Saure (the only female member of the American Medical Association) exerting her influence through virtual reality
.Comment from "buttergun", Barbelith Underground . Retrieved 5 March 2006. However, Robert Shea
died in 1994 before this project came to fruition. An excerpt was published in Robert Anton Wilson
's Trajectories Newsletter: The Journal of Futurism and Heresy in spring 1995. In a 1994 interview for FringeWare Review
, Wilson suggested he may even "do a Son of Illuminatus later". Curiously, in Intelligence Agents by Timothy Leary (1996) he was credited with having already authored Son of Illuminatus in the 1980s.
Shea, meanwhile, never wrote another Illuminatus!-related book, although many of his later novels include references to the themes of that work. Locus magazine describes Shea's Saracen
novels as "Deep background for the Illuminatus trilogy".
An audacious proposal by the English experimental theater director Ken Campbell
to stage Illuminatus! in its entirety at The National Theatre
in London was met with surprisingly open arms, particularly given its inordinate length: a cycle of five plays—The Eye of the Pyramid, Swift Kick Inc., The Man Who Murdered God, Walpurgisnacht Rock and Leviathan—each consisting of five 23-minute-long acts.
Sir Peter Hall, director of the National at the time, wrote of Campbell in his Diaries, "He is a total anarchist and impossible to pin down. He more or less said it was a crime to be serious."
The adaptation became the very first production at the National's Cottesloe Theatre space, running from 4 March to 27 March 1977. It had first opened in Liverpool
on 23 November 1976.
The first night of the London version featured Robert Anton Wilson, accompanied by Shea, as a naked extra in the witches' sabbat
scene. Wilson was delighted with the adaptation, saying: "I was thunderstruck at what a magnificent job they did in capturing the exact tone and mixture of fantasy and reality in the book. I've come to the conclusion that this isn't literature. It's too late in the day for literature. This is magic!!
The 23-strong cast featured several actors, such as Jim Broadbent
, David Rappaport
and Chris Langham
, who went on to successful film, stage and television careers. Broadbent alone played more than a dozen characters in the play. Bill Drummond
designed sets for the show, and it was eventually seen (when it moved to London, with Bill Nighy
then joining the cast) by the young Jimmy Cauty
. Drummond and Cauty later went on to form the Illuminatus!-inspired electronica band The KLF
.
In thanks, Wilson dedicated his Cosmic Trigger I: The Final Secret of the Illuminati (1977) to "Ken Campbell and the Science-Fiction Theatre Of Liverpool, England." The play was later staged in Seattle, Washington
in 1978.
An attempt was made to adapt the trilogy in comic book
form beginning in the 1980s, by "Eye N Apple Productions" headed by Icarus!-23. Icarus! met with Wilson in 1984 and subsequently obtained permission from Wilson's agent to adapt the trilogy. Illuminatus! #1 was issued in July 1987, then reissued in substantially revised form later that year by Rip Off Press
(who had published the original 4th edition of the Principia Discordia
in 1970).
A second issue followed in 1990, and a third in March 1991, after which the venture stalled (although several ashcans
of the as yet unpublished Fourth Trip were distributed at comic book conventions
in the Detroit and Chicago areas between 1991 and 2006).
Each comic covered one "trip" from the original trilogy, so had further issues followed this pattern, there would have been ten issues in total. The "new first issue" contained a letter from Bob Shea, who had seen the first issue and the materials for the next two. He wrote in part, "I'm delighted. I think it is very faithful to the novel and does a wonderful job of translating the spirit of the novel into a visual medium." The creators of the comic also made an Illuminatus! discussion room on Citadel
bulletin board systems.
Karl Koch
was heavily influenced by The Illuminatus! Trilogy. Besides adopting the pseudonym "Hagbard" from the character Hagbard Celine
, he also named his computer "FUCKUP," after a computer designed and built by that character. He was addicted to cocaine and became extremely paranoid, convinced he was fighting the Illuminati like his literary namesake. In 1987 he wrote a rambling seven-page "hacking manifesto of sorts, complete with his theories on Hagbard Celine and the Illuminati." The 1998
German motion picture 23
told a dramatized version of his story; Robert Anton Wilson
appeared as himself.
A card game
inspired by the trilogy, Illuminati
was created by Steve Jackson Games
. Using the Illuminatus! books as "spiritual guides but not as actual source material," it incorporated competing conspiracies of the Bavarian Illuminati and Discordians
and others, though no characters or groups specific to the novels. A trading card game (Illuminati: New World Order
) and role-playing game
supplement (GURPS
Illuminati) followed. The instruction booklets' bibliographies praise the novel and Wilson particularly, calling Illuminatus! in part "required reading for any conspiracy buff". Robert Shea provided a four-paragraph introduction to the rulebook for the Illuminati Expansion Set 1 (1983), in which he wrote, "Maybe the Illuminati are behind this game. They must be—they are, by definition, behind everything." Despite this initial involvement, Wilson later criticized some of these products for exploiting the Illuminatus! name without paying royalties (taking advantage of what he viewed as a legal loophole).From article In the RAW: Necessary Heresies originally published in REVelation magazine (#13, Autumn, 1995) pp36–40. Available at Disinformation website . Retrieved 28 February 2006.
The Illuminatus Trilogy! is steeped with references to the 1960s popular music scene (at one point a list of 200 fictional bands performing at the Walpurgisnacht rock festival is reeled off (including a handful of actual bands of the 60s), and there are numerous references to the famous rock and roll song, "Rock Around the Clock
"), and has influenced many bands and musicians. One of the aliases of anarchic British band The KLF
was named after a secret society from the trilogy. They released much of their early material under the name "The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu"/"The JAMMs", cf. "The Justified Ancients of Mummu"/"The JAMs" from the trilogy, and much of their work was Discordian in nature. They mirrored the fictional JAMs' gleeful political tactics of causing chaos and confusion by bringing a direct, humorous but nevertheless revolutionary approach to making records. The American band Machines of Loving Grace
took the name of a sex act performed by one of the main characters during a Black Mass
for the title of their song "Rite of Shiva" on their eponym
ous album.Scott Benzel talking to Jon Bains in a 1993 interview for Children of Sores . Retrieved 11 March 2006. UK chillout maestro Mixmaster Morris
also named his band The Irresistible Force after one that appears at the festival in the last part of the trilogy. Together with Coldcut
he organised a huge Robert Anton Wilson Memorial Show at the Queen Elizabeth Hall
in London on 18 March 2007.
In general, The Illuminatus! Trilogy can be credited with popularizing the genre of conspiracy fiction
,Rick Kleffel writing in The Agony Column for 26 August 2002 . Retrieved 11 March 2006. a field later mined by authors like Umberto Eco
(Foucault's Pendulum) and Dan Brown
(Angels and Demons
, The Da Vinci Code
, The Lost Symbol), comic book writers like Alan Moore
(V for Vendetta
, Watchmen
), Dave Sim
(Cerebus) and Grant Morrison
(The Invisibles
), and screenwriters like Chris Carter
(The X-Files
) and Damon Lindelof
(Lost
). In particular, the regular use of the Illuminati in popular culture
as shadowy central puppet masters in this type of fiction can be traced back to their exposure via The Illuminatus! Trilogy.
Major English-language editions include:
Trilogy
A trilogy is a set of three works of art that are connected, and that can be seen either as a single work or as three individual works. They are commonly found in literature, film, or video games...
written by Robert Shea
Robert Shea
Robert Joseph Shea was an American novelist and former journalist best known as co-author with Robert Anton Wilson of the science fantasy trilogy Illuminatus!. It became a cult success and was later turned into a marathon-length stage show put on at the British National Theatre and elsewhere. In...
and Robert Anton Wilson
Robert Anton Wilson
Robert Anton Wilson , known to friends as "Bob", was an American author and polymath who became at various times a novelist, philosopher, psychologist, essayist, editor, playwright, poet, futurist, civil libertarian and self-described agnostic mystic...
first published in 1975. The trilogy is a satirical
Satire
Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...
, postmodern
Postmodernism
Postmodernism is a philosophical movement evolved in reaction to modernism, the tendency in contemporary culture to accept only objective truth and to be inherently suspicious towards a global cultural narrative or meta-narrative. Postmodernist thought is an intentional departure from the...
, science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
-influenced adventure story; a drug
Psychoactive drug
A psychoactive drug, psychopharmaceutical, or psychotropic is a chemical substance that crosses the blood–brain barrier and acts primarily upon the central nervous system where it affects brain function, resulting in changes in perception, mood, consciousness, cognition, and behavior...
-, sex
Human sexuality
Human sexuality is the awareness of gender differences, and the capacity to have erotic experiences and responses. Human sexuality can also be described as the way someone is sexually attracted to another person whether it is to opposite sexes , to the same sex , to either sexes , or not being...
-, and magick
Magic (paranormal)
Magic is the claimed art of manipulating aspects of reality either by supernatural means or through knowledge of occult laws unknown to science. It is in contrast to science, in that science does not accept anything not subject to either direct or indirect observation, and subject to logical...
-laden trek through a number of conspiracy theories
Conspiracy theory
A conspiracy theory explains an event as being the result of an alleged plot by a covert group or organization or, more broadly, the idea that important political, social or economic events are the products of secret plots that are largely unknown to the general public.-Usage:The term "conspiracy...
, both historical and imaginary, related to the authors' version of the Illuminati
Illuminati
The Illuminati is a name given to several groups, both real and fictitious. Historically the name refers to the Bavarian Illuminati, an Enlightenment-era secret society founded on May 1, 1776...
. The narrative often switches between third and first person perspectives and jumps around in time. It is thematically dense, covering topics like counterculture
Counterculture
Counterculture is a sociological term used to describe the values and norms of behavior of a cultural group, or subculture, that run counter to those of the social mainstream of the day, the cultural equivalent of political opposition. Counterculture can also be described as a group whose behavior...
, numerology
Numerology
Numerology is any study of the purported mystical relationship between a count or measurement and life. It has many systems and traditions and beliefs...
, and Discordianism
Discordianism
Discordianism is a religion based on the worship of Eris , the Greco-Roman goddess of strife. It was founded circa 1958–1959 after the publication of its holy book the Principia Discordia, written by Malaclypse the Younger and Omar Khayyam Ravenhurst after a series of shared hallucinations at a...
.
The trilogy comprises The Eye in the Pyramid, The Golden Apple, and Leviathan. They were first published as three separate volumes starting in September 1975. In 1984 they were published as an omnibus edition, and are now more commonly reprinted in the latter form.
In 1986 the trilogy won the Prometheus Hall of Fame Award
Prometheus Award
The Prometheus Award is an award for libertarian science fiction novels given annually by the Libertarian Futurist Society, which also publishes a quarterly journal Prometheus. L. Neil Smith established the award in 1979, but it was not awarded regularly until the newly founded Libertarian Futurist...
, designed to honor classic libertarian
Libertarianism
Libertarianism, in the strictest sense, is the political philosophy that holds individual liberty as the basic moral principle of society. In the broadest sense, it is any political philosophy which approximates this view...
fiction.
The authors went on to write several works, both fiction and nonfiction, that dealt further with the themes of the trilogy, but they did not write any direct sequels.
Illuminatus! has been adapted for the stage, and has influenced several modern writers, musicians, and games-makers. The popularity of the word "fnord
Fnord
Fnord is the typographic representation of disinformation or irrelevant information intending to misdirect, with the implication of a worldwide conspiracy....
" and the 23 enigma
23 (numerology)
The 23 enigma refers to the belief that most incidents and events are directly connected to the number 23, some modification of the number 23, or a number related to the number 23.-Origins:...
can both be attributed to the trilogy. It remains a seminal work of conspiracy fiction
Conspiracy fiction
The conspiracy thriller is a subgenre of thriller fiction. The protagonists of conspiracy thrillers are often journalists or amateur investigators who find themselves pulling on a small thread which unravels a vast conspiracy that ultimately goes "all the way to the top"...
, predating by years such novels as Foucault's Pendulum
Foucault's Pendulum
Foucault's Pendulum is a novel by Italian writer and philosopher Umberto Eco. It was first published in 1988; the translation into English by William Weaver appeared a year later....
and The Da Vinci Code
The Da Vinci Code
The Da Vinci Code is a 2003 mystery-detective novel written by Dan Brown. It follows symbologist Robert Langdon and Sophie Neveu as they investigate a murder in Paris's Louvre Museum and discover a battle between the Priory of Sion and Opus Dei over the possibility of Jesus having been married to...
.
Narrative
The plot meanders between the thoughts, hallucinationHallucination
A hallucination, in the broadest sense of the word, is a perception in the absence of a stimulus. In a stricter sense, hallucinations are defined as perceptions in a conscious and awake state in the absence of external stimuli which have qualities of real perception, in that they are vivid,...
s and inner voices (both real and imagined) of its many characters, as well as through time (past, present, and future)— sometimes in mid-sentence. Much of the back story is explained via dialogue between characters, who recount unreliable
Unreliable narrator
An unreliable narrator is a narrator, whether in literature, film, or theatre, whose credibility has been seriously compromised. The term was coined in 1961 by Wayne C. Booth in The Rhetoric of Fiction. This narrative mode is one that can be developed by an author for a number of reasons, usually...
, often mutually contradictory, versions of their supposed histories. There are even parts in the book in which the narrative reviews and jokingly deconstructs
Deconstruction
Deconstruction is a term introduced by French philosopher Jacques Derrida in his 1967 book Of Grammatology. Although he carefully avoided defining the term directly, he sought to apply Martin Heidegger's concept of Destruktion or Abbau, to textual reading...
the work itself.
Plot summary
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
detectives (Saul Goodman and Barney Muldoon) into the bombing of Confrontation, a leftist
Left-wing politics
In politics, Left, left-wing and leftist generally refer to support for social change to create a more egalitarian society...
magazine, and the disappearance of its editor, Joe Malik. Discovering the magazine's investigation into the assassinations of John F. Kennedy
John F. Kennedy assassination
John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the thirty-fifth President of the United States, was assassinated at 12:30 p.m. Central Standard Time on Friday, November 22, 1963, in Dealey Plaza, Dallas, Texas...
, Robert F. Kennedy
Robert F. Kennedy assassination
The assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, a United States Senator and brother of assassinated President John F. Kennedy, took place shortly after midnight on June 5, 1968, in Los Angeles, California...
, and Martin Luther King, Jr., the two follow a trail of memos that suggest the involvement of powerful secret societies
Secret society
A secret society is a club or organization whose activities and inner functioning are concealed from non-members. The society may or may not attempt to conceal its existence. The term usually excludes covert groups, such as intelligence agencies or guerrilla insurgencies, which hide their...
. They slowly become drawn into a web of conspiracy theories. Meanwhile, the magazine's reporter, George Dorn — having been turned loose without support deep in right-wing
Right-wing politics
In politics, Right, right-wing and rightist generally refer to support for a hierarchical society justified on the basis of an appeal to natural law or tradition. To varying degrees, the Right rejects the egalitarian objectives of left-wing politics, claiming that the imposition of equality is...
Mad Dog, Texas
Texas
Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...
— is arrested for drug possession. He is jailed and physically threatened, at one point hallucinating about his own execution. The prison is bombed and he is rescued by the Discordians
Discordianism
Discordianism is a religion based on the worship of Eris , the Greco-Roman goddess of strife. It was founded circa 1958–1959 after the publication of its holy book the Principia Discordia, written by Malaclypse the Younger and Omar Khayyam Ravenhurst after a series of shared hallucinations at a...
, led by the enigmatic Hagbard Celine
Hagbard Celine
Freeman Hagbard Celine, H.M., S.H. is a central protagonist in the Illuminatus trilogy of books by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson, named after the legendary Viking hero Hagbard who died for love. In the Schrödinger's Cat trilogy, the sequel to Illuminatus!, it is stated that 'Hagbard Celine'...
, captain of a golden submarine. Hagbard represents the Discordians in their eternal battle against the Illuminati
Illuminati
The Illuminati is a name given to several groups, both real and fictitious. Historically the name refers to the Bavarian Illuminati, an Enlightenment-era secret society founded on May 1, 1776...
, the conspiratorial organization that secretly controls the world. He finances his operations by smuggling illicit substances.
The plot meanders around the globe to such far-flung locations as Las Vegas
Las Vegas metropolitan area
The Las Vegas Valley is the heart of the Las Vegas-Paradise, NV MSA also known as the Las Vegas–Paradise–Henderson MSA which includes all of Clark County, Nevada, and is a metropolitan area in the southern part of the U.S. state of Nevada. The Valley is defined by the Las Vegas Valley landform, a ...
(where a potentially deadly, secret U.S. government-developed mutated anthrax epidemic has been accidentally unleashed); Atlantis
Atlantis
Atlantis is a legendary island first mentioned in Plato's dialogues Timaeus and Critias, written about 360 BC....
(where Howard, the talking porpoise
Porpoise
Porpoises are small cetaceans of the family Phocoenidae; they are related to whales and dolphins. They are distinct from dolphins, although the word "porpoise" has been used to refer to any small dolphin, especially by sailors and fishermen...
, and his porpoise aides help Hagbard battle the Illuminati); Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
(where someone resembling John Dillinger
John Dillinger
John Herbert Dillinger, Jr. was an American bank robber in Depression-era United States. He was charged with, but never convicted of, the murder of an East Chicago, Indiana police officer during a shoot-out. This was his only alleged homicide. His gang robbed two dozen banks and four police stations...
was killed many years ago); and to the island of Fernando Poo
Bioko
Bioko is an island 32 km off the west coast of Africa, specifically Cameroon, in the Gulf of Guinea. It is the northernmost part of Equatorial Guinea with a population of 124,000 and an area of . It is volcanic with its highest peak the Pico Basile at .-Geography:Bioko has a total area of...
(the location of the next great Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
standoff between Russia
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
, China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
and the USA).
The evil scheme uncovered late in the tale is an attempt to immanentize the eschaton
Immanentize the eschaton
In political theory and theology, to immanentize the eschaton means trying to bring about the eschaton in the immanent world. It has been used by conservative critics, foremost William F. Buckley, as a pejorative reference to certain utopian projects, such as socialism, communism and transhumanism...
(a catchphrase coined by Eric Voegelin
Eric Voegelin
Eric Voegelin, born Erich Hermann Wilhelm Vögelin, was a German-born American political philosopher. He was born in Cologne, then Imperial Germany, and educated in political science at the University of Vienna. He became a teacher and then an associate professor of political science at the...
), a secret scheme of the American Medical Association, an evil rock band, to bring about a mass human sacrifice
Human sacrifice
Human sacrifice is the act of killing one or more human beings as part of a religious ritual . Its typology closely parallels the various practices of ritual slaughter of animals and of religious sacrifice in general. Human sacrifice has been practised in various cultures throughout history...
, the purpose of which is the release of enough "life-energy" to give eternal life to a select group of initiates, including Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
. The AMA are four siblings who comprise four of the five mysterious Illuminati Primi. The identity of the fifth remains unknown for much of the trilogy. The first European "Woodstock
Woodstock Festival
Woodstock Music & Art Fair was a music festival, billed as "An Aquarian Exposition: 3 Days of Peace & Music". It was held at Max Yasgur's 600-acre dairy farm in the Catskills near the hamlet of White Lake in the town of Bethel, New York, from August 15 to August 18, 1969...
" festival, held at Ingolstadt
Ingolstadt
Ingolstadt is a city in the Free State of Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany. It is located along the banks of the Danube River, in the center of Bavaria. As at 31 March 2011, Ingolstadt had 125.407 residents...
, Bavaria
Bavaria
Bavaria, formally the Free State of Bavaria is a state of Germany, located in the southeast of Germany. With an area of , it is the largest state by area, forming almost 20% of the total land area of Germany...
, is the chosen location for the sacrifice of the unwary victims, via the reawakening of hibernating Nazi
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
battalions from the bottom of nearby Lake Totenkopf. The plot is foiled when, with the help of a 50-foot-tall incarnation of the goddess Eris
Eris (mythology)
Eris is the Greek goddess of strife and discord, her name being translated into Latin as Discordia. Her Greek opposite is Harmonia, whose Latin counterpart is Concordia. Homer equated her with the war-goddess Enyo, whose Roman counterpart is Bellona...
, the four members of the AMA are killed: Wilhelm is killed by the monstrous alien being Yog-Sothoth
Yog-Sothoth
Yog-Sothoth is a cosmic entity of the fictional Cthulhu Mythos and the Dream Cycle of H. P. Lovecraft. Yog-Sothoth's name was first mentioned in his novella The Case of Charles Dexter Ward...
, Wolfgang is shot by John Dillinger, Winifred is drowned by porpoises, and Werner is trapped in a sinking car.
The major protagonists, now gathered together onboard the submarine, are menaced by the Leviathan
Leviathan
Leviathan , is a sea monster referred to in the Bible. In Demonology, Leviathan is one of the seven princes of Hell and its gatekeeper . The word has become synonymous with any large sea monster or creature...
, a giant, pyramid-shaped single-cell sea monster
Sea monster
Sea monsters are sea-dwelling mythical or legendary creatures, often believed to be of immense size.Marine monsters can take many forms, including sea dragons, sea serpents, or multi-armed beasts. They can be slimy or scaly and are often pictured threatening ships or spouting jets of water...
that has been growing in size for hundreds of millions of years. The over-the-top nature of this encounter leads some of the characters to question whether they are merely characters in a book. This metafiction
Metafiction
Metafiction, also known as Romantic irony in the context of Romantic works of literature, is a type of fiction that self-consciously addresses the devices of fiction, exposing the fictional illusion...
al note is swiftly rejected (or ignored) as they turn their attention to the monster again. The threat is neutralized by offering up their onboard computer as something for the creature to communicate with to ease its loneliness. Finally, Hagbard Celine reveals himself as the fifth Illuminatus Primus; he has been playing both sides against each other in order to keep balance. He is a representative of the "true" Illuminati, whose aim is to spread the idea that everybody is free to do whatever they want at all times.
Titles
The Eye in the Pyramid refers to the Eye of Providence
Eye of Providence
The Eye of Providence is a symbol showing an eye often surrounded by rays of light or a glory and usually enclosed by a triangle...
, which in the novel represents particularly the Bavarian Illuminati, and makes a number of appearances (for example, as an altar and a tattoo).
The Golden Apple refers to the Golden apple
Golden apple
The golden apple is an element that appears in various national and ethnic folk legends or fairy tales. Recurring themes depict a hero retrieving the golden apples hidden or stolen by a monstrous antagonist...
of discord, from the Greek myth
Greek mythology
Greek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the ancient Greeks, concerning their gods and heroes, the nature of the world, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices. They were a part of religion in ancient Greece...
of the Judgement of Paris
Judgement of Paris
thumb |right |460px |[[The Judgment of Paris |The Judgment of Paris]], [[Peter Paul Rubens]], ca 1636...
. In the trilogy it is used as the symbol of the Legion of Dynamic Discord, a Discordian
Discordianism
Discordianism is a religion based on the worship of Eris , the Greco-Roman goddess of strife. It was founded circa 1958–1959 after the publication of its holy book the Principia Discordia, written by Malaclypse the Younger and Omar Khayyam Ravenhurst after a series of shared hallucinations at a...
group; the golden apple makes a number of appearances, for example, on the cover, on a black flag, and as an emblem on a uniform.
Leviathan refers to the Biblical
Bible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
sea monster Leviathan
Leviathan
Leviathan , is a sea monster referred to in the Bible. In Demonology, Leviathan is one of the seven princes of Hell and its gatekeeper . The word has become synonymous with any large sea monster or creature...
, which is a potential danger to Hagbard's submarine Leif Erickson (from the name of the Icelandic discoverer of America
Leif Ericson
Leif Ericson was a Norse explorer who is regarded as the first European to land in North America , nearly 500 years before Christopher Columbus...
).
The three parts of the trilogy are subdivided into five "books" named after the five seasons of the Discordian calendar
Discordian calendar
The Discordian or Erisian calendar is an alternative calendar used by some adherents of Discordianism. It is specified on page 00034 of the Principia Discordia.The Discordian year 1 YOLD is 1166 BC...
. These books are also subdivided into ten "trips" named after the ten Sephirot. The last trip's conclusion is followed by fourteen appendices named after letters of the Hebrew Alphabet
Hebrew alphabet
The Hebrew alphabet , known variously by scholars as the Jewish script, square script, block script, or more historically, the Assyrian script, is used in the writing of the Hebrew language, as well as other Jewish languages, most notably Yiddish, Ladino, and Judeo-Arabic. There have been two...
, which share their names with paths on the Tree of Life. The first page of the Appendix includes this mysterious note: "There were originally 22 appendices explaining the secrets of the Illuminati. Eight of the appendices were removed due to the paper shortage. They will be printed in heaven", while "Appendix Mem
Mem
Mem is the thirteenth letter of many Semitic abjads, including Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew and Arabic...
" states: "Where are the missing eight appendices? Answer: Censored." This appears to be another of the authors' jokes, although it is true that eight letters of the Hebrew Alphabet are missing, and the publisher required the authors to cut 500 pages from the book.
Publishing history
The trilogy was originally written between 1969 and 1971 while Wilson and Shea were both associate editors for PlayboyPlayboy
Playboy is an American men's magazine that features photographs of nude women as well as journalism and fiction. It was founded in Chicago in 1953 by Hugh Hefner and his associates, and funded in part by a $1,000 loan from Hefner's mother. The magazine has grown into Playboy Enterprises, Inc., with...
magazine. As part of the role, they dealt with correspondence from the general public on the subject of civil liberties
Civil liberties
Civil liberties are rights and freedoms that provide an individual specific rights such as the freedom from slavery and forced labour, freedom from torture and death, the right to liberty and security, right to a fair trial, the right to defend one's self, the right to own and bear arms, the right...
, much of which involved paranoid rants about imagined conspiracies. The pair began to write a novel with the premise that "all these nuts are right, and every single conspiracy they complain about really exists". In a 1980 interview given to the science fiction magazine Starship, Wilson suggested the novel was also an attempt to build a myth around Discordianism
Discordianism
Discordianism is a religion based on the worship of Eris , the Greco-Roman goddess of strife. It was founded circa 1958–1959 after the publication of its holy book the Principia Discordia, written by Malaclypse the Younger and Omar Khayyam Ravenhurst after a series of shared hallucinations at a...
:
There was no specific division of labor in the collaborative writing process, although Shea's writing tended towards melodrama
Melodrama
The term melodrama refers to a dramatic work that exaggerates plot and characters in order to appeal to the emotions. It may also refer to the genre which includes such works, or to language, behavior, or events which resemble them...
, while Wilson's parts tended towards satire
Satire
Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...
. Wilson states in a 1976 interview conducted by Neal Wilgus:
According to Ken Campbell
Ken Campbell (actor)
Kenneth Victor Campbell was an English writer, actor, director and comedian known for his work in experimental theatre...
, who created a stage adaptation of Illuminatus! with Chris Langham
Chris Langham
Christopher "Chris" Langham is an English writer, actor and comedian. He is most famous for playing MP Hugh Abbot in BBC Four sitcom The Thick of It and as presenter Roy Mallard in People Like Us, first on BBC Radio 4 and later on its transfer to television on BBC Two, where Mallard is almost...
, the writing process was treated as a game of one-upmanship between the two co-authors, and was an enjoyable experience for both:
The unusual end product did not appeal to publishers, and it took several years before anybody agreed to take it on. According to Wilson, the division of Illuminatus! into three parts was a commercial decision of the publisher, not the authors, who had conceived it as a single continuous volume. Shea and Wilson were required to cut 500 pages to reduce printing costs on what was seen as a risky venture, although Wilson states that most of the ideas contained therein made it into his later works. The idea that the top secrets of the Illuminati were cut from the books because the printer decided to trim the number of pages is a joke typical of the trilogy.
Dell Publishing
Dell Publishing
Dell Publishing, an American publisher of books, magazines and comic books, was founded in 1921 by George T. Delacorte, Jr.During the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s, Dell was one of the largest publishers of magazines, including pulp magazines. Their line of humor magazines included 1000 Jokes, launched in...
first released these individual editions (with covers illustrated by Carlos Victor Ochagavia) in the USA in 1975
1975 in literature
The year 1975 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:* August 12 — with the 20-year time limit stipulated by Thomas Mann at his death having expired, sealed packets containing 32 of the author's notebooks were opened in Zurich, Switzerland.* Writing under the...
, to favorable reviews and some commercial success. It became a cult favorite but did not cross over into large mainstream sales. In Britain
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
, Sphere Books
Sphere Books
-History:Founded in 1961, Sphere Books began work on its first publication, the 1962 paperback edition of Gottfried Benn's The Trainee Man. Originally part of The Thomson Corporation, Sphere was sold to Pearson PLC in 1985 and became part of Penguin...
released the individual editions (with different cover art) in 1978
1978 in literature
The year 1978 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*The Bookseller/Diagram Prize for Oddest Title of the Year, a humorous award given annually to books with unusual titles is created. The first winner was Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Nude...
. The individual editions sold steadily until 1984
1984 in literature
The year 1984 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*The book Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell is widely read....
, when the trilogy was republished in a single omnibus volume for the first time. This collected edition lost the "what has gone before" introduction to The Golden Apple and the "Prologue" to Leviathan. Some of the material in that foreword, such as the self-destruct mynah birds (taught to say "Here, kitty-kitty-kitty!"), appears nowhere else in the trilogy, likely a result of the 500 pages of cuts demanded by Dell. The omnibus edition gave a new lease of life to flagging sales, and became the most commonly available form of the trilogy from then on.
The trilogy was translated and published in German, again both as separate volumes (the three covers of which formed a tryptych) and an omnibus. The face of J. R. "Bob" Dobbs was split across the first two volumes, despite the Church of the SubGenius
Church of the SubGenius
The Church of the SubGenius is a "parody religion" organization that satirizes religion, conspiracy theories, unidentified flying objects, and popular culture. Originally based in Dallas, Texas, the Church of the SubGenius gained prominence in the 1980s and 1990s and maintains an active presence on...
not being featured in the novel (although Wilson had become a member). The Church was founded by Illuminatus! fans, and the image of "Bob" is widely considered to be a representation of Wilson himself.
Themes
The Illuminatus! Trilogy covers a wide range of subjects throughout the book. These include discussions about mythology, current events, conspiracy theories and counterculture.Conspiracies
Eye of Providence
The Eye of Providence is a symbol showing an eye often surrounded by rays of light or a glory and usually enclosed by a triangle...
, a mystical symbol which derives from the ancient Egyptian Eye of Horus
Eye of Horus
The Eye of Horus is an ancient Egyptian symbol of protection, royal power and good health. The eye is personified in the goddess Wadjet...
and is rumored to be the symbol of the Bavarian Illuminati. Some of America's founding fathers
Founding Fathers of the United States
The Founding Fathers of the United States of America were political leaders and statesmen who participated in the American Revolution by signing the United States Declaration of Independence, taking part in the American Revolutionary War, establishing the United States Constitution, or by some...
are alleged by conspiracy theorists to have been members of this sect.
The books are loaded with references to the Illuminati, the Argenteum Astrum
Argenteum Astrum
The A∴A∴ is a magical order that was created in 1907 by Aleister Crowley and George Cecil Jones after they left the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. The acronym, A∴A∴, has been assigned many meanings . The order is a Thelemic magical fraternity, the goals of which are the pursuit of light and...
, many and various world domination
Hegemony
Hegemony is an indirect form of imperial dominance in which the hegemon rules sub-ordinate states by the implied means of power rather than direct military force. In Ancient Greece , hegemony denoted the politico–military dominance of a city-state over other city-states...
plans, conspiracy theories and pieces of gnostic
Gnosticism
Gnosticism is a scholarly term for a set of religious beliefs and spiritual practices common to early Christianity, Hellenistic Judaism, Greco-Roman mystery religions, Zoroastrianism , and Neoplatonism.A common characteristic of some of these groups was the teaching that the realisation of Gnosis...
knowledge. Many of the odder conspiracies in the book are taken from unpublished letters to Playboy
Playboy
Playboy is an American men's magazine that features photographs of nude women as well as journalism and fiction. It was founded in Chicago in 1953 by Hugh Hefner and his associates, and funded in part by a $1,000 loan from Hefner's mother. The magazine has grown into Playboy Enterprises, Inc., with...
magazine, where the authors were working as associate editors while they wrote the novels. Among the oddest, the suggestion that Adam Weishaupt
Adam Weishaupt
Johann Adam Weishaupt was a German philosopher and founder of the Order of Illuminati, a secret society with origins in Bavaria.-Early life:...
, founder of the Bavarian Illuminati, killed George Washington
George Washington
George Washington was the dominant military and political leader of the new United States of America from 1775 to 1799. He led the American victory over Great Britain in the American Revolutionary War as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army from 1775 to 1783, and presided over the writing of...
and took on his identity as President of the United States
President of the United States
The President of the United States of America is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces....
is often noted in Illuminati-conspiracy discussion. Proponents of this theory point to Washington's portrait on the United States one-dollar bill
United States one-dollar bill
The United States one-dollar bill is the most common denomination of US currency. The first president, George Washington, painted by Gilbert Stuart, is currently featured on the obverse, while the Great Seal of the United States is featured on the reverse. The one-dollar bill has the oldest...
, which they suggest closely resembles the face of Weishaupt.
Fnord
The nonsense wordNonsense word
A nonsense word, unlike a sememe, may have no definition. If it can be pronounced according to a language's phonotactics, it is a logatome. Nonsense words are used in literature for poetic or humorous effect. Proper names of real or fictional entities are sometimes nonsense words.-See...
fnord
Fnord
Fnord is the typographic representation of disinformation or irrelevant information intending to misdirect, with the implication of a worldwide conspiracy....
, invented by the writers of Principia Discordia
Principia Discordia
Principia Discordia is a Discordian religious text written by Greg Hill and Kerry Thornley . It was originally published under the title "Principia Discordia or How The West Was Lost" in a limited edition of 5 copies in 1965...
, is given a specific and sinister meaning in the trilogy. It is a subliminal message technique, a word that the majority of the population since early childhood has been trained to ignore (and, of course, trained to forget both the training and the fact that they are ignoring it), but which they associate with a vague sense of unease. Upon seeing the word, readers experience a panic reaction. They then subconsciously suppress all memories of having seen the word, but the sense of panic remains. They therefore associate the unease with the news story they are reading. Fnords are scattered liberally in the text of newspapers and magazines, causing fear
Fear
Fear is a distressing negative sensation induced by a perceived threat. It is a basic survival mechanism occurring in response to a specific stimulus, such as pain or the threat of danger...
and anxiety
Anxiety
Anxiety is a psychological and physiological state characterized by somatic, emotional, cognitive, and behavioral components. The root meaning of the word anxiety is 'to vex or trouble'; in either presence or absence of psychological stress, anxiety can create feelings of fear, worry, uneasiness,...
in those following current events. However, there are no fnords in the advertisements, thus encouraging a consumerist
Consumerism
Consumerism is a social and economic order that is based on the systematic creation and fostering of a desire to purchase goods and services in ever greater amounts. The term is often associated with criticisms of consumption starting with Thorstein Veblen...
society. Fnord magazine equated the fnords with a generalized effort to control and brainwash the populace. To "see the fnords" would imply an attempt to wrestle back individual autonomy.
The word makes its first appearance in The Illuminatus! Trilogy without any explanation during an acid
LSD
Lysergic acid diethylamide, abbreviated LSD or LSD-25, also known as lysergide and colloquially as acid, is a semisynthetic psychedelic drug of the ergoline family, well known for its psychological effects which can include altered thinking processes, closed and open eye visuals, synaesthesia, an...
trip
Psychedelic experience
The term "psychedelic experience" is vague – characterized by polyvalence or ambiguity due to its nature – however in modern psychopharmacological science as well as philosophical, psychological, neurological, spiritual-religious and most other ideological discourses it is understood as an altered...
by Dr. Ignotum Per Ignotius and Joe Malik: "The only good fnord is a dead fnord". Several other unexplained appearances follow. Only much later in the story is the secret revealed, when Malik is hypnotized by Hagbard Celine to recall suppressed memories of his first-grade teacher conditioning his class to ignore the fnords: "If you don't see the fnord it can't eat you, don't see the fnord, don't see the fnord..."
Numerology
NumerologyNumerology
Numerology is any study of the purported mystical relationship between a count or measurement and life. It has many systems and traditions and beliefs...
is given great credence by many of the characters, with the Law of Fives in particular being frequently mentioned. Hagbard Celine states the Law of Fives in Appendix Gimmel: "All phenomena are directly or indirectly related to the number five." Another character, Simon Moon, identifies what he calls the "23 synchronicity principle
23 (numerology)
The 23 enigma refers to the belief that most incidents and events are directly connected to the number 23, some modification of the number 23, or a number related to the number 23.-Origins:...
", which he credits William S. Burroughs
William S. Burroughs
William Seward Burroughs II was an American novelist, poet, essayist and spoken word performer. A primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodernist author, he is considered to be "one of the most politically trenchant, culturally influential, and innovative artists of the 20th...
as having discovered. Both laws involve finding significance in the appearance of the number, and in its "presen[ce] esoterically because of its conspicuous exoteric
Exoteric
Exoteric refers to knowledge that is outside of and independent from anyone's experience and can be ascertained by anyone. Compare Common sense. It is distinguished from internal esoteric knowledge. Exoteric relates to "external reality" as opposed to one's own thoughts or feelings. It is knowledge...
absence." One of the reasons Moon finds 23 significant is because "All the great anarchists died on the 23rd day of some month or other." He also identifies a "23/17 phenomenon." They are both tied to the Law of Fives, he explains, because 2 + 3 = 5, and 1 + 7 = 8 = 2³. Robert Anton Wilson claimed in a 1988 interview that "23 is a part of the cosmic code. It's connected with so many synchronicities
Synchronicity
Synchronicity is the experience of two or more events that are apparently causally unrelated or unlikely to occur together by chance and that are observed to occur together in a meaningful manner...
and weird coincidences that it must mean something, I just haven't figured out yet what it means!".
Counterculture
The books were written at the height of the late 1960s, and are infused with the popular countercultureCounterculture
Counterculture is a sociological term used to describe the values and norms of behavior of a cultural group, or subculture, that run counter to those of the social mainstream of the day, the cultural equivalent of political opposition. Counterculture can also be described as a group whose behavior...
ideas of that time. For instance, the New Age
New Age
The New Age movement is a Western spiritual movement that developed in the second half of the 20th century. Its central precepts have been described as "drawing on both Eastern and Western spiritual and metaphysical traditions and then infusing them with influences from self-help and motivational...
slogan "flower power
Flower power
Flower power is a slogan used by the American counterculture movement during the late 1960s and early 1970s as a symbol of passive resistance and non-violence ideology. It is rooted in the opposition movement to the Vietnam War. The expression was coined by the American Beat poet Allen Ginsberg in...
" is referenced via its German form, Ewige Blumenkraft
Ewige Blumenkraft
Ewige Blumenkraft is given in Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson's Illuminatus! Trilogy as a slogan or password of the Illuminati....
(literally "eternal flower power"), described by Shea and Wilson as a slogan of the Illuminati, the enemies of the hippie
Hippie
The hippie subculture was originally a youth movement that arose in the United States during the mid-1960s and spread to other countries around the world. The etymology of the term 'hippie' is from hipster, and was initially used to describe beatniks who had moved into San Francisco's...
ideal. The book's attitude to New Age philosophies and beliefs are ambiguous. Wilson explained in a later 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."Interview given to EST magazine in 1991, available at ESTWeb . Retrieved 4 March 2006.
The prevalence of kinky sex in the story reflects the hippy ideal of "free love
Free love
The term free love has been used to describe a social movement that rejects marriage, which is seen as a form of social bondage. The Free Love movement’s initial goal was to separate the state from sexual matters such as marriage, birth control, and adultery...
"; characters are both liberal-minded and promiscuous. The authors are well aware that it also provides an excuse for mere titillation: in a typically self-referential
Self-reference
Self-reference occurs in natural or formal languages when a sentence or formula refers to itself. The reference may be expressed either directly—through some intermediate sentence or formula—or by means of some encoding...
joke, a character in the story suggests the scenes exist: "only to sell a bad book filled with shallow characters pushing a nonsense conspiracy". Similarly, the books espouse the use of mind-altering substances to achieve higher states of consciousness, in line with the beliefs of key counterculture figures like Timothy Leary
Timothy Leary
Timothy Francis Leary was an American psychologist and writer, known for his advocacy of psychedelic drugs. During a time when drugs like LSD and psilocybin were legal, Leary conducted experiments at Harvard University under the Harvard Psilocybin Project, resulting in the Concord Prison...
, who is mentioned throughout the three novels. Dr. Leary himself called the trilogy "more important than Ulysses
Ulysses (novel)
Ulysses is a novel by the Irish author James Joyce. It was first serialised in parts in the American journal The Little Review from March 1918 to December 1920, and then published in its entirety by Sylvia Beach on 2 February 1922, in Paris. One of the most important works of Modernist literature,...
or Finnegans Wake
Finnegans Wake
Finnegans Wake is a novel by Irish author James Joyce, significant for its experimental style and resulting reputation as one of the most difficult works of fiction in the English language. Written in Paris over a period of seventeen years, and published in 1939, two years before the author's...
," two novels by author James Joyce
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...
- who appears as a character in The Illuminatus! Trilogy and is a favorite author of Robert Anton Wilson
Robert Anton Wilson
Robert Anton Wilson , known to friends as "Bob", was an American author and polymath who became at various times a novelist, philosopher, psychologist, essayist, editor, playwright, poet, futurist, civil libertarian and self-described agnostic mystic...
. This quote is blurb
Blurb
A blurb is a short summary or some words of praise accompanying a creative work, usually used on books without giving away any details, that is usually referring to the words on the back of the book jacket but also commonly seen on DVD and video cases, web portals, and news websites.- History :The...
ed on the covers or front page of its various printings.
Cognitive dissonance
Every view of realityReality
In philosophy, reality is the state of things as they actually exist, rather than as they may appear or might be imagined. In a wider definition, reality includes everything that is and has been, whether or not it is observable or comprehensible...
that is introduced in the story is later derided in some way, whether that view is traditional or iconoclastic. The trilogy is an exercise in cognitive dissonance
Cognitive dissonance
Cognitive dissonance is a discomfort caused by holding conflicting ideas simultaneously. The theory of cognitive dissonance proposes that people have a motivational drive to reduce dissonance. They do this by changing their attitudes, beliefs, and actions. Dissonance is also reduced by justifying,...
, with an absurdist plot built of seemingly plausible, if unprovable, components. Ultimately, readers are left to form their own interpretations as to which, if any, of the numerous contradictory viewpoints presented by the characters are valid or plausible, and which are simply satirical
Satire
Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...
gags and shaggy dog jokes. This style of building up a viable belief system, then tearing it down to replace it with another one, was described by Wilson as "guerrilla ontology
Guerrilla ontology
Guerrilla ontology is a practice inspired by guerrilla warfare, described by Robert Anton Wilson as an ontological method of dealing with people with extremely fixed worldviews....
".1995 CCN interview, available at Deep Leaf Productions . Retrieved 11 March 2006.
This postmodern
Postmodernism
Postmodernism is a philosophical movement evolved in reaction to modernism, the tendency in contemporary culture to accept only objective truth and to be inherently suspicious towards a global cultural narrative or meta-narrative. Postmodernist thought is an intentional departure from the...
lack of belief in consensus reality
Consensus reality
Consensus reality is an approach to answering the philosophical question "What is real?" It gives a practical answer: reality is either what exists, or what we can agree seems to exist....
is a cornerstone of the semi-humorous Chaos
Chaos theory
Chaos theory is a field of study in mathematics, with applications in several disciplines including physics, economics, biology, and philosophy. Chaos theory studies the behavior of dynamical systems that are highly sensitive to initial conditions, an effect which is popularly referred to as the...
-based religion of Discordianism
Discordianism
Discordianism is a religion based on the worship of Eris , the Greco-Roman goddess of strife. It was founded circa 1958–1959 after the publication of its holy book the Principia Discordia, written by Malaclypse the Younger and Omar Khayyam Ravenhurst after a series of shared hallucinations at a...
. Extracts from its sacred text, the Principia Discordia
Principia Discordia
Principia Discordia is a Discordian religious text written by Greg Hill and Kerry Thornley . It was originally published under the title "Principia Discordia or How The West Was Lost" in a limited edition of 5 copies in 1965...
by Malaclypse the Younger
Malaclypse the Younger
Gregory Hill , better known by the pen name Malaclypse the Younger , was one of the two writers of the Principia Discordia, along with Kerry Wendell Thornley . He was also adapted as a character in The Illuminatus! Trilogy...
, are extensively quoted throughout the trilogy. It incorporates and shares many themes and contexts from Illuminatus. Shea and Wilson dedicated the first part "To Gregory Hill and Kerry Thornley
Kerry Thornley
Kerry Wendell Thornley is known as the co-founder of Discordianism, in which context he is usually known as Omar Khayyam Ravenhurst or simply Lord Omar...
", the founders of the religion. The key Discordian practice known as "Operation Mindfuck
Operation Mindfuck
Operation Mindfuck or OM is an important practice in the Discordian religion. The concept was developed by Kerry Thornley and Robert Anton Wilson in 1968 and given its name by Wilson and Robert Shea in The Illuminatus! Trilogy...
" is exemplified in the character of Markoff Chaney (a play on the mathematical random process called Markov chain
Markov chain
A Markov chain, named after Andrey Markov, is a mathematical system that undergoes transitions from one state to another, between a finite or countable number of possible states. It is a random process characterized as memoryless: the next state depends only on the current state and not on the...
). He is an anti-social dwarf who engages in subtle practical joking in a deliberate attempt to cause social confusion. One such joke involves the forging and placing of signs that are signed by "The Mgt." (leading people to believe they are from "The Management" instead of "The Midget") that contain absurdities like "Slippery when wet. Maintain 50mph."
Self-reference
There are several parts in the book where it reviews and jokingly deconstructs itself. The fictional journalist Epicene Wildeblood at one point is required to critique a book uncannily similar to The Illuminatus! Trilogy:Several protagonists come to the realization that they are merely fictional characters, or at least begin to question the reality of their situation. George Dorn wonders early on if he "was in some crazy surrealist movie, wandering from telepathic sheriffs to homosexual assassins, to nympho lady Masons, to psychotic pirates, according to a script written in advance by two acid-heads and a Martian humorist". Hagbard Celine claims towards the climax that the entire story is a computer-generated synthesis of random conspiracies: "I can fool the rest of you, but I can't fool the reader. FUCKUP has been working all morning, correlating all the data on this caper and its historical roots, and I programmed him to put it in the form of a novel for easy reading. Considering what a lousy job he does at poetry, I suppose it will be a high-camp
Camp (style)
Camp is an aesthetic sensibility that regards something as appealing because of its taste and ironic value. The concept is closely related to kitsch, and things with camp appeal may also be described as being "cheesy"...
novel, intentionally or unintentionally."
Allusions to other works
For a work of fiction, Illuminatus! contains a lot of references to songs, films, articles, novels and other media. This is partly because the characters themselves are involved in doing research, but it is also a trademark of Wilson's writing.The novel Telemachus
Telemachus
Telemachus is a figure in Greek mythology, the son of Odysseus and Penelope, and a central character in Homer's Odyssey. The first four books in particular focus on Telemachus' journeys in search of news about his father, who has been away at war...
Sneezed by the character Atlanta Hope with its catchphrase "What is John Guilt?" is a spoof of Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand was a Russian-American novelist, philosopher, playwright, and screenwriter. She is known for her two best-selling novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged and for developing a philosophical system she called Objectivism....
's Atlas Shrugged
Atlas Shrugged
Atlas Shrugged is a novel by Ayn Rand, first published in 1957 in the United States. Rand's fourth and last novel, it was also her longest, and the one she considered to be her magnum opus in the realm of fiction writing...
. Ayn Rand is mentioned by name a few times in Illuminatus!, and her novel is alluded to by Hagbard who says, "If Atlas can Shrug and Telemachus can Sneeze, why can't Satan Repent?" Rand is also disparaged in one of the appendices concerning property, ostensibly written by Hagbard, which serves as an explanation of anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon was a French politician, mutualist philosopher and socialist. He was a member of the French Parliament, and he was the first person to call himself an "anarchist". He is considered among the most influential theorists and organisers of anarchism...
's views on the subject. There are also references to Thomas Pynchon
Thomas Pynchon
Thomas Ruggles Pynchon, Jr. is an American novelist. For his most praised novel, Gravity's Rainbow, Pynchon received the National Book Award, and is regularly cited as a contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature...
's The Crying of Lot 49
The Crying of Lot 49
The Crying of Lot 49 is a novel by Thomas Pynchon, first published in 1966. The shortest of Pynchon's novels, it is about a woman, Oedipa Maas, possibly unearthing the centuries-old conflict between two mail distribution companies, Thurn und Taxis and the Trystero...
and his Gravity's Rainbow
Gravity's Rainbow
Gravity's Rainbow is a postmodern novel written by Thomas Pynchon and first published on February 28, 1973.The narrative is set primarily in Europe at the end of World War II and centers on the design, production and dispatch of V-2 rockets by the German military, and, in particular, the quest...
, an equally enormous experimental novel concerning liberty and paranoia that was published two years prior to Illuminatus!. Wilson claims his book was already complete by the time he and Shea read Pynchon's novel (which went on to win several awards), but they then went back and made some modifications to the text before its final publication to allude to Pynchon's work. The phrase "So it goes" is repeatedly used in reference to death, a deliberate echoing of Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. was a 20th century American writer. His works such as Cat's Cradle , Slaughterhouse-Five and Breakfast of Champions blend satire, gallows humor and science fiction. He was known for his humanist beliefs and was honorary president of the American Humanist Association.-Early...
's Slaughterhouse Five.
Author H. P. Lovecraft
H. P. Lovecraft
Howard Phillips Lovecraft --often credited as H.P. Lovecraft — was an American author of horror, fantasy and science fiction, especially the subgenre known as weird fiction....
is alluded to often, with many mentions of characters (e.g., Robert Harrison Blake
Robert Harrison Blake
Robert Harrison Blake is a fictional character in the Cthulhu Mythos. The character is the creation of H. P. Lovecraft and appears in his short story "The Haunter of the Dark" .-Summary:...
, Henry Armitage, Klarkash-Ton), monsters (e.g., Tsathoggua
Tsathoggua
Tsathoggua is a fictional supernatural entity in the Cthulhu Mythos shared fictional universe. He is the creation of Clark Ashton Smith and is part of his Hyperborean cycle....
, Yog-Sothoth
Yog-Sothoth
Yog-Sothoth is a cosmic entity of the fictional Cthulhu Mythos and the Dream Cycle of H. P. Lovecraft. Yog-Sothoth's name was first mentioned in his novella The Case of Charles Dexter Ward...
), books (Necronomicon
Necronomicon
The Necronomicon is a fictional grimoire appearing in the stories by horror writer H. P. Lovecraft and his followers. It was first mentioned in Lovecraft's 1924 short story "The Hound", written in 1922, though its purported author, the "Mad Arab" Abdul Alhazred, had been quoted a year earlier in...
, Unaussprechlichen Kulten
Unaussprechlichen Kulten
Unaussprechlichen Kulten is a fictional work of arcane literature in the Cthulhu Mythos. The book first appeared in Robert E. Howard's short stories "The Children of the Night" and "The Black Stone" as Nameless Cults. Like the Necronomicon, it was later mentioned in several stories by H. P...
) and places (Miskatonic University
Miskatonic University
Miskatonic University is a fictional university located in Arkham; a fictitious town which is said to exist in Essex County, Massachusetts. It is named after the Miskatonic River . After first appearing in the H. P...
) from his Cthulhu Mythos
Cthulhu Mythos
The Cthulhu Mythos is a shared fictional universe, based on the work of American horror writer H. P. Lovecraft.The term was first coined by August Derleth, a contemporary correspondent of Lovecraft, who used the name of the creature Cthulhu - a central figure in Lovecraft literature and the focus...
. He even appears himself as a character, as does his aunt Annie Gamwell and one of his acquaintances, Hart Crane
Hart Crane
-Career:Throughout the early 1920s, small but well-respected literary magazines published some of Crane’s lyrics, gaining him, among the avant-garde, a respect that White Buildings , his first volume, ratified and strengthened...
. Interest in Lovecraft reached new heights in 1975, with two full-length biographies
Biography
A biography is a detailed description or account of someone's life. More than a list of basic facts , biography also portrays the subject's experience of those events...
published in the same year as The Illuminatus! Trilogy.
Reviews and reputation
Playboy
Playboy is an American men's magazine that features photographs of nude women as well as journalism and fiction. It was founded in Chicago in 1953 by Hugh Hefner and his associates, and funded in part by a $1,000 loan from Hefner's mother. The magazine has grown into Playboy Enterprises, Inc., with...
, Publishers Weekly
Publishers Weekly
Publishers Weekly, aka PW, is an American weekly trade news magazine targeted at publishers, librarians, booksellers and literary agents...
, the American Library Association
American Library Association
The American Library Association is a non-profit organization based in the United States that promotes libraries and library education internationally. It is the oldest and largest library association in the world, with more than 62,000 members....
's Booklist
Booklist
Booklist is a publication of the American Library Association that provides critical reviews of books and audiovisual materials for all ages. It is geared toward libraries and booksellers and is available in print or online...
magazine, Philadelphia Daily News
Philadelphia Daily News
The Philadelphia Daily News is a tabloid newspaper that serves Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. The newspaper is owned by Philadelphia Media Holdings which also owns Philadelphia's other major newspaper The Philadelphia Inquirer. The Daily News began publishing on March 31, 1925, under...
, Berkeley Barb
Berkeley Barb
The Berkeley Barb was a weekly underground newspaper that was published in Berkeley, California, from 1965 to 1980. It was one of the first and most influential of the counterculture newspapers of the late 1960s, covering such subjects as the anti-war and civil-rights movements as well as the...
, Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...
and Limit. The Village Voice
The Village Voice
The Village Voice is a free weekly newspaper and news and features website in New York City that features investigative articles, analysis of current affairs and culture, arts and music coverage, and events listings for New York City...
called it "The ultimate conspiracy book ... the biggest sci-fi-cult novel to come along since Dune
Dune (novel)
Dune is a science fiction novel written by Frank Herbert, published in 1965. It won the Hugo Award in 1966, and the inaugural Nebula Award for Best Novel...
... hilariously raunchy!" John White of the New Age Journal
New Age Journal
New Age Journal, or New Age: The Journal for Holistic Living was an American periodical prominent in the late 20th century, and defining itself as covering topics related to the period's "New Age"; it has been succeeded, in turn, by Body & Soul, and under new ownership by Body + Soul.It was founded...
described it as:
The Fortean Times was also enthusiastic, whilst acknowledging the difficulties many readers would have attempting to follow the convoluted plot threads:
Illuminatus! even garnered some attention outside of literary criticism, having several pages devoted to it in a chapter on the American New Right
New Right
New Right is used in several countries as a descriptive term for various policies or groups that are right-wing. It has also been used to describe the emergence of Eastern European parties after the collapse of communism.-Australia:...
in Architects of Fear: Conspiracy Theories and Paranoia in American Politics by George Johnson (1983).
In more recent years, it was complimented in the bibliography to the New Hackers Dictionary as a book that can help readers "understand the hacker
Hacker culture
A hacker is a member of the computer programmer subculture originated in the 1960s in the United States academia, in particular around the Massachusetts Institute of Technology 's Tech Model Railroad Club and MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory...
mindset." The Dictionary described it as:
It was also included in the "Slack Syllabus" in The Official Slacker Handbook by Sarah Dunn
Sarah Dunn (author)
Sarah Dunn is an American author and television writer. She was educated in the University of Arizona.Coming to prominence in 1994 with her book Official Slacker Handbook, Sarah Dunn went to Hollywood, where she wrote for such series as Murphy Brown, Veronica's Closet and Spin City.- Books by...
(1994), a satirical guide aimed at Generation X
Generation X
Generation X, commonly abbreviated to Gen X, is the generation born after the Western post–World War II baby boom ended. While there is no universally agreed upon time frame, the term generally includes people born from the early 1960's through the early 1980's, usually no later than 1981 or...
.
Follow-ups
Wilson and Robert Shea went on to become prolific authors. While Shea concentrated mainly on historical novels, Wilson produced over 30 works, mixing fictional novels with nonfiction. Although both authors' later work often elaborated on concepts first discussed in Illuminatus!, the pair never collaborated again. The trilogy inspired a number of direct adaptations, including a stage play and a comic book series, and numerous indirect adaptations that borrowed from its themes.Shea and Wilson
Wilson subsequently wrote a number of prequelPrequel
A prequel is a work that supplements a previously completed one, and has an earlier time setting.The widely recognized term was a 20th-century neologism, and a portmanteau from pre- and sequel...
s, sequel
Sequel
A sequel is a narrative, documental, or other work of literature, film, theatre, or music that continues the story of or expands upon issues presented in some previous work...
s and spin-offs
Spin-off (media)
In media, a spin-off is a radio program, television program, video game, or any narrative work, derived from one or more already existing works, that focuses, in particular, in more detail on one aspect of that original work...
based upon the Illuminatus! concept, including an incomplete pentalogy called The Historical Illuminatus Chronicles
The Historical Illuminatus Chronicles
The Historical Illuminatus Chronicles is a series of three novels by Robert Anton Wilson written after his highly successful The Illuminatus! Trilogy and his 1981 "Masks of the Illuminati"...
, a standalone work entitled Masks of the Illuminati
Masks of the Illuminati
Masks of the Illuminati is a 1981 novel by Robert Anton Wilson, co-author of The Illuminatus! Trilogy and over thirty other influential books...
and The Illuminati Papers
The Illuminati Papers
The Illuminati Papers is a collection of essays and other works by Robert Anton Wilson first published in 1980 . The book expands upon characters and themes from his earlier The Illuminatus! Trilogy and most of the essays are written from the point of view of the characters in Illuminatus! Topics...
, in which several chapters are attributed to the trilogy's characters. Many of Wilson's other works, fictional and nonfictional, also make reference to the Illuminati or the Illuminatus! books. Several of the characters from Illuminatus!, for example, Markoff Chaney ("The Midget") and Epicene Wildeblood, return in Wilson's Schrödinger's Cat Trilogy
Schrödinger's Cat trilogy
The Schrödinger's Cat Trilogy is a trilogy of novels by Robert Anton Wilson consisting of The Universe Next Door, The Trick Top Hat, and The Homing Pigeons, each illustrating a different interpretation of quantum physics...
, which also carries on some of its themes. The third book of the Cat trilogy, The Homing Pigeons, is actually mentioned as a sequel to Illuminatus! in "Appendix Mem". In 1998, Wilson published an encyclopedia of conspiracy theories called Everything is Under Control, which explains the origins of many of the theories mentioned in Illuminatus!.
Wilson and Shea did plan to collaborate again on a true sequel, Bride of Illuminatus, taking place in 2026. It was rumored that it would feature a resurrected Winifred Saure (the only female member of the American Medical Association) exerting her influence through virtual reality
Virtual reality
Virtual reality , also known as virtuality, is a term that applies to computer-simulated environments that can simulate physical presence in places in the real world, as well as in imaginary worlds...
.Comment from "buttergun", Barbelith Underground . Retrieved 5 March 2006. However, Robert Shea
Robert Shea
Robert Joseph Shea was an American novelist and former journalist best known as co-author with Robert Anton Wilson of the science fantasy trilogy Illuminatus!. It became a cult success and was later turned into a marathon-length stage show put on at the British National Theatre and elsewhere. In...
died in 1994 before this project came to fruition. An excerpt was published in Robert Anton Wilson
Robert Anton Wilson
Robert Anton Wilson , known to friends as "Bob", was an American author and polymath who became at various times a novelist, philosopher, psychologist, essayist, editor, playwright, poet, futurist, civil libertarian and self-described agnostic mystic...
's Trajectories Newsletter: The Journal of Futurism and Heresy in spring 1995. In a 1994 interview for FringeWare Review
FringeWare Review
FringeWare Review was a magazine about Subculture published in Austin, Texas. Many of the publication's writers and editors were associated with other publications such as Boing Boing, Mondo 2000, Whole Earth Review, and Wired. The last issue of the magazine was #14...
, Wilson suggested he may even "do a Son of Illuminatus later". Curiously, in Intelligence Agents by Timothy Leary (1996) he was credited with having already authored Son of Illuminatus in the 1980s.
Shea, meanwhile, never wrote another Illuminatus!-related book, although many of his later novels include references to the themes of that work. Locus magazine describes Shea's Saracen
The Saracen
The Saracen is a two-part novel written by Robert Shea. The two separate portions, The Land of the Infidel and The Holy War are a continuous tale....
novels as "Deep background for the Illuminatus trilogy".
Adaptations
Ken Campbell
Ken Campbell was an English writer, actor, director and comedian.Ken Campbell may also refer to:* Ken Campbell , Canadian evangelist* Ken Campbell , former Scotland international goalkeeper...
to stage Illuminatus! in its entirety at The National Theatre
Royal National Theatre
The Royal National Theatre in London is one of the United Kingdom's two most prominent publicly funded theatre companies, alongside the Royal Shakespeare Company...
in London was met with surprisingly open arms, particularly given its inordinate length: a cycle of five plays—The Eye of the Pyramid, Swift Kick Inc., The Man Who Murdered God, Walpurgisnacht Rock and Leviathan—each consisting of five 23-minute-long acts.
Sir Peter Hall, director of the National at the time, wrote of Campbell in his Diaries, "He is a total anarchist and impossible to pin down. He more or less said it was a crime to be serious."
The adaptation became the very first production at the National's Cottesloe Theatre space, running from 4 March to 27 March 1977. It had first opened in Liverpool
Liverpool
Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough of Merseyside, England, along the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary. It was founded as a borough in 1207 and was granted city status in 1880...
on 23 November 1976.
The first night of the London version featured Robert Anton Wilson, accompanied by Shea, as a naked extra in the witches' sabbat
Sabbath (witchcraft)
The Witches' Sabbath or Sabbat is a supposed meeting of those who practice witchcraft, and other rites.European records indicate cases of persons being accused or tried for taking part in Sabbat gatherings, from the Middle Ages to the 17th century or later.- Etymology :The English word “sabbat”...
scene. Wilson was delighted with the adaptation, saying: "I was thunderstruck at what a magnificent job they did in capturing the exact tone and mixture of fantasy and reality in the book. I've come to the conclusion that this isn't literature. It's too late in the day for literature. This is magic!!
Jim Broadbent
James "Jim" Broadbent is an English theatre, film, and television actor. He is known for his roles in Iris, Moulin Rouge!, Topsy-Turvy, Hot Fuzz, and Bridget Jones' Diary...
, David Rappaport
David Rappaport
David Stephen Rappaport was an English actor, probably one of the best known dwarf actors in television and film...
and Chris Langham
Chris Langham
Christopher "Chris" Langham is an English writer, actor and comedian. He is most famous for playing MP Hugh Abbot in BBC Four sitcom The Thick of It and as presenter Roy Mallard in People Like Us, first on BBC Radio 4 and later on its transfer to television on BBC Two, where Mallard is almost...
, who went on to successful film, stage and television careers. Broadbent alone played more than a dozen characters in the play. Bill Drummond
Bill Drummond
William Ernest Drummond is a Scottish artist, musician, writer and record producer. He was the co-founder of late 1980s avant-garde pop group The KLF and its 1990s media-manipulating successor, the K Foundation, with which he burned a million pounds in 1994...
designed sets for the show, and it was eventually seen (when it moved to London, with Bill Nighy
Bill Nighy
William Francis "Bill" Nighy is an English actor and comedian. He worked in theatre and television before his first cinema role in 1981, and made his name in television with The Men's Room in 1991, in which he played the womanizer Prof...
then joining the cast) by the young Jimmy Cauty
Jimmy Cauty
James Francis Cauty is a British artist and musician born in Liverpool, England, in 1956...
. Drummond and Cauty later went on to form the Illuminatus!-inspired electronica band The KLF
The KLF
The KLF were one of the seminal bands of the British acid house movement during the late 1980s and early 1990s....
.
In thanks, Wilson dedicated his Cosmic Trigger I: The Final Secret of the Illuminati (1977) to "Ken Campbell and the Science-Fiction Theatre Of Liverpool, England." The play was later staged in Seattle, Washington
Seattle, Washington
Seattle is the county seat of King County, Washington. With 608,660 residents as of the 2010 Census, Seattle is the largest city in the Northwestern United States. The Seattle metropolitan area of about 3.4 million inhabitants is the 15th largest metropolitan area in the country...
in 1978.
An attempt was made to adapt the trilogy in comic book
Comic book
A comic book or comicbook is a magazine made up of comics, narrative artwork in the form of separate panels that represent individual scenes, often accompanied by dialog as well as including...
form beginning in the 1980s, by "Eye N Apple Productions" headed by Icarus!-23. Icarus! met with Wilson in 1984 and subsequently obtained permission from Wilson's agent to adapt the trilogy. Illuminatus! #1 was issued in July 1987, then reissued in substantially revised form later that year by Rip Off Press
Rip Off Press
Rip Off Press, Inc. is a seminal publishing company that specializes in adult-themed literature and graphic novels, mostly in a specific comic book format known as underground comix.-Overview:...
(who had published the original 4th edition of the Principia Discordia
Principia Discordia
Principia Discordia is a Discordian religious text written by Greg Hill and Kerry Thornley . It was originally published under the title "Principia Discordia or How The West Was Lost" in a limited edition of 5 copies in 1965...
in 1970).
A second issue followed in 1990, and a third in March 1991, after which the venture stalled (although several ashcans
Ashcan copy
An ashcan copy is a term that originated in the Golden Age of Comic Books, meant to describe a publication produced solely for legal purposes , and not normally intended for distribution.-Origins:...
of the as yet unpublished Fourth Trip were distributed at comic book conventions
Fan convention
A fan convention, or con , is an event in which fans of a particular film, television series, comic book, actor, or an entire genre of entertainment such as science fiction or anime and manga, gather to participate and hold programs and other events, and to meet experts, famous personalities, and...
in the Detroit and Chicago areas between 1991 and 2006).
Each comic covered one "trip" from the original trilogy, so had further issues followed this pattern, there would have been ten issues in total. The "new first issue" contained a letter from Bob Shea, who had seen the first issue and the materials for the next two. He wrote in part, "I'm delighted. I think it is very faithful to the novel and does a wonderful job of translating the spirit of the novel into a visual medium." The creators of the comic also made an Illuminatus! discussion room on Citadel
Citadel (software)
Citadel is the name of a bulletin board system software program, and of the genre of programs it inspired. Citadels were notable for their room-based structure and relatively heavy emphasis on messages and conversation as opposed to gaming and files...
bulletin board systems.
Influence
The infamous 1980s computer hackerHacker (computer security)
In computer security and everyday language, a hacker is someone who breaks into computers and computer networks. Hackers may be motivated by a multitude of reasons, including profit, protest, or because of the challenge...
Karl Koch
Hagbard (Karl Koch)
Karl Werner Lothar Koch was a German hacker in the 1980s, who called himself "hagbard", after Hagbard Celine. He was involved in a Cold War computer espionage incident.-Biography:...
was heavily influenced by The Illuminatus! Trilogy. Besides adopting the pseudonym "Hagbard" from the character Hagbard Celine
Hagbard Celine
Freeman Hagbard Celine, H.M., S.H. is a central protagonist in the Illuminatus trilogy of books by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson, named after the legendary Viking hero Hagbard who died for love. In the Schrödinger's Cat trilogy, the sequel to Illuminatus!, it is stated that 'Hagbard Celine'...
, he also named his computer "FUCKUP," after a computer designed and built by that character. He was addicted to cocaine and became extremely paranoid, convinced he was fighting the Illuminati like his literary namesake. In 1987 he wrote a rambling seven-page "hacking manifesto of sorts, complete with his theories on Hagbard Celine and the Illuminati." The 1998
1998 in film
-Events:* February 14 - Sharon Stone marries Phil Bronstein.* Former child star Gary Coleman is charged with assaulting a young female bus driver at a California shopping mall.-Top grossing films:...
German motion picture 23
23 (film)
23 is a 1998 German drama thriller film about a young hacker Karl Koch, who died on 23 May 1989, a presumed suicide. It was directed by Hans-Christian Schmid, who also participated in screenwriting. The title derives from the protagonist's obsession with the number 23, a phenomenon often described...
told a dramatized version of his story; Robert Anton Wilson
Robert Anton Wilson
Robert Anton Wilson , known to friends as "Bob", was an American author and polymath who became at various times a novelist, philosopher, psychologist, essayist, editor, playwright, poet, futurist, civil libertarian and self-described agnostic mystic...
appeared as himself.
Card game
A card game is any game using playing cards as the primary device with which the game is played, be they traditional or game-specific. Countless card games exist, including families of related games...
inspired by the trilogy, Illuminati
Illuminati (game)
Illuminati is a standalone card game made by Steve Jackson Games , inspired by The Illuminatus! Trilogy by Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea. The game has ominous secret societies competing with each other to control the world through sinister means, including legal, illegal, and even mystical...
was created by Steve Jackson Games
Steve Jackson Games
Steve Jackson Games is a game company, founded in 1980 by Steve Jackson, that creates and publishes role-playing, board, and card games, and the gaming magazine Pyramid.-History:...
. Using the Illuminatus! books as "spiritual guides but not as actual source material," it incorporated competing conspiracies of the Bavarian Illuminati and Discordians
Discordianism
Discordianism is a religion based on the worship of Eris , the Greco-Roman goddess of strife. It was founded circa 1958–1959 after the publication of its holy book the Principia Discordia, written by Malaclypse the Younger and Omar Khayyam Ravenhurst after a series of shared hallucinations at a...
and others, though no characters or groups specific to the novels. A trading card game (Illuminati: New World Order
Illuminati: New World Order
Illuminati: New World Order is a collectible card game that was released in 1995 by Steve Jackson Games, based on their original boxed game Illuminati, which in turn was inspired by The Illuminatus! Trilogy...
) and role-playing game
Role-playing game
A role-playing game is a game in which players assume the roles of characters in a fictional setting. Players take responsibility for acting out these roles within a narrative, either through literal acting, or through a process of structured decision-making or character development...
supplement (GURPS
GURPS
The Generic Universal RolePlaying System, or GURPS, is a tabletop role-playing game system designed to allow for play in any game setting...
Illuminati) followed. The instruction booklets' bibliographies praise the novel and Wilson particularly, calling Illuminatus! in part "required reading for any conspiracy buff". Robert Shea provided a four-paragraph introduction to the rulebook for the Illuminati Expansion Set 1 (1983), in which he wrote, "Maybe the Illuminati are behind this game. They must be—they are, by definition, behind everything." Despite this initial involvement, Wilson later criticized some of these products for exploiting the Illuminatus! name without paying royalties (taking advantage of what he viewed as a legal loophole).From article In the RAW: Necessary Heresies originally published in REVelation magazine (#13, Autumn, 1995) pp36–40. Available at Disinformation website . Retrieved 28 February 2006.
The Illuminatus Trilogy! is steeped with references to the 1960s popular music scene (at one point a list of 200 fictional bands performing at the Walpurgisnacht rock festival is reeled off (including a handful of actual bands of the 60s), and there are numerous references to the famous rock and roll song, "Rock Around the Clock
Rock Around the Clock
"Rock Around the Clock" is a 12-bar-blues-based song written by Max C. Freedman and James E. Myers in 1952. The best-known and most successful rendition was recorded by Bill Haley and His Comets in 1954...
"), and has influenced many bands and musicians. One of the aliases of anarchic British band The KLF
The KLF
The KLF were one of the seminal bands of the British acid house movement during the late 1980s and early 1990s....
was named after a secret society from the trilogy. They released much of their early material under the name "The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu"/"The JAMMs", cf. "The Justified Ancients of Mummu"/"The JAMs" from the trilogy, and much of their work was Discordian in nature. They mirrored the fictional JAMs' gleeful political tactics of causing chaos and confusion by bringing a direct, humorous but nevertheless revolutionary approach to making records. The American band Machines of Loving Grace
Machines of Loving Grace
Machines of Loving Grace was an industrial rock band from Tucson, Arizona.Named for a Richard Brautigan poem, they formed in 1989. The original lineup consisted of Scott Benzel , Stuart Kupers , and Mike Fisher , with Brad Kemp added shortly thereafter...
took the name of a sex act performed by one of the main characters during a Black Mass
Black Mass
A Black Mass is a ceremony supposedly celebrated during the Witches' Sabbath, which was a sacrilegious parody of the Catholic Mass. Its main objective was the profanation of the host, although there is no agreement among authors on how hosts were obtained or profaned; the most common idea is that...
for the title of their song "Rite of Shiva" on their eponym
Eponym
An eponym is the name of a person or thing, whether real or fictitious, after which a particular place, tribe, era, discovery, or other item is named or thought to be named...
ous album.Scott Benzel talking to Jon Bains in a 1993 interview for Children of Sores . Retrieved 11 March 2006. UK chillout maestro Mixmaster Morris
Mixmaster Morris
Mixmaster Morris is an English ambient DJ and underground musician. Relating specifically to ambient music, Morris stated "It's exactly what you need if you have a busy and stressful life".-Life and career:...
also named his band The Irresistible Force after one that appears at the festival in the last part of the trilogy. Together with Coldcut
Coldcut
Coldcut are an English dance music duo, comprising Matt Black and Jonathan More. Their signature style is electronic dance music, featuring cut up samples of hip hop, breaks, jazz, spoken word and various other types of music, as well as video and multimedia.-1980s:In 1986, computer programmer Matt...
he organised a huge Robert Anton Wilson Memorial Show at the Queen Elizabeth Hall
Queen Elizabeth Hall
The Queen Elizabeth Hall is a music venue on the South Bank in London, United Kingdom that hosts daily classical, jazz, and avant-garde music and dance performances. The QEH forms part of Southbank Centre arts complex and stands alongside the Royal Festival Hall, which was built for the Festival...
in London on 18 March 2007.
In general, The Illuminatus! Trilogy can be credited with popularizing the genre of conspiracy fiction
Conspiracy fiction
The conspiracy thriller is a subgenre of thriller fiction. The protagonists of conspiracy thrillers are often journalists or amateur investigators who find themselves pulling on a small thread which unravels a vast conspiracy that ultimately goes "all the way to the top"...
,Rick Kleffel writing in The Agony Column for 26 August 2002 . Retrieved 11 March 2006. a field later mined by authors like Umberto Eco
Umberto Eco
Umberto Eco Knight Grand Cross is an Italian semiotician, essayist, philosopher, literary critic, and novelist, best known for his novel The Name of the Rose , an intellectual mystery combining semiotics in fiction, biblical analysis, medieval studies and literary theory...
(Foucault's Pendulum) and Dan Brown
Dan Brown
Dan Brown is an American author of thriller fiction, best known for the 2003 bestselling novel, The Da Vinci Code. Brown's novels, which are treasure hunts set in a 24-hour time period, feature the recurring themes of cryptography, keys, symbols, codes, and conspiracy theories...
(Angels and Demons
Angels and Demons
Angels & Demons is a 2000 bestselling mystery-thriller novel written by American author Dan Brown and published by Pocket Books. The novel introduces the character Robert Langdon, who is also the protagonist of Brown's subsequent 2003 novel, The Da Vinci Code, and 2009 novel, The Lost Symbol...
, The Da Vinci Code
The Da Vinci Code
The Da Vinci Code is a 2003 mystery-detective novel written by Dan Brown. It follows symbologist Robert Langdon and Sophie Neveu as they investigate a murder in Paris's Louvre Museum and discover a battle between the Priory of Sion and Opus Dei over the possibility of Jesus having been married to...
, The Lost Symbol), comic book writers like Alan Moore
Alan Moore
Alan Oswald Moore is an English writer primarily known for his work in comic books, a medium where he has produced a number of critically acclaimed and popular series, including Watchmen, V for Vendetta, and From Hell...
(V for Vendetta
V for Vendetta
V for Vendetta is a ten-issue comic book series written by Alan Moore and illustrated mostly by David Lloyd, set in a dystopian future United Kingdom imagined from the 1980s to about the 1990s. A mysterious masked revolutionary who calls himself "V" works to destroy the totalitarian government,...
, Watchmen
Watchmen
Watchmen is a twelve-issue comic book limited series created by writer Alan Moore, artist Dave Gibbons, and colourist John Higgins. The series was published by DC Comics during 1986 and 1987, and has been subsequently reprinted in collected form...
), Dave Sim
Dave Sim
David Victor Sim is an award-winning Canadian comic book writer and artist.A pioneer of self-published comics and creators' rights, Sim is best known as the creator of Cerebus the Aardvark, a comic book published from 1977 to 2004, which chronicles its main character in a 6,000-page self-contained...
(Cerebus) and Grant Morrison
Grant Morrison
Grant Morrison is a Scottish comic book writer, playwright and occultist. He is known for his nonlinear narratives and counter-cultural leanings, as well as his successful runs on titles like Animal Man, Doom Patrol, JLA, The Invisibles, New X-Men, Fantastic Four, All-Star Superman, and...
(The Invisibles
The Invisibles
The Invisibles is a comic book series that was published by the Vertigo imprint of DC Comics from 1994 to 2000. It was created and scripted by Scottish writer Grant Morrison, and drawn by various artists throughout its publication....
), and screenwriters like Chris Carter
Chris Carter (screenwriter)
Christopher Carl Carter is an American screenwriter, film director and producer. He is the creator of The X-Files and Millennium.- Ten Thirteen Productions :...
(The X-Files
The X-Files
The X-Files is an American science fiction television series and a part of The X-Files franchise, created by screenwriter Chris Carter. The program originally aired from to . The show was a hit for the Fox network, and its characters and slogans became popular culture touchstones in the 1990s...
) and Damon Lindelof
Damon Lindelof
Damon Laurence Lindelof is an American television writer and executive, most recently noted as the co-creator and executive producer for the television series Lost. He has written for and produced Crossing Jordan, and wrote for Nash Bridges, Wasteland, and the MTV anthology series Undressed...
(Lost
Lost (TV series)
Lost is an American television series that originally aired on ABC from September 22, 2004 to May 23, 2010, consisting of six seasons. Lost is a drama series that follows the survivors of the crash of a commercial passenger jet flying between Sydney and Los Angeles, on a mysterious tropical island...
). In particular, the regular use of the Illuminati in popular culture
Illuminati in popular culture
Illuminati in popular culture covers how the secret society of the Illuminati founded by Adam Weishaupt in Bavaria in 1776 has been manifested in popular culture, in books and comics, television and movies, games, and music....
as shadowy central puppet masters in this type of fiction can be traced back to their exposure via The Illuminatus! Trilogy.
Editions
- 1975, USA, Dell, Separate editions, The Eye in the Pyramid ISBN 0-440-04688-2, The Golden Apple ISBN 0-440-04691-2 Leviathan ISBN 0-440-14742-5
- 1976–7, UK, SphereSphere Books-History:Founded in 1961, Sphere Books began work on its first publication, the 1962 paperback edition of Gottfried Benn's The Trainee Man. Originally part of The Thomson Corporation, Sphere was sold to Pearson PLC in 1985 and became part of Penguin...
, Separate editions, The Eye in the Pyramid ISBN 0-7221-9208-8, The Golden Apple ISBN 0-7221-9209-6 Leviathan ISBN 0-7221-9211-8 - 1980, USA, Laurel, Separate editions, The Eye in the Pyramid ISBN 0-440-34688-6, The Golden Apple ISBN 0-7221-9209-6, Leviathan ISBN 0-440-34742-4
- 1984, USA, Dell ISBN 0-440-53981-1, Pub date January 1984, Paperback (collected edition)
- 1986, UK, Sphere, Pub date December 1986, Paperback (separate editions), The Eye in the Pyramid ISBN 0-7221-9219-3 The Golden Apple ISBN 0-7221-9222-3 Leviathan ISBN 0-7221-9216-9
- 1988, USA, Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group ISBN 0-440-53981-1, Pub date November 1988, Paperback (collected edition)
- 1998, USA, MJF Books ISBN 1-56731-237-3, Pub date February 1998, Hardback (collected edition)
- 1998, USA, Constable and Robinson ISBN 1-85487-574-4, Pub date July 1998, Paperback (collected edition)
External links
- Robert A. Wilson's website - features excerpts from The Illuminatus! Trilogy.
- Robert Shea's website - features historical information about the book and its writing
- The Illuminatus! Trilogy Wikia
- Buddha Fart Illuminatus! Wiki (run by members of Maybe Logic Academy web site)