Notes on Robert Anton Wilson — Cosmic Trigger I — The Final Secret of the Illuminati (3)
Part 3: The Book of the Mothman
Wilson continues his witty stream of consciousness style bouncing back and forth between subjects and it’s still a really enjoyable read. Also, I’m pretty sure I’m reading a bit ahead and writing about stuff we haven’t discussed yet with Low Society. I blame Kindle. We don’t talk about everything the book says so this is fine, we take it and run in some strange directions.
Except for four or five minutes a week, when the Shaman wonders about all the impossible theories he usually screens out as too melodramatic to be true…
I think if people are being honest with themselves, everyone is like this when it comes to navigating reality. The world is a complex and dangerous place, confusing at most points, and everyone is just kind of figuring out this “life” thing as they go along with differing levels of personal delusion about what they hear, see and read. Facts once hidden are revealed, facts once trusted are reviled, and truth is inevitably as fluid as every individual’s metaprogrammed subjective reality.
Is the Illuminati real? Is there a shadowy organization running the world, possibly for the purpose of preparing for an invasion by extraterrestrial or extradimensional beings? Probably not, but there remains that vanishingly remote possibility and a piece of your mind that keeps the idea there for you to very routinely scoff at.
Are there gods, spirits, demons, angels or aliens influencing events here on earth, visiting us physically or speaking to us through prophets, portents, cards, stars or visions? Probably not, but yet we continue to seek and listen to them. Why? Is it simply a product of our fear of the unknown, or is it something else? Are these beings within or without? There is no way to truly know.
Did the US Government orchestrate a plot to kidnap Governor Kristin Whitmer for the purpose of entrapping members of a right wing militia organization involved in Covid-related public protests, resulting in acquittal for two of the accused, a hung jury for the other two, and a lot of egg on the government’s face? Well, that actually happened, but not very long ago you yourself may well have believed that this was too melodramatic to be true. A conspiracy theory, if you will.
Wilson talks about “The Left” as a CIA op to discredit the authentic “Left” in the 60’s, primarily in the context of Dr. Leary being fucked over by the Justice Dept. I’m not going to go on some long idiot tirade about this here because politics is really fucking tiring for me, but it’s weird how this 60’s counter-culture perspective echoes today’s political environment-The Left as some mutated ouroboros, insatiably devouring itself and irrationally angry at, well, everything all the time.
Keep an open mind.
Watch for snakes.
More about Timothy Leary
A few days later, in discussion with the former Vacaville prison psychologist, Dr. Wesley Hiler, I asked him what he really thought of Dr. Leary’s extraterrestrial contacts. Specifically, since he didn’t regard Leary as crazy or hallucinating, what was happening when Leary thought he was receiving extraterrestrial communications?
“Every man and woman who reaches the higher levels of spiritual and intellectual development,” Dr. Hiler said calmly, “feels the presence of a Higher Intelligence. Our theories are all unproven. Socrates called it his daemon. Others call it gods or angels. Leary calls it extraterrestrial. Maybe it’s just another part of our brain, a part we usually don’t use. Who knows?”
As I’ve described in previous notes, I agree with Dr. Hiler’s view on this. After reading a mountain of books and listening on countless occasions to the insights of clergy, mystics, artists, anthropologists, friends, family and colleagues, I would dearly love there to be some Higher Intelligence we are talking to and that is talking to us from the mouths of neurotic oracles in cryptic symbolism. I don’t care where it is from. Whatever people are seeing during their own mystic journeys, I think there is a general belief that there is something we do not understand that drives us to seek mystic experience in its many myriad forms. I just don’t know if any of it is true outside of ourselves, and I don’t know that it matters either way.
A lot of time devoted again to the trials and tribulations of Dr. Leary, with more specific details of his treatment by the US Justice System. Leary came to believe his defense team were all government double-agents, and claimed he never informed on the Weather Underground or DSA or any other revolutionary group. I don’t need to believe Dr. Leary’s stories to think that he probably wouldn’t be doing all that time if he was an informant.
“I’ve learned a lot about mammalian politics,” Tim says. “I’ve held my own in dealing with the Justice Department, the narcs, the FBI, the CIA, Weather Underground, Al Fatah in Algiers, the local cops in dozens of states, prison guards and administrators in 29 prisons on 3 continents, and all the prison gangs of the California Archipelago-the Manson crowd, the Aryan Brotherhood, the JDL, the Black Muslims, the Mexican and Sicilian Mafias . . . No other social psychologist has had this kind of practical field experience with groups who will kill you in a minute if you show weakness. This has been the greatest educational experience of my life.”
That’s certainly an interesting way to look at imprisonment, Doctor. I don’t know if it’s healthy to be that Zen about it.
Wilson also circles back to the eternal search for immortality noted previously and more adventures with Kerry Thornley, his friend and fellow Discordian who started conspiracy theories about the JFK assassination to help his old friend Lee Oswald then started to believe them, eventually turning on virtually everyone in his life in a disturbing spiral of persecutory paranoia. I feel sorry for the guy.
The Mothman Prophecies
I had never bothered to read any specifics about this phenomenon before because the movie was just awful and “UFO” sightings of these kind are almost universally the most ridiculous hysterical bullshit ever. Journalist John Keel wrote his book The Mothman Prophecies about a mass report of UFOs, extraterrestrials, cattle mutilations and increased encounters with a local legendary xenomorph known as The Mothman, an enormous anthropomorphic figure with giant red eyes and huge moth wings in the hills of West Virginia. Along with these came reports of strange Men in Black suits driving Black Cadillacs lurking about, I assume doing inscrutable MiB things. There were numerous reports of direct contact with extraterrestrials in the area, and Mr. Keels found a pattern to the things that contactees were told, assumedly by the aliens and/or the enigmatic Mothman, were predictions of things to come:
He would not, but a year later he was stabbed in Manila
This happened. Kennedy was shot dead in a hotel kitchen in 1968
This last one didn’t happen either, but Kell claimed it was fulfilled when a local bridge fell down at the behest of malign forces he referred to as “ultraterrestrials.” Kell believed these ultraterrestrials were behind the sightings and are dangerous malevolent beings. Disappointing, I really like the sound of the word ultraterrestrials.
It does sound, as Wilson says, like a type of contagious mass hysteria. However, alternatively, we could also say that some capricious aliens who hate cows but love Catholics and Democrats tried in vain to warn Kennedy not to visit the Ambassador Hotel.
Personally, I find it far more believable that there is some ultraterrestrial trickster spirit behind this than the idea that malevolent superhumanoids from space arrived to harass rural West Virginia in an effort to save the life of an ultra-rich liberal politician. Call me weird if you like.
First there is a mountain.
Then there is no mountain.
Then there is.
Birthday Book of the Law, Egyptian Gods and Mystery Babalon
Wilson quotes from the 3rd chapter of Crowley’s primary text The Book of the Law in a somewhat disjointed way I find annoying, tying together 2 verses far apart from each other out of context:
3: Now let it be first understood that I am a god of War and of Vengeance. I shall deal hardly with them.
The next verse immediately following: “4: Choose ye an island!”
Wilson mashes this with the following:
46: I am the warrior Lord of the Forties: the Eighties cower before me, & are abased. I will bring you to victory & joy: I will be at your arms in battle & ye shall delight to slay. Success is your proof; courage is your armour; go on, go on, in my strength; & ye shall turn not back for any!
The Law was written before WW1, but it’s easy to see why one might think verse 46 is prescient. The God of War surely ruled the 1940’s, but I’m not sure he ruled the abased 1980’s — I think rather that the 80’s was ruled primarily by the Root of Earth aka the Ace of Disks: pure amoral materialism.
Briefly, The Book of the Law was written in 1904 after he and his wife visited the Boulak Museum in Cairo and his wife Rose, a spirit medium, began having visions of the god Horus. Soon after, Crowley was visited by a spirit known as Aiwass “minister of Hoor-Pa-Kraat” who dictated the Book to him over the course of 3 days for one hour each in a “rich baritone voice” very unlike the voice from Sirius that Wilson describes, but alike in being experienced as a prophetic voice from an nonhuman entity. An experience that sounds very much the sort of thing that Crowley commented on in his own words:
Diverse as these statements are at first sight all agree in announcing an experience of the class which fifty years ago would have been called supernatural, today may be called spiritual, and fifty years hence will have a proper name based on an understanding of the phenomenon which occurred
The conclusion from where we’re crashing at Chapel Perilous being that the source of these mystical experiences is coming from somewhere in the direction of the Sirius star system.
It is the anniversary of Crowley’s writing of The Book of the Law as I finalize these notes, and it is traditional for some that at this time one should read the 3 chapters of the book over 3 days, the time it took for him to record the angel’s words. If you have not read The Law you should even if you aren’t into Crowley, it’s quite short and has at worst some beautiful poetry (make sure you pay attention to the comment/warning at the end of it). A few passages to honor its original writing 118 years ago today, first from the opening of the book, beautiful and simple:
Had! The manifestation of Nuit.
The unveiling of the company of heaven.
Every man and every woman is a star.
Every number is infinite; there is no difference.
I love this passage. Every man and woman is a star, all are heavenly in their essence, divinity lies in all peoples great and small. There is no inherent evil in humanity, there is only responsible and irresponsible manifestation of Will. We are consumed by numbers, though we know not how they connect to the universe, what they are, or why they are. We know only that they are descriptive, and that they have power and that they lie in some metaphysical realm outside of ourselves.
Invoke me under my stars! Love is the law, love under will. Nor let the fools mistake love; for there are love and love. There is the dove, and there is the serpent. Choose ye well! He, my prophet, hath chosen, knowing the law of the fortress, and the great mystery of the House of God.
All these old letters of my Book are aright; but [Tzaddi] is not the Star. This also is secret: my prophet shall reveal it to the wise.
This is a passage that’s a bit confusing to some for good reason. Since the writing of The Law Crowley published numerous texts expounding on Magick and the Thoth Tarot, and my copy of Liber 777 attributes The Star as being the Hebrew letter Tzaddi or key #28 in Aquarius, instead of the key letter He #15 in Aries.
The card itself as you can see at the bottom of the the image near the end of this document does not use the letter Tzaddi [צ] and Aries, it uses the letter He [ה] and Aquarius. Crowley’s answer was to just correct the correspondences, swapping paths 15 and 28 with Atu IV: The Emperor. He simply did what she said and made it right, sticking it to the Golden Dawn who maintains that it is in path 28 as listed in Liber 777. The meaning of the card is essentially unchanged.
We have nothing with the outcast and the unfit: let them die in their misery. For they feel not. Compassion is the vice of kings: stamp down the wretched & the weak: this is the law of the strong: this is our law and the joy of the world. Think not, o king, upon that lie: That Thou Must Die: verily thou shalt not die, but live. Now let it be understood: If the body of the King dissolve, he shall remain in pure ecstasy for ever. Nuit! Hadit! Ra-Hoor-Khuit! The Sun, Strength & Sight, Light; these are for the servants of the Star & the Snake.
Be strong, do not let your Will be swayed by the tears of those that revel in their oppressed alienation. Do not believe their lies and live O King, for if you fall into their trap you will surely die apart from heaven. (The three gods Nuit, Hadit and Ra-Hoor-Khuit are the divine voices behind the words channeled by Aiwass, one behind each chapter respectively)
The dissolving of the King who remains in ecstasy reminds me of The Tower, atop which we are taught the wisdom of Shiva the Destroyer, who dances on the skulls of her beloved:
All manifestations, however glorious, however delightful, are stains. To achieve perfection, all existing things must be annihilated.
(The Book of Thoth)
I meditate often on this perfect and holy oblivion.
But your holy place shall be untouched throughout the centuries: though with fire and sword it be burnt down & shattered, yet an invisible house there standeth, and shall stand until the fall of the Great Equinox; when Hrumachis shall arise and the double-wanded one assume my throne and place. Another prophet shall arise, and bring fresh fever from the skies; another woman shall awake the lust & worship of the Snake; another soul of God and beast shall mingle in the globed priest; another sacrifice shall stain the tomb; another king shall reign; and blessing no longer be poured To the Hawk-headed mystical Lord!
Ominous, like much in the 3rd chapter of The Law. Chapter 3 is intentionally shocking, Ra-Hoor-Khu lets off a torrent of horrifying imagery with what I believe to be the intent of attacking the reader’s social programming. Though your holy places be destroyed they remain holy, and there will remain an invisible temple untouchable by man. The Temple of the Heart and the Soul and the Feminine Mystery.
Wilson states that in Kenneth Grant’s Magical Revival, it is claimed that Sirius is represented by the tarot card The Star. The Golden Dawn and their erstwhile descendants the Thelemites would agree, and they give a lot of compelling reasons why Sirius is the Egyptian goddess Nuit, the spiritual essence of The Star and the source of the words channeled by Aiwass in chapter one of The Book of the Law.
Atu XVII: The Star
Key 15 He ה “Window” (Aquarius)
Lies between Chokmah(Wisdom) and Tiphareth(Beauty) on the Tree of Life, it is called the Constituting Intelligence, so called because it constitutes the substance of creation in pure darkness, and men have spoken of these contemplations; it is that darkness spoken of in scripture, Job xxxviii. 9, “and thick darkness a swaddling band for it..
[Job 38:9 When I made the cloud the garment thereof / and thick darkness a swaddling band for it]
The Star is Nuit herself, materialized as a beautiful goddess figure emerged from where she dwells in the mysteries of Binah(Understanding), she is also the gods Isis (and her precursor Sopdet), Shiva, Athena, Minerva and Mars. It is the card representing the power of consecration. The Star represents hope or help from unexpected places, blessings without sacrifice but for the sacrifice of Love and spiritual insight.
Sirius burns brightly above the manifest image of the goddess, in its light she is no longer an abstraction. She empties two cups from either hand, one above, one below, representing the life-giving breasts (“the milk of the stars from her paps; yea, the milk of the stars from her paps.” — Upon her head she pours out Love and material blessings (milk/oil/blood). Upon the junction of Earth and Water she pours the water of Nepenthe, Ambrosia, the nectar of the source of the Holy Grail, the essence of her divinity with all the possibilities of existence, the water of Binah. Venus the light of Love burns behind her before a dully burning celestial globe above a blasted featureless desert landscape.
I hold that Sirius (Sothis/Sopdet) is also related to Atu VII: The Chariot as it lies in Cancer and shares some similar meanings and correspondences. This is not a contradiction, this is beautiful and complementary. The Star with The Chariot add complexity to its mystery: the blessed Nuit reveals herself in Apollo’s Fire of Water in the upper reaches of the Tree of Life as she emerges from her home in the womb of Binah. The Chariot represents the expression of Will, a symbol of life, hope, creation — The Star represents hope, blessings, help from unknown places.
Perhaps beings from that big bright Star I’ve admired since I was a little boy at my father’s side in the darkness watching and naming the stars, constellations and other objects in the sky really are the source of magic. Who knows? What I do know is that if that is so, that the universe is either much more interesting or infinitely more terrifying.
Next we’ll talk about Sufis, Parables, and the 8 Brains of Dr. Leary
Also coming soon are my notes from riding a Siberian shamanic drum in college in 1993, a couple more tarot readings and part of an ongoing log I call An Accounting of Objects
Originally published at https://dissidenttower.substack.com on April 10, 2022.
