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As 1960s counterculture morphed into the me-decade of the 1970s, part of any hip library was the Illuminatus trilogy, whose co-author, Robert Anton Wilson, has died aged 74.
Post-polio syndrome had weakened his legs and a fall confined him to bed. The trilogy - Eye Of The Pyramid, Golden Apple, and Leviathan, all published in 1975 and co-written with Robert Shea, who died in 1994 - grew out of their experience as editors at Playboy, particularly from the Playboy Forum, readers' letters which they answered and occasionally wrote. The steady stream of conspiracy theories they received inspired them to detail the battle of the Bavarian Illuminati, secret controllers of the world, against the Discordians, whose embrace of chaos may have owed more than a little to the paranoid uses of entropy in the fiction of Thomas Pynchon.
Illuminatus brilliantly incorporated elements from the cult literature of the time: borrowing elements of Colin Wilson, Philip K Dick (and his SF pulp predecessors), Flann O'Brien, Carlos Casteneda, Timothy Leary and Kurt Vonnegut in a mix both knowingly tongue-in-cheek and pseudo-intellectually challenging. It was also funny. "My goal," said Wilson, "is to try to get people into a state of generalised agnosticism, not about God alone but agnosticism about everything."
Born in Brooklyn, Wilson contracted polio as a child and felt the effects throughout his life. He studied engineering and mathematics at Brooklyn Polytechnic and then New York University, but engineering soon gave way to sales, then to copywriting and freelance journalism, most notably in Paul Krassner's early counterculture journal The Realist. He was hired as an associate editor at Playboy in 1965, perhaps because of his Realist cover story "Timothy Leary and the Psychological H-Bomb".
Playboy at the time saw itself at the cutting edge of the new liberated lifestyle. It is interesting to see, in the progression of the four books he wrote while working there (Playboy's Book of Fabulous Words, Sex and Drugs: A Journey Beyond Limits, Sex Magicians and The Book of the Beast), a presaging of the concerns of Illuminatus, and the conceptual leap the trilogy made, from consumer lifestyle in the direction of a philosophical world view, no matter how facetious. Published as paperback originals, they were a cult hit. Never bestsellers, they have remained in print ever since. Their biggest impact in this country came when Ken Campbell's Science Fiction Theatre of Liverpool adapted the trilogy for the stage. The 10-hour epic debuted in 1976, then became the first presentation of the National Theatre's Cottesloe in 1977.
Wilson followed up with the autobiographical Cosmic Trigger: Final Secrets of the Illuminati, which included encounters with extraterrestrials while under the influence of peyote and mescaline. He would produce two more volumes of the Cosmic Trigger, in 1991 and 1995. Where he had fun with the conspiracies of Illuminatus, in his non-fiction he pursued the revelation of a parallel kind of secret control, the way society acts to restrain individual consciousness, and the search for freedom through expanding that consciousness. Drugs played an important role. He collaborated with Leary on two books, Neuropolitics (1978) and The Game of Life (1979) reflecting those concerns, but he also practised what he preached.
A prodigious smoker of marijuana, he once told Krassner that he wrote the first draft of each book "straight, the second stoned, then straight, then stoned, and so on, until I'm absolutely delighted with every sentence. Or until irate editors start reminding me about deadlines, whichever comes first." Marijuana also helped with the effects of polio, and as they worsened he became an advocate for its medical use.
His best science fiction was the Schroedinger's Cat trilogy (1980-81), which brought quantum physics into the mix. Illuminatus became a sort of alternative franchise: The Illuminati Papers (1980), Masks Of The Illuminati (1981) and another trilogy, The Historical Illuminatus Chronicles (1982, 85, 91) all followed. His dissertation for a PhD in psychology from the unaccredited Paidea University was published as Prometheus Rising (1983). Other works included a play, Wilhelm Reich In Hell (1987), Quantum Psychology (1990), and Everything Is Under Control: An Encyclopedia Of Conspiracy Theories (1998). Among many projects, all of which generated writing, recordings, websites and followings, were the Church of the Sub-Genius, the Association for Consciousness Exploration and E-Prime, dedicated to the elimination of the verb "to be" from the language in favour of something less definitive.
When his last illness became terminal, he was bombarded with financial support from readers. He paraphrased comedian Jack Benny to thank them, saying: "I do not deserve this, but I also have severe leg problems and I don't deserve them either." His last posting on his website said: "I look forward without dogmatic optimism but without dread. I love you all and I deeply implore you to keep the lasagna flying."
He married the writer Arlen Riley in 1958; she died in 1999. He is survived by a son and two daughters; a third daughter was killed in 1976 during a robbery.
John Higgs writes: When I visited Robert Anton Wilson in December 2004, he looked frail. From photographs I was expecting a stocky, round-faced man, but the Bob I met was thinner in the face, which gave his ever-smiling eyes more prominence. His white beard had grown long and gave him the look of a Taoist sage. His voice was weak but this did not matter, for his mind was sharp and witty and what he said was worth listening to.
In conversation, you realised how liberating his brand of agnosticism is. By not believing in anything he was free to examine everything. To Bob, everything was interesting. This openness was life-affirming because he did not shut himself off from the good and the humour in things. His pleasure in wild ideas may have sidelined him as a contemporary thinker, but his approach was an antidote to fundamentalism. For Bob, fixed belief was intellectual suicide, and the framing of an argument into only two competing sides was absurd. He is gone but, I think, there is still much we will learn from him.
· Robert Anton Wilson, writer, born January 18 1932; died January 11 2007
It’s the conspiracy theory to dwarf all conspiracy theories. A smorgasbord of every other intrigue under the sun, the Illuminati are the supposed overlords controlling the world’s affairs, operating secretly as they seek to establish a New World Order.
But this far-fetched paranoia all started with a playful work of fiction in the 1960s. What does this tell us about our readiness to believe what we read and hear – and what can the Illuminati myth reveal about the fake news and stories we continue to be influenced by today?
When most people try to look into the secret society’s history, they find themselves in Germany with the Enlightenment-era Order of the Illuminati. It was a Bavarian secret society, founded in 1776, for intellectuals to privately group together and oppose the religious and elitist influence over daily life. It included several well-known progressives at the time but, along with the Freemasons, they found themselves gradually outlawed by conservative and Christian critics and the group faded out of existence.
That is, until the 1960s. The Illuminati that we’ve come to hear about today is hardly influenced by the Bavarians at all, as I learned from author and broadcaster David Bramwell, a man who has dedicated himself to documenting the origins of the myth. Instead, an era of counter-culture mania, LSD and interest in Eastern philosophy is largely responsible for the group’s (totally unsubstantiated) modern incarnation. It all began somewhere amid the Summer of Love and the hippie phenomenon, when a small, printed text emerged: Principia Discordia.
The book was, in a nutshell, a parody text for a parody faith – Discordianism – conjured up by enthusiastic anarchists and thinkers to bid its readers to worship Eris, goddess of chaos. The Discordian movement was ultimately a collective that wished to cause civil disobedience, practical jokes and hoaxes.
The text itself never amounted to anything more than a counter-culture curiosity, but one of the tenets of the faith – that such miscreant activities could bring about social change and force individuals to question the parameters of reality – was immortalised by one writer, Robert Anton Wilson.
According to Bramwell, Wilson and one of the authors of the Principia Discordia, Kerry Thornley, “decided that the world was becoming too authoritarian, too tight, too closed, too controlled”. They wanted to bring chaos back into society to shake things up, and “the way to do that was to spread disinformation. To disseminate misinformation through all portals – through counter culture, through the mainstream media, through whatever means. And they decided they would do that initially by telling stories about the Illuminati.”
At the time, Wilson worked for the men’s magazine Playboy. He and Thornley started sending in fake letters from readers talking about this secret, elite organisation called the Illuminati. Then they would send in more letters – to contradict the letters they had just written.
“So, the concept behind this was that if you give enough contrary points of view on a story, in theory – idealistically – the population at large start looking at these things and think, ‘hang on a minute’,” says Bramwell. “They ask themselves, ‘Can I trust how the information is presented to me?’ It’s an idealistic means of getting people to wake up to the suggested realities that they inhabit – which of course didn’t happen quite in the way they were hoping.”
The chaos of the Illuminati myth did indeed travel far and wide – Wilson and another Playboy writer wrote The Illuminatus! Trilogy which attributed the ‘cover-ups’ of our times – such as who shot John F Kennedy – to the Illuminati. The books became such a surprise cult success that they were made into a stage play in Liverpool, launching the careers of British actors Bill Nighy and Jim Broadbent.
British electronic band The KLF also called themselves The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu, named after the band of Discordians that infiltrate the Illuminati in Wilson’s trilogy as they were inspired by the religion’s anarchic ideology. Then, an Illuminati role-playing card game appeared in 1975 which imprinted its mystical world of secret societies onto a whole generation.
Today, it’s one of the world’s most widely punted conspiracy theories; even celebrities like Jay-Z and Beyoncé have taken on the symbolism of the group themselves, raising their hands into the Illuminati triangle at concerts. It’s hardly instigated the mind-blowing epiphany – the realisation that it’s all fake – which the proponents of Discordianism had originally intended.
The 60s culture of mini-publishers and zines seems terrifically distant now from today’s globalised, hyper-connected internet, and it has undeniably been the internet’s propensity to share and propagate Illuminati rumours on websites like 4chan and Reddit that has brought the idea the fame it has today.
But we live in a world that is full of conspiracy theories and, more importantly, conspiracy theory believers; in 2015, political scientists discovered that about half of the general public in the USA endorse at least one conspiracy theory. These include anything from the Illuminati to the Obama ‘birther’ conspiracy, or the widely held belief that 9/11 was an inside job carried out by US intelligence services.
Conspiracy theorists believe signs on the US dollar bill point to Illuminati influence (Credit: Alamy)
“There’s no one profile of a conspiracy theorist,” says Viren Swami, professor of social psychology at Anglia Ruskin University. “There are different perspectives of why people believe in these theories, and they’re not necessarily mutually exclusive – so the simplest form of explanation is that people who believe in conspiracy theories are suffering from some sort of psychopathology.”
Another conclusion researchers have drawn to is that these theories could provide rational ways of understanding events that are confusing or threatening to self esteem. “They give you a very simple explanation,” adds Swami, who published research in 2016 that found believers in conspiracy theories are more likely to be suffering from stressful experiences than non-believers. Other psychologists also discovered last year that people with higher levels of education are less likely to believe in conspiracy theories.
The picture that this paints of modern America is a dark one, especially for Swami who has seen a change in who normally promotes conspiracy material. “Particularly in South Asia, conspiracy theories have been a mechanism for the government to control the people. In the West, it’s typically been the opposite; they’ve been the subject of people who lack agency, who lack power, and it’s their lacking of power that gives rise to conspiracy theories to challenge the government. Like with 9/11. If people lack power, conspiracy theories can sow the seeds of social protest and allow people to ask questions.
“The big change now is that politicians, particularly Donald Trump, are starting to use conspiracies to mobilise support.”
The 45th President of the United States was a notorious “birther”, regularly speaking to the media about how President Obama wasn’t really born in Hawaii. He also accused various US states of voter fraud after the 2016 election and his campaign team were responsible for propagating now debunked fabricated stories such as Pizzagate and the Bowling Green Massacre.
I asked Swami if he thought that this shift in conspiracy theory usage could affect politics long term. “People could become disengaged with mainstream politics if they believe in conspiracy theories,” said Swami. “They’re much more likely to engage with fringe politics. They’re also much more likely to engage with racist, xenophobic and extremist views.”
The idea of an untouchable, secretive elite must resonate with people that feel left behind and powerless; Trump said he wanted to represent these people, especially the once-powerful industrial landscape of America’s Rust Belt. Yet instead of feeling better represented in the halls of power by a non-politician like themselves – and theoretically being less likely to feel powerless and vulnerable to conspiracies – it seems like some in America are more likely to believe in stories like the Illuminati more than ever before.
“If Wilson was alive today, he’d be part delighted, part shocked”, says David Bramwell. “As far as they thought in the 60s, culture was a little too tight. At present, it feels like things are loose. They’re unravelling.
“Perhaps more stability will come as people fight against ‘fake news’ and propaganda. We’re starting to understand how social media is feeding us ideas we want to believe. Echo chambers.”
In fact, The "Illuminati" are mostly rich frat boys who promote their own myth as the "PayPal Mafia", "The Deep State" and the "Tech Illuminati". They are the execs at Google, Facebook, Tesla, etc. who, in fact are not "untouchable elite super minds". They are, in fact, only one FBI search warrant away from their own down-fall.
