Chaos Theory

[The Great Pope of OUTSIDE]

As for using the PD, or Wikipedia to hope to mount a view of reality... its probably a bad idea. There are some good ideas in the PD, but remember the book is a mirror, you'll see far more of yourself than the Universe there.

I kinda figured that. I actually have a totally different set of beliefs not really related to Discordianism at all, which is what I tend to believe when it comes to the universe and the metaphysical. I find Discordianism relates a lot better to humanity and to me personally than it does to God the Universe and Everything. Mostly I'm just trying to figure out where you all stand on the subject.

My opinion on beliefs is that they're generally a bad idea. But then I read too much Robert Anton Wilson so that may account for it.

My opinion is that all my beliefs are probably wrong but I'll keep them until I'm proven wrong, and then I'll change them, but the one belief I won't change is that humanity is a fucked up and highly entertaining species.

[Golden Applesauce]

First introduction to Discordianism was through Wiki, and although it and PD itself were rather clear on some things, the Chaos Theory was not one of them.

Ima talk about real Chaos Theory, since I know a little about that.

Chaos Theory describes systems where making proportionally smaller changes in the initial conditions doesn't cause proportionally smaller changes in the outcome.  That sentence is horribly muddled, and I'm not sure how to reword it for clarity so I'll give an example:

You're shooting a bow at a regular archery target some distance away.  Also you are in deep space, so there is no air resistance or little gusts of wind or whatever.  The arrow will fly in a straight line in the direction you shoot it.

So you shoot the arrow, aiming it almost directly at the center of the target.  If you know you're off by less than +/- 10 degrees in any direction, you can draw a cone of possible trajectories.  If you improve your precision so that your aim is only off by +/- 1 degree, then you can draw a much smaller cone of possible places your arrow can go.  The more precisely you know how you are aiming, the better you can predict where the arrow is going to go - smaller changes to the initial conditions (how you're aiming) make proportionally smaller changes to the final condition (where the arrow goes.)  This is a non-chaotic system.

Now suppose you're shooting this arrow at the point of a real cone.  If you are off even the tiniest bit to the right, the arrow will strike the right side of the cone and bounce of to the right; if you're off a bit to the left, the arrow will hit the left side and bounce off to that side.  Here's the thing: knowing how precisely are aiming does no longer tells you where the arrow will go.  If you know that your aim is within +/- .001 degrees of straight towards the point of the cone, you know the arrow will strike the cone pretty dang close to the point - but not on which side of the point it will hit, and therefore you can't predict which way it will bounce.  No matter how precisely you know the arrow's initial trajectory, you can't guess with better than 50% accuracy which way it will bounce once it hits the cone.  It's fundamentally unknown.  Deterministic models can't predict which way it will go.  A god who knows absolutely everything about the arrow and target in the present doesn't know much about the position of the arrow in the future.  This is a chaotic system.

tl;dr : Laplace's Demon is useless at predicting the weather.  Because weather is chaotic, and that means no matter how accurately we know the temperature and humidity of every cubic centimeter of atmosphere, we can't tell where it will be raining in two weeks.

[Cramulus]

It makes for a great unification (of sorts) but does there really need to be something that encompasses everything, if it's really just everything anyway, without a separate intelligence of any sort?

It helps to have a word for everything

we use the word chaos

other people call it OM

or Tao

or God or whatever

it really depends on what parts of it you emphasize, what metaphors you use to describe it

what we (I) want to emphasize in the CTC is that there is a much larger world than the one you can perceive. In trying to understand this chaos, we have to make up models and explanations. It's how we make sense of the world. In the Discordian framework we pay attention to the order and disorder. But those things (order and disorder) are interchangable in many ways, and only as real as they are useful. The "wise spag", the free thinker, the guy escaping fromthe black iron prison, needs to focus on chaos, on the world outside of his perceptions, in order to escape the traps laid by order and disorder.

[Golden Applesauce]

As for using the PD, or Wikipedia to hope to mount a view of reality... its probably a bad idea. There are some good ideas in the PD, but remember the book is a mirror, you'll see far more of yourself than the Universe there.

I kinda figured that. I actually have a totally different set of beliefs not really related to Discordianism at all, which is what I tend to believe when it comes to the universe and the metaphysical. I find Discordianism relates a lot better to humanity and to me personally than it does to God the Universe and Everything. Mostly I'm just trying to figure out where you all stand on the subject.

My opinion on beliefs is that they're generally a bad idea. But then I read too much Robert Anton Wilson so that may account for it.

My opinion is that all my beliefs are probably wrong but I'll keep them until I'm proven wrong, and then I'll change them, but the one belief I won't change is that humanity is a fucked up and highly entertaining species.

Weirdly enough, the more you treat people as if they are all fucked up, the more fucked up they actually act.

[The Great Pope of OUTSIDE]

Hey, I actually treat people nicely, thank you very much. Unlike some people on here I'm not going to say mean things unless I'm joking. Mostly I'm just extremely interested in people's stories, which is why I think everyone is messed up in some way or another, but even still it's cool, cuz if you aren't messed up somehow then you're pretty much downright boring. But there are a lot of people who are actually really interesting, and it's those people I want to know. Thanks for clearing up the math portion of the Chaos Theory, that was really helpful.

It makes for a great unification (of sorts) but does there really need to be something that encompasses everything, if it's really just everything anyway, without a separate intelligence of any sort?

It helps to have a word for everything

Sure it may help, but do you really NEED it when Chaos itself doesn't have a separate entity and is really just everything else? Why not let everything else stand for itself, and not try to combine it all into one thing when it isn't?

[Kai]

http://www.principiadiscordia.com/forum/index.php?topic=26349.0 For further reference to definitions of Chaos versus Cosmos.

[Golden Applesauce]

It makes for a great unification (of sorts) but does there really need to be something that encompasses everything, if it's really just everything anyway, without a separate intelligence of any sort?

It helps to have a word for everything

Sure it may help, but do you really NEED it when Chaos itself doesn't have a separate entity and is really just everything else? Why not let everything else stand for itself, and not try to combine it all into one thing when it isn't?

The position that the Universe is Chaos not a linguistic position - that the two words both refer to the same thing - but a philosophical statement about the nature of the universe.  Most religions hold that the universe existed in a state of primordial Chaos (or just didn't exist) and then a creator god carves order into Chaos, creating the Cosmos (= ordered universe).  The Chaos the Discordians talk about is that kind of chaos, not just miscellaneous disorder (which is why we say that Chaos is composed of order and disorder.)  To say that the Universe is Chaos is to deny that a creator (or the big bang or whatever) created Cosmos out of Chaos and affirm that the universe is still in the primordial state.  "Order" and "Disorder" are just ways of viewing / arranging the primal Chaos. 

An anarchist might say that In The Beginning (of humankind, anyway) people used to be gloriously free in a perfect social order that imposed laws on no one (a primordial state) but that with the invention of government, laws, and money the primordial state was transformed into one of oppression, strife, and artificial scarcity.

A progressive might say that In The Beginning, humans lived nasty, brutish, and short lives in a constant struggle against, well, everything and that with the invention of cooperation, government, and society, they transformed that primordial state into one of harmony, peace, and longer lifespans.

A Discordian says that in the beginning, people were people.  In the present, they still are.  (Then he'll probably give either the progressive or the anarchist argument just for the hell of it.)

[The Great Pope of OUTSIDE]

http://www.principiadiscordia.com/forum/index.php?topic=26349.0 For further reference to definitions of Chaos versus Cosmos.

That was pretty helpful (and thankee much for the link), but unless I'm mistaken or missed something, that thread still didn't really clear up what chaos is and what it should be applied to. Although it does help explain a lot about Cosmos.

The position that the Universe is Chaos not a linguistic position - that the two words both refer to the same thing - but a philosophical statement about the nature of the universe.  Most religions hold that the universe existed in a state of primordial Chaos (or just didn't exist) and then a creator god carves order into Chaos, creating the Cosmos (= ordered universe).  The Chaos the Discordians talk about is that kind of chaos, not just miscellaneous disorder (which is why we say that Chaos is composed of order and disorder.)  To say that the Universe is Chaos is to deny that a creator (or the big bang or whatever) created Cosmos out of Chaos and affirm that the universe is still in the primordial state.  "Order" and "Disorder" are just ways of viewing / arranging the primal Chaos. 

Then if all the Universe is still Chaos, why do we have a Cosmos?

[LMNO]

I think you're veering into semantics.  Which is fine, so long as you recognize it.

Let's start from a slightly different point.  In order to understand when I use the word Chaos as a Discordian term (let's call it "Chaos^D") rather than in a Mathematical ("Chaos^M") or mundane way ("Chaos^Cabbage"), we should start with the (An)Eristic Illusions.

The (An)Eristic Illusions state that humans, being pattern-making creatures, look at all the stuff in the experiential Universe and try to find patterns.  If they can make a pattern, they call it "Order".  If they can't find a pattern, they call it "Disorder."  The larger point being, that both Order and Disorder are created by the observer, and are therefore Illusions.

So, as a Discordian, I realize that even though Order and Disorder are Illusions, the stuff that lies beyond them are not. 

There is Something that exists,
beyond the Illusions of Order and Disorder.

Again, as a Discordian, I realize that I am a pattern maker, and so want to call that Something, well... something.

For lack of a better name, I call It "Chaos".

Here is where we enter into semantics.  Because the (An)Eristic Illusions try to organize what it perceives, and yet are also Illusions, then if Chaos is to encompas it all, it must also allow for the impossible.

At dinner parties, I claim It is everything Possible and Impossible.

Some people might call this "God", but that's an organizing concept; "God" is an idea of Order which, as you know, is an Illusion.

When asked why not call It "god",
I point out that their head is too fucking small.

By calling all the stuff in which we try to find patterns a name which itself recognizes our thought process, we can better grasp what we're trying to say.

Which is why calling it "god", "cosmos", "Universe", or "stuff" just isn't the same.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

As for using the PD, or Wikipedia to hope to mount a view of reality... its probably a bad idea. There are some good ideas in the PD, but remember the book is a mirror, you'll see far more of yourself than the Universe there.

I kinda figured that. I actually have a totally different set of beliefs not really related to Discordianism at all, which is what I tend to believe when it comes to the universe and the metaphysical. I find Discordianism relates a lot better to humanity and to me personally than it does to God the Universe and Everything. Mostly I'm just trying to figure out where you all stand on the subject.

My opinion on beliefs is that they're generally a bad idea. But then I read too much Robert Anton Wilson so that may account for it.

My opinion is that all my beliefs are probably wrong but I'll keep them until I'm proven wrong, and then I'll change them, but the one belief I won't change is that humanity is a fucked up and highly entertaining species.

Similar, I just tend to call them ideas rather than beliefs:

"These are the best ideas I got at the moment..."

[The Great Pope of OUTSIDE]

I think you're veering into semantics.  Which is fine, so long as you recognize it.

Let's start from a slightly different point.  In order to understand when I use the word Chaos as a Discordian term (let's call it "ChaosD") rather than in a Mathematical ("ChaosM") or mundane way ("ChaosCabbage"), we should start with the (An)Eristic Illusions.

The (An)Eristic Illusions state that humans, being pattern-making creatures, look at all the stuff in the experiential Universe and try to find patterns.  If they can make a pattern, they call it "Order".  If they can't find a pattern, they call it "Disorder."  The larger point being, that both Order and Disorder are created by the observer, and are therefore Illusions.

So, as a Discordian, I realize that even though Order and Disorder are Illusions, the stuff that lies beyond them are not.

There is Something that exists,
beyond the Illusions of Order and Disorder.

Again, as a Discordian, I realize that I am a pattern maker, and so want to call that Something, well... something.

For lack of a better name, I call It "Chaos".

Here is where we enter into semantics.  Because the (An)Eristic Illusions try to organize what it perceives, and yet are also Illusions, then if Chaos is to encompas it all, it must also allow for the impossible.

At dinner parties, I claim It is everything Possible and Impossible.

Some people might call this "God", but that's an organizing concept; "God" is an idea of Order which, as you know, is an Illusion.

When asked why not call It "god",
I point out that their head is too fucking small.

By calling all the stuff in which we try to find patterns a name which itself recognizes our thought process, we can better grasp what we're trying to say.

Which is why calling it "god", "cosmos", "Universe", or "stuff" just isn't the same.

So basically, calling everything chaos is just one more level of understanding that humans can't understand everything?

[Triple Zero]

Why?

Because otherwise we fall into the 'all is one' trap.

But you've already stated that "all is chaos". Isn't that the same thing? If Chaos is one thing made up of many things, it is still ONE THING, or one term at least, which people try to describe "all" as.

Not exactly.  It is not one thing.  It's one word.  Big difference.

Yeah, just as "all" is one word too.

[Telarus]

I think you're veering into semantics.  Which is fine, so long as you recognize it.

Let's start from a slightly different point.  In order to understand when I use the word Chaos as a Discordian term (let's call it "ChaosD") rather than in a Mathematical ("ChaosM") or mundane way ("ChaosCabbage"), we should start with the (An)Eristic Illusions.

The (An)Eristic Illusions state that humans, being pattern-making creatures, look at all the stuff in the experiential Universe and try to find patterns.  If they can make a pattern, they call it "Order".  If they can't find a pattern, they call it "Disorder."  The larger point being, that both Order and Disorder are created by the observer, and are therefore Illusions.

So, as a Discordian, I realize that even though Order and Disorder are Illusions, the stuff that lies beyond them are not.

There is Something that exists,
beyond the Illusions of Order and Disorder.

Again, as a Discordian, I realize that I am a pattern maker, and so want to call that Something, well... something.

For lack of a better name, I call It "Chaos".

Here is where we enter into semantics.  Because the (An)Eristic Illusions try to organize what it perceives, and yet are also Illusions, then if Chaos is to encompas it all, it must also allow for the impossible.

At dinner parties, I claim It is everything Possible and Impossible.

Some people might call this "God", but that's an organizing concept; "God" is an idea of Order which, as you know, is an Illusion.

When asked why not call It "god",
I point out that their head is too fucking small.

By calling all the stuff in which we try to find patterns a name which itself recognizes our thought process, we can better grasp what we're trying to say.

Which is why calling it "god", "cosmos", "Universe", or "stuff" just isn't the same.

So basically, calling everything chaos is just one more level of understanding that humans can't understand everything?

Something like that. The following model dates as far back as Weishaupt (apparently):

APPENDIX GIMMEL: THE ILLUMINATI THEORY OF HISTORY

    And to this day, the proverb is still repeated from the Danube to the Rhine: "It is dangerous to talk too much about the Illuminati."
    —VON JUNTZ, Unausprechlichen Kulten

    Theoretically, an Age of Bureaucracy can last until a paper shortage develops, but, in practice, it never lasts longer than 73 permutations.
    —WEISHAUPT, Konigen, Kirchen and Dummheit

In a well-known passage in the Necronomicon Abdul Alhazred writes, "They ruled once where man rules now; where man rules now, they shall rule again. After summer is winter, and after winter, summer." Weishaupt, who possessed only the Olaus Wormius translation, in the 1472 Lyons edition with its numerous misprints and errors, found this text scrambled into "They ruled once where man rules now, summer. Where man rules now, after summer is winter. They shall rule again, and after winter." Thoroughly confused, he wrote to his good friend the Kabalist Kolmer in Baghdad for an explanation. Kolmer, meanwhile, dispatched a letter to him answering a previous question. When this epistle arrived, Weishaupt had been experimenting with a new strain of Alamout black and was in no condition to realize it was a reply to an earlier query; he was, thus, ready to accept enlightenment in the words: "Concerning your rather thorny enquiry: I find that, in most cases, ergot is the best remedy. Failing this, I can only suggest the path of Don Juan."

Weishaupt assumed that Kolmer meant the passage would become clear if he read it while under the influence of ergot. He promptly went down to his laboratory and tossed off a jigger; then, for good measure, he chewed a few peyote buttons. (He was under the misapprehension that the Don Juan referred to was the same Yaqui Indian magician of the twentieth century whose mind he had been tapping through the Morgenheutegesternwelt. Peyote was that Don Juan's great "teacher," and Weishaupt had imported some from Mexico at great trouble and expense.) It should be explained at this point that the question which Kolmer was answering happened to be not philosophical but personal. Weishaupt had sought his advice on a problem much perplexing him that month: the fact that his sister-in-law was somewhat pregnant and circumstantial evidence seemed to mark him as the father. He wasn't at all sure how to explain this to Eve. Kolmer had intended to convey that Adam should give his paramour the ergot, since it often functions as an abortifacient; the alternative referred to the path of an earlier Don Juan and meant splitting the scene entirely. However, the stoned Ingolstadt sage misunderstood totally, and so came to the Necronomicon full of hashish, peyote, and a substantial quality of ergot, which had, under the influence of the other drugs and his own intestinal juices, mutated into ergotine, a close chemical cousin of LSD. The result was that the words seemed to leap out of the page at him, shouting with intense meaning:

    THEY RULED ONCE WHERE MAN RULES NOW SUMMER WHERE MAN RULES NOW AFTER SUMMER IS WINTER THEY SHALL RULE AGAIN AND AFTER WINTER

Abdul Alhazred's concept of the Great Cycle, which derived actually from the Upanishads, took on kinky edges in Weishaupt's flipped-out cortex. Five kinky edges, to be exact, since he was still obsessed with the profound new understanding of the Law of Fives he had achieved the night he saw the shoggoth turn into a rabbit. He quickly fetched Giambattista Vico's Scienze nuovo from his shelf and began reading: He saw that he was right. Vico's theory of history, in which all societies pass through the same four stages, was an oversimplification—there were, when you looked closely at the actual evidence behind Vico's rhetoric, five distinct stages each time the Italian listed only four. Weishaupt looked very closely, and, like Joe Malik, the harder be looked the more fives he found.

It was then that the man's truly unique mind made its great leap: He remembered that Joachim of Floris, a proto-primus Illuminatus of the eleventh century, had divided history into three stages: the Age of the Father, dominated by Law; the Age of the Son, dominated by Love; and the Age of the Holy Spirit, dominated by Joy. Where most philosophers rush to publish their insights, Weishaupt saw the advantage of an alternative path. The Law of Fives would be kept secret, so that only Illuminati Primi would know about it and could predict events correctly, but the Joachimite theory would be revived and publicized to mislead others. (He, Kolmer, Meyer Amschel Rothschild, DeSade, and Sir Frances Dashwood—the original Five—had some discussions about possibly pushing Vico instead of Joachim, but, as Weishaupt argued, "Four is a little bit too close to five . . ." Even so, it was quite a spell of years before they found the ideal front man to push the three-step theory, G. W. F. Hegel. "He's perfect," Weishaupt wrote in the De Molay cipher from Mount Vernon. "Unlike Kant, who makes sense only in German, this man doesn't make sense in any language.") The rest of the story—the exoteric story, at least —is history. After Hegel was Marx; and after Marx, the Joachimite three-step was permanently grafted onto revolutionary tactics.

The esoteric story, of course, is different. For instance, in 1914, when the fifth and final stage of Western Civilization was dawning, James Joyce published A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. The five chapters of that novel not only suggested five stages in the hero's growth, but by the alteration of styles from chapter to chapter suggested analogies with other five-stage processes. This was too much for the Illuminati Primi of the time, who warned Joyce to be more careful in the future. A battle of wills ensued, and all through the writing of Ulysses Joyce was still considering a novel built entirely around the Law of Fives. When the Illuminati gave him what they call "the Tiresias treatment" —blindness—he finally compromised. Finnegans Wake, when it appeared, broke with the Joachim-Hegel-Marx three-step but did not include the funfwissenschaft. Instead, the Viconian four-stage theory was resurrected, a middle path that appealed to Joyce's sense of synchroniciry, since he had once taught at a school on Vico Road in Dublin and later also lived in a house on Via Giambattista Vico in Rome.*

    * Do you believe that?

Now for a few words about the "real truth," at least as the Illuminati understand "real truth."

Every society actually passes through the five stages of Verwirrung, or chaos; Zweitracht, or discord; Unordnung, or confusion; Beamtenherrschaft, or bureaucracy; and Grummet, or aftermath. Sometimes, to make comparison with the exoteric Hegel-Marx system more pointed, the esoteric Illuminati system is defined as: Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis, Parenthesis, and Paralysis. The public Hegel-Marx triad is also called the tricycle, and the arcane latter two stages are called the bicycle; one of the first secrets revealed to every illuminatus Minore is "After the tricycle it comes always the bicycle." (The Uluminati are rather prone toward literal translations from Weishaupt's German.)

The first stage, Verwirrung or chaos, is the point from which all societies begin and to which they all return. It is, so to speak, the natural condition of humanity—an estimation which the reader can confirm by closely observing his neighbors (or, if he has the necessary objectivity, himself).

It is, therefore, also the fundamental Thesis. The Illuminati associate this with Eris, and also with other goddesses from Isis to Ishtar and from Kwannon to Kali—with the Female Principle, yin, in general. This correlates with hexagram 2 in the I Ching: that is, K'un, which has the meanings of receptivity, nature (in contrast to spirit), earth (in contrast to sky), female (in contrast to male). Thus, although this is the first stage chronologically, it has the mystical number 2, which is always associated with the female in magic; and it correlates with the 2nd trump in Tarot, the High Priestess, who represents not only maternity and fertility but gnosis. The sign of the horns represents Verwirrung because the fingers make a V shape; and the planet or the symbol of Venus, , also designates this stage. On the Zodiac: Aquarius,

The second stage, Zweitracht, begins with the appearance of a ruling or governing class. This is the Antithesis of chaos, of course, and leads directly into discord when the servile class discovers that its interests are not the same as the interests of the ruling class. This correlates with Osiris, Jehovah, and all masculine deities; with the symbol of the All-Seeing Eye; with hexagram 1 in the I Ching: Ch'ien, the creative, the heavenly, the strong, the powerful; with the male principle, yang, in general; with the number 3, symbolizing the all-male Christian trinity; with the 12th trump of the Tarot, the Hanged Man,  symbolizing sacrifice, schism and schizophrenia; and with the planet or symbol of Mars, . Naturally, a Zweitracht period is always replete with "internal contradictions," and somebody like Karl Marx always arises to point them out. On the Zodiac: Pisces,

The third stage, Unordnung or confusion, occurs when an attempt is made to restore balance or arrive at the Hegelian Synthesis. This correlates with Loki, the Devil, Mercury (god of thieves), Thoth in his role of Trickster, Coyote, and other spirits of illusion or deception; with hexagram 4 in the I Ching, Meng, youthful folly or standing on the brink of the abyss; with the number 11, signifying sin, penance, and revelation; with the 21st trump in the Tarot, the Fool who walks over the abyss; and with the planet or sign of Mercury, . It represents that attempt to restore the state of nature by unnatural means, an annihilation of the biogram by the logogram. On the Zodiac: Cancer, .

The fourth stage, Beamtenherrschaft or bureaucracy, represents the Parentheses that occur when the Hegelian Synthesis does not succeed in reconciling the opposites. This correlates with Void (absence of any divinity); with I Ching hexagram 47, K'un, oppression or exhaustion, superior men held in restraint by inferior men; with the number 8, indicating balance and the Last Judgment; with the 16th Tarot trump, Falling Tower, representing deteriorations and the Tower of Babel; and with the planetoid or sign of the moon, . On the Zodiac: Libra,

The fifth stage, Grummet or aftermath, represents the transition back to chaos. Bureaucracy chokes in its own paperwork; mind is at the end of its tether; in desperation, many begin to deny the logogram and follow the biogram, with varying degrees of success. This correlates with Hermaphrodite; with I Ching hexagram 59, Huan, dispersion, dissolution, foam on the water; with the number 5, union of male and female; with the 6th trump of the Tarot, the Lovers, indicating union; and with the sun or its symbol, . On the Zodiac: Virgo,

Since the association of these references, and their bearings on history, may be a bit unclear to some readers, we will give further details on each stage.


-=continued next post=-

[Telarus]

VERWIRRUNG

In this chaotic period, the Hodge and the Podge are in dynamic balance. There is no stasis: The balance is always shifting and homeostatic, in the manner of the ideal "self-organizing system" of General Systems Theory or Cybernetics. The Illuminati, and all authoritarian types in general, dislike such ages so much that they try to prevent any records of their existence from reaching the general public. Pre-Chou China was one such period, and its history (except for some fragments in Taoist lore) is largely lost; we do know, however, that the I Ching was reorganized when the Chou Dynasty introduced patriarchal authoritarianism to China. It was then that the hexagram K'un, , associated with this period was moved from the first place to its present, second place in the Ching. Every line in K'un is broken (yin), because this is a feminist and prepatriarchal form of society, and because yin correlates with the agricultural rather than the urban. Always linked to darkness by mystics, this K'un style of sensibility is also linked, by the Illuminati, with dreck (dung) and everything they find messy and intolerable about ordinary human beings. (The Erisians, of course, take the opposite position, connect this with Eris, the primordial goddess, and regard it as ideal.)

Verwirrung is numerologically linked with 2, not only because of K'un's shift from first to second place in the Ching, but because it is the balance of Hodge and Podge. Thus, even though it is the first stage chronologically, it is never linked with 1 in magic sense, because 1 signifies the erect penis, the male principle in isolation, and such authoritarian games as monotheism, monopoly, monogamy, and general monotony. This dynamic 2-ness of Verwirrung is also implicit in its Tarot card, the 2nd trump or High Priestess, who sits between a black pillar and a white one (cf. The Hodge and Podge) and who represents mystery, magic, mischief, and Erisian values generally. She wears the balanced (solar) cross, rather than the unbalanced (Christian) cross, to emphasize the unity of opposites in such a historical period.

Typical Aquarians who have manifested Verwirrung values are Aaron Burr, Christopher Marlowe, Hung Mung, Charles Darwin, Willard Gibbs (who incorporated chaos into mathematics), Mrs. Patrick Campbell, Elizabeth Blackwell (pioneer woman physician), Anna Pavlova, Mozart, Lewis Carrol, Robert Burns, James Joyce, Lord Byron, David Wark Griffith, and Gelett Burgess, author of the classic Erisian poem:

    I never saw a purple cow I never hope to see one But I'll tell you this anyhow: I'd rather see than be one.

The Verwirrung phase of European history is identified with the Danubian Culture, so called because most of its relics have been found along the shores of the Danube. According to archeologists, the Danubian culture was agricultural, pre-urban, worshipped a female rather than a male god, and never invented anything remotely like a state. The pre-Inca society of Peru, the Minoan civilization, the pre-Chou period of China already mentioned, and many American Indian tribes still surviving also represent a Verwirrung social framework. The synthesis of Hodge and Podge, and especially of biogram and logogram, in such cultures is indicated by the amazement of explorers from authoritarian societies when first encountering them. The usual words about the "grace" and "spontaniety" of the natives merely represent the lack of authoritarian conflict between biogram and logogram: These people sit, like the Tarot High Priestess, between opposite poles, without tilting one way or the other.

But the fact that this is a dynamic and not a static balance means that eventually (after 73 permutations, according to Weishaupt) the second stage must evolve.

ZWEITRACHT

In this discordant period, the Hodge and the Podge are in conflict, because a ruling class emerges which attempts to control the others. This correlates with hexagram 1, , Ch'ien, the all-powerful, in the I Ching. The six unbroken lines represent the severity and monotony of such a period, which is, above all, the age of the T-square, the building of fences, the division of lands by "boundaries" drawn on maps, and the imposition of one man's (or one group's) will upon all others. Typically, the earth is regarded as both flat and finite by the Zweitracht mentality, and there is much concern with dividing it up into portions (among themselves, of course). The "superstitious" terror of American Indians when first confronting maps was merely the reaction of a Verwirrung mentality to a Zweitracht mentality: The Indians could not conceive of people treating earth as a thing to be exploited rather than a mother to be respected.

Zweitracht associates with 3 numerologically because 3 is the totally male number, because all-male Trinities (Brahma-Vishnu-Siva, Father-Son-Spirit, etc.) are invented in such ages, and because the discord always has a minimum of 3 vectors, not merely 2. That is, the division into a propertied ruling class and an unpropertied governed class immediately sets in motion further cupidity; the ruling class soon falls to fighting over the spoils. Contrary to Marx, most of the strife in Zweitracht ages is not the conflict between proprietors and proles but between various proprietors over who gets the biggest share of the pie.

The governing Tarot card is trump 12, the Hanged Man. The cross on which he hangs is blossoming, to show that it is still organic and alive (the biogram); he hangs upside down, to show the reversal of nature. He represents both the burden of omniscience in the owning-governing class and the burden of nescience in the servile-submissive class: the total crucifixion of desire by Realprinzip and Realpolitik.

The astrological sign of this period is Pisces, the two fish swimming in opposite directions indicating the conflict of logogram and biogram ("body" and "spirit," astrologers say.) Typical Pisceans who have shown the Zweitracht personality are E. H. Harriman, the railroad magnate (who covered the United States with Ch'ien-style unbroken straight lines), Cardinal John Henry Newman, Sir Robert Baden-Powell, founder of the Boy Scouts (an attempt to instill Piscean authoritarianism even in childhood), Admiral Chester Nimitz, John Foster Dulles, Anna Lee (founder of the world's most antisexual religion, the Shakers), industrialists like Kruger and Pullman, financiers like Cambell and Braden, Grover Cleveland, John C. Calhoun, Neville Chamberlain, Andrew Jackson (whose expulsion of the Cherokee Nation from its traditional lands onto the "trail of tears," where most of them perished, is the archetypal Zweitracht land-grab), William Jennings Bryan, and Frank Stanton of CBS.

Since all Illuminati with any academic leanings at all are encouraged to major in history, the tendency in most textbooks is not only to black out Verwirrung periods but to glorify Zweitracht periods as ages of Light and Progress. Indeed, they make entertaining reading: They .are ages of expansion, and there are always new people being discovered to be subjugated, "civilized," and converted to tax-payers and rent-payers. Almost any age described in glowing and admiring language in a history text will prove, on examination, to be a Zweitracht era, and the foremost butchers and invaders are treated as the outstanding heroes of humanity. A sympathetic reading of the biographies of these empire-builders almost always indicates that they were homo neophile individuals who turned their talents to destruction rather than creativity because of bitterness engendered by years of torment and baiting by homo neo-phobe types during their childhoods.

The ever-present conflict in a Zweitracht period eventually leads to the third stage.

UNORDNUNG

Humanity has been transformed during a Zweitracht age, by placing logogram in governing authority over bio-gram. Unordnung is an attempt to restore balance by revolutionizing the logogram; there is no thought about the biogram, because contact with this somatic component of personality has been lost. (This loss of contact has been variously described by pre-Celinean observers: It is "the veil of Maya" in Buddhism, the "censor band" or "repression" in psychoanalysis, the "character armoring" and "muscular armoring" in Reichian psychology, etc.)

The I Ching hexagram for this stage is Meng, , or Youthful Folly. The yang line at the top indicates the continued supremacy of logogram, even though some biogram elements (the yin lines) begin to reassert themselves. The traditional reading is "mountain above water"; that is, the rigid logogram still repressing the Aquarian element as it seeks to liberate itself. The usual Chinese interpretation of this hexagram is "The young fool needs discipline," and the leaders of all rebellions at this stage always heartily agree with that and demand unquestioning obedience from their followers. This is a time of turmoils, troubles, and tyrannies that appear and disappear rapidly.

The mystical number is 11, which means "a new start" in Kabalism and "error and repentence" in most other systems of numerology.

Tarot trump 21, The Fool, symbolizes this age as a dreamy-eyed youth unknowingly walking over an abyss. The Hitlerjugend, and the disciples of various other fuehrers and messiahs, immediately come to mind. That this card is disputed by various Tarot experts, and is given a numerical value of 0 rather than 21 by the wisest, indicates the confusion in all Unordnung periods. The dog who barks to warn the Young Fool, like the yin lines in the hexagram, represents the desperate attempts of the biogram ton break through the repression or censor-band and make itself heard.

Typical Cancerians who exemplified Unordnung are Julius Caesar, Mary Baker Eddy (whose philosophy was an explicit denial of the biogram), Albert Parsons, Emma Goldman, Benjamin Peret, Vladimir Mayakofski, Henry David Thoreau, Durrutti, P-J Proudhon, Brooks Adams, General Kitchener, Luigi Pirandello (the literary master of ambiguity), Erich Ambler (the literary master of conspiracy), Calvin Coolidge (who issued the classically muddled Cancerian statement "Be as revolutionary as science and as conservative as the multiplication table"), Andrei Gromy-ko, Nelson Rockefeller, John Calvin, Estes Kefauver, and Rexford Tugwell.

An Unordnung period has always been thought of (even before Hegel provided the words) as a synthesis between the thesis of Verwirrung and the antithesis Zweitracht; since it is a false synthesis on the logogrammic level only, it always gives birth to the fourth stage, the Parenthesis.

BEAMTENHERRSCHAFT

This is the age of bureaucracy, and to live at this time is, as Proudhon said, "to have every operation, every transaction, every movement noted, registered, counted, rated, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, refused, authorized, endorsed, admonished, prevented, reformed, redressed, corrected ... to be laid under contribution, drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolized, extorted from, exhausted, hoaxed, and robbed." The governing I Ching hexagram is 47, K'un, , oppression or exhaustion, the dried-up lake, with the usual reading of superior men oppressed by the inferior. This is the time when homo neophobe types most rigorously repress homo neophile types, and great heresy hunts and witch trials flourish. This correlates with the number 8, signifying the Last Judgment, because every citizen is to some extent a State functionary, and each is on trial before the jury of all. The traditional Chinese associations with this hexagram are sitting under a bare tree and wandering through an empty valley— signifying the ecological havoc wreaked by purely abstract minds working upon the organic web of nature.

The 16th Tarot trump, The Tower, describes this age.

The Tower is struck by lightning and the inhabitants fall from the windows. (Cf. the Tower of Babel legend and our recent power failures.) The traditional interpretations of this card suggest pride, oppression, and bankruptcy.

This correlates with Libra, the mentality which measures and balances all things on an artificial scale (Maya). Typical Libras who have manifested Beamtenherrschaft characterists are Comte de Saint Simon, Justice John Marshall, Hans Geiger, Henry Wallace, Dwight Eisenhower, John Kenneth Galbraith, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., John Dewey, and Dr. Joyce Brothers.

In Beamtenherrschaft ages there is ceaseless activity, all planned in advance, begun at the scheduled second, carefully supervised, scrupulously recorded— but inevitably finished late and poorly done. The burden of omniscience on the ruling class becomes virtually intolerable, and most flee into some form of schizophrenia or fantasy. Great towers, pyramids, moon shots, and similar marvels are accomplished at enormous cost while the underpinnings of social solidarity crumble entirely. While blunders multiply, no responsible individual can ever be found, because all decisions are made by committees; anyone seeking redress of grievance wanders into endless corridors of paperwork with no more tangible result than in the Hunting of the Snark. Illuminati historians, of course, describe these ages as glowingly as Zweitracht epochs, for, although control is in the hands of homo neophobe types, there is at least a kind of regularity, order, and geometrical precision about everything, and the "messiness" of the barbaric Verwirrung ages and revolutionary Unordnung ages is absent.

Nevertheless, the burden of omniscience on the rulers steadily escalates, as we have indicated, and the burden of nescience on the servile class increasingly renders them unfit to serve (more and more are placed on the dole, shipped to "mental" hospitals, or recruited into whatever is the current analog of the gladiatorial games), so the Tower eventually falls.

GRUMMET

The age of Grummet begins with an upsurge of magicians, hoaxers, Yippies, Kabouters, shamans, clowns, and other Eristic forces. The relevant I Ching hexagram is 59, Huan, , dispersion and dissolution. The gentle wind above the deep water is the Chinese reading of the image, with associations of loss of ego, separation from the group, and "going out" in general. Yin lines dominate all but the top of the hexagram; the forces leading to a new Verwir-rung stage are pushing upward toward release. This is also called Paralysis by the Illuminati, because, objectively, nothing much is happening; subjectively, of course, the preparations for the new cycle are working unconsciously.

The mystic number is 5, union of male (3) with female (2) and final resolution of conflict between Verwirrung and Zweitracht.

The governing Tarot trump is number 6, the Lovers, in which the woman looks upward at the angel (Eris, the bio-gram) and the man looks at the woman (the logogram, yang, reaches synthesis with biogram, yin, only through reconciliation with the female). Hence, the upsurge of feminism in such periods, together with a renewed emphasis on clans, tribes, and communes.

Typical Virgos manifesting Grummet traits are Charlie Parker, Antonin Artaud, Louis Lingg, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Grandma Moses, Lodovico Ariosto, Greta Garbo, Hedy Lamarr, and Goethe and Tolstoy (who manifested strong yin values while never quite getting reconciled with the women in their own lives. Tolstoy, however, as the classic dropout, is an archetypal Grummet persona and almost completed the Sufi course of "quit this world, quit the next world, quit quitting!").

After Grummet, of course, authority has collapsed entirely, and the biogram stands on equal footing with the logogram. Hodge and Podge being once again in dynamic balance, a new Verwirrung period begins, and the cycle repeats.

Since Weishaupt dreamed this schema up while he was under the influence of several hallucinogenic drugs, one should regard it with some skepticism. It is certainly not true in every detail, and there is no theoretical or empirical demonstration that each of the five ages must always have 73 permutations. The fact that Grummet-Virgo personalities (and all other of the five personality types) are born in all ages, even if they come to dominance in their appropriate epochs, leaves many mysteries still unsolved. In short, all that a sober scholar can say of the Illuminati theory of history is that it makes at least as much sense as the exoteric Marx-Hegel, Spengler, Toynbee, and Sorokin theories.

The A:.A:., who regard all Illuminati theories as false projections onto the external world of inner spiritual processes, are particularly skeptical about this one, since it involves several false correlations between the I Ching and the Tarot, the Zodiac, etc.

Finally, it should be noted that of all the people Hagbard employed as resonance for the vibes used against the Saure family in Ingolstadt, only Lady Velkor, Danny Pricefixer, and George Dorn were not Virgos. Hagbard evidently believed that the Illuminati magical links work when Illuminati activities are occurring in a given area—and, hence, virtually all of "his" people at the festival were Virgos and thereby linked with the Grummet/Huan-59/Trump 6 chain of astrological associations. On the other hand, the presence of three non-Virgos shows Hagbard's pragmatic approach and his refusal to be ruled even by so exact a science as astrology.*

    * This sentence may manifest a lapse into mockery or mystification by otherwise sober authors.

In this connection, when George Dorn and his mother went to Radio City Music Hall to see The Lotus Position, the last movie made by the American Medical Association before their tragic deaths, they happened to meet a tall Italian and a very beautiful black woman whom he introduced as his wife. Mrs. Dorn didn't catch the Italian's name, but it was obvious that George had a very great admiration for him. On the bus back to Nutley, she decided to straighten the boy out.

"A man who respects himself and his own race," she began, "would never think of marrying into the colored."

"Shut up, Ma," George said politely.

"That's no way to talk to your mother," the fine lady said, going ahead blithely. "Now, your father had some radical ideas, and he tried to get the unions to accept the colored, but he never thought of marrying into them, George. He had too much self-respect. Are you listening, George?"

"How did you like the AMA?" he asked.

"Such wonderful young boys. So clean-cut. And that darling sister of theirs! At least they didn't think there was anything attractive about long hair on men. Do you know what long hair makes men look like?"

"Like girls, Ma. Is that right?"

"It makes them look worse than girls, George. It makes them look like they're not really men, if you know what I mean."

"No, I don't know what you mean, Ma." George was profoundly bored.

"Well, I mean a little bit on the lavender side." She tittered.

"Oh," he said, "you mean cocksuckers. Some of my best friends are cocksuckers, Ma."

At this simple piece of factual information, the remarkable lady turned red and then purple, and then twisted in her chair to look out the window in angry silence for the rest of the trip. The curious thing is that, before George could get the courage to shut the old battleaxe up that way, he first had to try to shoot a cop and then try to shoot himself and finally take hashish with Hagbard Celine, and yet she was a Virgo and he was a Capricorn.

[Stelpa]

What? I thought Discordianism Chaos Theory was invented by that guy from the first Jurassic Park