The Illuminatus! Trilogy

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.