The Illuminatus! Trilogy

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.

APPENDIX DALETH: HASSAN i SABBAH AND ALAMOUT BLACK

When the Prophet died in 4632 A.M.,* the true faith was almost immediately shattered by conflict between the Shiite and Sunnite parties. More than a century of religious and civil warfare followed, and by 4760 A.M. the Shiites themselves had split and given birth to a subsect known as the Ismailis, or Ishmaelians. It was out of this group that Hassan i Sabbah formed the Order of the Assassins in 5090 A.M.

* Known as the year 52 to Moslems, 4392 to Jews and Scotch Rite Masons, 4320 to Confucians, and 632 to Christians.

Ishmaelian religion had already at that date become a nine-level affair in the manner typical of mystical secret societies. Those of the lowest grade, for instance, were merely informed that Al Koran contained an allegorical meaning in addition to its surface teachings, and that their salvation lay in following orders. As a neophyte progressed through the various grades, more and more of the allegories would be explained, and a doctrine would gradually emerge which is, in essence, that taught by all the mystics of East and West-Buddhists, Taoists, Vedantists, Rosicrucians, etc. The doctrine is, in important aspects, unspeakable (which is why the trainee required an imam - the Ishmaelian equivalent of a guru- to guide him in the nonverbal aspects); the ninth and highest grade, however, had no parallel except in very strict Theravada Buddhism. In this ninth grade, which Hassan attained shortly before founding the Hashishim, it was taught that even the personal mystical experience of the seeker (his own encounter with the Absolute, or the Void, or the Hodge-Podge, or God, or Goddess, or whatever one chooses to call it) should be subject to the most merciless analysis and criticism, and that there is no guide superior to reason. The Ishmaelian adept, in short, was one who had achieved supreme mystical awareness but refused to make even that into an idol; he was a total atheist-anarchist subject to no authority but his own independent mind.