The Illuminatus! Trilogy

Some have suggested that Hassan, who was known to have traveled much in his youth, might have brought opium back from the East and mixed it with hashish. The scholarly Dr. Joel Fort goes further and argues, in The Pleasure Seekers, that Hassan's supercharger was wine-and-opium, with no marijuana products at all. Dr. John Allegro, in The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross, argues that both Hassan and the first Christians actually achieved the paradisical vision with the aid of amanita muscaria, the "fly agaric" mushroom, which is poisonous in high doses but psychedelic (or at least deleriant) in small quantities.

The present book's suggestion- Alamout black, an almost pure hashish with a few pinches of belladonna and stramonium- is based on:

(1) the strong etymological evidence that the Hashishim Were somehow involved with hashish;

(2) the unlikelihood that wine, opium, mushrooms, or any combination thereof could account for the etymological and historical association of Hassan with hashish;

(3) the reasons previously given for doubting that hashish alone is the answer;

(4) the capacity of stramonium and belladonna (in small doses) to create intensely brilliant visual imagery, beyond that of even the best grades of hashish;

(5) the fact that these latter drugs were used in both the Elusinian Mysteries and in the European witch cult contemporary with Hassan (see R.E.L. Masters, Eros and Evil).

Since it is not the intent of this book to confuse fact with fancy, it should be pointed out that these arguments are strong but not compelling. Many other alternatives can be suggested, such as hashish-belladonna-mandragora, hashish-stramonium-opium, hashish-opium-belladonna, hashish-opium-bufotinin,* etc., etc. All that can be said with certainty is that Hagbard Celine insists the correct formula is hashish-belladonna-stramonium (in ratio 20:1:1), and we believe Hagbard- most of the time.

* Medieval magicians knew how to obtain bufotinin. They took it, as Shakespeare recorded, from "skin of toad."

The exact link between the Assassins and the European Illuminati remains unclear. We have seen (but no longer own) a John Birch Society publication arguing that the alliance between the Hashishim and the Knights Templar was consummated and that European masonry has been more or less under Hashishim influence ever since. More likely is the theory of Daraul (op. cit.) that after the Hashishim regrouped as the nonviolent Ishmaelian sect of today, the Roshinaya (Illuminated Ones) copied their old tactics and were in turn copied by the Allumbrados of Spain and, finally, by the Bavarian Illuminati.

The nine stages of Hashishim training, the thirteen stages in Weishaupt's Iluminati, the thirty-two degrees of masonry, etc., are, of course, arbitrary. The Theravada Buddhists have a system of forty meditations, each leading to a definite stage of growth. Some schools of Hinduism recognize only two stages: Dhyana, conquest of the personal ego, and Samadhi, unity with the Whole. One can equally well posit five stages or a hundred and five. The essential that is common to all these systems is that the trainee, at some point or other, is nearly scared to death.*

* An interesting account of a traditional system used by quite primitive Mexican Indians, yet basically similar to any and all of the above, is provided by anthropologist Carlos Castaneda, who underwent training with a Yaqui shaman, and recounts some of the terrors vividly in The Teachings of Don Juan, A Separate Reality, Journey to Ixtlan, and Tales of Power. Don Juan used peyote, stramonium, and a magic mushroom (probably psilocyble Mexicana, the drug Tim Leary used for his first trip).

The difference between these systems is that some aim to liberate every candidate and some, like Sabbah's and Weishaupt's, deliberately encourage the majority to remain in ignorance, whereby they may with profit be endlessly exploited by their superiors in the cult. The same general game of an illuminated minority misusing a superstitious majority was characteristic of Tibet until the Chinese Communist invasion broke the power of the high lamas. A sympathetic account of the Tibetan system, which goes far toward justifying it, can be found in Alexandra David-Neel's The Hidden Teachings of Tibetan Buddhism; an unsympathetic account by a skeptical fellow mystic is available in The Confessions of Aleister Crowley.