The Illuminatus! Trilogy

"Property₃ is impossible" means that property₃ (= property₁) creates so much conflict of interest that society is in perpetual undeclared civil war and must eventually devour itself (and properties₁ and ₃ as well). In short, Proudhon, in his own way, foresaw the Snafu Principle. He also foresaw that communism would only perpetuate and aggravate the conflicts, and that anarchy is the only viable alternative to this chaos.

It is not averred, of course, that property₃ will come into existence only in a totally voluntary society; many forms of it already exist. The error of most alleged libertarians- especially the followers (!) of the egregious Ayn Rand- is to assume that all property₁ is property₂. The distinction can be made by any IQ above 70 and is absurdly simple. The test is to ask, of any title of ownership you are asked to accept or which you ask others to accept, "Would this be honored in a free society of rationalists, or does it require the armed might of a State to force people to honor it?" If it be the former, it is property? and represents liberty; if it be the latter, it is property₁ and represents theft.

APPENDIX CHETH: HAGBARD'S ABDICATION

Readers who do not understand the scene in which Hagbard abdicates in favor of Miss Portinari should take heart. Once they do understand it, they will understand most of the mysteries of all schools of mysticism.

APPENDIX LAMED: THE TACTICS OF MAGICK

The human brain evidently operates on some variation of the famous principle enunciated in The Hunting of the Snark: "What I tell you three times is true."

–NORBERT WEINER, Cybernetics

The most important idea in the Book of Sacred Magic of Abra-Melin the Mage is the simple-looking formula "Invoke often."

The most successful form of treatment for so-called mental disorders, the Behavior Therapy of Pavlov, Skinner, Wolpe, et al., could well be summarized in two similar words: "Reinforce often." ("Reinforcement," for all practical purposes, means the same as the layman's term "reward." The essence of Behavior Therapy is rewarding desired behavior; the behavior "as if by magic" begins to occur more and more often as the rewards continue.)

Advertising, as everybody knows, is based on the axiom "Repeat often."

Those who think they are "materialists" and think that "materialism" requires them to deny all facts which do not square with their definition of "matter" are loath to admit the well-documented and extensive list of individuals who have been cured of serious maladies by that very vulgar and absurd form of magick known as Christian Science. Nonetheless, the reader who wants to understand this classic work of immortal literature will have to analyze its deepest meanings, guided by an awareness that there is no essential difference between magick, Behavior Therapy, advertising, and Christian Science. All of them can be condensed into Abra-Melin's simple "Invoke often."

Reality, as Simon Moon says, is thermoplastic, not thermosetting. It is not quite Silly-Putty, as Mr. Paul Krassner once claimed, but is much closer to Silly-Putty than we generally realize. If you are told often enough that "Budweiser is the king of beers," Budweiser will eventually taste somewhat better- perhaps a great deal better- than it tasted before this magick spell was cast. If a behavior therapist in the pay of the communists rewards you every time you repeat a communist slogan, you will repeat it more often, and begin to slide imperceptibly toward the same kind of belief that Christian Scientists have for their mantras. And if a Christian Scientist tells himself every day that his ulcer is going away, the ulcer will disappear more rapidly than it would have had he not subjected himself to this homemade advertising campaign. Finally, if a magician invokes the Great God Pan often enough, the Great God Pan will appear just as certainly as heterosexual behavior appears in homosexuals who are being handled (or manhandled) by Behavior Therapy.

The opposite and reciprocal of "Invoke often" is "Banish often."