The Illuminatus! Trilogy

"Yes, she was his mistress, virtually his common-law wife, for a long time, and-"

"No soap. You're years too late. Reporters bought up everything she had that showed even the back of Dillinger's head, way back, long before she came here to the reservation to die."

"Well, did you know her?"

"Sure." James was careful not be spiteful and didn't add: all Menominee Indians know one another, in a way you whites can't understand "knowing."

"Did she ever converse about Dillinger?"

"Of course. Old women always talk about their dead men. Always say the same thing, too: never was another man as good as him. Except when they say there never was another man as bad as him. They only say that when they're drunk, though."

The paleface kept turning colors, the way people do when you're on peyote. Now he looked almost like an Indian. That made it easier to talk to him.

"Did she ever say anything about John's attitude toward the Masons?"

Why shouldn't people turn colors? All the trouble in world came from the fact that they usually stayed the same color. James nodded profoundly. As usual, peyote had brought him a big Truth. If whites and blacks and Indians were turning colors all the time, there wouldn't be any hate in the world, because nobody would know which people to hate.

"I said, did she ever mention John's attitude toward the Masons?"

"Oh. Oh, yes. Funny you should ask that." The man had a halo around his head now, and James wondered what that meant. Every time he took peyote alone things like that would happen, and he'd end up wishing there were a Road Chief or some other priest around to explain these signs properly. But what about the Masons? Oh, yes. "Billie said the Masons were the only people John Dillinger really hated. He said they railroaded him to prison the first time, and they owned all the banks, so he was getting even by robbing them."

The professor's mouth dropped open in surprise and delight- and James thought it was kind of funny to see that, especially with the halo turning from pink to blue to pink to blue to pink again at the same time.

("A big mouth, a tiny brain/He only thinks of blood and pain,"

Howard sang.)

Notes found by a TWA stewardess in a seat vacated by a Mr. "John Mason" after a Madison, Wisconsin, to Mexico City flight June 29, 1969: one week after the last SDS convention of all time:

"We only robbed from the banks what the banks robbed from the people"-Dillinger, Crown Point Jail, 1934. Could have come from any anarchist text.

Lucifer- bringer of light.

Weishaupt's "illumination" amp; Voltaire's "enlightenment": from the Latin "lux" meaning light.

Christianity all in 3s (Trinity, etc.) Buddhism in 4s. Illuminism in 5s. A progression?

Hopi teaching: all men have 4 souls now, but in future will have 5 souls. Find an anthropologist for more data on this.

Who decided the Pentagon building should have that particular shape?

"Kick out the Jams"??? Cross-check.

"Adam," the first man; "Weis," to know; "haupt," chief or leader. "The first man to be a leader of those who know." Assumed name from the beginning?

lok-Sotot in Pnakotic manuscripts. Cd. be Yog-Sothoth?

D.E.A.T.H.-Don't Ever Antagonize The Horn. Does Pynchon know?

Must get Simon to explain the Yellow Sign and the Aklo chants. Might need protection.

C. says the h. neophobe type outnumbers us 1000-to-l. If so, all this is hopeless.

What gets me is how much has been out in the open for so long. Not just in Lovecraft, Joyce, Melville, etc., or in the Bugs Bunny cartoons but in scholarly works that pretend to explain. Anybody who wants to go to the trouble can find out, for instance, that the "secret' of the Eleusinian Mysteries was the words whispered to the novice after he got the magic mushroom: "Osiris is a black God!" Five words (of course!) but no historian, archeologist, anthropologist, folklorist, etc. has understood. Or, those who did understand, didn't care to admit it. Can I trust C.? For that matter, can I trust Simon?

This matter of Tlaloc should convince me, one way or the other.

("He only thinks of blood and slaughter/The shark should live on land not water.")

("To hell with the shark and all his kin/And fight like hell when you see his fin.")

When Joe Malik got off the plane at Los Angeles International Airport, Simon was waiting for him.

"We'll talk in your car," Joe said briefly.

The car, being Simon's, was naturally a psychedelic Volkswagen. "Well?" he asked as they drove out of the airport onto Central Avenue.