The Illuminatus! Trilogy

"At first I thought he was just another big-house faggot, when he started tracking me around and asking me all sorts of personal questions. But he was what I wanted to become -a successful bank-robber -so I played along. To tell you the truth, I was so horny it wouldn't have mattered if he was a faggot. You have no idea how horny a man gets in prison. That's why Baby-Face Nelson and a lot of other guys preferred to die rather than go back to the big house again. Hell, if you haven't been there, you can't understand. You just don't know what being horny is.

"Well, anyway, after a lot of bull about Jesus and Jehovah and the Bible and all that, Harry just asked me point-blank one day in the prison yard: 'Do you think it's possible there might be a true religion?' I was about to say, 'Bullshit- like there might be an honest cop,' but something stopped me. I realized he was dead serious, and a lot might depend on my answer. So I was cautious. I said, 'If there is, I haven't heard about it.' And he just came back, real quiet, 'Most people haven't.'

"It was a couple of days afterward that he brought the subject up again. Then, he went right on with it, showed me the Sacred Chao and everything. It took my breath away." The old man's voice trailed off, as he sank into silent memories.

"And it really does go back to Babylon?" Joe prompted.

"I'm not much of an intellectual," Dillinger replied. "Action is my arena. Let Simon tell you that part."

Simon was eager to leap into the breach. "The basic book to confirm our tradition," he said, "is The Seven Tablets of Creation, which is dated at about 2500 B.C. the time of Sargon. It describes how Tiamat and Apsu, the first gods, were coexisting in Mummu, the primordial chaos. Von Junzt, in his Unausprechlichen Kulten,

tells how the Justified Ancients of Mummu originated, just about the time the Seven Tablets were inscribed. You see, under Sargon, the chief deity was Marduk. I mean, that was what the high priests gave out to the public- in private, of course, they worshipped lok-Sotot, who became the Yog-Sothoth of the Necronomicon. But maybe I'm going too fast. Getting back to the official religion of Marduk, it was based on usury. The priests monopolized the medium of exchange and were able to extract interest for lending it. They also monopolized the land, and extracted tribute for renting it. It was the beginning of what we laughingly call civilization, which has always rested on rent and interest. The old Babylonian con.

"The official story was that Mummu was dead, killed in the war between the gods. When the first anarchist group arose, they called themselves Justified Ancients of Mummu. Like Lao-Tse and the Taoists in China, they wanted to get rid of usury and monopoly and all the other pigshit of civilization and go back to a natural way of life. So, grok, they took the supposedly dead god, Mummu, and claimed he was still alive and was actually stronger than all the other gods. They had a good argument 'Look around,' they'd say, "what do you see most of? Chaos, right? Therefore, the god of Chaos is the strongest god, and is still alive.'

"Of course, we got our ass whipped good. We were just no match for the Illuminati in those days. Didn't have a clue, about how they performed their 'miracles,' for instance. So we got our asses whipped again, in Greece, when the JAMs got started again, as part of the Cynic movement. By the tune the whole thing was happening again in Rome- usury and monopoly and the whole bag of tricks- the truce took place. The Justified Ancients became part of the Illuminati, a special group still keeping our own name, but taking orders from the Five. We thought we'd humanize them, like the anarchists who stayed in SDS after last year. And so it went until 1888. Then Cecil Rhodes started the Circle of Initiates and the big schism occurred. Every meeting would have a faction of Rhodes boys carrying signs that said 'Kick out the JAMs!' It was the parting of the ways. They just didn't trust us- or maybe they were afraid of being humanized.

"But we had learned a lot by our long participation in the Illuminati conspiracy, and now we know how to fight them with their own weapons."

"Fuck their weapons," Dillinger interrupted. "I like to fight them with my weapons."

"You are

behind the big unsolved bank robberies of the last few years-"

"Sure. Just in the planning, though. I'm too old to vault over tellers' cages and carry on like I did back in the thirties."

"John is also fighting on another front," Simon interjected.

Dillinger laughed. "Yes," he said. "I'm the president of Laughing Buddha Jesus Phallus Inc. You've seen them- 'If it's not an LBJP it's NOT an L.P.'?

"Laughing Buddha Jesus Phallus?" Joe exclaimed. "My God, you put out the best rock in the country! The only rock a man my age can listen to without wincing."