Hope Springs Eternal: The Mary Wheeler Interview

Mary and Tim Wheeler, with son Christopher.  Courtesy Mary Wheeler.

Prepare yourself(s) for an amazing interview with a largely unknown (until now!) Discordian named Hope Springs (real name Mary Wheeler). Mary—as you’ll soon discover—found herself smack dab in the middle of the early Discordian scene along with her husband, Tim Wheeler (aka Harold Lord Randomfactor of Illuminatus! fame.)

Tim Wheeler was most likely the one who entered the phrase “Don’t Let Them Immanentize the Eschaton!” into the Discordian lexicon, but (partly thanks to Tim) the phrase already had a life in conservative circles. Eric Vogelin coined it, but someone turned William F. Buckley on to it and he then helped popularize it.  This probably accounts for the legend that Buckley was one of the anonymous authors of Principia Discordia.

An abundance of the Wheeler’s materials have been incubating in the Discordian Archives awaiting the appropriate time to be pulled out, dusted off and re-injected into modern day Discordianism. A sprinkling of these materials appear in Historia Discordia: Origins ofthe Discordian Society, some of which—as Steven Adkins points out in the interview to follow—were misattributed to Thomas the Gnostic. D’oh! (Future editions of Historia Discordia will correct this glaring miscue, Hail Eris!)

Consider this but the first installment of a plethora of Tim and Mary Wheeler goodies which we will share with you in the days and weeks to come! – Adam Gorightly from the Historia Discordia website. 

I don’t recall exactly when I first heard of Discordianism.  I might have first been exposed to it in the Illuminatus! trilogy.  A friend of mine gave me a bedraggled copy I repaired with duct tape; he handed it to me with the caveat that it was mine, but I had to read it in one sitting.  It just so happens I was heading to Mexico for a spell so I took it with me and one day, sat down to read it.  As ordered, I read it straight through over the course of 14 hours, stopping to eat, maybe not even then, reading throughout the night by candlelight in my rented one-room shack tucked away in the village of General Zaragosa, south of Monterrey in the desert state of Nuevo Léon.  It has since had a big influence on me.  I later collaborated on a Wiki called PlasticTub which, in retrospect, owes a great deal to the trilogy:  a fictitious milieu of people with ridiculous names, divided into factions and factions within factions, quasi-political, spiritually apposed, engaged in clandestine warfare over obscure ideological differences.  The “heroes” are vaguely Discordian.

In any event, I eventually moved to New Mexico and ended up in Jemez Springs, another small mountain village in a desert state, and one of my neighbors was a cool woman by the name of Mary Wheeler.  She and her two adult children were my friends and co-workers and for two years we hung out and talked, drank a lot, explored the mesas with their abandoned settlements and petroglyphs, chopped wood, shot guns, worked a little….

I knew Mary had been a Discordian because I ran across an old copy of the Principia Discordia at her house one day.  I don’t know which edition it was, but it was yellow and about the size of a Jack Chick tract, maybe 2.5 by 5 inches, I’m not sure.  I was excited to hold it in my hand and remember going on about how rare it was.  Thing is, I never queried Mary about it too much, although at some point she did tell me her “Discordian name” was “Hope Springs”.  When I saw Adam Gorightly’s Historia Discordia had come out, I wrote and asked if he was familiar with a Discordian named Hope Springs.  He wasn’t, so I thought it’d be a good idea to contact Mary and interview her.  She graciously agreed and I was able to ask her about a wide variety of topics.  I think it will be of interest to Discordians and fans of the Principia and Illuminatus!  I hope you agree.

Mary has been very generous with her memories and even sent me a 3^rd edition of the Principia complete with rubber stamps and a rolling paper glued onto the title page.  It’s one of the most precious things I own.  Thanks Mary! 

Let’s start at the beginning…. 

The real hero behind that silly period was Greg Hill, Malaclypse the Younger. A sweet, smart and funny guy who lived in San Francisco. The Bobs were both working for Playboy, for the Playboy Advisor column. I was Hope Springs, and Tim, my husband, was Harold Lord Randomfactor.

How did you know Greg?  How did the nicknames come about?  Who dubbed you Hope Springs and Harold Lord Randomfactor?  BTW, when you told me Tim was Randomfactor, I nearly popped apart, because he’s a character in the Illuminatus! trilogy. 

We met Greg through Bob Wilson/Shea.  We chose our own nicknames. Tim was always citing names like Ida Clair, which were a play on words. And yes, we certainly knew Randomfactor was a character in the trilogy. And Bob Shea took a humorous interest in Emperor Norton of San Francisco, a crazie who anointed himself.

It was all nonsense and silly and clever fun, none of us were serious at all. In the few times we got together, all we did was laugh. We also sent around "groovy kits," large Manila envelopes filled with clippings, drawings, objects, that we treated with great reverence. We smoked, opened the envelope, kept what we wanted and added to it, and mailed it on to the next guy.

When you got together, was this in theory at least for the Discordian Society?  Where did you all get together?  Were these “groovy kits” a Discordian thing?  What sort of topics were in the clippings?  Were these sent around to friends only or were they ever sent to people you didn’t know personally, with instructions on what to do?  Were they actually called “groovy” kits?

Groovy Kit instructions.  Courtesy Discordian Archive

Kerry was in Atlanta, as I recall, and an ok guy. There was a fellow in New Orleans whose last name was Cruikshank, I think, that was quite bizarre, and took Kennedy conspiracies too seriously. He was always in a recruiting mode. We never met either of them.

I can remember getting together with Greg only once, at Bob Wilson’s in Chicago. We were living in Indiana by then, so when we heard Greg would be visiting, we came up.

We had many social get-togethers with the Sheas throughout the years, which were less Discordian than simply friendship.

The Groovy Kits were definitely Discordian. The contents were very varied. Newspaper or magazine clippings, funny or serious; actual objects, like something unusual with a “5” or a “23” on it. Maybe a racy photo. A secret message, in code.  Maybe a Mexican peso. It could be anything, but it had to be interesting, one way or the other.  As far as I knew, it traveled between Wilson, Shea, Greg, Kerry and us. And yes, we called it a groovy kit. And yes, we always smoked before opening it.

There were two versions of the Principia floating around, and I think I have them both still. One groovy kit item we kept was an original Crumb comic book, which I regrettably gave to [a mutual friend] some years ago. I remember those days with great fondness, but never imagined it would still be alive 40 years later. I mean, we were just kidding!

I can't honestly remember how we came to be a part of this...surely it was either through Bob Wilson or Bob Shea. We stayed close to the Shea's, not so much Wilson. Tim wrote an article for National Review which Bill Buckley loved. He published the article and made it the cover story. It was all about conspiracy theories and all sorts of stuff he had picked up from these guys, so that makes me think that article came after our association with them. But that article certainly would have cemented the friendships. Remember we were on totally opposite sides of the political fence….well, maybe not too opposite. Everyone seemed to be a libertarian/anarchist at the time.

Was Tim a freelancer or a staffer?  How did you know the Bobs?  Did you already share an interest in conspiracies before meeting those guys, or did they turn you on to it?  Was Discordianism already well-established when you met them or did you both have a role in shaping the ideas? 

Our People's Underground issue of the National Review.  Courtesy Mary Wheeler.

We were living in Larchmont, NY at the time, and when we moved to Indiana, we began to lose interest in it. We stayed in touch with the Sheas, who were fun and interesting, and way more normal than any of the others. I'm still in touch with Bob's widow.

Tim was on the staff for about 4 years, and then when we moved to Indiana, he continued to write those short paragraphs up front for the magazine.  He was a contributing editor thereafter, for about 30 years.

In those early years when Tim worked in the office, as an editorial assistant, there was a lot of joking about the Illuminati. I can remember conversations with fellow conservatives where the conspiracy of the Illuminati ballooned into a conspiracy of left handed people, or those with first cousins named Jeffrey. It spawned fantastic letterheads!  Nobody at NR took it seriously, and we made fun of those that did.  I think that is why it was so much fun to discover the Discordians, who also didn’t take any of that seriously. We had discovered like-minded people who tended to be liberals, or at least anarchists. And we were right-wing crazies, although Tim was very much a libertarian. It was clearly already established by the time we were introduced, because the Principia had already been written.  I think there were later editions that included some of Our People’s Underworld paraphernalia. 

An old roommate of mine worked for the NRA (years ago)  and got this cassette in the mail from a member put out by the John Birch Society, a long thing about the Illuminati, one world government, etc.  What was the feeling about this line of thinking among young conservatives at the time?  Tim wrote a satirical article, so that’s one indication….I ask because the belief that the Illuminati is out to install one world government is a strong as ever.  I know that this has deep roots with the work of Taxil, Nesta Webster etc.  I don’t know as much as I should about the conservative movement of the period, so this may be a dumb question, but what was the view of the Birchers among the NR-type conservatives, the Buckley line of thinking? 

Nobody could stand the whackos of the Birchers when we were at National Review. Buckley had dismissed them, losing critical subscribers, but picking up credence in the meantime. It was an important move on NR’s part, and Buckley’s part.  There is no one today with that kind of power: he made the Birchers irrelevant to the Conservative Movement.

I’ve always admired Buckley.  Was he as charming personally as he appears on film?  Did he (WFB) know anything about Discordianism? 

Buckley was wonderful, extremely generous and gracious and loyal. And the real war horse behind National Review those days was his sister Priscilla, who was equally generous, gracious and loyal. Bill did know about Discordianism, through Tim, but it wasn’t anything beyond simple amusement…I doubt he gave it much thought. But National Review was pretty hip. The older editors could be a bit stodgy, but they had kids our age, and the staff was pretty young, and very clever.  Humor was a big part of National Review, lots of joking, pranking. Bill Rickenbacker was especially mischievous.

BTW, I just read this:

“Conservative spokesman William F. Buckley popularized [Eric] Voegelin's phrase as "Don't immanentize the eschaton!" Buckley's version became a political slogan of Young Americans for Freedom during the 1950s and 1960s.” (citing an NR article by Jonah Goldberg entitled “Immanent Corrections”)

One of the Wheelers' bumper stickers.  Note the Larchmont address.  Courtesy Discordian Archive.

YAF was never respected by those of us out of college and already at work in Conservative circles. Those were clean-cut college kids, who we made fun of by forming YARF, Young Americans for REAL Freedom, also acknowledged in Illuminatus!

YARF material.  Courtesy Discordian Archive.

WFB did originally write about Voegelin's quote, and we also wrote about it in Rally, a magazine we founded in '64 or '65, which was meant to be an avenue for young writers. It lasted only a couple of years, not surprisingly.  Rally was a serious venture. We were back in Milwaukee, having been fired from the day-to-day National Review job. We went to many Milwaukee businessmen and raised enough money to get it off the ground, and then continued to raise money to keep it afloat. Rally was meant to be a forum for young conservatives, that would theoretically then move on to NR. It was a fine magazine. [see Rally "Magazine" by Daniel H. Johnston at http://blogs.brown.edu/hallhoag/2014/08/15/rally-magazine/] 

And then we really promoted the phrase through merchandizing.

Your quote was done by evil Revisionists! (And YAF wasn't even in existence in the 50s.)

Was it Tim who turned Bill on to the expression for the first time?  Did the Bobs and Greg know about it from Tim as well?

It wasn't Tim who told Bill about the phrase, and it may have even been Milton Friedman...can't really remember.  But it definitely was Tim who popularized it. And I'm sure the Bobs and Greg were not reading somewhat obscure Conservative magazines...they learned it from Tim.

[The phrase basically means trying to create “heaven on earth”, kind of forcing the hand of God into bringing about the final, heavenly stage of history (the eschaton).  Conservative critics have used the phrase to criticize usually but not limited to left-wing or utopian ideologies such as communism.]

I’ll definitely be discrete with anything you say about this, but didn’t you once tell me at some point you guys had a farm and grew a little weed?  I know RAW was into pot and LSD and I’m assuming this was fairly current.  Was this important at the time?  Was it seen as something like an exploration of innerspace, cosmic awakening etc….or just a good time?  Were young conservatives as apt to smoke a spliff or two as the hippies?

When we moved to Indiana, we had 25 acres of land, and three acres surrounding the house; that is, not under cultivation. Yes, we grew a lot of pot – it kept us afloat through those years. It was an income for us, though it simply horrifies me now to think how reckless we were. I don’t know about the others, but we smoked just for the feel good. No thoughtful insights, no magical apparitions. We smoked with a couple of our conservative friends, but I don’t know about others. My guess is that everybody smoked, but most people didn’t gab about it.

What exactly was Our People’s Underground?  I thought it was a group in the satire article, but I see there were little mimeo magazines published by the OPU—SNAFU.  What was the group supposed to represent, even satirically and how did it come about?  Was it part of the joking about with conspiracies at the NR you talked about?

Also, did you have a hand in creating SNAFU?  Anything you could tell us about it?

SNAFU addressed to Greg Hill.  Courtesy Discordian Archive.

We were living in Larchmont, had three kids, one on the way. Tim was working for the Conservative Book Club, headed by Neil McCaffery. Danny Rosenthal was the head of the sales department, and he and Neil got into some sort of disagreement, and we wound up siding with Danny, and Tim (and Dan) were fired from the CBC. All of this happened when we were just getting involved with the Discordians.

Tim wrote this hilarious piece about secret societies and goings-on, and when Bill Buckley saw it, he immediately wrote Tim a note that asked if he could have the article for $1000? Tim wrote back "yes, if I can keep this note."

So the commercial possibilities were enormous -- buttons, notepads, cards, and bumper stickers. We produced them and sold them, and formed Our People's Underworld. It kept us alive financially until Tim finally got a speech-writing job in Indianapolis.

Along the way we wrote and produced Snafu. Only four issues...it was very laborious. We had an electric typewriter, but everything else was cut and pasted onto sheets, and then taken to the printer.

It was, of course, meant to be funny, but it was a source of income as well. Not much, mind you, but we were a struggling family of six by the time we moved to Indiana.

The Illuminati-referenced stuff was always a huge seller.

My oldest son Christopher has thousands of photos posted on PBase (csw62) and one gallery is for Tim [http://www.pbase.com/csw62/dad]. There are lots of shots of old notepads from OPU.

So you sold the notepads as well?  Was the OPU at first a satire and then you realized it could be a source of revenue, or was there a financial interest from the get-go?  Was there any sense that the Discordian thing could generate revenue as well, or was that more a labor of love?  I mean, the Principia was for sale, no?

Wheeler-designed letterheads used in Operation Jake.  Courtesy Chris Wheeler.

The original article was serious satire of conspiracies, but all the merchandising flowed naturally from OPU. We didn't have anything to do with any commercial aspect of Discordianism. I wasn't aware that Greg was selling Principia [he was]...indeed, it seemed to us that copies were scarce and sacred. I think any real commercialism of their stuff was after it faded from our lives.

Did you write any of the SNAFU material? If so, what?  Were you personally as interested in the subject of conspiracies as the others?  How did the whole interest in conspiracies get started at NR?

How did you guys react to Tim appearing as a character in the Illuminatus! Trilogy?  Did you feel slighted that Hope Springs didn’t make an appearance?    Besides you and Yvonne, were there other women Discordians?

Also, was wondering if you had any anecdotes about Thornley.  I didn’t get if you’d ever met in person, but maybe the others told you about him. 

I didn't write any of the material, but I helped choose the cartoons, the photos, drawings...all the illustrative stuff.  And helped paste it all together.  I did all the administrative work.  There were supposed to be 8 issues, but only four were published.

I'm sure Tim was pleased about Randomfactor -- I don't really remember. All these years later, I was surprised to see that there were quite a few years between OPU and Discordianism, and the publishing of Illuminatus!  I would have guessed it was much closer together.

Our best-selling button was “Don't Let Them Immanentize the Eschaton.” That appeared in the trilogy.  It referenced the original OPU issue of NR. And lots of OPU stuff was mentioned in the appendix of Part III, and Operation Jake, wherein some selected politicians received weird letters on weirder letterhead.

Bob Wilson's wife Arlen, I'm sure, was active. But it was mostly a male thing. BTW, I got a beautiful condolence note from Bob Wilson when my step father died in 1970.  I kept it for a long time, but don't have it anymore. It was serious, and sweet, and wise. It was not a side of him I had seen.

We never met Kerry, but certainly had lots of cheerful correspondence with him.

I don't know if you could see Breaking Bad [she asks because I live in France; I saw it!] but the goofy lawyer was named Saul Goodman, and he now has a spin off show, being filmed in Albuquerque. Coincidence? I think not....

I’d forgotten Saul Goodman was a detective in Illuminatus!  Before I print this, you can go over it to make sure you’re ok with the content.  I won’t go on forever, but I want to let it unfold slowly so I don’t neglect anything.

I have no problem with anything you print, except if it characterized one of these guys in a mean way. There was nothing mean or nasty or disparaging about any of our relationships. 

Can you tell me more about Project Jake, how it came about and was carried out, who was targeted?

You mentioned you were surprised that people are still into this because you were all joking around; why do you think people are still into it? Several editions of the Principia have been brought out, does that surprise you?

We were first involved with Operation Mindfuck, wherein we took all those subscription inserts in magazines, filled in the "enemy's" name, and subscribed for them!

So just furthering the game, and taking advantage of insane letterheads that we kept creating, we would write bogus letters to politicians that we particularly didn't like. With us, it would have been people like John Lindsey, or Jacob Javits. With the others it would have been right-wing congressmen or senators. Some carbon copies made their way into groovy kits.

We were drawn in for the humor, the cleverness, the unusual-ness, and maybe even the novelty of conservatives making friends with liberals (although we all were pretty much libertarians.) We all thought we were funny and clever. Perhaps that is why people are still being drawn in. The Trilogy was very funny and clever...I think certain types of people are drawn to it. And the guys were writers, who had a respect for their fellow crazies.  We all like to think we are funny and clever.

And in our own way, we took it seriously to the extent of making some money out of it, though I can't really speak to Greg's motives.  But the content -- it just wasn't real. It was made up. It was whimsy.

We had tons of correspondence from Kerry, the Bobs, and Greg, but when Tim died, our youngest wound up tossing almost all his papers. If he hadn't already gotten rid of them, she certainly did.

Hi Mary, I just got back from Italy yesterday and found the Historia Discordia book in my mailbox.  Just leafing thru it so far, but it’s already inspired a couple of questions….

In a section about the Groovy Kits, the editor mentions that following Emperor Norton’s example, the Discordians began issuing banknotes and there are several references to flaxscript and the exchange rate with Murphy Notes, apparently your and Tim’s invention?  Anything you can say about this?

Also, in an odd and ends section at the end, he reproduces one of your “Don’t let THEM Immanentize the Eschaton” bumper stickers, as well as a collection of what I believe are your letterheads (including YARF); he has these latter as being compiled by one “Thomas the Gnostic” and credits the bumper sticker to the same.  Is this an error, or was Thomas another one of Tim’s aliases?  Funny name, given Voegelin’s negative attitude towards Gnosticism.

I remember flaxscript, but Murphy Notes? No, not really. I believe none of us were wealthy, or even very well off, and would not have fallen for silly money.

I don't remember Thomas, and all that paraphernalia was Our People's Underworld, founded by Harold Randomfactor, before (barely) we became aware of Discordianism. But it would not surprise me if somewhere down the line Tim used Thomas the Gnostic for something or other. It wouldn't have been anything sustained, or else I would remember it.  [The Historia misattributes the sticker; Thomas the Gnostic was in fact another person.] 

Tim would have enjoyed the irony of Thomas, and he was no fan of Catholicism, but he was deeply Christian, à la C. S. Lewis. He was brought up in the Congregational church, but he held little respect for a tyranny of church. But individually, he was very much a believer in God, and in Jesus. He even said to me, that absurd notion that even if one didn't know for sure about god and the hereafter, it was better to err on the side of belief.

 BTW, what were The Freebish Papers?

Freebish Papers "from HOPE & HAROLD".  Courtesy Discordian Archive.

The Freebish Papers were nothing really, just a joint letter to a bunch of friends, there weren't more than a couple of them. Just personal correspondence.

What do you think of seeing all these scanned documents you guys made? [I’m referring here to the Discordian Archive that Adam inherited containing a multitude of Greg Hill’s papers] 

No wonder Tim never met a deadline! What an insane amount of time he spent on this. I'm sure this is only the tip of the iceberg.

Link to more non-Discordian info about Tim Wheeler:  

Human Events “Friends Remember Tim Wheeler” http://humanevents.com/2007/08/24/friends-remember-tim-wheeler/ 

Note:  The initial posting of this article had a link to NR articles by one Tim Wheeler.  These were, in fact by another Tim Wheeler, so I have removed this link.  I apologize for the mistake.

LoS would like to thank Mary Wheeler, Christopher Wheeler, the Wheeler family and Adam Gorightly for their time and hemp, er, I mean help.

Tentative bibliography of synchromystic and related titles....

This is a woefully incomplete list of titles I've read (except for one), that have informed my vision of what may be called "synchromysticism".  Only one book actually uses the term and deals with the genre directly, but all of them I think are useful "primary sources".  That said, they probably aren't the best choices to start with if you want to know what self-identified synchromystics have read and written; the list may be of most use to those who have already read some of those books and are looking for precursors or related works that may not have occurred to them to read.  Please feel free to add titles you've read in the comments section, bearing in mind I make no pretense of this list being either comprehensive or the most pertinent selection.  You can find many blogs and websites which identify themselves or are generally regarded as having a synchromystic approach to history and current events.  Like I said, this is only a list of books I've read; there are certainly other books out there that may be obvious but I can't vouch for them.  Dates refer to the first publication, not necessarily the edition I read, nor the date the book was actually written.

Plastic Tub, a Wiki project I contributed to predates my knowledge of synchromysticism but shares a lot of features with it.

• Brandon, Jim.  Weird America.  1978.  (The only book on this list I haven't read, but I recommend it on the basis of its connection to Downard, Hoffman and Coleman and its status as a precursor and a "classic" of the genre).
• Breton, Andre.  Surrealist Manifesto.  1924.
• Breton, Andre.  Nadja.  1928. 
• Burroughs, William S.  The Adding Machine.  1985.
• Coverly, Merlin.  Psychogeography.  2010.
• Debord, Guy.  Theory of the Dérive.  First published in French in 1956.  In English?
• de Sède, Gerard.  The Accursed Treasure of Rennes le Chateau.  First published in French in 1958.  In English, 2001.
• Downard, James Shelby and Hoffman, Michael.  King-Kill 33.  Published by Adam Parfrey in Apocalypse Culture in 1988, but Hoffman prefaces his online version by saying the book had been out of print since 1987.  He sells a longer version on his website.  Loren Coleman says the text circulated "for years" prior to being published by Parfrey and was written "sometime before 1978."
• Downard. "The Call to Chaos".  Apocalypse Culture, 2nd ed.  1990.
• Downard. "America, The Possessed Corpse".  Apocalypse Culture II.  2000.
• Downard.  Carnivals of Life and Death. (The only book-length work by the generally-acknowledged Godfather of the genre).  2006.    
• Eco, Umberto.  Foucault's Pendulum.  First published in Italian in 1988.  In English, 1989.
• Fort, Charles.  The Book of the Damned.  1919.
• Gorightly, Adam.  James Shelby Downard's Mystical War.  2008
• Guffey, Robert.  Cryptoscatology: Conspiracy Theory as Art Form.  2012.
• Hoffman, Michael.  Secret Societies and Psychological Warfare.  2001.
• The Holy Bible.
• Jung, Carl.  Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle.  1960.
• Mackey, Albert G.  An Encyclopedia of Freemasonry.  1873.
• Malaclypse the Younger.  Principia Discordia.  1965.
• Parfrey, Adam, Riding the Downardian Nightmare.  Cult Rapture. 
• Pynchon, Thomas.  Gravity's Rainbow.  1973.
• Spence, Richard.  "Searching for James Shelby Downard".  2012.
• Waite, Arthur E.  A New Encyclopedia of Freemasonry.  1921.  
• Wilson, Robert Anton and Shea, Robert.  Illuminatus! trilogy.
• Wilson, Robert Anton.  Cosmic Trigger, vols. I, II and III.  1977; 1991; 1995.

The Revelation of the Method

With the exception of my introduction, coda and a few comments in the text itself, this post is a reprint of a post from Skilluminati Research, a blog that delves sensibly into conspiracies both real....and imagined. As the author puts it:

Skilluminati Research is devoted to unraveling the system of social control in the Western World. This is not motivated by fear, moral outrage or a desire to "expose the truth" -- I'm just curious about how The Machine works. Here, I study the past century of overlapping currents in economics, behavioral psychology, education policy, marketing and persuasion, media theory, classified technology, and the operations of intelligence agencies. We study the current landscape of computerized surveillance, decentralized warfare, asymmetric conflicts, disaster capitalism, and "Psychological Operations." 

I first referred to the Skilluminati's The Revelation of the Method in 2011 ("Their ashes were then ground up and dumped into the Seine, so as to leave no relics behind.") and had cause to refer to it once again in my last post, about the movie Frozen (Queens of the Ice Age).  The second time I cited it, I got the notion that I'd like to reprint the post in full, so I contacted Skilluminati and explained why.  This is an edited version of what I wrote [Bracketed small italics not included]:

I write a blog with a friend called Laws of Silence.  We write about all sorts of things.  I personally focus on folklore and history, folk saints, church architecture, etc., but occasionally we (my partner and I) venture into areas that might be labeled "conspiracy theory" and even "synchromysticism".  Usually we’re a bit ironic with these latter two.  I rarely venture into synchromystic territory without evoking apophenia, the Baader-Meinhoff Phenomenon, confirmation bias etc., so, I’m not a wild-eyed "true believer".

Like many people interested in synchromystic-style conspiracy theory, I came to the subject via Burroughs (the 23 enigma, specifically), the Principia Discordia, and especially R. A. Wilson [His Cosmic Trigger series--especially tome I--and Illuminatus! trilogy are must-reads for anyone interested in the topic].  There is also a healthy dose of Surrealism and Stimes Addisson in my approach.  King Kill-33 was something that blew my mind and, once read, the effect it had on me could not be undone. 

[King Kill-33 is by one James Shelby Downard, but it is more akin to Hoffman's work in Secret Societies and Psychological Warfare than Downard's awful The Carnivals of Life and Death; I want to say say "allegedly" because although Hoffman and Feral House publisher Adam Parfrey claim to have met the man, and although I have no reason to believe these men are lying, I still wonder if we're being hoaxed.  One of the two known photos of Downard seems like a fake and Adam Gorightly's disappointing biography turns up nothing new or concrete about the man.  Which is par for the course.  Dr. Richard B. Spence, used public records to prove that Downard did, in fact, exist and presents more verifiable information in one short article than Gorightly manages in one short book, largely cribbed from other sources and barely about Downard at all....  So, with Spence's lengthy-enough citation of public records, why do I still have doubts?] 

I am also pretty familiar with Michael Hoffman.  I find him extremely intelligent, and he writes well-researched work, but still, he comes across as a mad hatter.  I’m just not down with his extreme right program, especially his obsession with the evils presented by whom he calls “Judaics” and "sodomites"-- sometimes both for the same person.  My latest post is a jest about the film Frozen, which a couple of religious folks (a Mormon and an Evangelical) have decried as a kind of homosexual indoctrination tool.  I ran with the idea one night, a bit drunk, and popped out (perhaps "pooped out") an absurd text on the same theme.  Previous posts were about bell towers in the Southwest of France.  So you can see, my topics are varied. 

What I want to reproduce is your text on the Revelation of the Method.  I could simply review it and link to it, but when I initially contacted you I was all keen to reproduce it on my blog.  I can see why you might not want that.  I figured though, that whatever “regular” readers I might have would be more likely to read the entire thing if it were on my blog as opposed to something I linked to.  I’m actually not sure that's true and I don’t have that many readers anyway.  Perhaps 150 hits a day or so, according to the blogger stats.  I really like your post, the best thing I’ve read on the topic.  So many people evoke the “Revelation of the Method” without knowing exactly where it comes from!  I’ve argued with people about confirmation bias and synchronicity and they write me off as simply “not getting it, man."  My hope is that by re-printing your article, more people might read it and because quite frankly, you’ve expressed your critique better than I, all in one place, as opposed to scattered across several posts. 

It’s a great article, an antidote to the synchromystic/twilight language virus which, though valid in a poetic sense, seems over-wrought and played out as a truly useful tool for de-masking the goings on of a pre-supposed “cryptocracy”.  Hey, there are obviously power elites, but this psychodrama theory of Masonic/Rosicrucian/Jewish origin seems a bit….counterproductive? 

Skilluminati responded:

A delightfully unexpected angle.
I gladly grant permission to reproduce that in full.

So, with no further ado's or a go-go's, here's the beef. 

Originally posted on Skilluminati Research, 27 Nov, 2010
 

I've been in love with that phrase for years: The Revelation of the Method is not my own invention, but borrowed poetry from the world of conspiracy theory. Although it gets referred to as an actual Masonic concept, it's actually a very recent fabrication from a Catholic "Revisionist Historian" named Michael Hoffman. In his original formulation, the Revelation of the Method is an occult ritual, specifically a "Masonic psychodrama."

Used casually, the implication is always the same: when the Cryptocracy commits major crimes, they will broadcast their intentions in advance, through popular movies and television. Hoffman himself was iffy on the actual order of the process: "it's my contention that these are occult rituals and that like the Rosicrucian Manifestos of the early 17th century they are accompanied by anonymous statements of intent like the original Unabom manifesto, as well as scripts that precede the ritual." Later in the same interview, though, he deviates from his own script: "Look at the movie "The Matrix" in the wake of Columbine. Look at "The Wicker Man" movie in the same time frame as Son of Sam. The themes of the killings are in the movies." Whatever its actual merits, the end result of this theory is pattern recognition in the service of a pre-established conclusion. The Revelation of the Method is how the Illuminati, or the Vatican, or the CIA rub it in our faces.

Of course, Michael A. Hoffman II is also a man who devotes a large portion of his life to questioning the historical veracity of the Nazi Holocaust. He's a religious fundamentalist with weird hobbies, and much like myself, badly in need of an honest editor. I'm not discussing him because he's important or correct on much of anything: he is not. He just happens to be the first source using this particular phrase.

As you might expect, he equates Masonry with Judaism and both with pure pagan Evil, which makes for some eloquent and exquisitely researched nonsense. The evidence boils down to drawing connections between violent crimes and violent media, with no actual chain of causality or conspiratorial links involved. Common themes and overlapping symbols are taken as sufficient proof.
Although this approach is similar to the recent "Synchromysticism" movement [I would argue it's pretty much exactly the same, but that quibble is certainly open to debate. --Daurade], it's important to note that the more grounded minds in that field reject Hoffman outright. When Christopher Knowles from the (outstanding) project The Secret Sun addressed The Revelation of the Method, he was blunt enough to bear repeating:

"First of all, there is no such thing as "Revelation of the Method," it's a speculative concept coined by a extreme-right conspiracy theorist and has no basis in esoteric history or doctrine. Second, I have no interest in talking to people who automatically identify ancient mythological symbols with conspiracy or evil. I'm talking to open-minded people who are looking for a deeper narrative in all of this." -- source link

Christian and Conspiratainment commentators who take on the weighty topic of Hegelian Synthesis usually present it as something invented, an intellectual technology that was unleashed upon the world. Actually, Hegel was diagnosing a pre-existing condition of the human species. The endless iterations of Thesis and Anti-Thesis stretch back throughout the history of human culture. It is a binary trap that has always shaped us: East and West, victors and victims, war and peace. Us and them.  [Not quite sure I agree here, but for the parts of this post which I am interested in, it's not critically relevant.  Plus, I haven't read Hegel in 20+ years.  --Daurade ]

 

"History is a nightmare from which we are trying to awaken." It's a great quote, pure poetry, but I can't get with that particular Thesis, when I really think about it. Humans are incredibly adaptable creatures, our brains are robust sense-making machines, and that's how we quickly come to view these nightmares as normal. History is normal days just like this one. "Business as Usual" is exactly what we need to get involved with. You know, just like the Socialists did.

On the Conspiratainment front, as always, we find a new set of answers. In the Infowars archives, the "Revelation of the Method" is a college essay by Hillary Clinton about the work of political realist Saul Alinsky. Alinsky, much like George Soros, has recently achieved Bond Villian Status in the cosmology of popular Mormon/JBS theorist Glenn Beck. Alinsky is the author of "Rules for Radicals," an explicit guide to achieving and exercising power in the tradition of The Prince, The Arthashastra and The Art of War.

Alinsky is worth being afraid of. He is clearly far sharper than any of the conservative propagandists, because in recent years they've simply stolen his material verbatim and re-named it "Rules for Patriots." (Matt Kibbe, you are lazy as fuck.) Besides, no matter what Hillary Clinton thought about Alinsky in College, she got further illuminated during the 1990's orchestrating the push for Health Care reform. Hillary wasn't cynical enough yet, she couldn't process how easily the American electorate could be motivated to become activists against their own interests. Pretty soon, she was talking about "a vast Right wing conspiracy," too. It was documented in a 331 page portfolio of clippings and connections titled "The Communication Stream of Conspiracy Commerce."

It's catching. The most remarkable thing about Conspiracy apophenia, to an amoral free agent like myself, is that it's distinctly contagious. Once infected, we always tend toward greater certainty. This is not lost on Michael Hoffman himself, who proclaims: "Give me two hours with any group of average intelligence and I'll have them reading twilight language and decoding occult rituals for the rest of their lives." I see no reason to doubt him.

Of course, Hoffman himself is a Catholic, a willing subject of the single most successful occult conspiracy in the known history of mankind. The Catholics, it should be noted, are the exact reason why the Freemasons and the Perfectibilists were "secret societies" in the first place: because of vulgarians like Tertullian, Torquemada, or Michael Hoffman. Men who could look at Sacred geometry and basic science, the very language of nature, and see only Satanic evil. Men who would torture and murder for the glory of God's Love. [I think this is a bit harsh on Hoffman, whose rhetoric, though strident, if not seething, doesn't seem  advocate violence; I could be wrong, but I see Hoffman someone who would rather convince with words rather than torture. --Daurade] It's pathetic. And it's catching.

Then again...it doesn't exactly help that Saul Alinsky dedicated Rules for Radicals to Satan Himself: "Lest we forget at least an over-the-shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical: from all our legends, mythology, and history... the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom — Lucifer." You can imagine what the NWO fighters make of a quote like that, but to me, it doesn't read like Sympathy for the Devil...it's more like a sly curse. Perhaps Alinsky was winking at young idealists who are charging headfirst down a road paved with good intentions? Che and Lenin both come to mind, for essentially opposite reasons.

It's not like Socialism has a monopoly on horrifying unintended consequences. In fact, human history teaches something far bleaker: every formalized system of government we've created has been perfectly capable of facilitating mass murder, class warfare and repressive regimes. Conspiracy critics like Michael Hoffman allow themselves the luxury of a solution, an answer, a promised land. An honest study of reality allows for no such sentimentality, and recognizes that the only way out of Hell is through it. This is where we stand in the modern world, and no amount of symbolic connections and "Twilight Language" is going to change these naked facts of our condition. Finger-pointing is a cop out. It is not sufficient to merely expose or destroy the Freemasons: it also falls upon us to replace them.

[Full disclosure:  I am a Freemason, so I hope Skilluminati is merely rhetorically directing this to the "NWO fighters" as an example of what they should be working on if they are serious about their mission, not what people as a whole should be working towards! --Daurade]

We don't have to look far for real life examples of power elites committing crimes out in the open, and sneering at the general public every step of the way. It's technically known as the Banking industry and they have been stepping up their game dramatically over the past two decades. More audacious and socially destructive than any "occult ritual crime," the spectacular theft of American wealth by a privileged few has been conducted in plain sight, documented through sober PBS documentaries and bestselling books. These are crimes everybody knows about, yet nobody seems to have the power to stop them.

Why can't the Revelation of the Method be about the actual science of social control? Movies and mass murder is such a tiny, schizoid slice of the entire spectrum of control that shapes our waking lives. Fields like political science and sociology have mostly been philosophy and horseshit, but in recent years they've been able to get ahold of serious data -- sufficient "Big Picture" numbers to start recognizing patterns instead of merely creating theories. The kind of headlines that emerge are grimly predictable but undeniably important: "Low incomes make poor more conservative, study finds" or "UT Professor: Economic Inequality is Self-Reinforcing" or more cheerful material like "The Poverty Trap: Why the Poor Pay More."

"Lee had a great knack to visualize. His whole thing was wedges and magnets. What pulls people apart...and what attracts people? You find ways to bring people to you, and ways to divide the people who are against you. This was his bottom line practical theory." -- Richard McBride

I would like to create a Revelation of the Method that functions as real Political Science, something to replace a field which is currently neither Political nor Scientific. As it stands, it's history, with no science involved, and far too little discussion about actual politics -- the technical details of the ongoing Cold War known as Everybody vs. Everybody Else.

There will always be an eye in the pyramid. The human race is a global superorganism managed by a self-selected Elite, thousands of competing and conflicting conspiracies. The goal of Skilluminati Research is to encourage active engagement instead of opposition and resistance...or as Graham Summer observed: "If you live in a country run by committee, be on the committee." I'm not talking about "Democracy" so much as the whole corrupted and invisible System itself. Money, power, religion and war. We need to be engaging with it, because there is no question of working outside of it -- that's a rhetorical flourish, a concept that exists only on paper. Here in the flesh and blood, bombs and bullets, money and food Real World, the System is everywhere at once and consumes all that it touches.

The most dangerous thing about excuses is that they're technically true. There's not much difference between Democrats and Republicans, there's not many avenues to exercise our power safely, and there's way too many problems to deal with simultaneously, it's all true. There's not much hope for the forces of peace. It's also true that all human innovation happens in that tiny space between "not much" and "nothing" -- because we are powerful, and tiny differences will be enough to enact huge changes. Remember, you only ever need 51% of the vote...and best of all, actual voters are already a minority to begin with.

Mark Meckler, the datamining and direct sales guru who created the Tea Party Patriots, has a 40 year plan. Over the weekend of October 2nd, 2010, he got to give a sales pitch the Council for National Policy, asking for a head start on the $100 million dollars it will cost to save America. His "in" was Gary Aldrich, who now sits on the board of TPP. Meckler claims to have 20 million email addresses and he's clearly stated his goals: "Tea Party Patriots plans to convert sixty percent or more of the population to support our core values of fiscal responsibility, constitutionally limited government, and free markets."

I know: Braindead horseshit. This frat boy has a 40 year plan, though.

Do we?

  

* * * *

Coda:  Daurade here.  Like I said in my letter to Skilluminati, I find synchromysticism to be a poetic game of sorts.  When I play it--and I apologize because this sounds terribly pretentious--I tend to think of it as an exercise in mapping both symbols and my own mind.  There is something out there--a shared reality--but I feel like I'm also uncovering something inside me.  A synchromystic "analysis" has different nuances for each individual, as the connections we make are reflections of our own obsessions, the coincidences reflect our own perceptions and what is "important" reflects our own prejudices.  It can be fun and playful, and some synchromystics are quite good at the game.  Da Black Whole and Aferrismoon are clever wordsmiths, with outrageous puns, a wide range and a sense of humor.  I used to read them regularly.

If you want to play, a broad knowledge of pop culture and the the humanities is essential.  Familiarity with the Bible, Freemasonry, religion and the occult are likewise fairly important areas of knowledge.  Even though I regularly feel I've played out the exercise to its logical conclusion, I still come across essays like this one which remind me why I started doing it:  There's a lot of fun it it and our conclusions are not really the point.  What is ultimately interesting is the process.  Synchromysticism is not an accumulated body of knowledge, but a type of exegesis.

For a while, every time I went off on a synchromystic bender, I'd run across something by Loren Coleman on his blog Twilight Language and I thus felt compelled to contact him.  In this post he answers my question about what he's actually trying to do on his blog.  Why twilight language?  His gracious response marks hims as more of a Fortean than a "conspiracy theorist" and you might find more merit in his approach than in its results (again, looking at the process rather than the product).  His mindset doesn't seem to involve the strident political or social motivation as the "NWO fighters", so I'm not sure if he's a target of Skilluminati's critique of would-be revolutionaries fooling about with symbolic connections and "Twilight Language".  

Coleman's blog was once called The Copycat Effect, however, so at some point he caught the virus.  With nearly 3 million (!) hits on his blog, he, rather than Hoffman, may be the synchromystic virus' (SM-23?) index case.   

Another of Coleman's posts reveals that several years ago he corresponded with Hoffman and one William Grimstad about Downard.  (We also learn that "synchromysticism" was coined in 2006 by Jake Kotze).  In yet another post, Coleman quotes and identifies Grimstad's Weird America (written as "Jim Brandon" in 1978), as one of the urtexts of the synchromystic "movement".  (He refers to Downard, Hoffman and Grimstad as the founding "triad".  Good luck finding Brandon's book, btw, though if you can find one for a reasonable price, I'd love to hear from you).  Coleman must be a much more open-minded guy than I am, because nowhere does he flinch at Hoffman's religious fundamentalism and bigotry, Grimstad's Holocaust denial and neo-Nazi affiliations (5/6/22 Update:  Here I was in error; he does address and repudiate it.  Since writing this, he also wrote a post specifically addressing the subject), Downard's perplexing influential masochistic gibberish or the admittedly Discordian writer Adam Gorightly's uneven take on his subject.  I know this sounds like I'm smearing Coleman, but this is not the case.  He seems to be saying that this particular branch of esoteric study makes, or made, for strange bedfellows.

Exchanging ideas with Grimstad....all went hand in hand with being a Fortean in the 1960s-1970s, especially if an interest in assassinations and strange suicides fit into the mindset.

He also says:

Downard's modern influence on Forteana, assassination studies, occult symbolism decoding, twilight language research and synchromysticism is so deep that he must be acknowledged as the Godfather to many of the points of view that inhabit those arenas.

Coleman deftly, almost imperceptibly, sidesteps the question of Downard's existence, but he does leave the possibility of his "non-existence" open, which, given the nature of the synchromystic game, might qualify as a brilliant move.  It's certainly appropriate that the godfather of synchromysticism may only be the invention of a couple of obscure anti-Semitic writers with the perplexing complicity of a secular Jewish publisher (Parfrey).  I've always found it odd that Hoffman would allow his work to appear in an anthology of texts, Apocalypse Culture--that includes so much content Hoffman would almost certainly categorize as vile perversion--published by a house which has also published the writings of celebrity/Satanist Anton LaVey (a mythomaniac of impressive proportions).  Not only that, but the two seemed to have some sort of friendship; the Tridentine Catholic....and the card-carrying member of the Church of Satan.  Wouldn't that be a hoot, if the conspiracy theorist extraordinaire was himself a the product of a conspiracy?  A meta-conspiracy?  A joke making fun of the gullible?  A group alter-ego? 

A revelation if you will, of the method?  More, perhaps, like an accumulation of methods.  An artwork in a genre which has been shaped by the workings of the Internets and is turn informing a large share of its culture.  Burroughs, Wilson and Downard have been influencing the fringe for years and now seem to be moving towards the center.  Sad to say, I'm not entirely convinced that's a good thing.