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ABSAgrams
ABSAgrams
ABSApundit, Illuminatus!, and the Golden Apple of discord
In the modern world, it sometimes seems as if we are inundated with confusion. Ever wonder what accounts for all this confusion? The authors of that masterpiece of satire (or maybe not?), Principia Discordia, think they know. The universe, they say, does not run according to high-minded, if sometimes childish and irrational deities (be they modern or ancient), but is under the spell of the Greek Goddess of Discord, Eris.
What did Eris do to earn this "status"? She got ticked off at everyone at a wedding party for not inviting her! (If you think about it, this is probably perfectly natural: who wants chaos, discord, and strife at a wedding…plenty of time for that after they’re married a while! 😊. [Okay, a little too much snark there! My apologies…] Moving along, though, we don’t imagine the other deities would be beating down the door to get Eris to come.
This started a long tradition of confronting discord and chaos in human activity. Since Discordians argue that something must account for all the chaos we endure constantly, they took as a possible approach that you simply give in to chaos and see where that leads you. Spoiler: they say it leads to personal liberation. So do we!
Once it is revealed that, possibly for one's entire life, one has been under the spell of systems of interpretation that exclude (or at least discourage) one from further exploration or force what might be quite novel observations into categories based on those one previously held. Put more bluntly: we seldom want to be told the truth, but we want to be told that what we already believe is true!
Some serious "pranking" here!
Quite obviously, Illuminatus! is based primarily on the principles of the Discordians, as (sort of) elucidated in Principia Discordia. the important thing to note concerning the whole axis between Illuminatus! and Principia Discordia is that it is essentially a prank (most psychic expansion techniques involve pranks, even though they are seldom identified as such—ahem!). All this has been characterized by one critic as the world’s longest “shaggy dog” joke.
For those who might be unfamiliar with this adorable artifact of so-called humor, a shaggy dog joke is a long, rambling story that keeps adding on pointless detail before ending with a precipitous and often anticlimactic punch line. Now, we don’t necessarily agree that PD’s conclusion that “reality is manipulable” is a truly unsatisfactory theme to end on but trust us: sample Illuminatus! and you’ll see their version of what happens when you disrupt everything with a shock dose of personal freedom. The critic is right, in a way: it really is a kind of shaggy dog story. But a major difference is to say that this one’s payoff is worth waiting for… and that, as you should soon see for yourself, that is a huge understatement.
As to whence the name originates, we guess “shaggy dog” comes from perhaps seeing a shaggy dog of sinister behavior do something on your property and trying to chase it all over the neighborhood, only to confront the animal and see that it is nothing special…it’s just a shaggy dog.😊
And then, as the reviewer at the top of the page said, your illusions are “stripped away.” You gaze upon the shaggy dog in puzzled amazement, and go, “Huh?”
The “huh” here is the truth that the books' often tortuous (though invariably entertaining) details of Illuminatus! leads you to finally “get,” namely, that reality really is plastic but that it is presented to you as ironclad. The reason for there being (purportedly) ironclad aspects of reality is that there are those who want to control you and it is, to put it mildly, not in their best interests that you perceive that there are alternatives to the patterns they impose on your thinking. Therefore, that is what is revealed, but the truly delicious aspect of this revelation is…you already knew it! As one reviewer (see top of page) put it, it turns out this bizarre trilogy was actually “written by you and me.”
Been right there all this time...
The fact that a lot of people know the “revelation” already (we call it the most obvious “revelation” we’ve encountered!) is not a problem, but by the time the Discordians complete their playful antics in turning it upside down, inside out and sideways, you are confronted with the reality that, as they quote Hassan i Sabbah, “everything is true and everything is permissible.”
If you get nothing else out of our interactions, you should go away, not with simply accepting how, say, Illuminatus! [ABSAdomain04] distinguishes itself from other ABSAdomains, but—as will always be the case with us—how it aligns with these areas of specialization, as well as other domains you could bring to the discussion.
A-a-and Here it Comes...
Of course, you know what comes next! A great value of Illuminatus! lies in how it intersects with other domains, whether ABSAdomains or not. An obvious pairing here is with the material on Aleister Crowley (ABSAdomain11), the English occultist/magician who popularized the rather Rabelaisian phrase, “Do what thou wilt shall be whole of the law.” As we’ve noted elsewhere, you could study that phrase for the rest of your life and not get to the bottom of it.
However, this does highlight the importance of will in creating reality, just as the “worship” of Eris puts you in exactly that same frame of mind. Little that the Discordians say makes sense on its own; you have to put in the work of making it make sense, and when you do you find your mental power increased. There are many, many connections possible, and we trust that we will get to at least some of them in time. It should always be born in mind that a chief purpose for all the ABSAdomains lies in their utility: how does this practice or process--especially cross-fertilized with other practices--make me more able to master my ability to create reality (after first learning that it worked for ABSAprime)? Remember: these are here because they “worked” for me personally; there’s lots of other candidates 😊
"As Below, So Above"
[Graphics by Descript's Overlord and Microsoft's Powerpoint. Background videos by Wix.com].
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