Discordianism is a belief system based around Eris, the Greek goddess of strife and discord, and variously defined as a religion, philosophy, paradigm, or parody religion. It was founded after the 1963 publication of its holy book, the Principia Discordia, written by Greg Hill with Kerry Wendell Thornley, the two working under the pseudonyms Malaclypse the Younger and Omar Khayyam Ravenhurst.
Robert Anton Wilson was an American author, futurist, psychologist, and self-described agnostic mystic. Recognized within Discordianism as an Episkopos, pope and saint, Wilson helped publicize Discordianism through his writings and interviews. In 1999 he described his work as an "attempt to break down conditioned associations, to look at the world in a new way, with many models recognized as models or maps, and no one model elevated to the truth". Wilson's goal was "to try to get people into a state of generalized agnosticism, not agnosticism about God alone but agnosticism about everything."
Timothy Francis Leary was an American psychologist and author known for his strong advocacy of psychedelic drugs. Evaluations of Leary are polarized, ranging from bold oracle to publicity hound. According to poet Allen Ginsberg, he was "a hero of American consciousness", and writer Tom Robbins called him a "brave neuronaut". During the 1960s and 1970s, Leary was arrested 36 times. President Richard Nixon described him as "the most dangerous man in America".
The Illuminatus! Trilogy is a series of three novels by American writers Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson, first published in 1975. The trilogy is a satirical, postmodern, science fiction–influenced adventure story; a drug-, sex-, and magic-laden trek through a number of conspiracy theories, both historical and imaginary, related to the authors' version of the Illuminati. The narrative often switches between third- and first-person perspectives in a nonlinear narrative. It is thematically dense, covering topics like counterculture, numerology, and Discordianism.
William Ernest Drummond is a Scottish artist, musician, writer, and record producer. He was a co-founder of the late-1980s avant-garde pop group the KLF and its 1990s media-manipulating successor, the K Foundation, with which he famously burned £1 million in 1994.
James Francis Cauty, also known as Rockman Rock, is an English artist and musician, best known as one-half of the duo the KLF, co-founder of the Orb and as the man who burnt £1 million.
The eight-circuit model of consciousness is a holistic model originally presented as psychological philosophy by Timothy Leary in books including Neurologic (1973) and Exo-Psychology (1977), later expanded on by Robert Anton Wilson in his books Cosmic Trigger (1977) and Prometheus Rising (1983), and by Antero Alli in his books Angel Tech (1985) and The Eight-Circuit Brain (2009), that suggests "eight periods [circuits]" within the model. This model has been described as a potential route towards reconciling different interpretations of what it means to be a human being. The eight circuits, or eight systems or "brains", as referred by other authors, operate within the human nervous system. Each corresponds to its own imprint and subjective experience of reality. Leary and Alli include three stages for each circuit, detailing developmental points for each level of consciousness.
The 23 enigma is a belief in the significance of the number 23. The concept of the 23 enigma has been popularized by various books, movies, and conspiracy theories, which suggest that the number 23 appears with unusual frequency in various contexts and may be a symbol of some larger, hidden significance. A topic related to the 23 enigma is eikositriophobia, which is the fear of the number 23.
Gregory Hill, better known by the pen name Malaclypse the Younger, was an American author. He is listed as author of the Principia Discordia, which was written with Kerry Wendell Thornley and others. He was also adapted as a character in The Illuminatus! Trilogy (1975). During the early years of circulation of the Principia Discordia, rumors claimed that the author of the book was Richard Nixon, Timothy Leary, or Robert Anton Wilson; or that the book and Malaclypse the Younger were both fictional inventions of Robert Anton Wilson, as with Abdul Alhazred's Necronomicon.
Cosmic Trigger I: The Final Secret of The Illuminati is the first book in the Cosmic Trigger series, first published in 1977 and the first of a three-volume autobiographical and philosophical work by Robert Anton Wilson. It has a foreword by Timothy Leary, which he wrote in the summer of 1977.
The KLF are a British electronic band who originated in Liverpool and London in the late 1980s. Scottish musician Bill Drummond and English musician Jimmy Cauty began by releasing hip hop-inspired and sample-heavy records as the JAMs. As the Timelords, they recorded the British number-one single "Doctorin' the Tardis", and documented the process of making a hit record in a book The Manual . As the KLF, Drummond and Cauty pioneered stadium house and, with their 1990 LP Chill Out, the ambient house genre. The KLF released a series of international hits on their own KLF Communications record label and became the biggest selling singles act in the world in 1991.
"Fuck the Millennium", sometimes spelled "***k the Millennium", is a protest song by the band 2K—Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty—better known as the Justified Ancients of Mu Mu or the KLF. The song was inspired musically by Jeremy Deller's "Acid Brass" project, where a traditional brass band plays acid house classics; these include the KLF's "What Time Is Love?". They were also inspired topically by the then-forthcoming end of the second millennium and the plans to celebrate it.
The following is a list of works by Timothy Leary. The majority of Leary's works were put into the public domain by his estate in 2009.
Michelle Olley is a British writer, journalist and magazine and book editor.
Watling Street: Travels Through Britain and Its Ever-Present Past is the fifth book by the British journalist, novelist and cultural historian John Higgs. The book charts Higgs's journey along Watling Street, one of the oldest roads in Britain, from Dover to Anglesey, during which journey he records the so-called hidden history of this ancient path from its first creation up to the present day. As well as recording the historical figures and their stories surrounding the road, Higgs also meets up with and interviews contemporary figures along the way such as Alan Moore and Alistair Fruish. The author describes the history of the road as, "Watling Street is a road of witches and ghosts, of queens and highwaymen, of history and myth, of Chaucer, Dickens and James Bond. Along this route Boudicca met her end, the battle of Bosworth changed royal history, Bletchley Park code breakers cracked Nazi transmissions and Capability Brown remodelled the English landscape.
2023: A Trilogy is a book by Jimmy Cauty and Bill Drummond writing as The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu. The book was published in 2017, 23 years after the duo had burnt one million British pounds they earned in the music industry as The KLF.
Alistair Fruish is an English filmmaker, writer and novelist, born in Northampton.
Daisy Eris Campbell, is a British writer, actress and theatre director. Daughter of actor and director Ken Campbell and actress and therapist Prunella Gee. She staged The Warp, a revival of Neil Oram's 24-hour play at The Everyman Theatre, Liverpool. Campbell also adapted Robert Anton Wilson’s cult autobiographical book Cosmic Trigger for the stage. She played the role of her mother in the play. Cosmic Trigger is a kind of sequel to her father's adaptation of Robert Anton Wilson's Illuminatus! Allegedly, Daisy was conceived during the original production of Illuminatus! In part, the play of Cosmic Trigger deals with the production of Ken Campbell's adaptation of Illuminatus! in Liverpool in 1976.
Neurologic is a 1973 book by Timothy Leary and Joanna Harcourt-Smith. The work was written by Leary during his re-incarceration at the California Men's Colony (CMC) in San Luis Obispo, California, from February to April 1973. A portion of the book was also entered into testimony as an exhibit in his trial for his original prison escape from CMC facilitated by the Weather Underground on September 13, 1970. Leary was initially arrested in 1970 for possession of one tenth of a gram of cannabis, and after escaping CMC he faced a lengthy prison term. The book was published after his extradition in 1973 and eventual conviction.
