Principia Discordia, Section Three

THE CURSE OF GREYFACE AND THE INTRODUCTION OF NEGATIVISM

To choose order over disorder, or disorder over order, is to accept a trip composed of both the creative and the destructive. But to choose the creative over the destructive is an all-creative trip composed of both order and disorder. To accomplish this, one need only accept creative disorder along with, and equal to, creative order, and also willing to reject destructive order as an undesirable equal to destructive disorder. The Curse of Greyface included the division of life into order/disorder as the essential positive/negative polarity, instead of building a game foundation with creative/destructive as the essential positive/negative. He has thereby caused man to endure the destructive aspects of order and has prevented man from effectively participating in the creative uses of disorder. Civilization reflects this unfortunate division. POEE proclaims that the other division is preferable, and we work toward the proposition that creative disorder, like creative order, is possible and desirable; and that destructive order, like destructive disorder, is unnecessary and undesirable. Seek the Sacred Chao - therein you will find the foolishness of all ORDER/DISORDER. They are the same!

ERISIAN MAGIC RITUAL - THE TURKEY CURSE Revealed by the Apostle Dr. Van Van Mojo as a specific counter to the evil Curse of Greyface. THE TURKEY CURSE is here passed on to Erisians everywhere for their just protection.

The Turkey Curse works. It is firmly grounded on the fact that Greyface and his followers absolutely require an aneristic setting to function and that a timely introduction of eristic vibrations will neutralize their foundation. The Turkey Curse is designed solely to counteract negative aneristic vibes and if introduced into a neutral or positive aneristic setting (like a poet working out word rhythms) it will prove harmless, or at worst, simply annoying.
It is not designed for use against negative eristic vibes, although it can be used as an eristic vehicle to introduce positive vibes into a misguided eristic setting. In this instance, it would be the responsibility of the Erisian Magician to manufacture the positive vibrations if results are to be achieved.

CAUTION- all magic is powerful and requires courage and integrity on the part of the magician.
This ritual, if misused, can backfire. Positive motivation is essential for self-protection.

TO PERFORM THE TURKEY CURSE:

1. Take a foot stance as if you were John L. Sullivan preparing for fisticuffs.
2. Face the particular greyfaced you wish to short-circuit, or towards the direction of the negative aneristic vibration that you wish to neutralize.
3. Begin waving your arms in any elaborate manner and make motions with your hands as though you were Mandrake feeling up a sexy giantess.
4. Chant, loudly and clearly: GOBBLE, GOBBLE, GOBBLE, GOBBLE, GOBBLE!
5. The results will be instantly apparent.

A PRIMER FOR ERISIAN EVANGELISTS
by Lord Omar

The SOCRATIC APPROACH is most successful when confronting the ignorant. The "socratic approach" is what you call starting an argument by asking questions. You approach the innocent and simply ask "Did you know that God's name is ERIS, and that He is a girl?"
If he should answer "Yes." then he probably is a fellow Erisian and so you can forget it.
If he says "No." then quickly proceed to: THE BLIND ASSERTION and say "Well, He Is a girl, and His name is ERIS!" Shrewedly observe if the subject is convinced.
If he is, swear him into the Legion of Dynamic Discord before he changes his mind.
If he does not appear convinced, then proceed to: THE FAITH BIT "But you must have Faith! All is lost without Faith! I sure feel sorry for you if you don't have Faith." And then add: THE ARGUMENT BY FEAR and in an ominous voice ask "Do you know what happens to those who deny Goddess?"
If he hesitates, don't tell him that he will surely be reincarnated as a precious Mao Button and distributed to the poor in the Region of Thud (which would be a mean thing to say), just shake your head sadly and, while wiping a tear from your eye, go to: THE FIRST CLAUSE PLOY wherein you point to all of the discord and confusion in the world and exclaim "Well who the hell do you think did all of this, wise guy?"
If he says, "Nobody, just impersonal forces." then quickly respond with: THE ARGUMENT BY SEMANTICAL GYMNASTICS and say that he is absolutely right, and that those impersonal forces are female and that Her name is ERIS.
If he, wonder of wonders, still remains obstinate, then finally resort to: THE FIGURATIVE SYMBOLISM DODGE and confide that sophisticated people like himself recognize that Eris is a Figurative Symbol for an Ineffable Metaphysical Reality and that The Erisian Movement is really more like a poem than like a science and that he is liable to be turned into a Precious Mao Button and Distributed to The Poor in The Region of Thud if he does not get hip.
Then put him on your mailing list.

SINK
A GAME

by Ala Hera, E.L., N.S.
RAYVILLE APPLE PANTHERS

"In a way, we're a kind of Peace Corps."
Maj. A. Lincoln German,
Training Director of the Green Beret Special Warfare School
Ft. Bragg, N.C.

A Joint Effort of the Discordian Society

POST OFFICE LIBERATION FRONT

Export License Not Required

THIS IS A CHAIN LETTER.

WITHIN THE NEXT FIFTY-FIVE DAYS YOU WILL RECEIVE THIRTY-ELEVEN HUNDRED POUNDS OF CHAINS!

In the meantime - plant your seeds. If a lot of people who receive this letter plant a few seeds and a lot of people receive this letter, then a lot of seeds will get planted. Plant your seeds. In parks. On lots. Public flower beds. In remote places. At City Hall. Wherever. Whenever. Or start a plantation in your closet (but read up on it first for that). For casual planting, its best to soak them in water for a day and plant in a bunch of about 5, about half an inch deep. Don't worry much about the weather, they know when the weather is wrong and will try to wait for nature. Don't soak them if its wintertime.

Seeds are a very hearty life form and strongly desire to grow and flourish. But some of them need people's help to get started. Plant your seeds.

Make a few copies of this letter (5 would be nice) and send them to friends of yours. Try to mail to different cities and states, even different countries. If you would rather not, then please pass this copy on to someone and perhaps they would like to.

THERE IS NO TRUTH to the legend that if you throw away a chain letter then all sorts of catastrophic, abominable, and outrageous disasters will happen. Except, of course, from your seed's point of view.

Q. "How come a woodpecker doesn't bash its brains out?" A. Nobody has ever explained that.

Mary Jane says "Plant Your Seeds. Keep Prices Down."

"And God said, behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of the earth... to you it shall be for meat."
-Genesis 1:29

Questions:
Have a friendly class talk.
Permit each child to tell any part of the unit on "Courtesy in the Corridors and on the Stairs" that he enjoyed.
Name some causes of disturbance in your school.
On no account give the same answers tomorrow as you do today.

Chapter 1,
THE EPISTLE TO THE PARANOIDS
Lord Omar

1. Ye have locked yerselves up in cages of fear--and, behold, do ye now complain that ye lack FREEDOM!
2. Ye have cast out yer brothers for devils and now complain ye, lamenting, that ye've been left to fight alone.
3. All Chaos was once yer kingdom; verily, held ye dominion over the entire Pentaverse, but today ye was sore afraid in dark corners, nooks, and sink holes.
4. O how the darknesses do crowd up, one against the other, in ye hearts! What fear ye more that what ye have wroughten?
5. Verily, verily I say unto you, not all the Sinister Ministers of the Bavarian Illuminati, working together in multitudes, could so entwine the land with tribulation as have yer baseless warnings.

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If your I.Q. is over 150, and you have $3,125.00 (plus handling), you might be eligible for a trial membership in the A.I.S.B. If you think you qualify, put the money in a cigar box and bury it in your backyard. One of our Underground Agents will contact you shortly. I DARE YOU!

TELL NO ONE!
ACCIDENTS HAVE A STRANGE WAY OF HAPPENING TO PEOPLE WHO TALK TOO MUCH ABOUT THE BAVARIAN ILLUMINATI

May we warn you against imitations! Ours is the original and genuine

"Nothing is true. Everything is Permissible"
Hassan i Sabbah

NIL CARBORUNDUM ILLEGITIMO

Official Bavarian Illuminati "Ewige Blumenkraft!"

"Illuminate the Opposition!"
Adam Weishaupt, Grand Primus Illuminatus

Here is a letter from A.I.S.B. to POEE:

The World's Oldest And Most Successful Conspiracy

BAVARIAN ILLUMINATI Founded by Hassan i Sabbah, 1090 A.D. (5090 A.L., 4850 A.M.) Reformed by Adam Weishaupt, 1776 A.D. (5776 A.L., 5536 A.M.) Official Business Surreptitious Business From: Dear Brother Mal-2, In response to your request for unclassified agitprop to be inserted in the new edition of PRINCIPIA, hope the following will be of use. And please stop bothering us with your incessant letters! Episkopos Mordecai, Keeper of the Notary Sojac, informs me that you are welcome to reveal that our oldest extant records show us to have been fully established in Atlantis, circa 18,000 B.C., under Kull, the galley slave who ascended to the Throne of Valusia. Revived by Pelias of Koth, circa 10,000 B.C. Possibly it was he who taught the inner-teachings to Conan of Cimmeria after Conan became King of Aquilonia. First brought to the western hemisphere by Conan and taught to Mayan priesthood (Conan is Quetzlcoatl). That was 4 Ahua, 8 Cumhu, Mayan date. Revived by Abdul Alhazred in his infamous Al Azif, circa 800 A.D. (Al Azif translated into Latin by Olaus Wormius, 1132 A.D., as The Necronomicon.) In 1090 A.D. was the founding of The Ismaelian Sect (Hashishim) by Hassan i Sabbah, with secret teachings based on Alhazred, Pelias and Kull. Founding of the Illuminated Ones of Bavaria, by Adam Weishaupt, on May 1, 1776. He based it on the others. Weishaupt brought it to the United States during the period that he was impersonating George Washington; and it was he who was the Man in Black who gave the design for The Great Seal to Jefferson in the garden that night. The Illuminated tradition is now, of course, in the hands of The Ancient Illuminated Seers of Bavaria (A.I.S.B.), headquartered here in the United States. Our teachings are not, need I remind you, available for publication. No harm, though, in admitting that some of them can be found disguised in Joyce's Finnegan's Wake, Burroughs Nova Express, the King James translation of the Holy Bible (though not the Latin or Hebrew), and The Blue Book. Not to speak of Ben Franklin's private papers (!), but we are still suppressing those. Considering current developments--you know the ones I speak of--it has been decided to reveal a few more of our front organizations. Your publication is timely, so mention that in addition to the old fronts like the Masons, the Rothchild Banks, and the Federal Reserve System, we now have significant control of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (since Hoover died last year, but that is still secret), the Students for a Democratic Society, the Communist Party USA, the American Anarchist Assn., the Junior Chamber of Commerce, the Black Lotus Society, the Republican Party, the John Dillinger Die For You Society, and the Camp Fire Girls. It is still useful to continue the sham of the Birchers that we are seeking world domination; so do not reveal that political and economic control was generally complete several generations ago and that we are just playing with the world for a while until civilization advances sufficiently for phase five. In fact you might still push Vennard's The Federal Reserve Hoax: "Since the Babylonian Captivity there has existed a determined, behind-the- scenes under-the-table, atheistic, satanic, anti-Christian force--worshipers of Mamon--whose undying purpose is world control through the control of Money. July 1, 1776 (correct that to May 1st, Vennard can't get anything right) the Serpent raised its head in the under-ground secret society known as the Illuminati, founded by Adam Weishaupt. There is considerable documentary evidence to prove all revolutions, wars, depressions, strikes and chaos stem from this source." Etc., etc., you know the stuff. The general location of our US HQ, incidentally, has been nearly exposed; and so we will be moving for the first time this century (what a drag!). If you want, you can reveal that it is located deep in the labyrinth of sewers beneath Dealy Plaza in Dallas, and is presided over by The Dealy Lama. Inclosed are some plans for several new potential locations. Please review and add any comments you feel pertinent, especially regarding the Eristic propensity of the Pentagon site. Oh, and we have some good news for you, Brother Mal! You know that Zambian cybernetics genius who joined us? Well, he has secretly co- ordinated the FBI computers with the Zurich System and our theoriticians are in ecstasy over the new information coming out. Look, if you people out there can keep from blowing yourselves up for only two more generations, then we will finally have it. After 20,000 years, Kull's dream will be realized! We can hardly believe it. But the outcome is certain, given the time. Our grandchildren, Mal! If civilization makes it through this crises, our grandchildren will live in a world of authentic freedom and authentic harmony and authentic satisfaction. I hope I'm alive to see it, Mal, success is in our grasp. Twenty thousand years....! Ah, I get spaced just thinking about it. Good luck on the Principia. Ewige Blumenkraft! HAIL ERIS. Love, MAD MALIK PS: PRIVATE - Not for publication in The Principia. We are returning to the two Zwack Cyphers for classified communications. Herewith your copy. DO NOT DIVULGE THIS INFORMATION - SECURITY E-5.

Part FiveThe Golden Secret

NONSENSE AS SALVATION

The human race will begin solving it's problems on the day that it ceases taking itself so seriously.

To that end, POEE proposes the countergame of NONSENSE AS SALVATION. Salvation from an ugly and barbarous existence that is the result of taking order so seriously and so seriously fearing contrary orders and disorder, that GAMES are taken as more important than LIFE; rather than taking LIFE AS THE ART OF PLAYING GAMES.

To this end, we propose that man develop his innate love for disorder, and play with The Goddess Eris. And know that it is a joyful play, and that thereby CAN BE REVOKED THE CURSE OF GREYFACE.

If you can master nonsense as well as you have already learned to master sense, then each will expose the other for what it is: absurdity. From that moment of illumination, a man begins to be free regardless of his surroundings. He becomes free to play order games and change them at will. He becomes free to play disorder games just for the hell of it. He becomes free to play neither or both. And as the master of his own games, he plays without fear, and therefore without frustration, and therefore with good will in his soul and love in his being.

And when men become free then mankind will be free. May you be free of The Curse of Greyface. May the Goddess put twinkles in your eyes. May you have the knowledge of a sage, and the wisdom of a child. Hail Eris.

T'AI
___ ___
___ ___
___ ___
_______
_______
_______

THUS ENDS PRINCIPIA DISCORDIA
This being the 4th Edition, March 1970, San Francisco; a revision of the 3rd Edition of 500 copies, whomped together in Tampa 1969; which revised the 2nd Edition of 100 copies from Los Angeles 1969; which was a revision of "PRINCIPIA DISCORDIA or HOW THE WEST WAS LOST" published in New Orleans in 1965 in five copies, which were mostly lost.

If you think the PRINCIPIA is just a ha-ha, then go read it again.

(K) ALL RIGHTS REVERSED - Reprint what you like

Published by POEE Head Temple - San Francisco " On The Future Site of Beautiful San Andreas Canyon"

Office of My High Reverence Malaclypse the Younger KSC OPOVIG HIGH PRIEST POEE

THE LAST WORD The foregoing document was revealed to Mal-2 by the Goddess Herself through many consultations with Her within his Pineal Gland. It is guaranteed to be the Word of Goddess. However, it is only fair to state that Goddess doesn't always say the same thing to each listener, and that other Episkoposes are sometimes told quite different things in their Revelations, which are also the Word of Goddess. Consequently, if you prefer a Discordian Sect other than POEE, then none of these Truths are binding, and it is a rotten shame that you have read all the way down to the very last word.  

DISCORDIAN SOCIETY Dedicated to an Advanced Understanding of the Paraphysical Manifestations of Everyday Chaos

DID YOU KNOW THAT YOU HAVE A LOPSIDED PINEAL GLAND?

Well, probably you do have one, and it's unfortunate because lopsided Pineal Glands have perverted the Free Spirit of Man, and subverted Life into a frustrating, unhappy and hopeless mess.

Fortunately, you have before you a handbook that will show you how to discover your salvation through ERIS, THE GODDESS OF CONFUSION. It will advise you how to balance your Pineal Gland and reach spiritual Illumination. And it will teach you how to turn your miserable mess into a beautiful, joyful, and splendid one.

POEE is a bridge from PISCES to AQUARIUS

The Words of the Illuminated Rated X NATURALLY	THIS MAY BE THE MOST IMPORTANT GUIDE IN YOUR LIFE! -THE GODDESS ERIS PREVAILS-	Have you ever secretly wondered why thePyramid has five sides? counting the bottom?
GRAND OPERA "Wherefore my bowels shall soundlike a harp for Moab, and mine nner parts for Kirharesh." -Isaiah 16:11	Why are we Here ? SUPPRESSED KNOWLEDGE	YES, I'd like to know the Five Simple Actions that will turn Me into a "Mental Wizard" in a Single Weekend.
Face to fact with the mighty forces and elements of nature, the thoughtful man fearlessly contemplates his place in the great cosmic scheme. POEE	HYGIENE Great The Lord promised: "Therefore, - behold, I will bring evil upon the house of Jeroboam and will cut off from Jeroboam him that pisseth against the wall..." -Kings 14:10 (This unsanitary practice caused serious erosion of the mud walls)	Warning! Prolonged use in a darkened room may induce hallucinations or trigger undesired side effects. Should not be used in the presence of persons subject to epilepsy.

[4th edition afterword:]

SPECIAL AFTERWORD to the Loompanics Edition of PRINCIPIA DISCORDIA
G.H. Hill, San Francisco,
1979 All Rites Reversed (K) Reprint What You Like

INTERVIEW WITH NORTON CABAL by Gypsie Skripto, Special Correspondent

It has been ten years since I net the mysterious Malaclypse the Younger. I was free lancing for the underground papers and went to POEE Hear Temple at 555 Battery Street to try for an interview.

I found him in the Temple PO Box busy wrapping up the new Fourth Edition of PRINCIPIA. He seemed impatient with me, insisting that he didn't have the time or inclination for foolish questions from reporters. Undaunted, I burst out with questions like whether he preferred Panama Red or Acapulco Gold and how the fuck did we manage to fit inside of a tiny post office box and other things apropos a naive young semiliterate dropout hippy writer. He asked me if I wanted to drop mescaline and fuck all night and said he knew how to turn himself into a unicorn and there might be room for a tiny interview on the cover of the PRINCIPIA if I wanted to work for the GREATER POOP so I said sure, OK, I've never dropped mescaline in a post office box before.

It turned out I was among the last to see Malaclypse. As subsequent issues of GREATER POOP revealed, he was to disappear and POEE business was to be assumed by his students at Norton Cabal. Professor Ignotum P. Ignotius, Department of Comparative Realities, was assigned the Trust of the POEE Scruple and Rev. Dr. Occupant became Keeper of the Box. The newly published copies of PRINCIPIA were distributed by Mad Malik, Block Disorganizer, who had distribution contacts with the Aluminum Bavariati. Practical relations remained in the hands of concept artist G. Hill.

When the 1000 PRINCIPIAS were gone the GREATER POOP stopped publishing, Head Temple closed down and the Cabal just seemed to evaporate. Finally even the box was closed. But over the years I noticed that copies were still circulating, and that independent Discordian Cabals would occasionally pop out of nowhere (and still do). And I would wonder what ever happened to Malaclypse.

When I read the ILLUMINATUS trilogy I resolved to again find and interview the denizens of Joshua Norton Cabal of the Discordian Society.

* * * * *

As I cabled over Nob to San Francisco's Station 'O' Post Office I couldn't help but wonder at Goddess' hand in assigning street addresses to Her outposts. Mal2 had told me that Good Lord Omar always filed everything under "O" for OUT OF FILE.

"Maya is marvelous" I was thinking when I rapped on the little metal door and was greeted warmly by a huge beard who introduced himself as Professor Ignotius. He ushered me into a spacious wood paneled and tapestry hung parlor where three others were laughing and passing around a wine jug. The sunny one in a tunic was the Reverend Doctor Occupant, the trim khaki and jeans was Mad Malik and the wine jug claimed to be Hill. I got the recorder on....

GYPSIE SKRIPTO [in response to a question]: ...1969 but only briefly. I guess I missed you guys.

MAD MALIK: No wonder, he was pretty much a one man show then. We were just his students and were usually off on errands. You worked for the POOP?

Gypsie: Well, for one nig one nig one night anyway. The interview is in the PRINCIPIA

REV. DR. OCCUPANT: Malik was the only one he would ever let write for the POOP or get on the letterhead.

Gypsie: Did you [Malik] have higher authority than the others?

Malik: No, [but I was allowed to speak in the POOP] because [Malaclypse the Younger] hated politics. He was infuriated with Johnson and Nixon over Viet Nam because it was turning the renaissance into a political revolution and was stealing his sacred thunder. So he trained me in Zenarchy, which he learned from Omar, and I was the official anarcho-pacifist for the Cabal. Also I was liaison to The Ancient Illuminated Seers of Bavaria, the Chicago Discordians. Later Omar activated the Hung Mung Cong Tong and ELF, on Zenarchist principles, and also Operation Mindfuck. I was also into those. Though at the time I was masquerading in GREATER POOP as a created cabbage to throw off the FBI.

Gypsie [to Hill]: Since you wrote it, I take it you are an anarchist?

G.H. Hill: Since then I have given up anarchy. Too many rules-- hating the government and all that stuff.

IGNOTUM PER IGNOTIUS: It's like hating your own fantasies.

Malik: [Anarchy] is also standing up and proceeding forward, fantasy rule or not. The condition is the same.

Occupant: Brother needs some wine!

Malik: We have had this argument before, Reverend Doctor Brother. But wine before platitudes, fill it up.

Gypsie [to Hill]: And pacifism?

Hill: I'm not sure I ever was one. Mal2 was not, Malik was. Personally I accepted self defense yet I could never reconcile that with the ideal. I finally gave up on that one too. Actually I just gave up on idealism.

Ignotius: Idealism lives with rules. Realism lives with rocks.

Hill: Yeah. I get along better with rocks.

Malik: Mal2 once told me that pacifism was a dilemma. If everybody was a pacifist then everything would be perfect. But nobody is going to be a pacifist unless I am first. But if I am and somebody else is not, then I get screwed. He said that there were five choices under that circumstance. The first was napalming farmers and the second was executing your parents. The third was hypocrisy, the fourth was cowardice, and the fifth was to swallow the dilemma.
Zenarchists are trained in dilemma swallowing.

Occupant: So are other Erisians, like POEE.

Ignotius: That is characteristic of the Discordian perspective.

Hill: But of course training contradicts Discordian principles.

Malik: Oh so what. Contradictions are nothing to Discordians.

Occupant: Dilemma, Schilmemma. [to Gypsie]: What do you think of this, pretty ma'am? We don't get to hear your thoughts.

Gypsie: I'm reporting now, you talk.

Occupant: Later then?

Gypsie: Perhaps. Later.

Occupant: You are smiling.

Gypsie: Hey, guy, later. [to Hill]: Doesn't this leave you a little schizy?

Hill: It's OK, I'm half Gemini.

Gypsie: What's the other half?

Hill: Taurus. That makes me a stubborn schizy.

Ignotius: I'm a Whale.

Occupant: I choose Satyr.

Malik: Spirits don't have signs.

Hill: A character can have a sign if I want it so.

Occupant: Well I can have a sign if I want to and screw both of you.

Malik: Come on Greg, you just think that we are your characters....

Occupant: You were inhabited by Malaclypse the Younger. He caused you to create roles and those roles are being performed by us spirits.

Ignotius: A perfectly normal pagan relationship.

Hill: Well you can look at it like that if you want to, but I created Mal2 to my specifications just as I conceived all the rest of you.

Occupant: You didn't invent Eris. She caused you to think you created the spirit of Malaclypse.

Hill: Oh bull! Besides, I changed her so much the Greeks would never recognize her.

Occupant: That's what She wanted!

Ignotius: Deities change things around all the time.

Malik: What you don't realize is that a spirit has a self identity.

Hill: Nope. A spirit is a product of definition and the one who is doing the defining around here is me. Your identity is what I say it is. Just to prove it, I'm going to change your name.

SINISTER DEXTER: It's OK with me. Fate is fate. I never much liked "Mad Malik" anyway.

Ignotius: Besides people confused him with Joe Malik in ILLUMINATUS.

Dexter: I sort of enjoyed the confusion part.

Occupant: Doesn't prove anything anyway.

Gypsie: That name sounds familiar. Where is it from?

Hill: It's a name I came up with in the old days and never used it much. Its on page 38 of the PRINCIPIA referring to Vice President Spiro Agnew. I always thought I invented it but now it sounds like a Stan Freberg name now that I think about it. It may have stuck in my preconscious memory from early TV.

Gypsie: Can you use it without his permission?

Hill: If it is his? I don't know. I hope so. It means "left right" in Latin and is a perfect name for a libertarian anarchist. Actually in my kind of art the question of what can I use freely and what can I not is a very tricky problem.

Gypsie: How do you mean?

Hill: Well, take a collage for example. Like the early one on page 36 of the PRINCIPIA. Each little piece was extracted from some larger work created by some other artist and published and maybe copyrighted. I find them in newspapers and magazines mostly. Often from ads. With a collage you select and extract from your environment and then assemble into an original relationship. The PRINCIPIA itself is a collage. A conceptual collage. All of it happens simultaneously. But visually it is a montage, passing through time, like a book does. There is a lot of pirated stuff in the PRINCIPIA, especially in the margins. But also I sympathize with artists who must own and sell their works to earn a living. Art, like knowledge, should be free fodder for everyone. But it isn't. It is perplexing.

Gypsie: Where did all the things in PRINCIPIA come from?

Hill: Well, a full answer would take another book in itself. Most of the writing credited to a name is a true person and almost always a different name means a different person. Most of the non-credited, you know, Malaclypse, text is mine although some things credited to either Mal2 or Omar were actually co-written and passed back and forth and rewritten by each of us. The marginalia, dingbats, and pasted in titles and heads and things came from wherever I found them--some of which is original but uncredited Discordian output, like the page head on 12 and other pages which is from a series of satiric memo pads from Our Peoples Underworld Cabal. All page layout is mine and some whole graphics like the Sacred Chao and the Hodge Podge Transformer are mine but mostly I just found stuff and integrated it. Mostly I did concept, say 50% of the writing, 10% of the graphics, all of the layout.

Gypsie: Specifically, what are some of the sources?

Hill: Well, the poem on the front cover is by Walt Kelly and was spoken by one of his characters in Pogo. The government seals starting from page 1 are from a book of sample seals from the U.S. Government Printing Office. Western Union on page 6 got into the act because I used to be a teletype operator and had access to blank forms. Rubber stamps came from all over the place and some, like the apple on page 27, I carved myself. A few I ordered to my specification, like on page 1. The quote on the top of page 8 might be from Barnum, I'm not sure. The jumping man on page 12 is from an advertisement. I recognize the style--a popular commercial artist--but I don't know his name. The Chinese on the page is a grocery ad, I think. The Norton money on page 14 is historic, plus my little additions. The apple on page 17, as well as the triangle on 23 and the Sacred Chao on 50 are, believe it or not, pasteups of mimeographs, from Seattle Cabal. That group produced the best damn mimeography I've ever seen. The Lick Here Box on page 23 is one of many tidbits making the rounds in alternative/underground newspapers in those days. Trip 5 page header on 29 was a chapter title in one of Tim Leary's books. The Knight on the bull with the TV antenna on his helmet on page 46 came from a very artistic magazine called Horseshit and put out by two brothers from Long Beach. I don't remember their names. Wonderful magazine.

Occupant: Eris told Mal2 what to use and where to find it.

Hill: Yeah, in a way that is right. That is why my name does not appear anywhere on the PRINCIPIA and why it was published with a broken copyright-- Reprint What You Like. I knew I was taking liberties and didn't want my intentions to be misunderstood. It was an experiment and was intended to be an underground work and that involves a different set of ethics than commercial work.

Gypsie: There are no real names at all?

Hill: Oh, some. Camden Benares is a real name because he legally changed his original name to his Holy Name. Also, instead of using Mordecai Malignatus I used Bob Wilson's real name on page 12 because Werewolf Bridge was a work before Discordianism. And of course real people like Neils Bohr crop up in quotes.

Gypsie: What do you think about the PRINCIPIA now? Would you want to change it?

Hill: I consider it a successful work and I wouldn't want to change it. In some ways it is immature and I am not the same person I was 10 years ago, but it accomplished the objectives I set for myself and it has the effect I wanted it to have. There are a few errors though.

Gypsie: Like what?

Hill: Oh, I changed a quote from Tom Gnostic on page 61 and I don't think he ever did forgive me for it. He's right. Starbuck's Pebbles should have been preceded by the Myth of Starbuck which was being saved for something else and never got used. I should have used it when I had the chance. And then Eris did a neat little trick on me by having IBM make the Greek selectric typewriter element not coincide with all the characters on their keyboard. So the little "kallisti" that appears on the title page and lastly on the back cover came out "kallixti" and I was too dumb to know the difference.

Gypsie: Will there ever be a Fifth Edition?

Hill: There already is a Fifth Edition, by Mal2. It is a one page telegram that reduces everything to an infinite aum. I found it at Western Union where a machine got stuck and kicked out hundreds of pages of nothing but m's. He made it the Fifth Edition and then left. Principia/Malaclypse was a very personal work for me and actually took 10 years to culminate. It was one single statement that included my adolescence in the 50's and my young adulthood in the 60's. When I finally had the paste-ups done I knew that I had finished it. That is why, quote, Malaclypse left. I knew it was finished. I didn't know exactly what it was, but it was done.

Occupant: See?

Gypsie: Earlier you said that you met your objectives. Just what were those objectives?

Hill: Well, that's hard to answer because it kept refining itself over the years. In 1969 I mainly though of myself as a cosmic clown and I set out to prove, by demonstration, that a deity can be anything at all. In other words, people invent gods and not the other way around. Later I decided that I was doing some kind of conceptual art. In the 50's my culture taught me that I was created by and for a deity, a specific male deity, and that all other deities are FALSE. Yet my growing experience showed me that any deity is true in some sense and false in some other sense. So I set out to do what my society told me is impossible--make a real religion from a patently absurd deity. In the 50's a female deity was blasphemy. In the 70's a humorous deity is still considered impossible, ridiculous, and blasphemous. As far as I'm concerned, I have proven my point. Eris is a real deity and even though I don't promote Erisianism as a serious religion....

Occupant: I do!

Dexter: You speak for yourself.

Ignotius: Here, here.

Hill: ...I do point out that it makes just as much sense from its own perspective as all the others do from each of their own perspectives.

Occupant: I think paganism is a valid spiritual path. I encourage Erisianism because it makes fun of itself. I think this is healthy.

Ignotius: If you can live rewardingly with Goddess Eris you can live with any deity, including none at all.

Dexter: I don't much go for the worship business but I argee with Occupant about the spirit of the thing. We live in a time of turmoil, the whole planet is in a state of change. If we, as a species, cower from the confusion then we die with the dying. This is revolution.

Ignotius: I am an athiest myself. There is no Greg Hill.

[laughter]

Gypsie [to Hill]: What do you think of ILLUMINATUS?

Hill: Oh, I love it. I was finishing PRINCIPIA when Shea and Wilson were working on ILLUMINATUS. It took Dell five years to publish it...maybe that is significant. The 1969 Discordian Society was a mail network between independent writers of various kinds. Norton Cabal was just me and my characters and I used the other Cabals as sort of a laboratory. In return other Discordians would bounce their stuff off of me. We would toss in ideas and anybody could take anything out. It was a concept stew. The exchanging of ideas and techniques broadened and encouraged all of us. I like ILLUMINATUS for the surrealism. A very effective method of writing.

Ignotius: I got misquoted. Worse, I wasn't even in that scene and if I had been then I would have said something else.

Dexter [to Ignotius]: That was me in that scene.

Ignotius: Oh, is that what that was?

Dexter: He got our names mixed up.

Hill: He got mixed up about me too, in COSMIC TRIGGER. Bob says that when Oswald was buying the assassination rifle, my girlfriend was printing the first edition of PRINCIPIA on Jim Garrison's Xerox. It wasn't my girlfriend, it was Kerry's; it wasn't the FIRST ED PRINCIPIA, it was some earlier Discordian thought; it wasn't Garrison's Xerox, it was his mimeograph; and it wasn't just before Kennedy was shot but a couple of years before that.* The FIRST ED PRINCIPIA, by the way, was reproduced at Xerox Corp when xerography was a new technology. Which was my second New Orleans trip in 1965. I worked for a guy on Bourbon Street who was a Xerox salesman by day.

Dexter: I think that George Dorn took too much guff from Hagbard. If someone pulls a weapon on me, I'm more inclined to either leave or kill the sonofabitch.

Occupant: You are supposed to be a pacifist.

Dexter: I'm speaking figuratively of course. I'll tell you more tomorrow.

Gypsie [to Hill]: Did you really translate erotic Etruscan poetry?

Hill: Sure, but I used a pen name. I signed it "Robert Anton Wilson".

[A quick rap is heard on the door]

Gypsie: I have only one question left...

Dexter: I'll get it.

Gypsie: ...what I really want to know is how can we all fit inside of a tiny little post office box?

Dexter[to Gypsie]: It's a telegram for you, from Mal2.

Gypsie: To me?

[Paper tearing]

Gypsie [reading]: "If I told everybody how they could live inside of a post office box then everybody would stop paying landlords and go live inside their post office boxes. It would collapse the building! Can you imagine, post offices collapsing all over the country, the hemisphere, the PLANET! The whole world's communication system would be destroyed. No,no, I must not say. I dare not!"

* I checked this further with Mr. Thornley. He says that the woman in question was not his girlfriend, she was just a friend, and it wasn't a couple of years before Kennedy was shot but had to be a couple of years after (but before Garrison investigated Thornley). --GS

[5th edition principia discordia (no, actually just a joke):]

FIFTH EDITION ODD# Infinity

PRINCIPIA DISCORDIA
or
A CATERPILLAR'S PRAISE TO THE BUTTERFLY

being the FINAL STATEMENT of Malaclypse the Younger

published by Joshua Norton Cabal San Francisco (K) All Rites Reversed