The Illuminatus! Trilogy

GRUMMET

The age of Grummet begins with an upsurge of magicians, hoaxers, Yippies, Kabouters, shamans, clowns, and other Eristic forces. The relevant I Ching hexagram is 59, Huan, , dispersion and dissolution. The gentle wind above the deep water is the Chinese reading of the image, with associations of loss of ego, separation from the group, and "going out" in general. Yin lines dominate all but the top of the hexagram; the forces leading to a new Verwir-rung stage are pushing upward toward release. This is also called Paralysis by the Illuminati, because, objectively, nothing much is happening; subjectively, of course, the preparations for the new cycle are working unconsciously.

The mystic number is 5, union of male (3) with female (2) and final resolution of conflict between Verwirrung and Zweitracht.

The governing Tarot trump is number 6, the Lovers, in which the woman looks upward at the angel (Eris, the bio-gram) and the man looks at the woman (the logogram, yang, reaches synthesis with biogram, yin, only through reconciliation with the female). Hence, the upsurge of feminism in such periods, together with a renewed emphasis on clans, tribes, and communes.

Typical Virgos manifesting Grummet traits are Charlie Parker, Antonin Artaud, Louis Lingg, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Grandma Moses, Lodovico Ariosto, Greta Garbo, Hedy Lamarr, and Goethe and Tolstoy (who manifested strong yin values while never quite getting reconciled with the women in their own lives. Tolstoy, however, as the classic dropout, is an archetypal Grummet persona and almost completed the Sufi course of "quit this world, quit the next world, quit quitting!").

After Grummet, of course, authority has collapsed entirely, and the biogram stands on equal footing with the logogram. Hodge and Podge being once again in dynamic balance, a new Verwirrung period begins, and the cycle repeats.

Since Weishaupt dreamed this schema up while he was under the influence of several hallucinogenic drugs, one should regard it with some skepticism. It is certainly not true in every detail, and there is no theoretical or empirical demonstration that each of the five ages must always have 73 permutations. The fact that Grummet-Virgo personalities (and all other of the five personality types) are born in all ages, even if they come to dominance in their appropriate epochs, leaves many mysteries still unsolved. In short, all that a sober scholar can say of the Illuminati theory of history is that it makes at least as much sense as the exoteric Marx-Hegel, Spengler, Toynbee, and Sorokin theories.

The A:.A:., who regard all Illuminati theories as false projections onto the external world of inner spiritual processes, are particularly skeptical about this one, since it involves several false correlations between the I Ching and the Tarot, the Zodiac, etc.

Finally, it should be noted that of all the people Hagbard employed as resonance for the vibes used against the Saure family in Ingolstadt, only Lady Velkor, Danny Pricefixer, and George Dorn were not Virgos. Hagbard evidently believed that the Illuminati magical links work when Illuminati activities are occurring in a given area-and, hence, virtually all of "his" people at the festival were Virgos and thereby linked with the Grummet/Huan-59/Trump 6 chain of astrological associations. On the other hand, the presence of three non-Virgos shows Hagbard's pragmatic approach and his refusal to be ruled even by so exact a science as astrology.*

* This sentence may manifest a lapse into mockery or mystification by otherwise sober authors.

In this connection, when George Dorn and his mother went to Radio City Music Hall to see The Lotus Position, the last movie made by the American Medical Association before their tragic deaths, they happened to meet a tall Italian and a very beautiful black woman whom he introduced as his wife. Mrs. Dorn didn't catch the Italian's name, but it was obvious that George had a very great admiration for him. On the bus back to Nutley, she decided to straighten the boy out.

"A man who respects himself and his own race," she began, "would never think of marrying into the colored."

"Shut up, Ma," George said politely.

"That's no way to talk to your mother," the fine lady said, going ahead blithely. "Now, your father had some radical ideas, and he tried to get the unions to accept the colored, but he never thought of marrying into them, George. He had too much self-respect. Are you listening, George?"

"How did you like the AMA?" he asked.

"Such wonderful young boys. So clean-cut. And that darling sister of theirs! At least they didn't think there was anything attractive about long hair on men. Do you know what long hair makes men look like?"

"Like girls, Ma. Is that right?"

"It makes them look worse than girls, George. It makes them look like they're not really men, if you know what I mean."

"No, I don't know what you mean, Ma." George was profoundly bored.

"Well, I mean a little bit on the lavender side." She tittered.

"Oh," he said, "you mean cocksuckers. Some of my best friends are cocksuckers, Ma."

At this simple piece of factual information, the remarkable lady turned red and then purple, and then twisted in her chair to look out the window in angry silence for the rest of the trip. The curious thing is that, before George could get the courage to shut the old battleaxe up that way, he first had to try to shoot a cop and then try to shoot himself and finally take hashish with Hagbard Celine, and yet she was a Virgo and he was a Capricorn.