The Illuminatus! Trilogy

A. YIN-YANG; B. SACRED CHAD; c. OUROBOROS, THE SERPENT EATING ITS OWN TAIL;
D. ASTROLOGICAL SIGN OF CANCER; E. SWASTIKA;
F. ROMAN CATHOLIC SACRED HEART; G. HEXAGRAM.

The symbolism of the swastika is quite adequately explained in Wilhelm Reich's Mass Psychology of Fascism.

Ouroboros, the serpent eating its own tail, is chiefly emblematic of the Mass of the Holy Ghost.*

* See Israel Regardie, The Tree of Life.

The Roman Catholic symbolism of the Sacred Heart is strikingly overt, especially to readers of Frazer and Payne-Knight. In essence, it is the same notion conveyed by the cartoonist's conventional rendering of Cupid shooting his arrow into a red pulsating heart. This is the basic meaning of the Dying God and the Resurrection. The identification of Christ with the pelican who stabs its own heart with its beak (to feed its young) is an analogous rendering of the same motif. We repeat that it was only because the Saure family so misread these simple symbols that they became cruel and sadistic.

In essence, then, the basic symbols, of magic, mythology, and religion-whether Eastern or Western, ancient or modern, "right-hand" or "left-hand"-are so simple that only the pernicious habit of looking for alleged "profundities" and "mysteries" prevents people from automatically understanding them almost without thinking. The meaning of the hexagram- the female equivalent of the male pentagram- was explicated by Freud himself, but most students, convinced that the answer could not be so elementary and down-to-earth, continue to look into the clouds.

The same principles apply to written symbols. The all-important name YOD HE VAU HE, for instance, has traditionally been scanned in various ways, of which the most significant correlations are given in the following table:

The traditional lion-man-eagle-bull symbolism also fits this table,* as do Joyce's Four Old Men in Finnegans Wake;** it can also be found in the Aztec codices and Buddhist mandalas.

* YOD, the fiery father, is the lion (fire-sign); HE, the watery mother, is man as humanity; VAU, the air spirit, is eagle; final HE, earth, is bull.

** Marcus Lyons (i.e., the lion) is the fiery father; Matt Gregory (i.e., the ego) is the watery mother; John McDougall (i.e., eagle) is the airy son; Luke Tarpey (taur, the bull) is the earthy daughter.

The essential and original meaning, of course, is a program for a ritual, and the ritual is magick. The four letters are simply the four beats in Wilhelm Reich's formula: muscular tension -» electrical charge -» electrical discharge -» muscular relaxation. In short, as Freud once noted, every sexual act involves, at a minimum, four parties. The father and son provide a "fist" and a "nail"; the mother and daughter provide two "windows." The case of the Chicago schizophrenic killer William Heirens, who experienced orgasm when climbing through windows, demonstrates that this symbolism does not have to be taught and is inherent in the human mind, although always subject to the distortion exemplified by the Saures.

Finally, the universal blessing given on page 218 is intimately involved with the YHVH formula:

I bless Ra, the fierce sun burning bright

I bless Isis-Luna in the night

I bless the air, the Horus-Hawk

I bless the earth on which I walk

The fiery father, the watery mother, the airy son, and the earthy daughter are all there, just as they are in every alchemical formula.* But we say no more at this point, lest the reader begin seeking for a 5 = 4 equation to balance the 5 = 6.

* In this connection-and also, en passant, as an indication that Adolf Hitler's link with the Illuminati was not invented for this work of "fiction"- we suggest that the reader look into The Morning of the Magicians, by Pauwels and Bergier.

We conclude with a final warning and clarification: Resort to mass sacrifice (as among the Aztecs, the Catholic Inquisition, and the Nazi death camps) is the device of those who are incapable of the true Rite of the Dying God.