In the early 1990s, I locked myself in my room and read all 800 pages of the Illuminatus! Trilogy. It was a book that offered a little bit of everything: philosophy, comedy, tragedy, confusion, skepticism, and a conversation with Leviathan at the bottom of the ocean. I lost three pounds because I didn’t eat. It would not be the last time I locked myself away to read Robert Anton Wilson.
Later, I would read and cherish most everything I had ever read by RAW (as he has been come to be known). His books introduced or sparked an interest in me for Timothy Leary, Aleistar Crowley, the Golden Dawn, the Illuminati, Discordianism (I am a Fenderson), Joseph Campbell, Linus Pauling, Magick, Buckminster Fuller, The Knights Templer, quantum mechanics, Thelema, a political thought process that lends itself being a Libertarian (although I may just be making this up) and exploration of every kind. (more…)