Robert Joseph Shea (February 14, 1933 – March 10, 1994) was an American novelist and former journalist best known as co-author with Robert Anton Wilson of the science fantasy trilogy Illuminatus! It became a cult success and was later turned into a marathon-length stage show put on at the British National Theatre and elsewhere. In 1986 it won the Prometheus Hall of Fame Award . Shea went on to write several action novels based in exotic historical settings.
54-709: Robert Joseph Shea was born in New York City. He attended high school at Manhattan Prep (Manhattan College High School) in Riverdale, the Bronx. After graduation he attended Manhattan College and Rutgers University. Apart from co-authoring Illuminatus! with Wilson, Shea wrote several historical action novels, including Shike (1981), a two-volume novel set in Ancient Japan about the warrior monk Jebu and his love Lady Shima Taniko, All Things Are Lights (1986), and The Saracen ,
108-542: A " libertarian socialist ", saying that "I ask only one thing of skeptics: don't bring up Soviet Russia, please. That horrible example of State Capitalism has nothing to do with what I, and other libertarian socialists, would offer as an alternative to the present system." By the 1980s he was less enthusiastic about the socialist label, writing in Prometheus Rising that he "does not like" the spread of socialism. In his book Right Where You Are Sitting Now , he praises
162-508: A BA, MA (1978) and PhD (1981) in psychology from Paideia University, which was an accredited university in California at the time he graduated in 1981 but later on became unaccredited and then closed. Wilson reworked his dissertation, and it found publication in 1983 as Prometheus Rising . Wilson married freelance writer and poet Arlen Riley in 1958. They had four children, including Christina Wilson Pearson and Patricia Luna Wilson. Luna
216-602: A cane, until 2000, when he experienced a major bout with post-polio syndrome that would continue until his death. He attended Catholic grammar schools before securing admission to the selective Brooklyn Technical High School . Removed from the Catholic influence at "Brooklyn Tech", Wilson became enamored of literary modernism (particularly Ezra Pound and James Joyce ), the Western philosophical tradition, then-innovative historians such as Charles A. Beard , science fiction (including
270-583: A career in journalism and as an editor, notably for Playboy , Wilson emerged as a major countercultural figure in the mid-1970s, comparable to one of his coauthors, Timothy Leary , as well as Terence McKenna . Born Robert Edward Wilson in Methodist Hospital , in Brooklyn , New York, he spent his first years in Flatbush , and moved with his family to Gerritsen Beach , in a lower middle class area, around
324-522: A heavy body of taboos. They're so fearful, and so hostile, and so narrow, and frightened, and uptight and dogmatic ... I wrote this book because I got tired satirizing fundamentalist Christianity ... I decided to satirize fundamentalist materialism for a change, because the two are equally comical ... The materialist fundamentalists are funnier than the Christian fundamentalists, because they think they're rational! ... They're never skeptical about anything except
378-498: A higher salary than any other magazine at which I had worked and never expected me to become a conformist or sell my soul in return. I enjoyed my years in the Bunny Empire. I only resigned when I reached 40 and felt I could not live with myself if I didn't make an effort to write full-time at last." Along with frequent collaborator Robert Shea , Wilson edited the magazine's Playboy Forum, a letters section consisting of responses to
432-525: A novel published in two volumes in 1989 depicting the struggle between a blond Muslim warrior called Daoud ibn Abdullah and his French crusader adversary, Simon de Gobignon. His last published book was the Native American tale Shaman (1991). All Things Are Lights and the outline for the unfinished novel Children of Earthmaker have been released under a Creative Commons license and are available to read and copy at Robert Shea's website. Lady Yang
486-525: A put-on, but I can't think of a good and original put-on that I haven't done several times before. So I'll tell you the truth, for once. After investigating the Illuminati and their critics for the last 30 years, I think the Illuminati was a short lived society of free thinkers and democratic reformers that formed a secret society within Freemasonry, using Freemasonry as a cover so they could plot to overthrow all
540-661: A set of libertarian and anarchist axioms known as Celine's laws (named after Hagbard Celine, a character in Illuminatus! ), concepts Wilson revisited several times in other writings. Among the many subplots of Illuminatus! one addresses biological warfare and the overriding of the United States Bill of Rights , another gives a detailed account of the John F. Kennedy assassination (in which no fewer than five snipers, all working for different causes, prepare to shoot Kennedy), and
594-489: A strong materialist bias, and that in fact modern physics may have already disproved materialist metaphysics . Wilson also supported the work and utopian theories of Buckminster Fuller and examined the theories of Charles Fort . He and Loren Coleman became friends, as he did with media theorist Marshall McLuhan and Neuro Linguistic Programming co-founder Richard Bandler , with whom he taught workshops. He also admired James Joyce, and wrote extensive commentaries on
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#1732854919707648-568: A strong opponent of what he called "the war on some drugs", Wilson participated as a Special Guest in the week-long 1999 Annual Cannabis Cup in Amsterdam, and used and often promoted the use of medical marijuana . He participated in a protest organized by the Wo/Men's Alliance for Medical Marijuana in Santa Cruz in 2002. On June 22, 2006, Paul Krassner reported on The Huffington Post that Wilson
702-564: Is a two-volume novel published in 1981 by Robert Shea . It fictionalises and compresses Japanese history in order to incorporate the Genpei War and attempted invasion of Japan by the Mongols within the lifespans of two characters: Jebu, a warrior- monk of mixed parentage (a Mongol father and a Japanese woman) of the Order of Zinja who is a highly fictionalized version of Benkei — and Shima Taniko,
756-430: Is about how Jebu and Taniko are forced onto opposing sides of a civil war, and Taniko's growth as a woman whose fate moves her from one powerful man to another, eventually becoming grandmother to a shōgun . In all, the story can be viewed as a tragedy, as Taniko's social importance and Jebu's loyalty to his order will always prevent them from truly being together. Also focused on is the contrast of hypocrisies between
810-500: Is the death of intelligence". He described this approach as "Maybe Logic". Wilson wrote about this and other topics in articles for the cyberpunk magazine Mondo 2000 . Wilson favored a form of basic income guarantee ; synthesizing several ideas under the acronym RICH. His ideas are set forth in the essay "The RICH Economy", found in The Illuminati Papers . In an article critical of capitalism, Wilson self-identified as
864-528: The Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute from 1952 to 1957 and English education at New York University from 1957 to 1958 but did not complete his degree at either institution. After having smoked cannabis for nearly a decade, Wilson first experimented with mescaline in Yellow Springs, Ohio , on December 28, 1961. Wilson began to work as a freelance journalist and advertising copywriter in
918-690: The Church of the SubGenius , who referred to him as "Pope Bob". He contributed to their literature, including the book Three-Fisted Tales of "Bob" , and shared a stage with their founder, Rev. Ivan Stang , on several occasions. Wilson also founded the Guns and Dope Party. As a member of the Board of Advisors of the Fully Informed Jury Association , Wilson worked to inform the public about jury nullification ,
972-580: The Playboy Philosophy editorial column. During this period, he covered Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert 's Millbrook, New York -based Castalia Foundation at the instigation of Alan Watts in The Realist , cultivated important friendships with William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg , and lectured at the Free University of New York on 'Anarchist and Synergetic Politics' in 1965. He received
1026-1012: The White Lotus Society in China, the Hashishim (assassins) in the Middle East, and the Knights Templar in Europe, among others. Through an aside in All Things Are Lights , the Zinja are therefore linked, however tenuously, to Shea's other writings on secret societies, most notably his work with Robert Anton Wilson in The Illuminatus! Trilogy . Many characters within Shike are based around actual historical figures. In January 2008 Mike Shea link , son of
1080-753: The georgist economist Silvio Gesell . In the essay Left and Right: A Non-Euclidean Perspective , Wilson speaks favorably of several "excluded middles" that "transcend the hackneyed debate between monopoly Capitalism and totalitarian Socialism"; he says his favorite is the mutualist anarchism of Benjamin Tucker and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon , but he also offers kind words for the ideas of Gesell, Henry George , C. H. Douglas , and Buckminster Fuller . Wilson also identified as an anarchist and described his belief system as "a blend of Tucker, Spooner , Fuller, Pound , Henry George, Rothbard , Douglas, Korzybski , Proudhon and Marx ." Wilson spoke several times at conventions of
1134-471: The American Libertarian Party . He included Benjamin Tucker's Instead of a Book , Henry George's Progress and Poverty , and Gesell's The Natural Economic Order in a list of 20 book recommendations, "the bare minimum of what everybody really needs to chew and digest before they can converse intelligently about the 21st Century." Robert Anton Wilson and his wife Arlen Riley Wilson founded
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#17328549197071188-580: The Illuminati has been adapted as a theatrical stage play by Daisy Eris Campbell, daughter of Ken Campbell the British theatre maverick who staged Illuminatus! at the Royal National Theatre in 1977. The play opened on November 23, 2014, in Liverpool before transferring to London and Brighton. Some of the costs were met through crowdfunding . Wilson's book is itself dedicated to "Ken Campbell and
1242-564: The Illuminati , also included some elements of H. P. Lovecraft 's work in his novels, and at times claimed to have perceived encounters with magical "entities" (when asked whether these entities seemed "real", he answered they seemed "real enough", although "not as real as the IRS" but "easier to get rid of", and later decided that his experiences may have emerged from "just my right brain hemisphere talking to my left"). He warned against beginners using occult practice, since to rush into such practices and
1296-518: The Illuminati features historical characters in a fictionalized setting, and contains a blend of occult history. Intermixing Albert Einstein , James Joyce , Aleister Crowley , Sigmund Freud , Carl Jung , Vladimir Ilyich Lenin , and others, the book focuses on Pan as well as other occult icons, ideas, and practices. It also includes homages, parodies and pastiches from both the lives and works of Crowley and Joyce. Wilson's play, Wilhelm Reich in Hell ,
1350-633: The Institute for the Study of the Human Future in 1975. From 1982 until his death, Wilson had a business relationship with the Association for Consciousness Exploration , which hosted his first on-stage dialogue with his long-time friend Timothy Leary entitled The Inner Frontier . Wilson dedicated his book The New Inquisition to A.C.E.'s co-directors, Jeff Rosenbaum and Joseph Rothenberg. Wilson also joined
1404-898: The Science-Fiction Theatre Of Liverpool, England." In his nonfiction and partly autobiographical Cosmic Trigger I: The Final Secret of the Illuminati (1977) and its two sequels, as well as in many other works, Wilson examined Freemasons , Discordianism, Sufism , the Illuminati, Futurology , Zen Buddhism , Dennis and Terence McKenna , Jack Parsons , the occult practices of Aleister Crowley and G.I. Gurdjieff , Yoga , and many other esoteric or counterculture philosophies, personalities, and occurrences. Wilson advocated Timothy Leary 's 8-Circuit Model of Consciousness and neurosomatic/linguistic engineering, which he wrote about in many books including Prometheus Rising (1983, revised 1997) and Quantum Psychology (1990), which contain practical techniques intended to help
1458-591: The age of four or five, where they stayed until relocating to the steadfastly middle-class neighborhood of Bay Ridge when Wilson was thirteen. He had polio as a child, and found generally effective treatment with the Kenny Method (created by Elizabeth Kenny ) which the American Medical Association repudiated at that time. Polio's effects remained with Wilson throughout his life, usually manifesting as minor muscle spasms causing him to occasionally use
1512-479: The anarchist zine No Governor . The title comes from a quote attributed to Zhuangzi , "There is no governor anywhere." The zine was mentioned in and read by one of the characters in Illuminatus! . Clipped from the Robert J. Shea Tribute page: Shea was a resident of Glencoe, Illinois He was survived by his son, Michael E. Shea, and his second wife, author Patricia Monaghan . Shike (novel) Shike
1566-628: The author Bob Shea, released the book under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share-Alike license link Robert Anton Wilson Robert Anton Wilson (born Robert Edward Wilson ; January 18, 1932 – January 11, 2007) 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
1620-451: The author and on two of Joyce's novels, Finnegans Wake and Ulysses , in his 1988 book Coincidance: A Head Test . Although Wilson often lampooned and criticized some New Age beliefs, bookstores specializing in New Age material often sell his books. Wilson, a well-known author in occult and Neo-Pagan circles, used Aleister Crowley as a main character in his 1981 novel Masks of
1674-434: The book's climax occurs at a rock concert where the audience collectively face the danger of becoming a mass human sacrifice. Illuminatus! popularized Discordianism and the use of the term " fnord ". It incorporates experimental prose styles influenced by writers such as William S. Burroughs , James Joyce , and Ezra Pound . Although Shea and Wilson never co-operated on such a scale again, Wilson continued to expand upon
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1728-621: The cult classic series The Illuminatus! Trilogy (1975), co-authored with Shea. Advertised as "a fairy tale for paranoids", the three books— The Eye in the Pyramid , The Golden Apple , and Leviathan , soon offered as a single volume—philosophically and humorously examined, among many other themes, occult and magical symbolism and history, the counterculture of the 1960s , secret societies , data concerning author H. P. Lovecraft and author and occultist Aleister Crowley , and American paranoia about conspiracies and conspiracy theories . The book
1782-658: The kings in Europe and the Pope. I'm very happy that they succeeded in overthrowing all the kings, I just wish that they had completed the job and gotten rid of the Royal family in England too, but they did pretty well on the continent. I'm sorry they haven't finished off the Pope yet, either, but I think they're still working on the project and I wish them luck. Disinformation: The Interviews , by Richard Metzger Among Wilson's 35 books and many other works, perhaps his best-known volumes remain
1836-725: The late 1950s. He adopted his maternal grandfather's name, Anton, for his writings and told himself that he would save the "Edward" for when he wrote the Great American Novel . He later found that "Robert Anton Wilson" had become an established identity. He assumed co-editorship of the School for Living 's Brookville, Ohio -based Balanced Living magazine in 1962 and briefly returned to New York as associate editor of Ralph Ginzburg 's quarterly magazine, called fact: , before leaving for Playboy , where he served as an associate editor from 1965 to 1971. According to Wilson, Playboy "paid me
1890-412: The minor noblewoman with whom he falls in love on his first mission — escorting her to an arranged marriage with Prince Horigawa, a far older and extremely influential (but also extremely cunning and malevolent) nobleman. In that regard, the narrative structure of the Shike books bears a close similarity to Shea's 1986 All Things Are Lights , which also focuses on star-crossed lovers. The over-all story
1944-452: The noble class and warrior class. The nobles consider samurai beneath them but act in many of the barbarous ways that they accuse them of, and the samurai are presented as ruffians of shifting loyalties, despite considering themselves to be genteel and worldly. Shike posits a clan of grey-clad warrior monks, the "Zinja", which, it is stated by Abbot Taitaro, is related to several other secret societies throughout history, including specifically
1998-474: The original separate books. The Historical Illuminatus Chronicles , composed of The Earth Will Shake (1982), The Widow's Son (1985), and Nature's God (1991), follows the timelines of several characters through different generations, time periods, and countries. The books cover a range of topics, including (but not limited to) the history, legacy, and rituals of the Illuminati and related groups. Masks of
2052-557: The reader break free of one's reality tunnels . With Leary, he helped promote the futurist ideas of space migration , intelligence increase , and life extension , which they combined to form the word symbol SMI²LE . Wilson's 1986 book, The New Inquisition , argues that whatever reality consists of it actually would seem much weirder than we commonly imagine. It cites, among other sources, Bell's theorem and Alain Aspect 's experimental proof of Bell's to suggest that mainstream science has
2106-550: The resulting "energies" they unleash could lead people to "go totally nuts". Wilson also criticized scientific types with overly rigid belief systems, equating them with religious fundamentalists in their fanaticism . In a 1988 interview, when asked about his newly published book The New Inquisition: Irrational Rationalism and the Citadel of Science , Wilson commented: I coined the term irrational rationalism because those people claim to be rationalists, but they're governed by such
2160-447: The right of jurors to nullify a law they deem unjust. Wilson advocated for and wrote about E-Prime , a form of English lacking all forms of the verb "to be" (such as "is", "are", "was", "were" etc.). "Is", "is." "is" —the idiocy of the word haunts me. If it were abolished, human thought might begin to make sense. I don't know what anything "is" ; I only know how it seems to me at this moment. A decades-long researcher into drugs and
2214-512: The stage when Ken Campbell produced it as a ten-hour drama. It also appeared as two card based games from Steve Jackson Games , one a trading-card game ( Illuminati: New World Order ). Eye N Apple Productions and Rip Off Press produced a comic book version of the trilogy. Wilson wrote two more popular fiction series. The first, a trilogy later published as a single volume, was Schrödinger's Cat . The second, The Historical Illuminatus Chronicles , appeared as three books. In between publishing
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2268-402: The support by posting the following comment on his personal website, expressing his gratitude: Dear Friends, my God, what can I say. I am dumbfounded, flabbergasted, and totally stunned by the charity and compassion that has poured in here the last three days. To steal from Jack Benny, "I do not deserve this, but I also have severe leg problems and I don't deserve them either." Because he was
2322-637: The themes of the Illuminatus! books throughout his writing career. Most of his later fiction contains cross-over characters from The Sex Magicians (Wilson's first novel, written before the release of Illuminatus! , which includes many of his same characters) and The Illuminatus! Trilogy . Illuminatus! won the Prometheus Hall of Fame award for Best Classic Fiction, voted by the Libertarian Futurist Society for science fiction in 1986, has many international editions, and found adaptation for
2376-524: The things they have a prejudice against. None of them ever says anything skeptical about the AMA, or about anything in establishment science or any entrenched dogma. They're only skeptical about new ideas that frighten them. They're actually dogmatically committed to what they were taught when they were in college. In a 2003 interview with High Times magazine, Wilson described himself as "model-agnostic" which he said consists of never regarding any model or map of
2430-486: The three books in differing alternative universes , in which the cast of characters remains almost the same aside from variations in names, careers and background stories. The books cover the fields of quantum mechanics and the varied philosophies and explanations that exist within the science. The single volume describes itself as a magical textbook and a type of initiation . The single-volume edition omits many entire pages and has many other omissions when compared with
2484-413: The two trilogies Wilson released a stand-alone novel, Masks of the Illuminati (1981), which, due to the main character's ancestry, fits into the timeline of The Historical Illuminatus Chronicles and, while published earlier, may qualify as the fourth volume in that series. Schrödinger's Cat consists of three volumes: The Universe Next Door , The Trick Top Hat , and The Homing Pigeons . Wilson set
2538-509: The universe with total 100% belief or total 100% denial. Following Korzybski, I put things in probabilities, not absolutes ... My only originality lies in applying this zetetic attitude outside the hardest of the hard sciences, physics, to softer sciences and then to non-sciences like politics, ideology, jury verdicts and, of course, conspiracy theory. Wilson claimed in Cosmic Trigger: Volume 1 "not to believe anything", since "belief
2592-925: The works of Olaf Stapledon , Robert A. Heinlein and Theodore Sturgeon ) and Alfred Korzybski 's interdisciplinary theory of general semantics . He would later recall that the family was "living so well ... compared to the Depression " during this period "that I imagined we were lace-curtain Irish at last." Following his graduation in 1950, Wilson was employed in a succession of jobs (including ambulance driver, engineering aide, salesman and medical orderly) and absorbed various philosophers and cultural practices (including bebop , psychoanalysis , Friedrich Nietzsche , Alfred Korzybski , James Joyce , Bertrand Russell , Carl Jung , Wilhelm Reich , Leon Trotsky , and Ayn Rand , whom he later repudiated) while writing in his spare time. He studied electrical engineering and mathematics at
2646-538: 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." In addition to writing several science-fiction novels, Wilson also wrote non-fiction books on extrasensory perception , mental telepathy , metaphysics , paranormal experiences, conspiracy theory, sex, drugs, and what Wilson called " quantum psychology ". Following
2700-665: Was beaten to death in an apparent robbery in the store where she worked in 1976 at the age of 15, and became the first person to have her brain preserved by the American Cryonics Society (which was called the Bay Area Cryonics Society at the time). Arlen Riley Wilson died on May 22, 1999, following a series of strokes. Richard Metzger : You have studied the Illuminati for years. Have you come to any conclusion about their aims? Robert Anton Wilson: Usually when people ask me that question, I give them some kind of
2754-545: Was finished but never published; a Creative Commons online version is in the works by Shea's son Michael. Three of his lectures and two panel discussions he participated in were recorded when he was a featured speaker at both the Starwood Festival and the WinterStar Symposium (both with and without Robert Anton Wilson) and produced by the Association for Consciousness Exploration . For several years, Shea edited
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#17328549197072808-432: Was intended to poke fun at the conspiratorial frame of mind. Wilson and Shea derived much of the odder material from letters sent to Playboy magazine while they worked as the editors of its Forum. The books mixed true information with imaginative fiction to engage the reader in what Wilson called " guerrilla ontology ", which he apparently referred to as " Operation Mindfuck " in Illuminatus! The trilogy also outlined
2862-726: Was published as a book in 1987 and first performed at the Edmund Burke Theatre in Dublin , in San Francisco, and in Los Angeles. It features many factual and fictional characters, including Marilyn Monroe , Uncle Sam , and Wilhelm Reich himself. Wilson also wrote and published as books two screenplays , not yet produced: Reality Is What You Can Get Away With: an Illustrated Screenplay (1992) and The Walls Came Tumbling Down (1997). Wilson's book Cosmic Trigger I: The Final Secret of
2916-507: Was under hospice care at home with friends and family. On October 2, Douglas Rushkoff reported that Wilson was in severe financial trouble. Slashdot , Boing Boing , and the Church of the SubGenius also picked up on the story, linking to Rushkoff's appeal. As his webpage reported on October 10, these efforts succeeded beyond expectation and raised a sum that would have supported him for at least six months. On October 5, 2006, Wilson responded to
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