Hello, duh, it's by Robert Anton Wilson, of course it's good. Or not. Probably maybe. Just keep reading, you young apple you. Soon you too will see the Truth: that we're all living in apple sauce. Oops, I shouldn't have given it away! Eris forgive me! Or not.

... Robert makes an excellent case that fellow Libertarians such as Murray Rothbard, George Smith and Samuel Edward Konkin III unintentionally create a new religious dogma based on an entirely metaphysical concept of "rights." He makes short work of their wacky ideas, which is a refreshing change from Mr. Wilson's other works, in which he (with great delight and panache) purveys his own wacky ideas.

I can't believe I have to be the first reviewer of this book. This is, in my opinion, the best place to start if you want to know what Crowley was all about. It has a very wide sampling of his voluminuos writing, with academic commentary. Much of Crowley's work is difficult to understand because he assumes you are as educated as he is, and because he frequently makes jokes designed to misleed and outrage those with a puritanical leaning. Having someone who has obviously spent some time studying Crowley and his ideas as a guide is an excellent benefit. Even though this book is out of print it seems to be widely and cheaply available, so buy a copy already.

Until he gets to your own.

Just buy the damn thing, it's Bob for Christ sakes.

A perrenial favorite of mine. Wilson is my hero; next to Burroughsian beats, Leary the Mad Leprechaun, and Quantum Physics-- which by no coincidance, RAW got me hooked on. Wilson has spun a titillating web of Indraic beauty in the omnidirectional expanding noos-sphere. Have fun with your head and read this or any of Wilson's mind candy manuals...HOO!

It's been a long wait since RAW's last book, but it was worth it, and not just for all us fans who have been checking his web-site regularly for the new "thoughts of the week" that tick in irregularly. The old standards are of course still here: Korzybski, Joyce, Leary, but with a new twist. Treating the internet and spending quite some time on an extended analogy between the net and the mind (who would have thought Leary's 8-circuit model would be illuminating here?), he discusses the possibilities for using the net in an individually liberatory way, both to enter into and try out alternate viewpoints and to undermine traditional "power structures" and institutions.

I bought the book, whereupon my pineal gland led me to the local supermarket, where I bought a couple of cabbages and conferred with them until they taught me all their secrets. Evil littler [things], I know, but it had to be done.

Seriously now, the book is great, I was already discordian before I read this. Insanity. Religious types who can't handle the fact that not everybody believes in their God, and that everything else is NOT evil, will really not enjoy this book. Good for atheists and open-minded religious types, and silly people all over the world. Always read while holding an apple in your left hand if you're right handed, left hand if you're left handed, and proceed to speak the text loudly and clearly in a Shakespearian tone. Wash down the book with a glass of squeezed hot dog bun for maximum enjoyment.

As others have pointed out, this is not an R.A.W. book, but much of his writing and philosophy stems from it. In actuality, it was written by Kerry Thornley, a 60s Berkeley radical, who himself became a victim of the type of conspiracies Wilson parodied in many of his other works.

That said, I recommend the "Principia" for anyone with a sense of humor. This is a work that will have you rolling off your chair at every turn. But, whether it's parody or not, you'll never be sure. Taking the form of the official tract and tenets of a non-existent (?) religion, it points out in a gonzo, agit-prop way the flaws and foibles of all religions that try to nail down the "Truth."

If you've read "Illuminatus!" then you'll recognize a lot of the rules that appear here. If you haven't, then this book is a good primer. The first time through, pretend it's all real. Subsequent times, enjoy the joke. In any case, it's something that needs to be read by people in the 90s, the decade that pretends to be oh too hip and beyond it all, but which, in reality, takes itself far too seriously for anyone's good.

Hail Eris! All Hail Discordia! And all that jazz...

It's a holy book. Therefore, holy folk of the appropriate persuasion are going to give it the full five stars or none at all, just to be contrary and suchlike. They are more enlightened than I am. As many of my fellow Gracious And Fancy Popes of the Word were prior to encountering Eris, I thought I was simply posessed of a sense of humor about the cosmic absurdity of It All. It is not so: I was a Discordian, and a Pope to boot. It's like getting a can of green beans for free when you buy one at the store.

As fiction, the Word is tripe. Hideous, slovenly stuff, written without care for typography or the quality of reasoning or illustrations. Bad bad bad. Naughty.

This is a good thing. If it made *sense*, it wouldn't be Erisian, would it? No. This is a Zen Surrealism haphazard cut-n-paste history and chronicle of the early days and times of our forefingers Malaclypse the Younger and Omar Khayyam-Ravenhurst, and how they met the Monkey who had Met the Goddess in a bowling alley, and how things happened beforehand and afterwards. The character of Eris Herself is intimately probed with loving gentleness for the first time, and the various signs and sigils related herunto explained in more or less detail. The Thing About Hot Dog Buns comes to light: a Discordian shall consume no hot dog buns for it was with a hot dog that Eris consoled herself after the Great Snub during the banquet of the gods at which the seeds of the Trojan War were planted. Therefore, on Fridays, a Discordian shall Go and Joyously Partake of a Hot Dog to thumb the nose at five of the world's major religions, thusly:

1. Catholicism: No meat on Fridays. 2. Hinduism: No meat of beef. 3. Judaism: No meat of pork. 4. Islam: No meat of pork. 5. Discordianism: No hot dog buns.

There are also a great many illustrations of dubious character, and no small abount of nose-swallowing. Things generally continue in this vein.

The basic dichotomy of the world (Eristic vs. Aneristic, bright chaos vs. dim stasis) is shamefully dualist as usually presented here, when it is not holy nonsense, and sages of the Word will do well to recall that the Hand of Eris has five asymmetrical fingers, and that these wierd fingers are the ones that spin the world. However, that aside--this is a do-it-yerself enlightenment kit, folks. Your pineal gland--it's a little raisin-sized thing under your forehead about where you'd expect a third eye to be if you had one--will thank you, and will probably feel free to speak up more often about things. You will become wiser and more groovy as a direct result of this new connection to Eris, and housepets will not flee from your approach. Before you know it you will be a Gourder, rather than a Gourdee. Before you know it, you'll know what all of this means, and you'll love it.

This is one of those books you read and your life changes and leaves you wondering why you were so blind before. Prometheus Rising starts out strong, instead of filling you up with personal propaganda he just states ideas and lets the reader decide if they like them or not. The basic idea is what you think, is what you prove to yourself.

Towards the ending of the book I felt that Wilson got too caught up in his own ideas and strayed of his initial paradigm. However he brings out so many points about realizing who you are and how you perceive your life that it makes Prometheus Rising a valuable companion.

Another tweak this book has is the exercises at the end in order to bring forth realization. Instead of the usual self-help "exercises" of look at the mirror and keep saying "I will succeed" for five hours, Wilson just poses questions and ideas to think about, analyze and experiment with.

I consider this book a Self Help/Occult book. If you are looking for a way to realize who you are and improve your life and your understanding of your self-created universe buy this book. If you are a chaos magician this book will give you the power to shift within paradigms and know why you work the way you do.

Assume nothing.

If you have ever wanted an explanation for the workings of the human mind, or an explanation for the explanations of the human mind (or any animal mind, really), this book is a good starting place.
It explains in detail the eight circuits on which modern brains function from oldest to the most recently evolved.
It explains why a million people must be wrong, why people will believe the darndest things, why technology and sociology are progressing so quickly in the recent eras, why you are capable of much more than you may believe.
It explains how your mind can affect your body (somatotypes, hypochondriasis, left-handedness), and how you can affect your mind through your body (pranayama, yoga).
It teaches how brainwashing is possible and the exact process it requires.
It teaches the effects of our reality-tunnels on progress, both of our society and of our minds.
And of course, there are the exercizes, so if you don't believe it, you can see it for yourself.
Once you have read this, and it's terminology is simple enough for a beginner, you may have the ability to better understand those around you and to get along better in the world. You may learn to question yourself, if you believe any of it, in terms of your own reality-tunnel. What this book offers most of all is the road to enlightenment, and without the stigma mysticism usually gives it.

This book has changed my life. It's one of the most influencial books that I've read. It sums up and explains the most profound thinkers, philosophies, and mind opening, soul freeing ideas in very simple and practical ways. It can lead you to many things if you explore what's offered. I believe it would change the world if everyone read it, and considered it seriously, and it's fun to read! Open your mind, read the book, do the work, and be free.

Robert Anton Wilson is one of the most forward thinkers of his time. Wilson's first book in this series leads you down his path of exploring the changes he underwent by using mind expanding drugs and experimenting with magick rituals. Wilson's storyline of his mind expansion intersects along the way with his real life and allows the reader an insight into what types of things were influencing his decisions as he probed deeper into this fantastical realm. The timeline shifts around but the reader is never dissatisfied. The second part of the book deals with the scientific basis behind his studies and those of other free thinkers such as Timothy Leary.

I first became interested in Wilson after reading the Illuminati trilogy. This book will only add to anyone's appreciation for that book and its author. This book provides some background into the events which are covered by the trilogy. In general, the Cosmic Trigger series begins with a bang. 4 stars losing one for the sometimes cryptic nature of the writing, but then again, that is RAW.

This is really the only book you need to buy by Robert A. Wilson; his fiction is pretty awful (cardboard characters and self-referential plots drowning in footnotes); and all his other nonfiction works are the same repetitive rambling about the strange soup he makes of his favorites: Leary's levels of consciousness, general semantics, James Joyce, western philosophy (all of which he well understands), mysticism (which he does not) and Wilson's own mediocre interpretation of the philosophical implications of the quantum theory (he's an old-school copenhagenist). Cosmic Trigger has all that but much more; autobiography lends it a lovely basic narrative structure that is far more affecting than any of his silly novels, it has the phantasmagoric black-comic mood he fails to quite pull off in fiction, and of course is written in his usual direct, smooth, readable, and frequently hilarious prose style. If only he weren't from the foul "take more dope" hedonistic-materialistic school of consciousness and hadn't therefore been eating acid like candy when he wrote this, we might even be able to relate some of these events from his internal universe of perception to the external universe we share.

This was my first introduction to the writings of Robert Anton Wilson, at a time in my life when the limited, inconsistant, and ludicrous models of reality offered by the world seemed too limiting to bear. What Wilson offers here appears (in my reality tunnel) to be a look into the largely misunderstood philosophy of agnosticism, as well as his own experiences with love, sex, drugs, yoga, magik, life, death, and governmental corruption.

Does this review capture Wilson, or Cosmic Trigger I in its entirety? Of course not, and Wilson is fully aware that his writings and non-beliefs defy any catagorization (his books are very hard to find in retail stores). All I can offer is my uninformed opinion that there is no wiser, more humorous, and generally more interesting than Robert Anton Wilson.

The Illuminatus Trilogy (Fnord!) is easily one of the best books written in the past twenty years. Filled with thought provoking intelligent writing and more than its fair share of wackyness, this book will keep you up till the break of dawn wondering what is happening all around us. The Illuminatus trilogy is not a easy read, nor should it be. It explains that we as individuals really haven't got a clue as to how the world works, or really who is in power and why. Filled with sex, violence, drugs, and loads of other good stuff this is not for the timid. However, those who dare to brave the rocky waters of the Illuminati will be very pleased with themselves when they finish the journey. Fnord

Illuminatus! is pershaps one of the most wonderful books I have ever read. The combination of occultism, anarchism, and outright wierdness carries the reader through the most bizzare conspiracy theory ever dreamt of. This book will make you laugh, rage, and probably cause you to become a bit paranoid.

The story, or stories, hinge around a search for the truth about the Illuminati, a worldwide conspiracy that has apparently existed for centuries. Wilson complied a great deal of information, as well as tid bits from letters sent to him by crazies when he was working as the letters editor at Playboy magazine. The result is a book that leaves you wondering where fact ends and satire begins. That is, of course, the point. Wilson is out to blow your mind.

Professional cynics, who delight in nay-saying the creativity of others without producing anything of their own as an alternative, will find the book sentimental and a bit silly. For those with truly open minds, however, the Illuminatus Trilogy will be a book to read many times over. There is enough subtlety to keep you as busy as a thorough reading of Finnegan's Wake. The hidden messages and allusions seem to multiply each time you read.

You may even see the Fnords!

I'm not even going to pretend to try to explain anything about the plot of this book. It is so complex that I'd need more space than the book itself takes up. I will say this though, this book is the most amazing combination of Sci-fi, occult, and conspiracty that I have ever seen. I found myself looking for certain numbers everywhere. Sometimes I actually see the fnords. What this book does is follow a few different, intertwining plots that center around an ancient society, the Illuminati, the lost continent of Atlantis, and some other, darker groups as well. The book is not for the faint of heart, because the conspiracies are written so well, that you find yourself believing them at times. Also, there are some graphic scenes that may not be suitable for younger readers.

This trilogy (you need to read all three for it to make sense) is not an easy read, but a very rewarding one. The only problem is it can be confusing, and you have to stick with it before you get hooked. The first 100 pages or so may or may not seem slow or uninteresting, or just plain confused. Stick with it though. It's worth it. I enjoyed this book immensely. It's definitely not light or easy, but very rewarding.