The difference between these systems is that some aim to liberate every candidate and some, like Sabbah's and Weishaupt's, deliberately encourage the majority to remain in ignorance, whereby they may with profit be endlessly exploited by their superiors in the cult. The same general game of an illuminated minority misusing a superstitious majority was characteristic of Tibet until the Chinese Communist invasion broke the power of the high lamas. A sympathetic account of the Tibetan system, which goes far toward justifying it, can be found in Alexandra David-Neel's The Hidden Teachings of Tibetan Buddhism; an unsympathetic account by a skeptical fellow mystic is available in The Confessions of Aleister Crowley.

Another word about Alamout black: It is not for the inexperienced psychedelic voyager. For instance, the first time Simon Moon tried it, in early 1968, he had occasion to use the men's room in the Biograph Theatre (where he had gone to see Yellow Submarine while under the influence). After his bowel movement he reached for the toilet paper and saw with consternation that the first sheet hanging down off the roll was neatly stamped

OFFICIAL

BAVARIAN ILLUMINATI

EWIGE BLUMENKRAFT!

On ordinary marijuana or hashish, such illusions occur, of course- but they are not true hallucinations. They go away if you look 'at them hard enough. No matter how hard Simon looked at the toilet paper, it still said

OFFICIAL

BAVARIAN ILLUMINATI

EWIGE BLUMENKRAFT!

Simon went back to his seat in the theater badly shaken. For weeks afterward he wondered if the Illuminati had some sinister reason for infiltrating the toilet paper industry, or if the whole experience were a genuine hallucination and the first sign, as he put it, "that this fucking dope is ruining my fucking head." He never solved this mystery, but eventually he stopped worrying about it.

As for Hassan i Sabbah X and the Cult of the Black Mother, the authors have been able to learn precious little about them. Since they are clearly related somehow to the Assassins and the cult of Kali, Mother of Destruction, one can consider them part of the Illuminati, or Podge, side of the Sacred Chao; since they seem to be businessmen rather than fanatics, and since Kali might be a version of Eris, one can consider them part of the Discordian or Hodge side. Amid such speculation and much mystery, they go their dark way, peddling horse and preaching some pretty funky doctrines about Whitey. Perhaps they intend to betray everybody and run off with the loot at an opportune moment-and, then again, maybe they are the only really dedicated revolutionaries around. "Nothing is too heavy to be knocked on its ass, and everything is cool, baby" is the only summary of his personal philosophy that Hassan i Sabbah X himself would give us. He's a studly dude, and we didn't press him.

APPENDIX TZADDI: 23 SKIDOO

Linguists and etymologists have had much exercise for their not-inconsiderable imaginations in attempting to account for this expression. Skidoo has been traced back to the older skedaddle, and thence to the Greek skedannumi, "to disperse hurriedly." The 23, naturally, has caused even more creative efforts by these gentry, since they are unaware of the secret teachings of Magick. One theorist, noting that Sidney Carton in Dickens' Tale of Two Cities is the twenty-third man guillotined in the final scene,* guessed that those playgoers who were eager to get out of the theater before the crowd counted off the executions and skidoo'd toward the exits numbered 23. Another eminent scholar assumes that the expression has something to do with men hanging around the old Flatiron Building on Twenty-third Street in New York City- a notoriously windy corner- to watch ladies' skirts raised by the breeze; when a cop came, they would skidoo. Others have mused inconclusively about the early telegraph operator's signal of 23, which means (roughly) "stop transmitting," "clear the line," or, to be crude, "shut up," but nobody claims to know how telegraphers picked 23 to have this meaning.

* A literary reference which Simon Moon, with his modernistic bias, overlooked.

The mystery's real origin is a closely guarded secret of the Justified Ancients of Mummu, which Simon had not attained the rank to learn. Dillinger, however, had attained this rank, and uses the formula quite correctly in the bank robbery scene in the Third Trip. It was printed by "Prater Perdurabo" (Aleister Crowley) in The Book of Lies (privately published, 1915; republished by Samuel Weiser Inc., New York, 1970). The text of the spell makes up the totality of Chapter 23 in that curious little book; and it reads:

(23)

SKIDOO

What man is at ease in his Inn?

Get out.

Wide is the world and cold.

Get out.

Thou hast become an in-itiate.

Get out.

But thou canst not get out by the way thou camest in. The Way out is THE WAY.

Get out.

For OUT is Love and Wisdom and Power.

Get OUT.

If thou hast T already, first get UT.

Then get O.

And so at last get OUT.

It is not permissible to explain this fully, but it may be stated guardedly that T is the union of sex and death, Tau, the Rosy Crucifixion; UT is Ugita in the Upanishads; and O is the Positive Void.*

* Fission Chips, like our other characters, was given a chance to peruse this manuscript before publication and correct any factual errors that may have crept in. Of this appendix, he said, "I think my leg is being pulled again, chaps. I suspect that Crowley wrote that in 1915 as a joke on his readers, and you blokes found it and inserted a reference to a magic formula used by Dillinger in your story just so you could then compose this appendix and 'explain' it." Such skepticism, straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel, may be compared to the stance of the Bible Fundamentalist who avers that JHVH made the universe in six days in 4004 B.C. but included fossils and other false leads to make it appear much older. One could equally assert that the cosmos appeared out of Void one second ago, including us and our false memories of a longer duration here.

APPENDIX VAU: FLAXSCRIP AND HEMPSCRIP

Flaxscrip was first introduced into Discordian groups by the mysterious Malaclypse the Younger, K.S.C., in 1968. Hempscrip followed the year after, issued by Dr. Mordecai Malignatus, K.N.S. (In the novel, taking one of our few liberties with historical truth, we move these coinages backward in time and attribute hempscrip to the Justified Ancients of Mummu.)

The idea behind flaxscrip, of course, is as old as history; there was private money long before there was government money. The first revolutionary (or reformist) use of this idea, as a check against galloping usury and high interest rates, was the foundation of "Banks of Piety" by the Dominican order of the Catholic Church in the late middle ages. (See Tawney, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism.) The Dominicans, having discovered that preaching against usury did not deter the usurer, founded their own banks and provided loans without interest; this "ethical competition" (as Josiah Warren later called it) drove the commercial banks out of the areas where the Dominicans practiced it. Similar private currency, loaned at a low rate of interest (but not at no interest), was provided by Scots banks until the British government, acting on behalf of the monopoly of the Bank of England, stopped this exercise of free enterprise. (See Muellen, Free Banking.) The same idea was tried successfully in the American colonies before the Revolution, and again was suppressed by the British government, which some heretical historians regard as a more direct cause of the American Revolution than the taxes mentioned in most schdolbooks. (See Ezra Pound, Impact, and additional sources cited therein.)