Customer Reviews

Principia Discordia, Or, How I Found Goddess and What I Did to Her When I Found Her: The Magnum Opiate of Malaclypse the Younger

5 star:		(64)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

Simultaneously operating as a religion and a parody of religion, the Principia Discordia has acquired a cult following which I was surprised to discover is well-deserved.

The Principia's juxtaposition of seemingly incompatible elements encourages confusion on the part of the reader. For instance, religious anecdotes and revelations are absurd to the point of idiocy; the constant didacticism intentionally contradicts itself; serious concepts are riddled with toilet humor. As a whole, the text seems like a cleverly constructed joke, yet it does contain moments of compelling insight.

In short, I'm still not sure whether to take any of the Principia seriously. Even if it is possible to take seriously, it is impossible to decode.

Regardless of its intentions, the Principia comes across as an ingenious text without so much as a hint of pretentiousness. The text meaningfully addresses complicated ideas while undercutting them with humor and paradox - it's all painfully clever AND a fun read. In this age of shallow post-modern tricks, that alone is a noteworthy achievement.


NOTE: The entire text is available online. If, however, you intend to purchase a copy, buy the black-cover edition published by Steve Jackson Games - it is the most recent and contains additional content not found in the yellow-cover or purple-cover editions.

I was sent a copy of this twisted beauty by a penpal, who accompanied it with the note 'I think you'll like this'. It has gone on to become the most borrowed book (and thusly the most creased) in my sizable collection and various phrases from within have crept into daily usage. Very funny, very clever, very Robert Anton Wilson and only-just-less-than very hallucinogenic, I love this book. A quick qualifier - I have a strong degree of revulsion towards the most organised of the religions, and this takes the (...) most admirably. The conversion 'what to say to convert a passer-by to Discordianism' is beautifully observed. There is a lot of insight behind the overt silliness, but you needn't bother with looking for insight if you're not inclined. That's kind of the point, anyway...and it isn't. The lighter side of Chaos magick, for those familiar. As I said earlier, I've lent this book to many people (around 40, I think...gods), only one of whom didn't enjoy it. Hail Eris! Consult your pineal. Fnord.

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 book goes against everything Discordia stands for. It is a disgrace to the religion. All of it is lies. Even the true parts.

Before I read this book I thought I was simply an agnostic with a strange sense of humor. Now I see the Truth, that all along when I saw all that was wrong with organized religion, and that any god of this universe must be a superb joker- it was Our Lady of Holy Discord speaking to me through my pineal gland! I just didn't know how to listen. Fortunately, a (now ex-) roommate introduced me to this wonderful tome of clear thought, and I saw the muddy existence we live through with new eyes. Buy this book. Read this book. Open your eyes to the Truth. then open them to the other Truth. Then, try the one after that, and after that one, try the one over there- and while you're at it, look over in the corner underneath it- hey, there's another!

Plus, it was simply heinous that the number of reviews stopped at 22. There simply HAD to be a 23rd- so I wrote this!

I always was Discordian, and simply didn't know what to call myself. Suffice to say, I now do. Hail Eris! All Hail Discordia! fnord.

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...

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.

By a weird coincidence of delivery dates, I received this book at approximately the same time as I started reading "Dropping Ashes On the Buddha: The Teaching of Zen Master Seung Sahn" (ISBN 0802130526), so I can't help but mentally compare the two. Both are witty takes on religion, and the messages are in some ways surprisingly similar.

Maybe I'm just weird (a very distinct possibility given my current reading list), but I actually got more real belly laughs out of "Ashes" than I did from "Principia Discordia", despite (or perhaps because of) the fact that "Dropping Ashes on the Buddha" is unquestionably a serious work on Zen, while "Principia Discordia" is clearly not serious, though the authors do appear to have a serious message. Seung Sahn's fascinating combination of wit and wisdom reminded me of a kind of Buddhist Groucho Marx, while the undeniably funny material in "Principia Discordia" put me more in mind of the Three Stooges. The humor's there in abundance, but the depth of the message just isn't the same.

Nonetheless, I'm glad I bought this book, if for no other reason than to teach me the origin of the Erisians I've read about in so many science fiction books (the "Illuminatus!" trilogy/ISBN 0440539811 and "The Long Run"/ISBN 1576466396 being my two favorites).

...

The 5th edition, from Illuminet,(i.e. the one with the purple cover) has an extended introduction that more than makes up for the $2.00 price difference. (evidently there is also a Steve Jackson Games edition, but I've never seen it so I can't comment) Kerry Thornley, AKA Lord Omar Ravenhurst, one of the co-authors, died in Atlanta last year. He was every bit as mellow and cool as you might have thought, and his untimely passing is mourned by everyone who knew him.

The crux of the book's phliosophy -- to the extent that Kerry and Greg set aside their satire and humor long enough to propound a philosophy -- is that creativity is the fundamental good; order v. chaos and statism v. anarchy are only secondary concerns. Reading the Principia changed my thinking forever.

Yes, it is unbearably, horribly silly, and blasphemous. It is not chaos magic in the slightest, for although chaos magick is chaotic, it is serious. this is not serious. This is, by golly, the very undoing and reversing of all order.

It has nothing to do with anything. It is not a Bible nor an anti-Bible. It is a collection of strange texts that disgust, disappoint, and confuse the Greyfaces of the world.

So don't be a Greyface, or I'll send my Eristic vibes after you.