Those Clever Sirians
Sub-Figura vel Liber Caeruleus

Various Relatively Holy Excerpts from:
Cosmic Trigger: Final Secret of the Illuminati
© 1977 by Robert Anton Wilson
New Falcon Publications, Tempe, AZ
ISBN 1-56184-003-3

The V.H. Fra. R.A.W.
In Regards to Our Mysterious Sirian Brethren
 

Sub-Figura ALPHA

For a precise historical overview of not only the connections between Sirius and ancient occult orders but also of the intrinsic relationship between that star system and Sothis or Set-An, we must examine Kenneth Grant’s work. Oddly enough, despite the fact that I have widely circulated this pointed excerpt, I remain yet unaware of anyone who has actually "got it" and made the connection between the rapidly (re-)emergent Sirius mythos and classical apocalyptic eschatology:

"The one place in Crowley’s writings where he gives the meaning of the initials A.'.A.'. is in his magical record (Cefalu, 1921) where it appears as ACTHP APLOC. This is a corrupt Graeco-Coptic form of Argenteum Astrum (the Silver Star) yet it is the true occult key to the nature of the order, which is not expressed by the correct Latin version of the name. Argos derives from arg or arca, the female generative power symbolized by the moon, the womb-shaped argha used in the mysteries, synonymous with the queen of heaven. Arghya (Sanskrit) is the libation cup; Aster Argos is the lunar or ’silver’ star.

"The lunar component is represented by the eye of Isis, and her star is Sirius, the dog-star (Set). The order of the Silver Star is thus the order of the eye of Set, ’the Son behind the Sun,’ represented astronomically by the star of Isis, which is Sothis (Sirius).

"The constellation of which Sirius was the chief star was once named the Phoenix [this constellation probably corresponded to the complex of stars now known as Cygnus and Aquila]. This was the secret name of Baphomet (Crowley) as the supreme head of the O.T.O. [the Ordo Templi Orientis or Order of the Temple of the East, so called because the east is the place of sunrise. The reference is not, however, to the physical sun, but to the eye of Set, astronomically imaged by Sirius.] He assumed the god-form of this bird (an emblem of the sothic year or cycle) because it reached the meridian (i.e. attained supremacy) at the moment of the rising of Sirius, or Set.

"The Silver Star (A:.A:.) is Sirius. As Hoor-paar-Kraat, whose formula is silence and strength, he is the undying god, beyond our solar system. Horus is the ’son’ of this god and the sun (or father) of our solar system. Horus is thus Hrumachis (son of) the star, Sirius. Sirius, Sothis or Set-An, thus represents the supreme, the eternal light. The star is therefore the key to the present aeon of Horus, for it represents the energy of Satan that will permeate the earth during the present cycle."

 

Aleister Crowley & the Hidden God, p. 59-60
1973 by Kenneth Grant, Skoob, London, ISBN 1-871438-36-5
 

Sub-Figura DELTA

Consider the Higher Intelligence contacted by Jack Parsons, the American rocket pioneer who co-founded Cal Tech and is reputed to have contributed as much basic innovative technology to aerospace as Goddard or von Braun. Parsons, who was a member of the Ordo Templi Orientis, back in the 1930s-40s when Aleister Crowley was still alive and acting as Outer Head, subsequently published The Book of the AntiChrist -- a strange, beautiful, revolutionary document which, like Crowley’s Book of the Law, was allegedly dictated by a Higher Intelligence. This entity is described by Parsons only as "most Holy and beautiful": it urged Parsons to declare war on,

"all authority that is not based on courage and manhood ... the authority of lying priests, conniving judges, blackmailing police," and called for "an end to restriction and inhibition, conscription, compulsion, regimentation and the tyranny of laws."

Part Two of this strange document urges all truth-seekers to practice Crowleyan sex-yoga: "Concentrate all force and being in Our Lady Babalon. Light a single light on her altar, saying Flame is our Lady; flame is her hair. I am flame." Etc. [As an interesting aside here, Parsons was killed in a horrible fiery accident involving mercury fulminate in his Holy Rocket Science Lab -B:.B:.] Babalon, in Crowley’s Tarot, is The Star, which Kenneth Grant says is Sirius.

Grady McMurty, an old friend of Crowley and Parsons, and currently Caliph of the Ordo Templi Orientis in the United States, has kindly placed in my hands various manuscripts of O.T.O. private publications during the 1940s. In one of them Parsons states his devotion to the shamanistic / psychedelic quest in poetic terms that might have seemed extreme even to Crowley.

The poem begins:

I hight Don Quixote, I live on peyote,
...marijuana, morphine and cocaine,
I never know sadness but only a madness
...that burns at the heart and the brain.
I see each charwoman, ecstatic, inhuman,
...angelic, demonic, divine.
Each wagon a dragon, each beer mug a flagon
...that brims with ambrosial wine.

This was printed in the February 21, 1943 issue of The Oriflamme, journal of the O.T.O., two months before Hofmann discovered LSD.

Parsons died in a laboratory accident in 1949. According to Kenneth Grant, Parsons’ last year was devoted to the attempt, with a mistress, to conceive a moonchild -- an entity magickally separated from earth-influence at the instant of conception and from then on dedicated to higher, outer-space influences. (Crowley describes this operation in his novel, Moonchild. To my knowledge, it has not been successfully performed to date.)

Jack Parsons’ life, midway between Crowley’s and Leary’s, was a testament to the faith: it is time to get off this planet. For his countless contributions to aerospace science, Parsons is honored by having a crater on the moon named after him [and certain Pasadena JPL insiders refer to their place of employment only half-jokingly as "Jack Parsons’ Lab" as opposed to "Jet Propulsion Lab." -B:.B:.].
 

The footsteps of the Illuminati

One day, browsing in a bookstore, I came upon Gurdjieff: Making a New World, by J.G. Bennett. Guess my state of mind when I came upon the following passage:

After Gurdjieff died I was asked by some of the old pupils to write a commentary on Beelzebub. When I had written a few chapters and sent them around for comment, almost all agreed that it would be a mistake to publish them. If Gurdjieff had intended his meaning to be readily accessible to every reader, he would have written the book differently. He himself used to listen to chapters read aloud and if he found the key passages taken too easily -- and therefore almost inevitably too superficially -- he would rewrite them in order, as he put it, to "bury the dog deeper." When people corrected him and said he surely meant "bury the bone deeper," he would turn on them and say it was not "bones" but the "dog" that you have to find. The dog is Sirius the dog star, which stands for the spirit of wisdom in the Zoroastrian tradition.

Sirius again. "Coincidence," says the Skeptic, one more time. Beelzebub’s Tales to his Grandson, the book in question, concerns extraterrestrial Higher Intelligences who intervene repeatedly on Earth to accelerate evolution here. But, of course, that’s just a story...

Or is it?

J.G. Bennett, in another book on the Gurdjieff teachings called Is There Life on Earth?, claims that Gurdjieff was initiated into a mystic society, unnamed, which began in Babylon around 4500 B.C. Grant also traces the Crowley tradition back to Egypt and Babylon around that time.

"Coincidence, coincidence, coincidence," mutters the Skeptic; but is there a growing uncertainty in his voice?

Wait. There’s a lot more to come. In July 1975, I published an article about all this in Gnostica, an occult newspaper. A few weeks later, I received a letter from Edward Gardiner of the Detroit Film Collective. Mr. Gardiner wrote that he attended the Fourth International Festival of Yoga and Esoteric Sciences in Dallas. Dr. Douglas Baker, in a lecture, said that Sirius is the Ajna center of a galactic being and our sun is the Heart center. Our planetary evolution depends on raising the energy from the Heart (our sun) to the Ajna (Sirius).

Dr. Baker represents the Theosophical Society, founded by Madame H.P. Blavatsky, based on alleged transmissions from a Secret Chief named Koot Hoomi. That Gurdjieff was educated by the Sufis is now generally accepted. Crowley was directed by a Secret Chief named Aiwass. I would estimate that about 90 per cent of the occult groups in the Western world today are wholly or partially derivative from Blavatsky or Gurdjieff or Crowley, who together make up the indispensable Big Three of 20^th century occultism. And now we have all three of them tied in, one way or another, with Sirius.

Of course, if shamans of any school are going to develop delusions about stars, they are likely to pick Sirius, which is the brightest star in the sky and hard to ignore. It is also in the constellation of the Dog, "man’s best friend."

Nevertheless, such is the repressed gullibility of even the most hardened Skeptic, I have found myself wondering once or twice about new meanings in the ancient Zen riddle, "Does a dog have the Buddha-nature?" And, on rereading Joyce’s Ulysses for the first time in several years, the Metaprogrammer was struck by the Black Mass in which the souls of all the saved chant "Gooooooooooooood" while all the souls of the damned chant "Doooooooooooooog."

This palindrome (God-Dog) also appears in The Book of the Law, remember, in the question, "Is a god to live in a dog?" My fantasy leaped and I asked myself why Joyce set Ulysses in spring 1904, the same time that Crowley was receiving The Book of the Law. (19 + 04 = 23 ... )

The same palindrome, again, appears in Chapter One of Dr. Leary’s High Priest, published in 1968. The chapter is titled "Godsdog."

Coincidence? Synchronicity? Higher Intelligence?

Then Brian Hanlon, San Francisco UFOlogist, called my attention to a book called Other Tongues, Other Flesh, by George Hunt Williamson.

Williamson, an early 1950s Contactee, claims to have met some flying saucerites from Sirius. He prints vast huge chunks of their language -- the "other tongues" in his title -- and I found that a few of the words were almost identical with some words in the "angelic" language used by Dr. John Dee, Aleister Crowley and other magi of the Illuminati tradition. For instance, Williamson transcribes one of the words he received as leshtal, Crowley has "lashtal." This is more striking when we remember the two Naval officers who got "affa" (nothing) from the same "angelic" language.

Williamson also informs us that the Sirians have been in contact with Earth for "several thousand years" and that their allies here use as insignia the Eye of Horus -- the origin of the Illuminati eye-in-triangle design."

Like every other Contacteé, Williamson may, of course, be suspected of hallucinating or just of being a damned liar. Even the most hard-headed skeptics, however, must be a bit puzzled if we ask a few questions at this point, such as: what are the chances of Williamson, either as a hallucinator or as a hoaxer, picking up words in the "angelic" language, known only to advanced students of Cabala? Well, maybe he could have read a bit of Cabala in his time; sure.

• But what are the chances, by coincidence or whatever, that two Naval Intelligence officers of high security rating should also, in a separate Contact, get a word in the same language?

• How could Williamson have known that Crowley was in any way connected with Sirius in 1953, when he wrote his book, since Kenneth Grant was the first to link Crowley and Sirius, in 1973?

• Was it only by coincidence of lucky guessing that Williamson picked the eye-in-the-triangle (used by Crowley and the Illuminati) as the alleged symbol of the secret society in contact with Sirius?

• Was it only another coincidence that that symbol was used by Adam Weishaupt and Thomas Jefferson?

• And is it another coincidence that Dr. Baker, the Theosophist, should declare Sirius "the third eye" of a cosmic being?

When Illuminatus was being written (1969-1971), I had no interest in Sirius at all and no delusions about contact with extraterrestrials. But we now find that both the number 23 and the eye-in-the-triangle motif -- the two most mysterious enigmas in that novel -- have a long history of linkage with the Illuminati-Sirius mystery. I didn’t know that when working on Illuminatus -- but evidently something that is part of my mind or in communication with my mind did know it.


Sub-Figura OMEGA

Aside from Brother Sheldon Nidle’s ubiquitous references to Sirius (and further corroboration provided by our OTO/CAW mole re: the neo-Knight Templar Order of the Solar Temple’s connection to Sirius) in regards to the Holy Church of the Latter Day UFO Saints, we could not help but recall this seminal historical (1920’s) reference recorded so eloquently by the V.H. Fra. R.A.W. (Robert Anton Wilson) in his fascinating discordian treatise Cosmic Trigger: The Final Secret of the Illuminati:

"Recently, English playwright Heathcote Williams sent me a Xerox of There Is No More Firmament, a one-act play written by the pioneer surrealist, Antonin Artaud, back in the early 1920’s. This strange, weirdly suggestive drama certainly deserves to be mentioned as part of the Sirius Mystery.

"There Is No More Firmament begins with discordant music indicating ’a far-off cataclysm.’ The curtain rises on an ordinary street scene, with actors coming and going rapidly. There are bits of ordinary conversation (’Wines ... windowglass ... gold’s going down’), suggestions of violence and insanity (’He’s undressing me. Help, he’s ripping my dress off...’ ’I’m on fire, I’m burning, I’m going to jump’) and, finally, the word ’Sirius’ repeated in every tone of voice and every pitch of the scale: SIRIUS ... SIRIUS ... SIRIUS ... SIRIUS ... Then a loudspeaker thunders, ’THE GOVERNMENT URGES YOU TO REMAIN CALM.’

"Actors rush about claiming that the sun is getting bigger, the plague has broken out, there is thunder without lightning, etc. A reasonable voice tries to explain, ’It was a magnetic phenomenon...’ Then the loudspeaker tells us:

"STUPENDOUS DISCOVERY. SKY PHYSICALLY ABOLISHED. EARTH ONLY A MINUTE AWAY FROM SIRIUS. NO MORE FIRMAMENT.

"One actor claims it is the end of the world. Another says it is two worlds ramming each other.

[...]

"A group of scientists appear and disagree with each other vehemently about what is happening while a Revolutionary objects, ’It isn’t science anymore, it’s immoral.’ Another promises us, not very reassuringly, ’We won’t see the antichrist yet.’ Finally, one scientist comes forth to explain to the audience, ’The molecular grouping in Sirius is everything. These two forces, ours and theirs, had to be put in touch with each other.

"The curtain falls and violent percussion instruments and sirens create a din as the audience leaves.

"(For the curious, the whole text of this play can be found in Antonin Artaud, Collected Works, Vol. II. Calder and Boyars: London, 1971.)

"Artaud went ’insane’ about ten years after writing this play, and spent the World War II years in a mental hospital. After the war ended, he regained his ’sanity’ and lived his final years in Paris as a hero to the young intelligentsia, who regarded him as a prophet. The people who were allegedly ’sane’ during the years of Artaud’s hospitalization spent most of their time trying to blow up as much as possible of the civilized world."

 

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More Information:  The Star Sirius

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