The 23 Apples of Eris

I love the elegance of “A POEE cabal is exactly what you think it is.” There is no purpose or definition assigned. A cabal doesn’t have to be a group of mystics, or secret agents a la Illuminatus. If you and your friends get together to  play board games every week, and you have fun doing it, you could call it a cabal.

Malaclypse takes special care to divorce himself of any real authority. He encourages people to come up with alternate interpretations of Eris’ word. He gives out ordination certificates, but they’re basically meaningless.  He seems to enjoy wearing the leader costume, but is careful to hold that role at arm’s length.

From what I’ve read, Greg Hill (the guy who plays Malaclypse in this book) had a love/hate relationship with Discordia. When he wrote the Principia, he said he was possessed by the spirit of Malaclypse. This character helped him articulate the things he had been thinking about as he grew up in the suburbs of California in the 1950s and 60s. Many years later, when the work was done, Malaclypse left him. (note the concordance with Aliester Crowley’s Aiwass, the entity which Crowley claims wrote The Book Of The Law).

In anecdotes about Greg Hill, he sounds totally annoyed with the Discordian Society. Rev. Loveshade approached him in the 80s (?) and the man sounded like he was done with it. He didn’t want to be the guru anymore. Robert Anton Wilson’s alter ego, Hagbard Celine, voices the same thing when he steps down as head of the Lief Erikson cabal in the Illuminatus! trilogy.

Hagbard lowered his eyes for a second and gave a Sicilian shrug. “O oi che siete in picdoletta barca,” he said softly, and bowed. “I’m still in charge of nautical and technical matters,” he announced, “but Miss Portinari now succeeds me as episkopos of the Leif Erikson cabal. Anyone with lingering spiritual or psychological problems, take them to her.” He lunged across the room, hugged the girl, laughed with her happily for a moment and placed his golden apple ring on her finger. “Now I don’t have to meditate every day,” he shouted joyously, “and I’ll have more time for some thinking.”    -The Illuminatus! Trilogy

I love the phrase “World Council of Churches Boutique” It sounds like a store offers samples of various world religions.

The warning about money illustrates the main difference between Discordia and the Church of the Subgenius.

Here’s another page by Rev. Mungojerry Grindlebone, the author of the Erisian Hymn on page 00019. It’s an application to the Erisian movement, the counterpart to POEE. This is Kerry Thornley’s half of the classic Discordian society.

The page resembles a bureaucratic application form, but the questions themselves are absurd. This entry path to the Erisian movement shows  the relationship between bureaucracy and absurdity. If you’ve ever spent hours filling out forms that in all likelihood nobody will read, you already understand.

The Lick Here box in the bottom right corner has been an ongoing mystery to Discordians. Many of us have licked our monitors or print-outs of the Principia, hoping that we’re one of the lucky 25. Discordian folklore posits that Mal and Omar dropped a hit of LSD into 25 copies of the Principia.

I imagine some people must have been quite startled as they started to come up.

This is the main page describing POEE.

Most interesting to me is the five degrees of POEE. As a member of this POEE, you’d climb up the hierarchy as you learned about Eris. But the Polyfather is not the highest rank, the popes are. And most of the popes don’t know anything about Discordia. And anybody can be a pope, every man woman and child on this earth is a genuine and certified Pope. So you don’t have to go through the other four steps to be the head of POEE.

There’s a lesson here about no-mind. The Buddha says that everybody’s a Buddha, they just don’t realize it.  Students of Zen spend years training their minds to be childlike. The POEE hierarchy recognizes that there’s nothing really mystical or occult about enlightenment, it’s accessible to everybody.  There are people who walk around confident, aware, and unconflicted, doing what they’re supposed to be doing, and they didn’t need a single spiritual teaching to do that. A seeker could spend decades on a spiritual path, and then meet somebody who seems to have mastered the teaching, despite having never heard of it.

"Riel Monkey" by Riel Hilario, from the exhibit "if an apostle looks in no monkey can look out"

The hierarchy is also a reminder to be humble. We are not walking on the “true spiritual path”, and to entertain that idea is an ego game. Regular pedestrians “get” Discordianism a lot better than any of us, so give them a break. They are the highest members of POEE, they are totally free of Discordian orthodoxy and dogma. You could learn a thing or two from them!

The quote at the bottom of the page is from Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, a German scientist and satirist. This line is one of his most famous aphorisms. Originally, it’s not talking about the Principia, but all books. In another similar aphorism, Lichtenberg clarifies, “When a book and a head collide and it sounds hollow, then the book doesn’t need to be blamed for it.”  This is line shares a chord with a warning later in the book: If you think the Principia is just a joke, go back and read it again.

The Five Fingered Hand of Eris evokes a few ideas: (1) the harmonious union between two opposites, (2) the point of confrontation between two opposing sides. The note about the horns and their meaning in western occultism reads an afterthought. I visualize Mal drawing the five fingered hand, and a pagan friend says, “Oh look, horns up and horns down,” and then Mal goes, “Ah, good call,” and makes some scribblings underneath his drawing.

The quote at the bottom of the page is from Andre Breton, one of the founders of the Surrealist art movement. Breton was interested in what he called “surrealist automatism“, a creative process in which you draw material from your unconscious mind up to the surface. In automatic drawing, you rapidly sketch out whatever comes into your head, not really drawing with your rational mind. The little accidents and seemingly random markings are a window to the psyche. It can be surprising what lurks down there!

The juxtaposition of the occult note and the surrealist quote brings Austin Osman Spare to mind.  Spare was a contemporary of Breton, though I don’t know if they influenced each other. Spare was writer, artist, and self-styled magician. He laid down much of the foundation for what would become Chaos Magic, including signalization and automatic writing. The automatic writing process is nearly identical to Breton’s automatic drawing. Spare’s goal was similar to Breton’s – tap into the depths of the psyche, and harness the latent power of the self to transform the mind.

We’re The Upside Down People

The POEE Disorganizational Matrix describes the “hierarchy” of the POEE side of the Discordian Society.

The first thing to note is that it’s reversed. The people who know the most about Eris have the lowest rank in the society. The people who have never heard about it (most people) are the highest rank and the best Discordians.

Discordia is not about creating an elite sect of people who “get it”, and impart their enlightened wisdom onto the unwashed masses. No, we Discordians have a lot to learn a lot from those spags. Following a lesser-known Greek Goddess? We’re clearly wired all wrong.

A few weeks ago, somebody at a party asked me what Discordia was about. He had seen the Chao Te Ching on my facebook wall, and he really likes the Tao Te Ching you know, and so I found myself in the unfortunate position of having to “explain” Discordianism.

WELL, I said, We’re a disorganized religion. Or maybe we’re a joke, it’s hard to tell. We reject dogma and definition. The Discordian hierarchy is reversed… the most informed people about Discordia are at the bottom. The people who have no idea what it is [the popes] are at the top. So the fact that I’m even explaining this to you means that you get Discord better than I do.

My friend said, “So the point is to stop the mind?”

and I said, “Well, uh, kinda… some people treat it that way… It’s like this…”

He said, “You missed it. You can’t tell me what it is or isn’t about, I’m the fucking POPE, MOTHERFUCKER.”

The Classic Discordian Society

Once upon a time, there really was an office of the polyfather. There really was an organization called POEE. Both of these things have faded into the purple haze of history, but that hasn’t stopped them from being part of the Discordian society. There’s still a Discordian society, but they’re (dis)organized differently.

POEE

Today, there are two groups that use the name POEE (the Para-theo-ana-meta-mystikhood Of Eris Esoteric). The people who run Poee.org have a bunch of links to Discordian literature. An awesome guy named Synaptaclypse KSC runs Poee.co.uk, which operates as a Discordian publishing house and propaganda depository. Among other things, Syn prints the Hardcover edition of the Principia Discordia, which is gorgeous. Sadly, neither of these websites represent real communities anymore.

Needless to say, anybody can be a member of POEE. You don’t have to get anybody’s approval anymore, you just declare yourself a member. POEE has a bit of a mystical connotation – it appeals to Discordians that experiment with the occult or other esoteric approaches to reality.

The Golden Apple Corps

The Golden Apple Corps are the activist wing of the Discordian Society. If you do pranks, projects, or mischief in the name of Eris, this is your crowd. Their primary project is Operation Mindfuck, an ongoing mission to snap people out of their robotic thought patterns.

The Golden Apple Corps have no leader and accept anybody as a member.

In recent years, the Golden Apple Corps have used OMGASM to collaborate on projects. Briefly, OMGASM is the idea that Discordians should participate in other pranks by Discordians (“Sticking apart is most fun when we do it together!” -St Mae). Sometimes Discordians come up with projects and name them with a -GASM on the end. This is a signal that “you’re invited to participate, collaborate, and expand on this”.

For example, FnordGASM is the project to write “Fnord” one paper currency. Anybody can do it. The more people do it, the more people will look up Fnord and find a trail of breadcrumbs leading to MADNESS.

My hope is that as Discordia becomes better represented on the web, we’ll have a larger pool of pranksters to collaborate with. This could lead to larger and larger projects, more golden apples being tossed into people’s brains.

Episkiposes

Episkopos is an Ancient Greek word meaning “overseer”. In a modern religious context it refers to the Bishop who presides over a group of churches. Protestants don’t have a pope, but they do have Bishops. Being an Episkopos means that you’ve got your own version of Discordia, your own revelation from Eris, and you accept nobody else’s authority to tell you what’s up.

There are a lot of Episkoposes. If you have an interpretation of Discordia that doesn’t jive with POEE or the Golden Apple Corps, you’re probably in charge of your own Episkopos. Discordia encourages this sort of thing – it’s better that we have 10,000 conflicted versions of Discordia than one “true” version with its own tribes of believers and skeptics.

The Legion of Dynamic Discord

The LDD is comprised of Discordians who don’t belong to any of the above groups. This is sometimes seen as the “entry path” into Discordia. You are in the LDD while you don’t have your mind made up about this stuff.

The stereotypical legionnaire enjoys telling other Discordians that they’re doing it wrong and their tribe is bad, but doesn’t himself have a clear idea of what “doing it right” would be.  St. Vincent Verthaine used to call them the “Little Deluded Dupes”.

The House of the Rising Hodge

This sect represents the Discordian elements that are ordered. Discordian Historians, Dictionaries, and this series of blog posts attempting to “explain” the Principia Discordia  belong in this category.

The House of the Rising Podge

This sect refers to Discordian advocacy for Disorder. Mal and Omar warn us that a little disorder can be good, but don’t go too crazy with it. Too much Wisdom is Insanity. Too much Beauty is Outrageous. Overemphasis on Integrity leads to Arrogance. And while bullshit makes the flowers grow, too much of it really smells.