Principia Discordia.pdf

23 Apples of Eris Introduction

Well, here it is - the closest thing youre going to get to the real Principia Discordia

without actually going out and stealing a copy... and its totally free of charge (so just pre-

tend you stole it, we wont tell)!

We scanned every page of the Loompanics Edition of the Principia Discordia and

yanked out everything we could not reproduce with text in PageMaker. I swear, this file

couldnt be much smaller than it is right now and still cover the entire Principia.

We got into an argument among ourselves as to whether or not to include the Steve

Jackson Games editions pages at the end of this document, and after much biting and

spitting, we decided to. It makes the file bigger and were not exactly fans of Steve Jack-

son (who steals Discordian imagery, like any good Discordian would, but then turns around

and copyrights them), but we figured some of you might want to see those additional pages

enough to go out and purchase a copy, and wed rather give it to you. If you want us to

illegally reproduce anything else they do, let us know and we will attempt to procure and

reproduce.

Anyway, other than those pages, everything else has been yanked out of the

Loompanics edition of the Principia, and everything is as close to the original as we could

make it, spelling errors and all. When we couldnt find a font that was in the original, we

chose the next closest thing or used the image instead.

Its doggedly unneccessary for us to go into why we did it and so forth and so on. If

you went through the trouble of downloading this, you already know why - a labor of love and

all that shit. Prince Mu-Chao and Happy Fun Ball deserve all the credit; everyone else just

watched them and giggled, sometimes choking on the bong water. Especially when Prince Mu-

Chao realized that Happy Fun Ball had spent two hours scanning the pages that he had

already scanned. They reminded us of root beer. I dont remember why at this time, but Im

sure... anyway, I digress. Im running out of space.

Please excuse the shamefully blatent advertisements at the bottom of the page. We

promise, this is the only page well clutter with them, so our suggestion is to just throw this

page out entirely.

So, without further ado, just skip over the aforementioned shamefully blatent

advertisements at the bottom of this page and go on to Mr. Wilsons Introduction. Its much

more interesting than ours is, I assure you.

http://come.to/discordia/

http://23ae.onestop.net/

ftp://23ae.onestop.net/ (soon)

princemuchao@poboxes.com

happyfunball@poboxes.com

- Rev. MarshMellow Fluff

P.S. - If you wanna actually buy a printed copy of this (for some reason) buy it off of Loompanics, not

Steve Jackson. Write or call them for a catalog (may write back asking for $5 or something, their 200+

page catalog is definitely worth it, though):

1-800-380-2230

LOOMPANICS UNLIMITED

PO BOX 1197

Port Townsend, WA 98368

Not sure if they ship outside of the US or not...

fnord

INTRODUCTION

You hold in your hands one of the Great Books of our century fnord.

Some Great Books are recognized at once with a fusillade of critical

huzzahs and gonfolons, like Joyce’s Ulysses. Others appear almost furtively

and are only discovered 50 years later, like Moby Dick or Mendel’s great es-

say on genetics. The Principia Discordia entered our space-time continuum

almost as unobtrusively as a cat-burglar creeping over a windowsill.

In 1968, virtually nobody had heard of this wonderful book. In 1970,

hundreds of people from coast to coast were talking about it and asking the

identity of the mysterious author, Malaclypse the Younger. Rumors swept

across the continent, from New York to Los Angeles, from Seattle to St. Joe.

Malaclypse was actually Alan Watts, one heard. No, said another legend –

the Principia was actually the work of the Sufi Order. A third, very intriguing

myth held that Malaclypse was a pen-name for Richard M. Nixon, who had

allegedly composed the Principia during a few moments of lucidity. I enjoyed

each of these yarns and did my part to help spread them. I was also careful

never to contradict the occasional rumors that I had actually written the whole

thing myself during an acid trip.

The legendry, the mystery, the cult grew very slowly. By the mid-1970’s,

thousands of people, some as far off as Hong Kong and Australia, were talk-

ing about the Principia, and since the original was out of print by then, xerox

copies were beginning to circulate here and there.

When the Illuminatus trilogy appeared in 1975, my co-author, Bob Shea,

and I both received hundreds of

letters from people intrigued by the quotes from the Principia with which we

had decorated the heads of several chapters. Many, who had already heard

of the Principia or seen copies, asked if Shea and I had written it, or if we had

copies available. Others wrote to ask if it were real, or just something we had

invented the way H.P. Lovecraft invented the Necronomicon. We answered

according to our moods, sometimes telling the truth, sometimes spreading the

most Godawful lies and myths we could devise fnord.

Why not? We felt that this book was a true Classic (literatus immortalis)

and, since the alleged intelligentsia had not yet discovered it, the best way to

keep its legend alive was to encourage the mythology and the controversy

about it. Increasingly, people wrote to ask me if Timothy Leary had written it,

and I almost always told them he had, except on Fridays when I am more

whimsical, in which case I told them it had been transmitted by a canine intel-

ligence – vast, cool and unsympathetic – from the Dog Star, Sirius.

Now, at last, the truth can be told.

Actually, the Principia is the work of a time-traveling anthropologist from

the 23 rd Century. He is currently passing among us as a computer specialist,

bon vivant and philosopher named Gregory Hill. He has also translated sev-

eral volumes of Etruscan erotic poetry, under another pen-name, and in the

18 th Century was the mysterious Man in Black who gave Jefferson the design

for the Great Seal of the United States.

I have it on good authority that he is one of the most accomplished time-

travelers in the galaxy and has visited Earth many times in the past, using

such cover-identities as Zeno of Elias, Emperor Norton, Count Cagliostro,

Guillaume of Aquitaine, etc. Whenever I question him about this, he grows

very evasive and attempts to persuade me that he is actually just another 20 th

Century Earthman and that all my ideas about his

Extraterrestrial and extratemporal origin are delusions. Hah! I am not that

easily deceived. After all, a time-traveling anthropologist would say just that,

so that he could observe us without his presence causing culture-shock.

I understand that he has consented to write an Afterward to this edition. He’ll

probably contradict everything I’ve told you, but don’t believe a word he says

fnord. He is a master of the deadpan put-on, the plausible satire, the philo-

sophical leg-pull and all branches of guerilla ontology.

For full benefit to the Head, this book should be read in conjunction with The

Illuminoids by Neal Wilgus (Sun Press, Albuquerque, New Mexico) and Zen

Without Zen Masters by Camden Benares (And/Or Press, Berkeley, Califor-

nia). “We are operating on many levels here”, as Ken Kesey used to say.

In conclusion, there is no conclusion. Things will go on as they always have,

getting weirder all the time.

Hail Eris. All hail Discordia. Fnord?

-Robert Anton Wilson

International Arms and Hashish Inc.

Darra Bazar, Kohat

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