The Illuminatus! Trilogy Among Wilson's 35 books and many other works, perhaps his best-known volumes remain the cult classic series
The Illuminatus! Trilogy (1975), co-authored with Shea. Advertised as "a
fairy tale for paranoids", the three books—
The Eye in the Pyramid,
The Golden Apple, and
Leviathan, soon offered as a single volume—philosophically and humorously examined, among many other themes, occult and magical symbolism and history, the
counterculture of the 1960s,
secret societies, data concerning author
H. P. Lovecraft and author and occultist
Aleister Crowley, and American
paranoia about
conspiracies and
conspiracy theories. The book was intended to poke fun at the conspiratorial frame of mind. Wilson and Shea derived much of the odder material from letters sent to
Playboy magazine while they worked as the editors of its Forum. The books mixed true information with imaginative fiction to engage the reader in what Wilson called "
guerrilla ontology", which he apparently referred to as "
Operation Mindfuck" in
Illuminatus! The trilogy also outlined a set of
libertarian and anarchist
axioms known as
Celine's laws (named after Hagbard Celine, a character in
Illuminatus!), concepts Wilson revisited several times in other writings. Among the many subplots of
Illuminatus! one addresses
biological warfare and the overriding of the
United States Bill of Rights, another gives a detailed account of the
John F. Kennedy assassination (in which no fewer than five snipers, all working for different causes, prepare to shoot Kennedy), and the book's climax occurs at a rock concert where the audience collectively face the danger of becoming a mass human sacrifice.
Illuminatus! popularized
Discordianism and the use of the term "
fnord". It incorporates experimental prose styles influenced by writers such as
William S. Burroughs,
James Joyce, and
Ezra Pound. Although Shea and Wilson never co-operated on such a scale again, Wilson continued to expand upon the themes of the
Illuminatus! books throughout his writing career. Most of his later fiction contains cross-over characters from
The Sex Magicians (Wilson's first novel, written before the release of
Illuminatus!, which includes many of his same characters) and
The Illuminatus! Trilogy.
Illuminatus! won the
Prometheus Hall of Fame award for Best Classic Fiction, voted by the Libertarian Futurist Society for science fiction in 1986, has many international editions, and found adaptation for the stage when
Ken Campbell produced it as a ten-hour drama. It also appeared as two card-based games from
Steve Jackson Games, one a trading-card game (
Illuminati: New World Order). Eye N Apple Productions and
Rip Off Press produced a comic-book version of the trilogy.
''Schrödinger's Cat Trilogy, The Historical Illuminatus Chronicles, and Masks of the Illuminati'' Wilson wrote two more popular fiction series. The first, a trilogy later published as a single volume, was ''
Schrödinger's Cat. The second, The Historical Illuminatus Chronicles, appeared as three books. In between publishing the two trilogies Wilson released a stand-alone novel, Masks of the Illuminati'' (1981), which, due to the main character's ancestry, fits into the timeline of
The Historical Illuminatus Chronicles and, while published earlier, may qualify as the fourth volume in that series. ''Schrödinger's Cat
consists of three volumes: The Universe Next Door
, The Trick Top Hat
, and The Homing Pigeons''. Wilson set the three books in differing
alternative universes, in which the cast of characters remains almost the same aside from variations in names, careers and background stories. The books cover the fields of
quantum mechanics and the
varied philosophies and explanations that exist within the science. The single volume describes itself as a
magical textbook and a type of
initiation. The single-volume edition omits many entire pages and has many other omissions when compared with the original separate books.
The Historical Illuminatus Chronicles, composed of
The Earth Will Shake (1982), ''The Widow's Son
(1985), and Nature's God'' (1991), follows the timelines of several characters through different generations, time periods, and countries. The books cover a range of topics, including (but not limited to) the history, legacy, and rituals of the
Illuminati and related groups.
Masks of the Illuminati features historical characters in a fictionalized setting, and contains a blend of occult history. Intermixing
Albert Einstein,
James Joyce,
Aleister Crowley,
Sigmund Freud,
Carl Jung,
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, and others, the book focuses on
Pan as well as other occult icons, ideas, and practices. It also includes homages, parodies and pastiches from both the lives and works of Crowley and Joyce.
Plays and screenplays Wilson's play,
Wilhelm Reich in Hell, was published as a book in 1987 and first performed at the
Edmund Burke Theatre in
Dublin, in San Francisco, and in Los Angeles. It features many factual and fictional characters, including
Marilyn Monroe,
Uncle Sam, and
Wilhelm Reich himself. Wilson also wrote and published as books two
screenplays, not yet produced:
Reality Is What You Can Get Away With: an Illustrated Screenplay (1992) and
The Walls Came Tumbling Down (1997). Wilson's book
Cosmic Trigger I: The Final Secret of the Illuminati has been adapted as a theatrical stage play by Daisy Eris Campbell, daughter of
Ken Campbell the British theatre maverick who staged
Illuminatus! at the Royal National Theatre in 1977. Some of the costs were met through
crowdfunding. Wilson's book is itself dedicated to "Ken Campbell and the Science-Fiction Theatre Of Liverpool, England."
The Cosmic Trigger series and other books In his nonfiction and partly autobiographical
Cosmic Trigger I: The Final Secret of the Illuminati (1977) and its two sequels, as well as in many other works, Wilson examined
Freemasons, Discordianism,
Sufism, the Illuminati,
Futurology,
Zen Buddhism,
Dennis and
Terence McKenna,
Jack Parsons, the occult practices of
Aleister Crowley and
G.I. Gurdjieff,
Yoga, and many other
esoteric or
counterculture philosophies, personalities, and occurrences. Wilson advocated
Timothy Leary's
8-Circuit Model of Consciousness and neurosomatic/linguistic engineering, which he wrote about in many books including
Prometheus Rising (1983, revised 1997) and
Quantum Psychology (1990), which contain practical techniques intended to help the reader break free of one's
reality tunnels. With Leary, he helped promote the futurist ideas of
space migration,
intelligence increase, and
life extension, which they combined to form the word symbol
SMI²LE. Wilson's 1986 book,
The New Inquisition, argues that whatever reality consists of it actually would seem much weirder than we commonly imagine. It cites, among other sources,
Bell's theorem and
Alain Aspect's experimental proof of Bell's to suggest that mainstream science has a strong materialist bias, and that in fact modern physics may have already disproved
materialist metaphysics. Wilson also supported the work and
utopian theories of
Buckminster Fuller and examined the theories of
Charles Fort. He and
Loren Coleman became friends, as he did with media theorist
Marshall McLuhan and
Neuro Linguistic Programming co-founder
Richard Bandler, with whom he taught workshops. He also admired James Joyce, and wrote extensive commentaries on the author and on two of Joyce's novels,
Finnegans Wake and
Ulysses, in his 1988 book
Coincidance: A Head Test. Although Wilson often lampooned and criticized some
New Age beliefs, bookstores specializing in New Age material often sell his books. Wilson, a well-known author in
occult and
Neo-Pagan circles, used
Aleister Crowley as a main character in his 1981 novel
Masks of the Illuminati, also included some elements of
H. P. Lovecraft's work in his novels, and at times claimed to have perceived encounters with magical "entities" (when asked whether these entities seemed "real", he answered they seemed "real enough", although "not as real as the IRS" but "easier to get rid of", and later decided that his experiences may have emerged from "just my right brain hemisphere talking to my left"). He warned against beginners using occult practice, since to rush into such practices and the resulting "energies" they unleash could lead people to "go totally nuts". Wilson also criticized scientific types with overly rigid belief systems, equating them with
religious fundamentalists in their
fanaticism. In a 1988 interview, when asked about his newly published book
The New Inquisition: Irrational Rationalism and the Citadel of Science, Wilson commented: ==Thought==