Cosmic trigger : final secret of the illuminati

Filled with failed prophecies, prescient wisdom and utter bull, this is RAW at his best. Captures the better zeitgeist of the post-hippie 70's, and the evolution of conspiracies new and old. Laughable and insightful. Read this book on your own journey through Chapel Perilous.

It's a fascinating time capsule into the 60s and 70s, with boundless optimism for the future, for the development of mankind, for immortality and psychic powers. It's also, of course, extremely dated, and wrong in most of its predictions. The biographical notes weave in and out of the narrative but it never really becomes a RAW biography - and that's to its advantage.

Audio note: It's engagingly read but has a couple of audio mistakes with redone lines.

Difficult to give this one a rating. It is a wonderful historical piece and gives an interesting view of what life in the Berkeley was like for some folks. Also obviously influential on later fringe culture. (I'd be willing to wager that this along w/ Illuminatus had at least some impact on The Invisibles.

However, the writing does fail into the trap where Wilson seems to take a lot of his source material at face value, or attempts to convince the reader it's unlikely to be a hoax or that mundane explanations are less likely than radical ones.

There is interesting conflict internally as Wilson's "Skeptic" thoughts seem to be lurking in the unconscious even during some of the more outrageous claims.

If you have any interest in Berkeley in show more the 60s/70s, Leary or like Philip K. Dick's trippier writing like VALIS, this is worth a read. show less

"Cosmic Trigger" is a return to the science stifling Middle Ages of magic, alchemy and mysticism with New Ager, Wilson writing in the preface that he "does not believe anything" as he sets out on his exploration outside consensus reality.

Not believing anything is O.K. The problem is that his exploration ignores the very thing (scientific method) that gives him tools like computers, electric light etc. So the book isn't an investigation at all - it's more of an invitation to join in the mystic fun.

He even manages to combine the Bermuda Triangle, Atlantis, pyramids and UFOs all on one page:

Page 225; "As for the prediction that I would dive into the ruins of Atlantis: after I got back from England, an occultist named Alve Stuart contacted show more me and invited me to join an expedition to the Bermuda Triangle to investigate various legends, including the idea that part of Atlantis was down there, and reports from natives of the area that UFOs are often see rising from the waters...A month later Charles Berlitz claimed to have found a sunken pyramid in the Bermuda Triangle. He claimed it was twice the size of the pyramid of Cheops..."

Or some notes on the difficulty of research;

Page 89; "At this point in the internal voyage, the Shaman knows that he is far, far into the underground vaults of Chapel Perilous and that the way back to the robot-reality of the domesticated hive is not going to be easy."

Page 3; "..my interest in the Illuminati was to lead me through a cosmic Fun House featuring double and triple agents, UFOs,possible Presidential assassination plots, the enigmatic symbols on the dollar bill, messages from Sirius, pancakes from God-knows-where, the ambiguities of Aleister Crowley, some mysterious hawks that follow Uri Geller around, Futurists, Immortalists, plans to leave this planet and the latest paradoxes of quantum mechanics."

My own favourite is the 23 enigma. After all, what if there are aliens? (re. Fermi "Where is everybody? Where are the signs of other life?). show less

A great read. In spite of their mystic insights and cosmic aspirations, RAW and Leary were vulnerable human beings living in a dark age. Wilson provides a surprisingly graphic glimpse of life as the sixties became a memory and the backlash began; the onset of the troubling karmas which are still with us. But even more amazing is the revelation of the great heart and holy spirit by which we are empowered to rise above it all. The final secret is that love, truth, intelligence and the good humor of friendship ultimately outshine all difficult and oppressive conditions.

From the date of first printing to the present, I have received more mail about Cosmic Trigger than about anything else I ever wrote, and most of the mail has been unusually intelligent and open-minded. For some reason, many readers of this book think they can write me intimately and without fear, about subject officially Taboo in our society....The new edition presents an opportunity to answer the most frequent questions and to correct the most persistent misunderstandings. It should be obvious to all intelligent readers (but curiously is not obvious to many) that my viewpoint in this book of one of agnosticism. The word "agnostic" appears explicitly in the Prologue and the agnostic attitude is restated again and again in the text, but show more many people still think I "believe" some of the metaphors and models employed here. I therefore want to make it even clearer than ever before that I DO NOT BELIEVE ANYTHING .... Cosmic Trigger deals with a process of deliberately induced brain change through which I put myself in the years 1962-76. This process is called "initiation" or "vision quest" in many traditional societies and can loosely be considered some dangerous variety of self-psychotherapy in modern terminology. I do not recommend it for everybody, and I think I obtained more good results than bad ones chiefly because I had been through two varieties of ordinary psychotherapy before I started my own adventures and because I had a good background in scientific philosophy and was not inclined to "believe" any astounding Revelations too literally. Briefly, the main thing I learned in my experiments is that "reality" is always plural and mutable. show less

I try to open my mind up as much as possible when reading R.A.W.'s books, because it is more fun that way. Skipping the self-medication and sex magick bit, the basic thesis I think anyone can draw from this is that it is good to keep an open mind and believe "six impossible things before breakfast," as long as no one else is getting hurt by it. This book suffers a little looking back, because many of the predictions regarding scientific cures for aging and death, or the state of manned space travel, are sadly not in evidence in today's world (or at least they have not been shared with us). Wilson's optimism and enthusiasm for ideas of progress that guaranteed the singularity occurring by 2012 seem naive at this point, but I am sure show more Wilson would remain optimistic were he with us today, and just push the dates back further. show less