This book was my introduction to so many rabbit holes, back when I first read it almost 20 years ago. I got it from the LA public library in my 20s, read it and Promethus Rising on the weekends when I should have been working on my PhD.

So many rabbit holes! The Illuminati. Space colonization. Ancient aliens. JFK conspiracies. LSD/ Peyote / Mushrooms. Hero worship of Leary / Castenada/ Crowley. Synchronicity. UFOlogy. Alien abduction. Heart chakras. Sufis. Remote Viewing. Precognition. Immortality.

The new foreword, beautifully written, claims that the book continues to pass the test of time. I'd say that was true 20 years ago, and not the case now.

The reason I returned to this book NOW was that it was also my first introduction to the idea of reality tunnels constructed by news outlets; gurreilla ontology; deep agnosticism; and how to cope with living in America amid the downfall of an unbelievably corrupt presidency. This book's critique of the American polity amid Watergate - and RAW's refusal to hold any party line on ANYTHING related to politics - influenced my idea of reality very deeply as I built my foundations in both science and weird science. So I wondered if there would be any value in today's 20 year olds reading this as their own entre' into gurreilla ontology and magick.

Actually, not so much.

I'm really glad I re-read this before recommending it to the 20 year olds in my life now. It doesn't serve that purpose, but circling back to it really does help me appreciate my own journey the past couple decades. It's very well written and Operation Mind Fuck is terribly funny. Moreover it's a really interesting inside view on some famous people of a certain era - and on the optimism they never knew they had back then in a time they all considered themselves to be cynics.

That said, I think this one is going to get more cringey every year for a while. The test of time will not be kind.

The numerology stuff goes from funny to stupid much faster this time around. I just read McKenna's True Hallucinations, which Wilson uses as an actually credible source text - even though McKenna himself admits that it's likely what he documents at La Chorrera is very likely a psychotic break. Of course psychosis is an adventure in confirmation bias, in pattern recognition gone awry. Wilson is hilarious and self-aware around much of his theories, and adds an extra-agnostic (and extremely funny) introduction to my copy of this text to underline the fallability of his numerological claims, but dude. It's actually the hero worship thing that leads to the book's hardest cringe. He takes seriously old boys who don't even take themselves seriously.

A slim majority of the text here comes down to that - unchecked praise of Leary and friends. No wonder these guys thought their theories were so special. The egomania and hero worship in esoteric subcultures from the OTO through high weirdness are ASTONISHING... of a kind I don't see elsewhere in these eras. Ironic for a bunch of men who thought they were on the leading edge of enlightenment.

This would be fine now if it were just this adolescent D&D vibe that Crowley worship gives off. But the book is actually insanely racist and misogynist. I guess this is what the new Foreword is hedging agaist. For his time, Wilson has some really lovely critiques of the racism, sexism and other bigotry of the day - his critical mind is in good working order.

But let's be real - he was a Playboy writer, and tis book features throw-away lines he clearly wrote with that readership in mind. I won't quote them because they're so bad. The narrative through-line and climax of the book isn't all the egomaniac magick men he's obsessed with: it's his own family life, and his effort to make some sense of the horrible murder of his wonderful daughter. And yet, knowing this time around that this is what the book is really about, I was astonished at how little we ever hear about his family life here. There are just a couple of tiny scenes in which the characters are introduced. Arlen his wife shows up as a companion on some outings, but not as a character except in the most important scene of the book, when they learn of their daughter's murder and indeed we see that Arlen is a bonafide hero in action and in her husband's eyes. I so wish that the publisher, the readership and the author in these times would have seen fit to write a book about these real people. It's not Wilson's misogyny and egomania on display here, so much as his uncritical acceptance of the biases of his context - something he was SO brilliantly able to resist when it comes to meta-theory, epistemology and electoral politics.

About the racism. Wilson is really sensitive to bigotry, in ways I think are worth reading in context. The racism is way more subtle - it's in what's taken for granted in the whole long section on Sirius and Africa. Like, his imagination isn't big enough to consider that African people advanced enough to study the stars - so the RATIONAL explanation MUST be.... ALIENS. It's incredibly painful to see where his critical and broad-thinking mind DOES NOT go when it comes to the Sirius thesis. At this point we're all pretty clear on the racism of the Ancient Aliens thesis, but because it's such a big part of this book - THIS is the main reason I'd never recommend it to kids just starting out in the world of esoterica. Maybe instead I'd recommend Starships, Gordon White's take on the aliens thesis, which clarifies its colonial mindset while also introducing all kinds of weirdness and magick to young readers.

One of the most striking impressions this book leaves is its optimism. Towards the end, there is a long section on futurism, and even after the ultimate tragedy of the story, it's Wilson's openness to scientific + supernormal advances in human consciousness that gets us through.

I don't think this futurism dates the text in a bad way. It is interesting to remember how optimistic humans were in the 60s and 70s about where the species was going. That gives a different feeling to my own interpretation of what the 80s and 90s were. Not a big disappointment from my perspective as a child, but so much less than our forbearers expected. Most of the predictions were already wrong when I read this book in the early 2000s; now they're just a great way to illuminate how far we have declined. And oh, if only Watergate were the worst crimes a president could commit. If only CBS Evening News were the propaganda that were brainwashing our masses.

All in all, a REALLY timely and interesting re-read for those who have been around the magickal world a long time and probably started in this genre. But definitely not the doorway-to-the-weird that it once was for so many.

R.I.P. Luna, R.I.P. RAW

Wilson has written a book that you just can't take in all at once.
One of the deeper "surface" lessons, the one Wilson shouts the loudest and at the same time refuses to do any more than tease you with, is that you have to decide for yourself what to believe -- but that deciding to believe anything limits what you will be able to observe in the world around you. This is heavy stuff, and ground-breaking to the average reader.
This is a work that has earned a place on my bookshelf ... although I might have to wait a while to re-read it. "Cosmic Trigger" is a great foil to dogma of all stripes, but going through it too many times in succession makes it a piece of dogma itself, and the message gets lost.

Interesting and very entertaining, a real different angle on the 60s / hippie movement / etc. Autobiographical in nature, stories and such with heavy dose of psychedelic introspection from an intelligent man. Respect to RAW for his open-mindedness and the he spent mapping the Chapel Perilous for the readers...

Take everything with a grain of salt (he'd agree) but, on a simpler level, the book carries a strong theme of accepting your subjective experience. Its a deep dive into "the more I understand, the less I know." Maybe a slippery slope but that's how the trigger gets you.

Wilson is a genius, and I could listen to his lectures for hours. I wouldn't be the person I am today if I hadn't stumbled upon his brand of counter-cultural "guerrilla ontology". His literary voice is just one I can't get enough of in any flavor, fictional, non-fictional, biographical... I was an unfortunate casualty of the cancer known as suburban American Protestantism-Lite, and I was in dire need of Wilson's crass, hyper-disruptive exploration of religion, psychology, mythology, and social hegemony. He not only lays down some breathtaking riffs in his own right, but he led me to read from and read about many other amazing authors, intellectual figures, and counter-cultural figures. His playful candor and deep diving into the shadowy corners of the human experience knocked down so many of my idols, shook my foundations, dispelled my boogeymen, and had me questioning every assumption or value I ever had about anything, bringing me face-to-face with the abyss. Right after devouring some Wilson, and thanks to his references, I read Eight Lectures on Yoga, a text that set me on a path I am still grateful for and passionate about a decade later. Cosmic Trigger belongs with Prometheus Rising and The Illuminatus! Trilogy to display the full spectrum of humor and seriousness, magic and realism, history and fiction, and where the lines blur between all these things. Each of these titles helps the enjoyment of the other, and taken together they give an interesting snapshot of counter-culture in Wilson's time. I will probably re-read all of these titles in the near future and pick up some more. If you enjoy Jung, Borges, McLuhan, McKenna, comparative religion, philosophy, and weird psychology, you will probably love Wilson.

Original. Hilarious. Stretches minds. To be read with a healthy dose of skepticism.

Four stars because some parts were a bit tedious to get through; lots of speculation on the nature of reality and what the future holds (many of which didn’t pan out). It however, paints an excellent picture of the vibrant 1960-70’s psychedelics era. Also interesting to note that some of the hot themes at the time are still popular today, they’re just being tackled differently (eg longevity).

Back when I was in deep study of the freemasons I was contacted by a mysterious individual who said that he had many secrets to tell, but I could not talk to him again until I read this book. I tried to order it off line, I never received it. I tried retrieving it from the library, it was mysterious missing. Every avenue I took, it was unavailable. Year when by and my friend and business partner at the time Jarmo gave me a present. Said it was the Techo-virus, said not to open it for a year, not until my birthday august 7th, 2008. So i waited and it was during this time that I was transitioning to Chicago. On the day of my birthday I woke up at 4 in the morning and drove 8 hours from Kentucky to Michigan, to finished cleaning my apartment. Jarmo was there. We took the present he gave me, the techno virus and soaked it kerosene for 8 hours. Then, we lit it on fire in the parking lot in a plastic bin full or kerosene. We waited for it to burn it self out. When the fire had finally died out, I scooped the ashes off the pavement, and what did I find, well, this book, the book we've been searching for. And somehow, the book remained unburned. It smelled of sulfur as if from hell itself. It may very well have been. I read it alone in my economy apartment in Chicago. It must have made an impression, I sited in a book I was writing, I Hate Chicago. After I finished it I emailed the mysterious figure who years earlier told me to read the book...his email had been disconnected.

The book still smells of hell.

I liked this a great deal better than The Illuminatus! Trilogy and Schrödinger's Cat Trilogy, but not as much as Quantum Psychology: How Brain Software Programs You & Your World. Both Leary and R.A.W come across as really good people (although Leary's lust sometimes seems questionable) in this book. I might buy this book as it is an easier read than Quantum Psychology: How Brain Software Programs You & Your World and perhaps contains more hidden knowledge. I also might just buy Quantum Psychology: How Brain Software Programs You & Your World

insufferable lead-paint-addled boomer "guru" solipsism. turns out any banal coincidence can be "synchronicity" if you take enough acid...
two stars because the writing is often quite funny with endearing puns and exotic coinages throughout. i also appreciate that the author at least doesn't pretend to be scientific and objective too much, unlike the absolute nonsense presented as hard scientific fact that was 'Dragons of Eden' by Carl Sagan.

Caution: side effects may include premature illumination. For best results, ingest in your early 20s.

5 stars of audacious nonsense, top-notch hokum, first-rate bullshit, and a world-class mindfuck.

Robert Anton Wilson's positivity shines through as always. A joy to read. Fascinating subject matter dealing with his occult experiments to ever expand his reality tunnel and raise his consciousness. Most of the book has to do with his growing awareness of a connection to the Dog Star, Sirius, and the coincidences that abound in his life around it. RAW always manages to attract interesting and intriguing people into his life (Tim Leary is a prominent figure in the book, and although he doesn't appear in person, so is Aleister Crowley) mostly through his own wide reading and scientific querying. And so we encounter a number of scientists and other figures working on such projects as SMI2LE - Tim Leary's term for Space Migration, Intelligence Increase, and Life Extension - and unexplained phenomena. These are all faves of Wilson's and he's covered them in other books, along with Leary's 8 circuit model of higher consciousness (see Wilson's 'Prometheus Rising') and this is why it felt to me that he goes on a bit long about this stuff here. Though if you haven't encountered these ideas before, they're all very interesting. Most striking was RAW writing about his youngest daughter Luna, a loving peaceful child with Right-On ideas, a beacon of Light, who was beaten to death at age 16 during a robbery of the store she worked at after school. Wilson's portrayal of her (and how he and his wife dealt with such an awful tragedy) is very touching. RAW's life was never easy, and he pursued much that wouldn't make it so, but he did it all to bring positivity and love to a world much in need of it. And thus reading this, as with his other work, is very inspiring. And a lot of fun.

First of all, if you listen and reads books at the same time, as I often do, I cannot recommend the audiobook enough. The reader, Oliver Senton, has a thick blue collar accent (“univoisity!”) that perfectly matches the endearing, approachable nature of the text, which is stuffed with ideas that are complex, zany and weird.

This book is an indispensable artifact of psychedelic thought from one of its sharpest observers and architects. RAW’s approach to the blunderbuss blast of concepts from that time is as brilliant as it is unique. Chapel Perilous is still an incredibly useful paradigm for researching the unorthodox.

It’s also a memoir of a remarkable individual (and family) who went from tending a small farm to working for Hugh Hefner to living on welfare. This is my second reading of this book, and the tragedy at the end hits just as hard as it did when I read Cosmic Trigger over twenty years ago, something that makes the book more than a mere time capsule. Signal versus noise indeed.

With a title like Final Secrets of the Illuminati, I was expecting a fictional story akin to Illuminatus!: while I wasn't disappointed, the book is instead a chronology of Robert Anton Wilson's spiritual and philosophical journey over the course of his life.

Reading Wilson is almost like taking a drug: if you let it, his writing puts you almost in another consciousness. This is neither an inherently good or bad thing, but I have had thoughts and ideas while reading his work that I never would have otherwise. I'm never really sure if he believes what he's saying or is only saying it to mess with peoples' minds, but in the end that doesn't matter. In Cosmic Trigger he's not trying to get you to follow his life -- as big a fan of his as I am, I don't plan on taking hallucinogenic substances -- but is instead trying to pass along what he's gotten out of his life. He admits that he doesn't always agree with his prior assertions (like the messages he was receiving from Sirius), and as such neither should you. If Wilson has taught me anything, it's that Truth -- hard, finite and irrefutable -- is hard to come by.

Some of his predictions for the future, with Timothy Leary's SMIILE program especially, look dated: we're living his future, and it doesn't look like either of them had hoped. Don't read this book expecting to agree with everything, or most, or possibly anything Wilson says. I don't think he would have wanted everyone to agree with him; thinking about what he wrote, and forming your own assumptions, seems a more likely goal.