Masks of the Illuminati

by Robert Anton Wilson

One fateful evening in a suitably dark, beer-soaked Swiss rathskeller, a wild and obscure Irishman named James Joyce would become the drinking partner of an unknown physics professor called Albert Einstein. And on that momentous night, Sir John Babcock, a terror-stricken young Englishman, would rush through the tavern door bringing a mystery that the two most brilliant minds of the century could solve...or perhaps bringing only a figment of his imagination born of the paranoia of our times.

Genres: Fiction, Science Fiction, Fantasy, Philosophy, Conspiracy Theories, Historical Fiction, Mystery

368 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1981

About the author

Robert Anton Wilson was an American author, futurist, psychologist, and self-described agnostic mystic. Recognized within Discordianism as an Episkopos, pope and saint, Wilson helped publicize Discordianism through his writings and interviews. In 1999 he described his work as an "attempt to break down conditioned associations, to look at the world in a new way, with many models recognized as models or maps, and no one model elevated to the truth". Wilson's goal was "to try to get people into a state of generalized agnosticism, not agnosticism about God alone but agnosticism about everything."
In addition to writing several science-fiction novels, Wilson also wrote non-fiction books on extrasensory perception, mental telepathy, metaphysics, paranormal experiences, conspiracy theory, sex, drugs, and what Wilson called "quantum psychology".
Following a career in journalism and as an editor, notably for Playboy, Wilson emerged as a major countercultural figure in the mid-1970s, comparable to one of his coauthors, Timothy Leary, as well as Terence McKenna.

Reviews

[Max Nemtsov]

Как бы не лучший детектив, что мне приходилось читать, гениальный развлекательный роман - превосходный, очень ловко сделанный, разнообразный и дразнящий. Он параллелен Пинчону и Умберто Эко, провозвестник Нила Стивенсона и Алана Мура.
Заканчивается все чудесной кроулианской мистерией, якобы под галлюциногенами в шампанском, но в ней дивно мешаются наука и мистика, квантовая теория и магия, относительность и эзотерика, подчеркивая еще раз, что они мало чем друг от дружки отличаются. Результатом ее в поэтическом мире РЭУ станут всеобщая теория поля, "Улисс" и "Финнеганы", и это нечеловечески прекрасная поэзия, конечно. РЭУ гуманист и романтик, каких немного в литературе.

Оказалось, лет 20 назад он выходил по-русски, но я не верю в ру-перевод, чесгря, потому что он предваряется таким вот замечанием "От издателя": "Роман «Маски иллюминатов», открывающий знаменитую уилсоновскую фантастическую эпопею, публикуется с незначительными сокращениями". Здесь содержится как минимум одна глупость: никакую "эпопею" он не "открывает", это отдельностоящий роман, - и замечание про сокращения очень сильно настораживает, потому что необязательных длиннот я в нем не обнаружил. Надо думать, неведомые мне "издательский дом Янус" и переводчик Максим Чеботарев считали себя умнее автора.

[Jacob]

A wonderful, brilliant novel. Erudite, fun, psychedelic, all-brow and all around awesome. Highly recommended for anyone into Detective Fiction, Metaphysical or Surreal storylines/narratives, conspiracies, Classic Literature, James Joyce, Albert Einstein, Aleister Crowley, History, etc. Put this on your TBR.

[Ira (SF Words of Wonder)]

Check out my full, spoiler light, video review HERE.

It’s hard to believe someone could write a novel like this, but RAW is not just anyone. John Babcock teams up with Albert Einstein and James Joyce to solve some mysterious suicides that could be linked to an occult book. They start to make some headway and then Aleister Crowley enters, and everything gets flipped upside down. This is filled with deep topics and lots of humor.

There are so many fictional and factual things mixed into this novel that it is hard to know what is true or made up, and I loved it. The Invisible College, The Golden Dawn, Cabala, Rosicrucianism, Rosy Cross, Freemasonry, The Necronomicon, ET extra-dimensional time-travelers, Arthur Machen’s ‘The Great God Pan’, Robert Chamber’s ‘The King in Yellow’, Robert Browning’s ‘Child Roland to the Dark Tower Came’, Carl Jung, MacGregor Mathers, Ezra Pound, William Yeats, Richard Burton and of course The Illuminati.

And one of the best quotes in the book: "This is, indeed, a great wall." -- Richard M. Nixon, at the Great Wall of China.

[Andrew Schwartz]

A clever metaphysical detective story masquerading as a Gothic horror, this book casts James Joyce and Albert Einstein as its super-sleuths, with the two trading off the roles of Sherlock Holmes and Watson as the plot demands it. The sinister Aleister Crowley is also integral to the plot, acting as their Moriarty-like foil.

Though set in pre-WWI Europe, this novel shares many themes and concepts with Wilson's other works (generally set in the mid-to-late twentieth century.) There is the familiar fascination with secret societies and magickal rites, conspiracies and manipulation, the benevolent hidden within the frightening, and scientific illumination masquerading as the supernatural. And, while occasionally dry and drawn out, most of it is also extremely funny.

[Frank Kool]

ME: * casually reading Masks of the Illuminati by Robert Anton Wilson *

RANDOM PERSON: "Reading a book, eh? What's it about?"

ME: * confused, thousand-yard-stare *

RANDOM PERSON: "I don't mean to bother, just curious..."

ME: "It's... it's essentially a counter-culture supernatural mystery buddy-movie disguised as a novel: Albert Einstein and James Joyce team up to solve a series of mysteries in 1914, involving the likes of Aleister Crowley, the Monster of Loch Ness, a whole host of esoteric/satanic authors and thinkers, a mindmelting initiation into a cult, an undergoing (or is it overgoing?) into the collective unconscious, and of course more conspiracy groups than you can shake a stick at. If you take the lengthy expositions on Tarot cards, Kabbala, and numerology, the overabundance of Latin and German quotes, the imitation (or is it a homage?) of Joyce's stream-of-consciousness writing style, and the half-assed application of physics to psychology with a grain of salt, it's actually one hell of a ride that is worth reading several times over."

RANDOM PERSON: "..."

ME: "Don't forget to look for the hunchback behind every soldier!"

RANDOM PERSON: *Slowly steps backwards - leaves the scene*

[Laura]

This book scared me so much when I first read it that I've more or less blocked it out of my mind.

[Chris]

"Maybe we're just drunk, Joyce said[.]"

4/5 would fnord again.

[Lloyd Grady]

One of the best mystery novels. The connections to the occult and counter-culture are plentiful. I've taken notes while reading and researched the many real-world references.

[Maria Thomarey]

0,5

[Valissa]

"Who profits? Who else but the Devil?" he answered rhetorically, giving vent to the kind of unwholesome laugh that makes people move away uncomfortably.

"If you listen to seemingly dull people very closely, you'll see that they're all mad in different and interesting ways, and are merely struggling to hide it."

[Shane]

The mystery isn't very mysterious, and the ersatz Joyce passages are tedious, though there is some amusement in the book. Go read Wilson's Illuminatus! trilogy instead, or almost anything else he's written. I love old Bob, but this is a weaker work. (Second read, ~ 17 years after the first)

[Joel Newton]

Very entertaining, though the final scene is a bit over-dramatic.
Clever - Foucault's Pendulum meets Ulysses, except that Foucault's Pendulum hadn't been written yet.... Then, historical psychological conspiracy.

[Jerico]

A good historical fiction reworking of RAW's main thematic interests. Not as good as Illuminatus or the Cat trilogies but thought provoking and well written.

[Claudio]

Herrlich absurd.

[David Shapiro]

I love this book and return to it often.

[Ron]

I read this book when I was in high school and there are passages that still keep me up late at night just thinking about them, even though the last time I read it was maybe about eight years ago. Two years ago, when the NY Times Book Review was trotting out the usual suspects for its list of the greatest novels of the late twentieth century, I said this should have been on it, and I stand by that. Easily the best, most tightly constructed novel Wilson ever wrote.

Here's an extremely short recap: A man walks in on James Joyce and Albert Einstein and, over the course of the story, we learn of the terrors he has suffered at the hands of Aleister Crowley, who even now is closing in on him.

[Chris Brown]

Very fun read. A tad indulgent at times but, for the most part, I recommend it. You will especially like it if you are interested in secret societies, nature of reality,magic, Aleister Crowley, OTO, Golden Dawn, cabbala, poetry, relativity. It works OK as just a mystery.

[Geoff Gander]

Not as overtly mind-blowing as the Illuminatus! Trilogy, but a nevertheless fun read that manages to explore early 20th century Hermeticism, psychology, and related topics.

[Dave Peticolas]

Albert Einstein and James Joyce team up to investigate conspiracies. Yes.

[Brad Guy]

Dang, I was all ready to give this book four and a half stars. The first 90% was entertaining and witty. James Joyce, Albert Einstein, and Aleister Crowley walk into a bar...

The story was set up as a mystery, although it wasn't all that hard to solve. A young man, Sir John Babcock, is interested in the occult. Soon he gains the notice of Aleister Crowley, who spends the next 300 pages running him thru the wringer. Maybe I should put up a spoiler warning, but it's almost immediately apparent that's what's going on. All of Sir John's spiritual and moral beliefs are put to the test, leaving him a hollowed out, nervous wreck. He staggers into a tavern where he encounters a pair of kindly strangers- Joyce and Einstein. These two apply their notable powers of observation and set poor Sir John straight. Almost.

Not only do Einstein and Joyce figure out that Crowley is behind all of Babcock's troubles, they surmise that Crowley himself will make one more appearance soon. And right on cue, there is a knock at the door. Crowley enters, bearing a bottle of Champaign laced with LSD. (Never mind that LSD hadn't been invented yet, maybe it was peyote). The four of them drink up and begin hallucinating. For thirty pages. The end. It felt as though Wilson said to himself, "Well, I'm almost done here. Guess I better take some acid". At least it wasn't the whole book this time.

I do like how Wilson used Aleister Crowley as Chekhov's Gun- You see Crowley lurking in the shadows in the first act, you know he's going to go off in the third. In this case, the gun on the mantle is a double barrel shotgun: Early in the story James Joyce remarks that "No man may remain a solipsist while scraping dog shit off his boot". Yet by the end of the third act, there we all are, scraping away at the curb.

[Sarah]

There's really only one vein of Wilsonerei, and you either like it or you don't. I do. RAW was one of my major influences.

As a member of the species, Masks of the Illuminati is less deep and heartwrenching than the Illuminatus! trilogy, but more sound and interesting than Prometheus Rising.

This one involves Jung, Einstein, and Joyce solving an occult mystery and helping a Young Man Who Got In Over His Head. Aleister Crowley makes an appearance.

Wilson's good at fake-Joyce. I enjoy it. He's one of the few people I know who reads Joyce the way I do -- not in hushed voice and on bended knee, but lightly and laughing.

I never found the Golden Dawn/Masonic junk appealing, but if it is crack to you (as it is to many) you'll find plenty of material.

These books need illustrating badly, by some collage-happy guy like Coulthart who knows from Beardsley and Hapshash.

[Mercurius]

Abhorrently written.

Incoherent, jumbled ideas, a laughably lame plot twist that appears to have been made up on the spot. The list of things wrong with this goes on and on.

In almost all his works there is a virginal initiate who thinks of nothing but sex, and it is just tedious at this point.

All of these would be forgivable if not for the fact often paragraphs are disconnected, which again would be forgivable if not for having no grammar and looking like this was the point in the evening where he got really drunk whilst writing.

All in all I now have no idea how his books were even published in the first place.

And does he really have any other ideas other than the one trumpeted one about duality? It would seem not. One trick pony Bob and the effort to point out the blasted Observer effect on Duality strikes again!

[mkfs]

"Have we really been sitting here laughing like fools for three or four hours?"
"Something like that."
"Is it over yet?"
"I don't think so - do you see what I see?"

Thus the curtain falls on this novel whose sequel is the writing of Ulysses. An excellent - and literary - variation on the "I received instructions from Future Me on how to build this time machine, which has become commonplace in his era thanks to my invention" narrative loop.

Another one that I first read around 1990, and that holds up surprisingly well after all these years.

[Tydar]

I don't even know. The occultist/conspiracy trend in literature from the later 20th century confuses me. On one level, this book could be valuable as a criticism of closed-mindedness or something else more elaborate than that that I don't really want to specify further at the moment. On the other hand, it could be ridiculous. At the very least, it was a fun read.

[Zulu Adams]

A brilliant brain exercise disguised as a novel.

The mish-mash of ideas and the imagining of iconic figures in odd situations is a supremely fun read, and I'll probably reread it again some day. Love how he uses the gothic and conspiracy elements as a smokescreen for a practical guide to relativity.

I haven't read any RAW in years and this was a perfect reintroduction.

[Paul]

Probably Wilson's most straightforward novel in terms of narrative flow, but it still holds up on re-reading. Full of background information on the occult movement, and biographical details of Aleister Crowley. The passages written in the style of Joyce are well-done, and the final section is particularly memorable.

[Nick Black]

Not nearly as good as The Illuminatus Trilogy or The Schrodinger's Cat Trilogy, but still good wholesome fun for the whole family.

[Old-Barbarossa]

The only book that pits Albert Einstein and James Joyce against the forces of darkness and conspiracy…or does it?
A puzzle of a book.

[Ali]

It's been a long time since Iread this, but it's a book I've been interested in re-reading.

[A.]

Nice weird book by Mr. Wilson. In the same vein as the Illuminatus Trilogy, not as good, much weirder. Not a bad read atall, which is by the way my favorite Pacific Island.