Illuminatus! Part I

The Eye in the Pyramid

By: Robert Shea, Robert Anton Wilson

Narrated by: Ken Campbell, Chris Fairbank

Length: 13 hrs and 15 mins

Publisher's summary

"It was the year when they finally immanentized the Eschaton".

So begins this original trilogy of conspiracies, Illuminatus!. For the first time in audiobook form, the unabridged epic is presented in all its grandeur, spookiness, hilarity, and brilliance.

The Illuminati, an inside joke? The lunatic fringe? Or a vast conspiracy hidden for centuries, unleashing it's power on a naive, defenseless world? It was the lousy luck of Saul Goodman, a tough, streetwise New York detective, to smell the trail in a bombed-out office - the heavy case he'd always dreaded. In a breakneck race against an awesome deadline, Goodman plunges down the trail of the ultimate conspiracy as the days fall away toward Apocalypse.

Filled with sex, violence, and rock-and-roll, in and out of time and space, Illuminatus! is only partly a work of the imagination. The trilogy tackles all the cover-ups of our time, from who really shot the Kennedys to why there's a pyramid on the one-dollar bill, and suggests a mind-blowing truth.

Part I: The Eye in the Pyramid is performed by the incomparable Ken Campbell and Chris Fairbank. In 1976, Ken Campbell adapted Illuminatus! for the stage, creating a 10-hour epic that went on to open the Royal National Theatre in London under the patronage of Queen Elizabeth II.

©1975 Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson (P)2006 Deepleaf Productions Inc.

Critic reviews

"If baseball can have a designated hitter, why can't science fiction have a designated underground classic? Well, apparently it can, and Illuminatus! is its name." (Booklist)
"The ultimate conspiracy book...the biggest sci-cult novel to come along since Dune." ( Village Voice) "If you want to read a riddle wrapped in an enigma within a conundrum that turns out to be the best secret in the world, get the Illuminatus! trilogy." ( New Age Journal)

Great book and great story

Love all things occult and Illuminati and this book was truly one of a kind and great start to finish!

love the content, hate the performance.

I'm a huge fan of brilliant beautiful weirdos like Robert Anton Wilson. I've listened to most of his lectures and all of cosmic trigger. his brant of gonzo linguistic philosophy and esoteric playful sarcasm never fails to get me thinking or break whatever doldrums loop I find myself in. I want odd. I want out there. I want big bowls of subversive word soup so hot with disrespect for the establishment that they don't even bother to be angery.

and that's all here. However...the first narrator...sounds like a dickensian street goblin. his voice doesn't convey mysterious byzantine corridors of half-truths, twisted perceptions, odd facts, and guerrilla ontology displayed in Willson work. it conveys the image of a Muppet spider in a busted-out top hat barking out orders to the orphans around him to "pick more pockets! you worfless grubs!"

the performance pulls one right out of the experience.

Love the book love the story love the history

The narrator almost lost it for me until I really started listening to the book and it his voice really fit in
would have been five stars across the board

iluminating !

chaoticaly charming into a misunderstanfing that iluminates the way to doubt everything that the powers at hand have cuningly induced us into beliving. all of that while laughting as much as gods laugh of the plans of man

Werid and wild.

Great Narrators on this book. I forgotten how crazy this series is. Highly recommend this book.

This book is a thumbprint of the sixties

This book is very clearly intended as a coded history of the anarchist/mystic/hippie/weirdo rebellion of the 1960'sish era. The authors were tuned in to the main current of the underground at the time, a silently loud rebellion against the soft power that has ruled the industrialized west since the 1700's. This rebellion was almost completely quashed in the 1980's, but the authors of this book seem to have understood the root problems that would end it, and they've sealed in this book and the others the frantic, free lovin', wild and wooly and weird spirit of the 60's. They've told us in allegory and myth what they tried to kill the beast, and what they discovered along the way, and like all insufferable baby boomers they've shoveled it onto my generation to solve. Reading this from 2020 in my twenties, I comprehend with grim hindsight the war that is described here. The sardonic and wacky humor is not funny to me, it only hammers the dark reality home. I recommend everyone read these books.

best ever. love this book.

very amazing. love the words, the reader, etc. actually listened to it twice. so good it seemed worth an additional purchase. truly amazing.

What a wild ride...

if you're a fan of wild conspiracy theories, crazy sci-fi, and the Paranormal blended with the metaphysical blended with the philosophical blended with the spiritual, then this is probably the book for you. Even if those things aren't your bag, man, the narration was phenomenal and hilarious, really selling the unique writing style of this book.

the greatest story ever told

my all-time favorite book there is nothing else like it you must listen to it now

Over the Top and Proud of It

I read the trilogy in the 1970's when it first came out. There appears to be a limited audience for the book, as it is disjointed, difficult to follow, and all around over the top. But that is clearly the intent of the authors. This is not intended to be an intellectual discourse on conspiracies, religion, or whatever. But at another level, it succeeds at playing with conspiracies and religion and all in a way that, dare I say, enlightens the reader/listener.

Reading the book was difficult, and I did not have a linear recollection or understanding of the book when reading it or after it was finished. But it also stuck in my mind as one of the more original and intense books I have experienced (not read, experienced).

I just finished listening to this first book of the trilogy, and while I found the narrator's piratical, gruff and mumbling style at first off-putting, I quickly became convinced it perfectly matched the book -- the narrator's out-of-control stagger through a staggeringly out- of-control story has contributed to an understanding of the book which I did not get from wading through the written word 35 years ago. The other performer who does the voices equally contributes to a knowing experience of the book. For instance, one of the characters, a 23 year old hippie, is played as a naive juvenile. At first off-putting, it soon becomes a meta-comment on the character -- he is chosen for enlightenment because he is gullible, "but in the right way."

These books were never intended to be comprehended in a linear fashion, or in detail. More of an understanding of the whole. I plan to obtain the second book and listen after I decompress a bit, and hope the third one is also produced. Some of the messages echo strongly today -- the bad guys planned assassinations and terrorist acts which would leave Americans begging to surrender their freedom for security.