Robert Anton Wilson’s The Cosmic Trigger with Gabriel Kennedy
New Thinking AllowedSep 28, 2026
Jeffrey Mishlove and biographer Gabriel Kennedy revisit Robert Anton Wilson's 1977 classic Cosmic Trigger, Volume 1: The Final Secret of the Illuminati, and the psychedelic, occult and quantum-physics scene of mid-1970s Berkeley that produced it. They trace how Wilson's LSD-fueled Crowley rituals led him to believe he was receiving telepathic messages from beings near the star Sirius, tied to synchronicities around the number 23, until a meeting with Jacques Vallée changed his interpretation. The conversation also covers Wilson's collaboration with the imprisoned Timothy Leary, his model agnosticism, and the family tragedies that shaped the book.
