Robert Anton Wilson’s The Cosmic Trigger with Gabriel Kennedy

Summary

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.

Key takeaways

• 1Wilson says that on July 23, 1973, he had a Holy Guardian Angel experience while on LSD, listening to a John C. Lilly tape and a recording of Aleister Crowley's Bornless Ritual.
• 2In 1974, Timothy Leary, then in prison at CMF Vacaville, invited Wilson to co-write 'The Periodic Table of Energy,' which was largely published later as 'The Game of Life'; Kennedy says Leary was the target of COINTELPRO-style character assassination at the time.
• 3After a 1976 dream voice told him 'Sirius is very important,' Wilson read Robert K. Temple's 'The Sirius Mystery' and Kenneth Grant's claim that Crowley's A∴A∴ (Silver Star) refers to Sirius; Kennedy says Harry Smith originally passed the Dogon story to Arthur Young, who suggested it to Temple.
• 4Jacques Vallée met Wilson at his October 1974 Crowley Mass party and offered the idea that UFOs come from Earth itself and act as a 'control system,' which shifted Wilson's thinking.
• 5Wilson reported spontaneous remote-viewing visions of his son Graham in April and June 1973; Kennedy notes that SRI held a remote-viewing experiment on June 2, 1973, the same date as one vision.
• 6The 23 Enigma is traced to William S. Burroughs's story of a ferry captain named Clark, with an earlier Jack Kirby comic as a possible source; Wilson's daughter Luna was murdered on October 2, 1976, and he had her brain cryogenically preserved.

Glossary terms

Source

Transcript excerpt

What makes Bob very interesting, obviously, is that, you know, he was doing all these psychedelics, but his mind was constantly working to see how this could be integrated into psychological models of, you know, self, just like Tim Leary, you know, and also, you know, philosophically, you know, and also biologically. What does this psychedelic substance mean for humanity at this time and for someone personally? You know, for him, like many, you know, who study this, like Stanislav Grof, like, you know, acid is an amplifier. Psychedelics is a, you know, an amplifier of what's going on in your mind. And it's also jet fuel that he found that he could use in his magical experiments. Because at this time, in the 70s, beginning in 1970, Wilson gets extremely interested in the work of Aleister Crowley. And wider than that, sort of these occult methods of consciousness exploration. Keep watching to learn more. The new Thinking Allowed magazine, issue 10, on UFOs and UAP, is now ready for free download. And you can also order beautiful printed copies. Go to newthinkingallowed.org. New Thinking Allowed is presented by the California Institute for Human Science, a fully accredited university offering distant learning graduate degrees that focus on mind, body, and spirit. The topics that we cover here. We are particularly excited to announce new degrees emphasizing parapsychology and the paranormal. Visit their website at cihs.edu. Book 4 in the new Thinking Allowed Dialogue Series is Charles T. Tartt, Seventy Years of Exploring Consciousness and Parapsychology. Now available on Amazon. The Cosmic Trigger, Volume 1, The Final Secret of the Illuminati. Conversations on the Leading Edge of Knowledge and Discovery with Psychologist Jeffrey Mishlove. Hello and welcome. I'm Jeffrey Mishlove. ...

Excerpt from New Thinking Allowed, Sep 28, 2026. Rights remain with the original creators. Hear the full episode at the source.