Coincidance - Principia Discordia

COINCIDANCE 199
You Too, Can Be A Pope
More serious, or at least more desperate, is the Discordian Society and/or
Paratheo-Anametamystikhood of Eris Esoteric, an anarchistic sect divided
deliberately into two opposed groups, each claiming to be (I quote) "the first
True Religion." Like the witches, the Discordians worship a female divinity,
but say She is crazy. Her name, in fact, is Eris, and the ancient Greeks knew
her as the Goddess of Chaos; Discordians claim she is also the Goddess of
Confusion, Discord and Bureaucracy. The Discordian orthodoxy, headed
by "Ho Chih Zen" (real name, Kerry Thornley), claims this was revealed by
a miraculous talking chimpanzee, who appeared in a bowling alley in Yorba
Linda, California in 1957. The POEE sect flatly rejects this, says it is
superstitious nonsense intended to attract the gullible, and proves the
existence of Eris by Five Proofs, which are all logical monstrosities and
reduce actually to One Proof—namely, "If Eris doesn't exist, who put all the
Chaos in this universe, you damned atheist?"
The High priest of the Head temple (his orthography) of POEE is
"Malaclypse the Younger, Omnibenevolent Polyfather of Virginity in Gold"
(real name: Gregory Hill), who was, of course, ordained as a minister by the
ever-helpful Rev. Hensley. It has its own Bible, by Malaclypse, called Prmcipia
Discmiia, or How J Found Goddess and What 1 Did to Her After I Found Her, and has
cabals—not churches or groves or covens or even nests—all over the US, in
England, in Australia, in Canada and even one in Hong Kong. Leaders of the
cabals, called Episkopi, all have odd names and titles, e.g., Camden Benares
(author of Zen Without Zen Masters) heads the Los Angeles cabal of Eris Erotic,
Onrak the Backwards heads the Colorado Encrustation, and the Berkeley
cabal is run by Lady L, Fucking Anarchist Bitch—a title, she explain, given to
her by Eldridge Cleaver during a political debate.
Discordians have set out to out-Hensley Hensley by making every man,
woman and child on the planet a Pope. They are doing this by massdistribution
of Pope cards and have not, of course, neglected to send one of
these to the Anti-Pope in France and the chap in the Vatican who still thinks
he's the only Pope. All employees of the Pentagon are, willy-nilly,
Discordian saints whether they want to be or not, since Malacypse has
canonized them and incorporated them into a holy order called "Knights Of
The Five-Sided Castle," under the patronage of St. Quixote. The Pentagon
itself is a religious shrine, said to embody the perfect balance of Chaos and
Bureaucracy. Everybody who opposes Discordianism as blasphemous or
absurd is an honorary saint too, of the House of the Rising Hodge, while
Discordians are saints of the House of the Rising Podge.
Discordianism shuns dogma but has one catma, the Syadastan Affirmation,
which reads, "All affirmations are true in some sense, false in some sense,