Illuminatus! introduced readers to the enigmatic character Hagbard Celine and Wilson's theory that all points of view are umwelts or "reality tunnels," which exclude other truths or information. Amongst the multi-layered characters and shifting plots, RAW alluded to much of the modern Western Magickal Tradition, such as sex magick, links between secret societies and intelligence services (the three main figures who influenced the early Twentieth Century occult revival - Theosophist Helena Blatavsky, Russian mystic George Gurdjieff and Aleister Crowley all worked for the latter), ritual drug use, secret Nazi research under the Ahnernerbe organisation into occult technology, and parodies of the 1960s hippie experience.

Whilst Illuminatus! was campy, its hidden references to philosophies and descriptions of occult knowledge catapulted Wilson and Shea into the ranks of writers like Daniel Defoe, Victor Hugo, Jules Verne, and Mary Shelley - authors who had used allegories to communicate a second, hidden meaning in their literature - such as the perennial search for the elusive Philosopher's Stone: "pure consciousness" and the Fountain of Youth.

Twenty years later controversy regarding Illuminatus! rages on. Apart from discussing esoteric doctrines, the book conveyed a model of conspiracies and paranoia that rival Eric Hoffer's examination of fanaticism in The True Believer. Wilson and Shea used the metaphor of the "Order of Illuminati or the Enlightened", an organisation founded in Bavaria, 1776, by Adam Weishapt, then Professor of Natural and Canon Law at the University of Ingoldstadt. The organisation was similar to Freemasonry, and after gaining over 2000 members and lodges across Europe, was suppressed in 1784 by the Bavarian Government. This group of republican free-thinkers began to decline and Weishapt fled Bavaria in 1785, later dying at Gotha in 1811.

Although most likely a curious historical footnote, the Illuminati were the first modern society to use for political subversion the machinery of the secret organization. RAW was able to link this back to the Knights Templar and Hassan i Sabbah's shadowy Assassins, who had a stranglehold on religious power from the ninth Century onwards. His dying words reportedly were "Nothing Is Real, Everything Is Permitted." Conspiracy theorists have linked the Illuminati to the rise of Hitler, the Trilateral Commission, the Club of Rome, International Zionism, Communism, the assassinations of JFK, Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King and the Military-Industrial Complex; all vying for world domination. RAW found it intriguing that such theorists were spread across the entire political spectrum, suggesting that conspiracies are metaphors for this troubled age. Some modern conspiracy theorists even contend that the publication of Illuminatus! sent shockwaves through the N.W.O., the Vatican, Masons and the CIA by revealing the "great hidden secret."

RAW's response was: "Well, I'm flattered that some people think Illuminatus! could have shaken up the New World Order, but I find it hard to believe. The conspiratorial details in that book came from (1) long published paranoid literature (2) the satirical imaginations of Shea and myself. Reprinting the old paranoid rants couldn't have disturbed the Masters of Earth, could it? The only alternative then is that either Shea or I or both of us possess unconscious ESP and the things we think we invent actually come to us by telepathy. A charming idea! I must think about it some more . . .

"Actually, a few things that I thought I invented did turn out to be true, oddly enough. The one I still remember is Beethoven's link to the original, real, historical Illuminati. I invented that as a parody of right-wing books on the Beatles serving Moscow - but hot damn years later I found, in a bio of Ludwig, that he had several associates in the Illuminati and the Illuminati commissioned his first major work, The Emperor Joseph Cantata. So maybe I do have unconscious ESP. . . .in odd moments. Most of what I think I invented still seems like fiction to me and to all sane people I know."

A startling revelation for RAW fans are his future projections for the fictional Illuminat series as a whole. "I eventually plan to continue The Historical Illuminati Chronicles. Right now I'm more concerned with the future again. I'm working on Bride of Illuminatus which takes place in 2026, a more congenial place for my mind to roam than the Eighteenth Century. If I live long enough, I hope all my novels will form one continuous saga from 1750, when Bach died and Sigismundo Celine was born, up through the democratic and industrial revolutions, on to Darwin and Nineteenth Century rationalism, then linking in the outbreak of Relativity (Einstein, Joyce, Crowley) in Masks of the Illuminati, jumping forward to the psycehdelic age in Illuminatus and quantum/computer revolutions in Schroedinger's Cat and then finishing up with my hopes for the future in Bride."

He hopes that readers will gain a new perspective by being able to read the series sequentially. "After the first Illuminatus! trilogy with Shea, I noticed that some of the negative responses indicated an ignorance, not just of modern science, but of the Enlightenment philosophy of the 18th Century. Many people who can read are still living, mentally, in the dark ages. So thats when I began to think of a series of interconnected novels that would take such readers through all the revolutions of the past two centuries and prepare them for the 21st Century. The reason Sigismundo Celine, in The Earth Will Shake, is born in Naples is because the Inquisition still existed there in 1750. Taking him out of that fanatic Catholic world into the world of French rationalism begins the process of taking the readers from the Age of Aquinas to the Age of Space."