Principia Discordia, the sacred book for worshippers of Eris (goddess of chaos and entropy), which was featured prominently in Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea’s Illuminatus! Trilogy, and was influential in the formation of the Church of the SubGenius (of which I’m a reverend) has been reprinted by Ronin press, which is claiming a copyright to the work.
The Principia Discordia, written by Kerry Thornley and Greg Hill, was released into the public domain when it was first published by the authors in 1965.
This year, Ronin Press released a new edition of the Principia Discordia, changing the title to Discordia: Hail the Goddess of Chaos and Confusion, altering some of the text, and slapping a copyright on the work. This has angered many of Discordia’s popes.
“Unfortunately for us followers of Discordia they have seen fit to alter the original text, use shoddy, low quality graphics stolen from the Internet and have completely mangled the original layout of our most sacred text…This re-titled version of Principia Discordia is 140 x 165mm and comes in at 192 pages. The reason for the huge page count compared with the original, is that the editor has split up the original layout and spread sections over numerous pages. They have also changed some of the original text to subtly alter it’s meaning and there are numerous just-wrongs throughout; far too many to list here.” – Pope Anonymous Sausages XXIII
Many people have given Ronin’s version of the book the lowest possible rating of one star on Amazon, but I had a chuckle at this 5-star review by Ivan Saunter “Axebaud”:
I have not bought this book, since I don’t need another version of the text. However, I am readily giving it five stars, for it has thrown upon modern discordians even more Chaos and Confusion than they deserve.
Jason Pitzl-Waters Wildhunt has more on the story. Link (Free scan of original text with graphics here | various text editions here)
