An Illustration I did of Hagbard Celine is now on permanent display at the Deutsches Museum in Munich, Germany! The drawing is part of the Modern Cryptology section of the “Image Script Codes” (Bild Schrift Codes) exhibition. It’s part of a display dedicated to Karl Koch, the Illuminatus! influenced hacker who used “Hagbard Celine” as his pseudonym.

The drawing was originally done back in 2015 in support of the RAW Illumination blog’s online reading group for the Illuminatus! Trilogy, and apparently turned up as part of the museum’s research into Karl Koch.

The image features Hagbard Celine giving a psychedelic speech during a climatically surreal moment towards the end of the book.

Hagbard is attempting to save attendees of a music fest in Ingolstadt, Germany from a horde of resurgent nazi zombies. Or at least that’s one interpretation of what’s going on!

The scene is a kaleidoscope of conflicting points of view, Joycean modernism pushed to the extreme, where uncertainty itself is elevated to the highest reality.

I like that this little fragment of Hagbard speaking in tongues now lives only a short train ride away from the location of the scene in the novel. Not to mention, for thematic reasons, in the capital of Bavaria!

Oh! And for contextual clarity, the original quote, my drawing, and the museum’s image selection all came well before covid. Hagbard is imploring us to remove our Oscar Wildean masks of truth :)))

Here’s the description of the museum from the initial license request e-mail:

The Deutsches Museum in Munich is a special place for communicating scientific and technical knowledge. Opened in 1903 it is not only one of the oldest museums of science and technology in the world, but also with its exhibition space of 66,000 square meter one of the biggest. Its unique collection of original exhibits makes Deutsches Museum an international leading institution for celebrating science and technology. As a major German research museum of national significance, it is supported by the state of Bavaria, the federal government and the German states and is a member of the Leibniz Association. Currently the Future Initiative is working on upholding the museums excellent status and modernizing the exhibitions, which are all going to be updated. Some topics are even going to be completely new.