Kerry Wendell Thornley is perhaps best-known as the co-founder of Discordianism. In this context he is usually known as Omar Khayyam Ravenhurst, a name he derived from Omar Khayyám. He and Hill authored the religion's seminal text Principia Discordia, Or, How I Found Goddess, And What I Did To Her When I Found Her.

Under the pen name Ho Chi Zen, Thornley also published a broadsheet newsletter called Zenarchy in the late 1960s. "Zenarchy" is described in the introduction of the collected volume as "the social order which springs from meditation," and "A noncombative, nonparticipatory, no-politics approach to anarchy intended to get the serious student thinking."