On Tue, Jan 08, 2002 at 07:01:25AM -0800, Martijn Melenhorst wrote:
Well, it's not really that I'm that deep into that stuff, but reading the Illuminatus Trilogy made me thinking of how conspiracy theories could be set up, and how people could set conspiracy theories up to cover real conspiracies.
If you would follow the Illuminatus Trilogy way of thinking, the Illuminatus Trilogy itself is a big cover-up of all gnostic symbols and their meaning, that are, evidently, present in our lives, all over the world, ridiculizing all other theories that ever existed (or would exist in the future back then). For one purpose ofcourse: To stop discussions about a better belief in the world than the current ones, that would make us free and independant of government or any leading party in our lives. The book 'The Celestian Promise' somehow touched this subject, as do many others.
"The Celestine Prophecy" IIRC A (worringly) wish-washy pile of meaningless toss IMHO At least Illuminatus! didn't claim to be for real, it's always been sold as scifi/humour, but I reckon it's got more real value than the CP books.
The most simple evidence for this, is that the Illuminatus Trilogy grabs symbols of the ancient Egyptian belief, and the beliefs that followed from this, and puts them into the hands of the 'Illuminati', ridiculizing the symbols at the same time (isn't that convenient?). Ofcourse the whole Illuminatus Trilogy is a big "70's policy"-inspired joke, but maybe this was the real message?
I don't know if you should look too hard for a "real message" :)
A better example: The 'eye-in-the-pyramid', ofcourse, is from the ancient Egypt belief, which was ridiculized as a sun-evangelis while it really was a death-evangelis. The 'all-seeing-eye', as it is called in the Trilogy, is ofcourse the all-seeing-eye of their god of life, promising them life-after-death (reincarnation). Now, it's probably not a surprise to all of you that the Trilogy also heavily debates (and eventually believes) in reincarnation.
"the Trilogy [believes] in reincarnation" ?!? The trilogy is an elaborate joke, it's NOT supposed to be taken literally! (On the other hand, many a true word is spoken in jest. Accept the contradictions.)
What happened to the Egyptian belief is, that they were suppressed by the Christian belief at some point in history. Christianity itself (or what their belief may have been at that time) eventually taking over their symbols of the reincarnated son of a god (as Maria and Jesus later on) to make people convert to their beliefs. The Egyptian evangelists, back at that time, still had their belief which promised people a good life after death if they tried to find out who they really were. So, instead of scaring people of the 'all-seeing-eye', they advised people to look inside theirselves. This, ofcourse, was of no use to the political leaders at that time, so the Christian evangelis was first adopted to these Egyptian ideas, but NOT TOO MUCH, mind you, then it was slowly changed to make people follow only a few leaders instead of theirselves. This, in effect, would make the Christians the 'Illuminati', and the people following what remained of the old Egyptian belief (much later called the 'free-masons') the JAMMs, although the books loses me there after page 100 or something, and continues ridiculizing itself, atmho.
The Trilogy then, also dabbles into the George Washington/Hemp/Pyramid-on-the-dollar-bill theory, which is just a big fake version of the real fact that George Washington was a free-mason himself. The pyramid on the dollar bill is, therefore, not strange at all, seen the text above, and has got nothing to do with 'Illuminati'.
That depends entirely on who you define as the Illuminati If you believe people like XXX then the freemasons ARE the illuminati. I think you're making the mistake of trying to distinguish "real" "facts" from "fake" ones, in a book that is deliberately misleading! oh, and i believe Washington *did* grow hemp.
The text under the pyramid on the dollar-bill says something like "That a new order may come" (I'm Dutch, so I don't have it with me ofcourse :), which should point to the fact that (time is eternal:), no, to the fact that the suppressed gnostic belief that was the basis of the Egyptian belief will come back some day.
IIRC it says "novus ordo seclorum" - "A new order of the ages" whatever that means! the other quote on the $1 bill is "e pluribus unum" which the last book of Illuminatus! defines as "Out of many, one" (supposed to be a reference to leviathan, the gigantic monocellular organism that lives in the ocean and pre-dates all other life on earth. Still looking for a real message? :)
And here we finally arrive at the 'Gnostic' word, and I'm sure somewhere in the text above the relation between gnosticism and The Illuminatus Trilogy is explained. It is known that the original Gnostic belief, which is hyped too much these years, amongst others by that same book 'The Celestian Promise', did contain some essential rules for living, which were adopted by the bible (once again) and changed to fit their needs. That's nothing special, since every religion does this in some way or another, but those original scripts vanished from earth a short time after that.
Ofcourse it did not vanish out of the minds of it's believers, and another script (of which I currently can not remember the name) was written by one of them containing the most basic rules. It was published in several books a lot of years B.C., which got burned as soon as the ruling parties discovered it's contents. Only some scripts seem to have survived, explaining the free-masons, or so they say. The symbols related to these scripts are seen, these days, to conclude my story, in every powerful place in the world. Ofcourse there's the pyramids themselves in once-powerful Egypt, then there's the pyramid in Paris, France, which was placed there to celebrate it's aniversary. The name 'Paris' being a derived name from one of the gods of the old Egyptian belief, by the way. And I'm not even starting about Napoleon and his common position-with-his-hand, which seems to be a free-mason's gesture of some kind which I can not remember here. Then there's the big pyramid-topped 'tower' in america, which the founder of America is facing all the time...
Anyway, I can continue on and on like this, but it seems that the basis for the Illuminatus Trilogy was some paper written by someone, talking about how the original belief (Gnostic) which the Egyptian religion was based on, must have been suppressed by world-leaders for some important reason (oooh, what would that be?) over the past 2500 years or so.
it's drawn from far more sources than this one of the ideas they play with, and exploit for their own purposes (humour? enlightenment? help sell the book?) is gnosticism I think the most significant influence isn't freemasonry, or gnosticism, or the golden dawn, it's post-hippie, anti-establishment culture.
Probably this mail does not make much sense, but take it from me that I'm not bothered by this at all. Don't expect me to be obsessed with this shit, it's just something I noticed, and I'm writing it out as I think, since I'm sitting at work and have to be fast. Hope someone can pick this up for me and tell me what I have missed that is so obvious, since it is not really a secret all, just something we are not told about.
I think you've missed the fact that Illuminatus! is a joke! :) An elaborate one, with some serious points, but a joke nonetheless. One of my favourite serious points, rather pertinient to the topic of the "true" link between gnosticism/illuminism/aneurism/alcoholism, is the following quote from Miss Portinari, very similar to something Bruce Lee says in Enter the Dragon (so it must be true): They didn't know what the symbols and paradoxes meant. Instead of following the finger that points to the moon, they sat down and worshipped the finger itself. Instead of following the map, they thought it was the territory and tried to live in it. Instead of reading the menu they tried to eat it. Dig? -- "Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment: Cleverness is mere opinion, bewilderment is intuition." - Jalal-uddin Rumi