The Illuminatus! Trilogy

"Right-hand," the priest said. "All absurdist systems are right-hand. Well, almost all. They don't invoke You-Know-Who under any circumstances. They rely on Discordia… do you remember your Roman myths?

"Enough to know that Discordia is just the Latin equivalent of Eris. They're part of the Erisian Liberation Front, then?" Simon was beginning to wish he were stoned; these conspiratorial conversations always made more sense when he was slightly high. He wondered how people like the President of the U.S. or the Chairman of the Board of GM were able to plot such intricate games without being on a trip at the time. Or did they take enough tranquilizers to produce a similar effect?

"No," the priest said flatly. "Don't ever make that mistake. ELF is a much more, um, esoteric outfit than the LDD. Celine is on the activist side, like us. Some of his capers make Morituri or God's Lightning look like Trappists by comparison. No, ELF will never get on Mr. Celine's trip."

"He's got an absurdist yoga and an activist ethic?" Simon reflected. "The two don't mix."

"Celine is a walking contradiction. Look at his symbol again."

"I've been looking at it and that pentagon worries me. Are you sure he's on our side?"

The American Medical Association came to some kind of erotic or musical climax and the priest's answer was drowned out. "What?" Simon asked, after the applause died down.

"I said," Padre Pederastia whispered, "that we're never sure anybody is on our side. Uncertainty is the name of the game."

ILLUMINATI PROJECT: MEMO #10 7/28

J.M.:

On the origin of the pyramid-and-eye symbol, test your credulity on the following yarn from Flying Saucers in the Bible by Virginia Brasington (Saucerian Books, 1963, page 43.):

The Continental Congress had asked Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams to arrange for a seal for the United States of America… None of the designs they created or which were submitted to them, were suitable…

Fairly late at night, after working on the project all day, Jefferson walked out into the cool night air of the garden to clear his mind. In a few minutes he rushed back into the room, crying, jubilantly: "I have it! I have it!" Indeed, he did have some plans in his hands. They were the plans showing the Great Seal as we know it today.

Asked how he got the plans, Jefferson told a strange story. A man approached him wearing a black cloak that practically covered him, face and all, and told him that he (the stranger) knew they were trying to devise a Seal, and that he had a design which was appropriate and meaningful…

After the excitement died down, the three went into the garden to find the stranger, but he was gone. Thus, neither these Founding Fathers, nor anybody else, ever knew who really designed the Great Seal of the United States!

Pat

ILLUMINATI PROJECT: MEMO 7/29

J.M.:

The latest I've found on the eye-and-pyramid is in a San Francisco underground paper (Planet, San Francisco, July 1969, Vol. I, No.4.), suggesting it as a symbol for Timothy Leary's political party when he was running for governor of California instead of just running:

The emblem is a tentative design for the Party's campaign button. One wag suggests that everyone cut out the circle from the back of a dollar bill and send the wholly dollar to Governor Leary so he can wallpaper his office with them. Then paste the emblem on your front door to signify your membership in the party.

Translations: The year of the beginning New Secular Order

Both translations are wrong, of course. Annuit Coeptis means "he blesses our beginning" and Novus Ordo Se~ clorem means "a new order of the ages." Oh, well, scholarship was never the hippies' strong point. But - Tim Leary an Illuminatus?

And pasting the Eye on the door - I can't help but think of the Hebrews marking their doorways with the blood of a lamb so that the Angel of Death would pass by their houses.

Pat

ILLUMINATI PROJECT: MEMO #12 8/3

J.M.: