A conspiracy of intelligence

I suspect that this is going to turn into one of my least coherent Blogs ever; and rightly so, based upon the subject matter.

I’m currently reading ‘The Illuminatus Trilogy!’ by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson. Ostensibly, it’s a trippy sixties meander through a host of conspiracy theories. I’m only about halfway through the first book in the trilogy, ‘The Eye in the Pyramid’ and the Rolling Stone quote in the inside cover perfectly surmises why it’s such a great classic: “The longest shaggy dog joke in literary history… A hundred pages in I couldn’t figure out why I was wasting my time with this nonsense… after three hundred I was having too much fun to quit, and by the end I was eager to believe every word – I loved it.”

The reason why I love it so much is for precisely the same reason I detested ‘The Da Vinci Code’. When I read the Da Vinci Code, I had the problem that I knew exactly what Dan Brown was talking about because it wasn't new to me. I’d read Baigent and the Templars, had inexorably cross paths with Abbé Sauniere and Rennes-le-chateau; and have even wandered around Roslin Chapel and some ruins just down the road from it. Because none of the Grail information was a surprise to me, all that was left for me was a substandard chase story that should really have borrowed a few more ideas from Bullitt than from Baigent.

With Illuminatus, you get a plot so over the top and convoluted that you are routed through so many different ideas and concepts. You can barely keep up. The book switches narratives half way through sentences, goes back and forth in time so often you’re dizzy. And, partly, from the stuff I have read about Illuminati conspiracies, instead of ruining the plot, actually helps me keep up.

Now, you’re probably going: that’s rather interesting Mr. Kenny, why for did you warn me and your other reader about this all being rather incoherent? Well, this is where I’m departing from Shea and Wilson and wandering around Neurocam and JK Rowling (not together you understand).

My own Neurocam experiences have been interesting, though occasionally perplexing. On the various boards and forums Neurocam seems to end up being linked to a number of books and movies, some I’ve watched, some not. A list, if you will:

Books:

1. The Magus by John Fowles


2. The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon

Movies & TV:

1. Strange Days - IMDB Page


2. The Game - IMDB Page


3. Videodrome - IMDB Page


4. The Prisoner – Six of One Appreciation SocietyCourtesy of the Neurocam Wiki Project / Neuroboards

It surprises me that Illuminatus isn’t up there. “Get out of your mind” the Neurocam Slogan is one that appears in Illuminatus. ‘"You have to go out of your mind before you can come to your senses," as Tim Leary…’ from Eye of the Pyramid – Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea (the Illuminatus Trilogy.

However, I’m not going to labour the point and move onto JK Rowling. (Like I said I would). Frequently in what I’ve read so far in Illuminatus comes ‘He who must not be named’. Now, Voldemort doesn’t make an appearance but Hastur, a fictional primal terror god does who is referred to by various Discordians as “he who must not be named” and who is based on a character from H.P. Lovecraft (who also makes a theoretical cameo appearance in Illuminatus). The dark symbology of Rowling (to continue my minor conspiracy theory) continues with one of the key characters of Rowling’s first book: The Philosophers Stone. The title object revealed, early on, to be made by one Nicolas Flamel who is named as a Grandmaster in the list of men of the ‘Priory of Sion’ a fictional dynasty of grandmasters of a fake organisation created by a French charlatan called Pierre Plantard. Flamel is mentioned in various archaic works like The Book of Abraham the Jew.

I’m starting to sound like a paranoid delusional schizophrenic, so I’ll taper off and get to the point: I like literature and ideas that make you spike off in different directions, no matter how irrelevant or pastoral. To me it exercises your brain and makes you fitter. Clearly, though, for some people, any obsessional personality traits can be dangerous, but since I haven’t blown any up yet, I doubt I’ll start any time soon. That’s why Da Vinci Code is a relevant book (but I’ll maintain, not a well-written or constructed book) because it makes people argue and figure things out. It is also why Illuminatus is a great book, despite its convoluted nature: it makes you think.