The illuminatus! trilogy (75 page)

So things went for many thousands of years, until the priests were rich, fat and decadent, while the citizens
lived in terror and slavery. The number of sacrifices increased ever, for Hastur grew with each victim whose energy he absorbed and his appetite grew with him. Finally, among the people, there arose one who had been refused admission to the priesthood, Ma-lik, and he taught that humanity could become all-powerful, not through eating the golden apples and sacrificing to the lloigor, but through a process he called rational thought. He was, of course, fed to Hastur as soon as the priests heard of this teaching, but he had followers, and they quickly learned to keep their thoughts private and plan their activities in secret. This was the age of midnight arrests, purge trials and accelerating sacrifices in Carcosa, Mama Sutra said, and eventually the followers of Ma-lik—the few who had escaped extermination—fled to the Thuranian subcontinent, which is now Europe.

There they met little people who had come down from the north after the snake folk had exterminated each other in some form of slow, insidious and stealthy civil war. (Apparently, the snakes never met in a single battle during all this time: the poison in the wine cup, the knife in the back and similar subtle activities had slowly escalated to the deadly level of actual warfare. The serpent people had an aversion to
facing
an enemy as they killed him.) The little people had had their own experiences with the lloigor, long ago, but all they remembered were confused legends about Ores (whom Mama Sutra identified with the Tcho-Tchos) and a great kero named Phroto who battled a monster called Zaurn (evidently a shoggoth, Mama Sutra said.)

Many millenniums passed, and the little people and the followers of Ma-lik intermarried, producing basically the human race of today. A great law-giver named Kull tried to establish a rational society on Malik’s principles, and fought a battle with some of the serpent people who had surprisingly survived in hidden places; most of this got lost in exaggeration and legend. After more thousands of years, a barbarian named Konan or Conan arose, somehow, to the throne of
Aquilonia, mightiest kingdom on the Thuranian subcontinent; Konan brooded much about the continuing horrors in Carcosa, which he sensed as a threat to the rest of the world. Finally, he disappeared, abdicating in favor of his son, Conn, and reputedly sailing
to the west
.

Konan, Mama Sutra said, was the same person who appeared in the Yucatan peninsula at that time and became known as Kukulan. He was evidently seeking, among the Mayan scientists, some knowledge or technology to use against the lloigor. Whatever happened, he left them, and only the legend of Kukulan, “the feathered serpent,” remained. When the Aztecs came down from the north, Kukulan became Quetzalcoatl, and human sacrifice was instituted in his name. The lloigor, in some fashion, had turned the work of Konan around and made it serve their own ends.

Carcosa meanwhile perished. What happened is unknown, but some students of ancient lore suspect that Konan actually circumnavigated the globe, collecting knowledge as he went, and descended upon Carcosa with weapons that destroyed both the Cult of the Yellow Sign and all traces of the civilization that served it.

Throughout the rest of history, Mama Sutra went on, the Cult of the Yellow Sign never regained its former powers, but it has come very close in certain times and certain places. The lloigor continued to exist, of course, but could no longer manifest in our kind of space-time continuum unless the Cult performed very complicated technical operations, which were sometimes disguised as religious rituals and sometimes as wars, famines or other calamities.

Over the intervening ages, the Cult waged steady warfare against the one power that threatened them: rationality. When they couldn’t manifest a lloigor to blast a mind, they learned to fake it; if real magic wasn’t available, stage magic served in its place. “By ‘real magic,’ of course,” Mama Sutra explained, “I mean the technology of the lloigor. As science-fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke has commented, any sufficiently
advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. The lloigor have that kind of technology. That’s how they got to earth from their star.”

“You mean their planet, don’t you?” Danny asked.

“No, they lived originally on a star. I told you they were not made of matter as we understand it. Incidentally, their origin on a star explains why the pentagram or star shape always attracts their attention and is one of the best ways of summoning them. They invented that design. A star doesn’t look five-pointed to a human being, but that’s what it looks like to
them.”

Finally, in the 18th century, the Age of Reason appeared to be at hand. Tentatively, as an experiment, one branch of the Illuminati surfaced in Bavaria. They were led by an ex-Jesuit named Adam Weishaupt who had inside knowledge of how the Cult of the Yellow Sign operated and performed its hoaxes and “miracles.” The real brain behind this movement, however, was Weishaupt’s wife, Eve; but they knew that, even in the Age of Reason, humanity was not ready yet for a liberation movement led by a woman, so Adam fronted for her.

The experiment was unsuccessful. The Cult of the Yellow Sign planted fake documents in the home of an Illuminatus named Zwack, whispered some hints to Bavarian government and then watched with glee as the movement was disbanded and hounded out of Germany.

A simultaneous experiment began in America, started by two Illuminati named Jefferson and Franklin. Both preached reason, like Weishaupt, but carefully did not make his mistake of stating explicitly how this contradicted religion and superstition. (This latter matter they discussed only in their private letters.) Since Jefferson and Franklin were national heroes, and since the rationalistic government they helped to create seemed well established, the Cult of the Yellow Sign dared not denounce them openly. One trial balloon was attempted: the Reverend Jebediah Morse, a high Yellow Sign adept, openly accused Jefferson of being
an Illuminatus and charged him and his party with most of the crimes that had discredited Weishaupt in Bavaria. The American public was not deceived—but all subsequent Yellow Sign propaganda in America has rested on the original anti-Illuminati claims of Reverend Morse.

Due to Jefferson, one Illuminati symbol was adopted by the new government: the Eye on the Pyramid, representing knowledge of geometry and, hence, of the order of nature. This was to be used in later generations, if necessary, to indicate the truth about the founding of the U.S. government, since it was well understood that the Cult of the Yellow Sign would try to distort the facts as soon as possible. Another Illuminati work, of more immediate importance, was the Bill of Rights (the part of the Constitution still under most vigorous attack by the Yellow Sign fanatics) and certain key expressions in early documents, such as the reference to “Nature and Nature’s God” in the Declaration of Independence—as far as Jefferson dared to go in leavening traditional superstition with a natural-science admixture. And, of course, the first half-dozen Presidents were all high-ranking Masons and Rosicrucians who understood at least the fundamentals of Illuminati philosophy.

Mama Sutra sighed briefly, and went on. All this, she said, is only the tip of the iceberg. Government actually plays a minor role in controlling people; far more important are the words and images that make up the semantic environment. The Cult of the Yellow Sign not only suppresses words and images that threaten their power, but infiltrates every branch of communications with their own ideology. Science and reason are forever mocked or portrayed as menacing. Wishful thinking, fantasy, religion, mysticism, occultism and magic are forever preached as the real solutions to all problems. Best-selling books teach people to
pray
, not
work
, for success. Movies win awards by showing a child’s ignorant faith justified over the skepticism of adults. There is an astrology column in virtually
every newspaper. More and more, the ideology of the Cult of the Yellow Sign is set forth openly, as the ideas of the Illuminati and the Founding Fathers are forgotten or distorted. One only has to think of any antidemocratic, antirational or antihumane idea out of the Dark Ages, Mama Sutra said, and one can immediately think of some popular religious columnist or some movie star who is blatantly expounding it and calling it “Americanism.”

The Cult of the Yellow Sign, the old woman continued, is determined to destroy the United States, because it came closer than any other nation to the Illuminati ideals of free minds and free people and because it still retains a few tattered relics of Illuminism in its laws and customs.

This is where Mr. Hagbard Celine enters the picture, Mama Sutra said grimly.

Celine, she went on, was a brilliant but twisted personality, the son of an Italian pimp and a Norwegian prostitute. Raised in the underworld, he early developed a contempt and hatred for ordinary, decent society. The Mafia, recognizing his talents and predilections, took him in and financed his way through Harvard Law School. After graduation, he became an important mouthpiece for Syndicate hoodlums in trouble with the law. On the side, however, he also took some cases for American Indians, since this was a way of frustrating the government. In one particularly bitter battle, he attempted to stop the construction of a much-needed dam in upstate New York; his unbalanced behavior in the courtroom (which helped lose the case) indicated his deep attraction for the occult, since he had obviously been taken in by the superstitions of the Indians he served. Mafia dons conferred with leaders of the Cult of the Yellow Sign, and soon, Hagbard, who had been wandering around Europe aimlessly, was recruited to start a new front for the Cult, to fight the United States both politically and religiously. This front, Mama Sutra said, was called the Legion of Dynamic Discord, and, while it pretended to
be against all governments, it was actually devoted only to harming the U.S. He was given a submarine (which he later claimed to have designed himself) and became an important cog in the Mafia heroin-smuggling business. More important, his crew—renegades and misfits from all nations—were indoctrinated in a deliberately nonsensical variety of mysticism.

An important center of Celine’s heroin network, Mama Sutra added, was a fake church in Santa Isobel on the island of Fernando Poo.

Obviously, Mama Sutra concluded, Joseph Malik, the editor of
Confrontation
, was investigating the Illuminati, deceived by the lies spread against them by Celine and the Yellow Sign adepts. As for Professor Marsh, his explorations in Fernando Poo may have revealed something about Celine’s heroin ring.

“Then you think they’re both dead,” Danny said somberly. “And, probably, Goodman and Muldoon and Pat Walsh, the researcher, also.”

“Not necessarily. Celine, as I have told you, is both brilliant and quite insane. He has perfected his own form of brainwashing and it amuses him to recruit rather than destroy any possible opponent. It is quite possible that all of these people are working for him right now, against the Illuminati and the United States, which they will believe to be the major enemies of humanity.” Mama Sutra paused thoughtfully. “However, that is far from sure. Events in the last few days have changed Celine for the worse. He is more insane, and more dangerous, than ever. The assassinations of April 25 all across the nation appear to be his work, engineered through the Mafia. He is striking out blindly against anyone he imagines may be an Illuminatus. Needless to say, most of the victims were not actually in the Illuminati, which is, as I have mentioned, a very small organization. Since he is in this violent and paranoid frame of mind, I fear for the lives of anyone associated with him.”

Danny was slumped forward in his chair, drunk, dejected and depressed. “Now that I know,” he asked
rhetorically, “what can I do about it? My God, what can I do about it?”

I finally got around to reading
Telemachus Sneezed
on the flight to Munich, a touch of appropriate synchronicity, since Atlanta Hope (like the Ilsluminati’s pet paperhanger) had an umbilical connection backward toward Clark Kent’s old enemy Lothar and his festive burgher’s unsure God. In fact, Atlanta wrote as if she had her own Diet of Worms for breakfast every morning. What made it even more fan-fuckin’-tastic was that she was on the same flight with me, sitting, in fact, a few seats ahead of me and to port, or starboard, or whatever is the correct word for right when you’re in the air.

Mary Lou was with me; she was a hard woman to get out of your system once you’d made it with her. John had advanced me only enough money for my own passage, so I’d hustled some Alamout Black on Wells Street to raise the extra fare for her, and then I had to explain that it wasn’t just a pleasure trip.

“What’s all the mystery?” she had asked. “Are you CIA or a Commie or something for Christ’s sake?”

“If I told you,” I said, “you wouldn’t believe it. Just enjoy the music and the acid and whatever else is coming down, and when it happens you’ll see it. You’d never believe it before you see it.”

“Simon Motherfucking Moon,” she told me gravely, “after the yoga and sex you’ve taught me these last three days, I’m ready to believe anything.”

“Ghosts? The
grand zombi?”

“Oh, there you go again, putting me on,” she protested.

“See?”

So it was more or less left at that and we smoked two joints and hopped a cab out to O’Hare, passing all the signs where they were tearing down lower-middle-class neighborhoods to turn them into upper-middle-class high-rise neighborhoods and each sign said,
THIS IS ANOTHER IMPROVEMENT FOR CHICAGO—RICHARD J.
DALEY, MAYOR
. Of course, in the lower-class neighborhoods, they weren’t tearing anything down, just waiting for the people to go on another rampage and burn it down. The signs there were all done with spray cans and had more variety: OFF THE PIG, BLACK P. STONE RUNS IT, POWER TO THE PEOPLE, FRED LIVES, ALMIGHTY LATIN KINGS RUN IT, and one that would have pleased Hagbard, OFF THE LANDLORDS. Then we got into the traffic on the Eisenhower Expressway (Miss Doris Day standing before Ike’s picture in my old schoolroom flashed through memory like the ghost of an old hard-on, the flesh of her mammary) and we put on our gas masks and sat while the cab crawled along fast enough to possibly catch a senile snail with arthritis.