The Illuminatus! Trilogy полностью

At least, for now, you can probably grasp this much: their fundamental fallacy is the Aneristic Delusion. They really believe in law n' order. As a matter of fact, since everybody in this crazy, millennia-old battle has his own theory about what the Illuminati are really aiming at, I might as well tell you mine. I think they're all scientists and they want to set up a scientific world government. The Jacobins were probably following precise Illuminati instructions when they sacked the churches in Paris and proclaimed the dawn of the Age of Reason. You know the story about the old man who was in the crowd when Louis XVI went to the guillotine and who shouted as the king's head fell, "Jacques De Molay, thou art avenged"? All the symbols that De Molay introduced into Masonry are scientific implements- the T-square, the architect's triangle, even that pyramid that has caused so much bizarre speculation. If you count the eye as part of the design, the pyramid has 73 divisions, you know, not 72. What's 73 mean? Simple: multiply it by five, in accordance with Weishaupt's funfwissenschaft, the science of fives, and you get 365, the days of the year. The damn thing is some kind of astronomical computer, like Stonehenge. The Egyptian pyramids are facing to the East, where the sun rises. The great pyramid of the Mayans has exactly 365 divisions, and is also facing to the East. What they're doing is worshipping the "order" they have found in Nature, never realizing that they projected the order there with their own instruments.

That's why they hate ordinary mankind- because we're so disorderly. They've been trying for six or seven thousand years to reestablish Atlantis-style high civilization- law 'n' order- the Body Politic, as they like to call it. A giant robot is what their Body Politic really amounts to, you know. A place for everything and everything in its place. A place for everybody and everybody in his place. Look at the Pentagon- look at the whole army, for Goddess's sake! That's what they want the planet to be like Efficient, mechanical, orderly- very orderly- and inhuman. That's the essence of the Aneristic Delusion: to imagine you have found Order and then to start manipulating the quirky, eccentric chaotic things that really exist into some kind of platoons or phalanxes that correspond to your concept of the Order they're supposed to manifest. Of course, the quirkiest, most chaotic things that exist are other people- and that's why they're so obsessed with trying to control us.

Why are you staring like that? Am I changing colors or growing bigger or something? Good: the acid is starting to work. Now we can really get to the nitty-gritty. First of all, most of what I've been telling you is bullshit. The IIluminati have no millennia-old history; neither do the JAMs. They invented their great heritage and tradition- Jacques De Molay and Charlemagne and all of it- out of whole cloth in 1776, picking up all sorts of out-of-context history to make it seem plausible. We've done the same. You might wonder why we copy them, and even deceive our own recruits about this. Well, part of illumination- and we've got to be illuminized ourselves to fight them- is in learning to doubt everything. That's why Hagbard has that painting in his stateroom saying "Think for yourself, schmuck," and why Hassan i Sabbah said "Nothing is true." You've got to learn to doubt us, too, and everything we tell you. There are no honest men on this voyage. In fact, maybe this part is the only lie I've told you all evening, and the Illuminati history before 1776 really is true and not an invention. Or maybe we're just a front for the Illuminati… to recruit you indirectly…

Feeling paranoid? Good: illumination is on the other side of absolute terror. And the only terror that is truly absolute is the horror of realizing that you can't believe anything you've ever been told. You have to realize fully that you are "a stranger and afraid in a world you never made," like Houseman says.

Twenty-two big rhinoceroses, twenty-three big. rhinoceroses…