“What wild notion are you following now?”
“I don’t know,” Saul said thoughtfully. “He doesn’t mind the neighbors hearing the dogs—probably he’s the kind of left-wing individualist who likes nothing better than quarreling with his landlord and the other tenants about some issue like the no-pets rule. So he wasn’t hiding anything until he ducked out. And then he not only took the dogs but hid all evidence that they’d ever been here. Even though he must have known that the neighbors would all talk about them.”
“Maybe he was feeding them human flesh,” Muldoon suggested ghoulishly.
“Lord, I don’t know. You look around for anything of interest. I’m going to read those Illuminati memos.” Saul returned to the living room and began:
ILLUMINATI PROJECT: MEMO #5
7/26
J.M.:
Sometimes you find things in the damndest places. The following is from a girl’s magazine (“The Conspiracy” by Sandra Glass, Teenset, March 1969, pages 34-40).
Simon proceeded to tell me about the Bavarian Illuminati. The nightmarish story begins in 1090 a.d. in the Middle East when Hassan i Sabbah founded the Ismaelian Sect, or Hashishim, so called because of their use of hashish, a deadly drug derived from the hemp plant which is better known as the killer weed marijuana…. The cult terrorized the Moslem world until Genghis Khan’s Mongols brought law and order to the area. Cornered in their mountain hideaway, the Hashishim dope fiends proved no match for the clean-living Mongol warriors, their fortress was destroyed, and their dancing girls shipped to Mongolia for rehabilitation. The heads of the cult fled westward….
“The Illuminati surfaced next in Bavaria in 1776,” Simon told me…. “Adam Weishaupt, a student of the occult, studied the teachings of Hassan i Sabbah and grew hemp in his backyard. On February 2, 1776, Weishaupt achieved illumination. Weishaupt officially founded the Ancient Illuminated Seers of Bavaria on May 1st, 1776. Their slogan was ‘Ewige Blumenkraft.’ … They attracted many illustrious members such as Goethe and Beethoven. Beethoven tacked up an Ewige Blumenkraft poster on the top of the piano on which he composed all nine of his symphonies.”
The last paragraph of the article is, however, the most interesting of all:
Recently I saw a documentary film on the Democratic Convention of 1968, and I was struck by the scene in which Senator Abraham Ribicoff made a critical remark provoking the anger of the Mayor of Chicago. In the ensuing tumult it was impossible to hear the Mayor’s shouted retort, and there has been much speculation about what he actually said. To me it seemed his lips were forming the words that by this time become frighteningly familiar: “Ewige Blumenkraft!”
The further I dig, the wilder the whole picture looks. When are we going to tell George about it?
Pat
ILLUMINATI PROJECT: MEMO #6
7/26
J.M.:
The John Birch Society has looked into the subject and they have a theory of their own. The first source I’ve found on this is a pamphlet “CFR: Conspiracy to Rule the World” by Gary Allen, associate editor of the Birchers’ magazine, American Opinion.
Allen’s thesis is that Cecil Rhodes created a secret society to establish English domination of the world in 1888. This society acts through Oxford University, the Rhodes Scholarships and—hold your breath—the Council on Foreign Relations, a nonprofit foundation for the study of International Affairs headquartered right here on Sixty-eighth Street in New York. Seven out of nine of our last Secretaries of State were recruited from the CFR, Allen points out, and dozens of other leading politicians as well—including Richard Nixon. It is also implied, but not directly stated, that William Buckley, Jr. (an old enemy of the Birchers) is another tool of the CFR; and the Morgan and Rothschild banking interests are supposed to be financing the whole thing.
How does this tie in with the Illuminati? Mr. Allen merely drops hints, linking Rhodes to John Ruskin, and Ruskin to earlier internationalists, and finally stating that “the originator on the profane level of this type of secret society” was Adam Weishaupt, whom he calls “the monster who founded the Order of the Illuminati on May 1, 1776.”
Pat
ILLUMINATI PROJECT: MEMO #7
7/27
J.M.:
This is from a small left-wing newspaper in Chicago (The Roger SPARK Chicago, July 1969, Vol. 2, No. 9: “Daley Linked With Illuminati,” no author’s name given):
No historian knows what happened to Adam Weishaupt after he was exiled from Bavaria in 1785, and entries in “Washington’s” diary after that date frequently refer to the hemp crop at Mount Vernon.
The possibility that Adam Weishaupt killed George Washington and took his place, serving as our first President for two terms, is now confirmed…. The two main colors of the American flag are, excluding a small patch of blue in one corner, red and white: these are also the official colors of the Hashishim. The flag and the Illuminati pyramid both have thirteen horizontal divisions: thirteen is, of course, the traditional code for marijuana … and is still used in that sense by Hell’s Angels among others.
Now, “Washington” formed the Federalist party. The other major party in those days, The Democratic Republicans, was formed by Thomas Jefferson [and] there are grounds for accepting the testimony of the Reverend Jedediah Morse of Charleston, who accused Jefferson of being an Illuminati agent. Thus, even at the dawn of our government, both parties were Illuminati fronts….
This story later repeats the Teenset report that Mayor Daley used the phrase “Ewige Blumenkraft” during his incoherent diatribe against Abe Ribicoff.
Pat
ILLUMINATI PROJECT: MEMO #8
7/27
J.M.:
More on the Washington-Weishaupt theory:
In spite of the fact that his face appears on billions of stamps and dollar bills, and his portrait hangs in every public building in the country, no one is quite sure what Washington looks like. A “Project 20” script, “Meet George Washington” will be seen tonight at 7:30 on Channel (fill in by local stations). The program offers contemporary portraits of the first President, some of which do not even seem to be the same man.
This is a press release sent out by NBC on April 24, 1969. Some of the portraits can be found in Encyclopedia Britannica and the resemblance to portraits of Weishaupt is undeniable.
Incidentally, Barbara called my attention to this: the letter in Playboy asking about the Illuminati was signed “R.S., Kansas City, Missouri.” According to the Kansas City newspapers, a Robert Stanton of that city was found dead on March 17, 1969 (about a week after the April Playboy appeared on the newsstands) with his throat torn as if by the talons of some enormous beast. No animal was reported missing from any of the local zoos.
Pat
Saul looked up at the pictures of Washington on the wall. For the first time, he noticed the strange half-smile on the most famous of them all, the one by Gilbert Stuart that appears on one-dollar bills. “As if by the talons of some enormous beast,” he quoted to himself, thinking again of Malik’s disappearing dogs.
“What the hell are you grinning about?” he asked sourly.
Congressman Koch, he remembered suddenly, in a speech years and years ago when marijuana was illegal everywhere, said something about Washington’s hemp crop. What was it? Yes: it was about the entries in the General’s diary—they showed that he separated the female hemp plants from the males before fertilization. That was botanically unnecessary if he was growing the crop for rope, but it was standard practise in cultivating hemp for marijuana, Koch pointed out.
And “illumination” was one of the words hippies were always using to describe the experience one obtains from the highest grade of grass. Even the more common term, “turning on,” had the same meaning as “illumination,” when you stopped to think about. Wasn’t that what the crown of light around Jesus’ head in Catholic art was supposed to mean? And Goethe—if he was really part of this—might have been referring to the experience in his last words, as he
lay dying: “More light!”
I should have become a rabbi, like my father wanted, Saul thought bemusedly. Police work is getting to be too much for me.
In a few minutes I’ll be suspecting Thomas Edison.
ROCK ROCK ROCK TILL BROAD DAYLIGHT
Slowly, Mary Lou Servix swam back to consciousness, like a shipwreck victim reaching a raft.
“Good Lord,” she breathed softly.
Simon kissed her neck. “Now you know,” he whispered.
“Good Lord,” she repeated. “How many times did I come?”
Simon smiled. “I’m not an anal-compulsive type—I wasn’t counting. Ten or twelve, something like that, I guess.”
“Good Lord. And the hallucinations. Was that what you were doing to my nervous system, or was it the grass?”
“Just tell me about what you saw.”
“Well, you got a halo around you, sort of. A big blue halo. And then I saw that it was around me, too, and that it had all sorts of little blue dots dancing in sort of whorls inside it. And then there wasn’t even that anymore. Just light. Pure white light.”
“Suppose I told you I have a friend who’s a dolphin and he exists in that kind of limitless light all the time.”
“Oh, don’t start jiving me. You’ve been so nice, until now.”
“I’m not jiving you. His name is Howard. I might arrange for you to meet him.”
“A fish?”
“No, baby. A dolphin is a mammal. Just like you and me.”
“You are either the world’s greatest brain or the world’s craziest motherfucker, Mr. Simon Moon. I mean it. But that light … My God, I will never forget that light.”
“And what happened to your body?” Simon asked casually.
“You know, I didn’t know where it was. Even in the middle of my orgasms I didn’t know where my body was. Everything was just … the light….”
ROCK ROCK ROCK AROUND THE CLOCK TONIGHT
And leaving Dallas that much-discussed November 22 afternoon in 1963, the man using the name “Frank Sullivan” brushes past McCord and Barker at the airport, but no foreshadowing of Watergate darkens his mind. (Back at the Grassy Knoll, Howard Hunt’s picture is being snapped and will later turn up in the files of New Orleans D.A. Jim “The Jolly Green Giant” Garrison: not that Garrison ever came within light years of the real truth….)
“Here, kitty-kitty-kitty” Hagbard calls.
But now we are going back, again, to April 2 and Las Vegas; Sherri Brandi (nee Sharon O’Farrell) arriving home finds Carmel in her living room at four in the morning. It doesn’t surprise her; he often made these unexpected visits. He seems to enjoy invading other people’s territory like some kinda creepy virus. “Darling,” I cried, rushing to kiss him as he expected. I wish the creep would drop dead, I thought as our mouths met.
“An all-night john?” he asked casually.
“Yeah. One of those scientists who works at that place out in the desert we’re all supposed to pretend we don’t know about. A freak.”
“He wanted something special?” Carmel asked quickly. “You charged him extra?” At times I thought I could really see dollar signs in his eyes.
“No,” I said, “he just wanted a lay. But afterward he wouldn’t let me go. Just kept jawing.” I yawned, looking around at the nice furniture and the nice paintings; I had managed to get everything in shades of pink and lavender, really beautiful, if that creep hadn’t been sitting there on the couch looking like a hungry dead rat. I always wanted pretty things and I think I could have been some kind of artist or designer if all my luck wasn’t always lousy. Christ, who ever told Carmel a blue turtleneck would go with a brown suit? If it wasn’t for women, in my honest-to-Pete opinion, men would all go around looking like that. That’s what I think. Insensitive. A bunch of cavemen, or Meander Thralls, or whatever you call them. “This john had a lot on his mind,” I said before old candy-bar could start crossexamining me about something else. “He’s against fluorides in drinking water and the Catholic church and faggots and he thinks the new birth-control pill is as bad as the old one and I should use a diaphragm instead. Christ, he’s got the inside dope on everything under the sun, he thinks, and I hadda listen to it all. That kind of john.”
Carmel nodded. “Scientists are schmucks,” he said.
I pulled the dress over my head and hung it in the closet (it was the nice green one with the spangles and the new style where my nipples stick out through little holes, which is a pain in the ass because they’re always rubbing against something and getting raw, but it really turns on the Johns, and, like I always say, that’s the name of the game, in this sonofabitching town with all the lousy luck, the only way to heavy scratch is go out there, girl, and sell your snatch) and then I grabbed my robe quick before old blow-job bobo decided it was time for his weekly Frenching. “He’s got a nice house, though,” I said to distract the creep. “He doesn’t have to live out there on the base, he’s too important for rules and regularities. Nice to look at, I mean. Redwood walls and burnt orange decor, you know? Pretty. He hates it, though. Acts as if he thinks it’s haunted by Count Frankenstein or somebody. Keeps jumping up and walking around like he’s looking for something. Something that’ll bite his head off in one gulp if he finds it.” I decided to let the top of the robe hang open a little. Carmel was either horny or he wanted something else, and something else with him generally means he thinks you’ve been holding back some cash. Him and his damned belt. Of course, sometimes with that I go queer all over for a flash and I guess that’s like the come that men have, the orgasm, but it ain’t worth the pain, believe me. I wonder if it’s true some women get it in intercourse? Really get it? I don’t think so. I’ve never known anybody in the business who gets it, from a man, only from Rosy Palm and her five sisters, sometimes, and if none of us do, how could some straight nicey-nicey get it?
“Bugs,” Carmel said, looking shrewd and clever, off on his usual shtick of proving he was more hip to everything than anybody else on God’s green earth. I didn’t know what the hell he was talking about.
“What do you mean, bugs?” I asked. It was better than talking about money.
“The john,” he said with a know-it-all grin. “He’s important, you said. So his house has bugs. He probably keeps taking them out, and the FBI keeps coming back and putting in new ones. I bet he was very quiet when he was making it with you, right?” I nodded, remembering. “See. He couldn’t stand the thought of those Feds eavesdropping on the other end of the wire. Just like Mai—like a guy I know in the Syndicate. He’s so afraid of bugs he won’t hold a business talk anywhere but the bathroom in his hotel suite with all four faucets going full blast and both of us whispering. Running water screws up a bug more than playing loud music on the radio, for some scientific reason.”
“Bugs,” I said suddenly. “That’s it.” The other kind of bugs. I was remembering Charley raving about fluoridation: “And we’re all classified as mental cases, because a few right-wing nuts fifteen or twenty years ago who said fluoridation was a communist plot to poison us. Now, anybody who criticizes fluoridation is supposed to be just as bananas as God’s Lightning. Good Lord, if anybody wants to do us in without firing a shot, I could—” and he caught himself, hid something that almost showed on his face, and ended like his brain was walking on one foot, “I could point to a dozen things in any chemistry book more effective than fluoride.” But he wasn’t thinking of chemicals, he was thinking of those little bugs, microbes is the word, and that’s what he was working on. I could feel that flash I always get when I read something in a John, like if he had more money than he let on, or he’d caught his wife spreading for the milkman and was doing it to get even, or he was really a faggola and was just proving to himself that he wasn’t completely a faggola. “My God,” I said, “Carmel, I read about those microbe bugs in the Enquirer. If they have an accident out there, this whole town goes, and the state with it, and God knows how many other states. Jesus, no wonder he ke
eps washing his hands!”
“Germ warfare?” Carmel said, thinking fast. “God, I’ll bet this town is crawling with Russian spies trying to find out what’s going on out there. And I’ve got a direct lead for them. But how the hell do you meet a Russian spy, or a Chinese spy for that matter? You can’t just advertise in a newspaper. Hell. Maybe if I went down to the university and talked to some of those freaking commie students….”
I was shocked. “Carmel! You can’t sell your own country like that!”
“The hell I can’t. The Statue of Liberty is just another broad, and I’ll take what I can get for her. Don’t be a fool.” He reached in his jacket pocket and took out a caramel candy like he always did when he was excited. “I’ll—bet somebody in the Mob will know. They know everything. Jesus, there has to be some way of cashing in on this.”
The President’s actual television broadcast was transmitted to the world at 10:30 p.m. EST, March 31. The Russians and Chinese were given twenty-four hours to get out of Fernando Poo or the skies over Santa Isobel would begin raining nuclear missiles: “This is darn serious,” the Chief Executive said, “and America will not shirk its responsibility to the freedom-loving people of Fernando Poo!” The broadcast concluded at 11 p.m. EST, and within two minutes people attempting to get reservations on trains, planes, busses or car pools to Canada had virtually every telephone wire in the country overloaded.
In Moscow, where it was ten the next morning, the Premier called a conference and said crisply, “That character in Washington is a mental lunatic, and he means it. Get our men out of Fernando Poo right away, then find out who authorized sending them in there in the first place and transfer him to be supervisor of a hydroelectric works in Outer Mongolia.”
“We don’t have any men in Fernando Poo,” a commissar said mournfully. “The Americans are imagining things again.”
“Well, how the hell can we withdraw men if we don’t have them there in the first place?” the Premier demanded.
The illuminatus! trilogy Page 5