My favorite thing about Abulafia was the description of it on the back as “an incredible computer capable of inventing connections between all of their entries”. Did the person who wrote that not read the book? Did they not understand it? Were they making a joke, where the “incredible computer” was actually the editors?
It’s been so many years since I read Foucault’s Pendulum that I don’t recall the computer, or its program. But my memory is that the confabulation they created was real — by accident, yet it was.
(The article is likely correct - it was not real but was believed to be so by people who wanted it to be. Which I in turn misremember as stumbling on something real that is confirmed bu those same conspiracy theorists.)
Perhaps I misinterpreted what I read. Yet if so that would be a surprising twist on the point of this article.
> But my memory is that the confabulation they created was real — by accident, yet it was.
The confabulation was picked up by people who, for various reasons, wanted to believe it was true. But there was no truth, there was just people looking to control others, and people willing to be controlled.
I believe the conspiracy was real, but was itself an emergent manifestation of the conspiracy hunters' paranoia.
As the occultist Agliè explicitly champions, "in its loftiest sense syncretism is the acknowledgment that a single Tradition runs through and nurtures all religion, all learning, all philosophy". He asserts that "true esotericism does not fear contradiction".
None of what was published could falsify the syncretic paranoia-therefore whatever existed was the cult, since no tradition could be excluded.
My favorite thing about Abulafia was the description of it on the back as “an incredible computer capable of inventing connections between all of their entries”. Did the person who wrote that not read the book? Did they not understand it? Were they making a joke, where the “incredible computer” was actually the editors?
i read FP before the da vinci code came out and i still can't believe it wasn't a bigger controversy. dan brown jacked the whole format.
He got the meaning entirely backwards, though. Or as Eco put it, Dan Brown was a creature in one of his stories.
It’s been so many years since I read Foucault’s Pendulum that I don’t recall the computer, or its program. But my memory is that the confabulation they created was real — by accident, yet it was.
(The article is likely correct - it was not real but was believed to be so by people who wanted it to be. Which I in turn misremember as stumbling on something real that is confirmed bu those same conspiracy theorists.)
Perhaps I misinterpreted what I read. Yet if so that would be a surprising twist on the point of this article.
> But my memory is that the confabulation they created was real — by accident, yet it was.
The confabulation was picked up by people who, for various reasons, wanted to believe it was true. But there was no truth, there was just people looking to control others, and people willing to be controlled.
I believe the conspiracy was real, but was itself an emergent manifestation of the conspiracy hunters' paranoia.
As the occultist Agliè explicitly champions, "in its loftiest sense syncretism is the acknowledgment that a single Tradition runs through and nurtures all religion, all learning, all philosophy". He asserts that "true esotericism does not fear contradiction".
None of what was published could falsify the syncretic paranoia-therefore whatever existed was the cult, since no tradition could be excluded.
my mis-intepretation is as good as yours, but IIRC their specific conspiracy wasn't real to begin with, but it _becomes_ real.
That was the genius bit of the book, IMVHO.