Umberto Eco and his "Plan"

Yesterday I`ve finished reading one of Umberto Eco`s books... The Pendul of Foucault. Apart from all the societies, organisations and links between every secret group across history, I found out that a certain connection between all, or almost all of them , exists. Now, what I want to know.. Could it be possible for every secret society today to have one and the same forefathers ?

I will stop here, I don`t have the answer, but I feel that it`s a possibility ...

Originally posted by Kapnobatai
Yesterday I`ve finished reading one of Umberto Eco`s books... The Pendul of Foucault. Apart from all the societies, organisations and links between every secret group across history, I found out that a certain connection between all, or almost all of them , exists. Now, what I want to know.. Could it be possible for every secret society today to have one and the same forefathers ?

No. You understand that "Focault's Pendulum" is not only fiction, but is also satire -- it's meant to be self-evidently false. Part of the whole point of the book is that the interpretation of facts by individuals leads them to live in separate social "universes." In fact, (SPOILER ALERT!!!!)

















as you're well aware, the "main group" doesn't even know what they're doing -- they turn to the main character for an explanation of what they're supposed to be doing!!!

I was not referring to Eco`s book alone... I was curious if in reality might be a small possibility of all secret societies having the same point of origin.

Originally posted by Kapnobatai
I was not referring to Eco`s book alone... I was curious if in reality might be a small possibility of all secret societies having the same point of origin.

Well, I doubt all secret societies have the same point of origin since they have different goals and beliefs. For example, why would a secret society based on Cain be founded by the same forefathers of a society based on Seth? The only way it is possible that all secret societies have the same point of origin is if a bunch of people spread out infiltrating many cultures and propped up secret societies to build a false distinction. That would mean the creators of the secret society based on Cain established a secret society based on Seth because they knew that if they could control the followers of Seth they would have no challenge against their power. Proving such a connection will most likely get you ridiculed and laughed at. Of course, the leaders of the Secret Society of Seth would deny any involvement with the Secret Society of Cain and would insist that you seek medical attention. *Note, this secret society of seth and cain is just an example... However, one or two having the same point of origin is definitely possible.

I must have been under the influence of Eco`s book.. This italian guy really knows how to play with connections and with symbols. Yes, DetectivePerez, I`m sure you are right. Thanx for opening my eyes. It`s really an impossibility for all secret societies in the world to have the same point of origin. Heh....

Originally posted by Kapnobatai
I must have been under the influence of Eco`s book.. This italian guy really knows how to play with connections and with symbols.

He is a major name and one of the foremost popularisers of the study of semiotics.

And I think it's important, when you're reading Foucault's pendulum, to remember that. The book will have much more savour if you understand that Eco is a professor of Semiotics.

Originally posted by DetectivePerez
Well, I doubt all secret societies have the same point of origin...

A pretty good case could be made for the sun being the singular point of origin of all secret societies and religions. Christ, Cain, Seth or other figure could easily be interpreted as nothing more than an abstraction of the sun, the sun being a reflection of God.
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Originally posted by df1A pretty good case could be made for the sun being the singular point of origin of all secret societies and religions. Christ, Cain, Seth or other figure could easily be interpreted as nothing more than an abstraction of the sun, the sun being a reflection of God.
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Ok so now there is more than one interpretation of this question. Df1, you are saying that it could be argued that a secret society in it's simplest form derives its origins from the Sun.

If I make up a secret society of Lawn Gnome Lovers, it has nothing to do with the Sun, but your arguement would be that I have the Sun to thank for my preconceived organization of my society?

But then again, If I knew nothing about secret societies and my decision to create a secret society was not based on anything in the past, then it would have nothing to do with the Sun.

Originally posted by DetectivePerez
secret society of Lawn Gnome Lovers...

Without the Sun you have no lawn thus no lawn gnomes to love. It is based on the Sun whether you are aware of the Sun or ignorant of the Sun. The following excerpt from Manly P. Halls book makes a strong case. You may wish to read the entire chapter.

Secret Teachings Of All Ages: The Sun, A Universal Deity
THE adoration of the sun was one of the earliest and most natural forms of religious expression. Complex modern theologies are merely involvements and amplifications of this simple aboriginal belief. The primitive mind, recognizing the beneficent power of the solar orb, adored it as the proxy of the Supreme Deity. Concerning the origin of sun worship, Albert Pike makes the following concise statement in his Morals and Dogma: "To them [aboriginal peoples] he [the sun] was the innate fire of bodies, the fire of Nature. Author of Life, heat, and ignition, he was to them the efficient cause of all generation, for without him there was no movement, no existence, no form. He was to them immense, indivisible, imperishable, and everywhere present. It was their need of light, and of his creative energy, that was felt by all men; and nothing was more fearful to them than his absence. His beneficent influences caused his identification with the Principle of Good; and the BRAHMA of the Hindus, and MITHRAS of the Persians, and ATHOM, AMUN, PHTHA, and OSIRIS, of the Egyptians, the BEL of the Chaldeans, the ADONAI of the Ph�nicians, the ADONIS and APOLLO of the Greeks, became but personifications of the Sun, the regenerating Principle, image of that fecundity which perpetuates and rejuvenates the world's existence."

PS: I did not post this to make any arguement with you concerning Masonry.
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Technically, without water you have no life on this Earth either. But there are plenty of stars to go around...

See, I think your arguement can be made for stuff such as animals, water, anything we consume or depend upon for life. If there was no heart or brain, we would not have life in current human form. Etc...

By the way, God comes before the Sun You said that

It is based on the Sun whether you are aware of the Sun or ignorant of the Sun.

I can say it is based on God whether you are aware of God or ignorant of God.

[edit on 30-8-2004 by DetectivePerez]

Originally posted by DetectivePerez
By the way, God comes before the Sun

You said that

It is based on the Sun whether you are aware of the Sun or ignorant of the Sun.

I can say it is based on God whether you are aware of God or ignorant of God.

[edit on 30-8-2004 by DetectivePerez]

Indeed. The Sun is not God. It can be a tempting trap to fall into to think otherwise. The Sun is the Glory of the Lord, but not God.

Originally posted by DetectivePerez
You said that

It is based on the Sun whether you are aware of the Sun or ignorant of the Sun.

I can say it is based on God whether you are aware of God or ignorant of God.

I am building a case for a singular root source of most religions/secret societies and argue that the singular root source is the sun. I have no disagreement with your personal belief, the sun is a reflection of God.
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[edit on 30-8-2004 by df1]

Originally posted by Kapnobatai
Yesterday I`ve finished reading one of Umberto Eco`s books... The Pendul of Foucault. Apart from all the societies, organisations and links between every secret group across history, I found out that a certain connection between all, or almost all of them , exists. Now, what I want to know.. Could it be possible for every secret society today to have one and the same forefathers ?

I will stop here, I don`t have the answer, but I feel that it`s a possibility ...

as others have noted before: there's nothing in Eco's novel that allows for this conclusion. On the contrary, what Eco illustrates is how a hoax can lead to real consequences (in this case, basically, a bunch of "i wanna belief"-folks who buy in the hoax and act upon it as if it is true, giving hand to unwanted consequences for the initial hoaxers)

is it possible that all secret societies have the same origins. is it plausible? I don't think so. I my modest attempt to understand its roots, I tend to pay a lot of attention to the socio-economical context in which they come into the public sphere.

If there were only 3 people alive on earth, you would have a conspiracy......so I suppose in that regard. Yes all such groups have a common thread.

In the book though I beleive the whole point is they punched in names of groups and had a computer randomly attach them to each other. It was meant as a joke. Then all the diff groups become convinced they have some secret "answer" to it all. It's been over a decade or 2 since I read that one, so I do not remember if that is absoultely correct, but that's what I recall.

reply to post by Kapnobatai


I recommend reading more of Eco, as much as you can. Try The Name of the Rose, probably his best novel. It was written, primarily, as a fiction primer for the study of semiotics.
Eco can be a bit too clever for his own good though, and a critic made a trenchant point regarding Foucault's Pendulum, designating it "intellectual onanism"...

There are claims that Eco ripped much of the Byzantine, convoluted secret society intrigue and conspiracy lore from Robert Anton Wilson's Illuminatus series.

After Eco, try some Borges. The Lottery in Babylon will fascinate, I'm sure.
Borges is the shadow thast dogs Eco, the ghost he attempts to exorcise via his fiction. The character of Jorge, the blind librarian, in The Name of the Rose, is based on him.

Anyway, I veer somewhat off topic. I have no idea if all secret societies have the same forefathers. Many things are possible, but then there are probably as many of the same sort of clandestine organizations, using many of the same methods, iconography, rituals, and grades, owing to the fact during the occult revival of the late 18th to early 19th centuries, there was a massive effloresecence of hermetic brotherhoods, with memberships crossing over between them all; and a bewildering amount of cross polination of ideas and philosophies as a result.
All secret soceities today are born of the original cult of reason, the Freemasons (who also had one foot in with the various "Rosicrucian" brotherhoods, the first chemists, it must be held in mind) - an Enlightenment era creation (no, they haven't been around since the dawn of time, no matter who says so) - and the irrationals, the various cults of anti-reason, that sprung up in opposition to Enlightenment principles (empiricism, rationalist materialist outlook, etc) typified by the early Freemasons who begun the Royal Society and championed the scientific method.
The latter are best represented by organizations such as the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, for instance.

Originally posted by Kapnobatai
Yesterday I`ve finished reading one of Umberto Eco`s books... The Pendul of Foucault. Apart from all the societies, organisations and links between every secret group across history, I found out that a certain connection between all, or almost all of them , exists. Now, what I want to know.. Could it be possible for every secret society today to have one and the same forefathers ?

I will stop here, I don`t have the answer, but I feel that it`s a possibility ...

Bleh,, that book almost caused my brain to bleed. Granted I was but a child when i read it, but still an over the top intellectual bore-fest.

I do like a good Anton Wilson yarn, really was just getting good when he failed to continue the Historical Chronicals series, I would be even more interested today with what he did with early American given all that has come to light.....still

My own thought is these are fiction writers, and if you want to know the deeper truths behind the tales, your better going to the source from which these modern authors gleaned their tales. Earlier writers from that period when our brothers were actually still semi secret, and before the enlightenment period and pop culture further obscured the original rituals, and oaths still had a life and death meaning. Francis Bacon is an excellent place to start.

evil necro!

Please delete-

yes the sun

the other one, the moon, is sin, without

the moon steals light from its brother the sun, the moon is a sinner, ha ha ha

people make babies in nine months, march 22 spring, nine months later winter solstice, savior born, christmas, ha ha ha

easy.

too easy.

a reply to: Extant Taxon

Eco was a smart man - way more learned than most people. And so what is the critique of "intellectual onanism" to mean other than the simple 'dissonance' between the developmental context (and the meanings it carries with it) of different people? Even the act of critiquing another persons literature as "intellectual onanism" seems intellectualist i.e. I had to look up the term onanism, which must therefore imply that the person making the claim sought a lesser known and more "flamboyant" term than a much more well known cognate: masturbation.

I don't get the childish games these cultures play. It's a neurodevelopmental thing: all the trite narrative/story-telling is just arbitrary fluff superimposed by creatures who don't even understand the complex rules which underlie their self-organization. Metaphysical circular reasoning via "contacting spirits", etc, will not do. Start with third person investigations, please, and proceed accordingly.

Nowadays the Peircean semiotic school has given rise to biosemiotics, to which I myself am seeking to advance in a relational interpersonal perspective, with specific emphasis on dissociation and idealization as a co-determining dynamic triggered by relational interactions.

Eco wrote Foucaults Pendlulum to describe the developmental context - or the semiotic milieu - which structures the human beings meaning relationship to reality. The story proceeds through the sephiroth, which is to imply the grandiosity of the metaphysical vision: from kether, crown, the highest abstraction of self in being, unity with "the one"; and so from here he explores the nature of the metaphysical logic of the novels main actors; its from experiences up here, as it were, which has the most 'encompassing' impact upon human behavior and ideation, which goes to shoe just how deeply Eco understood the world and culture around him - being a socialist, he knew, and understood, that mysticism and occultism had sway in world politics, and the logic went something like this...