# 17/23???Illuminati?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/17-23-illuminati/295020
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [March 17, 2005, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/17-23-illuminati/295020 "2005-03-17T18:29:01Z")
**Posts on this page:** 14
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@robin9jm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robin9jm)
#### Post date: [March 17, 2005, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/17-23-illuminati/295020/1 "2005-03-17T18:29:01Z")
Hey- what’s the 17/23 correllation for the Illuminati on the reverse side of the five dollar bill? Are there any other hints right under our noses that the illuminati think we’re too stupid to find? is 17/23 have anything whatsoever to do with the Bible? I’d like to know as much as I can about this “Illuminati” group.
Are there actual accounts of people going crazy from finding truths with the Illuminati?
Thanks.
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### Author:  [@UncleBeer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UncleBeer)
#### Post date: [March 17, 2005, 7:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/17-23-illuminati/295020/2 "2005-03-17T19:40:31Z")
> [@](#):
>
> Are there any other hints right under our noses that the illuminati think we’re too stupid to find?
They’re everywhere. Looks like Weishaupt was at least right about you.
[http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1\_043.html](http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_043.html)
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### Author:  [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)
#### Post date: [March 17, 2005, 7:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/17-23-illuminati/295020/3 "2005-03-17T19:42:47Z")
> [@robin9jm](#):
>
> I’d like to know as much as I can about this “Illuminati” group.
Here’s Cecil’s take on the Illuminati
[http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1\_043.html](http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_043.html)
To sum up, basically the Illuminati was an 18th century secret anarchist group founded by a Bavarian named Adam Weishaupt. They operated by infiltrating Masonic lodges in Bavaria. This got out, the Bavarian government cracked down on the Masons, and the Illuminati died out.
Then people started inventing conspiracy theories about how they were behind everything.
---
### Author:  [@The\_Chao\_Goes\_Mu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Chao_Goes_Mu)
#### Post date: [March 17, 2005, 8:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/17-23-illuminati/295020/4 "2005-03-17T20:20:48Z")
Relax now **Robin9Jm** , the Illuminati are nothing more fnord than a defunct crackpot boys club with a penchant for world domination. fnord This doesn’t mean that the countless books written about us, er, I mean _them_, by the tinfoil hat brigade aren’t deliciously entertaining. fnord
And what’s this I hear about numbers? 5, 17, 23? Complete hogwash.
Kinda makes ya wonder though, if the Illuminati actually existed if they wouldn’t publish books themselves containing conspiracy theories sounding so outlandish one would be left with no choice but to discount that the Illuminati could possibly fnord exist. That would be a good way to divert people from the truth, eh? That would be sneaky wouldn’t it?
Hmmm.
Novus ordo seclorum
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### Author:  [@picunurse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/picunurse)
#### Post date: [March 17, 2005, 8:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/17-23-illuminati/295020/5 "2005-03-17T20:44:54Z")
> [@The Chao Goes Mu](#):
>
> Relax now **Robin9Jm** , the Illuminati are nothing more fnord than a defunct crackpot boys club with a penchant for world domination. fnord This doesn’t mean that the countless books written about us, er, I mean _them_, by the tinfoil hat brigade aren’t deliciously entertaining. fnord
>
> And what’s this I hear about numbers? 5, 17, 23? Complete hogwash.
> Kinda makes ya wonder though, if the Illuminati actually existed if they wouldn’t publish books themselves containing conspiracy theories sounding so outlandish one would be left with no choice but to discount that the Illuminati could possibly fnord exist. That would be a good way to divert people from the truth, eh? That would be sneaky wouldn’t it?
>
> Hmmm.
>
> Novus ordo seclorum
Shoulda made it yellow, dude.
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### Author:  [@The\_Chao\_Goes\_Mu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Chao_Goes_Mu)
#### Post date: [March 17, 2005, 8:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/17-23-illuminati/295020/6 "2005-03-17T20:51:47Z")
> [@picunurse](#):
>
> Shoulda made it yellow, dude.
Made what yellow?
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### Author:  [@Larry\_Mudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Mudd)
#### Post date: [March 17, 2005, 10:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/17-23-illuminati/295020/7 "2005-03-17T22:51:18Z")
I’m going to go against the grain and drop the Discordian argot. No acid wit in this post, no sir, just the straight dope.
The OP may be referring to this [classic column](http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a2_295.html).
“Adam Kadmon” writes:
> [@Adam Kadmon](#):
>
> All the clues are right under our noses and always have been. We just have to open our eyes. An example is the “3172” that can be seen in the bushes at the left side of the Lincoln Memorial on the reverse side of the five-dollar bill. It’s a numerical anagram of the 17/23 correlation.
Cecil’s reply is an uncharacteristic show of ignorance:
> [@Cecil Adams](#):
>
> Dear Adam:
>
> The 17/23 correlation?
I can fill in the blanks:
In the 1950s and '60s, the esteemed Beat author William S. Burroughs developed a personal obsession with the number twenty-three. He saw it everywhere – particularly in news reports of disasters. He began, in his writing, spreading the legend of “The Twenty-three Enigma.” Soon, other people began seeing the number twenty-three appearing more often than it ought to.
This was particularly appealing to Discordians, and Kerry Thornley went a long way in furthering the meme.
In the early 1970s, Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea, the “letters” editors at Playboy magazine, published a crank letter from a conspiracy nut going on about the Illuminati, with an appended jokey reply. This resulted in a flood of letters from _other_ conspiracy nuts, “enlightening” the editors about the _real_ conspiracy. These letters agreed with the original writer in places, and in other places were totally contradictory. More importantly, they were unintentionally hilarious, and enormously entertaining, if unpublishable in Playboy.
This gave the two Bobs a great idea. They conceived the idea of writing a novel which began with the conceit that all these (impossibly contradictory) theories were, in fact, true.
One of the basic ideas of the book is that belief systems tend to reinforce themselves. Once someone “buys into” a belief system, they tend to ignore things that don’t fit it, and “see” plenty of evidence to support it. It’s a sort of a mental filter.
The Twenty-three Enigma was included in the novel(s), and arbitrarily elaborated on, as an experiment in meme theory. (Although at that time it was considered a proof of Burroughs’ assertion that language was “viral.”) The arbitrary augmentation of the Twenty-three Enigma was that the number 23 often appeared in conjuction with the number 17. The hypothesis was that, once the idea was put out there, people would, in fact, begin to notice this happening more than they would expect to. And Lo! They did. Oh lord, did they ever.
That brings us to “Adam Kadmon”, who apparently saw the number 3172 and “decrypted” it as a rearrangement of the digits in 17 and 23, taking it as proof of Illuminists in the treasury.
That’s all.
There is a valuable lesson to be learned from this. (It’s not, as you might intuit, that NO WIFE, NO HORSE, NO MOUSTACHEa small subset of people are damned fools and liable to believe the most outlandish sorts of things.)
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### Author:  [@DocCathode](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DocCathode)
#### Post date: [March 17, 2005, 11:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/17-23-illuminati/295020/8 "2005-03-17T23:02:14Z")
> [@robin9jm](#):
>
> Hey- what’s the 17/23 correllation for the Illuminati on the reverse side of the five dollar bill? Are there any other hints right under our noses that the illuminati think we’re too stupid to find? is 17/23 have anything whatsoever to do with the Bible? I’d like to know as much as I can about this “Illuminati” group.
>
> Are there actual accounts of people going crazy from finding truths with the Illuminati?
Fools! Poor blind fools! There is no Illuminati. They are just a distraction created by the World Wide Gangster Conspiracy government to prevent us from noticing the real threat.
Global warming.
It melts the polar ice caps. It raises the sea level. Don’t you see what’s happening?
Soon the stars will be right! R’yleh will rise! Dread Cthulhu shall emerge from his crypt and the cities of man shall fall before him!
Ia! Ia! Cthulhu ftaghn!
---
### Author:  [@Excalibre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Excalibre)
#### Post date: [March 17, 2005, 11:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/17-23-illuminati/295020/9 "2005-03-17T23:59:29Z")
> [@DocCathode](#):
>
> Fools! Poor blind fools! There is no Illuminati. They are just a distraction created by the World Wide Gangster Conspiracy government to prevent us from noticing the real threat.
>
> Global warming.
>
> It melts the polar ice caps. It raises the sea level. Don’t you see what’s happening?
>
> Soon the stars will be right! R’yleh will rise! Dread Cthulhu shall emerge from his crypt and the cities of man shall fall before him!
>
> Ia! Ia! Cthulhu ftaghn!
Gosh. I thought I understood Judaism a little better than I do - now DocCathode is praying to someone named Cthulhu? Is that like the Hebrew word for the Messiah? ;j
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### Author:  [@Larry\_Mudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Mudd)
#### Post date: [March 18, 2005, 3:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/17-23-illuminati/295020/10 "2005-03-18T03:08:29Z")
> [@robin9jm](#):
>
> I’d like to know as much as I can about this “Illuminati” group.
>
> Are there actual accounts of people going crazy from finding truths with the Illuminati?
I strongly recommend that you pick up [_The Illuminatus! Trilogy_](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0440539811/qid=1111116048/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/104-9717296-4893560) by Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea.
If it’s a bit much for you, you might consider getting your feet wet with [_Masks of the Illuminati_](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/044050306X/qid=1111116048/sr=2-4/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_4/104-9717296-4893560), by Robert Anton Wilson, which is much closer in form to a conventional novel (and less likely to do you a serious injury should you happen to drop it.)
Both of these books _can_, it should be noted, drive you out of your mind.
That’s all to the good. Most minds tend to be unconscionably small, confining things.
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### Author:  [@Princhester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Princhester)
#### Post date: [March 18, 2005, 11:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/17-23-illuminati/295020/11 "2005-03-18T11:18:14Z")
Reading those books changed the way I think. There are any number of stoopid self-help books out there that make that claim, but I doubt any of them could hold a candle up to _Illuminatus!_.
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### Author:  [@Princhester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Princhester)
#### Post date: [March 18, 2005, 11:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/17-23-illuminati/295020/12 "2005-03-18T11:20:41Z")
I should add that I am not suggesting for a moment that the books changed the way I think _in any useful way_.
They just changed the way I think 😉
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### Author:  [@Larry\_Mudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Mudd)
#### Post date: [March 21, 2005, 7:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/17-23-illuminati/295020/13 "2005-03-21T19:18:20Z")
I’m on the same page with you, there.
The most noticible change is a 123% increase in my smart-ass quotient, along with a tendency to weave faux conspiracy theories as a game, to see how long it takes before they’re accepted at face value. (Even the most outlandish ones get picked up and repeated by the Art Bell types.)
[Brief Example](http://groups.google.ca/groups?hl=en&lr=&th=11eccc1466c22553&rnum=2)
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### Author:  [@DocCathode](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DocCathode)
#### Post date: [March 21, 2005, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/17-23-illuminati/295020/14 "2005-03-21T19:38:13Z")
> [@Larry Mudd](#):
>
> The most noticible change is a 123% increase in my smart-ass quotient, along with a tendency to weave faux conspiracy theories as a game, to see how long it takes before they’re accepted at face value.
After a while explaining the actions of governments and corporations based on the unseen control of the Kindred, the agents of The Wyrm, or Grey Faces, it’s begun to frighten me how much more sense they make than the facts.
For example
Did mayor Wilson Goode order a satchel bomb dropped on a compound in the middle of a densely built residential neighborhood, knowing the compound contained children, because-
A He was Dominated by a powerful Malkavian who was hoping to start a massive riot?
B Goode and his advisors actually thought it was a good idea?