There was a response from Adam Kadmon at the end who mentions something called the 17/23 correlation, which is supposedly a secretly Illuminati message anagrammed into the Lincoln Memorial. You flippantly responded to him like 17/23 was something 100% unknown to you. For shame! I don’t have your book, but I googled the “17/23 correlation” and found very little information on it, but one of the things I did find was a reference to it written by you! In your book! On page 297!
Like I said, I don’t have your book, but maybe you could enlighten us to what you had written about this subject… unless you are trying to play act unilluminated to confuse us robots.
Tom Julian, Brooklyn NY.
BTW - If you wrote the one about the Tri-Lats and Adam’s response after you had written the story mentioning the 17/23 above, double shame on you and your editor!!!
I know that. But the eblast that came out on Saturday could have edited this part since it has since been obsolete. That’s what I was trying to say at the end of my post: =-=-=- BTW - If you wrote the one about the Tri-Lats and Adam’s response after you had written the story mentioning the 17/23 above, double shame on you and your editor!!! =-=-=-
It’s just a classic column, taken as a historical document. OTOH, such editting does occur (to some dissatisfaction). But in this case, some of the humor would be lost.
OK, here’s the timeline. First, Cecil wrote the one about the Trilateral Commission. This article ended up published on page 297 of the book. In it, Cecil indicates that he doesn’t know what the 17/23 correlation is supposed to be. Later, he wrote a column on miles and yards, and said that he still doesn’t know what the 17/23 correlation is. This is the sum total of what he’s written on 17/23. What’s enigmatic, here?
I recall that the number 23 was very significant in the Illuminatus trilogy, so I’m wondering if 17 wasn’t thrown in there, too. I would like to note that 2[sup]3[/sup] + 3[sup]2[/sup] = 17.
I remember reading that column when it first appeared and noticing this as well. I assumed this was what they were talking about. What it means OTOH, is a mystery to me.
Adam Kadmon means in hebrew - prehistoric man… (Adam=man, Kadmon=prehistoric).
So I don’t know if the dude who posted the reply is indeed Jewish/speaks hebrew and just wanted to make a little joke, but people are sure gonna laugh their ass off if that’s his real name and he comes to Israel…
It shows up in Kabbalistic writings (I won’t go into that as I’m far from the most expert around here I’m sure), and is referenced in The Illuminatus Trilogy. Undoubtedly the writer thought he was being cute. I’m surprised he didn’t sign himself “Hagbard Celine” or “Greg Hill”.
1723 is sometimes wrongly quoted as the birth date of Adam Weishaupt, as in the PC game Deus Ex: http://db.gamefaqs.com/computer/doswin/file/deus_ex_script.txt (search for 1723). It also turns up as various other things, like the year the illuminati was “revived”, again by Adam Weishaupt, as seen here: http://www.miqel.com/text/23-5-and-synchronicity-11-11.html (the first entry on the page). Basically, it seems, because the number turns up in a couple of places it’s been incorporated into amatuer illuminati theories. So chances are the guy from Baltimore has heard about 1723s appearances and it’s suppossed link to the Illuminati, and that’s what he meant by “the 17/23 corellation”.
The connection of 17, 23, and 1723 to the Illuminati is directly out of The Illuminatus Trilogy, and there 23 was important because 2+3 = 5 – as noted in Principia Discordia – and thus is connected with the Law of Fives.
Frankly, I’m not sure anymore what conspiracy theories (or connections between theories) predate Illuminatus and which were originated there. I’d say it’s a pretty safe bet that 17/23 is largely a creation of Shea and Wilson, and gullible conspiracy theorists since then have adopted it as gospel without realizing that it started in a book making fun of conspiracy theories.
I read the Illuminatus! trilogy back in the 1970s, in my tender teen years. Fascinating! Why? Sex! I was fifteen, for Christ’s sake.
When I was some twenty years older, I picked up a copy and found it almost unreadable. (Except for all the sex, which is still pretty cool.) It occurred to me that the books probably had a lot of readers who were just bright enough to be engrossed, without being able to separate the self-parodying nonsense from the bits of actual political and philosophical thinking. Could be a problem.
From now on, no more cuteness. And no smoking or spitting. – The Mgt.
17 & 23 are low & unlikely prime numbers. Non-prime numbers are seen as ordinary, being functions of other numbers. But an unusual non-prime, while it appears spontaneously often enough, has a weirdness value, which can be interpreted as a conspiracy, especially once the idea is planted in one’s brain. (“What I say three times is true.”)
Of the primes:
2 is commonly seen.
3 is commonly seen, though also thought mystical.
5 is key to human counting systems.
7 is astrologically grandfathered in (planets, days of the week), & also thought mystical.
11 has that double-character thing.
13 is already a “bad luck” number.
19 is one less than a score, so has the “big number minus one” identity.
29 & 31, same kind of thing.
37 is 1/18 of 666, so would have a meaning already in the minds of numerologists.
So 17, 23, 43, & 47, of the primes less than 50, have a certain exploitability as stereotypically “random” numbers in art or what have you. A non-prime might seem too neat in certain contexts. This makes their incidence higher than expected when any number will do, because they seem so arbitrary. This is then interpreted as a conspiracy.
