Lure of the Arcane: The Literature of Cult and Conspiracy

Introduction

Introduction Conspiracy Fiction In September 2009 the publishing world heralded another major novel by Dan Brown, author of the international best sellers Angels and Demons (2000) and The Da Vinci Code (2003). Over one million copies were sold on the first day of publication and two million more during the first week. The Lost Symbol follows essentially the same formula as its two predecessors. Like them, it features Robert Langdon, the Harvard professor of symbology, who is joined by a lovely heroine with specialist skills (this time in the arcane science of noetics) to thwart a plot involving the efforts of a monstrous villain (this time a tattooed steroidfreak with a redeemer obsession) to recover a mythic object (this time The Lost Word as the key to the Ancient Mysteries) guarded by a secret society (this time the Freemasons rather than, as in Brown’s earlier novels, the Illuminati, the Priory of Sion, or Opus Dei). Again, the plot takes us on an architectural tour of a national capital (this time not Rome and Paris but Washington, DC) with fascinating details about the Masonic symbols underlying the design and ornamentation of national landmarks: the Capitol, the Library of Congress, the National Cathedral, and the Washington Monument. As usual in Brown’s thrillers, the mystery involves anagrams, conundrums, and other clues hidden in works of art (this time Albrecht Dürer’s Melencolia and 2 Lure of the Arcane a small model of the legendary Masonic Pyramid). The plot, condensed by urgent deadlines into a brief period (this time only twelve hours), is given a rather implausible dimension of national urgency that brings the CIA and its tyrannical director of security into the picture: the villain threatens to release to the media pictures of leading Washingtonians—the architect of the Capitol, the dean of the National Cathedral, the director of the Smithsonian, along with various senators and political figures—engaged in allegedly barbaric rituals and thereby to throw the government into turmoil. The Lost Word, which the villain had hoped in an ultimate consecration to tattoo onto his skull, turns out to be a copy of the Bible buried unattainably in the cornerstone of the Washington Monument. Brown’s novel, which remained on the best-seller lists for weeks, enjoyed considerable literary company. That same year, 2009, saw the publication of several other successful thrillers based on essentially the same formula: a hero or heroine assisting a secret group to protect a mythic prize that is sought by villains. Chris Kuzneski’s The Lost Throne features three heroes coming to the assistance of a “Brotherhood” of monks from Mount Athos who are being murdered in their effort to protect the secret of hidden ancient treasure and books from an unscrupulous collector and his hired Spartan thugs. In Jim Marrs’s The Sisterhood of the Rose the heroine links up with a group of women—including the mistresses of Hitler and Mussolini, Stalin’s daughter, and the photographer Margaret Bourke-White—who band together to keep the great Treasure of Solomon, hidden centuries earlier by the Knights Templar, out of the hands of the Nazis. These novels are often grouped together with those known loosely as “conspiracy thrillers.” But in conspiracy thrillers the secret society is usually a force of evil pursuing its own ends by illegal means but outwitted at the last minute by a hero with unusual talents acting alone or with a small group. In Daniel Levin’s The Last Ember, for instance, the hero and heroine oppose a sinister Palestinian cohort wreaking havoc in Jerusalem and Rome in an effort to recover and destroy an ancient menorah proving the Jewish claim to the Temple Mount. In Dale Brown’s Rogue Forces the U.S. president seeks to control a violent contractor known as “Scion” from pursuing his own interests in the Middle East for the benefit of the clandestine directors of his company. James Rollins’s The Doomsday Key portrays a powerful group known as “The Guild,” which cites reports by the Club of Rome to justify its use of genetic modification of food sources in order to control populations and the world. In Raymond Khoury’s The Sign an elite coterie seeks first to prevent global warming, and ultimately to instigate a religious war of civilizations, by wielding scientific devices to legitimate a fake Introduction 3 messiah who will preach their gospel. David Ignatius’s...