Copyright on Conspiracy?
I find the news that Baigent and Leigh - the authors of the "The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail" in 1982 - are suing Dan Brown for stealing ideas from their book to write the far more sucessful "Da Vinci Code" risible in the extreme.
I remember the Baigent and Leigh book when it first came out - it successfully synthesised a whole bunch of legends and theories about Jesus and his marriage to Mary Magdalene, odd chunks of history, the Knights Templars ("the templars, the templars - always the templars") and the Rennes la Chateau "mystery" into an amusing potboiler that sold moderately well to an audience that had no idea about anything the book was talking about.
Then Dan Brown came along and successfully synthesised a whole bunch of legends, theories about Jesus and Magdalene yada yada yada ... you guessed it - the templars turn up, and the freemasons, opus dei and uncle Tom Cobley and all .. into an amusing potboiler that sold very well to an audience that had no idea of anything that the book was talking about.
But all the legends, myths, secret societies and cod-theology - all the guff about the Templars and the Holy Grail - it's all been done to death again and again and again in the Fortean and Occult literature for the last 20-50 years.
Every overpriced new-age part-work on the hidden mysteries of time, the universe and god have covered this story to death for years .... and years ... and years.
I'd be very surprised if Baigent and Leigh win - there are too many mimeographed pamplets and 18th centruy Victorian tracts speculating everything - and more - in the same field that Baigent, Leigh and Brown have written about.
They all synthesised the same bunch of silly old ideas and made books about those silly ideas - then they all sold books to people all over the world who like reading about silly ideas.
Good business in my mind.
Anyway - if Baigent and Leigh win - what's to stop the Priory of Sion suing them for stealing their ideas, and then the Illuminati suing the Priory of Sion, and then the Templars suing the Illuminati who are in turn sued by the remnants of Hassan-I-Sabbah's "Hashishin" - who are then sued in turn by the descendants of Jesus because he really was a magic mushroom just as Wassoon theorised ...
I'm just waiting for the second coming of the Templars
Have I mentioned the Templars yet ??
Let me tell you all about my latest conspiracy theory ... no I can't .. if I told you about it I'd have to kill you .. and it's copyright anyway ..
Anyway it has to be true because I read it in a book while I was in a secret Tibetan monastery and it was dictated by the Secret Masters - it was all about the reincarnation of Adam Weishaupt and the 3rd coming of the 4th Reich because they have these secret bases in Antarctica where the grey aliens experiment on people from all over time who are snatched using the secret time tunnel located at Montauk which uses the energy generated by the HAARP system ...
File this under Fortean methinks - but not until I've mentioned the Templars - they have linked up with Google adwords and every time you read the word "Templars" I get 50cents.
It's all a conspiracy you know.
Tags: baigent and leigh dan brown holy blood and holy grail da vinci code templars Rennes-le-Château mysteries new age holy grail san graal holy engaal haarp