A short story by Argentine magic realist Jorge Luis Borges, “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius” (published in his collection Labyrinths, 1962) draws on the history of the Rosicrucian movement to present one of the clearest models of secret society activity in print. According to the story, sometime in the early seventeenth century, a secret society, Orbis Tertius (Third Sphere), sets out to create an imaginary country and make the world believe that it actually exists. As the project unfolds, they realize that they will have to invent an entire world to give the nation of Tlön a setting. They compile a 40-volume encyclopedia containing detailed information about every aspect of Uqbar, their invented world. With funding from an eccentric American millionaire, the encyclopedia is completed and parts of it are leaked to the outside world, and a handful of artifacts from the imaginary world begin to surface. People outside Orbis Tertius become so fascinated by Uqbar that the real world begins to imitate the imaginary one.
The historical Rosicrucian movement, intentionally or not, followed a similar trajectory from fiction to reality, as people inspired by the original Rosicrucian manifestos set out to remake themselves in the image of the adepts of the Rose Cross, launching an international movement that remains a major force in the occult community 400 years later. An even closer fit to the story can be found in the bizarre UMMO case of the 1970s, in which persons unknown faked a series of close encounters with UFOs from the planet UMMO and used the resulting publicity as a springboard to pass on hundreds of pages of Ummese philosophy, spirituality, and science to a growing community of followers. See Rosicrucians; unidentified flying objects (UFOs).
SOURCE:
The Element Encyclopedia of Secret Societies : the ultimate a-z of ancient mysteries, lost civilizations and forgotten wisdom written by John Michael Greer – © John Michael Greer 2006