Powers That Be (angels and Demons)

Powers That Be

The idea of a conspiracy, especially within governmental and foreign affairs such as a Flat-earth or Free Masonry, has been proposed by many as the “one truth” the public actually knows. Everything else, according to conspiracy theorists around the globe, is a facade for the evil schemes carried out by the governing powers. These schemes usually consist of initiating a chain-reaction of events, causing one mishap to unleash a series of other misfortunate events, in order to obtain a goal. This goal is typically the gaining of more power and expansion of control over worldly affairs. In Angels and Demons by Dan Brown, the plot follows the journey of Robert Langston and his accomplice, Vittoria Vestra, in their endeavor to stop the Illuminati from sabotaging the Vatican. With every conflict, there is a history behind it. When it comes to the interminable power struggle between the Vatican and the Illuminati, one can see the cause and effect relationships these two groups had with each other quite clearly.

Before assessing the justification for each organization’s acts against one another, one must decipher the history behind their story. In the book, it is numerously stated that the Illuminati was first organized as a congregation of scientists, philosophers, physicists, and other renaissance-era thinkers. At first, everything they did was carried out in secret because the Vatican enjoyed and thrived on their immense power over the people. An organization, especially one that proposed science over God like the Illuminati, was sacrilegious, and a threat in the eyes of the Vatican. In fact, the Illuminati was viewed so unholy that there was a mandation stating all members would be persecuted in the name of God. This was the beginning of the endless power struggle between the Church of Illumination and the Roman Catholic Church.

In response to the Vatican’s cruel treatment, the Illuminati fought back by infiltrating and working in secret to take down the infrastructure of the Vatican’s “corrupt” College of Cardinals and their ringleader, the pope. To do this, the Illuminati hired an assassin to kidnap four cardinals, execute them in a prophetic fashion. The assassin was also ordered to steal a canister of antimatter from CERN (Conseil Européen de Recherche Nucléaire), otherwise known as the European Council for Nuclear Research, and plant a nuclear bomb with the antimatter inside the Vatican during the conclave. The Vatican was in session of electing a new pope (conclave) because the pope was pronounced dead of a stroke not too long before. Later on in the story, it is revealed that the pope was actually poisoned with his own medicine. He was given a much higher dose than prescribed, and died in the process. Initially, there was no suspicion that the Illuminati was behind his death,