The Masters of Atlantis Read Online Free PDF

they could hearken to. Little by little he worked things out. Most of the triangles and a good many of the oracular ambiguities had already been pruned from the Codex , and Popper went further yet. The Cone of Fate was not exactly abandoned but he no longer talked about it except in response to direct inquiry. The Gnomonic content of his lectures diminished daily as the Popper content swelled. Soon he had a coherent system, one with wide appeal, and he had to book ever larger rooms and halls to accommodate the growing number of men who came to hear his words of hope.
    For this was what he gave them. Through Gnomonic thought and practices they could become happy, and very likely rich, and not later but sooner. They could learn how to harness secret powers, tap hidden reserves, plug in to the Telluric Currents. It was all true enough. Popper plugged them in to something of an electrical nature and he bucked them up with the example of his own dynamic personality and they went away thinking better of themselves.
    The Gnomon wave was cresting, and it was at this high point that Morehead Moaler of Brownsville, Texas, became a Gnomon, perhaps the most steadfast of them all. But little notice was taken of him at the time, or of his remote Texas Pillar, what with all the national excitement. There were articles in the press about “the mysterious Mr. Jimmerson” who remained concealed in his “Egyptian Temple” in Burnette, Indiana, while his spokesman, Austin Popper, went about teaching “a lost Egyptian science.” Look , the magazine, published an account of a Popper rally in Philadelphia, with a striking photograph of a roomful of solemn men standing with their hands clasped atop their heads. Popper appeared on a network radio show in Chicago, a breakfast show, and was received with whistles and sustained applause from the friendly oldsters in the audience. He marched around the breakfast table with them, and one jolly old man, whose name he failed to catch in the hubbub, presented him with a talking blue jay. He caught the bird’s name, Squanto, but just missed catching the name of the old gentleman, whose smiling red face he was to see often in his dreams, the face saying its name, but just out of earshot, never with quite enough force.
    Mr. Jimmerson, at the urging of the Council, called Popper in off the road and said, “This has gone too far, Austin. I want you to stop playing the fool. I want you to show some dignity. They tell me you have a Victrola now and a talking bird.”
    Popper was contrite. He promised to conduct himself with restraint in the future. Then he went back on the road and resumed his old ways. He led his followers in cheers and he played bouncy tunes on a windup phonograph, marking the beat with wildly swooping arms. He engaged in comic dialogues with Squanto. He continued to court the press and he even had his picture taken with politicians. These were two of the Four P’s that all Gnomons were under orders to shun, the other two being the Pope and the police. He continued to weaken the membership requirements until admittance to the order became almost effortless. The two nights of initiation were reduced to a token twenty minutes, with no insistence on figs, and the Pledge was no longer eight densely printed pages of Hermetical mystery lore and bloody vows of faith to the Ten Pillars of Atlantis—all to be recited without stumbling once—but rather one short paragraph that was little more than a bland affirmation of humility before the unseen powers of the universe.
    Still, there was something to be said for Popper. He did bring in thousands of new members, a few of whom turned out to be good Gnomons, and all of whom paid monthly dues and bought books and study materials from the Gnomon Press.
    Mr. Jimmerson was of two minds. He wavered. One day he was resolved that Austin must go and the next day he would defend him in a heated session of the Council. More