Ludibrium

Ludibrium is a word derived from

Paul Arnold translated Andreae's usage as farce,^[2] but this conception has been contested by Frances Yates, who took Rosicrucianism seriously and who suggested that Andreae's use of the term implied more nearly some sort of "Divine Comedy", a dramatic allegory played in the political domain during the tumult which preceded the Thirty Years' War in Germany.

Similarly, the melancholic Jaques in As You Like It (1599–1600) asserts, after the fashion of Heraclitus, that "All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players."

Robert Anton Wilson has suggested that the Priory of Sion is a modern ludibrium:

The Priory of Sion fascinates me, because it has all the appearances of being a real conspiracy, and yet if you look at the elements another way, it looks like a very complicated practical joke by a bunch of intellectual French aristocrats. And half of the time I believe it really is a practical joke by a bunch of intellectual French aristocrats. And then part of the time I think it is a real conspiracy.^[3]

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