Are you a Believer? (The Illusionist - Anita Mason)

Name: happybunny75

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Product:	The Illusionist - Anita Mason
Date:	24/09/01 (64 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great story and plot, Lots to think about

Disadvantages: Can get very bogged down with detail, Not an easy read

What will you find in The Illusionist?

Religion; science; illusions; belief; disbelief; God and gods; a sacrifice named Joshua; a coward called Kepha and a magician called Simon. Bored yet? Losing the plot? You should be.

This is a quirky, although somewhat long-winded and entangled tale of religious belief intermingled with myth and magic.

Simon Magus the illusionist travels around the country showing off his magic and gaining fans. Somewhat disillusioned he believes that he has not reached his full potential and wants to make a difference to the world. After delving into the scientific realms and making himself ill through fever, he then thinks he sees a vision and that he must join a sect even though he is not a ‘believer’.

He desperately tries to understand Kepha, the group’s leader and Philip, who heals the sick and performs miracles for the populace. The trouble is Simon’s logical mind.

Ten years before the sect had a leader called Joshua. Joshua healed the masses and taught his disciples to love God and to teach others about the ways of God (ringing any bells yet?). The authorities were getting a bit upset about this and so killed him. Later Joshua apparently rose from his tomb and appeared to some of his flock. Simon’s logic questions this. “If he’d wanted people to believe he’d risen from the dead, there would have been more point in showing himself to his enemies”. In each instance, Simon questions the logic of God’s motives and Joshua’s existence he is confronted with the same idea that nothing needs to be explained or justified in the ways of God.

Simon is thrown out of the sect after thinking there is a secret that he can learn about the miracles that the sect are able to perform, and bribing Kepha.

Even more disillusioned Simon, eventually sets up his own sect which opposes all forms of religious laws and announces freedom o
f expression and sexuality for its members. The result is a conflict between the original sect, where divisions are already happening and between Simon’s ideas and rejection of one god.

Well, that’s the basic outline. Yes, there is a certain familiarity about it and that’s what makes this book so challenging. It’s a case of spot the biblical stories and characters from the novel. But you need to be on the ball. I think if you have a good knowledge of theology then this book is analytically challenging. But despite my very limited knowledge of religion, I too enjoyed it.

There are a number of interesting points that Mason raises in the novel. The main protagonists of the original sect are portrayed as being illogical fools who accept something that they don’t fully understand. They were told things by Joshua that they can not put into practice. Their belief is that the end of the world will come and that they must persuade people to accept God and join their sect so that they will be saved. They sit and wait and are confused by when the time will come. It is only Simon, in his wisdom that wants to question and understand what the writings of their religion mean and how that can be transferred. The religious are naïve? Maybe in Mason’s novel they are. With humour though she underpins this with justifying the human condition. We believe what we want to believe. Some things are better left understood.

I loved the character of Simon. He questions everything. What god drowns a whole population and only saves one family? Why does a god who is omniscient and all-knowing put a tree in the Garden of Eden and didn’t expect anyone to eat from it? Mmmmm. I ponder these questions all the time, and have to congratulate Anita Mason on this character.

But…..

This is not an easy read. It is compelling, but it does take a time to figure out. The narrative jumps around endlessly from one perso
n to another, and sometimes to work out Simon’s ideas you could do with a degree in Philosophy. But don’t be put off. This really is an intriguing story, which was also nominated for the Booker Prize in 1983.

In the closing paragraph of the novel, I think Mason sums up the view of what religion is.

“If the entire structure [religion] rested, as it eventually did, on a mythologising of history, the sect might have remarked with perfect truth that it was quite impossible to know what had really happened and that any version of history is a myth in any case. It never did say that, for some reason”


Have an open mind. Think theologically and philosophically and you will enjoy.

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