No. But it may be obscure.
“Obscure” means “covered over,” as in scutum (shield), and sky. Something is there, but you can’t see it. It implies darkness, indistinctness. Yet it is not ambiguous, vague, invisible, necessarily malicious, or even secret.
A seditious secret implies betrayal; something obscure can be merely not-known, or not-seen. The best place to hide information, after all, is in the open (“The Purloined Letter”).
So our Society traces back not to charlatans, mystagogues, and oracles, but to those most openly, outwardly seeking the obscure, turning the shields of nature and time over to inspect what lies beneath.
Openness in this way becomes itself obscure. Our great mystery is not that we are open and prone to opening, but that we are not couching our openness in conformity, on the one hand, or in mystery and religion, on the other.
Our obscurity is a shield, a badge. Those with us recognize it, a fellow-pilgrim’s staff digging into a weary road.
***
From The Correct & Truthsome History of the Hollow Earth Geographers’ Guild & Subsequent Operations Thereupon Founded:
The Society must look back to at best always-murky origins in the geometric horses and bulls of Lascaux, in the bull-jumping of Kreta, the proto-scientific astral rites of Lagash and Ur, and of the Maya ziggurats, and of a thousand hillsides lighted by a thousand fires…
