The following text was originally written in Italian and delivered as a sermon on Saturday 27 September 1997, h.16.00, in the park of Villa Spada, hills of Bologna (Italy), as part of the Psychic Attack on Karol Woytila and the National Eucharistic Council. That event had caused the invasion of Bologna by 400.000 pilgrims, catholic schoolboys, friars and Jesus freaks, and was going to climax with Bob Dylan singing in the presence of the Pope (the converted minstrel of Duluth shook hands with the Polack, while the latter delivered a sermon on the lyrics of "Blowin' In The Wind". Disgusting!). The Psychic Attack was officiated by more than 100 Blissetts.

Other actions of "cult jamming" included a fake leaflet by an inexistent 'Congregation for the safeguard of Christian morality' which abused the Church for allowing a communist jew to play at the Council, as well as a fake discount voucher bearing the logo of the NEC and the text: 'If you show this coupon together with your NEC card, you can get a snack (drink + sandwich or toast) at 1500 lire at the following bars: [listing the most posh bars in town]'. 1500 lire is a ludicrous price, approximately US$1.

Luther Blissett exhorts all his herselves to spread 'The Gospel According To Judas' and translate it into every language on Earth.

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO JUDAS

or The Ultimate Luther Blissett Manifesto

"Nothing is real, everything is possible... That should go without saying."

"He was in the world, and the world was made through him,
yet the world knew him not"

(John I,10)

Jerusalem, zero AD. Posing as a messiah was the latest trend. Prophets were springing out like mushrooms. Nutters, fools, parasites and the likes. I smelt the business of the moment: a pop star nobody could compete with. The public would believe anything, but they had a predilection for: bloodsheds, riots, visions, miracles, apparitions and above all the liberation from Rome. I had to create a new genre.

I hung about for a while and met a crusty carpenter in the desert, a geezer who used to preach peace and love to a rock and three lizards. Long-haired, greasy, photogenic. I asked him: 'What's yer name?', and he went 'Jesus of Nazareth'. My, that name sucked, it wasn't catchy enough! It took something glamourous... I looked at his hair and said: 'From now on, you're "Jesus Christ", Greasy Jesus!'. That was the groove I'd been looking for. I suggested him to come with me and preach to the folks, with board and lodging at my expense.

I expounded the strategy: 'We must bull and beat all the competitors. They wanna save the people of Israel? You're gonna save the mankind. They are the Messiah of the Scriptures? You are nothing other than God. They wanna kick the Romans out of Israel? You're gonna open the doors of the kingdom of heaven!'

I'd got the frontman, now I needed the band. During a three years tour in Palestine, I recruited 11 gullible boors. The Jesus Christ Superstar Tour ended with a triumphal entry in Jerusalem, attended by thousands of fans. The pop star had reached the height of his fame. Priests and cops loathed him, and I thought: 'if I manage to make him die on stage he'll conquer immortality: a revolutionary martyr giving his all to the public, for love of humanity'. Sounded great, man!

I blabbed out to Caiaphas and Pilate the place of a secret meeting. The cops came and took him. As I kissed him I thought 'Now he's really a god, the greatest pop icon in history!'.

Then things started to slip out of my hands. Peter, the most gullible disciple, boasted that Jesus had entrusted him to found a church. As always, conspiracy theorists claimed that he wasn't really dead, that a guy had met him in the desert and all. Eventually people agreed on one version of the story: he's gone to heaven, but someday he'll come back and sort out all their problems. They ended up selling the icon to the power: the very priests and the coppers who'd created the martyr re-legitimated themselves by wearing the new cult as a stole. I didn't give a fuck about that anymore, I could but leave the stage [he points to the slip-knot] and live on my income tlll the return of the greaser - that is, since the bloke was dead as a door-nail, forever [he slips into the loop].

I had just written 2000 years of future history. I had marked the whole Western imagery. The Gnostic Conspiracy was gonna control History. Yeah, the Great Conspiracy of the Providence. You know, every conspiracy must have an internal raison d'etre. That's even more important than the aim: a conspiracy has to be a self-sufficient game, an ever-changeable jigsaw puzzle... and one can get sick of puzzles. Those people have played with the icon I gave them for two fucking millennia. Their hopes of redemption have become an endless stream of tears and whimperings. Peter's descendants direct the masque of Faith with crusaders of the Italian Workers' Catholic Association, goblin-like Burman nuns and all the usual scum. I can't stand that shite, I haven't got the guts anymore.

I've been pondering a new plan for a while. I'm an action man, I can't stay in any longer, there are so many things to do, and numberless chances to take. A professional like me knows that the end of an era is like its beginning... It's the wilderness, the Far West, ideas cross-pollinate and new icons are created, new mythologies to play with, and above all new cosmic plots. One must smell the changes in the air, check out the clubs, the streets and the letters to the editor. For fuck's sake, we're at the end of the millennium; in 1148 that guy Malachi, the old Irish monk, foresaw the future in the darkness of his cell, and wrote a list of 112 popes to end in 2000 AD, and the end of the list is the beginning of the apocalypse. And guess what, the polack is the last pope but one! It won't take long: if the polack dies before 2000, the 99% of Malachi's prophecy will come true. It was Malachi himself who gave me the idea. That's that, he wrote that the last pope will dare call himself Peter II - a perfect circle, with the last pope named after the first one. He'll announce the end of the Church of Rome and the unfolding of the apocalypse.

That's what we need, but we also need a newer definition, say, a less authoritarian one... Hypocalipse, a revelation from below. This time I won't work with one messiah: the name shall be one, but anybody will adopt it. A multiple, modifiable icon that crosses all the trends, places and milieux.No more fucking gurus, just an open icon which priests and coppers cannot manipulate (indeed, they can, but as much as anybody else, there can be no monopoly as long as the kids have a telephone and a computer).

I'm working on a charming, smart character... He's got a catchy name which promises to spread by itself:

LUTHER BLISSETT.