Ludibrium is a word derived from Latin ludus (plural ludi), meaning a plaything or a trivial game.
In Latin ludibrium denotes an object of fun, and at the same time, of scorn and derision, and it also denotes a capricious game itself: e.g., ludibria ventis (Virgil), "the playthings of the winds", ludibrium pelagis (Lucretius), "the plaything of the waves"; Ludibrio me adhuc habuisti (Plautus), "Until now you have been toying with me."
[1] However, in his Peregrini in Patria errores (1618) Andreae compares the world to an amphitheatre where no one is seen in their true light.
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.
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.