Eco: Foucalt's Pendulum (44 page)

"After all, they were
Germans," I said. "I'll read the Rosi-crucian
manifestoes."

"But you said the
manifestoes were fake," Belbo said.

"So? What we're putting
together is fake."

"True," he said. "I was
forgetting that."

Elles deviennent le
Diable: debiles, timorees, vaillantes a des heures exceptionnelles,
sanglantes sans cesse, lacrymantes, caressantes, avec des bras qui
ignorent les lois....Fi! Fi! Elles ne valent rien, elles sont
faites d'un cote, d'un os courbe, d'une dissimulation
rentree...Elles baisent le serpent...

¡XJules Bois, Le
satanisme et la magie, Paris, Chailley, 1895,

He was forgetting that,
yes. The following file, brief and dazed, surely belongs to this
period.

FILENAME:
Ennoia

You arrived at the house
suddenly with your grass. I didn't want any, I won't allow any
vegetable substance to interfere with the functioning of my brain
(I'm lying, I smoke tobacco, drink distillations of grain). The few
times, in the early sixties, when somebody forced me to share in
the circulation of a joint, with that cheap slimy paper impregnated
with saliva, and the last drag using a pin, I wanted to
laugh.

But yesterday it was you
offering it to me, and I thought that maybe this was your way of
offering yourself, so I smoked, trusting. We danced close, the way
nobody's danced for years, and¡Xthe shame of it¡Xwhile Mahler's
Fourth was playing. I felt as if in my arms an ancient creature
were yeasting, with the sweet and wrinkled face of an old nanny
goat, a serpent rising from the depths of my loins, and I worshiped
you as a very old and universal aunt. Probably I went on holding my
body close to yours, but I felt also that you were in flight,
ascending, being transformed into gold, opening locked doors,
moving objects through the air as I penetrated your dark belly,
Megale Apophasis, Prisoner of the Angels.

Was it not you I sought
all along? I am here, always waiting for you. Did I lose you, each
time, because I didn't recognize you? Did I lose you, each time,
because I did recognize you but was afraid? Lose you because each
time, recognizing you, I knew I had to lose you?

But where did you end up
last night? I woke this morning with a headache.

Let us remember well,
however, the secret references,to a period of 120 years that
brother A...., the successor of D and last of the second line of
succession¡Xwho lived among many of us¡Xaddressed to us, we of the
third line of succession...

¡XFama Fratemitatis, in
Allgemeine und general Reformation, Cassel, Wessel, 1614

First thing, I read
through the two manifestoes of the Rosicrucians, the Fama and the
Confessio. I also took a look at the Chemical Wedding of Christian
Rosencreutz by Johann Valentin Andreae, because Andreae was the
presumed author of the manifestoes.

The two manifestoes
appeared in Germany between 1614 and 1615, thus about thirty years
after the 1584 meeting between the French and English Templars and
almost a century before the French were to meet with the
Germans.

I read, not to believe
what the manifestoes said, but to look beyond them, as if the words
meant something else. To help them mean something else, I knew I
should skip some passages and attach more importance to some
statements than to others. But this was exactly what the
Diabolicals and their masters were teaching us. If you move in the
refined time of revelation, do not follow the fussy, philistine
chains of logic and their monotonous sequentiality.

Taken literally, these
two texts were a pile of absurdities, riddles, contradictions.
Therefore they could not be saying what they seemed to be saying,
and were neither a call to profound spiritual reformation nor the
story of poor Christian Rosen-creutz. They were a coded message to
be read by superimposing them on a grid, a grid that left certain
spaces free while covering others. Like the coded message of
Provins, where only the initial letters counted. Having no grid, I
had to assume the existence of one. I had to read with
mistrust.

The manifestoes spoke of
the Plan of Provins¡Xthere could be no doubt about that. In the
grave of C. R. (allegory of the Grange-aux-Dimes, the night of June
23, 1344) a treasure had been placed for posterity to discover, a
treasure "hidden....for one hundred and twenty years." It was not
money; that much was clear. Not only was there a polemic against
the unrestrained greed of the alchemists, but the text said openly
that what had been promised was a great historical change. And if
the reader failed to understand that, the second manifesto said
that there could be no ignoring an offer that concerned the miranda
sextae aetatis (the wonders of the sixth and final appointment!),
and it repeated: "If only it had pleased God to bring down to us
the light of his sixth Candelabrum...if only we could read
everything in a single book and, reading it, understand and
remember....How pleasant it would be if through song (the message
read aloud!) we could transform rocks (lapis exillis!) into pearls
and precious stones..." And there was further talk of arcane
secrets, and of a government that was to be established in Europe,
and of a "great work" to be achieved...

It was said that C. R.
had gone to Spain (or Portugal?) and had shown the learned there
"whence to draw the true indicia of future centuries," but in vain.
Why in vain? Was it because a group of German Templars at the
beginning of the seventeenth century made public a very closely
guarded secret, forced to come out into the open on account of a
halt in the process of the transmission of the message?

The manifestoes
undeniably tried to reconstruct the phases of the Plan as
Diotallevi had summarized them. The first brother whose death was
mentioned was Brother I. O., who had "come to the end" in England.
So someone had arrived triumphantly at the first appointment. And a
second line of succession was mentioned, and a third. Thus far all
was apparently in order: the second line, the English one, met the
third line, the French one, in 1584. Those writing at the beginning
of the seventeenth century spoke only of what had happened to the
first three groups. In the Chemical Wedding, written by Andreae in
his youth, hence before the manifestoes (even if they appeared as
early as 1614), three majestic temples were mentioned, the three
places that must already have been known.

Yet, reading, I realized
that while the two manifestoes did indeed speak later in the same
terms as the Chemical Wedding, it was as if something upsetting had
happened meanwhile.

For example, why such
insistence on the fact that the time had come, the moment had come,
though the enemy had employed all his tricks to keep the occasion
from materializing? What occasion? It was said that C. R.'s final
goal was Jerusalem, but he hadn't been able to reach Jerusalem. Why
not? The Arabs were praised because they exchanged messages, but in
Germany the learned didn't know how to assist one another. What did
that mean? And there was a reference to "a larger group that wants
the pasture all for itself." Evidently some party, pursuing its
private interests, was trying to upset the Plan, and evidently
there had in fact been a serious setback.

The Fama said that at
the beginning someone had worked out a magic writing (why of
course, the message of Provins), but that the Clock of God struck
every minute "whereas ours is unable to strike even the hours." Who
had missed the strokes of the divine clock, who had failed to
arrive at a certain place at the right moment? There was a
reference to an original group of brothers who could have revealed
a secret philosophy but had decided, instead, to disperse
throughout the world.

The manifestoes breathed
uneasiness, uncertainty, bewilderment. The brothers of the first
lines of succession had each arranged to be replaced "by a worthy
successor," but "they decided to keep secret....the place of their
burial and even today we do not know where they are
buried."

What did this really
refer to? What sepulcher was without an address? It was becoming
obvious to me that the manifestoes were written because some
information had been lost. An appeal was being made to anyone who
happened to possess that information: He should come
forward.

The end of the Fama was
unequivocal: "Again we ask all the learned of Europe...to consider
with kindly disposition our offer...to let us know their
reflections...Because even if for the present we have not revealed
our names....anyone who sends us his name will be able to confer
with us personally, or¡X if some impediment exists¡Xin
writing."

This was exactly what
the colonel had intended to do by publishing his story: force
someone to emerge from his silence.

There had been a gap, a
hiatus, an unraveling. In the tomb of C. R., there was written not
only post 120 annos patebo, to recall the schedule of the
appointments, but also Nequaquam vacuum; not "The void does not
exist," but "The void should not exist." A void had been created,
and it had to be filled!

Once again I asked
myself: Why were these things being said in Germany, where, if
anything, the fourth line should simply wait with saintly patience
for its own turn to come? The Germans couldn't complain¡Xin
1614¡Xof a failed appointment in Marienburg, because the Marienburg
appointment would not take place until 1704.

Only one conclusion was
possible: the Germans were complaining because the preceding
appointment had not taken place.

This was the key! The
Germans (the fourth line) were lamenting the fact that the English
(the second line) had failed to reach the French (the third line).
Of course. In the text you could find allegories that were almost
childishly transparent: the tomb of C. R. is opened and in it are
found the signatures of the brothers of the first and second
circles, but not of the third. The Portuguese and the English are
there, but where are the French?

In other words, the
English had missed the French. Yet the English, according to what
we had established, were the only ones who had any idea where to
find the French, just as the French were the only ones who had any
idea where to find the Germans. So, even if the French found the
Germans in 1704, they would have shown up minus two-thirds of what
they were supposed to deliver.

The Rosicrucians came
out into the open, accepting the known risks, because that was the
only way to save the Plan.

We do not even know with
certainty if the Brothers of the second line possessed the same
knowledge as those of the first, or if they were given all the
secrets.

¡XFama Fraternitatis, in
Allgemeine und general Reformation, Cassel, Wessel, 1614

I told Belbo and
Diotallevi. They agreed that the secret meaning of the manifestoes
should be clear even to a Diabolical.

"Now it's all clear,"
Diotallevi said. "We were stuck on the notion that the Plan had
been blocked at the passage from the Germans to the Paulicians,
while in fact it had been blocked in 1584, at the passage from
England to France."

"But why?" Belbo asked.
"What reason can there be that the English were unable to keep
their appointment with the French in 1584? The English knew where
the Refuge was."

Seeking truth, he turned
to Abulafia. As a test, he asked for two random entries. The output
was:

Minnie Mouse is Mickey's
fiancee

Thirty days hath
September April June and November

"Now, let's see," Belbo
said. "Minnie has an appointment with Mickey, but by mistake she
makes it for the thirty-first of September, and
Mickey..."

"Hold it, everybody!" I
said. "Minnie could have made a mistake only if her date with
Mickey was for October 5, 1582!"

"Why?"

"The Gregorian reform of
the calendar! Why, it's obvious. In 1582 the Gregorian reform went
into effect, correcting the Julian calendar; and to make things
come out even, ten days in the month of October were abolished, the
fifth to the fourteenth!"

"But the appointment in
France is for 1584, Saint John's Eve, June 23."

"That's right. But as I
recall, the reform didn't go into effect immediately everywhere." I
consulted the perpetual calendar we had on the shelf. "Here we are.
The reform was promulgated in 1582, and the days between October 5
and October 14 were abolished, but this applied only to the pope.
France adopted the new calendar in 1583 and abolished the tenth to
the nineteenth of December. In Germany there was a schism: the
Catholic regions adopted the reform in 1584, with Bohemia, but the
Protestant regions adopted it in 1775, almost two hundred years
later, and Bulgaria¡Xand this is a fact to bear in mind¡Xadopted it
only in 1917! Now, let's look at England...It adopted the Gregorian
calendar in 1752. That's to be expected: in their hatred of the
papists, the Anglicans also held out for two centuries. So you see
what happened. France abolished ten days at the end of 1583, and by
June 1584 the French were all accustomed to it. But when it was
June 23, 1584, in France, in England it was still June 13, and ask
youself whether a good Englishman, Templar though he may have been,
would have taken this into account. They drive on the left even
today, and ignored the decimal system for ages...So, then, the
English show up at the Refuge on what for them is June 23, except
that for the French it's already July 3. We can assume the
appointment wasn't to take place with fanfares; it would be a
furtive meeting at a certain corner at a certain hour. The French
go to the place on June 23; they wait a day, two days, three,
seven, and then they leave, thinking that something has happened.
Maybe they give up in despair on the very eve of July 3. The
English arrive on the third and find nobody there. Maybe they also
wait a week, and nobody shows. The two grand masters have missed
each other." "Sublime," Belbo said. "That's what happened. But why
is it the German Rosicrucians who go public, and not the
English?"

I asked for another day,
searched my card files, and came back to the office glowing with
pride. I had found a clue, an almost invisible clue, but that's how
Sam Spade works. Nothing is trivial or insignificant to his eagle
eye. Toward 1584, John Dee, mage and cabalist, astrologer to the
queen of England, was assigned to study the reform of the Julian
calendar.

"The English Templars
meet the Portuguese in 1464. After that date, the British Isles
seem to be struck by a cabalistic fervor. Anyway, the Templars work
on what they have learned, preparing for the next encounter. John
Dee is the leader of this magic and hermetic renaissance. He
collects a personal library of four thousand volumes, a library in
the spirit of the Templars of Provins. His Monas Hieroglyphica
seems directly inspired by the Tabula smaragdina, the bible of the
alchemists. And what does John Dee do from 1584 on? He reads the
Steganographia of Trithemius! He reads it in manuscript, of course,
because it appeared in print for the first time only in the early
seventeenth century. Dee, the grand master of the English group
that suffered the failure of the missed appointment, wants to
discover what happened, where the error lay. Since he is also a
good astronomer, he slaps himself on the brow and says, ¡¥What an
idiot I was!' He starts studying the Gregorian reform, after he
obtains an appanage from Elizabeth, to see how to rectify the
mistake. But he realizes it's too late. He doesn't know whom to get
in touch with in France. He has contacts, however, in the
Mittel-europaische area. The Prague of Rudolf II is one big
alchemist laboratory; so Dee goes to Prague and meets Khunrath, the
author of Amphitheatrum sapientiae aeternae, whose allegorical
plates later influenced both Andreae and the Rosicrucian
manifestoes. What sort of relationships does Dee establish? I don't
know. Shattered by remorse at having committed an irreparable
error, he dies in 1608. Not to worry, though, because in London
someone else is at work¡Xa man who, everybody now agrees, was a
Rosicrucian and who spoke of the Rosicrucians in his New Atlantis.
I mean Francis Bacon."

"Did Bacon really talk
about them?" Belbo asked.

"Strictly speaking, no,
but a certain John Heydon rewrote the New Atlantis under the title
The Holy Land, and he put the Rosicrucians in it. But for us that
makes no difference. Bacon didn't mention them by name for obvious
reasons of discretion, but it's as if he did."

"And a pox on
doubters."

"Right. It's because of
Bacon that attempts are made to strengthen relations between the
English and German circles. In 1613 Elizabeth, daughter of James I,
now reigning, marries Frederick V, Elector Palatine of the Rhine.
After the death of Rudolf II, Prague is no longer the ideal
location; Heidelberg is. The wedding of the elector and the
princess is a triumph of Templar allegories. In the course of the
London festivities, Bacon himself is the impresario, and an
allegory of mystical knighthood is performed, with an appearance of
the knights on the top of a hill. It is obvious that Bacon is now
Dee's successor, grand master of the English Templar
group..."

"And since he is clearly
the author of the plays of Shakespeare, we should also reread the
complete works of the bard, which certainly talk about nothing else
but the Plan," Belbo said. "Saint John's Eve, a midsummer night's
dream."

"June 23 is not
midsummer."

"Poetic license. I
wonder why everybody overlooked these clues, these clear
indications. It's all so unbearably obvious."

"We've been led astray
by rationalist thought," Diotallevi said. "I keep telling
you."

"Let Casaubon go on; it
seems to me he's done an excellent job."

"Not much more to say.
After the London festivities, the festivities begin in Heidelberg,
where Salomon de Caus has built for the elector the hanging gardens
of which we saw a dim reflection that night in Piedmont, as you'll
recall. And in the course of these festivities, an allegorical
float appears, celebrating the bridegroom as Jason, and from the
two masts of the ship recreated on the float hang the symbols of
the Golden Fleece and the Garter. I hope you haven't forgotten that
the Golden Fleece and the Garter are also found on the columns of
Tomar...Everything fits. In the space of a year, the Rosicrucian
manifestoes come out: the appeal that the English Templars, with
the help of their German friends, are making to all Europe, to
reunite the lines of the interrupted Plan." "But what exactly are
they after?"