Eco: Foucalt's Pendulum (22 page)

There is a body that
enfolds the whole of the world; imagine it in the form of a circle,
for this is the form of the Whole...Imagine now that under the
circle of this body are the 36 decans, midway between the total
circle and the circle of the zodiac, separating these two circles
and, so to speak, delimiting the zodiac, transported along it with
the planets...The changing of kings, the rising up of cities,
famine, plague, the tides of the sea, earthquakes: none of these
takes place without the influence of the decans¡K

¡XCorpus Hermeticus,
Stobaeus, excerptum VI

"What treasures of
knowledge?"

"Do you realize how
great the second and third centuries after Christ were? Not because
of the pomp of the empire in its sunset, but because of what was
burgeoning in the Mediterranean basin then. In Rome, the
Praetorians were slaughtering their emperors, but in the
Mediterranean area, there flourished the epoch of Apuleius, the
mysteries of Isis, and that great return to spirituality:
Neoplatonism, gnosis. Blissful times, before the Christians seized
power and began to put heretics to death. A splendid epoch, in
which dwelled the nous, a time dazzled by ecstasies and peopled
with presences, emanations, demons, and angelic hosts. The
knowledge I am talking about is diffuse and disjointed; it is as
ancient as the world itself, reaching back beyond Pythagoras, to
the Brahmans of India, the Hebrews, the mages, the gymnosophists,
and even the barbarians of the far north, the Druids of Gaul and
the British Isles. The Greeks called the barbarians by that name
because to overeducated Greek ears, their languages sounded like
barking, and the Greeks therefore assumed that they were unable to
express themselves. In fact, the barbarians knew much more than the
Hellenes at the time, precisely because their language was
impenetrable. Do you believe the people who will dance tonight know
the meaning of all the chants and magic names they will utter?
Fortunately, they do not, and each unknown name will be a kind of
breathing exercise, a mystical vocalization.

"The age of the
Antonines...The world was full of mar-velous correspondences,
subtle resemblances; the only way to penetrate them¡Xand to be
penetrated by them¡Xwas through dreams, oracles, magic, which allow
us to act on nature and her forces, moving like with like.
Knowledge is elusive and volatile; it escapes measurement. That's
why the conquering god of that era was Hermes, inventor of all
trickery, god of crossroads and thieves. He was also the creator of
writing, which is the art of evasion and dissimulation and a
navigation that carries us to the end of all boundaries, where
everything dissolves into the horizon, where cranes lift stones
from the ground and weapons transform life into death, and water
pumps make heavy matter float, and philosophy deludes and
deceives...And do you know where Hermes is today? Right here. You
passed him when you came through the door. They call him Exu,
messenger of the gods, go-between, trader, who is ignorant of the
difference between good and evil."

He looked at us with
amused distrust. "You believe that I am as hasty in distributing
gods as Hermes is in distributing merchandise. But look at this
book, which I bought this morning in a little shop in Pelourinho.
Magic and mystery of Saint Cyprian, recipes for spells to win love
or cause your enemy's death, invocations to the angels and to the
Virgin. Popular literature for these mystics whose skin is black.
But this is Saint Cyprian of Antioch, about whom there is an
immense literature dating from the silver age. His parents wanted
him to learn all there was to know about the earth¡Xland, sea, and
air¡Xso they sent him to the most distant realms, that he might
acquire all mysteries, including the generation and corruption of
herbs and the virtues of plants and of animals: the secrets not of
natural history but of occult science, those buried in the depths
of distant and archaic traditions. At Delphi, Cyprian dedicated
himself to Apollo and to the dramaturgy of the serpent; he studied
the mysteries of Mithra; on Mount Olympus at fifteen, guided by
fifteen hi-erophants, he attended the rites that summon the Prince
of This World, in order to master his intrigues; in Argos he was
initiated into the mysteries of Hera; in Phrygia he learned
hepatoscopic fortunetelling. At last there was nothing left of
land, sea, or air that he did not know, no ghost, no object, no
artifice of any kind, not even the art of altering writing through
sorcery. In the underground temples of Memphis he had learned how
demons communicate with earthly things and places, what they loathe
and love, how they dwell in darkness and how they mount resistance
in certain domains, how they are able to possess souls and bodies,
the feats of higher knowledge they can perform, of memory, terror,
and illusion, and the art of causing turmoil in the earth,
influencing underground currents...Then, alas, he was converted,
but something of his knowledge remained and was passed on, and we
find it here, in the mouths and minds of these ragged people you
call idolaters. My lovely friend, a little while ago you looked at
me as if I were a ci-devant. Who among us is living in the past?
You, who would bestow the horrors of the toiling industrial age
upon this country, or I, who wish that our poor Europe might
recover the naturalness and faith of these children of
slaves?"

"Jesus," Amparo said in
a nasty hiss. "You know as well as I do that it's just another way
of keeping them quiet..."

"Not quite. Capable of
expectation. Without a sense of expectation, there can be no
paradise; isn't that what you Europeans have taught us?"

"I'm a
European?"

"The important thing is
not skin color but faith in Tradition. Granted, these children of
slaves pay a price in returning a sense of expectation to a West
paralyzed by well-being; perhaps they even suffer, but still they
know the language of the spirits of nature, of the air, the waters,
and the winds..."

"You people are
exploiting us again."

"Again?"

"Yes. You should have
learned your lesson in ¡¥89, Count. We get fed up, and then..."
Smiling like an angel, she drew her beautiful hand straight across
her throat. For me, even Amparo's teeth aroused desire.

"How dramatic!" Aglie
said, taking his snuffbox from his pocket and stroking it with his
fingers. "So you've recognized me. But it wasn't the slaves who
made heads roll in ¡¥89; it was the upstanding bourgeoisie, whom
you should hate. Besides, the Comte de Saint-Germain has seen many
a head roll in all his centuries, and many a head reattached. But
wait, here comes the mae-de-santo, the ialorixa."

Our meeting with the
abbess of the terreiro was calm, cordial, civilized, and rich in
folklore. She was a big black woman with a dazzling smile. At first
you would have said she was a housewife, but when we began talking,
I understood how women like this could rule the cultural life of
Salvador.

"Are the orixas people
or forces?" I asked her. The mae-de-santo answered that they were
forces, obviously: water, wind, leaves, rainbows. But how did she
prevent ordinary people from seeing them as warriors, women, saints
of the Catholic Church? "Do you yourselves not also worship a
cosmic force in the form of virgins?'' she replied. The important
thing is to venerate the force. The aspect of the force must fit
each man's ability to comprehend.

She invited us to visit
the chapels in the garden before the rite began. In the garden were
the houses of the orixas. A swarm of black girls in Bahian dress
was cheerfully gathered there, making the final
preparations.

The houses of the orixas
were arranged around the garden like the chapels of a sacred mount.
Outside each one was displayed the image of the corresponding
saint. Inside, the garish colors of flowers clashed with those of
the statues and the just-cooked foods offered to the gods. White
for Oxala, blue and pink for Yemanja, red and white for Xang5,
yellow and gold for Ogun...Initiates kneeled and kissed the
threshold, touching themselves on the forehead and behind the
ear.

"But is Yemanja Our Lady
of the Conception or not?" I asked. "Is Xango Saint Jerome or
not?"

"Don't ask embarrassing
questions," Aglie advised. "It's even more complicated in an
umbanda. Saint Anthony and Saints Cosmas and Damian are part of the
Oxala line. Sirens, water nymphs, caboclas of the sea and the
rivers, sailors, and guiding stars are part of the Yemanja line.
The line of the Orient includes Hindus, doctors, scientists, Arabs
and Moroccans, Japanese, Chinese, Mongols, Egyptians, Aztecs,
Incas, Caribs, and Romans. To the Oxossi line belong the sun, the
moon, the caboclo of waterfalls, and the caboclo of the blacks. In
the Ogun line we come upon Ogun Beira-Mar, Rompe-Mato, lara, Mege,
Na-ruee...In other words, it all depends."

"Jesus," Amparo said
again.

"Oxala, you mean," I
murmured to her, my lips brushing her ear. "Calm down. No
pasaran."

The ialorixa showed us a
series of masks that some acolytes were bringing into the temple.
These were big straw dominoes, or hoods, which the mediums would
put on as they went into a trance, falling prey to the divinity.
This was a form of modesty, she explained. In some terreiros the
chosen danced with their faces bare, letting onlookers see their
passion. But the initiates should be shielded, respected, removed
from the curiosity of the profane or anyone who cannot understand
the inner jubilation and grace. That was the custom in this
terreiro, she said, and that was why outsiders were not readily
admitted. Maybe someday, she remarked, who knows? We might well
meet again.

But she didn't want us
to leave without sampling some of the comidas de santo¡Xnot from
the corbeils, which had to remain intact until the end of the rite,
but from her own kitchen. She took us to the back of the terreiro,
where there was a multicolored banquet of manioc, pimento, coco,
amendoim, gengibre, moqueca de siri-mole, vatapa, ef6, caruru,
black beans with farofa, amid a languid odor of African spices,
sweet and strong tropical flavors, which we tasted dutifully,
knowing that we were sharing the food of the ancient Sudanese gods.
And rightly so, the ialorixa told us, because each of us, whether
he knew it or not, was the child of an orixa, and often it was
possible to tell which one. I boldly asked whose son I was. The
ialorixa demurred at first, saying she couldn't be sure, but then
she agreed to examine the palm of my hand. She looked into my eyes
and said: "You are a son of Oxala."

I was proud. Amparo, now
relaxed, suggested we find out whose son Aglie was, but he said he
preferred not to know.

When we were home again,
Amparo said to me: "Did you see his hand? Instead of the life line,
he has a series of broken lines. Like a stream that comes to a
stone, parts, and flows together again a meter farther on. The line
of a man who must have died many times."

"World champion of the
metempsychosis relay."

"No pasaran," Amparo
said, laughing.

Simply because they
change and hide their names, do not give their right age, and by
their own admission go about without allowing themselves to be
recognized, there is no logic that can deny that they necessarily
must exist.

¡XHeinrich Neuhaus, Pia
et ultimissima admonestatio de Fratri-bus Rosae-Crucis, nimirum: an
sint? quotes sint? unde nomen Mud sibi asciverunt, Danzig,
Schmidlin, 1618; French ed. 1623, p. 5

Diotallevi used to say
that Hesed was the Sefirah of grace and love, white fire, south
wind. The other evening in the periscope, I thought that those last
days with Amparo in Bahia belonged under that sign. You remember so
much while you wait for hours and hours in the darkness. I
remembered especially one of the last evenings. We had walked
through so many alleys and squares that our feet ached, and we went
to bed early, but we didn't feel like sleeping. Amparo, huddled
against the pillow in the fetal position, was pretending to read
one of my little pamphlets on the umbanda, propping it on her
knees. From time to time she would roll lazily onto her back, legs
spread, the book balanced on her belly, listening to me read from
the book on the Rosicrucians. I was trying to involve her in my
discoveries. It was a mild evening; as Belbo, exhausted with
literature, might have put it in one of his files, there was nought
but a lovely sighing of the wind. We had splurged on a good hotel;
there was a view of the sea from the window, and the still-lighted
closet kitchen offered the comforting sight of the basket of
tropical fruit we had bought at four that morning.

"It says that in 1614 an
anonymous work appeared in Germany entitled Allgemeine und general
Reformation, or General and common Reform of the entire Universe,
followed by Fama Fra-ternitatis of the Honorable Confraternity of
the Rosy-Cross, addressed to all learned Men and Sovereigns of
Europe, together with a brief Reply by Herr Haselmeyer, who for
this Reason was cast into Prison by the Jesuits and then placed in
Irons on a Galley. Now printed and made known to all the sincere of
Heart. Published in Cassel by Wilhelm Wessel.''

"A little long, isn't
it?"

"Apparently all titles
were like that in the seventeenth century. Lina Wertmuller wrote
them, too. Anyway, this was a satirical work, a fairy tale about a
general reform of mankind, partly plagiarized from Traiano
Boccalini's Ragguagli di Par-naso. But it contained a manifesto of
about a dozen pages¡Xthe Fama Fratemitatis¡Xwhich was republished
separately a year later, at the same time as another manifesto,
this one in Latin: Confessio fraternitatis Roseae Crucis, ad
eruditos Europae. Both present the Confraternity of the Rosy Cross
and talk about its founder, a mysterious C.R. Only later¡Xand from
other sources¡X was it learned, or presumed, that C.R. was one
Christian Ro-sencreutz."

"Why didn't they use the
full name?"

"The whole thing's full
of initials; they didn't use anybody's full name. They're all
G.G.M.P.I.; one is called P.O., an affectionate nickname. Anyway,
the pamphlet tells of the formative years of C.R., who first
visited the Holy Sepulcher, then set off for Damascus, moved on to
Egypt, and from there went to Fez, which must have been one of the
sanctuaries of Moslem wisdom at the time. There, our Christian, who
already knew Greek and Latin, learned Oriental languages, physics,
mathematics, andthe sciences of nature, accumulating all the
millennial wisdom of the Arabs and Africans, as well as cabala and
magic. He also translated a mysterious Liber M into Latin, and thus
came to know all the secrets of the macrocosm and microcosm. For
two centuries, everything Oriental had been fashionable, especially
if it was incomprehensible."

"They always go for
that. Hungry? Frustrated? Exploited? Mystery cocktail coming up.
Here..." She passed me a joint. "This is good stuff."

"See? You also seek to
lose yourself."

"Except that I know it's
only chemical. No mystery at all. It works even if you don't know
Hebrew. Come here."

"Wait. Next Rosencreutz
went to Spain, where he picked up more occult doctrines, claiming
that he was drawing closer to the center of all knowledge. In the
course of these travels¡Xwhich for an intellectual of the time was
a sort of total-wisdom trip-he realized that what was needed in
Europe was an association that would guide rulers along the paths
of wisdom and good."

"Very original. Well
worth it, all that studying. I want some cold mamaia."

"In the fridge. Do me a
favor. You go. I'm working."

"If you're working, that
makes you the ant. So be a good ant and get some
provisions."

"Mamaia is pleasure, so
the grasshopper should go. Otherwise I'll go, and you
read."

"No. Jesus, I hate the
white man's culture. I'll go."

Amparo went to the
little kitchen, and I enjoyed seeing her against the light.
Meanwhile, C.R. was on his way back from Germany, but instead of
devoting himself to the transmutation of metals, of which his now
immense knowledge made him capable, he decided to dedicate himself
to spiritual reformation. He therefore founded the confraternity,
inventing a language and magic writing that would be the foundation
of the wisdom of generations of brothers to come.

"No, I'll spill it on
the book. Put it in my mouth. Come on, no tricks, silly. That's
right...God, how good mamaia is, rosencreutzlische
Mutti-ja-ja...Anyway, what the first Rosicrucians wrote in the
first few years could have enlightened the world."

"Why? What did they
write?"

"There's the rub. The
manifesto doesn't say; it leaves you with your mouth watering. But
it was important; so important, it had to remain
secret."

"The
bastards."

"No! Hey, cut that out!
Well, as the Rosicrucians gained more and more members, they
decided to spread to the four corners of the earth, vowing to heal
the sick without charging, to dress according to the customs of
each country (never wearing clothes that would identify them), to
meet once a year, and to remain secret for a hundred
years."

"Tell me: what kind of
reformation were they after? I mean, hadn't there just been one?
What was Luther then? Shit?"

"No, you're wrong. This
was before the Protestant Reformation. There's a note here; it says
that a thorough reading of the Fama and the Confessio
evinces¡X"

"Evinces?"

"Evinces. Shows, makes
evident. Stop that, I'm trying to talk about the Rosy Cross. It's
serious."

"It evinces."

"Rosencreutz was born in
1378 and died in 1484, at the ripe old age of a hundred and six.
And it's not hard to guess that the secret confraternity made a
considerable contribution to the Reformation that celebrated its
centenary in 1615. In fact, Luther's coat of arms includes a rose
and a cross."

"Some
imagination."

"You expect Luther to
use a burning giraffe or a limp watch? We're all children of our
own time. I've found out whose child I am, so shut up and let me go
on. Around 1604 the brethren of the Rosy Cross were rebuilding a
part of their palace or secret castle, and they came across a
plaque with a big nail driven into it. When they pulled out the
nail, part of the wall collapsed, and they saw a door with
something written on it in big letters: POST CXX ANNOS
PATEBO..."

I had already learned
this from Belbo's letter, but still couldn't help reacting. "My
God..."

"What is it?"

"It's like a Templar
document that...A story I never told you, about a colonel
who¡X"

"What of it? The
Templars must have copied from the Rosi-crucians."

"But the Templars came
first."

"Then the Rosicrucians
copied from the Templars."

"What would I do without
you, darling?"

"That Aglie's ruined
you. You're looking everywhere for revelation."

"Me? I'm not looking for
anything."

"And a good thing, too.
Watch out for the opiate of the masses."

"El pueblo unido jamas
sera vencido."

"Go ahead, laugh. So
what did those idiots say?"

"Those idiots learned
everything they knew in Africa, weren't you listening?"

"And while they were in
Africa, they started packing us up and sending us here."

"Thank God. Otherwise
you might have been born in Pretoria." I kissed her. "Beyond the
door," I went on, "they found a sepulcher with seven sides and
seven corners, miraculously illuminated by an artificial sun. In
the middle was a circular altar decorated with various mottoes or
emblems, on the order of NEQUAQUAM VACUUM...."

"Quack quack what?
Signed, Donald Duck?"

"It's Latin. It means
¡¥the void does not exist.' "

"That's good to know.
Otherwise, think of the horror¡X"

"Do me a favor and turn
on the fan, animula vagula blan-dula."

"But it's
winter."

"Only for you people of
the wrong hemisphere, darling. For me it's July. Please, the fan.
It's not because you're a woman; just that it's on your side of the
bed. Thanks. Anyway, under the altar they found Rosencreutz's body,
intact. In his hand was a copy of Book I, crammed with infinite
knowledge. Too bad the world can't read it¡Xthe manifesto
says¡Xotherwise, gulp, wow, brr, squisssh!"

"Ouch."

"As I was saying, the
manifesto ends by promising that a huge treasure remains to be
discovered, along with stupendous revelations about the ties
between the macrocosm and the microcosm. And don't think that these
were a bunch of tacky alchemists offering to show us how to make
gold. No, that was small potatoes. They were aiming higher, in
every sense of the word. The manifesto announced that the Fama was
being distributed in five languages, and, soon to appear on this
screen, the Confessio. The brothers awaited replies and reviews
from learned and ignorant alike. Write, telephone, send in your
names, and we'll see if you're worthy to share our secrets, of
which we have given you only the faintest notion. Sub umbra alarum
tuarum lehova."

"Which
means?"

"It's a formula of
conclusion. Over and out. It sounds as if the Rosicrucians were
dying to tell what they had learned, and were anxiously waiting for
the right listener. But not one word about what it was they
knew."

"Like that fellow
whose
icture was in the ad we saw on the plane: Send me ten dollars, and
I'll tell you how to become a millionaire."