Eco: Foucalt's Pendulum (24 page)

"It did happen that way.
You should read some Feuerbach, instead of those junk books of
yours."

"Amparo, the sun's
coming up."

"We must be
crazy."

"Rosy-fingered dawn
gently caresses the waves..."

"Yes, go on. It's
Yemanja. Listen! She's coming."

"Show me your
ludibria..."

"Oh, the
Tintinnabulum!"

"You are my Atalanta
Fugiens..."

"Oh, my Turris
Babel..."

"I want the Arcana
Arcanissima, the Golden Fleece, pale et rose comme un coquillage
marin..."

"Sssh...Silentium post
clamores," she said.

It is probable that the
majority of the supposed Rosy Crosses, generally so designated,
were in reality only Rosicrucians...Indeed, it is certain that they
were in no way members, for the simple fact that they were members
of such associations. This may seem paradoxical at first, and
contradictory, but is nevertheless easily
comprehensible...

¡XRen6 Guenon, Aperfu
sur I'initiation, Paris, Editions Traditi onelles, 1981, XXXVIII,
p. 241

We returned to Rio, and
I went back to work. One day I read in an illustrated magazine that
there was an Order of the Ancient and Accepted Rosy Cross in the
city. I suggested to Amparo that we go and take a look, and
reluctantly she came along.

The office was in a side
street; its plate-glass window contained plaster statuettes of
Cheops, Nefertiti, the Sphinx.

There was a plenary
session scheduled for that very afternoon: "The Rosy Cross and the
Umbanda." The speaker was one Professor Bramanti, Referendary of
the Order in Europe, Secret Knight of the Grand Priory in Partibus
of Rhodes, Malta, and Thessalonica.

We decided to go in. The
room, fairly shabby, was decorated with Tantric miniatures
depicting die serpent Kundalini, the one the Templars wanted to
reawaken with the kiss on the behind. All things considered, I
thought, it had hardly been worth crossing the Atlantic to discover
a new world: I could have found the same things at the Picatrix
office.

Professor Bramanti sat
behind a table covered with a red cloth, facing a rather sparse and
sleepy audience. He was a corpulent gentleman who might have been
described as a tapir if it hadn't been for his bulk. He was already
talking when we came in. His style was pompous and oratorical. He
couldn't have started long before, however, because he was still
discussing the Rosicru-cians during the eighteenth dynasty, under
the reign of Ah-mose I.

Four Veiled Masters, he
said, kept watch over the race that twenty-five thousand years
before the foundation of Thebes had originated the civilization of
the Sahara. The pharaoh Ahmose, influenced by them, established the
Great White Fraternity, guardian of the antediluvian wisdom the
Egyptians still retained. Bramanti claimed to have documents
(naturally, inaccessible to the profane) that dated back to the
sages of the Temple of Karnak and their secret archives. The symbol
of the rose and the cross had been conceived by the pharaoh
Akhenaton. Someone has the papyrus, Bramanti said, but don't ask me
who.

The Great White
Fraternity was ultimately responsible for the education of: Hermes
Trismegistus (who influenced die Italian Renaissance just as much
as he later influenced Princeton gno-sis), Homer, the Druids of
Gaul, Solomon, Solon, Pythagoras, Plotinus, the Essenes, the
Therapeutae, Joseph of Arimathea (who took the Grail to Europe),
Alcuin, King Dagobert, Saint Thomas, Bacon, Shakespeare, Spinoza,
Jakob Bohme, Debussy, Einstein. (Amparo whispered that he seemed to
be missing only Nero, Cambronne, Geronimo, Pancho Villa, and Buster
Kea-ton.)

As for the influence of
the original Rosy^ Cross on Christianity, Bramanti pointed out, for
those who hadn't got their bearings, that it was no accident that
Jesus had died on a cross.

The sages of the Great
White Fraternity were also the founders of the first Masonic lodge,
back in the days of King Solomon. It was clear, from his works,
that Dante had been a Rosicrucian and a Mason¡Xas had Saint Thomas,
incidentally. In cantos XXIV and XXV of the "Paradiso" one finds
the triple kiss of Prince Rosicrux, the pelican, white tunics (me
same as those worn by the old men of the Apocalypse), and the three
theological virtues of Masonic chapters (Faith, Hope, and Charity).
In fact, the symbolic flower of the Rosicrucians (the white rose of
cantos XXX and XXXI) was adopted by the Church of Rome as symbol of
the mother of the Savior. Hence the Rosa Mystica of the
litanies.

It was equally clear
that the Rosicrucians had lived on through the Middle Ages, a fact
shown not only by their infiltration of the Templars, but also by
far more explicit documents. Bramanti cited one Kiesewetter, who
demonstrated in the late nineteenth century that the Rosicrucians
had manufactured four quintals of gold for the Prince-Elector of
Saxony in medieval times, clear proof being available on a certain
page of the Theatrum Chem-icum, published in Strasbourg in 1613.
But few have remarked the Templar references in the legend of
William Tell. Tell cuts his arrow from a branch of mistletoe, a
plant of Aryan mythology, and he hits an apple, symbol of the third
eye activated by the serpent Kundalini. And we know, of course,
that the Aryans came from India, where the Rosicrucians took refuge
after leaving Germany.

Of the various groupings
that claimed descent from the Great White Fraternity¡Xoften
childishly¡XBramanti recognized just one as legitimate: the
Rosicrucian Fellowship of Max Heindel, and that only because Alain
Kardek had been educated in its circles. Kardek was the father of
spiritualism, and it was his theosophy, which contemplated contact
with the souls of the departed, that spiritually formed umbanda
spirituality, the glory of our most noble Brazil. In this
theosophy, Aum Banda, it seems, is a Sanskrit expression denoting
the divine principle and source of life. ("They tricked us again,"
Amparo murmured. "Not even the word ¡¥umbanda' is ours; the only
African thing about it is the sound.")

The root is Aum or Um,
which is the Buddhist Om and also the name of God in the language
of Adam. If the syllable urn is properly pronounced, it becomes a
powerful mantra and produces fluid currents of harmony in the
psyche through the siakra, or frontal plexus. ("What's the frontal
plexus?" Amparo asked. "An incurable disease?")

Bramanti explained that
there was a big difference between true brethren of the Rosy
Cross¡Xheirs of the Great White Fraternity, obviously secret, such
as the Ancient and Accepted Order, whose unworthy representative he
was, and the "Rosicrucians," who claimed attachment to the Rosy
Cross mystique for opportunistic reasons, lacking any
justification. He urged his audience to give no credence to any
Rosicrucian who called himself a brother of the Rosy Cross. (Amparo
remarked that one man's Rosy Cross was another man's
Rosicrucian.)

One ill-advised member
of the audience stood up and asked how Professor Bramanti's order
could claim to be authentic, since it violated the law of silence
observed by all true adepts of the Great White
Fraternity.

Bramanti rose to reply.
"I was unaware that we had been infiltrated by the paid
provocateurs of atheistic materialism. Under these circumstances I
have no more to say." And at that he walked out with a certain
majesty.

That evening, Aglie
telephoned to see how we were and to tell us that we had finally
been invited to a rite, the next day. In the meantime, he suggested
we have a drink. Amparo had a political meeting with her friends; I
went to join Aglie by myself.

Valentiniani...nihil
magis curant quam occultare quod praedicant: si tamen praedicant,
qui occultant...Si bona fides quaeres, concrete vultu, suspense
supercilio¡Xaltum est¡Xaiunt. Si subtiliter tentes, per
ambiguitates bilingues communem fidern affirmant. Si scire te
subos-tendas, negant quidquid agnoscunt...Habent artificium quo
prius persuadeant, quam edoceant.

¡XTertullian, Adversus
Valentinianos

Aglie invited me to a
place where some ageless men still made a batida in the traditional
way. In just a few steps we left the civilization of Carmen
Miranda, and I found myself in a dark room where some natives were
smoking cigars thick as sausages. The tobacco, as broad,
transparent leaves, was rolled into what looked like old hawser,
worked with the fingertips, and wrapped in oily straw paper. It
kept going out, but you could understand what it must have been
like when Sir Walter Raleigh discovered it.

I told him about my
afternoon adventure.

"So now it's the
Rosicrucians as well? Your thirst for knowledge is insatiable, my
friend. But pay no attention to those lunatics. They constantly
talk about irrefutable documents that no one ever produces. I know
that Bramanti. He lives in Milan, but he travels all over the world
spreading his gospel. ,A harmless man, though he still believes in
Kiesewetter. Hordes of Rosicrucians insist on that page of the
Theatrum Chemicum. But if you actually take a look at it¡Xand I
might modestly add that I have a copy in my little Milanese
library¡Xthere is no such quotation."

"Herr Kiesewetter's a
clown, then."

"But much quoted. The
trouble is that even the nineteenth-century occultists fell victim
to the spirit of positivism: a thing is true only if it can be
proved. Take the debate on the Corpus Hermeticum. When that
document came to light in Europe in the fifteenth century, Pico
della Mirandola, Ficino, and many other people of great wisdom
immediately realized that it had to be a work of most ancient
wisdom, antedating the Egyptians, antedating even Moses himself. It
contained ideas that would later be expressed by Plato and by
Jesus."

"What do you mean,
later? That's the same argument Bramanti used to prove Dante was a
Mason. If the Corpus repeats ideas of Plato and Jesus, it must have
been written after them!"

"You see? You're doing
it, too. That was exactly the reasoning of modem philologists, who
also added wordy linguistic analyses intended to show that the
Corpus was written in the second or third century of our era. It's
like saying that Cassandra must have been born after Homer because
she predicted the destruction of Troy. The belief that time is a
linear, directed sequence running from A to B is a modem illusion.
In fact, it can also go from B to A, the effect producing the
cause...What does ¡¥coming before' mean, or ¡¥coming after'? Does
your beautiful Amparo come before or after her motley ancestors?
She is too splendid¡Xif you will allow a dispassionate opinion from
a man old enough to be her father. She thus comes before. She is
the mysterious origin of whatever went into her
creation."

"But at this
point..."

"It is the whole idea of
¡¥point' that is mistaken. Ever since Parmenides, points have been
posited by science in an attempt to establish whence and whither
something moves. But in fact nothing moves, and there is only one
point, the one from which all others are generated at the same
instant. The occultists of the nineteenth century, like those of
our own time, naively tried to prove the truth of a thing by
resorting to the methods of scientific falsehood. You must reason
not according to the logic of time but according to the logic of
Tradition. One time symbolizes all others, and the invisible Temple
of the Rosicrucians therefore exists and has always existed,
regardless of the current of history¡Xyour history. The time of the
final revelation is not time by the clock. Its bonds are rooted in
the time of ¡¥subtle history,' where the befores and afters of
science are of scant importance."

"In other words, those
who maintain that the Rosicrucians are eternal¡X"

"Are scientific fools,
because they seek to prove that which must be known without proof.
Do you think the worshipers we will see tomorrow night are capable
of proving all the things that Kardek told them? Not at all. They
simply know, because they are willing to know. If we had all
retained this receptivity to secret knowledge, we would be dazzled
by revelations. There is no need to wish; it's enough to be
willing."

"But look¡Xand forgive
my banality¡Xdo the Rosicrucians exist or not?''

"What do you mean by
exist?"

"You tell
me."

"The Great White
Fraternity¡Xwhether you call them Rosicrucians or the spiritual
knighthood of which the Templars are a temporary incarnation¡Xis a
cohort of a few, a very few, elect wise men who journey through
human history in order to preserve a core of eternal knowledge.
History does not happen randomly. It is the work of the Masters of
the World, whom nothing escapes. Naturally, the Masters of the
World protect themselves through secrecy. And that is why anyone
who says he is a master, a Rosicrucian, a Templar is lying. They
must be sought elsewhere."

"Then the story goes on
endlessly."

"Exactly. And it
demonstrates the shrewdness of the Masters."

"But what do they want
people to know?"

"Only that there's a
secret. Otherwise, if everything is as it appears to be, why go on
living?"

"And what is the
secret?"

"What the revealed
religions have been unable to reveal. The secret lies
beyond."