Eco: Foucalt's Pendulum (40 page)

Poor idiot! Are you so
foolish as to believe we will openly teach you the greatest and
most important of secrets? I assure you that anyone who attempts to
study, according to the ordinary and literal sense of their words,
what the Hermetic Philosophers write, will soon find himself in the
twists of a labyrinth from which he will be unable to escape,
having no Ariadne's thread to lead him out.

¡XArtephius

Descending, I came to a
room below the ground, dimly lighted, with walls in rocaille like
those of fountains in a park. In one corner I saw an opening like
the bell of a trumpet. I heard sounds coming from it. When I
approached, the sounds became more distinct, until I could catch
sentences, as clear and precise as if they were being uttered at my
side. An Ear of Dionysius! Evidently the ear communicated with one
of the upper rooms, picking up the conversation of those who stood
near its aperture.

"Signora, I'll tell you
something I've never told anyone else. I'm tired...I've worked with
cinnabar, with mercury, I sublimated spirits, did distillations
with salts of iron, fermentations, and still I haven't found the
Stone. I prepared strong waters, corrosive waters, burning waters,
all in vain. I used eggshells, sulfur, vitriol, arsenic, sal
ammoniac, quartz, alkalis, oxides of rock, saltpeter, soda, salt of
tartar, and potash alum. Believe me, do not trust them, avoid the
imperfect metals; otherwise you will be deceived, as I was
deceived. I tried everything: blood, hair, the soul of Saturn,
marcasites, aes ustum, saffron of Mars, tincture of iron, litharge,
antimony. To no avail. I extracted water from silver, calcified
silver both with and without salt, and using aqua vitae I extracted
corrosive oils. I employed milk, wine, curds, the sperm of the
stars which falls to earth, chelidon, placentas, ashes,
even..."

"Even...?"

"Signora, there's
nothing in this world that demands more caution than the truth. To
tell the truth is like leeching one's own heart..."

"Enough, enough! You've
got me all excited."

"I dare confess my
secret only to you. I am of no place and no era. Beyond time and
space, I live my eternal existence. There are beings who no longer
have guardian angels: I am one of them..."

"But why have you
brought me here"

Another voice: "My dear
Balsamo! Playing with the myth of immortality, eh?"

"Idiot! Immortality is
not a myth. It's a fact."

I was about to leave,
bored by this chatter, when I heard Salon. He was speaking in a
whisper, tensely, as if gripping someone by the arm. I also
recognized the voice of Pierre.

"Come now," Salon was
saying, "don't tell me that you too are here for this alchemical
foolishness. And don't tell me you came to enjoy the cool air of
the gardens. Did you know that after Heidelberg, Caus accepted an
invitation from the king of France to supervise the cleaning of
Paris?"

"Les
facades?"

"He wasn't Malraux. It
must have been the sewers. Curious, isn't it? The man invented
symbolic orange groves and apple orchards for emperors, but what
really interested him were the underground passages of Paris. In
the Paris of those days there wasn't an actual network of sewers;
it was a combination of canals on the surface and, below, conduits,
about which little was known. The Romans, from the time of the
republic, knew everything about their Cloaca Maxima, yet fifteen
hundred years later, in Paris, people were ignorant of what went on
beneath their feet. Caus accepted the king's invitation because he
wanted to find out. What did he find out?

"After Caus, Colbert
sent prisoners down to clean the conduits¡Xthat was the pretext,
and bear in mind that this was also the period of the Man in the
Iron Mask¡Xbut they escaped through the excrement, followed the
current to the Seine, and sailed off in a boat, because nobody had
the courage to confront those wretches covered with stinking slime
and swarms of flies...Then Colbert stationed gendarmes outside the
various openings of the sewer, and the prisoners, forced to stay in
the passages, died. In three centuries the city engineers managed
to map only three kilometers of sewers. But in the eighteenth
century there were twenty-six kilometers of sewers, and on the very
eve of the Revolution. Does that suggest anything to
you?"

"Ah, you know,
this¡X"

"New people were coming
to power, and they knew something their predecessors didn't.
Napoleon sent teams of men down into the darkness, through the
detritus of the capital. Those who had the courage to work there
found many things: gold, necklaces, jewels, rings, and God knows
what else that had fallen into those passages. Some bravely
swallowed what they found, then came out, took a laxative, and
became rich. It was discovered that many houses had cellar
trapdoors that led directly to the sewer."

"Ca alors..."

"In a period when people
emptied chamber pots out the window? And why did they have sewers
with sidewalks along them, and iron rings set in die wall, to hang
on to? These passages were the equivalent of those tapis francs
where the lowlife gathered¡Xthe pegre, as it was called then¡Xand
if the police arrived, they could escape and resurface somewhere
else."

"Legendes..."

"You think so? Whom are
you trying to protect? Under Napoleon III, Baron Haussmann required
all the houses of Paris, by law, to construct an independent
cesspool, then an underground corridor leading to the sewer
system...A tunnel two meters thirty centimeters high and a meter
and a half wide. You understand? Every house in Paris was to be
connected by an underground corridor to the sewers. And you know
the extent of the sewers of Paris today? Two thousand kilometers,
and on various levels. And it all began with the man who designed
those gardens in Heidelberg..."

"So?"

"I see you do not wish
to talk. You know something, but you won't tell me."

"Please, leave me. It's
late. I am expected at a meeting." A sound of footsteps.

I didn't understand what
Salon was getting at. Pressed against the rocaille by the ear, I
looked around and felt that I was underground myself, and it seemed
to me that the mouth of that phonurgic channel was but the
beginning of a descent into dark tunnels that went to the center of
the earth, tunnels alive with Nibelungs. I felt cold. I was about
to leave when I heard another voice: "Come. We're ready to begin.
In the secret chamber. Call the others."

The Golden Fleece is
guarded by a three-headed Dragon, whose first Head derives from the
Waters, whose second Head derives from the Earth, and whose third
Head derives from the Air. It is necessary that these three Heads
belong to a single and very powerful Dragon, who will devour all
other Dragons.

¡XJean d'Espagnet,
Arcanum Hermeticae Philosophiae Opus, 1623, p. 138

I found my group again,
and told Aglie I had overheard something about a
meeting.

"Aha," Aglie said, "what
curiosity! But I understand. Having ventured into the hermetic
mysteries, you want to find out all about them. Well, as far as I
know, this evening there is the initiation of a new member of the
Ancient and Accepted Order of the Rosy Cross."

"Can we watch?" Garamond
asked.

"You can't. You mustn't.
You shouldn't. But we'll act like those characters in the Greek
myth who gazed upon what was forbidden them to see, and we'll risk
the wrath of the gods. I'll allow you one peek."

He led us up a narrow
stairway to a dark corridor, drew aside a curtain, and through a
sealed window we could glance into the room below, which was
lighted by burning braziers. The walls were covered with lilies
embroidered on damask, and at the far end stood a throne under a
gilded canopy. On one side of the throne was a sun, on the other a
moon, both set on tripods and cut out of cardboard on some plastic
material, crudely executed, covered with tinfoil or some metal
leaf, gold and silver, of course, but effective, because each
luminary spun, set in motion by the flames of a brazier. Above the
canopy an enormous star hung from the ceiling, shining with
precious stones¡Xor bits of glass. The ceiling was covered with
blue damask spangled with great silver stars.

Before the throne was a
long table decorated with palms. A sword had been placed on it, and
between throne and table stood a stuffed lion, its jaws wide.
Someone must have put a red light bulb inside the head, because the
eyes shone, incandescent, and flames seemed to come from the
throat. This, I thought, must be the work of Signer Salon,
remembering the odd customers he had referred to that day in the
Munich coal mine.

At the table was
Bramanti, decked out in a scarlet tunic and embroidered green
vestments, a white cape with gold fringe, a sparkling cross on his
chest, and a hat vaguely resembling a miter, decorated with a
red-and-white plume. Before him, hi-eratically deployed, were about
twenty men, also in scarlet tunics but without vestments. On their
chests they all wore a gold medal that I thought I recognized: I
remembered a Renaissance portrait, the big Hapsburg nose, and the
curious lamb with legs dangling, hanging by the waist. They had
adorned themselves with imitations, not bad, of the Order of the
Golden Fleece.

Bramanti was speaking,
his arms upraised, as if uttering a litany, and the others
responded from time to time. Then Bramanti raised the sword, and
from their tunics the others drew stilettos or paper knives and
held them high. At this point Aglie lowered the curtain. We had
seen too much.

We stole away with the
tread of the Pink Panther (as Diotallevi put it; he was remarkably
abreast of the perversions of popular culture) and found ourselves
back in the garden, slightly breathless.

Garamond was
overwhelmed. "But are they...Masons?"

"And what," Aglie
replied, "does Mason mean? They are the adepts of a chivalric order
inspired by the Rosicrucians, and indirectly by the
Templars."

"But what does that have
to do with the Masons?'' Garamond asked again.

"If what you saw has
anything in common with the Masons, it's the fact that Bramanti's
rite is also a pastime for provincial politicians and professional
men. It was thus from the beginning: Freemasonry was a weak
exploitation of the Templar legend. And this is the caricature of a
caricature. Except that those gentlemen take it extremely
seriously. Alas! The world is teeming with Rosicrucians and
Templars like the, ones you saw this evening. You mustn't expect
any revelation from them, though among their number occasionally
you can come across an initiate worthy of trust."

"But you, after all,"
Belbo said, without irony, as if the matter concerned him
personally, "spend time with them. Which ones do you believe in? Or
did you once believe in?"

"None, of course. Do I
look like a credulous individual? I consider them with the cold
objectivity, the understanding, the interest with which a
theologian might observe a Naples crowd shouting in anticipation of
the miracle of San Gennaro. The crowd bears witness to a faith, a
deep need, and the theologian wanders among the sweating, drooling
people because he might encounter there an unknown saint, the
bearer of a higher truth, a man capable of casting new light on the
mystery of the most Holy Trinity. But the Holy Trinity is one
thing, San Gennaro is another."

He could not be pinned
down. I didn't know how to define it¡Xhermetic skepticism?
liturgical cynicism?¡Xthis higher disbelief that led him to
acknowledge the dignity of all the superstitions he
scorned.

"It's simple," he was
saying to Belbo. "If the Templars, the real Templars, did leave a
secret and did establish some kind of continuity, then it is
necessary to seek them out, and to seek them in the places where
they could most easily camouflage themselves, perhaps by inventing
rites and myths in order to move unobserved, like fish in water.
What do the police do when they seek the archvillain, the evil
mastermind? They dig into the lower depths, the notorious dives
filled with petty crooks who will never conceive the grandiose
crimes of the dark genius the police are after. What does the
terrorist leader do to recruit new acolytes? Where does he look for
them and find them? He circulates in the haunts of the
pseudosubversives, the fellow-travelers who would never have the
courage to be the real thing, but who openly ape the attitudes of
their idols. Concealed light is best sought in fires, or in the
brush where, after the blaze, the flames go on brooding under
twigs, under trampled muck. What better hiding place for the true
Templar than in the crowd of his caricatures?''

We consider societies
druidic if they are druidic in their titles of their aims, or if
their initiations are inspired by druidism.

¡XM. Raoult, Les
druides. Les societes initiatiqu.es celtes contemporaines, Paris,
Rocher, 1983, p. 18

Midnight was
approaching, and according to Agile's program the second surprise
of the evening awaited us. Leaving the Palatine gardens, we resumed
our journey through the hills.

After we had driven
three-quarters of an hour, Aglie made us park the two cars at the
edge of a wood. We had to cross some underbrush, he said, to arrive
at a clearing, and there were neither roads nor trails.

We proceeded, picking
our way through shrubs and vines, our shoes slipping on rotted
leaves and slimy roots. From time to time Aglie switched on a
flashlight to find a path, but only for a second, because, he said,
we should not announce our presence to the celebrants. Diotallevi
made a remark¡XI don't recall it exactly, something about Little
Red Riding-Hood¡Xand Aglie, with tension in his voice, asked him to
be quiet.

As we were about to come
to the end of the brush, we heard voices. We had reached the edge
of the clearing, which was illuminated by a glow from remote
torches¡Xor perhaps votive lights, flickering at ground level,
faint and silvery, as if a gas were burning with chemical coldness
in bubbles drifting over the grass. Aglte told us to stop where we
were, still shielded by bushes, and wait.

"In a little while the
priestesses will come. The Druidesses, that is. This is an
invocation of the great cosmic virgin Mikil. Saint Michael is a
popular Christian adaptation, and it's no accident that he is an
angel, hence androgynous, hence able to take the place of a female
divinity..."

"Where do they come
from?" Diotallevi whispered.

"From many places:
Normandy, Norway, Ireland...It is a very special event, and this is
a propitious place for the rite."

"Why?" Garamond
asked.

"Certain places have
more magic than others."

"But who are they¡Xin
real life?"

"People. Secretaries,
insurance agents, poets. People you might run into tomorrow and not
recognize."

Now we could see a small
group preparing to enter the clearing. The phosphorescent light, I
realized, came from little lamps the priestesses held up in their
hands. They had seemed, earlier, to be at ground level because the
clearing was on the top of a hill; the Druidesses had climbed up
from below and were approaching the flat, open hilltop. They were
dressed in white tunics, which fluttered in the slight breeze. They
formed a circle; in the center, three celebrants stood.

"Those are the three
hallouines of Lisieux, Clonmacnoise, and Pino Torinese," Aglie
said. Belbo asked why those three in particular. Aglie shrugged and
said: "No more. We must wait now in silence. I can't summarize for
you in a few words the whole ritual and hierarchy of Nordic magic.
Be satisfied with what I can tell you. If I do not tell you more,
it is because I do not know...or am not allowed to tell. I must
respect certain vows of privacy."

In the center of the
clearing I noticed a pile of rocks, which suggested a dolmen.
Perhaps the clearing had been chosen because of the presence of
those boulders. One of the celebrants climbed up on the dolmen and
blew a trumpet. Even more than the trumpet we had seen a few hours
earlier, this looked like something out of the triumphal march in
At da. But a muffled and nocturnal sound came from it, as if from
far away. Belbo touched my arm: "It's the ramsing, the horn of the
Thugs around the sacred banyan..."

My reply was cruel,
because I didn't realize he was joking precisely to repress other
associations, and it must have twisted the knife in the wound. "It
would no doubt be less magical with the bombardon," I
said.

Belbo nodded. "Yes,
they're here precisely because they don't want a bombardon," he
said.

Was it on that evening
he began to see a connection between his private dreams and what
had been happening to him in those months?

Aglifc hadn't followed
our words, but heard us whispering. "It's not a warning or a
summons," he explained, "but a kind of ultrasound, to establish
contact with the subterranean currents. You see, now the Druidesses
are all holding hands, in a circle. They are creating a kind of
living accumulator, to collect and concentrate the telluric
vibrations. Now the cloud should appear..."

"What cloud?" I
whispered.

"Tradition calls it the
green cloud. Wait..."

I didn't really expect a
green cloud. Almost immediately, however, a soft mist rose from the
ground¡Xa fog, I would have said, if it had been thicker, more
homogeneous. But it was composed of flakes, denser in some places
than in others. The wind stirred it, raised it in puffs, like spun
sugar. Then it moved with the air to another part of the clearing,
where it gathered. A singular effect. For a moment, you could see
the trees in the background, then they would be hidden in a whitish
steam, while the turf in the center of the clearing would smoke and
further obscure our view of whatever was going on, as the moonlight
shone around the concealed area. The flake cloud shifted, suddenly,
unexpectedly, as if obeying the whims of a capricious
wind.

A chemical trick, I
thought, but then I reflected: we were at an altitude of about six
hundred meters, and it was possible that this was an actual cloud.
Foretold by the rite? Summoned? Or was it just that the celebrants
knew that on that hilltop, under favorable conditions, those
erratic banks of vapor formed just above the ground?

It was difficult to
resist the fascination of the scene. The celebrants' tunics blended
with the white of the cloud, and their forms entered and emerged
from that milky obscurity as if it had spawned them.

There was a moment when
the cloud filled the entire center of the little meadow. Some
wisps, rising, separating, almost hid the moon, but the clearing
was still bright at its edges. We saw a Druidess come from the
cloud and run toward the wood, crying out, her arms in front of
her. I thought she had discovered us and was hurling curses. But
she stopped within a few meters of us, changed direction, and began
running in a circle around the cloud, disappearing in the whiteness
to the left, only to reappear after a few minutes from the right.
Again she was very close to us, and I could see her
face.

She was a sibyl with a
great, Dantean nose over a mouth thin as a cicatrix, which opened
like a submarine flower, toothless but for two incisors and one
skewed canine. The eyes were shifty, hawklike, piercing. I heard,
or thought I heard¡Xor think now that I remember hearing, but I may
be superimposing other memories¡Xa series of Gaelic words mixed
with evocations in a kind of Latin, something on the order of "O
pegnia (oh, e oh!) et eee uluma!!!" Suddenly the fog lifted,
disappeared, the clearing became bright again, and I saw that it
had been invaded by a troop of pigs, their short necks encircled by
garlands of green apples. The Druidess who had blown the trumpet,
still atop the dolmen, now brandished a knife.

"We go now," Aglie said
sharply. "It's over."

I realized, as I heard
him, that the cloud was above us and around us, and I could barely
make out my companions.

"What do you mean,
over?" Garamond said. "Looks to me like the real stuff is just
beginning!"

"What you were permitted
to see is over. Now it is not permitted. We must respect the rite.
Come."

He reentered the wood,
was promptly swallowed up by the mist that enfolded us. We shivered
as we moved, slipping 01 dead leaves, panting, in disarray, like a
fleeing army, and regrouped at the road. We could be in Milan in
less than two hours. Before getting back into Garamond's car, Aglie
said goodbye to us: "You must forgive me for interrupting the show
for you. I wanted you to learn something, to see the people for
whom you are now working. But it was not possible to stay. When I
was informed of this event, I had to promise I wouldn't disturb the
ceremony. Our continued presence would have had a negative effect
on what follows."

"And the pigs? What
happens to them?" Belbo asked.

"What I could tell you,
I have told you."