Eco: Foucalt's Pendulum by eco foucault (ebook smartphone .txt) 📕

or the impulse of his spirit; this happenedwith the hieroglyphics of the Egyptians. For there can be norelationship between us and divine beings except through seals,figures, characters, and ceremonies. Thus the divinities speak tous through dreams and oracles. And that is what these gardens are.Every aspect of this terrace reproduces a mystery of thealchemist's art, but unfortunately we can no longer read it, noteven our host can. An unusual devotion to secrecy, you will agree,in this man who spends what he has saved over the years in order todesign ideograms whose meaning he has lost."

As we climbed fromterrace to terrace, the gardens changed. Some were in the form of alabyrinth, others in the form of an emblem, but each terrace couldbe viewed in its entirety only from a higher one. Looking down, Isaw the outline of a crown, and other patterns I had been unable toembrace as I was passing through them. But even from above, I couldnot decipher them. Each terrace, seen as one moved among itshedges, presented some images, but the perspective from aboverevealed new, even contradictory images, as if every step of thatstairway spoke two different languages at once.

As we moved higher, wenoticed some small structures. A fountain of phallic shape stoodbeneath a kind of arch or portico, and there was a Neptunetrampling a dolphin, a door with vaguely Assyrian columns, an archof imprecise form, as if polygons had been set upon other polygons,and each construction was surmounted by the statue of an animal: anelk, a monkey, a lion...

"And all this meanssomething?" Garamond asked.

"Unquestionably! Justread the Mundus Symbolicus of Pici-nelli, which, incidentally,Alciati foresaw with extraordinary prophetic power. The wholegarden may be read as a book, or as a spell, which is, after all,the same thing. If you knew the words, you could speak what thegarden says and you would then be able to control one of thecountless forces that act in the sublunar world. This garden is aninstrument for ruling the universe."

He showed us a grotto. Agrowth of algae; the skeletons of marine animals, whether naturalor not, I couldn't say; perhaps they were in plaster or stone...Anaiad could be discerned embracing a bull with the scaly tail ofsome great Biblical fish; it lay in a stream of water that flowedfrom the shell a Triton held like an amphora.

"I will tell you thedeeper significance of this, which otherwise might seem a banalhydraulic joke. Caus knew that if one fills a vessel with water andseals it at the top, the water, even if one then opens a hole inthe bottom, will not come out. But if one opens a hole at the top,also, the water spurts out below."

"Isn't that obvious?" Isaid. "Air enters at the top and presses the waterdown."

"A typical scientificexplanation, in which the cause is mistaken for the effect, or viceversa. The question is not why the water comes out in the secondcase, but why it refuses to come out in the first case."

"And why does itrefuse?" Garamond asked eagerly.

"Because, if it cameout, it would leave a vacuum in the vessel, and nature abhors avacuum. Nequaquam vacui was a Rosicrucian principle, which modernscience has forgotten."

"Very impressive,"Garamond said. "Casaubon, this has to be put in our wonderfuladventure of metals, these things must be highlighted: rememberthat. And don't tell me water's not a metal. You must use yourimagination."

"Excuse me," Belbo saidto Aglie, "but your argument is simply post hoc ergo ante hoc. Whatfollows causes what came before."

"You must not thinklinearly. The water in these fountains doesn't. Nature doesn't;nature knows nothing of time. Time is an invention of theWest.''

* * *

As we climbed, weencountered other guests. Belbo nudged Diotallevi, who said in awhisper: "Ah, yes, facies hermetica."

And among the pilgrimswith the facies hermetica, a little off to one side, a stiff smileof condescension on his lips, was Signer Salon. I nodded, henodded.

"You know Salon?" Aglieasked me.

"You mean you know him?"I asked. "I do, of course. We live in the same building. What doyou think of him?"

"I know him slightly.Some friends, whose word I trust, tell me he's a policeinformer."

That's why Salon knewabout Garamond and Ardenti. What was the connection, exactly,between Salon and De Angelis? But I confined myself to askingAglie: "What is a police informer doing at a party likethis?"

"Police informers,"Aglie said, "go everywhere. They can use any experience forinventing their confidential reports. For the police, the morethings you know, or pretend to know, the more powerful you are. Itdoesn't matter if the things are true. What counts, remember, is topossess a secret."

"But why was Saloninvited?" I asked.

"My friend," Agliereplied, "probably because our host respects the golden rule ofsapiental thought, which says that any error can be theunrecognized bearer of truth. True esotericism does not fearcontradiction."

"You're telling me that,finally, all contradictions agree."

"Quod ubique, quod abomnibus^et quod semper. Initiation is the discovery of theunderlying and perennial philosophy."

With all thisphilosophizing, we had reached the top terrace and were on a paththrough a broad garden that led to the entrance of the castle orvilla. In the light of a torch larger than the others and set upona column, we saw a girl wrapped in a blue garment spangled withgolden stars. In her hand she held a trumpet, the kind heralds blowin operas. As in one of those holy plays where the angels areadorned with tissue-paper feathers, the girl wore on her shoulderstwo large white wings decorated with almond-shaped figures, eachwith a dot in the center, looking almost like an eye.

Professor Camestres wasthere, one of the first Diabolicals to visit us at Garamond, theadversary of the Ordo Templi Orientis. We had difficultyrecognizing him, because he was costumed most singularly, thoughAglie said it was appropriate to the occasion: a white linen toga,loins girt by a red ribbon that also crisscrossed both chest andback, and a seventeenth-century hat to which were pinned four redroses. He knelt before the girl with the trumpet and uttered somewords.

"It's true," Garamondmurmured, "there are more things in heaven and earth..."

We went through astoried doorway, which reminded me of the Genoa cemetery. Above it,an intricate neoclassical allegory and the carved words: CONDOLEDET