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

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If our hypothesis iscorrect, the Holy Grail....was the breed and descendant of Jesus,the "Sang real" of which the Templars were the guardians...At thesame time, the Holy Grail must have been, literally, the vesselthat had received and contained the blood of Jesus. In other wordsit must have been the womb of the Magdalene.

¡XM. Baigent, R. Leigh,H. Lincoln, The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, 1982, London, Cape,xiv

"Nobody would take thatseriously," Diotallevi said.

"On the contrary, itwould sell a few hundred thousand copies," I said grimly. "Thestory has already been written, with slight variations, in a bookon the mystery of the Grail and the secrets of Rennes-le-Chateau.Instead of reading only manuscripts, you should look at what otherpublishers are printing."

"Ye Holy Seraphim!"Diotallevi said. "Then this machine says only what we alreadyknow." And he went out, dejected.

Belbo was piqued.¡¥"What is he saying¡Xthat my idea is an idea others have had? Sowhat? It's called literary polygenesis. Signer Garamond would saythat means I'm telling the truth. It must have taken years for theothers to come up with it, whereas the machine and I solved theproblem in one evening."

"I'm with you. Themachine's useful. But I believe we should feed in more statementsthat don't come from the Diabolicals. The challenge isn't to findoccult links between Debussy and the Templars. Everybody does that.The problem is to find occult links between, for example, cabalaand the spark plugs of a car."

I was speaking oif thetop of my head, but I had given Belbo an idea. He talked to meabout it a few mornings later.

"You were right. Anyfact becomes important when it's connected to another. Theconnection changes the perspective; it leads you to think thatevery detail of the world, every voice, every word written orspoken has more than its literal meaning, that it tells us of aSecret. The rule is simple: Suspect, only suspect. You can readsubtexts even in a traffic sign that says ¡¥No littering.'"

"Of course. Catharistmoralism. The horror of fornication."

"Last night I happenedto come across a driver's manual. Maybe it was the semidarkness, orwhat you had said to me, but I began to imagine that those pageswere saying Something Else. Suppose the automobile existed only toserve as metaphor of creation? And we mustn't confine ourselves tothe exterior, or to the surface reality of the dashboard; we mustlearn to see what only the Maker sees, what lies beneath. What liesbeneath and what lies above. It is the Tree of theSefirot."

"You don'tsay."

"I am not the one whosays; it is the thing itself that says. The drive shaft is thetrunk of the tree. Count the parts: engine, two front wheels,clutch, transmission, two axles, differential, and two rear wheels.Ten parts, ten Sefirot."

"But the positions don'tcoincide."

"Who says they don't?Diotallevi's explained to us that in certain versions Tiferet isn'tthe sixth Sefirah, but the eighth, below Nezah and Hod. Myaxle-tree is the tree of Belboth."

"Fiat."

"But let's pursue thedialectic of the tree. At the summit is the engine, Omnia Movens,of which more later: this is the Creative Source. The enginecommunicates its creative energy to the two front or higher wheels:the Wheel of Intelligence and the Wheel of Knowledge."

"If the car hasfront-wheel drive."

"The good thing aboutthe Belboth tree is that it allows metaphysical alternatives. So wehave the image of a spiritual cosmos with front-wheel-drive, wherethe engine, in front, transmits its wishes to the higher wheels,whereas in the materialistic version we have a degenerate cosmos inwhich motion is imparted by the engine to the two lower wheels:from the depths, the cosmic emanation releases the base forces ofmatter."

"What about an engine inback, rear-wheel drive?"

"Satanic. Higher andlower coincide. God is identified with the motion of crude matter.God as an eternally frustrated aspiration to divinity. The resultof th Breaking of the Vessels."

"Not the Breaking of theMuffler?"

"That occurs in aborteduniverses, where the noxious breath of the Archons spreads throughthe ether. But we mustn't digress. After the engine and two wheelscomes the clutch, the Sefirah of grace that establishes orinterrupts the flow of love that binds the rest of the tree of theSupernal Energy. A disk, a mandala that caresses another mandala.Then the coffer of change¡Xthe gear box, or transmission, as thepositivists call it, which is the principle of Evil, because itallows human will to speed up or slow down the constant process ofemanation. For this reason, an automatic transmission costs more,for there it is the tree itself that decides, in accordance withits own Sovereign Equilibrium. Then comes the universal joint, theaxle, the drive shaft, the differential¡Xnote theopposition/repetition of the quaternion of cylinders in the engine,because the differential (Minor Keter) transmits motion to theearthly wheels. Here the function of the Sefirah of difference isobvious, as, with a majestic sense of beauty, it distributes thecosmic forces to the Wheel of Glory and the Wheel of Victory, whichin an unaborted universe (front-wheel drive) are subordinate to themotion imparted by the higher wheels."

"A coherent exegesis.And the heart of the engine, seat of the One, theCrown?"

"You have but to lookwith the eyes of an initiate. The supreme engine lives by analternation of intake and exhaust. A complex, divine respiration, acycle initially based on two units called cylinders (an obviousgeometrical archetype), which then generate a third, and finallygaze upon one another in mutual love and bring forth the glory of afourth. In the cycle of the first cylinder (none is firsthierarchically, but only through the miraculous alternation ofposition), the piston (etymology: Pistis Sophia) descends from theupper neutral position to the lower neutral position as thecylinder fills with energy in the pure state. I'm simplifying,because here angelic hierarchies come into play, the valves, which,as my handbook says, ¡¥allow the opening and closing of theapertures that link the interior of the cylinders to the inductionpipes leading out of the carburetor.' The inner seat of the enginecan communicate with the rest of the cosmos only through thismediation, and here I believe is revealed¡XI am reluctant to utterheresy¡Xthe original limit of the One, which, in order to create,somehow depends on the Great Eccentrics. A closer reading of thetext may be required here. The cylinder fills with energy,