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

thepiston returns to the upper neutral position and achieves maximumcompression¡Xthe sim-sun. And lo, the glory of the Big Bang:combustion, expansion. A spark flies, the mixture of fuel flaresand blazes, and this the handbook calls the active phase of thecycle. And woe, woe if in the mixture of fuel the Shells intrude,the qelippot, drops of impure matter like water or Coca-Cola. Thenexpansion does not take place or occurs in abortivestarts..."

"Then the meaning ofShell is qelippot? We'd better not use it anymore. From now on,only Virgin's Milk..."

"We'll check. It couldbe a trick of the Seven Sisters, lower emanations trying to controlthe process of creation...In any case, after expansion, behold thegreat divine release, the exhaust. The piston rises again to theupper neutral position and expels the formless matter, nowcombusted. Only if this process of purification succeeds can thenew cycle begin. Which, if you think about it, is also theNeoplatonic mechanism of Exodus and Parodos, miraculous dialecticof the Way Up and the Way Down."

"Quantum mortaliapectora ceacae noctis habent! And the sons of matter never realizedit!"

"They never saw theconnection between the philosopher's stone andFirestone."

"For tomorrow, I'llprepare a mystical interpretation of the phone book."

"Ever ambitious, ourCasaubon. Mind you, there you'll have to solve the unfathomableproblem of the One and the Many. Better succeed slowly. Start,instead, with the washing machine."

"That's too easy. Thealchemistic transformation from black to whiter thanwhite."

67

Da Rosa, nada digamosagora....

¡XSampayo Bruno, OsCavalheiros do Amor, Lisbon, Guimaraes, 1960, p. 155

When you assume anattitude of suspicion, you overlook no clue. After our fantasy onthe power train and the Tree of the Sefirot, I was prepared to seesymbols in every object I came upon.

I had kept in touch withmy Brazilian friends, and in Portugal just then, at Coimbra, aconference was being held on Lusitanian culture. More out of a wishto see me again than out of respect for my expertise, my Riofriends managed to have me invited. Lia didn't go with me; she wasin her seventh month, and though her pregnancy had changed herslender figure only slightly, transforming her into a Flemishmadonna, she preferred to stay home.

I spent three merryevenings with my old comrades. As we were returning by bus toLisbon, an argument developed about whether we should stop atFatima or Tomar. Tomar was the castle to which the PortugueseTemplars had withdrawn after the king and the pope saved them fromtrial and ruin by transforming them into the Order of the Knightsof Christ. I couldn't miss a Templar castle, and luckily the restof the party was not enthusiastic about Fatima.

If I could have inventeda Templar castle, it would have been Tomar. You reach it byascending a fortified road that flanks the outer bastions, whichhave cruciform slits, and you breathe Crusader air from the firstmoment. The Knights of Christ prospered for centuries in thatplace. Tradition has it that both Henry the Navigator andChristopher Columbus belonged to that order, and in fact it devoteditself to the conquest of the seas¡Xmaking the fortune of Portugal.The knights' long and happy existence there had caused the castleto be rebuilt and extended through the centuries, so to itsmedieval part were joined Renaissance and Baroque wings. I wasmoved as I entered the church of the Templars, which had anoctagonal rotunda reproducing that of the Holy Sepulcher, and I wassurprised to see that the Templars' crosses had different forms,depending on their location. It was a problem I had encounteredbefore, when I went through the confused iconography on thesubject. Whereas the cross of the Knights of Malta had remainedmore or less the same, the Templar cross had been influenced byperiods and local traditions. That's why Templar-hunters, findingany kind of cross in a place, immediately think they've discovereda trace of the knights.

Our guide took us to seethe Manueline window, the janela par excellence, a filigree, acollage of marine and submarine troves, seaweeds, shells, anchors,capstans, and chains, celebrating the knights' achievements on theoceans. The window was framed by two towers, which were decoratedwith carvings of the insigne of the Garter. What was the symbol ofan English order doing in a Portuguese fortified monastery? Theguide couldn't say; but a little later, on another side, thenortheast, I believe, he showed us the insigne of the GoldenFleece. I couldn't help thinking of the subtle game of alliancesthat had united the Garter to the Golden Fleece, the Fleece to theArgonauts, the Argonauts to the Grail, and the Grail to theTemplars. Remembering Colonel Ardenti's narrative and a few pagesfrom the Diabolicals' manuscripts, I started when our guide showedus into a side room whose ceiling was gripped by keystones. Theywere rosettes, but on some of them was carved a bearded caprineface: Baphomet...

We went down into acrypt. After seven steps, a bare stone floor led to the apse, wherean altar could stand, or the chair of the grand master. You reachedit by passing beneath seven keystones, each in the form of a rose,one larger than the next, with the last set over a well. The Crossand the Rose, in a Templar monastery, and in a room surely builtbefore the Rosicrucian manifestoes...I put some questions to theguide. He smiled. "If you knew how many students of the occultsciences come here on pilgrimages....It's said that this was theinitiation chamber."

Entering by chance aroom not yet restored, which contained a few pieces of dustyfurniture, I found the floor cluttered with great cardboard boxes.Rummaging at random, I uncovered some fragments of volumes inHebrew, presumably from the seventeenth century. What were the Jewsdoing in Tomar? The guide told me that the knights had maintainedfriendly relations with the local Jewish community. He had me lookout the window and showed me a little garden designed like anelegant French maze¡Xthe work, he told me, of an eighteenth-centuryJewish architect: Samuel Schwarz.

The second appointmentin Jerusalem....And the first at the Castle? Wasn't that how themessage of Provins went? By God, the Castle of the Ordonationmentioned in Ingolf's document was not the Monsalvat of chivalricnovels, the Avalon of the Hyperboreal. No. What castle would theTemplars of Provins, more used to directing commandaries than toreading romances of the Round Table, have chosen for their firstmeeting place? Why, Tomar, the castle