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

But where did you end uplast night? I woke this morning with a headache.

70

Let us remember well,however, the secret references,to a period of 120 years thatbrother A...., the successor of D and last of the second line ofsuccession¡Xwho lived among many of us¡Xaddressed to us, we of thethird line of succession...

¡XFama Fratemitatis, inAllgemeine und general Reformation, Cassel, Wessel, 1614

First thing, I readthrough the two manifestoes of the Rosicrucians, the Fama and theConfessio. I also took a look at the Chemical Wedding of ChristianRosencreutz by Johann Valentin Andreae, because Andreae was thepresumed author of the manifestoes.

The two manifestoesappeared in Germany between 1614 and 1615, thus about thirty yearsafter the 1584 meeting between the French and English Templars andalmost a century before the French were to meet with theGermans.

I read, not to believewhat the manifestoes said, but to look beyond them, as if the wordsmeant something else. To help them mean something else, I knew Ishould skip some passages and attach more importance to somestatements than to others. But this was exactly what theDiabolicals and their masters were teaching us. If you move in therefined time of revelation, do not follow the fussy, philistinechains of logic and their monotonous sequentiality.

Taken literally, thesetwo texts were a pile of absurdities, riddles, contradictions.Therefore they could not be saying what they seemed to be saying,and were neither a call to profound spiritual reformation nor thestory of poor Christian Rosen-creutz. They were a coded message tobe read by superimposing them on a grid, a grid that left certainspaces free while covering others. Like the coded message ofProvins, where only the initial letters counted. Having no grid, Ihad to assume the existence of one. I had to read withmistrust.

The manifestoes spoke ofthe Plan of Provins¡Xthere could be no doubt about that. In thegrave of C. R. (allegory of the Grange-aux-Dimes, the night of June23, 1344) a treasure had been placed for posterity to discover, atreasure "hidden....for one hundred and twenty years." It was notmoney; that much was clear. Not only was there a polemic againstthe unrestrained greed of the alchemists, but the text said openlythat what had been promised was a great historical change. And ifthe reader failed to understand that, the second manifesto saidthat there could be no ignoring an offer that concerned the mirandasextae aetatis (the wonders of the sixth and final appointment!),and it repeated: "If only it had pleased God to bring down to usthe light of his sixth Candelabrum...if only we could readeverything in a single book and, reading it, understand andremember....How pleasant it would be if through song (the messageread aloud!) we could transform rocks (lapis exillis!) into pearlsand precious stones..." And there was further talk of arcanesecrets, and of a government that was to be established in Europe,and of a "great work" to be achieved...

It was said that C. R.had gone to Spain (or Portugal?) and had shown the learned there"whence to draw the true indicia of future centuries," but in vain.Why in vain? Was it because a group of German Templars at thebeginning of the seventeenth century made public a very closelyguarded secret, forced to come out into the open on account of ahalt in the process of the transmission of the message?

The manifestoesundeniably tried to reconstruct the phases of the Plan asDiotallevi had summarized them. The first brother whose death wasmentioned was Brother I. O., who had "come to the end" in England.So someone had arrived triumphantly at the first appointment. And asecond line of succession was mentioned, and a third. Thus far allwas apparently in order: the second line, the English one, met thethird line, the French one, in 1584. Those writing at the beginningof the seventeenth century spoke only of what had happened to thefirst three groups. In the Chemical Wedding, written by Andreae inhis youth, hence before the manifestoes (even if they appeared asearly as 1614), three majestic temples were mentioned, the threeplaces that must already have been known.

Yet, reading, I realizedthat while the two manifestoes did indeed speak later in the sameterms as the Chemical Wedding, it was as if something upsetting hadhappened meanwhile.

For example, why suchinsistence on the fact that the time had come, the moment had come,though the enemy had employed all his tricks to keep the occasionfrom materializing? What occasion? It was said that C. R.'s finalgoal was Jerusalem, but he hadn't been able to reach Jerusalem. Whynot? The Arabs were praised because they exchanged messages, but inGermany the learned didn't know how to assist one another. What didthat mean? And there was a reference to "a larger group that wantsthe pasture all for itself." Evidently some party, pursuing itsprivate interests, was trying to upset the Plan, and evidentlythere had in fact been a serious setback.

The Fama said that atthe beginning someone had worked out a magic writing (why ofcourse, the message of Provins), but that the Clock of God struckevery minute "whereas ours is unable to strike even the hours." Whohad missed the strokes of the divine clock, who had failed toarrive at a certain place at the right moment? There was areference to an original group of brothers who could have revealeda secret philosophy but had decided, instead, to dispersethroughout the world.

The manifestoes breatheduneasiness, uncertainty, bewilderment. The brothers of the firstlines of succession had each arranged to be replaced "by a worthysuccessor," but "they decided to keep secret....the place of theirburial and even today we do not know where they areburied."

What did this reallyrefer to? What sepulcher was without an address? It was becomingobvious to me that the manifestoes were written because someinformation had been lost. An appeal was being made to anyone whohappened to possess that information: He should comeforward.

The end of the Fama wasunequivocal: "Again we ask all the learned of Europe...to considerwith kindly disposition our offer...to let us know theirreflections...Because even if for the present we have not revealedour names....anyone who sends us his name will be able to conferwith us personally, or¡X if some impediment exists¡Xinwriting."

This was exactly whatthe