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

Scottish branch missed its opportunity; if things hadgone differently, the history of the following century might havebeen different."

"And afterward?" Iasked. "Was nothing patched together again?"

"What was there topatch¡Xto use your word?...._ Three years later, an evangelicalpreacher who had joined the Illuminati of Bavaria, a certain Lanze,died in a wood, struck by lightning. Instructions of the order werefound on him, the Bavarian government intervened, it was discoveredthat Weishaupt was plotting against the state, and the order wassuppressed the following year. And further: Weishaupt's writingswere published, containing the alleged projects of the Illuminati,and for a whole century they discredited all French and Germanneo-Templarism...It's possible that Weishaupt's Illuminati werereally on the side of Jacobin Masonry and had infiltrated theneo-Templar branch to destroy it. It was probably not by chancethat this evil breed had attracted Mirabeau, the tribune of theRevolution, to its side. May I say something inconfidence?"

"Please."

"Men like me, interestedin joining together again die fragments of a lost Tradition, arebewildered by an event like Wil-helmsbad. Some guessed and remainedsilent; some knew and lied. And then it was too late: first therevolutionary whirlwind, ! then the uproar of nineteenth-centuryoccultism...Look I at your list: a festival of bad faith andcredulity, petty spite, ! reciprocal excommunications, secrets thatcirculated on every I tongue. The theater of occultism."

"Occultists seem fickle,wouldn't you say?" Belbo remarked. "You must be able to distinguishoccultism from esotericism. Esotericism is the search for alearning transmitted only through symbols, closed to the profane.The occultism that spread in the nineteenth century was the tip ofthe iceberg, the little that surfaced of the esoteric secret. TheTemplars were initiates, and the proof of that is that whensubjected to torture, they died to save their secret. It is thestrength with which they concealed it that makes us sure of theirinitiation, and that makes us yearn j to know what they knew. Theoccultist is an exhibitionist. As P61adan said, an initiatorysecret revealed is of no use to anyone. Unfortunately, Peladan wasnot an initiate, but an occultist. The nineteenth century was thecentury of informers. Everybody rushed to publish the secrets ofmagic, theurgy, cabala, tarot. And perhaps they believed init."

Aglie continued lookingover our list, with an occasional I snicker of commiseration."Elena Petrovna. A good woman, at j heart, but she never said athing that hadn't already been written ; everywhere...Guaita, adrug-addict bibliomane. Papus: What a character!" Then he stoppedabruptly. "Tres....Where does I this come from? Whichmanuscript?"

Good, I thought, he'snoticed the interpolation. I answered vaguely: "Well, we puttogether the list from so many texts. Most of them have alreadybeen returned. They were plain rubbish. Do you recall, Belbo, wherethis Tres comes from?" "I don't think I do. Diotallevi?" "It wasdays ago...Is it important?" "Not at all," Aglie said. "It's justthat I never heard of it before. You really can't tell me whomentioned it?" We were terribly sorry, we didn't remember. Aglietook his watch from his vest. "Heavens, I have another engagement.You gentlemen will forgive me."

He left, and we stayedon, talking.

"It's all clear now. TheEnglish Templars put forth the Masonic proposal in order to makeall the initiates of Europe rally around the Baconianplan."

"But the plan onlyhalf-succeeds. The idea of the Baconians is so fascinating that itproduces results contrary to their expectations. The so-calledScottish line sees the new conventicle as a way to re-establish thesuccession, and it makes contact with the GermanTemplars."

"To Aglie, what happenedmade no sense. But it's obvious¡X to us, now. The various nationalgroups entered the lists, one against the other. I wouldn't besurprised if Martfnez Pasqualis was an agent of the Tomar group.The English rejected the Scottish; then there were the French,obviously divided into two groups, pro-English and pro-German.Masonry was the cover, the pretext behind which all these agents ofdifferent groups-God knows where the Paulicians and theJerusalemites were¡X met and clashed, each trying to tear a pieceof the secret from the others."

"Masonry was like Rick'sin Casablanca," Belbo said. "Which turns upside down the commonview that it is a secret society."

"No, no, it's a freeport, a Macao. A facade. The secret is elsewhere."

"PoorMasons."

Progress demands itsvictims. But you must admit we are uncovering an immanentrationality of history."

"The rationality ofhistory is the result of a good recombining of the Torah,"Diotallevi said. "And that's what we're doing, and blessed be thename of the Most High."

"All right," Belbo said."Now the Baconians have Saint-Martin-des-Champs, while theFranco-Roman neo-Templar line is breaking down into a hundredsects...And we still haven't decided what this secret is allabout."

"That's up to you two,"Diotallevi said.

"Us two? All three of usare in this. If we don't come out honorably, we'll all looksilly."

"Silly towhom?"

"Why, to history. Beforethe tribunal of Truth."

"Quid est veritas?"Belbo asked.

"Us," I said.

77

This herb is calledDevilbane by the Philosophers. It has been demonstrated that onlyits seed can expel devils and their hallucinations...When given toa young woman who was tormented by a devil during the night, thisherb made him flee.

¡XJohannes deRupescissa, Tractatus de Quinta Essentia, 11

During the next fewdays, I neglected the Plan. Lia's pregnancy was coming to term, andwhenever possible I stayed with her. I was anxious, but she calmedme, saying the time had not yet come. She was taking a course inpainless childbirth, and I was trying to follow her exercises. Liahad rejected science's offer to tell us the baby's sex in advance.She wanted to be surprised. Accepting this eccentricity on herpart, I touched her belly and did not ask myself what would comeout. We called it the Thing.

I asked how I could takepart in the birth. "It's mine, too, this Thing," I said. "I don'twant to be one of those movie fathers, pacing up and down thecorridor, chain-smoking."

"Pow, there's only somuch you can do. The moment comes when it's all up to me. Besides,you don't smoke. Surely you're not going to start smoking just forthis occasion."

"What'll I do,then?"

"You'll take part beforeand afterward. Afterward, if it's a boy, you'll teach him, guidehim, give him a fine old Oedipus complex in the usual way, with asmile you'll play out the ritual parricide when the time comes¡Xnofuss¡Xand at some point you'll show him your squalid office, thecard files, the page proofs of the wonderful adventure of