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

mouth of that well, perhaps now preparing tocome out, and here I was among stuffed owls, among a hundred deadand one pretending to be alive.

"All Europe's cathedralsare built where the Celts had their menhirs. Why did the Celts setthese stones in the ground, considering the effort it costthem?"

"Why did the Egyptiansgo to so much trouble to erect the pyramids?"

"There you are.Antennas, thermometers, probes, needles like the ones Chinesedoctors use, stuck into the body's nodal points. At the center ofthe earth is a nucleus of fusion, something similar to thesun¡Xindeed, an actual sun around which things revolve, describingdifferent paths. Orbits of telluric currents. The Celts knew wherethey were, and how to control them. And Dante? What about Dante?What was he trying to tell us with the account of his descent intothe depths? You understand me, dear friend?"

I didn't like being hisdear friend, but I went on listening to him. Giulio/Giulia, myRebis planted like Lucifer at the center of Lia's womb, but he/she,the Thing, would be upside down, would be struggling upward, andwould somehow emerge. The Thing was created to emerge upward fromthe viscera, and not make its entrance with head bowed, in stickysecrecy.

Salon by now was lost ina monologue he seemed to repeat from memory. "You know what theEnglish leys are? If you fly over England in a plane, you'll seethat all the sacred places are joined by straight lines, a grid oflines interwoven across the whole country, still visible becausethey suggested the lines of later roads..."

"The sacred places wereconnected by roads, and people simply tried to make roads asstraight as possible."

"Indeed? Then why dobirds migrate along these lines? Why do flying saucers follow them?It's a secret that was lost after the Roman invasion, but there arethose who still know it..."

"The Jews," Isuggested.

"They also dig. Thefirst alchemistic principle is VITRIOL: Visita Interiora Terrae,Rectificando Invenies Occultum Lapi-dem."

Lapis exillis. My Stonethat was slowly coming out of exile, from the sweet oblivioushypnotic exile of Lia's vessel; my Stone, beautiful and white, notseeking further depths, but seeking the surface...I wanted to rushhome to Lia, to wait with her, hour by hour, for the appearance ofthe Thing, the triumph of the surface regained. Salon's den had themusty smell of tunnels. Tunnels were the origin that had to beabandoned; they were not the destination. And yet I followed Salon,and new, malicious ideas for the Plan whirled in my head. While Iawaited the one Truth of this sublunar world, I racked my brain toconstruct new falsehoods; blind as the animalsunderground.

I stirred. I had to getout of the tunnel. "I must go," I said. "Perhaps you can suggestsome books on this subject."

"Ha! Everything they'vewritten about is false, false as the soul of Judas. What I know Ilearned from my father..."

"Ageologist?"

"Oh no," Salon said,laughing, "no, not at all. My father-nothing to be ashamed of;water under the bridge¡Xworked for the Okhrana. Directly under thechief, the legendary Rachkov-ski."

Okhrana, Okhrana?Something like the KGB? The tsarist secret police, wasn't it? Andwho was Rachkovski? Wasn't there someone who had a similar name? ByGod, the colonel's mysterious visitor, Count Rakosky....No, enoughof this. No more coincidences. I didn't stuff dead animals; Icreated living animals.

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When White arrives inthe matter of the Great Work, Life has conquered Death, the King isresuscitated, Earth and Water have become Air, it is the domain ofthe Moon, their Child is born...Then Matter achieves such a degreeof fixity that Fire can no longer destroy it...When the artist seesperfect whiteness, the Philosophers say the books must be torn up,for they are now useless.

¡XDom J. Pernety,Dictionnaire mytho-hermetique, Paris, Bauche, 1758,"Blancheur"

I mumbled some excuse,in haste. I believe I said, "My girlfriend's having a babytomorrow." Salon haltingly offered me congratulations, as if notsure who the father was. I ran home, to breathe some cleanair.

Lia wasn't in. On thekitchen table, a piece of paper: "Darling, the waters have broken.Couldn't get you at the office. Taking a taxi to the hospital.Come. I feel alone."

A moment of panic. I hadto be there to count with Lia. I should have been in the office,reachable. It was my fault: the Thing would be born dead, Lia woulddie with it, Salon would stuff them both.

I entered the hospitalon unsteady legs, asked directions of people who didn't knowanything, twice ended up in the wrong ward. I shouted that they hadto know where Lia was having the baby, and they told me to calmdown, because here everybody was having a baby.

Finally¡XI don't knowhow¡XI found myself in a room. Lia was pearly pale but smiling.Someone had lifted her hair and put it under a white cap. For thefirst time I saw Lia's forehead in all its splendor. Next to herwas the Thing.

"It's Giulio," shesaid.

My Rebis. I, too, hadmade him, and not with chunks of dead bodies or arsenic soap. Hewas whole, all his fingers and toes were in the rightplace.

I insisted on seeing allof him, his little cock, his big balls. Then I kissed Lia on hernaked brow: "The credit is yours, darling; it all depends on thevessel."

"Of course the credit ismine, you shit. I had to count all by myself.''

"For me you are all thatcounts," I told her.

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The subterranean peoplehave reached the highest knowledge...If our mad humankind shouldbegin a war against them, they would be able to explode the wholesurface of our planet...

¡XFerdinand Ossendowski,Beasts, Men and Gods, 1924, v

I stayed at home withLia because, once she left the hospital and had to change thebaby's diapers, she cried and said she would never be able to cope.Somebody explained to us that this was normal: the excitement overthe victory of birth is followed by a feeling of helplessness inthe face of the immensity of the job. During those days, while Iloafed around the house, useless and not qualified, of course, forbreast-feeding, I spent long hours reading everything I had beenable to find concerning telluric currents.

On my return, I soundedout Aglfe on them. He made a gesture of boredom. "Weak metaphors,referring to the secret of the serpent Kundalini. Chinese geomancyalso sought in the earth the traces of the dragon. The telluricserpent simply stands for the occult serpent. The goddess