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

that in 1554 Postel, in a fit of mystical fervorand thirst for spiritual regeneration, joined Ignatius Loyola inRome. Ignatius welcomed him with open arms, but Postel was unableto part with his manias, his cabalism, his ecumenicalism, and theJesuits couldn't accept these things, especially one mania thatPostel absolutely refused to abandon: the idea that the King of theWorld was the king of France. Ignatius may have been a saint, buthe was also Spanish.

So at last a rupturecame about; Postel left the Jesuits¡Xor the Jesuits kicked him out.But since he had been a Jesuit, even if only briefly, he had swornobedience perinde ac cadaver to Saint Ignatius, and therefore musthave revealed to him his mission. "Dear Ignatius," he must havesaid, "in receiving me you receive also the secret of the TemplarPlan, whose unworthy representative I am in France, and indeed,while we are all awaiting the third centenary meeting in 1584, wemight as well await it ad majorem Dei gloriam."

So the Jesuits, thanksto Postel's moment of weakness, come to know the secret of theTemplars. This knowledge must be exploited. Saint Ignatius goes tohis eternal reward, but his successors remain watchful. They keepan eye on Postel; they want to know whom he will meet in thatfateful year 1584. But, alas, Postel dies before then. Nor is itany help that¡Xas one of our sources tells us¡Xan unknown Jesuit ispresent at his deathbed. The Jesuits do not learn who his successoris.

"I'm sorry, Casaubon,"Belbo said, "but something here doesn't add up. If what you say istrue, the Jesuits couldn't know that the meeting failed to come offin 1584."

"Don't forget that theJesuits," Diotaillevi remarked, "were men of iron, not easilyfooled."

"Ah, as for that," Belbosaid, "a Jesuit could eat two Templars for breakfast and anothertwo for dinner. They also were disbanded, and more than once, andall the governments of Europe lent a hand, but they're stillhere."

We had to put ourselvesin a Jesuit's shoes. What would a Jesuit do if Postel slipped fromhis grasp? I had an idea immediately, but it was so diabolical thatnot even our Diabolicals, I thought, would swallow it: TheRosicrucians were an invention of the Jesuits!

"After Postel's death,"I argued, "the Jesuits¡Xclever as they are¡Xmathematically foreseethe confusion of the calendars and decide to take the initiative.They set up this Rosicrucian red herring, calculating exactly whatwill happen. Among all the fanatics who swallow the bait, someonefrom one of the genuine groups, caught off guard, will comeforward. Imagine the fury of Bacon: ¡¥Fludd, you idiot, couldn'tyou have kept your mouth shut?"But, my lord, they seemed to be withus..."Fool, weren't you taught never to trust papists? They shouldhave burned you, not that poor wretch from Nola!' "

"But in that case,"Belbo said, "when the Rosicrucians move to France, why do theJesuits, or those polemicists in their hire, attack the newcomersas heretics possessed by devils?"

"Surely you don't expectthe Jesuits to work in a straightforward way. What sort of Jesuitswould they be then?"

We quarreled at lengthover my proposal and finally decided, unanimously, that theoriginal hypothesis was better: The Rosicrucians were the baitcast, for the French, by the Baconians and the Germans. But theJesuits, as soon as the manifestoes appeared, caught on. And theyimmediately joined in the game, to muddy the waters. Obviously, theJesuits' aim was to prevent the English and German groups frommeeting with the French; and to that end any trick would do, nomatter how dirty.

Meanwhile, they recordedevents, gathered information, and put it all¡Xwhere? In Abulafia,Belbo joked. But Diotallevi, who had been gathering informationhimself, said it was no joke. Surely the Jesuits were constructingan immense, tremendously powerful computer that would draw aconclusion from this patiently accumulated, age-old brew of truthand falsehood.

[...]

"The Jesuits,"Diotallevi said, "understood what neither the poor old Templars ofProvins nor the Baconian camp had yet realized, namely, that thereconstruction of the map could be accomplished by arscombinatoria; in other words, with a method that foreshadowed ourmodern electronic brains. The Jesuits were the first to inventAbulafia! Father Kircher reread all the treatises on thecombinatorial art, from Lullus on, and you see what he published inhis Ars Magna Sciendi..."

"It looks like a crochetpattern to me," Belbo said.

"No, gentlemen, thesearc all the possible combinations. Factor analysis, that of theSefer Yesirah. Calculation of permutations, the very essence of thetemurah!"

This was certainly so.It was one thing to conceive Fludd's vague project of identifyingthe map by beginning with a polar projection; it was quite anotherto figure out how many trials would be required in order to arriveat the correct solution. And, again, it was one thing to create anabstract model of all the possible combinations, and another toinvent a machine able to carry them out. So both Kircher and hisdisciple Schott built mechanical devices, mechanisms withperforated cards, computers ante litteram. Binary calculators.Cabala applied to modern technology.

IBM: lesus BabbageMundi, lesum Binarium Magnificamur. AMDG: Ad Maiorem Dei Gloriam?Not on your life! Ars Magna, Digitale Gaudium! IHS: lesus Hardware& Software!

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In the bosom of thedeepest darkness a society has been formed, a society of newbeings, who know one another though they have never seen oneanother, who understand one another without explanations, who serveone another without friendship...From the Jesuit rule this societyadopts blind obedience; from the Masons it takes the trials and theceremonies, and from the Templars the subterranean mysteries andthe great audacity. Has the Comte de Saint-Germain simply imitatedGuillaume Postel, who desperately wanted people to believe himolder than he was?

¡XMarquis de Luchet,Essai sur la secte des illumines, Paris, 1789,v and xii

The Jesuits knew that ifyou want to confound your enemies, the best technique is to createclandestine sects, wait for dangerous enthusiasms to precipitate,then arrest them all. In other words, if you fear a plot, organizeone yourself; that way, all those who join it come under yourcontrol.

I remembered thereservation Aglie had expressed about Ramsay, the first to posit adirect connection between the Masons and the Templars; Aglie saidthat Ramsay had ties with Catholic circles. In fact, Voltaire hadalready denounced Ramsay as a tool of the Jesuits. Faced with thebirth of English Freemasonry, the Jesuits in France responded withScottish neo-Templarism.

Responding to thisFrench plot, a certain Marquis de Luchet produced, in 1789,anonymously, Essai