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

Nothing exceptional, thetypical career of an eighteenth-century adventurer; not as manyloves as Casanova and frauds less theatrical than Cagliostro's.Apart from the odd incident here and there, he enjoyed somecredibility with those in authority, to whom he promised thewonders of alchemy, though with an industrial slant. The onlyunusual feature was the rumor of his immortality, which heundoubtedly instigated himself. In drawing rooms he would casuallymention remote events as if he had been an eyewitness, and hecultivated his legend gracefully, en sourdine.

The book also quoted apassage from Giovanni Papini's Gog, describing a nighttimeencounter with the Comte de Saint-Germain on the deck of an oceanliner. The count, oppressed by his millennial past and by thememories crowding his brain, spoke in despairing tones reminiscentof Funes, "el memo-rioso" of Borges, except that Papini's storydates from 1930. "You must not imagine our lot is deserving ofenvy," the count says to Gog. "After a couple of centuries anincurable ennui takes possession of the wretched immortals. Theworld is monotonous, men learn nothing, and, with every generation,they fall into the same errors and nightmares, events are notrepeated but they resemble one another...novelties end, surprises,revelations. I can confess to you now that only the Red Sea islistening to us: my immortality bores me. Earth holds no moresecrets for me and I have no hope anymore in myfellows."

"Curious character," Iremarked. "Obviously our friend Aglife is playing at impersonatinghim. A gentleman getting on in years, a bit dotty, with money tospend, free time for travel, and an interest in thesupernatural."

"A consistentreactionary, with the courage to be decadent," Amparo said."Actually, I prefer him to bourgeois democrats."

"Sisterhood is powerful,but let a man kiss your hand and you're ecstatic."

"That's how you'vetrained us, for centuries. Let us free ourselves gradually. Ididn't say I wanted to marry him."

"That'sgood."

The following week Aglietelephoned me. That evening, he said, we would be allowed to visita terreiro de candomble. We wouldn't be admitted to the actualrite, because the ialorixa was suspicious of tourists, but shewould welcome us herself and would show us around before itstarted.

He picked us up by carand drove through the favelas beyond the hill. The building wherewe stopped had a humble look, like a big garage, but on thethreshold an old black man met us and purified us with a fumigant.Up ahead was a bare little garden with an immense corbeil of palmfronds, on which some tribal delicacies, the comidas de santo, werelaid out.

Inside, we found a largehall, the walls covered with paintings, especially ex-votos, andAfrican masks. Aglie explained the arrangement of furniture: thebenches in the rear were for the uninitiated, the little dais forthe instruments, and the chairs for the Oga. "They are people ofsome standing, not necessarily believers, but respectful of thecult. Here in Bahia the great Jorge Amado is an Oga in oneterreiro. He was selected by lansa, mistress of war andwinds..."

"But where do thesedivinities come from?" I asked.

"It's complicated. Firstof all, there's a Sudanese branch, dominant here in the north fromthe early days of slavery. The candomble of the orixas¡Xin otherwords, the African divinities¡Xcome from this branch. In thesouthern states you find the influence of the Bantu groups, andthis is where all the intermingling starts. The northern cultsremain faithful to the original African religions, but in the souththe primitive macumba develops toward the umbanda, which isinfluenced by Catholicism, Kardecism, and Europeanoccultism..."

"So no Templarstonight?"

"That was meant to be ametaphor, but no, no Templars tonight. Syncretism, however, is avery subtle process. Did you notice, outside, near the comidas desanto, a little iron statue, a sort of devil with a pitchfork, andwith votive offerings at his feet? That's Exu, very powerful in theumbanda, but not in the candomble. Still, the candombte also honorshim as a kind of degenerate Mercury. In the umbanda, they arepossessed by Exu, but not here. However, he's treatedaffectionately. But you never can tell. You see that wall overthere?" He was pointing at the polychrome statues of a naked Indioand an old black slave, seated, dressed in white, and smoking apipe. "They are a ca-boclo and a preto velho, spirits of thedeparted. Very important in umbanda rites. What are they doinghere? Receiving homage. They are not used, because the candombl¢Gentertains relations only with the African orixas, but they are notcast out on that account."

"What do all thesechurches have in common, then?"

"Well, during the ritein all Afro-Brazilian cults the initiates go into a trance and arepossessed by higher beings. In the candomble these beings are theorixas; in the umbanda they are spirits of thedeparted."

"I forgot my own countryand my own race," Amparp said. "My God, a bit of Europe and a bitof historical materialism, and I forgot everything, the stories Iused to hear from my grandmother..."

"Historicalmaterialism?" Aglife smiled. "Oh, yes, I believe I've heard of it.An apocalyptic cult that came out of the Trier region. Am Iright?"

I squeezed Amparo's arm."No pasaran, darling."

"God," shemurmured.

Aglie watched our briefwhispered dialog in silence. "Infinite are the powers ofsyncretism, my dear. Shall I tell you a political version of thiswhole story? Legally, the slaves were freed in the nineteenthcentury, but all the archives of the slave trade were burned in aneffort to wipe out the stigmata of slavery. Formally, slaves werefree, but their past was gone. In the absence of any familyidentity, they tried to reconstruct a collective past. It was theirway of opposing what you young people call theEstablishment."

"But you just said thoseEuropean sects were also part of it."

"My dear, purity is aluxury, and slaves take what they can get. But they have theirrevenge. By now they have captured more whites than you think. Theoriginal African cults possessed the weakness of all religions:they were local, ethnic, shortsighted. But when they met the mythsof the conquerors, they reproduced an ancient miracle, breathingnew life into the mystery cults that arose around the Mediterraneanduring the second and third centuries of our era, when Rome indecline was exposed to ferment that had originated in Persia,Egypt, and pre-Judaic Palestine...In the centuries of the lateempire, Africa received the influences of all the religions of theMediterranean and condensed them into a package. Europe wascorrupted