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

and readers thought he was talking aboutthe land of the Rosicrucians, even though he never mentioned them.Poor Johann Valentin Andreae died, still swearing up and down thathe wasn't a Rosicrucian, or if he said he was, he had only beenkidding, but by now it was too late. The Rosicrucians wereeverywhere, aided by the feet that they didn't exist.''

"Like God."

"Now that you mentionit, let's see. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are a bunch ofpractical jokers who meet somewhere and decide to have a contest.They invent a character, agree on a few basic facts, and then eachone's free to take it and run with it. At the end, they'll seewho's done the best job. The four stories are picked up by somefriends who act as critics: Matthew is fairly realistic, butinsists on that Messiah business too much; Mark isn't bad, just alittle sloppy; Luke is elegant, no denying that; and John takes thephilosophy a little too far. Actually, though, the books have anappeal, they circulate, and when the four realize what's happening,it's too late. Paul has already met Jesus on the road to Damascus,Pliny begins his investigation ordered by the worried emperor, anda legion of apocryphal writers pretends also to know plenty...Toi,apo-cryphe lecteur, mon semblable, mon frere. It all goes toPeter's head; he takes himself seriously. John threatens to tellthe truth, Peter and Paul have him chained up on the island ofPatmos. Soon the poor man is seeing things: Help, there are locustsall over my bed, make those trumpets stop, where's all this bloodcoming from? The others say he's drunk, or maybe it'sarteriosclerosis...Who knows, maybe it really happened thatway."

"It did happen that way.You should read some Feuerbach, instead of those junk books ofyours."

"Amparo, the sun'scoming up."

"We must becrazy."

"Rosy-fingered dawngently caresses the waves..."

"Yes, go on. It'sYemanja. Listen! She's coming."

"Show me yourludibria..."

"Oh, theTintinnabulum!"

"You are my AtalantaFugiens..."

"Oh, my TurrisBabel..."

"I want the ArcanaArcanissima, the Golden Fleece, pale et rose comme un coquillagemarin..."

"Sssh...Silentium postclamores," she said.

31

It is probable that themajority of the supposed Rosy Crosses, generally so designated,were in reality only Rosicrucians...Indeed, it is certain that theywere in no way members, for the simple fact that they were membersof such associations. This may seem paradoxical at first, andcontradictory, but is nevertheless easilycomprehensible...

¡XRen6 Guenon, Aperfusur I'initiation, Paris, Editions Traditi onelles, 1981, XXXVIII,p. 241

We returned to Rio, andI went back to work. One day I read in an illustrated magazine thatthere was an Order of the Ancient and Accepted Rosy Cross in thecity. I suggested to Amparo that we go and take a look, andreluctantly she came along.

The office was in a sidestreet; its plate-glass window contained plaster statuettes ofCheops, Nefertiti, the Sphinx.

There was a plenarysession scheduled for that very afternoon: "The Rosy Cross and theUmbanda." The speaker was one Professor Bramanti, Referendary ofthe Order in Europe, Secret Knight of the Grand Priory in Partibusof Rhodes, Malta, and Thessalonica.

We decided to go in. Theroom, fairly shabby, was decorated with Tantric miniaturesdepicting die serpent Kundalini, the one the Templars wanted toreawaken with the kiss on the behind. All things considered, Ithought, it had hardly been worth crossing the Atlantic to discovera new world: I could have found the same things at the Picatrixoffice.

Professor Bramanti satbehind a table covered with a red cloth, facing a rather sparse andsleepy audience. He was a corpulent gentleman who might have beendescribed as a tapir if it hadn't been for his bulk. He was alreadytalking when we came in. His style was pompous and oratorical. Hecouldn't have started long before, however, because he was stilldiscussing the Rosicru-cians during the eighteenth dynasty, underthe reign of Ah-mose I.

Four Veiled Masters, hesaid, kept watch over the race that twenty-five thousand yearsbefore the foundation of Thebes had originated the civilization ofthe Sahara. The pharaoh Ahmose, influenced by them, established theGreat White Fraternity, guardian of the antediluvian wisdom theEgyptians still retained. Bramanti claimed to have documents(naturally, inaccessible to the profane) that dated back to thesages of the Temple of Karnak and their secret archives. The symbolof the rose and the cross had been conceived by the pharaohAkhenaton. Someone has the papyrus, Bramanti said, but don't ask mewho.

The Great WhiteFraternity was ultimately responsible for the education of: HermesTrismegistus (who influenced die Italian Renaissance just as muchas he later influenced Princeton gno-sis), Homer, the Druids ofGaul, Solomon, Solon, Pythagoras, Plotinus, the Essenes, theTherapeutae, Joseph of Arimathea (who took the Grail to Europe),Alcuin, King Dagobert, Saint Thomas, Bacon, Shakespeare, Spinoza,Jakob Bohme, Debussy, Einstein. (Amparo whispered that he seemed tobe missing only Nero, Cambronne, Geronimo, Pancho Villa, and BusterKea-ton.)

As for the influence ofthe original Rosy^ Cross on Christianity, Bramanti pointed out, forthose who hadn't got their bearings, that it was no accident thatJesus had died on a cross.

The sages of the GreatWhite Fraternity were also the founders of the first Masonic lodge,back in the days of King Solomon. It was clear, from his works,that Dante had been a Rosicrucian and a Mason¡Xas had Saint Thomas,incidentally. In cantos XXIV and XXV of the "Paradiso" one findsthe triple kiss of Prince Rosicrux, the pelican, white tunics (mesame as those worn by the old men of the Apocalypse), and the threetheological virtues of Masonic chapters (Faith, Hope, and Charity).In fact, the symbolic flower of the Rosicrucians (the white rose ofcantos XXX and XXXI) was adopted by the Church of Rome as symbol ofthe mother of the Savior. Hence the Rosa Mystica of thelitanies.

It was equally clearthat the Rosicrucians had lived on through the Middle Ages, a factshown not only by their infiltration of the Templars, but also byfar more explicit documents. Bramanti cited one Kiesewetter, whodemonstrated in the late nineteenth century that the Rosicrucianshad manufactured four quintals of gold for the Prince-Elector ofSaxony in medieval times, clear proof being available on a certainpage of the Theatrum Chem-icum, published in Strasbourg in 1613.But few have remarked the Templar references in the legend ofWilliam Tell. Tell cuts his arrow from a branch of mistletoe, aplant of Aryan mythology, and he hits an apple, symbol of the thirdeye activated by the serpent Kundalini. And we know, of course,that the Aryans