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

Of the various groupingsthat claimed descent from the Great White Fraternity¡Xoftenchildishly¡XBramanti recognized just one as legitimate: theRosicrucian Fellowship of Max Heindel, and that only because AlainKardek had been educated in its circles. Kardek was the father ofspiritualism, and it was his theosophy, which contemplated contactwith the souls of the departed, that spiritually formed umbandaspirituality, the glory of our most noble Brazil. In thistheosophy, Aum Banda, it seems, is a Sanskrit expression denotingthe divine principle and source of life. ("They tricked us again,"Amparo murmured. "Not even the word ¡¥umbanda' is ours; the onlyAfrican thing about it is the sound.")

The root is Aum or Um,which is the Buddhist Om and also the name of God in the languageof Adam. If the syllable urn is properly pronounced, it becomes apowerful mantra and produces fluid currents of harmony in thepsyche through the siakra, or frontal plexus. ("What's the frontalplexus?" Amparo asked. "An incurable disease?")

Bramanti explained thatthere was a big difference between true brethren of the RosyCross¡Xheirs of the Great White Fraternity, obviously secret, suchas the Ancient and Accepted Order, whose unworthy representative hewas, and the "Rosicrucians," who claimed attachment to the RosyCross mystique for opportunistic reasons, lacking anyjustification. He urged his audience to give no credence to anyRosicrucian who called himself a brother of the Rosy Cross. (Amparoremarked that one man's Rosy Cross was another man'sRosicrucian.)

One ill-advised memberof the audience stood up and asked how Professor Bramanti's ordercould claim to be authentic, since it violated the law of silenceobserved by all true adepts of the Great WhiteFraternity.

Bramanti rose to reply."I was unaware that we had been infiltrated by the paidprovocateurs of atheistic materialism. Under these circumstances Ihave no more to say." And at that he walked out with a certainmajesty.

That evening, Aglietelephoned to see how we were and to tell us that we had finallybeen invited to a rite, the next day. In the meantime, he suggestedwe have a drink. Amparo had a political meeting with her friends; Iwent to join Aglie by myself.

32

Valentiniani...nihilmagis curant quam occultare quod praedicant: si tamen praedicant,qui occultant...Si bona fides quaeres, concrete vultu, suspensesupercilio¡Xaltum est¡Xaiunt. Si subtiliter tentes, perambiguitates bilingues communem fidern affirmant. Si scire tesubos-tendas, negant quidquid agnoscunt...Habent artificium quoprius persuadeant, quam edoceant.

¡XTertullian, AdversusValentinianos

Aglie invited me to aplace where some ageless men still made a batida in the traditionalway. In just a few steps we left the civilization of CarmenMiranda, and I found myself in a dark room where some natives weresmoking cigars thick as sausages. The tobacco, as broad,transparent leaves, was rolled into what looked like old hawser,worked with the fingertips, and wrapped in oily straw paper. Itkept going out, but you could understand what it must have beenlike when Sir Walter Raleigh discovered it.

I told him about myafternoon adventure.

"So now it's theRosicrucians as well? Your thirst for knowledge is insatiable, myfriend. But pay no attention to those lunatics. They constantlytalk about irrefutable documents that no one ever produces. I knowthat Bramanti. He lives in Milan, but he travels all over the worldspreading his gospel. ,A harmless man, though he still believes inKiesewetter. Hordes of Rosicrucians insist on that page of theTheatrum Chemicum. But if you actually take a look at it¡Xand Imight modestly add that I have a copy in my little Milaneselibrary¡Xthere is no such quotation."

"Herr Kiesewetter's aclown, then."

"But much quoted. Thetrouble is that even the nineteenth-century occultists fell victimto the spirit of positivism: a thing is true only if it can beproved. Take the debate on the Corpus Hermeticum. When thatdocument came to light in Europe in the fifteenth century, Picodella Mirandola, Ficino, and many other people of great wisdomimmediately realized that it had to be a work of most ancientwisdom, antedating the Egyptians, antedating even Moses himself. Itcontained ideas that would later be expressed by Plato and byJesus."

"What do you mean,later? That's the same argument Bramanti used to prove Dante was aMason. If the Corpus repeats ideas of Plato and Jesus, it must havebeen written after them!"

"You see? You're doingit, too. That was exactly the reasoning of modem philologists, whoalso added wordy linguistic analyses intended to show that theCorpus was written in the second or third century of our era. It'slike saying that Cassandra must have been born after Homer becauseshe predicted the destruction of Troy. The belief that time is alinear, directed sequence running from A to B is a modem illusion.In fact, it can also go from B to A, the effect producing thecause...What does ¡¥coming before' mean, or ¡¥coming after'? Doesyour beautiful Amparo come before or after her motley ancestors?She is too splendid¡Xif you will allow a dispassionate opinion froma man old enough to be her father. She thus comes before. She isthe mysterious origin of whatever went into hercreation."

"But at thispoint..."

"It is the whole idea of¡¥point' that is mistaken. Ever since Parmenides, points have beenposited by science in an attempt to establish whence and whithersomething moves. But in fact nothing moves, and there is only onepoint, the one from which all others are generated at the sameinstant. The occultists of the nineteenth century, like those ofour own time, naively tried to prove the truth of a thing byresorting to the methods of scientific falsehood. You must reasonnot according to the logic of time but according to the logic ofTradition. One time symbolizes all others, and the invisible Templeof the Rosicrucians therefore exists and has always existed,regardless of the current of history¡Xyour history. The time of thefinal revelation is not time by the clock. Its bonds are rooted inthe time of ¡¥subtle history,' where the befores and afters ofscience are of scant importance."

"In other words, thosewho maintain that the Rosicrucians are eternal¡X"

"Are scientific fools,because they seek to prove that which must be known without proof.Do you think the worshipers we will see tomorrow night are capableof proving all the things that Kardek told them? Not at all. Theysimply know, because they are willing to know. If we had allretained this receptivity to secret knowledge, we would be dazzledby revelations. There is