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

Europeans. Aglie pointed out a blonde, a German psychologistwho had been participating in the rites for years. She had triedeverything, but if you are not chosen, it's hopeless: for her, thetrance never came, was beyond achieving. Her eyes seemed lost inthe void as she danced, and the atabaques gave neither her nervesnor ours any relief. Pungent fumes filled the hall and dazed bothworshipers and observers, somehow hitting everybody¡Xmeincluded¡Xin the stomach. But the same thing had happened to me atthe escolas de samba in Rio. I knew the psychological power ofmusic and noise, the way they produced Saturday night fevers indiscos. The German woman's eyes were wide, and every movement ofher hysterical limbs begged for oblivion. The other daughters ofthe saint went into ecstasy, flung their heads back, wriggledfluidly, navigating a sea of forgetfulness. The German tensed,distraught and almost in tears, like someone desperately strugglingto reach orgasm, wriggling and straining, but finding no release.However much she tried to lose control, she constantly regained it.Poor Teuton, sick from too many well-temperedclavichords.

The elect, meanwhile,were making their leap into the vacuum, their gaze dulled, theirlimbs stiffened. Their movements became more and more automatic,but not haphazard, because they revealed the nature of the beingstaking possession of them: some of the elect seemed soft, theirhands moving sideways, palms down, in a swimming motion; otherswent bent over and moved slowly, and the cambones used white linencloths to shield them from the crowd's view, for these had beentouched by an excellent spirit.

Some of the cavalosshook violently, and those possessed by pretos velhos emittedhollow sounds¡Xhum hum hum¡Xas they moved with their bodies tiltedforward, like old men leaning on canes, jaws jutting out inhaggard, toothless faces. But those possessed by the caboclos letout shrill warrior cries¡Xhiahou!¡X and the cambones rushed toassist the ones unable to bear the violence of the gift.

The drums beat, thepontos rose in the air thick with fumes. I was holding Amparo's armwhen all of a sudden her hands were sweating, her body trembled,and her lips parted. "I don't feel well," she said. "I want togo."

Aglie noticed what hadhappened and helped me take her outside. The night air brought heraround. "I'm all right," she said. "It must have been something Iate. And the smells, the heat..."

"No," said thepai-de-santo, who had followed us. "You have the qualities of amedium. You reacted well to the pontos. I was watchingyou."

"Stop!" Amparo cried,adding a few words in a language I didn't know. I saw thepai-de-santo turn pale¡Xor gray, as they used to say in adventurestories, where men with black skin turned gray with fear. "That'senough. I got a little sick. I ate something I shouldn'thave...Please, go back inside. Just let me get some air. I'd ratherbe by myself; I'm not an invalid."

We did as she asked, butwhen I went back inside, after the break in the open air, thesmells, the drums, the sweat that now covered every body acted likea shot of alcohol gulped down after a long abstinence. I ran a handover my brow, and an old man offered me an agog6, a small gildedinstrument like a triangle with bells, which you strike with alittle bar. "Go up on the platform," he said. "Play. It'll do yougood."

There was homeopathicwisdom in that advice. I struck the agogo, trying to fall in withthe beat of the drums, and gradually I became part of the event,and, becoming part of it, I controlled it. I found relief by movingmy legs and feet, I freed myself from what surrounded me, Ichallenged it, I embraced it. Later, Aglie was to talk to me aboutthe diiference between the man who knows and the man whoundergoes.

As the mediums fell intotrances, the cambones led them to the sides of the room, sat themdown, offered them cigars and pipes. Those of the faithful who hadbeen denied possession ran and knelt at their feet, whispered intheir ears, listened to their advice, received their beneficentinfluence, poured out confessions, and drew comfort from them. Somehovered at the edges of trance, and the cambones gently encouragedthem, leading them, now more relaxed, back among thecrowd.

In the dancing area manyaspirants to ecstasy were still moving. The German woman twitchedunnaturally, waiting to be visited¡Xin vain. Others had been takenover by Exu and were making wicked faces, sly, astute, as theymoved in jerks.

It was then that I sawAmparo.

Now I know that Hesed isnot only the Sefirah of grace and love. As Diotallevi said, it isalso the moment of expansion of the divine substance, which spreadsout to the edge of infinity. It is the care of the living for thedead, but someone also must have observed that it is the care ofthe dead for the living.

Striking the agogd, I nolonger followed what was happening in the hall, focused as I was onmy own control, letting myself be led by the music. Amparo musthave come in at least ten minutes before, and surely she had feltthe same effect I had experienced earlier. But no one had given heran agogo, and by now she probably wouldn't have wanted one. Calledby deep voices, she had stripped herself of all defenses, of allwill.

I saw her fling herselfinto the midst of the dancing, stop, her abnormally tense facelooking upward, her neck rigid. Then, oblivious, she launched intoa lewd saraband, her hands miming the offer of her own body. "APomba Gira, a Pomba Gira!" some shouted, delighted by the miracle,since until then the she-devil had not made her presence known. Oseu manto 6 de veludo, rebordado todo em ouro, o seu garfo 6 deprata, muito grande e seu tesouri...Pomba Gira das Almas, vein tomacho cho...

I didn't dare intervene.I may have accelerated the strokes of my little bar, trying to joincarnally with my woman, or with the indigenous spirit she nowincarnated.

The cambones went toher, had her put on the ritual vestment, and held her up as shecame out of her brief but intense trance. They led her to a chair.She was soaked with sweat and breathed with difficulty. She refusedto welcome those who rushed over to beg for oracles. Instead, shestarted crying.

The gira was coming toan