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

end. I left the platform and ran to Amparo. Aglie was alreadythere, delicately massaging her temples.

"How embarrassing!"Amparo said. "I don't believe in it, I didn't want to. How could Ihave done this?"

"It happens," Aglie saidsoftly, "it happens."

"But then there's nohope," Amparo cried. "I'm still a slave. Go away," she said to meangrily. "I'm a poor dirty black girl. Give me a master; I deserveit!"

"It happens to blondAchaeans, too," Aglie consoled her. "It's humannature..."

Amparo asked the way tothe toilet. The rite was ending. The German woman was stilldancing, alone in the middle of the hall, ostentatious but nowlistless. She had followed Amparo's experience with enviouseyes.

Amparo came back aboutten minutes later, as we were taking our leave of the pai-de-santo,who congratulated us on the splendid success of our first contactwith the world of the dead.

Aglie drove in silencethrough the night. When he stopped outside our house, Amparo saidshe wanted to go upstairs alone. "Why don't you take a littlewalk," she said to me. "Come back when I'm asleep. I'll take apill. Excuse me, both of you. I really must have eaten something Ishouldn't have. All those women tonight must have. I hate mycountry. Good night."

Aglie understood myuneasiness and suggested we go to an all-night bar inCppacabana.

At the bar I didn'tspeak. Aglie waited until I had started sipping my batida before hebroke the silence.

"Race¡Xor culture, ifyou prefer¡Xis part of our unconscious mind. And in another part ofthat unconscious dwell archetypes, figures identical for all menand in all centuries. This evening, the atmosphere, thesurroundings lulled our vigilance. It happened to all of us; youfelt it yourself. Amparo discovered that the orixas, whom she hasdestroyed in her heart, still live in her womb. You must not thinkI consider this a positive thing. You have heard me speakrespectfully of the supernatural energies that vibrate around us inthis country. But I have no special fondness for the practices ofpossession. An initiate is not the same as a mystic. Being aninitiate¡Xhaving an intuitive comprehension of what reason cannotexplain¡Xis a very deep process; it is a slow transformation of thespirit and of the body, and it can lead to the exercise of superiorabilities, even to immortality. But it is secret, intimate; it doesnot show itself externally; it is modest, lucid, detached. That iswhy the Masters of the World, initiates, do not indulge inmysticism. For them, a mystic is a slave, a site of themanifestation of the numinous, through which site the signs of asecret can be observed. The initiate encourages the mystic and useshim as you might use a telephone, to establish long-distancecontact, or as a chemist might use litmus paper, to detect theaction of a particular substance. The mystic is useful, because heis conspicuous. He broadcasts himself. Initiates, on the contrary,are recognizable only to one another. It is they who control theforces that mystics undergo. In this sense there is no differencebetween the possession experienced by the cavalos and the ecstasiesof Saint Theresa of Avila or Saint John of the Cross. Mysticism isa degenerate form of contact with the divine, whereas initiation isthe fruit of long askesis of mind and heart. Mysticism is ademocratic, if not demagogic, phenomenon; initiation isaristocratic."

"It is mental as opposedto carnal?"

"In a sense. Your Amparowas guarding her mind tenaciously, but she was not on guard againsther body. The lay person is weaker than we are."

It was late. Aglieinformed me that he was leaving Brazil. He gave me his Milanaddress.

I went home and foundAmparo asleep. I lay down beside her in silence, in the dark, andspent a sleepless night. It was as if there were an unknown beingnext to me.

In the morning Amparotold me that she was going to Petrdp-olis to visit a girlfriend. Wesaid good-bye awkwardly.

She left with a canvasbag, a volume of political economy under her arm.

For two months she sentme no word, and I made no attempt to seek her out. Then she wroteme a brief, evasive letter, telling me she needed time to think. Ididn't answer.

I felt no passion, nojealousy, no nostalgia. I was hollow, clear-headed, clean, and asemotionless as an aluminum pot.

I stayed in Brazil foranother year, with the constant feeling that I was on the brink ofdeparture. I didn't see Aglie again, I didn't see any of Amparo'sfriends. I spent long, long hours on the beach,sunbathing.

I flew kites, which downthere are very beautiful.

GEVURAH

34

Beydelus, Demeymes,Adulex, Matucgayn, Atine, Ffex, Uquizuz, Ga-dix, Sol, Veni cito cumtuis spiritibus.

¡XPicatrix, Sloane Ms.1305, 152, verso

The Breaking of theVessels. Diotallevi was to talk to us often about the late cabalismof Isaac Luria, in which the orderly articulation of the Sefirotwas lost. Creation, Luria held, was a process of divine inhalationand exhalation, like anxious breathing or the action of thebellows.

"God's asthma," Belboglossed.

"You try creating fromnothing. It's something you do once in your life. God blows theworld as you would blow a glass bubble, and to do that He takes adeep breath, holds it, and emits the long luminous hiss of the tenSefirot."

"A hiss oflight?"

"God hissed, and therewas light."

"Multimedia."

"But the lights of theSefirot must be gathered in vessels that can contain their splendorwithout shattering. The vessels destined to receive Keter, Hokhmah,and Binah withstood their magnificence, but for the lower Sefirot,from Hesed to Yesod, light was exhaled too strongly in a singleburst, and the vessels broke. Fragments of light were spilled intothe universe, and gross matter was thus born."

The breaking of thevessels was a catastrophe, Diotallevi said. What could be moreunbearable than an aborted world? There must have been some defectin the cosmos from the beginning, and not even the most learnedrabbis had been able to explain it completely. Perhaps at themoment God exhaled and was emptied, a few drops of oil lay in thefirst receptacle, a material residue, the reshimu, thusadulterating God's essence. Or perhaps the seashells^the qelippot,the beginnings of ruin¡Xwere slyly waiting in ambushsomewhere.

"Slippery folk, thoseqelippot," Belbo said. "Agents of the diabolical Dr. Fu Manchu. Andthen what happened?"

And then, Diotallevipatiently explained, in the light of Severe Judgment, orGevurah¡Xalso known as Pachad, or Terror¡Xthe Sefirah in which,according to Isaac the Blind, Evil first shows itself, theseashells acquired a real