Eco: Foucalt's Pendulum (32 page)

And from this springs
the extraordinary question: Did the Egyptians know about
electricity?

¡XPeter Kolosimo, Terra
senza tempo, Milan, Sugar, 1964, p. Ill

"I have a text on
vanished civilizations and mysterious lands," Belbo said. "It seems
that originally there existed, somewhere around Australia, a
continent of Mu, and from there the great currents of migration
spread out. One went to Avalon, one to the Caucasus and the source
of the Indus; then there were the Celts, and the founders of
Egyptian civilization, and finally the founders of
Atlantis..."

"Old hat. If you're
looking for books about Mu, I'll swamp your desk with them," I
said.

"But this writer may
pay. Besides, he has a beautiful chapter on Greek migrations into
Yucatan, and tells about the bas-relief of a warrior at Chiche'n
Itza who is the spit and image of a Roman legionary. Two peas in a
pod..."

"All the helmets in the
world have either plumes or horse tails," Diotallevi said. "That's
not evidence."

"Not for you, but for
him. He finds serpent worship in all civilizations and concludes
that there is a common origin..."

"Who hasn't worshiped
the serpent?" Diotallevi said. "Except, of course, the Chosen
People."

"They worshiped
calves."

"Only in a moment of
weakness. I'd reject this one, even if he pays. Celtism and
Aryanism, Kaly-yuga, and decline of the West, and SS spirituality.
I may be paranoid, but he sounds like a Nazi to me."

"For Garamond, that
isn't necessarily a drawback."

"No, but there's a limit
to everything. Here's a book about gnomes, undines, salamanders,
elves, sylphs, fairies, but it, too, brings in the origins of Aryan
civilization. The SS, apparently, are descended from the Seven
Dwarfs."

"Not the Seven Dwarfs,
the Nibelungs."

"The dwarfs it mentions
are the Little People of Ireland. The bad guys are the fairies, but
the Little People are good, just mischievous."

"Put it aside. What
about you, Casaubon? What have you found?"

"A text on Christopher
Columbus: it analyzes his signature and finds in it a reference to
the pyramids. Columbus's real aim was to reconstruct the Temple of
Jerusalem, since he was grand master of the Templars-in-exile.
Being a Portuguese Jew and therefore an expert cabalist, he used
talismanic spells to calm storms and overcome scurvy. I didn't look
at any texts on the cabala, because I assumed Diotallevi was
checking them."

"The Hebrew letters are
all wrong, photocopied from dream books."

"Remember, we're
choosing texts forlsis Unveiled. Let's steer clear of philology. If
the Diabolicals like to take their Hebrew letters from dream books,
let them do it. The problem I have is all the submissions on the
Masons. Signor Garamond told me to be very careful there; he
doesn't want to get mixed up in polemics among the various rites.
But I wouldn't neglect this manuscript about Masonic symbolism in
the grotto of Lourdes. Or this one about a mysterious gentleman,
probably the Comte de Saint-Germain, an intimate friend of Franklin
and Lafayette, who appeared at the moment of the creation of the
flag of the United States. It explains the meaning of the stars
very well, but becomes confused on the subject of the
stripes."

"The Comte de
Saint-Germain!" I said. "Well, well!"

"You know
him?"¡¥

"If I said yes, you
wouldn't believe me. Forget it. Now here, gentlemen, is a
four-hundred-page monstrosity decrying the errors of modern
science. The atom, a Jewish lie. The error of Einstein and the
mystical secret of energy. The illusion of Galileo and the
immaterial nature of the moon and the sun."

"In that line,"
Diotallevi said, "what I liked most is this review of Fortian
sciences."

"What are
they?"

"Named after Charles Hoy
Fort, who gathered an immense collection of inexplicable bits of
news. A rain of frogs in Birmingham, footprints of a fabulous
animal in Devon, mysterious steps and sucker marks on the ridges of
some mountains, irregularities in the precession of the equinoxes,
inscriptions on meteorites, black snow, rains of blood, winged
creatures at an altitude of eight thousand meters above Palermo,
luminous wheels in the sea, fossils of giants, a shower of dead
leaves in France, precipitations of living matter in Sumatra, and,
naturally, all the signs marked on Machu Picchu and other peaks in
South America that bear witness to the landing of powerful
spacecraft in prehistoric times. We are not alone in the
universe."

"Not bad," Belbo said.
"But what particularly intrigues me are these five hundred pages on
the pyramids. Did you know that the pyramid of Cheops sits right on
the thirtieth parallel, which is the one that crosses the greatest
stretch of land above sea level? That the geometric ratios found in
the pyramid of Cheops are the same ones found at Pedra Pintada in
Amazonia? That Egypt possessed two plumed serpents, one on the
throne of Tutankhamen and the other on the pyramid of Saqqara, and
the latter serpent points to Quetzalcoatl?"

"What does Quetzalcoatl
have to do with Amazonia, if he's part of the Mexican pantheon?" I
asked.

"Well, maybe I missed a
connection. But for that matter, how do you explain the fact that
the statues of Easter Island are megaliths exactly like the Celtic
ones? Or that a Polynesian god called Ya is clearly the Yod of the
Jews, as is the ancient Hungarian Io-v', the great and good god? Or
that an ancient Mexican manuscript shows the earth as a square
surrounded by sea, and in its center is a pyramid that has on its
base the inscription Aztlan, which is close to Atlas and Atlantis?
Why are pyramids found on both sides of the Atlantic?''

"Because it's easier to
build pyramids than spheres. Because the wind produces dunes in the
shape of pyramids and not in the shape of the
Parthenon."

"I hate the spirit of
the Enlightenment," Diotallevi said.

"Let me continue. The
cult of Ra doesn't appear in Egyptian religion before the New
Empire, and therefore it comes from the Celts. Remember Saint
Nicholas and his sleigh? In prehistoric Egypt the ship of the Sun
was a sleigh. Since there was no snow in Egypt, the sleigh's origin
must have been Nordic..."

I couldn't let that
pass: "Before the invention of the wheel, sleighs were used also on
sand."

"Don't interrupt. The
book says that first you identify the analogies and then you find
the reasons. And it says that, in the end, the reasons are
scientific. The Egyptians knew electricity. Without electricity
they wouldn't have been able to do what they did. A German engineer
placed in charge of the sewers of Baghdad discovered electric
batteries still operating that dated back to the Sassanids. In the
excavations of Babylon, accumulators were found that had been made
four thousand years ago. And, finally, the Ark of the Covenant
(which contained the Tables of the Law, Aaron's rod, and a pot of
manna from the desert) was a kind of electric strongbox capable of
producing discharges on the order of five hundred
volts."

"I saw that in a
movie."

"So what? Where do you
think scriptwriters get their ideas? The ark was made of acacia
wood sheathed in gold inside and out¡Xthe same principle as
electric condensers, two conductors separated by an insulator. It
was encircled by a garland, also of gold, and set in a dry region
where the magnetic field reached five hundred to six hundred volts
per vertical meter. It's said that Porsena used electricity to free
his realm from the presence of a frightful animal called
Volt."

"Which is why Alessandro
Volta chose that exotic pseudonym. Before, his name was simply
Szmrszlyn Khraznapahwsh-kij."

"Be serious. Also,
besides the manuscripts, I have letters that offer revelations on
the connections between Joan of Arc and the Sibylline Books,
between Lilith the Talmudic demon and the hermaphroditic Great
Mother, between the genetic code and the Martian alphabet, between
the secret intelligence of plants, cosmology, psychoanalysis, and
Marx and Nietzsche in the perspective of a new angelology, between
the Golden Number and the Grand Canyon, Kant and occultism, the
Eleusian mysteries and jazz, Cagliostro and atomic energy,
homosexuality and gno-sis, the golem and the class struggle. In
conclusion, a letter promising a work in eight volumes on the Grail
and the Sacred Heart."

"What's its thesis? That
the Grail is an allegory of the Sacred Heart or that the Sacred
Heart is an allegory of the Grail?''

"He wants it both ways,
I think. In short, gentlemen, I don't know what course to follow.
We should sound out Signor Gar-amond."

So we sounded him out.
He said that, as a matter of principle, nothing should be thrown
out, and we should give everyone a hearing.

"But most of this
stuff," I argued, "repeats things you can find on any station
newsstand. Even published authors copy from one another, and cite
one another as authorities, and all base their proofs on a sentence
of lamblicus, so to speak."

"Well," Garamond said,
"would you try to sell readers something they knew nothing about?
The Isis Unveiled books must deal with the exact same subjects as
all the others. They confirm one another; therefore they're true.
Never trust originality."

"Very well," Belbo said,
"but we can't tell what's obvious and what isn't. We need a
consultant."

"What sort of
consultant?"

"I don't know. He must
be less credulous than a Diabolical, but he must know their world.
And then tell us what direction we should take in Hermetics. A
serious student of Renaissance Hermeticism..."

"And the first time you
hand him the Grail and the Sacred Heart," Diotallevi said, "he
storms out, slamming the door."

"Not
necessarily."

"I know someone who
would be just right," I said. "He's certainly erudite; he takes
these things fairly seriously, but with elegance, even irony, I'd
say. I met him in Brazil, but he should be in Milan now. I must
have his phone number somewhere."

"Contact him," Garamond
said. "Tentatively. It depends on the cost. And try also to make
use of him for the wonderful adventure of metals."

Aglie seemed happy to
hear from me again. He inquired after the charming Amparo, and when
I hinted that was over, he apologized and made some tactful remarks
about how a young person could always begin, with ease, a new
chapter in his life. I mentioned an editorial project. He showed
interest, said he would be glad to meet us, and set a time, at his
house.

From the birth of
Project Hermes until that day, I had enjoyed myself heedlessly at
the expense of many people. Now, They were preparing to present the
bill. I was as much of a bee as the ones we wanted to attract; and,
like them, I was being quickly lured to a flower, though I didn't
yet know what that flower was.

During the day you will
approach the frog several times and will utter words of worship.
And you will ask it to work the miracles you wish...Meanwhile you
will cut a cross on which to sacrifice it.

¡XFrom a ritual of
Aleister Crowley

Aglifc lived in the
Piazzale Susa area: a little secluded street, a turn-of-the-century
building, soberly art nouveau. An elderly butler in a striped
jacket opened the door and led us into a small sitting room, where
he asked us to wait for the count.

"So he's a count," Belbo
whispered.

"Didn't I tell you? He's
Saint-Germain redivivus."

"He can't be redivivus
if he's never died," Diotallevi said. "Sure he's not Ahasuerus, the
wandering Jew?"

"According to some, the
Comte de Saint-Germain had also been Ahasuerus."

"You see?"

Aglte came in,
impeccable as always. He shook our hands and apologized: a tiresome
meeting, quite unforeseen, forced him to remain in his study for
another ten minutes or so. He told the butler to bring coffee and
begged us to make ourselves at home. Then he went out, drawing
aside a heavy curtain of old leather. It wasn't a door, and as we
were having our coffee, we heard agitated voices coming from the
next room. At first we spoke loudly among ourselves, in order not
to listen; then Belbo remarked that perhaps we were disturbing the
others. In a moment of silence, we heard a voice, and a sentence
that aroused our curiosity.

Diotallevi got up and
went over, as if he wanted to admire a seventeenth-century print on
the wall by the curtain. It showed a mountain cave, to which some
pilgrims were climbing by way of seven steps. Soon all three of us
were pretending to study the print.

The man we had heard was
surely Bramanti, and the sentence was: "See here, I don't send
devils to people's houses!"

That day we realized
Bramanti had not only a tapir's face but also a tapir's
voice.

The other voice belonged
to a stranger: a thick French accent and a shrill, almost
hysterical tone. From time to time Aglie's voice, soft and
conciliatory, intervened.

"Come, gentlemen," he
was saying now, "you have appealed to my verdict, and I am honored,
but you must therefore listen to me. Allow me, first of all, to say
that you, dear Pierre, were imprudent, at the very least, in
writing that letter..."

"It's an extremely
simple matter, Monsieur le Comte," the French voice replied. "This
Signer Bramanti, he writes an article, in a publication we all
respect, in which he indulges himself in some fairly strong irony
about certain Luciferans, who, he says, make hosts fly though they
don't even believe in the Real Presence, and they transmute silver,
and so forth and so on. Bon, everyone knows that the only
recognized Eglise Luciferienne is the one where I am the humble
tauroboliaste and psychopompe, and it is also well known that my
church does not indulge itself in vulgar Satanism and does not make
ratatouille with hosts¡Xthings worthy of chan-oine Docre at
Saint-Sulpice. In my letter I said that we are not vieux jeu
Satanists, worshipers of the Grand Tenancierdu Mal, and that we do
not have to ape the Church of Rome, with all those pyxes and
those¡Xcomment dit-on?¡Xchasubles...We are, au con-traire,
Palladians, as all the world knows, and, for us, Luciferre is the
principe of good. If anything, it is Adonai who is the principe of
evil, because He created this world, whereas Luciferre tried to
oppose..."

"All right," Bramanti
said angrily. "I admit I may have been careless, but this doesn't
entitle him to threaten me with sorcery!"

"Mais voyons! It was a
metaphor! You are the one who, in return, caused me to have the
envoutement!"

"Oh, of course, my
brothers and I have time to waste, sending little devils around! We
practice Dogma and the Ritual of High Magic: we are not witch
doctors!"

"Monsieur le Comte, I
appeal to you. Signer Bramanti is notoriously in touch with the
abbe Boutroux, and you well know that this priest is said to have
the crucifix tattooed on the sole of his foot so that he may tread
on Our Lord, or, rather, on his...Bon, I meet seven days ago this
supposed abbe at the Du San-greal Bookshop, you know; he smiles at
me, very slimy, as is his custom, and he says to me, ¡¥Well, we'll
be hearing from each other one of these evenings.' What does it
mean, one of these evenings? It means that, two evenings after, the
visits begin. I am going to bed and I feel chocs strike my face,
fluid chocs, you know; those emanations are easily
recognized."

"You probably rubbed the
soles of your slippers on the carpet. ¡¥¡¥

"Yes, yes, then why were
the bibelots flying? Why did one of my alembiques strike my head,
and my plaster Baphomet, it falls to the floor, and that a memento
of my late father, and on the wall three writings appear in red,
ordures I cannot repeat, hein? You know well that no more than a
year ago the late Monsieur Gros accused that abbe1 there of making
the cataplasms with fecal matter, forgive the expression, and the
abbe condemned him to death, and two weeks later the poor Monsieur
Gros, he dies mysteriously. This Boutroux handles poisons, the jury
d'honneur summoned by the Martinists of Lyon said so..."

"Slander," Bramanti
growled.

"Ah, that then! A trial
in matters of this sort is always circumstantial..."

"Yes, but nobody at the
trial mentioned the fact that Monsieur Gros was an alcoholic in the
last stages of cirrhosis."

"Do not be enfantine!
Sorcelery proceeds by natural ways; if one has a cirrhosis, they
strike one in the cirrhosis. That is the ABC of black
magic..."

"Then all those who die
of cirrhosis have the good Boutroux to blame. Don't make me
laugh!"

"Then tell me, please,
what passed in Lyon in those two weeks...Deconsecrated chapel, host
with Tetragramma-ton, your Boutroux with a great red robe with the
cross upside down, and Madame Olcott, his personal voyante, among
other things, with the trident that appears on her brow and the
empty chalices that fill with blood by themselves, and the abbe who
crached in the mouth of the faithful...Is that true or is it
not?"

"You've been reading too
much Huysmans, my friend!" Bramanti laughed. "It was a cultural
event, a pageant, like the celebrations of the school of Wicca and
the Druid colleges!"

"Ouais, the carnival of
Venise..."

We heard a scuffle, as
if Bramanti was attempting to strike his adversary and Aglie was
restraining him. "You see? You see?" the Frenchman said in a
falsetto. "But guard yourself, Bramanti, and ask your friend
Boutroux what happened to himl You don't know yet, but he's in the
hospital. Ask him who broke his figure! Even if I do not practice
that goety of yours, I know a little of it myself, and when I
realized that my house was inhabited, I drew on the parquet the
circle of defense, and since I do not believe, but your diablotines
do, I removed the Carmelite scapular and made the contresign, the
envoutement retourne, ah oui. Your abb6 passed a mauvais
moment!"

"You see? You see?"
Bramanti was panting. "He's the one casting spells!"

"Gentlemen, that's
enough," Aglie said politely but firmly. "Now listen to me. You
know how highly I value, on a cognitive level, these reexaminations
of obsolete rituals, and for me the Luciferine Church and the Order
of Satan are equally to be respected above and beyond their
demonological differences. You know my skepticism in this matter.
But, in the end, we all belong to the same spiritual knighthood,
and I urge you to show a minimum of solidarity. After all,
gentlemen, to involve the Prince of Darkness in a personal spat!
How very childish! Come, come, these are occultists' tales. You are
behaving like vulgar Freemasons. To be frank, yes, Boutroux is a
dissident, and perhaps, my dear Bramanti, you might suggest to him
that he sell to some junk dealer all that paraphernalia of his,
like the props for a production of Boito's
Mefistofele..."

"Ha, c'est bien dit,
ca," the Frenchman snickered. "C'est de la
brocanterie..."

"Let's try to see this
in perspective. There has been a debate on what we will call
liturgical formalisms, tempers have flared, but we mustn't make
mountains out of molehills. Mind you, my dear Pierre, I am not for
one moment denying the presence in your house of alien entities;
it's the most natural thing in the world, but with a little common
sense it could all be explained as a poltergeist."

"Yes, I wouldn't exclude
that possibility," Bramanti said. "The astral conjuncture at this
time..."

"Well then! Come, shake
hands, and a fraternal embrace."

We heard murmurs of
reciprocal apologies. "You know yourself," Bramanti was saying,
"sometimes to identify one who is truly awaiting initiation, it is
necessary to indulge in a bit of folklore. Even those merchants of
the Great Orient, who believe in nothing, have a
ceremony."

"Bien entendu, le
rituel, ah ca..."

"But these are no longer
the days of Crowley. Is that clear?" Aglie said. "I must leave you
now. I have other guests."

We quickly went back to
the sofa and waited for Aglie with composure and
nonchalance.