Eco: Foucalt's Pendulum by eco foucault (important books to read .txt) 📗

had theability to listen politely, look you in the eye, and say "You thinkso?" in a tone of such apparent sincerity that you immediately felthis profound disapproval. I was a barbarian, they used to say: suchsubtleties would always be lost on me.

"Barbarian?" I wouldprotest. "I may have been born in Milan, but my family came fromVal d'Aosta."

"Nonsense," they said."You can always tell a genuine Piedmontese immediately by hisskepticism."

"I'm askeptic."

"No, you're onlyincredulous, a doubter, and that's different."

I knew why Diotallevidistrusted Abulafia. He had heard that word processors could changethe order of letters. A test, thus, might generate its opposite andresult in obscure prophecies. "It's a game of permutation," Belbosaid, trying to explain. "Temurah? Isn't that the name for it?Isn't that what the devout rabbi does to ascend to the Gates ofSplendor?''

"My dear friend,"Diotallevi said, "you'll never understand anything. It's true thatthe Torah¡Xthe visible Jbrah, that is¡Xis only one of the possiblepermutations of the letters of the eternal Torah, as God created itand delivered it to the angels. By rearranging the letters of thebook over the centuries, we may someday arrive again at theoriginal Torah. But the important thing is not the finding, it isthe seeking, it is the devotion with which one spins the wheel ofprayer and scripture, discovering the truth little by little. Ifthis machine gave you the truth immediately, you would notrecognize it, because your heart would not have been purified bythe long quest. And in an office! No, the Book must be murmured dayafter day in a little ghetto hovel where you learn to lean forwardand keep your arms tight against your hips so there will be aslittle space as possible between the hand that holds the Book andthe hand that turns the pages. And if you moisten your fingers, youmust raise them vertically to your lips, as if nibbling unleavenedbread, and drop no crumb. The word must be eaten very slowly. Itmust melt on the tongue before you can dissolve it and reorder it.And take care not to slobber it onto your caftan. If even a singleletter is lost, the thread that is about to link you with thehigher sefirot is broken. To this Abraham Abulafia dedicated hislife, while your Saint Thomas was toiling to find God with his fivepaths.

"Abraham Abulafia'sHokhmath ha-Zerufvtas at once the science of the combination ofletter and the science of the purification of the heart. Mysticlogic, letters whirling in infinite change, is the world of bliss,it is the music of thought, but see that you proceed slowly, andwith caution, because your machine may bring you delirium insteadof ecstasy. Many of Abulafia's disciples were unable to walk thefine line between contemplation of the names of God and thepractice of magic. They manipulated the names in an effort to turnthem into a talisman, an instrument of dominion over nature,unaware¡Xas you are unaware, with your machine¡Xthat every letteris bound to a part of the body, and shifting a consonant withoutthe knowledge of its power may affect a limb, its position ornature, and then you find yourself deformed, a monster. Physically,for life; spiritually, for eternity."

"Listen," Belbo said tohim then. "You haven't discouraged me, you know. On the contrary. Ihave Abulafia¡Xthat's what I'm calling him¡Xat my command, the wayour friends used to have the golem. Only, my Abulafia will be morecautious and respectful. More modest. The problem is to find allthe permutations of the name of God, isn't it? Well, this manualhas a neat little program in Basic for listing all possiblesequences of four letters. It seems tailor-made for YHVH. Should Igive it a whirl?" And he showed Diotallevi the program; Diotallevihad to agree it looked cabalistic:

10 REManagrams

20 INPUT L$(1), L$(2),L$(3), L$(4)

30 PRINT

40 FOR I1 = 1 TO4

50 FOR I2 = 1 TO4

60 IF I2 = I1 THEN130

70 FOR I3 = 1 TO4

80 IF I3 = I1 THEN120

90 IF I3 = I1 THEN120

100 LET I4 =10-(I1+I2+I3)

110 LPRINTL$(I1);L$(I2);L$(I3);L$(I4)

120 NEXT I3

130 NEXT I2

140 NEXT I1

150 END

"Try it yourself. Whenit asks for input, type in Y, H, V, H, and press the ENTER key. Butyou may be disappointed. There are only twenty-four possiblepermutations."

"Holy Seraphim! What canyou do with twenty-four names of God? You think our wise men hadn'tmade that calculation? Read the Sefer Yesirah, Chapter Four,Section Sixteen. And they didn't have computers. ¡¥Two Stones maketwo Houses. Three Stones make six Houses. Four Stones maketwenty-four Houses. Five Stones make one hundred and twenty Houses.Six Stones make seven hundred and twenty Houses. Seven Stones makefive thousand and forty Houses. Beyond this point, think of whatthe mouth cannot say and the ear cannot hear. ¡¥ You know what thisis called today? Factor analysis. And you know why the Traditionwarns that beyond this point a man should quit? Because if therewere eight letters in the name of God, there would be fortythousand three hundred and twenty permutations, and if ten, therewould be three million six hundred twenty-eight thousand eighthundred, and the permutations of your own wretched little name,first name and last, would come to almost forty million. Thank Godyou don't have a middle initial, like so many Americans, becausethen there would be more than four hundred million. And if thenames of God contained twenty-seven letters ¡X in the Hebrewalphabet there are no vowels, but twenty -two consonants plus fivevariants¡X then the number of His possible names would havetwenty-nine digits. Except that you have to allow for repetitions,because the name of God could be aleph repeated twenty-seven times,in which case factor analysis is of no use: with repetitions you'dhave to take twenty-seven to the twenty-seventh power, which is, Ibelieve, something like four hundred forty-four billion billionbillion billion. Four times ten with thirty-nine zeros afterit."

"You're cheating, tryingto scare me. I've read your Sefer Yesirah, too. There aretwenty-two fundamental letters, and with them¡Xwith them alone¡XGodformed all creation."

"Let's not split hairs.Five, at this order of magnitude, won't help. If you say twenty-twoto the twenty-second power instead of twenty-seven to thetwenty-seventh, you still come up with something like three hundredand forty billion billion billion. On the human scale, it doesn'tmake much difference. If I counted one, two, three, and so