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

on, onenumber every second, it would take me almost thirty-two years toget to one lousy little billion. And it's more complicated thanthat, because cabala can't be reduced to the Sefer Yesirah alone.Besides which, there's a good reason why any real permutation ofthe Torah must include all twenty-seven letters. It's true that ifthe last five letters fall in the middle of a word, they aretransformed into their normal variant. But not always. In Isaiah9:2, for instance, there's the word "LMRBH," lemarbah¡Xwhich, notethe coincidence, means to multiply¡Xbut the mem in the middle iswritten as a final mem."

"Why isthat?"

"Every lettercorresponds to a number. The normal mem is forty, but the final memis six hundred. This has nothing to do with temurah, which teachespermutation; it involves, rather, gematria, which seeks sublimeaffinities between words and their numeric values. With the finalmem the word "LMRBH" totals not two hundred and seventy-seven buteight hundred and thirty-seven, and thus is equivalent to ThThZL,or thath zal, which means ¡¥he who gives profusely.' So you can seewhy all twenty-seven letters have to be considered: it isn't justthe sound that matters, but the number too. Which brings us to mycalculation. There are more than four hundred billion billionbillion billion possibilities. Have you any idea how long it wouldtake to try them all out, using a machine? And I'm not talkingabout your miserable little computer. At the rate of onepermutation per second, you would need seven billion billionbillion billion minutes, or one hundred and twenty-three millionbillion billion billion hours, which is a little more than fivemillion billion billion billion days, or fourteen thousand billionbillion billion years, which comes to a hundred and forty billionbillion billion centuries, or fourteen billion billion billionmillennia. But suppose you had a machine capable of generating amillion permutations per second. Just think of the time you'd savewith your electronic wheel: you'd need only fourteen thousandbillion billion millennia!

"The real and true nameof God, the secret name, is as long as the entire Torah, and thereis no machine in the world capable of exhausting all itspermutations, because the Torah itself is a permutation withrepetitions, and the art of temurah tells us to change not thetwenty-seven letters of the alphabet but each and every characterin the Torah, for each character is a letter unto itself, no matterhow often it appears on other pages. The two hes in the name YHVHtherefore count as two different letters. And if you want toCalculate all the permutations of all the characters in the entireTorah, then all the zeros in the world will not be enough for you.But go ahead, do what you can with your pathetic littleaccountant's machine. A machine does exist, to be sure, but itwasn't manufactured in your Silicon Valley: it is the holy cabala,or Tradition, and for centuries the rabbis have been doing what nocomputer can do and, let us hope, will never be able to do. Becauseon the day all the combinations are exhausted, the result shouldremain secret, and in any case the universe will have completed itscycle¡Xand we will all be consumed in the dazzling glory of thegreat Metacyclosynchro-tron."

"Amen," Jacopo Belbosaid.

Diotallevi was alreadydriving him toward these excesses, and I should have kept that inmind. How often had I seen Belbo, after office hours, runningprograms to check Diotallevi's calculations, trying to show himthat at least Abu could give results in a few seconds, not havingto work by hand on yellowing parchment or use antediluvian numbersystems that did not even include zero? But Abu gave his answers inexponential notation, so Belbo was unable to daunt Diotallevi witha screen full of endless zeros: a pale visual imitation of themultiplication of combinatorial universes, of the exploding swarmof all possible worlds.

After everything thathad happened, it seemed impossible to me, I thought as I stared atthe Rosicrucian engraving, that Belbo would not have returned tothose exercises on the name of God in selecting a password. And if,as I guessed, he was also preoccupied with numbers like thirty-sixand one hundred and twenty, they would enter into it, too. He wouldnot have simply combined the four Hebrew letters, knowing that fourStones made only twenty-four Houses.

But he might have playedwith the Italian transcription, which contained two vowels. Withsix letters¡Xlahveh¡Xhe had seven hundred and twenty permutationsat his disposal. The repetitions didn't count, because Diotallevihad said that the two hes must be taken as two different letters.Belbo could have chosen, say, the thirty-sixth or the hundred andtwentieth.

I had arrived at Belbo'sat about eleven; it was now one. I would have to write a programfor anagrams of six letters, and the best way to do that was tomodify the program I already had written for four.

I needed some fresh air.I went out, bought myself some food, another bottle ofwhiskey.

I came back, left thesandwiches in a corner, and started on the whiskey as I insertedthe Basic disk and went to work. I made the usual mistakes, and thedebugging took me a good half hour, but by two-thirty the programwas functional and the seven hundred and twenty names of God wererunning down the screen.

iahueh

iahuhe

iahtuh

iahehu

iahhve

iahhev

iauheh

iauhhe

iauehh

iauehh

iauhhe

iauhih

iaehuh

iaehhv

iaeuhh

iaeuhh

iaehhu

iaehuh

iahhu*

iahhev

lahuhe

iahueh

iahehv

iaheuh

ihaueh

ihauhe

ihaeuh

ihaehu

ihahue

ihahcu

i hwaeh

ihuahe

ihueah

ihueha

ihuhae

ihuhea

iheauh

iheahv

iheuah

iheuha

Ihehau

ihehva

ihhaue

ihhaev

ihhuae

ihhuea

ihheau

ihheua

iuaheh

iuahhe

iuaehh

iuaehh

iuahhe

i uahth

iuhaeh

i uhahe

iuehah

iuehha

iuhahe

iuhaeh

i uhhae

iuhhea

iuheah

iuheha

itahuh

i eahhu

ieavhh

ieauhh

ieahhv

ieahuh

iehauh

iehahu

iehuah

iehuha

iehhau

iehhua

itvahh

ieuahh

ievhah

ieuhha

iiuhah

ieuhha

iehahu

iehauh

iehhau

iehhva

iehwah

iehMha

lhahue

ihaheu

ihauhe

ihaueh

ihaehv

ihaeuh

ihhaue

i hhaeu

ihhuae

ihhuea

ihheau

ihheua

ihuahe

ihuaeh

ihuhae

ihuhea

ihueah

ihueha

iheahu

iheauh

ihehau

ihehua

iheuah

iheuha

aihueh

ai huhe

ai heuh

aihihu

ai hhue

aihheu

ai uheh

ai uhhe

aiuehh

aiuehh

aiuhhe

aiuh?h

aiehuh

aiehhv

aieuhh

aieuhh

ai ehhu

ai ehuh

aihhue

aihheu

aih-uhe

aihueh

ai hehu

aiheuh

ahiueh

ahiuhe

ahieuh

ahiehu

ahihue

ah i hew

ahuieh

ahu i he

ahueih

ahuehi

ahuh ie

ahvhei

ahe i uh

aheihu

ahe u i h

aheuhi

aheh i u

ahehui

ahhii/B

ahhieu

ahhuie

ahhye i

ahhei v

ahheu i

auiheh

aui hhe

auiehh

auiehh

au ihhe

auiheh

auh i eh

auhihe

auheih

auhehi

auhhie

auhhei

aueihh

auei hh

aueh ih

auehh i

auehih

auehhi

auhihe

avhieh

auhhie

aMhhei

auhe ih

auhehi

aeihuh

aeihhu

aeiuhh

aeiuhh

aeihhu

aeihuh

aehiuh

aeh i hu

aehuih

aehuhi

aehhiu

avhhu i

aeu i hh

aeuihh

aeuh i h

aeuhhi

aeuhih

a>uhhi

aehihu

aehi uh

aehhiu

aehhui

aehuih

aehuh i

ahihue

ahiheu

ahiuhe

ahiueh

ahiehu

ah iewh

ahhiue

ahhieu

ahhuie

ahhuei

ahheiu

ahheu i

ahu i he

ahy ieh

ahuhie

ahuhe i

ahue i h

ahuehi

ahe i hu

aheiuh

aheh i u

ahehui

ahevih

aheuhi

I took the pages fromthe printer without separating them, as if I were consulting thescroll of the Torah. I tried name number thirty-six. And drew ablank. A last sip of whiskey, then with hesitant fingers I triedname number one hundred and twenty. Nothing.

I wanted to die. Yet Ifelt that by now I was Jacopo Belbo, that he had surely thought asI was thinking. So I must have made some mistake, a stupid, trivialmistake. I was getting closer. Had Belbo, for some reason thatescaped me, perhaps counted from the end of the list?

Casaubon, you fool, Isaid to myself. Of course he started from the end. That is, hecounted from right to left. Belbo had