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

snooping around Manutius, or was Aglie using him for somecontact or other?

Salon didn't give metime to ponder this; he suggested a drink, and we ended up atPilade's. I had never seen Salon in this part of town, but hegreeted old Pilade as if they had known each other for years. Wesat down. He asked me how my history of magic was progressing. Sohe knew about that, too. I prodded him about the hollow-earththeory and about Sebottendorf, the man Belbo hadmentioned.

He laughed. "You peoplecertainly draw your share of madmen. I'm not familiar with thisbusiness of the earth being hollow. As for Sebottendorf, now therewas a character...He gave Himmler and company some ideas that weresuicidal for the German people."

"What ideas?"

"Oriental fancies. Thatman, wary of the Jews, ended up worshiping the Arabs and the Turks.Did you know that on Himm-ler's desk, along with Mein Kampf, therewas always the Koran? Sebottendorf, fascinated in his youth by anoccult Turkish sect, began studying Islamic gnosis. He said Fiihrerbut thought Old Man of the Mountain. When they all got together andfounded the SS, they had in mind an organization like theAssassins...Ask yourself why Germany and Turkey, in the First WorldWar, were allies."

"How do you know thesethings?"

"I told you, I think,that my poor father worked for the Okh-rana. Well, I remember inthose days how the tsarist police were concerned about theAssassins. Rachkovsky got wind of it first...But they gave up thattrail, because if the Assassins were involved, then the Jewscouldn't be, and the Jews were the danger. As always. The Jews wentback to Palestine and made those others leave their caves. But thewhole thing is complicated, confused. Let's leave it atthat."

He seemed to regrethaving said so much, and hastily took his leave. Then another thinghappened. I'm now sure I didn't dream it, but that day I thought itwas a hallucination: as I watched Salon walk away from the bar, Isaw him meet a man at the corner, an Oriental.

In any case, Salon hadsaid enough to start my imagination working again. The Old Man ofthe Mountain and the Assassins were no strangers to me: I hadmentioned them in my thesis. The Templars were accused of being incollusion with them. How could we have overlooked this?

So I began exercising mymind again, and my fingertips, going through old card files, and anidea came to me, an idea so spectacular that I couldn't restrainmyself.

The next morning I burstinto Belbo's office. "They got it all wrong. We got it allwrong."

"Take it easy, Casaubon.What are you talking about? Oh, my God, the Plan." Then hehesitated. "You probably don't know. There's bad news aboutDiotallevi. He won't speak. I called the hospital, but they refuseto give me the particulars because I'm not a relative. The mandoesn't have any relatives, so who is there to act on his behalf? Idon't like this reticence. A benign growth, they say, but thetherapy wasn't enough. He should .go back into the hospital for amonth or so, and minor surgery may be indicated...In other words,those people aren't telling me the whole story, and I like thissituation less and less."

I didn't know what tosay. Embarrassed by my triumphal entry, I started leafing throughpapers. But Belbo couldn't resist. He was like a gambler who's beenshown a pack of cards. "What the hell," he said. "Life goes on,unfortunately. What did you find?"

"Well, Hitler goes toall that trouble with the Jews, but he accomplishes nothing.Occultists throughout the world, for centuries, have studiedHebrew, rummaged in Hebrew texts, and at most they can draw ahoroscope. Why?"

"H'm....Because theJerusalemites' fragment of the message is still hidden somewhere.Though the Paulicians' fragment never turned up either, as far aswe know..."

"That's an answer worthyof Aglie, not of us. I have a better one. The Jews have nothing todo with it."

"What do youmean?"

"The Jews have nothingto do with the Plan. They can't. Picture the situation of theTemplars, first in Jerusalem, then in their commanderies in Europe.The French knights meet the Germans, the Portuguese, the Spanish,the Italians, the English: they all have contacts with theByzantine area, and in particular they combat the Turk, anadversary with whom they fight but also maintain a gentlemanlyrelationship, a relationship of equals. Who were the Jews at thattime, in Palestine? A religious and racial minority tolerated bythe condescending Arabs but treated very badly by the Christians.We must remember that in the course of the various Crusades theghettos were sacked as i matter of course and there were massacresall around. Is it conceivable that the Templars, snobs that theywere, would exchange mystical information with the Jews? Never. Andin the European commanderies, the Jews were considered usurers,were despised, people to be exploited, not trusted. We're talkingabout an alliance of knights, about a spiritual knighthood: wouldthe Templars of Provins allow second-class citizens to join that?Out of the question."

"But what about all thatRenaissance magic, and the study of cabala....?"

"That was only natural.By then we're close to the third meeting; they're champing at thebit, looking for shortcuts; Hebrew is a sacred and mysteriouslanguage; the cabalists have been busy on their own and to otherends. The Thirty-six scattered around the world get the idea that amysterious language might conceal God knows what secrets. It wasPico della Mirandola who said that nulla nomina, ut significativaet in quantum nomina sunt, in magico opere virtutem habere nonpossunt, nisi sint Hebraica. Pico della Mirandola was acretin."

"Bravo! Now you'retalking!"

"Furthermore, as anItalian, he was excluded from the Plan. ATiat did he know? So muchthe worse for Agrippa, Reuchlin, and their pals, who fell for thatred herring. I'm reconstructing the story of a red herring, a falsetrail: is that clear? We let ourselves be influenced by Diotallevi,who was always cabaliz-ing. He cabalized, so we put the Jews in thePlan. If he had been a scholar of Chinese culture, would we haveput the Chinese in the Plan?"

"Maybe we wouldhave."

"Anyway, let's not rendour garments; we were led astray by everyone. They all, from Postelon, probably, made this mistake. Two hundred years after Provins,they were convinced that the sixth group was the Jerusalemites. Itwasn't."

"Look, Casaubon, we werethe ones who revised Ardenti's theory, we were the