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

they were killers destined to be killed,victims condemned to make victims.

How they were feared!What tales the Crusaders told about them on moonless nights as thesimoom howled over the desert! How the Templars admired, enviedthose splendid animals; how awed they were by the clear will tomartyrdom! The Templars agreed to pay their tolls, asking, inexchange, formal tributes, in a game of reciprocal concessions,complicity, brotherhood of arms, disemboweling one another in theopen field but embracing one another in secret, exchanging murmuredwords of mystical visions, magic formulas, alchemicsubtleties...

From the Assassins, theTemplars learned occult rites. It was cowardice and ignorance thatkept King Philip's inquisitors from seeing that the spitting on thecross, the kiss on the anus, the black cat, and the worship ofBaphomet were simply a repetition of other ceremonies, ceremoniesperformed under the influence of the first secret the Templarslearned in the Orient: the use of hashish.

So it was obvious thatthe Plan was born¡Xhad to be born¡Xthere. From the men of Alamut,the Templars learned of the subterranean currents. They met the menof Alamut in Provins and established the secret plot of theThirty-six Invisibles, and that is why Christian Rosencreutzjourneyed to Fez and other places in the Orient, and that is why itwas to the Orient that Postel turned, and why it was from Egypt,home of the Fatimid Ismailis, that the mages of the Renaissanceimported the eponymous divinity of the Plan, Hermes, Hermes-Teuthor Toth, and why Egyptian figures were used by the mountebankCagliostro for his rituals. And the Jesuits, less narrow than wehad thought, with the good Father Kircher, lost no time in throwingthemselves into hieroglyphics, Coptic, and the other Orientallanguages, and Hebrew was only a cover, a nod to the fashion of theperiod.

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These texts are notaddressed to common mortals...Gnostic perception is a path reservedfor an elite...For, in the words of the Bible: Do not cast yourpearls before swine.

¡XKamal Jumblatt,Interview in Le Jour, March 31, 1967

Arcana publicatavilescunt: et gratiam prophanata amittunt. Ergo: ne margaritasobijce porcis, seu asino substerne rosas.

¡XJohann ValentinAndreae, Die Chymische Hochzeit des Christian Rosencreutz,Strassburg, Zetzner, 1616, frontispiece

For that matter, whereelse could you find someone able to wait on the rock for sixcenturies, someone who had actually waited on the rock? True,Alamut eventually fell, under the pressure of the Mongols, but theIsmaili sect survived throughout the East: it mingled withnon-Shiite Sufism, it generated the terrible sect of the Druzes,and it survived finally among the Indian Khojas, the followers ofthe Aga Khan, not far from the site of Agarttha.

But I had discoveredmore. Under the Fatimid dynasty, through the Academy of Heliopolis,the hermetic notions of the ancient Egyptians were rediscovered inCairo, and a house of sciences was established there. House ofsciences! Was it from this that Bacon drew the inspiration for hisHouse of Solomon, which in turn was the model for theConservatoire?

"That's it, that's it,there's no doubt about it," Belbo said, intoxicated. "But now howdo the cabalists fit in?"

"That's only a parallelstory. The rabbis of Jerusalem sense that something happenedbetween the Templars and the Assassins, and the rabbis of Spain,snooping around under the pretense of lending money at interest tothe European commanderies, get a whiff of something. They have beenexcluded and, spurred by national pride, they decide to figure itout on their own. What?! We, the Chosen People, are kept in thedark about the Secret of Secrets? And, bang, the cabalistictradition begins: a heroic attempt of the dispersed, the outsiders,to show up the masters, the ones in power, by claiming to knowall."

"But, doing that, theygive the Christians the impression that they really do knowall."

"And at a certain pointsomebody makes the supreme goof, confusing Ismail withIsrael."

"For God's sake, don'ttell me that Barruel and the Protocols and all the rest were simplythe result of a misspelling. Casau-bon, we're reducing a tragicchapter in history to a mistake of Pico dellaMirandola."

"No, maybe there'sanother reason. The Chosen People had taken on the duty ofinterpreting the Book. People are afraid of those who make themlook squarely at the Law. But the Assassins? Why didn't they turnup sooner?"

"Belbo! Think what adepressed area that was after the battle of Lepanto. Sebottendorfknows that there is something to be learned from the Turkdervishes, but Alamut is no more; those Turks are holed up Godknows where. They wait. And finally their moment comes; on the tideof Islamic irredentism they stick their heads out again. PuttingHitler in the Plan, we found a good reason for the Second WorldWar. Now, putting in the Assassins of Alamut, we explain what hasbeen happening for years in the Persian Gulf. And this is where wefind a place for our Tres, Templi Resurgentes Equites Synarchici. Asociety whose aim is to heal the rift, at last, between thespiritual knighthoods of different faiths."

"Or else to stimulateconflict and take advantage of the confusion. Once again we've doneour job and set History straight. Can it be that at the suprememoment the Pendulum will reveal that the Umbilicus Mundi is atAlamut?"

"Let's not go too far.I'd leave that last point hanging."

"Like thePendulum."

"If you like. We can'tjust say whatever enters our heads."

"No, no. Strictscholarship, above all."

That evening Icongratulated myself on having invented a great tale. I was anaesthete who used the flesh and blood of the world to make Beauty.But Belbo by now was an adept, and, like other adepts, not throughenlightenment, but faute de mieux.

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Claudicat ingenium,delirat lingua, labat mens.

¡XLucretius, De RerumNatura, iii, 453

It must have been aboutthen that Belbo tried to take stock of what was happening to him.But the most severe self-analysis could not free him now from thesickness to which he had grown accustomed.

FILENAME: And what ifit's true?

To invent a Plan. ThePlan justifies you to such a degree that you can no longer be heldaccountable, not even for the Plan itself. Just throw the stone andhide your hand. If there really were a Plan, there would be nofailure.

You never had Ceciliabecause the Archons made Annibale Canta-lamessa and Pio Bounskilled even with the friendliest of the brass instruments. Youfled the Canal gang because the Decans wanted to spare you foranother holocaust. And the man with the scar has a talisman morepowerful than yours.

A Plan, a guilty party.The dream