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

eccentric, ofcourse, but I used his idea as a starting point from which todetermine where the Templars might have located their secretcenters. I wouldn't have been able to understand the enigmas of themessage if I hadn't had some guiding idea. But I did have such anidea. It was my conviction, based oh abundant evidence, that theTemplar spirit was of Celtic, druidic origin; it was the spirit ofNordic Arian-ism, traditionally associated with the island ofAvalon, seat of the legendary civilization of the far north. As yousurely know, various authors have identified Avalon as the Gardenof the Hes-perides or as Ultima Thule, or as the Colchis of theGolden Fleece. It's hardly an accident that history's greatestchivalric order was la Toison d'Or, the Order of the Golden Fleece.Which makes it clear what the word ¡¥castle' in the message reallymeans: it refers to the hyperboreal, the northernmost castle, wherethe Templars kept the Grail, probably the mythicalMonsalvat."

He paused, wanting us tohang on his every word. We hung.

"Now let's go back tothe second command in the message: The guardians of the seal are togo to a place associated with bread. This instruction is completelyclear: the Grail is the chalice that contained Christ's blood, thebread is Christ's body, the place where the bread was eaten is theplace of the Last Supper, Jerusalem. It seems impossible that theTemplars wouldn't have maintained a secret base there, even afterthe Saracen recon-quest. I must admit that at first I was troubledby this Jewish element in a plan so deeply imbued widi Aryanmythology. But then I realized: we are the ones who continue toregard Jesus as deriving from the Judaic religion, because that'swhat the Church of Rome has always taught us. But the Templars knewthat Jesus was actually a Celtic myth. The whole gospel story is ahermetic allegory: resurrection after dissolution in the bowels ofthe earth, and all that. Christ is simply the elixir of thealchemists. For that matter, everyone knows that the Trinity is anAryan concept anyway, and that's why the whole rule of theTemplars, drawn up by the Druid Saint Bernard, is riddled with thenumbers."

The colonel took anothersip of water. He was hoarse. "And now we come to the third stage:the refuge. It's Tibet."

"Why Tiber?"

"Because, in the firstplace, Eschenbach tells us the Templars left Europe and took theGrail to India. Cradle of the Aryan race. The refuge is Agarttha.You gentlemen must have heard talk of Agarttha, seat of the King ofthe World, the underground city from which the Masters of the Worldcontrol and direct the developments of human history. The Templarsestablished one of their secret centers there, at the very sourceof their spirituality. You must be aware of the connection betweenthe realm of Agarttha and the Synarchy..."

"Frankly,no."

"All the better. Thereare secrets that kill. But let's not digress. In any case, you knowthat Agarttha was founded six thousand years ago, at the beginningof the Kali Yuga era, in which we are still living. The task of theknightly orders has always been to maintain contact with Agarttha,the active link between the wisdom of the East and the wisdom ofthe West. And now it's clear where the fourth meeting is to takeplace, in another druidic sanctuary, in a city of the Virgin: thecathedral of Chartres. From Provins, Chartres lies across the chiefriver of the Ile-de-France, the Seine."

We were completely lost."Wait a minute," I said. "What does Chartres have to do with yourCelts and Druids?"

"Where do you think theidea of the Virgin came from? The first virgins mentioned in Europewere the black virgins of the Celts. Once, as a young man, SaintBernard was in the church of Saint Voirles, kneeling before theblack virgin there, and she squeezed from her breast three drops ofmilk, which fell on the lips of the future founder of the Templars.That was why the romances of the Grail arose: to create a cover forthe Crusades, which were meant to find the Grail. The Benedictinesare the heirs of the Druids. Everybody knows that."

"And where are theseblack virgins now?"

"They were destroyed byforces who wanted to corrupt the Nordic and Celtic traditions andtransform them into a Mediterranean religion by inventing the mythof Mary of Nazareth. Or else those virgins were disguised,distorted, like so many other black madonnas still displayed to thefanaticism of the masses.

But if you examine theimages in the cathedrals as carefully as the great Fulcanelli did,you will find that this story is told quite clearly, and the tiesbetween the Celtic virgins and the alchemist tradition, Templar inorigin, are equally clear. The black virgin symbolizes the primematter that seekers employ in their quest for the philosopher'sstone, which, as we have seen, is simply the Grail. Where do youmink Mahomet, another great Druid initiate, got the inspiration forthe Black Stone of Mecca? Someone walled up the crypt in Chartresthat leads to the underground site where the original pagan statuestill stands, but if you look carefully, you can still make out ablack virgin, Notre-Dame-du-Pilier, carved by an Odinian canon. Inher right hand she holds the magic cylinder of the high priestessesof Odin, in her left the magic calendar that once depicted¡XI say,¡¥once,' because these sculptures unfortunately were vandalized byorthodox canons¡Xthe sacred animals of Odinism: the dog, the eagle,the lion, the white bear, and the werewolf. At the same time, noneof the scholars of Gothic esoterica has overlooked in Chartres astatue of a woman holding the chalice, the Grail. Ah, gentlemen, ifonly it were possible not just to read Chartres cathedral accordingto the tourist guides¡XRoman, Catholic, and Apostolic¡Xbut to seeit, really see it, with the eyes of Tradition! Then the true storytold by that rock of Erik at Avalon would be known."

"Which brings us to thePopelicans. Who were they?"

"The Cathars.¡¥Popelican'¡Xor ¡¥Popelicant'¡Xwas one of the names given toheretics. The Cathars of Provence had been destroyed, and I am notso naive as to imagine a meeting in the ruins of Montsegur, but thesect itself didn't die. There's a whole geography of hiddenCatharism, which produced Dante as well as the dolce stil nuovopoets and the Fedeli d'Amore sect. The fifth meeting place istherefore somewhere in northern Italy or