Eco: Foucalt's Pendulum (63 page)

Four our Ordinances and
Rites: We have two very long and faire Galleries in the Temple of
the Rosie Cross; In one of these we place patterns and samples of
all manners of the more rare and excellent inventions; In the other
we place the Statues of all principal Inventours.

¡XJohn Heydon, The
English Physitians Guide: Or A Holy Guide, London, Ferns, 1662, The
Preface

I had stayed in the
periscope too long. It must have been ten, ten-thirty. If something
was going to happen, it would happen in the nave, before the
Pendulum. I had to go down there and find a hiding place, an
observation post. If I arrived too late, after They entered (from
where?), They would notice me.

Go downstairs. Move...
For hours I had waited for this, but now that it was possible, even
wise, to do it, I felt somehow paralyzed. I would have to cross the
rooms at night, using my flashlight only when necessary. The barest
hint of a nocturnal glow filtered through the big windows. I had
imagined a museum made ghostly by the moon's rays; I was wrong. The
glass cases reflected vague glints from outside; that was all. If I
didn't move carefully, I could go sprawling on the floor, could
knock over something with a shatter of glass, a clang of metal. Now
and then I turned on the flashlight, turned it off. Proceeding, I
felt as if I were at the Crazy Horse. The sudden beam revealed a
nakedness, not of flesh, but of screws, clamps, rivets.

What if I were suddenly
to reveal a living presence, the figure of an envoy of the Masters
echoing, mirroring my progress? Who would be the first to shout? I
listened. In vain. Gliding, I made no noise. Neither did
he.

That afternoon I had
studied carefully the sequence of the rooms, in order to be able to
find the great staircase even in the darkness. But instead I was
wandering, groping. I had lost my bearings.

Perhaps I was going in
circles, crossing some of the rooms for the second time; perhaps I
would never get out of this place; perhaps this groping among
meaningless machines was the rite.

The truth was, I didn't
want to go down. I wanted to postpone the rendezvous.

I had emerged from the
periscope after a long and merciless examination of conscience, I
had reviewed our error of the last years and tried to understand
why, without any reasonable reason, I was now here hunting for
Belbo, who was here for reasons even less reasonable. But the
moment I set foot outside the periscope, everything changed. As I
advanced, I advanced with another man's head. I became Belbo. Like
Belbo, now at the end of his long journey toward enlightenment, I
knew that every earthly object, even the most squalid, must be read
as the hieroglyph of something else, and that there is nothing, no
object, as real as the Plan. How clever I was! A flash of light, a
glance, was all it took, and I understood. I would not let myself
be deceived.

...Froment's Motor: a
vertical structure on a rhomboid base. It enclosed, like an
anatomical figure exhibiting its ribs and viscera, a series of
reels, batteries, circuit breakers¡Xwhat the hell did the textbooks
call them?¡Xand the thing was driven by a transmission belt fed by
a toothed wheel... What could it have been used for? Answer: for
measuring the telluric currents, of course.

Accumulators. What did
they accumulate? I imagined the Thirty-six Invisibles as stubborn
secretaries (keepers of the secret) tapping all night on their
clavier-scribes to produce from this machine a sound, a spark, all
of them intent on a dialog from coast to coast, from abyss to
surface, from Machu Picchu to Avalon, come in, come in, hello hello
hello, Pamersiel Pa-mersiel, we've caught a tremor, current Mu 36,
the one the Brahmans worshiped as the breath of God, now I'll plug
in the tap, the valve, aU micro-macrocosmic circuits operational,
all the mandrake roots shuddering beneath the crust of the globe,
you hear the song of the Universal Sympathetic, over and
out.

My God, armies
slaughtered one another across the plains of Europe, popes hurled
anathemas, emperors met, hemophiliac and incestuous, in the hunting
lodge of the Palatine gardens, all to supply a cover, a sumptuous
facade for the work of these wireless operators who in the House of
Solomon were listening for pale echoes from the Umbilicus
Mundi.

And as they operated
these pseudothermic hexatetragrammatic electrocapillatories¡Xthat's
how Garamond would have put it¡X every now and then someone would
invent, say, a vaccine or an electric bulb, a triumph in the
wonderful adventure of metals, but the real task was quite
different: here they are, assembled at midnight, to spin this
static-electricity machine of Ducretet, a transparent wheel that
looks like a bandoleer, and, inside it, two little vibrating balls
supported by arched sticks, and when they touch, sparks fly, and
Dr. Frankenstein hopes to give life to his golem, but no, the
signal has another purpose: Dig, dig, old mole...

A sewing machine (what
else? One of those engraving-advertisements, along with pills for
developing one's bust, and the great eagle flying over the
mountains with the restorative cordial in its talons, Robur le
Conquerant, R. C.), but when you turn it on, it turns a wheel, and
the wheel turns a coil, and the coil... What does the coil do? Who
is listening to the coil? The label says, "Currents induced from
the terrestrial field." Shameless! There to be read even by
children on their afternoon visits! Mankind believed it was going
in a different direction, believed everything was possible,
believed in the supremacy of experiment, of mechanics. The Masters
of the World have deceived us for centuries. Enfolded, swaddled,
seduced by the Plan, we wrote poems in praise of the
locomotive.

I passed by. I imagined
myself dwindling, an ant-sized, dazed pedestrian in the streets of
a mechanical city, metallic skyscrapers on every side. Cylinders,
batteries, Leyden jars one above the other, merry-go-round
centrifuges, tourniquet elec-trique a attraction et repulsion, a
talisman to stimulate the sympathetic currents, colonnade
etincelante formee de rieuf tubes, electroaimant, a guillotine, and
in the center¡Xit looked like a printing press¡Xhooks hung from
chains, the kind you might see in a stable. A press in which you
could crush a hand, a head. A glass bell with a pneumatic pump,
two-cylinder, a kind of alembic, with a cup underneath and, to the
right, a copper sphere. In it Saint-Germain concocted his dyes for
the landgrave of Hesse.

A pipe rack with two
rows of little hourglasses, ten to a row, their necks elongated
like the neck of a Modigliani woman, some unspecified material
inside, and the upper bulge of each expanded to a different size,
like balloons about to take off. This, an apparatus for the
production of the Rebis, where anyone could see it.

Then the glassworks
section. I had retraced my steps. Little green bottles: a sadist
host offering me poisons in quintessence. Iron machines for making
bottles, opened and closed by two cranks. What if, instead of a
bottle, someone put a wrist in there? Whack! And it would be the
same with those great pincers, those immense scissors, those curved
scalpels that could be inserted into sphincters or ears, into the
uterus to extract the still-living fetus, which would be ground
with honey and pepper to sate the appetite of Astarte... The room I
was now crossing had broad cases, and buttons to set in motion
corkscrews that would advance inexorably toward the victim's eye,
the Pit and the Pendulum. We were close to carfeature now, to the
ridiculous contraptions of Rube Goldberg, the torture racks on
which Big Pete bound Mickey Mouse, the engrenage exterieur a trois
pignons, triumph of Renaissance mechanics, Branca, Ramelli, Zonca.
I knew these gears, I had put them in the wonderful adventure of
metals, but they had been added here later, in the last century,
and were ready to restrain the unruly after the conquest of the
world; the Templars had learned from the Assassins how to shut up
Noffo Dei when the time of his capture came; the swastika of
Sebotten-dorf would twist, in the direction of the sun, the
twitching limbs of the enemies of the Masters of the World. All
ready, these instruments awaited a sign, everything in full view,
the Plan was public, but nobody could have guessed it, the creaking
mechanical maws would sing their hymn of conquest, great orgy of
mouths, all teeth that locked and meshed exactly, mouths singing in
tick-tock spasms.

Finally I came to the
emetteur a etincelles soufflees designed for the EifFel Tower, for
the emission of time signals between France, Tunisia, and Russia,
the Templars of Provins, the Pau-licians, the Assassins of Fez.
(Fez isn't in Tunisia, and the Assassins, anyway, were in Persia,
but you can't split hairs when you live in the coils of
Transcendent Time.) I had seen it before, this immense machine,
taller than I, its walls perforated by a series of portholes, air
ducts. The sign said it was a radio apparatus, but I knew better, I
had passed it that same afternoon. The Beaubourg!

For all to see. And, for
that matter, what was the real purpose of that enormous box in the
center of Lutetia (Lutetia, the air duct in a subterranean sea of
mud), where once there was the Belly of Paris, with those
prehensile proboscises of vents, that insanity of pipes, conduits,
that Ear of Dionysius open to the sky to capture sounds, messages,
signals, and send them to the very center of the globe, and then to
return them, vomiting out information from hell? First the
Conservatoire, a laboratory, then the Tower, a probe, and finally
the Beaubourg, a global transmitter and receiver. Had they set up
that huge suction cup just to entertain a handful of hairy, smelly
students, who went there to listen to the latest record with a
Japanese headset? For all to see. The Beaubourg, gate to the
underground kingdom of Agarttha, the monument of the Resurgentes
Equites Synarchici. And the rest¡Xtwo, three, four billion of
them¡Xwere unaware of this, or forced themselves to look the other
way. Idiots and hylics. While the pneumatics headed straight for
their goal, through six centuries.

Unexpectedly, I found
the staircase. I went down, with increasing caution. Midnight was
approaching. I had to hide in my observation post before They
arrived.

It was about eleven. I
crossed the Lavoisier hall without turning on the flashlight,
remembering the hallucinations of that afternoon. I crossed the
corridor with the model trains.

There were already
people in the nave: dim lights moving, the sound of shuffling, of
objects being dragged.

Would I have time to
make it to the sentry box? I slipped along the cases with the model
trains and was soon close to the statue of Gramme, in the transept.
On a wooden pedestal, cubic in form (the cubic stone of Yesod!), it
stood as if to guard the entrance to the choir. My Statue of
Liberty was almost directly behind it.

The front panel of the
pedestal had been lowered, a kind of gangplank allowing people to
enter the nave from some concealed passage. In fact, an individual
emerged from there with a lantern¡Xa gas lantern, with colored
glass, which illuminated his face in red patches. I pressed myself
into a corner, and he didn't see me. A second man joined him from
the choir. "Vite," he said. "Hurry. In an hour they'll be
here."

So this was the
vanguard, preparing something for the rite. If there weren't too
many of them, I could still reach Liberty before They arrived¡XGod
knows from where, and in what numbers¡Xby the same route. For a
long while I crouched low, following the glints of the lanterns in
the church, the regular alternation of the lights between greater
and lesser intensity. I calculated how far they moved away from
Liberty and how much of it remained in shadow. Then, at a certain
moment, I risked it, squeezed past the leftside of Gramme,
atightfit, painful, even sucking in my stomach. Luckily, I was thin
as a rail. Lia...I made a dash, slipped into the sentry box, where
I sank to the floor and curled up in a fetal position. My heart
raced; my teeth chattered.

I had to relax. I
breathed through my nose rhythmically, my breaths gradually deeper
and deeper. This is how, under torture, you can make yourself lose
consciousness and escape the pain. And, in fact, I sank slowly into
the embrace of the Subterranean World.

Our cause is a secret
within a secret, a secret that only another secret can explain; it
is a secret about a secret that is veiled by a secret.

¡XJa ¡¥far as-Sadiq,
sixth Imam

Slowly, I regained
consciousness, heard sounds; the light, now stronger, made me
blink. My feet were numb. When I tried to get up, making no noise,
I felt I was standing on a bed of spiny sea urchins. The Little
Mermaid. Silently I stood on tiptoe, then bent my knees, and the
pain lessened. Peering out cautiously, left and right, I saw that
the sentry box was still pretty much in the shadows. Only then did
I take in the scene.

The nave was illuminated
on all sides. There were now dozens and dozens of lanterns, carried
by new arrivals, who were entering from the passage behind me. They
moved by on my left, into the choir, or lined up in the nave. My
God, I said to myself, a Night on Bald Mountain, Walt Disney
version.

They didn't raise their
voices; they whispered, together creating a noise like a crowd
scene in a play: rhubarb rhubarb.

To the left, the
lanterns were set on the floor in a semicircle, completing, with a
flattened arc, the eastern curve of the choir, and touching, at the
southernmost point, the statue of Pascal. A burning brazier had
been placed there, and on it someone was throwing herbs, essences.
The smoke reached me in the box, parched my throat, gave me a
feeling of dazed excitement.

In the center of the
choir, in the flickering of the lanterns, something stirred, a
slender shadow.

The Pendulum! The
Pendulum no longer swayed in its familiar place in the center of
the transept. A larger version of it had been hung from the
keystone in the center of the choir. The sphere was larger; the
wire much thicker, like a hawser, I thought, or a cable of braided
metal strands. The Pendulum, now enormous, must have appeared this
way in the Pantheon. It was like beholding the moon through a
telescope.

They had re-created the
pendulum that the Templars first experimented with, half a
millennium before Foucault. To allow it to sway freely, they had
removed some ribs and supporting beams, turning the amphitheater of
the choir into a crude symmetrical antistrophe marked out by the
lanterns.

I asked myself how the
Pendulum could maintain its constant oscillation, since the
magnetic regulator could not be beneath it now, in the floor. Then
I understood. At the edge of the choir, near the diesel engines,
stood an individual ready to dart like a cat to follow the plane of
oscillation. He gave the sphere a little push each time it came
toward him, a precise light tap of the hand or the
fingertips.

He was in tails, like
Mandrake. Later, seeing his companions, I realized that he was
indeed a magician, a prestidigitator from Le Petit Cirque of Madame
Olcott; he was a professional, able to gauge pressures and
distances, possessing a steady wrist skilled in working within the
infinitesimal margins necessary in legerdemain. Perhaps through the
thin soles of his gleaming shoes he could sense the vibrations of
the currents, and move his hands according to the logic of both the
sphere and the earth that governed it.

His companions¡Xnow I
could see them as well. They moved among the automobiles in the
nave, they scurried past the drai-siennes and the motorcycles,
almost tumbling in the shadows. Some carried a stool and a table
covered with red cloth in the vast ambulatory in the rear, and some
placed other lanterns. Tiny, nocturnal, twittering, they were like
rachitic children, and as one went past me I saw mongoloid features
and a bald head. Madame Olcott's Freaks Mignons, the horrible
little monsters I had seen on the poster in the Librairie
Sloane.

The circus was there in
full force: the staff, guards, chores ographers of the rite. I saw
Alex and Denys, les Geants d'Ava-lon, sheathed in armor of studded
leather. They were giants indeed, blond, leaning against the great
bulk of the Obeissante, their arms folded as they
waited.

I didn't have time to
ask myself more questions. Someone had entered with solemnity, a
hand extended to impose silence. I recognized Bramanti only because
he was wearing the scarlet tunic, the white cape, and the miter I
had seen on him that evening in Piedmont. He approached the
brazier, threw something on it, a flame shot up, then thick, white
smoke rose and slowly spread through the room. As in Rio, I
thought, at the alchemistic party. And I didn't have an agogo. I
held my handkerchief to my nose and mouth, as a filter. Even so, I
seemed to see two Bramantis, and the Pendulum swayed before me in
several directions at once, like a merry-go-round.

Bramanti began chanting:
"Alef bet gimel dalet he vav zain het tet yod kaf lamed mem nun
samek ayin pe sade qof resh shin tau!"

The crowd responded,
praying: "Pamersiel, Padiel, Camuel, Aseliel, Barmiel, Gediel,
Asyriel, Maseriel, Dorchtiel, Usiel, Cabariel, Raysiel, Symiel,
Armadiel..."

Bramanti made a sign,
and someone stepped from the crowd and knelt at his feet. For just
an instant I saw the face. It was Riccardo, the man with the scar,
the painter.

Bramanti questioned him,
and Riccardo answered, reciting from memory the formulas of the
ritual.

"Who are
you?"

"I am an adept, not yet
admitted to the higher mysteries of the Tres. I have prepared
myself in silence and meditation upon the mystery of the Baphomet,
in the knowledge that the Great Work revolves around six intact
seals, and only at the end will we know the secret of the
seventh."

"How were you
received?"

"Through the
perpendicular of the Pendulum."

"Who received
you?"

"A Mystical
Envoy."

"Would you recognize
him?"

"No, for he was masked.
I know only the knight of the rank higher than mine, and he knows
only the naometer of the rank higher than his, and each knows only
one other. And so I wish it to be."

"Quid facit Sator
Arepo?"

"Tenet Opera
Rotas."

"Quid facit Satan
Adama?"

"Tabat Amata Natas.
Mandabas Data Amata, Nata Sata."

"Have you brought the
woman?"

"Yes, she is here. I
have delivered her to the person, as I was ordered. She is
ready."

"Go, but remain
ready."

The dialog proceeded in
bad French, on both sides. Then Bramanti said: "Brothers, we are
gathered here in the name of the One Order, the Unknown Order, to
which Order, until yesterday, you did not know that you belonged,
and yet you have always belonged to it! Let us swear. Anathema on
all profaners of the Secret. Anathema on all sycophants of the
occult. Anathema on all those who have made a spectacle of the
Rites and Mysteries!"

"Anathema!"

"Anathema on the
Invisible College, on the bastard children of Hiram and the Widow,
on the operative and speculative masters of the lie of the Orient
and the Occident, Ancient, Accepted, or Revised, on Mizraim and
Memphis, on the Philalethes and the Nine Sisters, on the Strict
Observance and on the Ordo Tem-pli Orientis, on the Illuminati of
Bavaria and of Avignon, on the Kadosh Knights, on the Elus Cohen,
on the Perfect Friendship, on the Knights of the Black Eagle and of
the Holy City, on the Rosicrucians of Anglia, on the cabalists of
the Rose + Cross of Gold, on the Golden Dawn, on the Catholic Rosy
Cross of the Temple and of the Grail, on the Stella Matutina, on
the Astrum Argentinum and Thelema, on Vril and Thule, on every
ancient and mystical usurper of the name of the Great White
Fraternity, on the Guardians of the Temple, on every college and
priory of Zion and of Gaul!"

"Anathema!"

"Whoever out of
ingenuity, submission, conversion, calculation, or bad faith has
been initiated into any lodge, college, priory, chapter, or order
that illicitly refers to obedience to the Unknown Superiors or to
the Masters of the World, must this night abjure that initiation
and implore total restoration in spirit and body to the one and
true observance, the Tres, Templi Re-surgentes Equites Synarchici,
the triune and trinosophic mystical and most secret order of the
Synarchic Knights of Templar Rebirth!"

"Sub umbra alarum
tuarum!"

"Now enter the
dignitaries of the thirty-six highest and most secret
degrees."

As Bramanti called the
elect, they appeared in liturgical vestments, wearing the insigne
of the Golden Fleece on their chest.

"Knight of the Baphomet,
Knight of the Six Intact Seals, Knight of the Seventh Seal, Knight
of the Tetragrammaton, Knight Executioner of Florian and Dei,
Knight of the Atha-nor... Venerable Naometer of the Turns Babel,
Venerable Naometer of the Great Pyramid, Venerable Naometer of the
Cathedrals, Venerable Naometer of the Temple of Solomon, Venerable
Naometer of the Hortus Palatinus, Venerable Naometer of the Temple
of Heliopolis..."

As Bramanti recited the
titles, those named entered in groups, so I was unable to assign to
each his individual dignity, but among the first twelve I saw De
Gubernatis, the old man from the Librairie Sloane, Professor
Camestres, and others I had met that evening in Piedmont. And I saw
Signer Garamond, I believe as Knight of the Tetragrammaton,
composed and hieratic, very much absorbed in his new role, with
hands that trembled as they touched the Fleece on his chest.
Meanwhile, Bramanti went on: "Mystical Legate of Karnak, Mystical
Legate of Bavaria, Mystical Legate of the Barbelognostics, Mystical
Legate of Camelot, Mystical Legate of Montsegur, Mystical Legate of
the Hidden Imam... Supreme Patriarch of Tomar, Supreme Patriarch of
Kilwinning, Supreme Patriarch of Saint-Martin-des-Champs, Supreme
Patriarch of Marienbad, Supreme Patriarch of the Invisible Okhrana,
Supreme Patriarch in partibus of the Rock of Alamut..."

The patriarch of the
Invisible Okhrana was Salon, still gray-faced but, without his
smock, now resplendent in a yellow tunic edged in red. He was
followed by Pierre, the psychopomp of the Eglise Luciferienne, who
wore on his chest, instead of the Golden Fleece, a dagger in a
gilded sheath. Meanwhile, Bra-manti went on: "Sublime Hierogam of
the Chemical Wedding, Sublime Rodostauric Psychopomp, Sublime
Referendarium of the Most Arcane Arcana, Sublime Steganograph of
the Hieroglyphic Monad, Sublime Astral Connector Utriusque Cosmi,
Sublime Keeper of the Tomb of Rosencreutz... Imponderable Archon of
the Currents, Imponderable Archon of the Hollow Earth, Imponderable
Archon of the Mystic Pole, Imponderable Archon of the Labyrinths,
Imponderable Archon of the Pendulum of Pendula..." Bramanti paused,
and it seemed to me that he uttered the last formula with
reluctance: "And the Imponderable Archon of Imponderable Archons,
the Servant of Servants, Most Humble Secretary of the Egyptian
Oedipus, Lowest Messenger of the Masters of the World and Porter of
Agarttha, Last Thurifer of the Pendulum, Claude-Louis, Comte de
Saint-Germain, Prince Rackoczi, Comte de Saint-Martin, and Marchese
di Aglie, Monsieur de Surmont, Mr. Welldone, Marchese di
Monferrato, of Aymar, and of Belmar, Count Sol-tikoff, Knight
Schoening, Count of Tzarogy!"

As the others of the
elect took their places in the ambulatory facing the Pendulum, and
the faithful stood in the nave, Aglie entered, pale and drawn,
wearing a blue pinstripe suit. He led by the hand, as if escorting
a soul along the path of Hades, Lorenza Pellegrini, also pale, and
dazed, as if drugged; she was dressed only in a white,
semitransparent tunic, and her hair fell loose over her shoulders.
I saw her in profile as she went by, as pure and languid as a
Pre-Raphaelite adulteress. Too diaphanous not to stir, once again,
my desire.

Aglie led Lorenza to the
brazier, near the statue of Pascal; he caressed her vacant face and
made a sign to the Geants d'Avalon, who came and stood on either
side of her, supporting her. Then he went and sat at the table,
facing the faithful, and I could see him very well as he drew his
snuffbox from his vest and stroked it in silence before
speaking.

"Brothers, knights. You
are here because in these past few days the Mystic Legates have
informed you of the news, and therefore you all know the reason for
our meeting. We should have met on the night of June 23, 1945. Some
of you were not even born then¡Xat least not in your present form.
We are here because after six hundred years of the most painful
error we have found one who knows. How he came to know¡Xand to know
more than we¡Xis a disturbing mystery. But I trust that among us
there is one... You could not fail to be here, could you, mystical
friend already too curious on one occasion?... I trust, as I said,
that in our presence there is one who can shed light on this
matter. Ardenti!"

Colonel Ardenti¡Xyes, it
was he, raven-haired as before, though now doddering¡Xmade his way
among the others and stepped forward before what seemed to be
turning into a tribunal, but he was kept at a distance by the
Pendulum, which marked a space that could not be
crossed.

"We have not seen each
other for some time, brother." Aglie was smiling. "I knew that you
would be unable to resist coming. Well? You have been informed what
the prisoner said, and he says he learned it from you. So you knew
and you kept silent."