Eco: Foucalt's Pendulum (45 page)

Nos inuisibles pretendus
sont (a ce que Ton dit) au nombre de 36, separez en six
bandes.

¡XEffroyables pactions
faictes entre le diable & les pretendus Inuisibles, Paris,
1623, p. 6

"Maybe the manifestoes
have a double purpose: to send an appeal to the French, and at the
same time to collect the scattered pieces of the German group in
the aftermath of the Lutheran Reformation. Germany, in fact, is
where the biggest mess occurs. From the appearance of the
manifestoes until about 1621, the Rosicrucians receive too many
replies..."

I mentioned a few of the
countless pamphlets that had appeared on the subject, the ones that
had entertained me that night in Salvador with Amparo. "Possibly
among all these there is one person who knows something, but he is
lost in a sea of fanatics, enthusiasts, who take the manifestoes
literally, perhaps also provocateurs, who want to block the
operation, and impostors...The English try to take part in the
debate, to channel it. It's no accident that Robert Fludd, another
English Templar, in the space of a single year writes three works
that point to the correct interpretation of the manifestoes...But
the response is by now out of control, the Thirty Years' War has
begun, the Elector Palatine has been defeated by the Spanish, the
Palatinate and Heidelberg are sacked, Bohemia is in flames...The
English decide to return to France and try there. This is why in
1623 the Rosicrucians appear in Paris, giving the French more or
less the same invitation they gave the Germans. And what do you
read in one of the libels against the Rosicrucians in Paris,
written by someone who distrusts them or wants to confuse things?
That they are worshipers of the Devil, obviously, but since even in
slander you can't entirely erase the truth, it is hinted that they
hold their meetings in the Marais."

"So?"

"Don't you know Paris?
The Marais is the quarter of the Temple and, it so happens, the
Jewish ghetto! What's more, the libel says that the Rosicrucians
are in contact with a sect of Iberian cabalists, the Alumbrados!
But maybe the pamphlets against the Rosicrucians, under the guise
of attacking the thirty-six invisibles, are actually trying to
foster their identification...Gabriel Naude, Richelieu's librarian,
writes some Instructions a la France sur la verite de I'histoire
des Freres de la Rose-Crouc.What do these instructions say? Is
Naude" a spokesman for the Templars of the third group, or is he an
adventurer barging into a game that isn't his? On the one hand, he
dismisses the Rosicrucians as lunatic diabolists; on the other, he
insinuates that there are still three Rosicrucian colleges in
existence. And this would be true: after the third group, there are
still three more. Naude gives some almost fairy-tale hints (one
college is in India, on the floating islands), but he also says
that one of them is in the underground of Paris."

"And this explains the
Thirty Years' War?" Belbo asked.

"Beyond any doubt," I
said. "Richelieu receives privileged information from Naude; he
wants to have a finger in this pie, but he gets it all wrong, tries
armed intervention, and makes matters even worse. There are two
other events that shouldn't be overlooked. In 1619 a chapter of the
Knights of Christ meets in Tomar, after forty-six years of silence.
It had met in 1573, only eleven years before 1584, probably to
prepare, along with the English, the Paris journey, but after the
business of the Rosicrucian manifestoes it meets again, to decide
what line to take, whether to join the English operation or try a
different path."

"Yes," Belbo said,
"these are now people lost in a maze: some choose one path, some
another; some shout for help, and there's no telling if the replies
they hear are other voices or the echo of their own...They all are
groping. And what are the Paulicians and the Jerusalemites doing in
the meantime?"

"If we only knew,"
Diotallevi said. "But consider, too, that this is the period when
Lurianic cabala spreads and the talk about the Breaking of the
Vessels begins...And the idea that the Torah is an incomplete
message. There is a Polish Hasidic document that says: If another
event takes place, other combinations of letters will be born. But
remember this: the cabalists aren't happy that the Germans chose to
jump the gun. The proper succession and order of the Torah have
remained hidden, and they are known only by the Holy One, praised
be He. But you make me talk nonsense. If cabala becomes involved in
the Plan...."

"If the Plan exists, it
must involve everything. Either it explains all or it explains
nothing," Belbo said. "But Casaubon mentioned a clue."

"Yes. Actually, it's a
series of clues. Even before that 1584 meeting fails, John Dee has
begun devoting himself to the study of maps and the promotion of
naval expeditions. And who is his associate? Pedro Nunes, the royal
cosmographer of Portugal...Dee has a hand in the voyages to
discover the Northwest Passage to Cathay; he invests money in the
expedition of a certain Frobisher, who ventures toward the Pole and
returns with an Eskimo, whom everybody takes for a Mongol. Dee
fires up Francis Drake and encourages him to make his voyage around
the world. However, he wants the explorers to sail east, because
the East is the source of all occult knowledge, and at the
departure of one expedition¡XI forget which¡Xhe summons the
angels."

"And what does this
mean?"

"Dee, I think, isn't
really interested so much in the actual discovery of places, as in
their cartographic depiction, and for this reason he consults
Mercator and Ortelius, the great cartographers. It's as if the
fragments of the message in his possession have convinced him that
the final whole will be a map, and he is attempting to discover it
on his own. Indeed, I'll say more, like Signer Garamond. Is it
really likely that a scholar of his standing would have missed the
discrepancy between the calendars? Perhaps Dee wants to reconstruct
the message himself, without the other groups. Perhaps he thinks
the message can be reconstructed by magic or scientific means,
instead of waiting for the Plan to be achieved. Impatience, greed.
The bourgeois conqueror is born, and the principle of solidarity
that sustained the spiritual knighthood is breaking down. If this
was Dee's idea, you can imagine what Bacon thought. From Dee on,
the English try to discover the message by using all the secrets of
the new learning."

"And the
Germans?"

"The Germans....We'd
better have them stick to the path of Tradition. That way we can
explain at least two centuries of their history of philosophy.
Anglo-Saxon empiricism versus romantic idealism..."

"Chapter by chapter, we
are reconstructing the history of the world," Diotallevi said. "We
are rewriting the Book. I like it, I really like it."

Another curious case of
cryptography was presented to the public in 1917 by one of the best
Bacon scholars, Dr. Alfred von Weber Ebenhoff of Vienna. Employing
the same systems previously applied to the works of Shakespeare, he
began to examine the works of Cervantes...Pursuing the
investigation, he discovered overwhelming material evidence: the
first English translation of Don Quixote bears corrections in
Bacon's hand. He concluded that this English version was the
original of the novel and that Cervantes had published a Spanish
translation of it.

¡XJ. Duchaussoy, Bacon,
Shakespeare ou Saint-Germain?, Paris, La Colombe, 1962, p.
122

It seemed obvious to me
that in the days that followed Jacopo Belbo immersed himself in
historical works on the Rosy Cross period. But when he reported his
findings, he gave us only the bare outline of his fantasies, from
which we drew valuable suggestions. I know now that in fact he was
creating a far richer narrative on Abulafia, one in which a wild
play of quotations mingled with his private myths. The opportunity
of combining fragments of other stories spurred him to write his
own. He never mentioned this to us. I still think he was, quite
courageously, testing his talent in the realm of fiction. Or else
he was defining himself in the Great Story he was distorting like
any ordinary Diabolical.

FILENAME: The Cabinet of
Dr. Dee

For a long time I forgot
I was Talbot. From the time, at least, of my decision to call
myself Kelley. All I had done, really, was to falsify some
documents, like everybody else. The queen's men were merciless. To
cover what's left of my poor severed ears I am forced to wear this
pointed black cap, and people murmur that I am a sorcerer. So be
it. Dr. Dee, with a similar reputation, flourishes.

I went to see him in
Mortlake. He was examining a map. He was evasive, the diabolical
old man. Sinister glints in his shrewd eyes. His bony hand stroking
his little goatee.

"It's a manuscript of
Roger Bacon," he said to me, "and was lent me by the Emperor
Rudolf. Do you know Prague? I advise you to visit it. You may find
something there that will change your life. Tabula locorum rerum et
thesaurorum absconditorum Menabani..."

Stealing a glance, I saw
something written in a secret alphabet. But the doctor immediately
hid the manuscript under a pile of other yellowed pages. How
beautiful to live in a period where every page, even if it has just
come from the papermaker's workshop, is yellowed.

I showed Dr. Dee some of
my efforts, mainly my poems about the Dark Lady¡Xradiant image of
my childhood, dark because reclaimed by the shadow of time and
snatched from my possession¡Xand a tragic sketch, the story of
Seven Seas Jim, who returns to England in the train of Sir Walter
Ralegh and learns that his father has been murdered by his own
incestuous brother. Henbane.

"You're gifted, Kelley,"
Dee said to me. "And you need money. There's a young man, the
natural son of someone you couldn't dare imagine, and I want to
help him climb the ladder of fame and honors. He has little talent.
You will be his secret soul. Write, and live in the shadow of his
glory. Only you and I, Kelley, will know that the glory is
yours."

So for years I've been
turning out work for the queen and for all England that goes under
the name of this pale youth. If I have seen further, it is by
standing on ye shoulders of a Dwarfe. I was thirty, and I will
allow no man to say that thirty is the most beautiful time of
life.

"William," I said to
him, "let your hair grow down over your ears: it's becoming." I had
a plan (to take his place?).

Can one live in hatred
of this Spear-shaker, who in reality is oneself? That sweet thief
which sourly robs from me. "Calm down, Kelley," Dee says to me. "To
grow in the shadows is the privilege of those who prepare to
conquer the world. Keepe a Lowe Profyle. William will be one of our
covers." And he informed me¡Xoh, only in part¡Xof the Cosmic Plot.
The secret of the Templars. "And the stakes?" I asked.

"Ye Globe."

For a long time I went
to bed early, but one evening at midnight I rummaged in Dee's
private strongbox and discovered some formulas and tried summoning
angels as he does on nights of full moon. Dee found me sprawled, in
the center of the circle of the Macrocosm, as if struck by a lash.
On my brow, the Pentacle of Solomon. Now I must pull my cap even
farther down, half over my eyes.

"You don't know how to
do it yet," Dee said to me. "Watch yourself, or I'll have your nose
cut off, too. I will show you fear in a handful of
dust..."

He raised a bony hand
and uttered the terrible word: Garamond! I felt myself burn with an
inner flame. I fled (into the night).

It was a year before Dee
forgave me and dedicated to me his Fourth Book of Mysteries, "post
reconciliationem kellianam."

That summer I was seized
by abstract rages. Dee summoned me to Mortlake. There were William
and I, Spenser, and a young aristocrat with shifty eyes, Francis
Bacon. He had a delicate, lively, hazel Eie.

Dr. Dee said it was the
Eie of a Viper. Dee told us more about the Cosmic Plot. It was a
matter of meeting the Prankish wing of the Templars in Paris and
putting together two parts of the same map. Dee and Spenser were to
go, accompanied by Pedro Nunes. To me and Bacon he entrusted some
documents, which we swore to open only in the event that they
failed to return.

They did return,
exchanging floods of insults. "It's not possible," Dee said. "The
Plan is mathematical; it has the astral perfection of my Monas
Hieroglyphica. We were supposed to meet the Franks on Saint John's
Eve."

Innocently I asked:
"Saint John's Eve by their reckoning or by ours?"

Dee slapped himself on
the brow, spewing out horrible curses. "O," he said, "from what
power hast thou this powerful might?" The pale William made a note
of the sentence, the cowardly plagiarist. Dee feverishly consulted
lunar tables and almanacs. " ¡¥Sblood! ¡¥Swounds! How could I have
been such a dolt?" He insulted Nunes and Spenser. "Do I have to
think of everything? Cosmographer, my foot!" he screamed at Nunes.
And then: "Amanasiel Zorobabel!" And Nunes was struck in the
stomach as if by an invisible ram; he blanched, drew back a few
steps, and slumped to the ground.

"Fool," Dee said to
him.

Spenser was pale. He
said, with some effort: "We can cast sortie bait. I am finishing a
poem. An allegory about the queen of the fairies. What if I put in
a knight of the Red Cross? The real Templars will recognize
themselves, will understand that we know, will get in touch with
us..."

"I know you," Dee said.
"Before you finish your poem and people find out about it, a
lustrum will pass, maybe more. Still, the bait idea isn't
bad."

"Why not communicate
with them through your angels, Doctor?" I asked.

"Fool," he said to me.
"Haven't you read Trithemius? The angels of the addressee intervene
only to clarify a message if one is received. My angels are not
couriers on horseback. The French are lost. But I have a plan. I
know' how to find some of the German line. I must go to
Prague."

We heard a noise, a
heavy damask curtain was raised, we glimpsed a diaphanous hand,
then She appeared, the Haughty Virgin.

"Your Majesty," we said,
kneeling.

"Dee," she said. "I know
everything. Do not think my ancestors saved the knights in order to
grant them dominion over the world. I demand, you hear me, I demand
that the secret be the property of the Crown only."

"Your Majesty, I want
the secret at all costs, and I want it for the Crown. But I must
find the other possessors; it is the shortest way. When they have
foolishly confided in me what they know, it will not be hard to
eliminate them. Whether with a dagger or with arsenic
water."

On the face of the
Virgin Queen a ghastly smile appeared. "Very well then, my good
Dee," she said. "I do not ask much, only Total Power. For you, if
you succeed, the garter. For you, William"¡Xand she addressed the
little parasite with lewd sweetness¡X"another garter, and another
golden fleece. Follow me."

I murmured into
William's ear: "I perforce am thine, and all that is in me..."
William rewarded me with a look of unctuous gratitude and followed
the queen, disappearing beyond the curtain. Je tiens la

I was with Dr. Dee in
the Golden City. We went along narrow and evil-smelling passageways
not far from the cemetery of the Jews, and Dee told me to be
careful. "If the news of the failed encounter has spread," he said,
"the other groups will even now be acting on their own. I fear the
Jews; the Jerusalemites have too many agents here in
Prague..."

It was evening. The snow
glistened, bluish. At the dark entrance to the Jewish quarter
clustered the little stands of the Christmas market, and in their
midst, decked in red cloth, was the obscene stage of a puppet
theater lit by smoky torches. We passed beneath an arch of dressed
stone, near a bronze fountain from whose grille long icicles hung,
and there another passage opened. On old doors, gilded lion's heads
sank their teeth into bronze rings. A slight shudder ran along the
walls, inexplicable sounds came from the low roofs, rattlings from
the drainpipes. The houses betrayed a ghostly life of their own, a
hidden life...An old usurer, wrapped in a worn coat, brushed us in
passing, and I thought I heard him murmur, "Beware Athanasius
Per-nath..." Dee murmured back, "I fear quite another
Athanasius..." And suddenly we were in the Alley of the
Goldsmiths.

There, in the gloom of
another alley¡Xand the ears I no longer have, at this memory,
quiver under my worn cap¡Xa giant loomed up before us, a horrible
gray creature with a dull expression, his body sheathed in bronze
verdigris, leaning on a gnarled and knobby stick of white wood. The
apparition gave off an intense odor of sandalwood. Mortal horror
magically coalesced in that being that confronted me, yet I could
not take my eyes off the nebulous globe that sat atop his
shoulders, and in it discerned, barely, the rapacious face of an
Egyptian ibis, and behind that face, more faces, incubi of my
imagination and my memory. The outlines of the ghost, in the
darkness of that alley, dilated, contracted, as in a slow,
nonliving respiration....And¡Xoh, horror!¡X instead of feet, I saw,
as I stared at him, on the snow two shapeless stumps whose flesh,
gray and bloodless, was rolled up, as if in concentric
swellings.

My voracious
memories....

"The golem!" Dee cried,
raising both arms to heaven. His black coat with broad sleeves fell
to the ground, as if to create a cingulum, an umbilical cord
between the aerial position of the hands and the surface, or the
depths, of the earth. "Jezebel, Malkuth, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes!"
he said. And suddenly the golem dissolved like a sand castle struck
by a gust of wind. We were blinded by the particles of its clay
body, which tore through the air like atoms, until finally at our
feet was a little pile of ashes. Dee bent down, searched in the
ashes with his bony fingers, and drew out a scroll, which he hid in
his bosom.

From the shadows then
rose an old rabbi, with a greasy hat that greatly resembled my cap.
"Dr. Dee, I presume," he said.

"Here Comes Everybody,"
Dee replied humbly. "Rabbi Allevi, what a pleasant
surprise..."

The man said, "Did you
happen to see a creature roaming these parts?"

"A creature?" Dee said,
feigning amazement. "What sort of creature?"

"Come off it, Dee,"
Rabbi Allevi said. "It was my golem."

"Your golem? I know
nothing about a golem."

"Take care, Dr. Dee!"
Rabbi Allevi said, livid. "You're playing a dangerous game, you're
out of your league."

"I don't know what
you're talking about, Rabbi Allevi," said Dee. "We're here to make
a few ounces of gold for the emperor. We're not a couple of cheap
necromancers."

"Give me back the
scroll, at least," Rabbi Allevi begged.

"What scroll?" Dee
asked, with diabolical ingenuousness.

"Curse you, Dr. Dee,"
said the rabbi. "And verily I say unto thee, thou shall not see the
dawn of the new century." And he went off into the night, murmuring
strange words without consonants. Oh, Language Diabolical and
Holy.

Dee was huddled against
the damp wall of the alley, his face ashen, his hair bristling on
his head. "I know Rabbi Allevi," he said. "I will die on August 5,
1608, of the Gregorian calendar. So now, Kelley, you must help me
to carry out my plan. You are the one who will have to bring it to
fulfillment. Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchymy. Remember,"
he said. But I would remember in any case, and William with me. And
against me.

He said no more. The
pale fog that rubs its back against the panes, the yellow smoke
that rubs its back against the panes, licked with its tongue the
street corners. We were now in another alley; whitish vapors came
from the grilles at ground level, and through them you could
glimpse squalid dens with tilting walls, defined by gradations of
misty gray. I saw, as he came groping down a stairway (the steps
oddly orthogonal), the figure of an old man in a worn frock coat
and a top hat. And Dee saw him. "Caligari!" he exclaimed. "He's
here, too, in the house of Madame Sosostris, the famous
clairvoyante! We have to get moving."