The Magic Mountain (93 page)

“Sworn? To silence? They really do that?”

“Certainly. Silence and obedience.”

“Obedience, too. But listen here, professor—it seems to me he would have no reason, then, for criticizing any fanaticism or terrorism in my cousin’s vocation. Silence and obedience! I never would have thought that a freethinker like Settembrini could submit to such blatantly Spanish requirements and vows. I detect something downright military, Jesuitical, about this Freemasonry.”

“You detect correctly,” Naphta responded. “Your divining rod is twitching and tapping away. At its root, the very idea of the lodge is inseparably tied to the notion of the absolute. It is, therefore, terroristic—that is, anti-liberal. It relieves the individual of the burden of conscience, and in the name of an absolute goal, it sanctifies every means—even bloody, criminal means. There are indications that at one time the brotherhood of the lodge was symbolically sealed with blood. A brotherhood is never something visible, but always an organization that, by its very nature, is absolutist in spirit. You didn’t know, did you, that the founder of the Illuminati, a society that for a while almost fused with Freemasonry, was a former member of the Society of Jesus?”

“No, that’s new to me, of course.”

“Adam Weishaupt modeled his humanitarian secret society strictly on the Jesuit order. He was himself a Mason, and the most distinguished Masons of the period were Illuminati. I am speaking of the second half of the eighteenth century, which Settembrini would not hesitate to describe to you as a period of decline in his guild. In reality, however, it was in fullest bloom, as were secret societies in general. It was an age when Freemasonry achieved a higher life—a life of which it was later purged by people of the same sort as our philanthropist, who would most definitely have joined those who at the time accused it of Jesuitical obscurantism.”

“And they would have had good reason?”

“Yes—if you like. Banal freethinkers would have had reason to think so. It was a time when our own priests wanted to breathe the spirit of Catholic hierarchy into Freemasonry, and there was even a flourishing Jesuit lodge at Clermont, in France. It was, moreover, the period when Rosicrucianism infiltrated the lodges—a very strange brotherhood, which, you should note, united the purely rational, sociopolitical goals of improving the world and making people happy with a curious affinity for the occult sciences of the East, for Indian and Arabic wisdom and magical knowledge of nature. At the time, many lodges went through a period of rectification and reform, in the spirit of the ‘strict charges’—an explicitly irrational, mysterious, magical, alchemistic spirit, to which the higher degrees of the Scottish Rite owe their existence. Building on the old military ranks of apprentice, fellow, and master, new degrees called grand masters were added, leading to hieratic realms filled with Rosicrucian occultism. It was a matter of reaching back to certain religious orders of knights in the Middle Ages, to the Knights Templar in particular—you know, the ones who swore vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience before the patriarch of Jerusalem. Even today, one high degree of Masonry bears the title of ‘Grand Duke of Jerusalem.’ ”

“New to me, all new to me, Herr Naphta. I’m starting to see through our Settembrini’s tricks. Not bad—‘Grand Duke of Jerusalem.’ You should call him that sometime, too, just as a joke. He recently gave you the nickname of ‘
Doctor Angelicus.
’ That cries out for revenge.”

“Oh, there are a whole lot of similar imposing titles for the higher degrees in the Grand and Templar lodges of the strict charges. There is a Perfect Master, a King of the East, a Grand High Priest, and the thirty-first degree is called Exalted Prince of the Royal Mysteries. You will note that all these names bear some connection to Oriental mysticism. The reemergence of the Templars had meant nothing less than the establishment of such connections; it had introduced the ferment of irrationality into an intellectual world concerned with rational, practical social improvement. All of which gave Freemasonry a new fascination and luster, which explains the increased popularity it enjoyed at the time. It attracted various elements who were weary of their century’s sophistries, of its humane, dispassionate enlightenment, and were thirsty for stronger elixirs. The order’s success was such that the philistines complained that it was alienating men from domestic bliss and a reverence for women.”

“Well, then, professor, it’s quite understandable why Herr Settembrini doesn’t like to recall the blossoming of his order.”

“No, he does not like to recall that there was a time when his society was the object . of all the antipathies that freethinkers, atheists, and rationalistic encyclopedists usually reserve for the Church, Catholicism, monks, and the Middle Ages. You heard me say Masons were accused of obscurantism . . .”

“But why? I’d like to understand that more clearly.”

“I shall be glad to tell you. The strict charges meant a deepening and broadening of the order’s traditions, a transference of its historical origins back to an occult world, to the so-called Dark Ages. Those who held the higher degrees of the lodges were initiates in the
physica mystica
, bearers of a magical knowledge of nature—which means, in fact, great alchemists.”

“And now I have to summon all my faculties and try to remember what alchemy was more or less about. Alchemy—making gold, the philosopher’s stone,
aurum potabile
. . .”

“Yes, that’s the popular understanding. Put more academically, it is the purification, mutation, and refinement of matter, its transubstantiation to something higher, its enhancement, as it were. The
lapis philosophorum
, which is the male-female product of sulfur and mercury—the
res bina
, the bisexual
prima materia
—was nothing more and nothing less than the principle of that enhancement, the application of external influences to force matter upward: magical pedagogy if you will.”

Hans Castorp said nothing. But he blinked, and glanced upward out of the corner of his eye.

“The primary symbol of alchemistic transmutation,” Naphta went on, “was the crypt.”

“The grave?”

“Yes, the scene of corruption. It is the epitome of all hermetism—nothing less than the vessel, the carefully safeguarded crystal retort, in which matter is forced toward its final mutation and purification.”

“ ‘Hermetism’—that’s well put, Herr Naphta. ‘Hermetic’—I’ve always liked that word. It’s a magic word with vague, vast associations. Forgive me, but I can’t help thinking about our old canning jars, the ones our housekeeper in Hamburg—her name’s Schalleen, with no Frau or Fräulein, just Schalleen—has standing in rows on shelves in her pantry: hermetically sealed jars, with fruit and meat and all sorts of other things inside. There they stand, for months, for years, but when you need one and open it up, what’s inside is fresh and intact, neither years nor months have had any effect, you can eat it just as it is. Now, it’s not alchemy or purification, of course, it’s simple preservation, which is why they’re called preserves. But the magical thing about it is that what gets preserved in them has been withdrawn from time, has been hermetically blocked off from time, which passes right by. Preserves don’t have time, so to speak, but stand there on the shelf outside of time. But enough about canning jars. That didn’t get us very far. Beg your pardon, you were going to teach me more.”

“Only if you’d like me to. The apprentice must be fearless and hungry for knowledge—to speak in the style of our topic. The crypt, the grave, has always been the primary symbol in their initiation ceremony. The apprentice, the novice hungry to be admitted to such knowledge, must remain undaunted by the grave’s horrors; the rules of the lodge demand that he be tested by being led down into the crypt and that he remain there until he is brought forth by the hand of an unknown brother. Which is the reason for the maze of corridors and dark vaulted chambers through which the neophyte must wander, for the black cloth with which the halls of lodges of the strict charges are draped, for the cult of the coffin, which plays such an important role in their meetings and initiation ceremonies. The path of the mysteries and purification is beset with dangers, it leads through the fear of death, through the realm of corruption, and the apprentice, the neophyte, is the young man who is hungry for the wounds of life, demands that his demonic capacity for experience be awakened, and is led by shrouded forms, who are merely shades of the great mystery itself.”

“Thank you so much, Professor Naphta. Excellent. So that is what is called hermetic pedagogy. It certainly can’t hurt for me to have heard something about that, too.”

“All the less so, since it is a guide to final things, to an absolute confession of those things that transcend the senses, and so to our goal. The alchemistic rites of such lodges have led many a noble, inquisitive mind to that goal in the decades since. But surely I need not spell it out, since it cannot have escaped you that the degrees in the Scottish Rite are but a surrogate for another hierarchy, that the alchemistic knowledge of the Master Mason is fulfilled in the mystery of transubstantiation, and that the mystic tour with which the lodge favors its novices clearly corresponds to the means of grace, just as the metaphoric games of its ceremonies are reflections of the liturgical and architectural symbols of our Holy Catholic Church.”

“Oh, I see!”

“Beg your pardon, but that is not all. I already took the liberty of suggesting that the development of Freemasonry from guilds of respectable manual laborers is historically extraneous. The strict charges, at least, provided lodges with human foundations that went far deeper. Like certain mysteries in our Church, the lodges’ secrets have a clear connection to the solemn cults and holy excesses of primitive man. As regards the Church, I am thinking of the supper that is a feast of love, the sacramental partaking of body and blood. As regards the lodges, however—”

“Just a moment. One moment for a marginal comment. There are also so-called regimental love feasts in the disciplined community to which my cousin belongs. He often wrote me about them. Of course, except for people getting a bit drunk, it’s all quite respectable, not nearly as rough as things get in cadet taverns or—”

“—as regards the lodges, however, I was referring to the cult of the crypt and coffin, to which I previously called your attention. In both cases, we are dealing with a symbolism of last and ultimate things, with elements of orgiastic primal religion, with unbridled nocturnal sacrifices in honor of dying and ripening, of death, transformation, and resurrection. You will recall that both the cult of Isis and the Eleusinian mysteries were carried out in dark caves at night. Well, there were and are a great many mementos of Egypt in Freemasonry, and among its secret societies were some that used the name Eleusinian. Those lodges held feasts, feasts of the Eleusinian mysteries and the secrets of Aphrodite, which at last got the female involved—and the Feast of Roses, an allusion to the three blue roses on the Masonic apron, which, it seems, frequently ended in bacchanalian excess.”

“Now, now, what’s this I hear, Professor Naphta? And it’s all part of Freemasonry? And I’m supposed to picture our clearheaded Herr Settembrini mixed up with all that?”

“You’d be doing him a great injustice. No, Settembrini knows absolutely nothing about any of it. I told you, after all, that later on people like him purged the lodges of all elements of a higher life. The lodges were modernized, humanitarianized—good God. They were led back from their aberrations to reason, usefulness, and progress, to the battle against prince and priest—in short, to social happiness. The conversations inside them are once again about nature, virtue, moderation, and the fatherland. And, I assume, about business as well. In a word, it is bourgeois misery organized as a club.”

“What a pity. A pity about the Feast of Roses, too. I’ll have to ask Settembrini if he’s ever even heard of it.”

“The doughty Knight of the T-square!” Naphta scoffed. “You must realize that it was not all that easy for him to be admitted to the site where the temple of humanity is being built, because he’s as poor as a church mouse, and they not only demand higher education, humanistic education, but, beg your pardon, one must also be well-to-do just to afford the hefty initiation fees and annual dues. Education and property—behold the bourgeoisie! There you have the foundations of the liberal world republic!”

“Yes indeed,” Hans Castorp said, laughing, “there you have it right in front of your nose.”

“And yet,” Naphta added after a pause, “I would advise you not to take the man and his cause all too lightly, would even go so far, now that we are on the subject, as to beg you to be on your guard. Inanity is not synonymous with innocence. Nor is obtuseness necessarily harmless. These people may have poured a great deal of water into wine that was once quite heady, but the concept of brotherhood is itself strong enough to tolerate a lot of water. It retains traces of its fecund secret; nor can there be any doubt that Freemasonry has its hand in world politics, just as there is more to our charming Herr Settembrini than the man himself—standing behind him are powers, whose kin and emissary he is.”

“Emissary?”

“Well, yes—proselytizer, fisher of souls.”

“And what son of emissary are you?” Hans Castorp thought. But aloud he said, “My thanks, Professor Naphta. I’m much obliged to you for your reminder and warning. Do you know what? I’m going to go up one floor now, if you can call it a floor, and check the pulse of our lodge-brother in disguise. An apprentice must be fearless and hungry for knowledge. And cautious, too, of course. Caution is definitely required when one is dealing with emissaries.”

There was no reason to be shy about turning to Herr Settembrini for further information; inasmuch as the Italian had never been particularly careful about making a secret of his membership in that harmonious society, he could not reproach Herr Naphta for a lack of discretion in the matter. The
Rivista della Massoneria Italiana
lay open on his table; Hans Castorp had simply never noticed it before. And so when he brought the conversation around to the “royal craft,” as if he had never been in any doubt about Settembrini’s association with it, he met with little reticence. There were topics, of course, that the literary man would not discuss, and at their mention he simply set his lips tight with some ostentation, presumably bound by the terroristic oath that Naphta had said drew a veil of secrecy over the curious organization’s ceremonial usages and his own rank within it. But otherwise he was downright boastful and provided his inquisitive visitor a full picture of the fellowship’s worldwide operation, with approximately 20,000 lodges and 150 grand lodges, even reaching the cultures of Negro republics like Haiti and Liberia. He was also quite liberal about naming names of those great men who had been or were now Masons: Voltaire, Lafayette, and Napoleon, Franklin and Washington, Mazzini and Garibaldi; and among the living, the king of England and a great many other men, members of governments and parliaments, in whose hands lay the affairs of Europe.