¡XCorpus Hermeticus, Stobaeus, excerptum VI
"What treasures of knowledge?"
"Do you realize how great the second and third centuries after Christ were? Not because of the pomp of the empire in its sunset, but because of what was burgeoning in the Mediterranean basin then. In Rome, the Praetorians were slaughtering their emperors, but in the Mediterranean area, there flourished the epoch of Apuleius, the mysteries of Isis, and that great return to spirituality: Neoplatonism, gnosis. Blissful times, before the Christians seized power and began to put heretics to death. A splendid epoch, in which dwelled the nous, a time dazzled by ecstasies and peopled with presences, emanations, demons, and angelic hosts. The knowledge I am talking about is diffuse and disjointed; it is as ancient as the world itself, reaching back beyond Pythagoras, to the Brahmans of India, the Hebrews, the mages, the gymnosophists, and even the barbarians of the far north, the Druids of Gaul and the British Isles. The Greeks called the barbarians by that name because to overeducated Greek ears, their languages sounded like barking, and the Greeks therefore assumed that they were unable to express themselves. In fact, the barbarians knew much more than the Hellenes at the time, precisely because their language was impenetrable. Do you believe the people who will dance tonight know the meaning of all the chants and magic names they will utter? Fortunately, they do not, and each unknown name will be a kind of breathing exercise, a mystical vocalization.
"The age of the Antonines...The world was full of mar-velous correspondences, subtle resemblances; the only way to penetrate them¡Xand to be penetrated by them¡Xwas through dreams, oracles, magic, which allow us to act on nature and her forces, moving like with like. Knowledge is elusive and volatile; it escapes measurement. That's why the conquering god of that era was Hermes, inventor of all trickery, god of crossroads and thieves. He was also the creator of writing, which is the art of evasion and dissimulation and a navigation that carries us to the end of all boundaries, where everything dissolves into the horizon, where cranes lift stones from the ground and weapons transform life into death, and water pumps make heavy matter float, and philosophy deludes and deceives...And do you know where Hermes is today? Right here. You passed him when you came through the door. They call him Exu, messenger of the gods, go-between, trader, who is ignorant of the difference between good and evil."
He looked at us with amused distrust. "You believe that I am as hasty in distributing gods as Hermes is in distributing merchandise. But look at this book, which I bought this morning in a little shop in Pelourinho. Magic and mystery of Saint Cyprian, recipes for spells to win love or cause your enemy's death, invocations to the angels and to the Virgin. Popular literature for these mystics whose skin is black. But this is Saint Cyprian of Antioch, about whom there is an immense literature dating from the silver age. His parents wanted him to learn all there was to know about the earth¡Xland, sea, and air¡Xso they sent him to the most distant realms, that he might acquire all mysteries, including the generation and corruption of herbs and the virtues of plants and of animals: the secrets not of natural history but of occult science, those buried in the depths of distant and archaic traditions. At Delphi, Cyprian dedicated himself to Apollo and to the dramaturgy of the serpent; he studied the mysteries of Mithra; on Mount Olympus at fifteen, guided by fifteen hi-erophants, he attended the rites that summon the Prince of This World, in order to master his intrigues; in Argos he was initiated into the mysteries of Hera; in Phrygia he learned hepatoscopic fortunetelling. At last there was nothing left of land, sea, or air that he did not know, no ghost, no object, no artifice of any kind, not even the art of altering writing through sorcery. In the underground temples of Memphis he had learned how demons communicate with earthly things and places, what they loathe and love, how they dwell in darkness and how they mount resistance in certain domains, how they are able to possess souls and bodies, the feats of higher knowledge they can perform, of memory, terror, and illusion, and the art of causing turmoil in the earth, influencing underground currents...Then, alas, he was converted, but something of his knowledge remained and was passed on, and we find it here, in the mouths and minds of these ragged people you call idolaters. My lovely friend, a little while ago you looked at me as if I were a ci-devant. Who among us is living in the past? You, who would bestow the horrors of the toiling industrial age upon this country, or I, who wish that our poor Europe might recover the naturalness and faith of these children of slaves?"
"Jesus," Amparo said in a nasty hiss. "You know as well as I do that it's just another way of keeping them quiet..."
"Not quite. Capable of expectation. Without a sense of expectation, there can be no paradise; isn't that what you Europeans have taught us?"
"I'm a European?"
"The important thing is not skin color but faith in Tradition. Granted, these children of slaves pay a price in returning a sense of expectation to a West paralyzed by well-being; perhaps they even suffer, but still they know the language of the spirits of nature, of the air, the waters, and the winds..."
"You people are exploiting us again."
"Again?"
"Yes. You should have learned your lesson in ¡¥89, Count. We get fed up, and then..." Smiling like an angel, she drew her beautiful hand straight across her throat. For me, even Amparo's teeth aroused desire.
"How dramatic!" Aglie said, taking his snuffbox from his pocket and stroking it with his fingers. "So you've recognized me. But it wasn't the slaves who made heads roll in ¡¥89; it was the upstanding bourgeoisie, whom you should hate. Besides, the Comte de Saint-Germain has seen many a head roll in all his centuries, and many a head reattached. But wait, here comes the mae-de-santo, the ialorixa."
Our meeting with the abbess of the terreiro was calm, cordial, civilized, and rich in folklore. She was a big black woman with a dazzling smile. At first you would have said she was a housewife, but when we began talking, I understood how women like this could rule the cultural life of Salvador.
"Are the orixas people or forces?" I asked her. The mae-de-santo answered that they were forces, obviously: water, wind, leaves, rainbows. But how did she prevent ordinary people from seeing them as warriors, women, saints of the Catholic Church? "Do you yourselves not also worship a cosmic force in the form of virgins?'' she replied. The important thing is to venerate the force. The aspect of the force must fit each man's ability to comprehend.
She invited us to visit the chapels in the garden before the rite began. In the garden were the houses of the orixas. A swarm of black girls in Bahian dress was cheerfully gathered there, making the final preparations.
The houses of the orixas were arranged around the garden like the chapels of a sacred mount. Outside each one was displayed the image of the corresponding saint. Inside, the garish colors of flowers clashed with those of the statues and the just-cooked foods offered to the gods. White for Oxala, blue and pink for Yemanja, red and white for Xang5, yellow and gold for Ogun...Initiates kneeled and kissed the threshold, touching themselves on the forehead and behind the ear.
"But is Yemanja Our Lady of the Conception or not?" I asked. "Is Xango Saint Jerome or not?"
"Don't ask embarrassing questions," Aglie advised. "It's even more complicated in an umbanda. Saint Anthony and Saints Cosmas and Damian are part of the Oxala line. Sirens, water nymphs, caboclas of the sea and the rivers, sailors, and guiding stars are part of the Yemanja line. The line of the Orient includes Hindus, doctors, scientists, Arabs and Moroccans, Japanese, Chinese, Mongols, Egyptians, Aztecs, Incas, Caribs, and Romans. To the Oxossi line belong the sun, the moon, the caboclo of waterfalls, and the caboclo of the blacks. In the Ogun line we come upon Ogun Beira-Mar, Rompe-Mato, lara, Mege, Na-ruee...In other words, it all depends."
"Jesus," Amparo said again.
"Oxala, you mean," I murmured to her, my lips brushing her ear. "Calm down. No pasaran."
The ialorixa showed us a series of masks that some acolytes were bringing into the temple. These were big straw dom
inoes, or hoods, which the mediums would put on as they went into a trance, falling prey to the divinity. This was a form of modesty, she explained. In some terreiros the chosen danced with their faces bare, letting onlookers see their passion. But the initiates should be shielded, respected, removed from the curiosity of the profane or anyone who cannot understand the inner jubilation and grace. That was the custom in this terreiro, she said, and that was why outsiders were not readily admitted. Maybe someday, she remarked, who knows? We might well meet again.
But she didn't want us to leave without sampling some of the comidas de santo¡Xnot from the corbeils, which had to remain intact until the end of the rite, but from her own kitchen. She took us to the back of the terreiro, where there was a multicolored banquet of manioc, pimento, coco, amendoim, gengibre, moqueca de siri-mole, vatapa, ef6, caruru, black beans with farofa, amid a languid odor of African spices, sweet and strong tropical flavors, which we tasted dutifully, knowing that we were sharing the food of the ancient Sudanese gods. And rightly so, the ialorixa told us, because each of us, whether he knew it or not, was the child of an orixa, and often it was possible to tell which one. I boldly asked whose son I was. The ialorixa demurred at first, saying she couldn't be sure, but then she agreed to examine the palm of my hand. She looked into my eyes and said: "You are a son of Oxala."
I was proud. Amparo, now relaxed, suggested we find out whose son Aglie was, but he said he preferred not to know.
When we were home again, Amparo said to me: "Did you see his hand? Instead of the life line, he has a series of broken lines. Like a stream that comes to a stone, parts, and flows together again a meter farther on. The line of a man who must have died many times."
"World champion of the metempsychosis relay."
"No pasaran," Amparo said, laughing.
29
Simply because they change and hide their names, do not give their right age, and by their own admission go about without allowing themselves to be recognized, there is no logic that can deny that they necessarily must exist.
¡XHeinrich Neuhaus, Pia et ultimissima admonestatio de Fratri-bus Rosae-Crucis, nimirum: an sint? quotes sint? unde nomen Mud sibi asciverunt, Danzig, Schmidlin, 1618; French ed. 1623, p. 5
Diotallevi used to say that Hesed was the Sefirah of grace and love, white fire, south wind. The other evening in the periscope, I thought that those last days with Amparo in Bahia belonged under that sign. You remember so much while you wait for hours and hours in the darkness. I remembered especially one of the last evenings. We had walked through so many alleys and squares that our feet ached, and we went to bed early, but we didn't feel like sleeping. Amparo, huddled against the pillow in the fetal position, was pretending to read one of my little pamphlets on the umbanda, propping it on her knees. From time to time she would roll lazily onto her back, legs spread, the book balanced on her belly, listening to me read from the book on the Rosicrucians. I was trying to involve her in my discoveries. It was a mild evening; as Belbo, exhausted with literature, might have put it in one of his files, there was nought but a lovely sighing of the wind. We had splurged on a good hotel; there was a view of the sea from the window, and the still-lighted closet kitchen offered the comforting sight of the basket of tropical fruit we had bought at four that morning.
"It says that in 1614 an anonymous work appeared in Germany entitled Allgemeine und general Reformation, or General and common Reform of the entire Universe, followed by Fama Fra-ternitatis of the Honorable Confraternity of the Rosy-Cross, addressed to all learned Men and Sovereigns of Europe, together with a brief Reply by Herr Haselmeyer, who for this Reason was cast into Prison by the Jesuits and then placed in Irons on a Galley. Now printed and made known to all the sincere of Heart. Published in Cassel by Wilhelm Wessel.''
"A little long, isn't it?"
"Apparently all titles were like that in the seventeenth century. Lina Wertmuller wrote them, too. Anyway, this was a satirical work, a fairy tale about a general reform of mankind, partly plagiarized from Traiano Boccalini's Ragguagli di Par-naso. But it contained a manifesto of about a dozen pages¡Xthe Fama Fratemitatis¡Xwhich was republished separately a year later, at the same time as another manifesto, this one in Latin: Confessio fraternitatis Roseae Crucis, ad eruditos Europae. Both present the Confraternity of the Rosy Cross and talk about its founder, a mysterious C.R. Only later¡Xand from other sources¡X was it learned, or presumed, that C.R. was one Christian Ro-sencreutz."
"Why didn't they use the full name?"
"The whole thing's full of initials; they didn't use anybody's full name. They're all G.G.M.P.I.; one is called P.O., an affectionate nickname. Anyway, the pamphlet tells of the formative years of C.R., who first visited the Holy Sepulcher, then set off for Damascus, moved on to Egypt, and from there went to Fez, which must have been one of the sanctuaries of Moslem wisdom at the time. There, our Christian, who already knew Greek and Latin, learned Oriental languages, physics, mathematics, andthe sciences of nature, accumulating all the millennial wisdom of the Arabs and Africans, as well as cabala and magic. He also translated a mysterious Liber M into Latin, and thus came to know all the secrets of the macrocosm and microcosm. For two centuries, everything Oriental had been fashionable, especially if it was incomprehensible."
"They always go for that. Hungry? Frustrated? Exploited? Mystery cocktail coming up. Here..." She passed me a joint. "This is good stuff."
"See? You also seek to lose yourself."
"Except that I know it's only chemical. No mystery at all. It works even if you don't know Hebrew. Come here."
"Wait. Next Rosencreutz went to Spain, where he picked up more occult doctrines, claiming that he was drawing closer to the center of all knowledge. In the course of these travels¡Xwhich for an intellectual of the time was a sort of total-wisdom trip-he realized that what was needed in Europe was an association that would guide rulers along the paths of wisdom and good."
"Very original. Well worth it, all that studying. I want some cold mamaia."
"In the fridge. Do me a favor. You go. I'm working."
"If you're working, that makes you the ant. So be a good ant and get some provisions."
"Mamaia is pleasure, so the grasshopper should go. Otherwise I'll go, and you read."
"No. Jesus, I hate the white man's culture. I'll go."
Amparo went to the little kitchen, and I enjoyed seeing her against the light. Meanwhile, C.R. was on his way back from Germany, but instead of devoting himself to the transmutation of metals, of which his now immense knowledge made him capable, he decided to dedicate himself to spiritual reformation. He therefore founded the confraternity, inventing a language and magic writing that would be the foundation of the wisdom of generations of brothers to come.
"No, I'll spill it on the book. Put it in my mouth. Come on, no tricks, silly. That's right...God, how good mamaia is, rosencreutzlische Mutti-ja-ja...Anyway, what the first Rosicrucians wrote in the first few years could have enlightened the world."
"Why? What did they write?"
"There's the rub. The manifesto doesn't say; it leaves you with your mouth watering. But it was important; so important, it had to remain secret."
"The bastards."
"No! Hey, cut that out! Well, as the Rosicrucians gained more and more members, they decided to spread to the four corners of the earth, vowing to heal the sick without charging, to dress according to the customs of each country (never wearing clothes that would identify them), to meet once a year, and to remain secret for a hundred years."
"Tell me: what kind of reformation were they after? I mean, hadn't there just been one? What was Luther then? Shit?"
"No, you're wrong. This was before the Protestant Reformation. There's a note here; it says that a thorough reading of the Fama and the Confessio evinces¡X"
"Evinces?"
"Evinces. Shows, makes evident. Stop that, I'm trying to talk about the Rosy Cross. It's serious."
"It evinces."
"
Rosencreutz was born in 1378 and died in 1484, at the ripe old age of a hundred and six. And it's not hard to guess that the secret confraternity made a considerable contribution to the Reformation that celebrated its centenary in 1615. In fact, Luther's coat of arms includes a rose and a cross."
"Some imagination."
"You expect Luther to use a burning giraffe or a limp watch? We're all children of our own time. I've found out whose child I am, so shut up and let me go on. Around 1604 the brethren of the Rosy Cross were rebuilding a part of their palace or secret castle, and they came across a plaque with a big nail driven into it. When they pulled out the nail, part of the wall collapsed, and they saw a door with something written on it in big letters: POST CXX ANNOS PATEBO..."
I had already learned this from Belbo's letter, but still couldn't help reacting. "My God..."
"What is it?"
"It's like a Templar document that...A story I never told you, about a colonel who¡X"
"What of it? The Templars must have copied from the Rosi-crucians."
"But the Templars came first."
"Then the Rosicrucians copied from the Templars."
"What would I do without you, darling?"
"That Aglie's ruined you. You're looking everywhere for revelation."
"Me? I'm not looking for anything."
"And a good thing, too. Watch out for the opiate of the masses."
"El pueblo unido jamas sera vencido."
"Go ahead, laugh. So what did those idiots say?"
"Those idiots learned everything they knew in Africa, weren't you listening?"
"And while they were in Africa, they started packing us up and sending us here."
"Thank God. Otherwise you might have been born in Pretoria." I kissed her. "Beyond the door," I went on, "they found a sepulcher with seven sides and seven corners, miraculously illuminated by an artificial sun. In the middle was a circular altar decorated with various mottoes or emblems, on the order of NEQUAQUAM VACUUM...."
Eco: Foucalt's Pendulum Page 20