by Umberto Eco
"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—"
"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—"
"What of it? The Templars must have copied from the Rosicrucians."
"But the Templars came first."
"Then the Rosicrucians copied from the Templars."
"What would I do without you, darling?"
"That AgliÈ'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 jamás será 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...."
"Quack quack what? Signed, Donald Duck?"
"It's Latin. It means 'the void does not exist.'"
"That's good to know. Otherwise, think of the horror—"
"Do me a favor and turn on the fan, animula vagula blandula."
"But it's winter."
"Only for you people of the wrong hemisphere, darling. For me it's July. Please, the fan. It's not because you're a woman; just that it's on your side of the bed. Thanks. Anyway, under the altar they found Rosencreutz's body, intact. In his hand was a copy of Book I, crammed with infinite knowledge. Too bad the world can't read it—the manifesto says—otherwise, gulp, wow, brr, squisssh!"
"Ouch."
"As I was saying, the manifesto ends by promising that a huge treasure remains to be discovered, along with stupendous revelations about the ties between the macrocosm and the microcosm. And don't think that these were a bunch of tacky alchemists offering to show us how to make gold. No, that was small potatoes. They were aiming higher, in every sense of the word. The manifesto announced that the Fama was being distributed in five languages, and, soon to appear on this screen, the Confessio. The brothers awaited replies and reviews from learned and ignorant alike. Write, telephone, send in your names, and we'll see if you're worthy to share our secrets, of which we have given you only the faintest notion. Sub umbra alarum tuarum Iehova."
"Which means?"
"It's a formula of conclusion. Over and out. It sounds as if the Rosicrucians were dying to tell what they had learned, and were anxiously waiting for the right listener. But not one word about what it was they knew."
"Like that fellow whose picture was in the ad we saw on the plane: Send me ten dollars, and I'll tell you how to become a millionaire."
"And it's no lie. He has discovered the secret. And so have I."
"Listen, you better read on. You're acting as if we just met tonight."
"With you, it's always like the first time."
"Ah, but I don't get too familiar with the first one who comes along. Anyway, you have quite a collection now. First Templars, then Rosicrucians. You haven't read Plekhanov by any chance?"
"No. I'm waiting to discover his sepulcher a hundred and twenty years from now. Unless Stalin buried him with tractors."
"Idiot. I'm taking a bath."
30
And the famous confraternity of the Rosy Cross declares even now that throughout the universe delirious prophecies circulate. In fact, the moment the ghost appeared (though Fama and Confessio prove that this was a mere invention of idle minds), it produced a hope of universal reform, and generated things partly ridiculous and absurd, partly incredible. Thus upright and honest men of various countries exposed themselves to contempt and derision in order to lend open support, or to reveal themselves to these brothers ... through the Mirror of Solomon or in some other occult way.
—Christoph von Besold (?), Appendix to Tommaso Campanella, Von der Spanischen Monarchy, 1623
The best came later, and when Amparo returned, I was able to give her a foretaste of wondrous events. "It's an incredible story. The manifestoes appeared in an age teeming with texts of that sort. Everyone was seeking renewal, a golden century, a Cockaigne of the spirit. Some pored over magic texts, others labored at forges, melting metals, others sought to rule the stars, and still others invented secret alphabets and universal languages. In Prague, Rudolph II turned his court into an alchemistic laboratory, invited Comenius and John Dee, the English court astrologer who had revealed all the secrets of the cosmos in the few pages of his Monas Ierogliphica. Are you with me?"
"To the end of time."
"Rudolph's physician was a man named Michael Maier, who later wrote a book of visual and musical emblems, the Atalanta Fugiens, an orgy of philosopher's eggs, dragons biting their tails, sphinxes. Nothing was more luminous than a secret cipher; everything was the hieroglyph of something else. Think about it. Galileo was dropping stones from the Tower of Pisa, Richclieu played Monopoly with half of Europe, and in the meantime th
ey all had their eyes peeled to read the signs of the world. Pull of gravity, indeed; something else lies beneath (or, rather, above) all this, something quite different. Would you like to know what? Abracadabra. Torricelli invented the barometer, but the rest of them were messing around with ballets, water games, and fireworks in the Hortus Palatinus in Heidelberg. And the Thirty Years' War was about to break out."
"Mutter Courage must have been delighted."
"But even for them it wasn't all fun and games. In 1619 the Palatine elector accepted the crown of Bohemia, probably because he was dying to rule Prague, the magic city. But the next year, the Hapsburgs nailed him to the White Mountain. In Prague the Protestants were slaughtered, Comenius's house and library were burned, and his wife and son were killed. He fled from court to court, harping on how great and full of hope the idea of the Rosy Cross was."
"Poor man, but what did you expect him to do? Console himself with the barometer? Wait a minute. Give a poor girl time to think. Who wrote these manifestoes?"
"That's the whole point: we don't know. Let's try to figure it out.... How about scratching my rosy cross ... no, between the shoulder blades, higher, to the left, there. Yes, there. Now then, there were some incredible characters in this German environment. Like Simon Studion, author of Naometria, an occult treatise on the measurements of the Temple of Solomon; Heinrich Khunrath, who wrote Amphitheatrum sapientiae aeternae, full of allegories, with Hebrew alphabets and cabalistic labyrinths that must have inspired the authors of Fama, who were probably friends of one of the countless little Utopian conventicles of Christian rebirth. One popular rumor is that the author was a man named Johann Valentin Andreae. A year later, he published The Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosencreutz, but he had written that in his youth, so he must have been kicking the idea of the Rosy Cross around for quite some time. There were other enthusiasts, in Tübingen, who dreamed of the republic of Christianopolis. Perhaps they all got together. But it sounds as if it was all in fun, a joke. They had no idea of the pandemonium they were unleashing. Andreae spent the rest of his life swearing he hadn't written the manifestoes, which he claimed were a lusus, a ludibrium, a prank. It cost him his academic reputation. He grew angry, said that the Rosicrucians, if indeed they existed, were all impostors. But that didn't help. Once the manifestoes appeared, it was as if people had been waiting for them. Learned men from all over Europe actually wrote to the Rosicrucians, and since there was no address, they sent open letters, pamphlets, printed volumes. In that same year Maier published Arcana arcanissima, in which the brethren of the Rosy Cross were not mentioned explicitly, but everyone was sure he was talking about them and that there was more to his book than met the eye. Some people boasted that they had read Fama in manuscript. It wasn't so easy to prepare a book for publication in those days, especially if it had engravings, but in 1616, Robert Fludd—who wrote in England but printed in Leyden, so you have to figure in the time to ship the proofs—circulated Apologia compendiaria Fraternitatem de Rosea Cruce suspicionis et infamiis maculis aspersam, veritatem quasi Fluctibus abluens et abstergens, to defend the brethren and free them from suspicion, from the 'slander' that had been their reward. In other words, a debate was raging in Bohemia, Germany, England, and Holland, alive with couriers on horseback and itinerant scholars."
"And the Rosicrucians themselves?"
"Deathly silence. Post CXX annos patebo, my ass. They watched, from the vacuum of their palace. I believe it was their silence that agitated everyone so much. The fact that they didn't answer was taken as proof of their existence. In 1617 Fludd wrote Tractatus apologeticus integritatem societatis de Rosea Cruce defendens, and somebody in a De Naturae Secretis, 1618, said that the time had come to reveal the secret of the Rosicrucians."
"And did they?"
"Anything but. They only complicated things, explaining that if you subtracted from 1618 the one hundred and eighty-eight years promised by the Rosicrucians, you got 1430, the year when the Order of the Golden Fleece, la Toison d'Or, was established."
"What's that got to do with anything?"
"I don't understand the one hundred and eighty-eight years. It seems to me it should have been one hundred and twenty, but mystical subtractions and additions always come out the way you want. As for la Toison d'Or, it's a reference to the Argonauts, who, an unimpeachable source once told me, had some connection with the Holy Grail and therefore with the Templars. But that's not all. Fludd, who seems to have been as prolific as Barbara Cartland, brought out four more books between 1617 and 1619, including Utriusque cosmi historia, brief remarks on the universe, illustrated with roses and crosses throughout. Maier then mustered all his courage and put out his Silentium post clamores, in which he claimed that the confraternity did indeed exist and was connected not only to la Toison d'Or but also to the Order of the Garter. Except that he was too lowly a person to be received into it. Imagine the reaction of the scholars of Europe! If the Rosicrucians didn't accept even Maier, the order must have been really exclusive. So now all the pseuds bent over backward to get in. In other words, everyone said the Rosicrucians existed, though no one admitted to having actually seen them. Everyone wrote as if trying to set up a meeting or wheedle an audience, but no one had the courage to say I'm one, and some, maybe only because they had never been approached, said the order didn't exist; others said the order existed precisely because they had been approached."
"And not a peep out of the Rosicrucians."
"Quiet as mice."
"Open your mouth. You need some mamaia."
"Yum. Meanwhile, the Thirty Years' War began, and Johann Valentin Andreae wrote Turris Babel, promising that the Antichrist would be defeated within the year, while one Ireneus Agnostus wrote Tintinnabulum sophorum—"
"Tintinnabulum! I love it."
"—not a word of which is comprehensible. But then Campanella, or someone acting on his behalf, declared in Spanischen Monarchy that the whole Rosy Cross business was a game of corrupt minds.... And that's it. Between 1621 and 1623 they all shut up."
"Just like that?"
"Just like that. They got tired of it. Like the Beatles. But only in Germany. Otherwise, it's the story of a toxic cloud. It shifted to France. One fine morning in 1623, Rosicrucian manifestoes appeared on the walls of Paris, informing the good citizens that the deputies of the confraternity's chief college had moved to their city and were ready to accept applications. But according to another version, the manifestoes came right out and said there were thirty-six invisibles scattered through the world in groups of six, and that they had the power to make their adepts invisible. Hey! The thirty-six again!"
"What thirty-six?"
"The ones in my Templar document."
"No imagination at all, these people. What next?"
"Collective madness broke out. Some defended the Rosicrucians, others wanted to meet them, still others accused them of devil worship, alchemy, and heresy, claiming that Ashtoreth had intervened to make them rich, powerful, capable of flying from place to place. The talk of the town, in other words."
"Smart, those brethren. Nothing like a Paris launching to make you fashionable."
"You're right. Listen to what happened next. Descartes—that's right, Descartes himself—had, several years before, gone looking for them in Germany, but he never found them, because, as his biographer says, they deliberately disguised themselves. By the time he got back to Paris, the manifestoes had appeared, and he learned that everybody considered him a Rosicrucian. Not a good thing to be, given the atmosphere at the time. It also irritated his friend Mersenne, who was already fulminating against the Rosicrucians, calling them wretches, subversives, mages, and cabalists bent on sowing perverted doctrines. So what does Descartes do? Simply appears in public as often as possible. Since everybody can undeniably see him, he must not be a Rosicrucian, because if he were, he'd be invisible."
"That's method for you!"
"Of course, denying it wouldn't have worked. The way things were, if so
mebody came up to you and said, 'Hi there, I'm a Rosicrucian,' that meant he wasn't. No self-respecting Rosicrucian would acknowledge it. On the contrary, he would deny it to his last breath."
"But you can't say that anyone who denies being a Rosicrucian is a Rosicrucian, because I say I'm not, and that doesn't make me one."
"But the denial is itself suspicious."
"No, it's not. What would a Rosicrucian do once he realized people weren't believing those who said they were, and that people suspected only those who said they weren't? He'd say he was, to make them think he wasn't."
"Damnation. So those who say they're Rosicrucians are lying, which means they really are! No, no, Amparo, we mustn't fall into their trap. Their spies are everywhere, even under this bed, so now they know that we know, and therefore they say they aren't."
"Darling, you're scaring me."
"Don't worry, I'm here, and I'm stupid, so when they say they aren't, I'll believe they are and unmask them at once. The Rosicrucian unmasked is harmless; you can shoo him out the window with a rolled-up newspaper."
"What about Agliè? He wants us to think he's the Comte de Saint-Germain. Obviously so we'll think he isn't. Therefore, he's a Rosicrucian. Or isn't he?"
"Listen, Amparo, let's get some sleep."
"Oh, no, now I want to hear the rest."
"The rest is a complete mess. Everybody's a Rosicrucian. In 1627 Francis Bacon's New Atlantis was published, and readers thought he was talking about the land of the Rosicrucians, even though he never mentioned them. Poor Johann Valentin Andreae died, still swearing up and down that he wasn't a Rosicrucian, or if he said he was, he had only been kidding, but by now it was too late. The Rosicrucians were everywhere, aided by the fact that they didn't exist."
"Like God."
"Now that you mention it, let's see. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are a bunch of practical jokers who meet somewhere and decide to have a contest. They invent a character, agree on a few basic facts, and then each one's free to take it and run with it. At the end, they'll see who's done the best job. The four stories are picked up by some friends who act as critics: Matthew is fairly realistic, but insists on that Messiah business too much; Mark isn't bad, just a little sloppy; Luke is elegant, no denying that; and John takes the philosophy a little too far. Actually, though, the books have an appeal, they circulate, and when the four realize what's happening, it's too late. Paul has already met Jesus on the road to Damascus, Pliny begins his investigation ordered by the worried emperor, and a legion of apocryphal writers pretends also to know plenty.... Toi, apocryphe lecteur, mon semblable, mon frère. It all goes to Peter's head; he takes himself seriously. John threatens to tell the truth, Peter and Paul have him chained up on the island of Patmos. Soon the poor man is seeing things: Help, there are locusts all over my bed, make those trumpets stop, where's all this blood coming from? The others say he's drunk, or maybe it's arteriosclerosis.... Who knows, maybe it really happened that way."