by Umberto Eco
"It did happen that way. You should read some Feuerbach, instead of those junk books of yours."
"Amparo, the sun's coming up."
"We must be crazy."
"Rosy-fingered dawn gently caresses the waves..."
"Yes, go on. It's Yemanjá. Listen! She's coming."
"Show me your ludibria..."
"Oh, the Tintinnabulum!"
"You are my Atalanta Fugiens...."
"Oh, my Turris Babel..."
"I want the Arcana Arcanissima, the Golden Fleece, pale et rose comme un coquillage marin...."
"Sssh ... Silentium post clamores," she said.
31
It is probable that the majority of the supposed Rosy Crosses, generally so designated, were in reality only Rosicrucians.... Indeed, it is certain that they were in no way members, for the simple fact that they were members of such associations. This may seem paradoxical at first, and contradictory, but is nevertheless easily comprehensible....
—René Guénon, Aperçu sur l'initiation, Paris, Editions Traditionelles, 1981, XXXVIII, p. 241
We returned to Rio, and I went back to work. One day I read in an illustrated magazine that there was an Order of the Ancient and Accepted Rosy Cross in the city. I suggested to Amparo that we go and take a look, and reluctantly she came along.
The office was in a side street; its plate-glass window contained plaster statuettes of Cheops, Nefertiti, the Sphinx.
There was a plenary session scheduled for that very afternoon: "The Rosy Cross and the Umbanda." The speaker was one Professor Bramanti, Referendary of the Order in Europe, Secret Knight of the Grand Priory in Partibus of Rhodes, Malta, and Thessalonica.
We decided to go in. The room, fairly shabby, was decorated with Tantric miniatures depicting the serpent Kundalini, the one the Templars wanted to reawaken with the kiss on the behind. All things considered, I thought, it had hardly been worth crossing the Atlantic to discover a new world: I could have found the same things at the Picatrix office.
Professor Bramanti sat behind a table covered with a red cloth, facing a rather sparse and sleepy audience. He was a corpulent gentleman who might have been described as a tapir if it hadn't been for his bulk. He was already talking when we came in. His style was pompous and oratorical. He couldn't have started long before, however, because he was still discussing the Rosicrucians during the eighteenth dynasty, under the reign of Ahmose I.
Four Veiled Masters, he said, kept watch over the race that twenty-five thousand years before the foundation of Thebes had originated the civilization of the Sahara. The pharaoh Ahmose, influenced by them, established the Great White Fraternity, guardian of the antediluvian wisdom the Egyptians still retained. Bramanti claimed to have documents (naturally, inaccessible to the profane) that dated back to the sages of the Temple of Karnak and their secret archives. The symbol of the rose and the cross had been conceived by the pharaoh Akhenaton. Someone has the papyrus, Bramanti said, but don't ask me who.
The Great White Fraternity was ultimately responsible for the education of: Hermes Trismegistus (who influenced the Italian Renaissance just as much as he later influenced Princeton gnosis), Homer, the Druids of Gaul, Solomon, Solon, Pythagoras, Plotinus, the Essenes, the Ther-apeutae, Joseph of Arimathea (who took the Grail to Europe), Alcuin, King Dagobert, Saint Thomas, Bacon, Shakespeare, Spinoza, Jakob Bohme, Debussy, Einstein. (Amparo whispered that he seemed to be missing only Nero, Cambronne, Gcronimo, Pancho Villa, and Buster Keaton.)
As for the influence of the original Rosy Cross on Christianity, Bramanti pointed out, for those who hadn't got their bearings, that it was no accident that Jesus had died on a cross.
The sages of the Great White Fraternity were also the founders of the first Masonic lodge, back in the days of King Solomon. It was clear, from his works, that Dante had been a Rosicrucian and a Mason—as had Saint Thomas, incidentally. In cantos XXIV and XXV of the "Paradiso" one finds the triple kiss of Prince Rosicrux, the pelican, white tunics (the same as those worn by the old men of the Apocalypse), and the three theological virtues of Masonic chapters (Faith, Hope, and Charity). In fact, the symbolic flower of the Rosicrucians (the white rose of cantos XXX and XXXI) was adopted by the Church of Rome as symbol of the mother of the Savior. Hence the Rosa Mystica of the litanies.
It was equally clear that the Rosicrucians had lived on through the Middle Ages, a fact shown not only by their infiltration of the Templars, but also by far more explicit documents. Bramanti cited one Kiesewetter, who demonstrated in the late nineteenth century that the Rosicrucians had manufactured four quintals of gold for the Prince-Elector of Saxony in medieval times, clear proof being available on a certain page of the Theatrum Chemicum, published in Strasbourg in 1613. But few have remarked the Templar references in the legend of William Tell. Tell cuts his arrow from a branch of mistletoe, a plant of Aryan mythology, and he hits an apple, symbol of the third eye activated by the serpent Kundalini. And we know, of course, that the Aryans came from India, where the Rosicrucians took refuge after leaving Germany.
Of the various groupings that claimed descent from the Great White Fraternity—often childishly—Bramanti recognized just one as legitimate: the Rosicrucian Fellowship of Max Heindel, and that only because Alain Kardek had been educated in its circles. Kardek was the father of spiritualism, and it was his theosophy, which contemplated contact with the souls of the departed, that spiritually formed umbanda spirituality, the glory of our most noble Brazil. In this theosophy, Aum Banda, it seems, is a Sanskrit expression denoting the divine principle and source of life. ("They tricked us again," Amparo murmured. "Not even the word 'umbanda' is ours; the only African thing about it is the sound.")
The root is Aum or Um, which is the Buddhist Om and also the name of God in the language of Adam. If the syllable um is properly pronounced, it becomes a powerful mantra and produces fluid currents of harmony in the psyche through the siakra, or frontal plexus. ("What's the frontal plexus?" Amparo asked. "An incurable disease?")
Bramanti explained that there was a big difference between true brethren of the Rosy Cross—heirs of the Great White Fraternity, obviously secret, such as the Ancient and Accepted Order, whose unworthy representative he was, and the "Rosicrucians," who claimed attachment to the Rosy Cross mystique for opportunistic reasons, lacking any justification. He urged his audience to give no credence to any Rosicrucian who called himself a brother of the Rosy Cross. (Amparo remarked that one man's Rosy Cross was another man's Rosicrucian.)
One ill-advised member of the audience stood up and asked how Professor Bramanti's order could claim to be authentic, since it violated the law of silence observed by all true adepts of the Great White Fraternity.
Bramanti rose to reply. "I was unaware that we had been infiltrated by the paid provocateurs of atheistic materialism. Under these circumstances I have no more to say." And at that he walked out with a certain majesty.
That evening, Agliè telephoned to see how we were and to tell us that we had finally been invited to a rite, the next day. In the meantime, he suggested we have a drink. Amparo had a political meeting with her friends; I went to join Agliè by myself.
32
Valentiniani ... nihil magis curant quam occultare quod praedicant: si tarnen praedicant, qui occultant....Si bona fides quaeres, concreto vultu, suspenso supercilio—altum est—aiunt. Si subtiliter tentes, per ambiguitates bilingues communem fidem affirmant. Si scire te subostendas, negant quidquid agnoscunt.... Habent artificium quo prius persuadeant, quam edoceant.
—Tertullian, Adversus Valentinianos
Agliè invited me to a place where some ageless men still made a batida in the traditional way. In just a few steps we left the civilization of Carmen Miranda, and I found myself in a dark room where some natives were smoking cigars thick as sausages. The tobacco, as broad, transparent leaves, was rolled into what looked like old hawser, worked with the fingertips, and wrapped in oily straw paper. It kept going out, but you could understand w
hat it must have been like when Sir Walter Raleigh discovered it.
I told him about my afternoon adventure.
"So now it's the Rosicrucians as well? Your thirst for knowledge is insatiable, my friend. But pay no attention to those lunatics. They constantly talk about irrefutable documents that no one ever produces. I know that Bramanti. He lives in Milan, but he travels all over the world spreading his gospel. A harmless man, though he still believes in Kiesewetter. Hordes of Rosicrucians insist on that page of the Theatrum Chemicum. But if you actually take a look at it—and I might modestly add that I have a copy in my little Milanese library—there is no such quotation."
"Herr Kiesewetter's a clown, then."
"But much quoted. The trouble is that even the nineteenth-century occultists fell victim to the spirit of positivism: a thing is true only if it can be proved. Take the debate on the Corpus Hermeticum. When that document came to light in Europe in the fifteenth century, Pico della Mirandola, Ficino, and many other people of great wisdom immediately realized that it had to be a work of most ancient wisdom, antedating the Egyptians, antedating even Moses himself. It contained ideas that would later be expressed by Plato and by Jesus."
"What do you mean, later? That's the same argument Bramanti used to prove Dante was a Mason. If the Corpus repeats ideas of Plato and Jesus, it must have been written after them!"
"You see? You're doing it, too. That was exactly the reasoning of modern philologists, who also added wordy linguistic analyses intended to show that the Corpus was written in the second or third century of our era. It's like saying that Cassandra must have been born after Homer because she predicted the destruction of Troy. The belief that time is a linear, directed sequence running from A to B is a modern illusion. In fact, it can also go from B to A, the effect producing the cause.... What does 'coming before' mean, or 'coming after'? Does your beautiful Amparo come before or after her motley ancestors? She is too splendid—if you will allow a dispassionate opinion from a man old enough to be her father. She thus comes before. She is the mysterious origin of whatever went into her creation."
"But at this point..."
"It is the whole idea of 'point' that is mistaken. Ever since Parmenides, points have been posited by science in an attempt to establish whence and whither something moves. But in fact nothing moves, and there is only one point, the one from which all others are generated at the same instant. The occultists of the nineteenth century, like those of our own time, naively tried to prove the truth of a thing by resorting to the methods of scientific falsehood. You must reason not according to the logic of time but according to the logic of Tradition. One time symbolizes all others, and the invisible Temple of the Rosicrucians therefore exists and has always existed, regardless of the current of history—your history. The time of the final revelation is not time by the clock. Its bonds are rooted in the time of 'subtle history,' where the befores and afters of science are of scant importance."
"In other words, those who maintain that the Rosicrucians arc eternal—"
"Are scientific fools, because they seek to prove that which must be known without proof. Do you think the worshipers we will see tomorrow night are capable of proving all the things that Kardec told them? Not at all. They simply know, because they are willing to know. If we had all retained this receptivity to secret knowledge, we would be dazzled by revelations. There is no need to wish; it's enough to be willing."
"But look—and forgive my banality—do the Rosicrucians exist or not?"
"What do you mean by exist?"
"You tell me."
"The Great White Fraternity—whether you call them Rosicrucians or the spiritual knighthood of which the Templars are a temporary incarnation—is a cohort of a few, a very few, elect wise men who journey through human history in order to preserve a core of eternal knowledge. History does not happen randomly. It is the work of the Masters of the World, whom nothing escapes. Naturally, the Masters of the World protect themselves through secrecy. And that is why anyone who says he is a master, a Rosicrucian, a Templar is lying. They must be sought elsewhere."
"Then the story goes on endlessly."
"Exactly. And it demonstrates the shrewdness of the Masters."
"But what do they want people to know?"
"Only that there's a secret. Otherwise, if everything is as it appears to be, why go on living?"
"And what is the secret?"
"What the revealed religions have been unable to reveal. The secret lies beyond."
33
The visions are white, blue, white, pale red. In the end they mingle and are all pale, the color of the flame of a white candle; you will see sparks, you will feel gooseflesh all over your body. This announces the beginning of the attraction exerted on the one who fulfills the mission.
—Papus, Martines de Pasqually, Paris, Chamuel, 1895, p. 92
The promised evening arrived. Agliè picked us up just as he had in Salvador. The tenda where the session, or gira, was to take place was in a fairly central district, if you can speak of a center in a city whose tongues of land stretch through hills and lick the sea. Seen from above, illuminated in the evening, the city looks like a head with patches of alopecia areata.
"Remember, this is an umbanda tonight, not a candomblé. The participants will be possessed not by orixas, but by the eguns, spirits of the departed. And by Exu, the African Hermes you saw in Bahia, and his companion, Pompa Gira. Exu is a Yoruba divinity, a demon inclined to mischief and joking, but there was a trickster god in Amerind mythology, too."
"And who are the departed?"
"Pretos velhos and caboclos. The pretos velhos are old African wise men who guided their people at the time of deportation, like Rei Congo and Pai Agostinho.... They are the memory of a milder phase of slavery, when the blacks, no longer animals, became family friends, uncles, grandfathers. The caboclos, on the other hand, are Indian spirits, virgin forces representing the purity of original nature. In the umbanda the African orixas stay in the background, completely syncretized with Catholic saints, and these beings alone intervene. They are the ones who produce the trance. At a certain point in the dance, the medium, the cavalo, is penetrated by a higher being and loses all awareness of self. He continues to dance until the divine being has left him, and he emerges feeling better. Clean, purified."
"Lucky mediums," Amparo said.
"Lucky indeed," Agliè said. "They attain contact with Mother Earth. These worshipers have been uprooted, flung into the horrible melting pot of the city, and, as Spengler said, at a time of crisis the mercantile West turns once more to the world of the earth."
We arrived. The tenda looked like an ordinary building from the outside. Here, too, you entered through a little garden, more modest than the one in Bahia, and at the door of the barracão, a kind of storehouse, was a little statue of Exu, already surrounded by propitiatory offerings.
Amparo drew me aside as we went in. "Eve figured it out," she said. "That tapir at the lecturc talked about the Aryan age, remember? And this one talks about the decline of the West. Blut und Boden, blood and earth. It's pure Nazism."
"It's not that simple, darling. This is a different continent."
"Thanks for the news. The Great White Fraternity! You eat your God for dinner."
"It's the Catholics who do that. It's not the same thing."
"It is too. Weren't you listening? Pythagoras, Dante, the Virgin Mary, and the Masons. Always out to screw us. Make umbanda, not love."
"You're the one who's syncretized. Come on, let's have a look. This, too, is culture."
"There's only one culture: strangle the last priest with the entrails of the last Rosicrucian."
Agliè signaled us to go in. If the outside was seedy, the inside was a blaze of violent colors. It was a quadrangular hall, with one area set aside for the dancing of the cavalos. The altar was at the far end, protected by a railing, against which stood the platform for the drums, the atabaques. The ritual space was still empty, b
ut on our side of the railing a heterogeneous crowd was already stirring: believers and the merely curious, blacks and whites, all mixed, some barefoot, others wearing tennis shoes. I was immediately struck by the figures around the altar: pretos velhos, caboclos in multicolored feathers, saints who would have seemed to be marzipan were it not for their Pantagruelian dimensions, Saint George in a shining breastplate and scarlet cloak, saints Cosmas and Damian, a Virgin pierced by swords, and a shamelessly hvperrealist Christ, his arms outstretched like the redeemer of Corcovado, but in color. There were no orixas, but you could sense their presence in the faces of the crowd and in the sweetish odor of cane and cooked foods, in the stench of sweat caused by the heat and by the excitement of the imminent gira.