by Umberto Eco
"Yes, but it's a question of time. That would take centuries."
I said: "What if, instead, you fed it a few dozen notions taken from the works of the Diabolicals—for example, the Templars fled to Scotland, or the Corpus Hermeticum arrived in Florence in 1460—and threw in a few connective phrases like 'It's obvious that' and 'This proves that'? We might end up with something revelatory. Then we fill in the gaps, call the repetitions prophecies, and—voilà—hitherto unpublished chapter of the history of magic, at the very least!"
"An idea of genius," Belbo said. "Let's start right away."
"No. It's seven o'clock. Tomorrow."
"I'm starting tonight. Help me, just for a minute. Pick up, say, twenty of those pages on the floor, at random, glance at the first sentence of each, and that will be an entry."
I bent over, picked up, and read: "Joseph of Arimathea carries the Grail into France."
"Excellent.... I've written it. Go on."
"According to the Templar Tradition, Godefroy de Bouillon founded the Grand Priory of Zion in Jerusalem."
And "Debussy was a Rosicrucian."
"Excuse me," Diotallevi said, "but you also have to include some neutral data—for example, the koala lives in Australia, or Papin invented the pressure cooker."
"Minnie Mouse is Mickey's fiancée."
"We mustn't overdo it."
"No, we must overdo it. If we admit that in the whole universe there is even a single fact that does not reveal a mystery, then we violate hermetic thought."
"That's true. Minnie's in. And, if you'll allow me, I'll add a fundamental axiom: The Templars have something to do with everything."
"That goes without saying," Diotallevi agreed.
We went on for a while, but then it was really late. Belbo told us not to worry, he'd continue on his own. When Gudrun came in and told us she was locking up, he said he'd be staying to do some work and asked her to pick up the papers on the floor. Gudrun made sounds that could have belonged either to Latin sine flexione or to Chermish but that clearly expressed indignation and dismay, which demonstrated the universal kinship of all languages, descendants branched from a single, Adamic root. She obeyed, randomizing better than any computer.
***
The next morning, Belbo was radiant. "It works," he said. "It works beyond anything we could have hoped for." He handed us the printout.
The Templars have something to do with everything
What follows is not true
Jesus was crucified under Pontius Pilate
The sage Omus founded the Rosy Cross in Egypt
There are cabalists in Provence
Who was married at the feast of Cana?
Minnie Mouse is Mickey's fiancée
It logically follows that
If
The Druids venerated black virgins
Then
Simon Magus identifies Sophia as a prostitute of Tyre
Who was married at the feast of Cana?
The Merovingians proclaim themselves kings by divine right
The Templars have something to do with everything
"A bit obscure," Diotallevi said.
"Because you don't see the connections. And you don't give due importance to the question that recurs twice: Who was married at the feast of Cana? Repetitions are magic keys. Of course, I've compiled; but compiling the truth is the initiate's right. Here is my interpretation: Jesus was not crucified, and for that reason the Templars denied the Crucifix. The legend of Joseph of Arimathea covers a deeper truth: Jesus, not the Grail, landed in France, among the cabalists of Provence. Jesus is the metaphor of the King of the World, the true founder of the Rosicrucians. And who landed with Jesus? His wife. In the Gospels why aren't we told who was married at Cana? It was the wedding of Jesus, and it was a wedding that could not be discussed, because the bride was a public sinner, Mary Magdalene. That's why, ever since, all the Illuminati from Simon Magus to Postel seek the principle of the eternal feminine in a brothel. And Jesus, meanwhile, was the founder of the royal line of France."
66
If our hypothesis is correct, the Holy Grail ... was the breed and descendant of Jesus, the "Sang real" of which the Templars were the guardians....At the same time, the Holy Grail must have been, literally, the vessel that had received and contained the blood of Jesus. In other words it must have been the womb of the Magdalene.
—M. Baigent, R. Leigh, H. Lincoln, The Holy Blond and the Holy Grail, 1982, London, Cape, xiv
"Nobody would take that seriously," Diotallevi said.
"On the contrary, it would sell a few hundred thousand copies," I said grimly. "The story has already been written, with slight variations, in a book on the mystery of the Grail and the secrets of Rennes-le-Chateau. Instead of reading only manuscripts, you should look at what other publishers are printing."
"Ye Holy Seraphim!" Diotallevi said. "Then this machine says only what we already know." And he went out, dejected.
Belbo was piqued. "What is he saying—that my idea is an idea others have had? So what? It's called literary polygenesis. Signor Garamond would say that means I'm telling the truth. It must have taken years for the others to come up with it, whereas the machine and I solved the problem in one evening."
"I'm with you. The machine's useful. But I believe we should feed in more statements that don't come from the Diabolicals. The challenge isn't to find occult links between Debussy and the Templars. Everybody does that. The problem is to find occult links between, for example, cabala and the spark plugs of a car."
I was speaking off the top of my head, but I had given Belbo an idea. He talked to me about it a few mornings later.
"You were right. Any fact becomes important when it's connected to another. The connection changes the perspective; it leads you to think that every detail of the world, every voice, every word written or spoken has more than its literal meaning, that it tells us of a Secret. The rule is simple: Suspect, only suspect. You can read subtexts even in a traffic sign that says 'No littering.'"
"Of course. Catharist moralism. The horror of fornication."
"Last night I happened to come across a driver's manual. Maybe it was the semidarkness, or what you had said to me, but I began to imagine that those pages were saying Something Else. Suppose the automobile existed only to serve as metaphor of creation? And we mustn't confine ourselves to the exterior, or to the surface reality of the dashboard; we must learn to see what only the Maker sees, what lies beneath. What lies beneath and what lies above. It is the Tree of the Sefirot."
"You don't say."
"I am not the one who says; it is the thing itself that says. The drive shaft is the trunk of the tree. Count the parts: engine, two front wheels, clutch, transmission, two axles, differential, and two rear wheels. Ten parts, ten Sefirot."
"But the positions don't coincide."
"Who says they don't? Diotallevi's explained to us that in certain versions Tiferet isn't the sixth Sefirah, but the eighth, below Nezah and Hod. My axle-tree is the tree of Belboth."
"Fiat."
"But let's pursue the dialectic of the tree. At the summit is the engine, Omnia Movens, of which more later: this is the Creative Source. The engine communicates its creative energy to the two front or higher wheels: the Wheel of Intelligence and the Wheel of Knowledge."
"If the car has front-wheel drive."
"The good thing about the Belboth tree is that it allows metaphysical alternatives. So we have the image of a spiritual cosmos with front-wheel drive, where the engine, in front, transmits its wishes to the higher wheels, whereas in the materialistic version we have a degenerate cosmos in which motion is imparted by the engine to the two lower wheels: from the depths, the cosmic emanation releases the base forces of matter."
"What about an engine in back, rear-wheel drive?"
"Satanic. Higher and lower coincide. God is identified with the motion of crude matter. God as an eternally frustrated aspiration to divinity. The result of the Brea
king of the Vessels."
"Not the Breaking of the Muffler?"
"That occurs in aborted universes, where the noxious breath of the Archons spreads through the ether. But we mustn't digress. After the engine and two wheels comes the clutch, the Sefirah of grace that establishes or interrupts the flow of love that binds the rest of the tree to the Supernal Energy. A disk, a mandala that caresses another mandala. Then the coffer of change—the gear box, or transmission, as the positivists call it, which is the principle of Evil, because it allows human will to speed up or slow down the constant process of emanation. For this reason, an automatic transmission costs more, for there it is the tree itself that decides, in accordance with its own Sovereign Equilibrium. Then comes the universal joint, the axle, the drive shaft, the differential—note the opposition/repetition of the quaternion of cylinders in the engine, because the differential (Minor Keter) transmits motion to the earthly wheels. Here the function of the Sefirah of difference is obvious, as, with a majestic sense of beauty, it distributes the cosmic forces to the Wheel of Glory and the Wheel of Victory, which in an unaborted universe (front-wheel drive) are subordinate to the motion imparted by the higher wheels."
"A coherent exegesis. And the heart of the engine, seat of the One, the Crown?"
"You have but to look with the eyes of an initiate. The supreme engine lives by an alternation of intake and exhaust. A complex, divine respiration, a cycle initially based on two units called cylinders (an obvious geometrical archetype), which then generate a third, and finally gaze upon one another in mutual love and bring forth the glory of a fourth. In the cycle of the first cylinder (none is first hierarchically, but only through the miraculous alternation of position), the piston (etymology: Pistis Sophia) descends from the upper neutral position to the lower neutral position as the cylinder fills with energy in the pure state. I'm simplifying, because here angelic hierarchies come into play, the distributor caps, which, as my handbook says, 'allow the opening and closing of the apertures that link the interior of the cylinders to the induction pipes leading out of the carburetor.' The inner seat of the engine can communicate with the rest of the cosmos only through this mediation, and here I believe is revealed—I am reluctant to utter heresy—the original limit of the One, which, in order to create, somehow depends on the Great Eccentrics. A closer reading of the text may be required here. The cylinder fills with energy, the piston returns to the upper neutral position and achieves maximum compression—the simsun. And lo, the glory of the Big Bang: combustion, expansion. A spark flies, the mixture of fuel flares and blazes, and this the handbook calls the active phase of the cycle. And woe, woe if in the mixture of fuel the Shells intrude, the qelippot, drops of impure matter like water or Coca-Cola. Then expansion does not take place or occurs in abortive starts...."
"Then the meaning of Shell is qelippot? We'd better not use it anymore. From now on, only Virgin's Milk..."
"We'll check. It could be a trick of the Seven Sisters, lower emanations trying to control the process of creation....In any case, after expansion, behold the great divine release, the exhaust. The piston rises again to the upper neutral position and expels the formless matter, now combusted. Only if this process of purification succeeds can the new cycle begin. Which, if you think about it, is also the Neoplatonic mechanism of Exodus and Parodos, miraculous dialectic of the Way Up and the Way Down."
"Quantum mortalia pectora ceacae noctis habent! And the sons of matter never realized it!"
"They never saw the connection between the philosopher's stone and Firestone."
"For tomorrow, I'll prepare a mystical interpretation of the phone book."
"Ever ambitious, our Casaubon. Mind you, there you'll have to solve the unfathomable problem of the One and the Many. Better succeed slowly. Start, instead, with the washing machine."
"That's too easy. The alchemistic transformation from black to whiter than white."
67
Da Rosa, nada digamos agora...
—Sampayo Bruno, Os Cavalheiros do Amor; Lisbon, Guimaraes, 1960, p. 155
When you assume an attitude of suspicion, you overlook no clue. After our fantasy on the power train and the Tree of the Sefirot, I was prepared to see symbols in every object I came upon.
I had kept in touch with my Brazilian friends, and in Portugal just then, at Coimbra, a conference was being held on Lusitanian culture. More out of a wish to see me again than out of respect for my expertise, my Rio friends managed to have me invited. Lia didn't go with me; she was in her seventh month, and though her pregnancy had changed her slender figure only slightly, transforming her into a Flemish madonna, she preferred to stay home.
I spent three merry evenings with my old comrades. As we were returning by bus to Lisbon, an argument developed about whether we should stop at Fatima or Tomar. Tomar was the castle to which the Portuguese Templars had withdrawn after the king and the pope saved them from trial and ruin by transforming them into the Order of the Knights of Christ. I couldn't miss a Templar castle, and luckily the rest of the party was not enthusiastic about Fátima.
If I could have invented a Templar castle, it would have been Tomar. You reach it by ascending a fortified road that flanks the outer bastions, which have cruciform slits, and you breathe Crusader air from the first moment. The Knights of Christ prospered for centuries in that place. Tradition has it that both Henry the Navigator and Christopher Columbus belonged to that order, and in fact it devoted itself to the conquest of the seas—making the fortune of Portugal. The knights' long and happy existence there had caused the castle to be rebuilt and extended through the centuries, so to its medieval part were joined Renaissance and Baroque wings. I was moved as I entered the church of the Templars, which had an octagonal rotunda reproducing that of the Holy Sepulcher, and I was surprised to see that the Templars' crosses had different forms, depending on their location. It was a problem I had encountered before, when I went through the confused iconography on the subject. Whereas the cross of the Knights of Malta had remained more or less the same, the Templar cross had been influenced by periods and local traditions. That's why Templar-hunters, finding any kind of cross in a place, immediately think they've discovered a trace of the knights.
Our guide took us to see the Manueline window, the janela par excellence, a filigree, a collage of marine and submarine troves, seaweeds, shells, anchors, capstans, and chains, celebrating the knights' achievements on the oceans. The window was framed by two towers, which were decorated with carvings of the insigne of the Garter. What was the symbol of an English order doing in a Portuguese fortified monastery? The guide couldn't say; but a little later, on another side, the northeast, I believe, he showed us the insigne of the Golden Fleece. I couldn't help thinking of the subtle game of alliances that had united the Garter to the Golden Fleece, the Fleece to the Argonauts, the Argonauts to the Grail, and the Grail to the Templars. Remembering Colonel Ardenti's narrative and a few pages from the Diabolicals' manuscripts, I started when our guide showed us into a side room whose ceiling was gripped by keystones. They were rosettes, but on some of them was carved a bearded caprine face: Baphomet....
We went down into a crypt. After seven steps, a bare stone floor led to the apse, where an altar could stand, or the chair of the grand master. You reached it by passing beneath seven keystones, each in the form of a rose, one larger than the next, with the last set over a well. The Cross and the Rose, in a Templar monastery, and in a room surely built before the Rosicrucian manifestoes....I put some questions to the guide. He smiled. "If you knew how many students of the occult sciences come here on pilgrimages ... It's said that this was the initiation chamber."
Entering by chance a room not yet restored, which contained a few pieces of dusty furniture, I found the floor cluttered with great cardboard boxes. Rummaging at random, I uncovered some fragments of volumes in Hebrew, presumably from the seventeenth century. What were the Jews doing in Tomar? The guide told me that the knights had maintained friendl
y relations with the local Jewish community. He had me look out the window and showed me a little garden designed like an elegant French maze—the work, he told me, of an eighteenth-century Jewish architect: Samuel Schwarz.
The second appointment in Jerusalem ... And the first at the Castle? Wasn't that how the message of Provins went? By God, the Castle of the Ordonation mentioned in Ingolf's document was not the Monsalvat of chivalric novels, the Avalon of the Hyperboreal. No. What castle would the Templars of Provins, more used to directing commanderies than to reading romances of the Round Table, have chosen for their first meeting place? Why, Tomar, the castle of the Knights of Christ, a place where survivors of the order enjoyed complete freedom, unchanged guarantees, and where they could be in contact with the agents of the second group!
I left Tomar and Portugal with my mind ablaze. No longer was I laughing at the message Ardenti had shown us. The Templars, when they became a secret order, worked out a Plan that was to last six hundred years and conclude in our century. The Templars were serious men. If they talked about a castle, they meant a real castle. The Plan began at Tomar. And what would the ideal route have been, the sequence of the other five meetings? Places where the Templars could count on friendship, protection, complicity. The colonel spoke of Stonehenge, Avalon, Agarttha.... Nonsense. The message had to be completely restudied.
Of course—I reminded myself on my way home—the idea is not to discover the Templars' secret, but to construct it.
Belbo seemed disturbed at the thought of going back to the document left by the colonel, and he found it only after digging reluctantly in a lower drawer. But, I saw, he had kept it. Together we reread the Provins message, after so many years.