Foucault's Pendulum

by Umberto Eco

  The dancers sang brokenly, hysterically, they shook and bobbed their heads, they shouted, then made convulsive noises, like death rattles.

  The stuff emitted by the mediums took on body, grew more substantial; it was like a lava of albumin, which slowly expanded and descended, slid over their shoulders, their chests, their legs with the sinuous movement of a reptile. I could not tell now if it came from the pores of their skin or their mouths, ears, and eyes. The crowd pressed forward, pushing closer and closer to the mediums and the dancers. I lost all fear: confident that I would not be noticed among them, I stepped from the sentry box, exposing myself still more to the fumes that spread and curled beneath the vaults.

  Around the mediums, a milky luminescence. The foam began to detach itself from them, to assume ameboid shape. From the mass that came from one of the mediums, a tip broke free, turned, and moved up along his body, like an animal that intended to strike him with its beak. At the end of it, two mobile knobs formed, like the horns of a giant snail....

  The dancers, eyes closed, mouths frothing, did not cease their spinning, and they began to revolve, as much as the space allowed, around the Pendulum, miraculously doing this without crossing its trajectory. Whirling faster and faster, they flung off their fezes, let their long black hair stream out, and it seemed their heads were flying from their necks. They shouted, like the dancers that evening in Rio: Houu houu houuuuu ...

  The white forms acquired definition: one of them grew vaguely human in appearance, another went from phallus to ampule to alembic, and the third was clearly taking on the aspect of a bird, an owl with great eyeglasses and erect ears, the hooked beak of an old schoolmistress, a teacher of natural sciences.

  Madame Olcott questioned the first form: "Kelley, is that you?"

  From the form a voice came. It was definitely not Theo Fox speaking. The voice, distant, said in halting English: "Now ... I do reveale a ... a mighty Secret, if ye marke it well..."

  "Yes, yes," Madame Olcott insisted.

  The voice went on: "This very place is call'd by many names.... Earth ... Earth is the lowest element of all.... When thrice ye have turned this Wheele about ... thus my greate Secret I have revealed...."

  Theo Fox made a gesture with his hand, as if to beg mercy. "No, hold on to it," Madame Olcott said to him. Then she addressed the owl shape: "I recognize you, Khunrath. What have you to tell us?"

  The owl spoke: "Hallelu...'aah ... Hallelu...'aah ... Hallelu...'aah ... Was..."

  "Was?"

  "Was helfen Fackeln Licht ... oder Briln ... so die Leut ... nicht sehen ... wollen..."

  "We do wish," Madame Olcott said. "Tell us what you know."

  "Symbolon kósmou ... tâ ántra ... kaì tân enkosmiôn dunámeôn eríthento ... oi theológoi..."

  Leo Fox was also exhausted. The owl's voice weakened, Leo's head slumped, the effort to sustain the shape was too great. But the implacable Madame Olcott told him to persevere and addressed the last shape, which now had also taken on anthropomorphic features. "Saint-Germain, Saint-Germain, is that you? What do you know?"

  The shape began to hum a tune. Madame Olcott called for silence. The musicians stopped, and the dancers no longer howled, but they continued spinning, though with increasing fatigue.

  The shape was singing: "Gentle love, this hour befriends me..."

  "It's you; I recognize you," Madame Olcott said invitingly. "Speak, tell us where, what..."

  The shape said: "Il était nuit....La tête couverte du voile de lin ... j'arrive, je trouve un autel de fer, j'y place le rameau mystérieux.... Oh, je crus descendre dans un abîme ... des galeries composées de quartiers de pierre noire ... mon voyage souterrain..."

  "He's a fraud, a fraud!" Agliè cried. "Brothers, you all know these words. They're from the Très Sainte Tnnosophie, I wrote it myself; anyone can read it for sixty francs!" He ran to Geo Fox and began shaking him by the arm.

  "Stop, you imposter!" Madame Olcott screamed. "You'll kill him!"

  "And what if I do?" Agliè shouted, pulling the medium off the chair.

  Geo tried to support himself by clinging to the form he had secreted, but it fell with him and dissolved on the floor. Geo slumped in the sticky matter that he continued to vomit, until he stiffened, lifeless.

  "Stop, madman," Madame Olcott screamed, seizing Agliè. And then, to the other brothers: "Stand fast, my little ones. They must speak still. Khunrath, Khunrath, tell him you are real!"

  Leo Fox, to survive, was trying to reabsorb the owl. Madame Olcott went around behind him and pressed her fingers to his temples, to bend him to her will. The owl, realizing it was about to disappear, turned toward its creator: "Phy, Phy Diabolos," it muttered, trying to peck his eyes. Leo gave a gurgle, as if his jugular had been severed, and sank to his knees. The owl disappeared in a revolting muck ("Phiii, phiii," it went), and into it, choking, the medium also fell, and was still. Madame Olcott, furious, turned to Theo, who was doing his best to hold on: "Speak, Kelley! You hear me?"

  But Kelley did not speak. He was trying to detach himself from the medium, who now yelled as if his bowels were being torn. The medium struggled to take back what he had produced, clawing the air. "Kelley, earless Kelley, don't cheat again," Madame Olcott cried. Kelley, unable to separate himself from the medium, was now trying to smother him, turning into a kind of chewing gum, from which the last Fox brother was unable to extricate himself. Theo, too, sank to his knees, choking, entangled in the parasite blob that was devouring him; he rolled and writhed as if enveloped in flame. The thing that had been Kelley covered him like a shroud, then melted, liquefied, leaving Theo on the floor, the drained, gutted mummy of a child embalmed by Salon. At that same moment, the four dancers stopped as one, flailed their arms—drowning men, sinking like stones—then crouched, whined like puppies, and covered their heads with their hands.

  Agliè had returned to the ambulatory. He wiped the sweat from his brow with the little handkerchief that adorned his breast pocket, took two deep breaths, and put a white pill in his mouth. Then he called for silence.

  "Brother knights. You have seen the cheap tricks this woman inflicts on us. Let us regain our composure and return to my proposal. Give me one hour with the prisoner in private."

  Madame Olcott, oblivious, bent over her mediums, was stricken with an almost human grief. But Pierre, who had followed everything and was still seated on the throne, resumed control of the situation. "Non," he said. "There is only one means: le sacrifice humain! Give to me the prisoner."

  Galvanized by his energy, the giants of Avalon grabbed Belbo, who had watched the scene in a daze, and thrust him before Pierre, who, with the agility of an acrobat, jumped up, put the chair on the table, and pushed both giants to the center of the choir. He grabbed the wire of the Pendulum as it went by and stopped the sphere, staggering under the recoil. It took barely an instant. As if the thing had been prearranged—and perhaps, during the confusion, some signals had been exchanged—the giants climbed up on the table and hoisted Belbo onto the chair. One giant wrapped the wire of the Pendulum twice around Belbo's neck, and the other held the sphere, then set it at the edge of the table.

  Bramanti rushed to this makeshift gallows, flashing with majesty in his scarlet cloak, and chanted: "Exorcizo igitur te per Pentagrammaton, et in nomine Tetragrammaton, per Alfa et Omega qui sunt in spiritu Azoth. Saddai, Adonai, Jotchavah, Eieazereie! Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, Anael. Fluat Udor per spiritum Eloim! Maneat Terra per Adam Iot-Cavah! Per Samael Zebaoth et in nomine Eloim Gibor, veni Adramelech! Vade retro Lilith!"

  Belbo stood straight on the chair, the wire around his neck. The giants no longer had to restrain him. If he took one step in any direction, he would fall from that shaky perch, and the noose, tightening, would strangle him.

  "Fools!" Agliè shouted. "How will we put it back on its axis now?" He was concerned for the safety of the Pendulum.

  Bramanti smiled. "Do not worry, Count. We are not mixing your dyes here. This is the Pendulum, as They
conceived it. It will know where to go. And to convince a Force to act, there is nothing better than a human sacrifice."

  Until that moment, Belbo had trembled. But now I saw him relax. He looked at the audience, I will not say with confidence, but with curiosity. I believe that, hearing the argument between the two adversaries, seeing before him the contorted bodies of the mediums, the dervishes still jerking and moaning to the side, the rumpled vestments of the dignitaries, Belbo recovered his most genuine gift: his sense of the ridiculous.

  I believe that at that moment he decided not to allow himself to be frightened anymore. Perhaps his elevated position gave him a sense of superiority, as if he were watching, from a stage, that gathering of lunatics locked in a Grand Guignol feud, and at the sides, almost to the entrance, the little monsters, now uninterested in the action, nudging each other and giggling, like Annibale Cantalamessa and Pio Bo.

  He only turned an anxious eye toward Lorenza, as the giants again grasped her arms. Jolted, she came to her senses. She began crying.

  Perhaps Belbo was reluctant to let her witness his emotion, or perhaps he decided instead that this was the only way he could show his contempt for that crowd, but he held himself erect, head high, chest bared, hands bound behind his back, like a man who had never known fear.

  Calmed by Belbo's calm, resigned to the interruption of the Pendulum, but still eager to know the secret after a lifetime's search (or many-lifetimes), and also in order to regain control over his followers, Agliè addressed him again: "Come, Belbo, make up your mind. As you can see, you are in a situation that, to say the least, is awkward. Stop this playacting."

  Belbo didn't answer. He looked away, as if politely to avoid overhearing a conversation he had chanced upon.

  Agliè insisted, conciliatory, paternal: "I understand your irritation, your reserve. How it must revolt you to confide an intimate and precious secret to a rabble that has just offered such an unedifying spectacle! Very well, you may confide your secret to me alone, whispering it in my ear. Now I will have you taken down, and I know you will tell me a word, a single word."

  Belbo said: "You think so?"

  Then Agliè changed his tone. I saw him imperious as never before, sacerdotal, hieratic. He spoke as if he had on one of the Egyptian vestments worn by his colleagues. But the note was false; he seemed to be parodying those whom he had always treated with indulgent commiseration. At the same time, he spoke with the full assumption of his authority. For some purpose of his own—because this couldn't have been unintentional—he was introducing an element of melodrama. If he was acting, he acted well: Belbo seemed unaware of any deception, listening to Agliè as if he had expected nothing else from him.

  "Now you will speak," Agliè said. "You will speak, and you will join this great game. If you remain silent, you are lost. If you speak, you will share in the victory. For truly I say this to you: This night you and I and all of us are in Hod, the Sefirah of splendor, majesty, and glory; Hod, which governs ritual and ceremonial magic; Hod, the moment when the curtain of eternity is parted. I have dreamed of this moment for centuries. You will speak, and you will join the only ones who will be entitled, after your revelation, to declare themselves Masters of the World. Humble yourself, and you will be exalted. You will speak because I order you to speak, and my words efficiunt quod figurant!"

  ***

  And Belbo, now invincible, said, "Ma gavte la nata..."

  Agliè, even if he was expecting a refusal, blanched at the insult.

  "What did he say?" Pierre asked, hysterical.

  "He will not speak," Agliè roughly translated. He lifted his arms in a gesture of surrender, of obedience, and said to Bramanti: "He is yours."

  And Pierre said, transported: "Assez, assez, le sacrifice humain, le sacrifice humain!"

  "Yes, let him die. We'll find the answer anyway," cried Madame 0lcott, equally carried away, as she now returned to the scene, rushing toward Belbo.

  At the same time, Lorenza moved. She freed herself from the giants' grasp and stood before Belbo, at the foot of the gallows, her arms opened wide, as if to stop an invading army. In tears, she exclaimed: "Are you all crazy? You can't do this!"

  Agliè, who was withdrawing, stood rooted to the spot for a moment, then ran to her, to restrain her.

  What happened next took only seconds. Madame Olcott's knot of hair came undone; all rancor and flames, like a Medusa, she bared her talons, scratched at Agliè's face, shoved him aside with the force of the momentum of her leap. Agliè fell back, stumbled over a leg of the brazier, spun around like a dervish, and banged his head against a machine; he sank to the ground, his face covered with blood. Pierre, meanwhile, flung himself on Lorenza, drawing the dagger from the sheath on his chest as he moved, but he blocked my view, so I didn't see what happened. Then I saw Lorenza slumped at Bclbo's feet, her face waxen, and Pierre, holding up the red blade, shouted: "Enfin, le sacrifice humain!" Turning toward the nave, he said in a loud voice: "I'a Cthulhu! I'a S'ha-t'n!"

  In a body, the horde in the nave moved forward: some fell and were swept aside; others, pushing, threatened to topple Cugnot's car. I heard—I must have heard it, I can't have imagined such a grotesque detail—the voice of Garamond saying: "Gentlemen, please! Manners!..." Bramanti, in ecstasy, was kneeling by Lorenza's body, declaiming: "Asar, Asar! Who is clutching me by the throat? Who is pinning me to the ground? Who is stabbing my heart? I am unworthy to cross the threshold of the house of Maat!"

  ***

  Perhaps no one intended it, perhaps the sacrifice of Lorenza was to have sufficed, but the acolytes were now pressing inside the magic circle, which was made accessible by the immobility of the Pendulum, and someone—Ardenti, I think—was hurled by the others against the table, which literally disappeared from beneath Belbo's feet. It skidded away, and, thanks to the same push, the Pendulum began a rapid, violent swing, taking its victim with it. The wire, pulled by the weight of the sphere, tightened around the neck of my poor friend, yanked him into the air, and he swung above and with the Pendulum, swung toward the eastern extremity of the choir, then returned, I hoped without life, in my direction.

  Trampling one another, the crowd drew back, retreated to the edges of the semicircle, to allow room for the wonder. The man in charge of the oscillation, intoxicated by the rebirth of the Pendulum, supplied pushes directly on the hanged man's body. The axis of motion made a diagonal from my eyes to one of the windows, no doubt the window with the colorless spot through which, in a few hours, the first ray of the rising sun would fall. Therefore, I did not see Belbo swing in front of me, but this, I believe, was the pattern he drew in space...

  His head seemed a second sphere, trapped in the loops of the wire that stretched from the center of the keystone; and when the metal sphere tilted to the right, Belbo's head tilted to the left, and vice versa. For most of the long swing, the two spheres tended in opposite directions, one on either side of the wire, so what cleaved the air was no longer a single line, but a kind of triangular structure. And, while Belbo's head followed the pull of the wire, his body—at first in its final spasms, then with the disarticulated agility of a wooden marionette, arm here, leg there—described other arcs in the void, arcs independent of the head, the wire, and the sphere beneath. I had the thought that if someone were to photograph the scene using Muybridge's system—fixing on the plate every moment as a succession of positions, recording the two extreme points the head reached in each period, the two rest points of the sphere, the points of intersection of the wire with time, independent of both head and sphere, and the intermediary points marked by the plane of oscillation of the trunk and legs—Belbo hanged from the Pendulum would have drawn, in space, the tree of the Sefirot, summing-up in his final moment the vicissitude of all universes, fixing forever in his motion the ten stages of the mortal exhalation and defecation of the divine in the world.

  Then, as the Mandrake in tails continued to encourage that funereal swing, Belbo's body, through a grisly additi
on and cancellation of vectors, a migration of energies, suddenly became immobile, and the wire and the sphere moved, but only from his body down; the rest—which connected Belbo with the vault—now remained perpendicular. Thus Belbo had escaped the error of the world and its movements, had now become, himself, the point of suspension, the Fixed Pin, the Place from which the vault of the world is hung, while beneath his feet the wire and the sphere went on swinging, from pole to pole, without peace, the earth slipping away under them, showing always a new continent. The sphere could not point out, nor would it ever know, the location of the World's Navel.

  As the pack of Diabolicals, dazed for a moment in the face of this portent, began to yowl again, I told myself that the story was now finished. If Hod is the Sefirah of glory, Belbo had had glory. A single fearless act had reconciled him with the Absolute.

  114

  The ideal pendulum consists of a very thin wire, which will not hinder flexion and torsion, of length L, with the weight attached to its barycenter. For a sphere, the barycenter is the center; for the human body, it is a point 0.65 of the height, measuring from the feet. If the hanged man is 1.70m tall, his barycenter is located 1.10m from his feet, and the length L includes this distance. In other words, if the distance from the man's head to neck is 0.60m, the barycenter is 1.70 − 1.10 = 0.60m from his head, and 0.60 - 0.30 = 0.30m from his neck.

  The period of the pendulum, discovered by Huygens, is given by:

  where L is the length in meters, π = 3.1415927..., and g = 9.8m/sec2. Thus (1) gives:

  or, more or less:

  Note: T is independent of the weight of the hanged man. (In God's eyes all men are equal....)

  As for a double pendulum, one with two weights attached to the same wire ... If you shift A, A oscillates; then after a while it stops and B will oscillate. If the paired weights are different or if their lengths are different, the energy passes from one to the other, but the periods of these oscillations will not be equal.... This eccentricity of movement also occurs if, instead of beginning to make A oscillate freely by setting it in motion, you apply a force to the system already in motion. That is to say, if the wind blows in gusts on the hanged man in asynchronous fashion. After a while, the hanged man will become motionless and his gallows will oscillate as if its fulcrum were the hanged man.