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Umberto Eco
Only for you, children of doctrine and learning, have we written this work. Examine this book, ponder the meaning we have dispersed in various places and gathered again; what we have concealed in one place we have disclosed in another, that it may be understood by your wisdom
KETER
1
2Wee haue divers curious Clocks; And other like Motions of Return...Wee haue also Houses of Deceits of the Senses, where we represent all manner of Feats of Juggling, False Apparitions, Impostures, and Illusions...These are (my sonne) the Riches of Salomon's House.
HOKHMAH
3
4He who attempts to penetrate into the Rose Garden of the Philosophers without the key resembles a man who would walk without feet.
5And begin by combining this name, YHWH, at the beginning alone, and examine all its combinations and move it and turn it about like a wheel, front and back, like a scroll, and do not let it rest, but when you see its matter strengthened because of the great motion, because of the fear of confusion of your imagination and the rolling about of your thoughts, and when you let it rest, return to it and ask it, until there shall come to your hand a word of wisdom from it, do not abandon it.
6Juda Leon se dio a permutaciones
BINAH
7
8Having come from the light and from the gods, here I am in exile, separated from them.
9In his right hand he held a golden trumpet.
10And finally nothing is cabalistically inferred from vinum save VIS NUMerorum, upon which numbers this Magia depends.
11His sterility was infinite. It was part of the ecstasy.
12Sub umbra alarum tuarum, Jehova.
13Li frere, li mestre du Temple
14He declares that he saw, the day before, five hundred and four brothers of the order led to the stake because they would not confess the above-mentioned errors, and he heard it said that they were burned. But he fears that he himself would not resist if he were to be burned, that he would confess in the presence of the lord magistrates and anyone else, if questioned, and say that all the errors with which the order has been charged are true; that he, if asked, would also confess to killing Our Lord.
15Erard de Siverey said to me: "My lord, if you think that neither I nor my heirs will incur reproach for it, I will go and fetch you help from the Comte d'Anjou, whom I see in the fields over there." I said to him: "My dear man, it seems to me you would win great honor for yourself if you went for help to save our lives. Your own, by the way, is also in great danger."
16After which, brother Etienne de Provins, brought into the presence of the aforesaid officials and asked by them to defend the order, said he did not wish to. If the masters wished to defend it, they could, but before his arrest, he had been in the order only nine months.
17And thus did the knights of the Temple vanish with their secret, in whose shadow breathed a lofty yearning for the earthly city. But the Abstract to which their efforts aspired lived on, unattainable, in unknown regions...and its inspiration, more than once in the course of time, has filled those spirits capable of receiving it.
18If our eye could penetrate the earth and see its interior from pole to pole, from where we stand to the antipodes, we would glimpse with horror a mass terrifyingly riddled with fissures and caverns.
19After Beaujeu, the Order has never ceased to exist, not for a moment, and after Aumont we find an uninterrupted sequence of Grand Masters of the Order down to our own time, and if the name and seat of the true Grand Master and the true Seneschals who rule the Order and guide its sublime labors remain a mystery today, an impenetrable secret known only to the truly enlightened, it is because the hour of the Order has not struck and the time is not ripe...
20The Middle Ages awaited the hero of the Graal and expected that the head of the Holy Roman Empire would become an image and a manifestation of that "King of the World."...The invisible Emperor was to become also the visible one, and the Middle Ages would be "middle" in the sense of "central"...the invisible, inviolable center, the sovereign who must reawaken, the same hero, avenging and restoring. These are not fantasies of a dead, romantic past, but, rather, the simple truth for those who, today, alone can legitimately call themselves alive.
21The Graal...is a weight so heavy that creatures in the bondage of sin are unable to move it from its place.
22The knights of the Graal wanted to face no further questions.
HESED
23
24Sauvez la faible Aischa des vertiges de Nahash, sauvez la plaintive Heva des mirages de la sensibility, et que les Khe'rubs me gardent.
25...of these mysterious initiates¡Xnow become numerous, bold, conspiring¡Xall was born: Jesuitism, magnetism, Martinism, philosopher's stone, somnambulism, eclecticism.
26All the traditions of the earth must be seen as deriving from a fundamental mother-tradition that, from the beginning, was entrusted to sinful man and to his first offspring.
27One day, saying that he had known Pontius Pilate in Jerusalem, he described minutely the governor's house and listed the dishes served at supper. Cardinal de Rohan, believing these were fantasies, turned to the Comte de Saint-Germain's valet, an old man with white hair and an honest expression. "My friend," he said to the servant, "I find it hard to believe what your master is telling us. Granted that he may be a ventriloquist; and even that he can make gold. But that he is two thousand years old and saw Pontius Pilate? That is too much. Were you there?" "Oh, no, Monsignore," the valet answered ingenuously, "I have been in M. le Comte's service only four hundred years."
28There is a body that enfolds the whole of the world; imagine it in the form of a circle, for this is the form of the Whole...Imagine now that under the circle of this body are the 36 decans, midway between the total circle and the circle of the zodiac, separating these two circles and, so to speak, delimiting the zodiac, transported along it with the planets...The changing of kings, the rising up of cities, famine, plague, the tides of the sea, earthquakes: none of these takes place without the influence of the decans¡K
29Simply 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.
"And it's no lie. He has discovered the secret. And so have I."
30And 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.
31It 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...
32Valentiniani...nihil magis curant quam occultare quod praedicant: si tamen praedicant, qui occultant...Si bona fides quaeres, concrete vultu, suspense supercilio¡Xaltum est¡Xaiunt. Si subtiliter tentes, per ambiguitates bilingues communem fidern affirmant. Si scire te subos-tendas, negant quidquid agnoscunt...Habent artificium quo prius persuadeant, quam edoceant.
33The 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.
GEVURAH
34
35Sappia qualunque il mio nome dimanda ch'i' mi son Lia, e vo movendo intorno le belle mani a farmi una ghirlanda.
36Yet one caution let me give by the way to my present or future reader, who is actually melancholy¡Xthat he read not the symptomes or prog-nosticks of the following tract, lest, by applying that which he reads to himself, aggravating, appropriating things generally spoken, to his own person (as melancholy men for the most part do), he trouble or hurt himself, and get, in conclusion, more harm than good. I advise them therefore warily to peruse that tract.
37Whoever reflects on four things, it were better he had never been born: that which is above, that which is below, that which is before, and that which is after.
38Prince of Babylon, Knight of the Black Cross, Knight of Death, Sublime Master of the Luminous Ring, Priest of the Sun, Grand Architect, Knight of the Black and White Eagle, Holy Royal Arch, Knight of the Phoenix, Knight of Iris, Priest of Eleusis, Knight of the Golden Fleece.
39Doctor of the Planispheres, Hermetic Philosopher, Grand Elect of the Eons, Knight Prince of the Rose of Heredom, Grand Master of the Temple of Wisdom, Knight Noachite, .Wise Siviast, Knight Supreme Commander of the Stars, Sublime Sage of the Zodiac, Shepherd King of the Hutz, Interpreter of Hieroglyphs, Sage of the Pyramids, Sublime Titan of the Caucasus, Orphic Doctor, Sublime Skald, Prince Brahmin, Guardian of the Three Fires.
40Cowards die many times before their deaths.
41When it is recalled that Daath is situated at the point where the abyss bisects the Middle Pillar, and that up the Middle Pillar lies the Path of the Arrow, the way by which consciousness goes when the psychic rises on the planes, and that here also is Kundalini, we see that in Daath is the secret of both generation and regeneration, the key to the manifestation of all things through the differentiation into pairs of Opposites and their union in a Third.
42But you must know that we are all in agreement, whatever we say.
43People who meet on the street...secretly dedicate themselves to operations of Black Magic, they bind or seek to bind themselves to the Spirits of Darkness, to satisfy their ambitions, their hates, their loves, to do¡Xin a word¡XEvil.
44Invoke the forces of the Tablet of Union by means of Supreme Ritual of Pentagram, with the Active and Passive Spirit, with Eheieh and Agla. Return to the Altar, and recite the following Enochian Spirit Invocation: Ol Sonuf Vaorsag Goho lad Bait, Lonsh Calz Vonpho, Sobra Z-ol Ror I Ta Nazps, od Graa Ta Malprg...Ds Hol-q Qaa Nothoa Zimz, Od Commah Ta Nopbloh Zien...
45And from this springs the extraordinary question: Did the Egyptians know about electricity?
46During the day you will approach the frog several times and will utter words of worship. And you will ask it to work the miracles you wish...Meanwhile you will cut a cross on which to sacrifice it.
47Our exalted task then is to find order in these seven measures, a pattern that is distinct and will keep always the sense alert and the memory clear...This exalted and incomparable configuration not only performs the function of preserving entrusted things, words, and arts...but in addition it gives us true knowledge...
48Now, from apex to base, the volume of the Great Pyramid in cubic inches is approximately 161,000,000,000. How many human souls, then, have lived on the earth from Adam to the present day? Somewhere between 153,000,000,000 and 171,900,000,000.
49The Traditio Templi postulates, independently, the tradition of a templar knighthood, a spiritual knighthood of initiates...
50For I am the first and the last. I am the honored and the hated. I am the saint and the prostitute.
51When therefore a Great Cabalist wishes to tell you something, what he says will not be frivolous, vulgar, common, but, rather, a mystery, an oracle...
52In certain regions of the Himalayas, among the twenty-two temples that represent the twenty-two Arcana of Hermes and the twenty-two letters of some sacred alphabets, Agarttha forms the mystic Zero, which cannot be found...A colossal chessboard that extends beneath the earth, through almost all the regions of the Globe.
53Unable to control destinies on earth openly because governments would resist, this mystic alliance can act only through secret societies...These, gradually created as the need for them arises, are divided into distinct groups, groups seemingly in opposition, sometimes advocating the most contradictory policies in religion, politics, economics, and literature; but they are all connected, all directed by the invisible center that hides its power as it thus seeks to move all the scepters of the earth.
54The prince of darkness is a gentleman.
55I call a theatre [a place in which] all actions, all words, all particular subjects are shown as in a public theatre, where comedies and tragedies are acted.
56He began playing his shining trumpet with such power that the whole mountain rang.
57On every third tree a lantern had been hung, and a splendid virgin, also dressed in blue, lighted them with a raarvelous torch, and I lingered, longer than necessary, to admire the sight, which was of an ineffable beauty.
58Alchemy, however, is a chaste prostitute, who has many lovers but disappoints all and grants her favors to none. She transforms the haughty into fools, the rich into paupers, the philosophers into dolts, and the deceived into loquacious deceivers...
59And if such monsters are generated, we must believe them the work of nature, even if they be different from man.
60Poor idiot! Are you so foolish as to believe we will openly teach you the greatest and most important of secrets? I assure you that anyone who attempts to study, according to the ordinary and literal sense of their words, what the Hermetic Philosophers write, will soon find himself in the twists of a labyrinth from which he will be unable to escape, having no Ariadne's thread to lead him out.
61The Golden Fleece is guarded by a three-headed Dragon, whose first Head derives from the Waters, whose second Head derives from the Earth, and whose third Head derives from the Air. It is necessary that these three Heads belong to a single and very powerful Dragon, who will devour all other Dragons.
62We consider societies druidic if they are druidic in their titles of their aims, or if their initiations are inspired by druidism.
63¡¥What does the fish remind you of?" ¡¥Other fish."
TIFERET
64
65....the frame....was twenty foot square, placed in the middle of the room. The superficies was composed of several bits of wood, about the bigness of a die, but some larger than others. They were all linked together by slender wires. These bits of wood were covered on every square with paper pasted on them, and on these papers were written all the words of their language, in their several moods, tenses, and declensions, but without any order...The pupils at his command took each of them hold of an iron handle, whereof there were forty fixed round the edges of the frame, and giving them a sudden turn, the whole disposition of the words was entirely changed. He then commanded six and thirty of the lads to read the several lines softly as they appeared upon the frame; and where they found three or four words together that might make part of a sentence, they dictated to the four remaining boys...
66If 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.
67Da Rosa, nada digamos agora....
68Let your garments be white...If it is dark, set many lights burning...Now begin combining letters, few, many, shift them and combine them until your heart is warm. Pay attention to the movement of the letters and to what you can produce by combining them. And when your heart is warm, when you see that through the combination of the letters you grasp things you could not have known by yourself or with the aid of tradition, when you are ready to receive the influence of the divine power that enters into you, then use all the profundity of your thought to imagine in your heart the Name and His higher angels, as if they were human beings beside you.
69Elles deviennent le Diable: debiles, timorees, vaillantes a des heures exceptionnelles, sanglantes sans cesse, lacrymantes, caressantes, avec des bras qui ignorent les lois....Fi! Fi! Elles ne valent rien, elles sont faites d'un cote, d'un os courbe, d'une dissimulation rentree...Elles baisent le serpent...
70Let us remember well, however, the secret references,to a period of 120 years that brother A...., the successor of D and last of the second line of succession¡Xwho lived among many of us¡Xaddressed to us, we of the third line of succession...
71We do not even know with certainty if the Brothers of the second line possessed the same knowledge as those of the first, or if they were given all the secrets.
72Nos inuisibles pretendus sont (a ce que Ton dit) au nombre de 36, separez en six bandes.
73Another curious case of cryptography was presented to the public in 1917 by one of the best Bacon scholars, Dr. Alfred von Weber Ebenhoff of Vienna. Employing the same systems previously applied to the works of Shakespeare, he began to examine the works of Cervantes...Pursuing the investigation, he discovered overwhelming material evidence: the first English translation of Don Quixote bears corrections in Bacon's hand. He concluded that this English version was the original of the novel and that Cervantes had published a Spanish translation of it.
74Though his will be good, his spirit and his prophecies are illusions of the Devil...They are capable of deceiving many curious people and of causing great harm and scandal to the Church of Our Lord God.
75The only ones who elude....the eternal sleep....are those who in life are able to orient their mind toward the higher way. The initiates, the Adepts, are at the edge of that path. Having achieved memory, anamnesis, in the expression of Plutarch, they become free, they proceed without bonds. Crowned, they celebrate the "mysteries" and see on earth the throng of those who are not initiated and are not "pure," those who are crushed and pushing one another in the mud and in the darkness.
76If it were then a matter of defining in one word the dominant characteristic of French Freemasonry in the eighteenth century, only one would do: dilettantism.
77This herb is called Devilbane by the Philosophers. It has been demonstrated that only its seed can expel devils and their hallucinations...When given to a young woman who was tormented by a devil during the night, this herb made him flee.
78Surely this monstrous hybrid comes not from a mother's womb but from an Ephialtes, an Incubus, or some other horrendous demon, as though spawned in a putrid and venomous fungus, son of Fauns and Nymphs, more devil than man.
79He opened his coffer. In indescribable disorder it contained collars, rubber bands, kitchen utensils, badges of different technical schools, even the monogram of the Empress Alexandra Feodorovna and the Cross of the Legion of Honor. On everything, in his madness, he saw the seal of the Antichrist, in the form of two linked triangles.
80When White arrives in the matter of the Great Work, Life has conquered Death, the King is resuscitated, Earth and Water have become Air, it is the domain of the Moon, their Child is born...Then Matter achieves such a degree of fixity that Fire can no longer destroy it...When the artist sees perfect whiteness, the Philosophers say the books must be torn up, for they are now useless.
81The subterranean people have reached the highest knowledge...If our mad humankind should begin a war against them, they would be able to explode the whole surface of our planet...
82The earth is a magnetic body; in fact, as some scientists have found, it is one vast magnet, as Paracelsus affirmed some 300 years ago.
83A map is not the territory.
84The chief occupation of this Assembly¡Xand, in my opinion, the most useful¡Xshould be to work on natural history following the plans of Verulam.
85Phileas Fogg. A name that is also a signature: Eos, in Greek, has the sense of the global (it is therefore the equivalent of pan, of poly,) and Phileas is the same as Polyphile. As for Fogg, it is the English for brouillard....and no doubt Verne belonged to "Le Brouillard." He was even kind enough to indicate the relationship between this society and the Rose + Cross, because what, enfin, is our noble traveler Phi-leas Fogg if not a Rose + Cross?....And further, doesn't he belong to the Reform Club, whose initials, R.C., designate the reforming Rose + Cross? And this Reform Club stands in Pall Mall, suggesting once again the Dream of Polyphile.
86This science, which was not lost, at least as far as its practice was concerned, was taught to the cathedral builders by the monks of Ci-teaux...They were known, in the last century, as Compagnons du Tour de France. It was to them that Eiffel turned to build his tower.
87It is a remarkable coincidence that the 1623 Folio, known by the name of Shakespeare, contains exactly thirty-six plays...
88The Baron Hundt, Chevalier Ramsay....and numerous others who founded the grades in these rites, worked under instructions from the general of the Jesuits...Templarism is Jesuitism.
89In the bosom of the deepest darkness a society has been formed, a society of new beings, who know one another though they have never seen one another, who understand one another without explanations, who serve one another without friendship...From the Jesuit rule this society adopts blind obedience; from the Masons it takes the trials and the ceremonies, and from the Templars the subterranean mysteries and the great audacity. Has the Comte de Saint-Germain simply imitated Guillaume Postel, who desperately wanted people to believe him older than he was?
90In the true Masonic code no other god will be found save Mani. He is the god of the cabalist Masons, of the ancient Rosicrucians, of the Martinis! Masons...All the outrages attributed to the Templars are precisely those attributed, before them, to the Manicheans.
91Oh, how well you have unmasked those infernal sects that are preparing the way for the Antichrist...But there is still one sect that you have touched only lightly.
92There can no longer be any doubt. With all the power and the terror of Satan, the reign of the triumphant King of Israel is approaching our unregenerate world; the King born from the blood of Zion, the Antichrist, approaches the throne of universal power.
93The only society known to us that is capable of rivaling us in these arts is that of the Jesuits. But we have succeeded in discrediting the Jesuits in the eyes of the stupid populace, because that society is an open organization, whereas we stay in the wings, maintaining secrecy.
94Voltaire lui-meme est mort jesuite: en avoit-il le moindre soupcon?
95There is no need to multiply the evidence to prove that this degree of Rosy Cross was skillfully introduced by the leaders of Masonry...The doctrine, its hatred, and its sacrilegious practices, exactly those of the Cabala, of the Gnostics, and of the Manicheans, reveals to us the identity of the authors, namely the Jewish Cabalists.
96A cover is always necessary. In concealment lies a great part of our strength. Hence we must always hide ourselves under the name of another society.
97I am that I am.
98The National Socialist party did not tolerate secret societies, because it was itself a secret society, with its grand master, its racist gnosis, its rites and initiations.
99Nazism was the moment when the spirit of magic seized the helm of material progress. Lenin said Communism was socialism plus electricity. In a sense, Hitlerism was Guenonism plus armored divisions.
100To All the World: I declare the earth is hollow and habitable within; containing a number of solid, concentric spheres; one within the other, and that it is open at the poles twelve or sixteen degrees.
101Qui operator in Cabala...si errabit in opere aut non purificatus accesserit, deuorabitur ab Azazale.
102Leaving this place, we came to a settlement known as Milestre....where it is said that one known as the Old Man of the Mountain dwelled...And he built, over high mountains surrounding a valley, a very thick and high wall, in a circuit of thirty miles, and it was entered by two doors, and they were hidden, cut into the mountain.
103And Kairos appeared, holding in his hand a scepter that signified royalty, and he gave it to the first created God, and he took it and said: "Your secret name shall have 36 letters."
104These texts are not addressed to common mortals...Gnostic perception is a path reserved for an elite...For, in the words of the Bible: Do not cast your pearls before swine.
105Claudicat ingenium, delirat lingua, labat mens.
106List No. 5
NEZAH
107
108What is the hidden influence behind the press, behind all the subversive movements going on around us? Are there several Powers at work? Or is there one Power, one invisible group directing all the rest¡Xthe circle of the real Initiates!
109Saint-Germain... very polished and witty... said he possessed every kind of secret....He often employed, for his apparitions, that famous magic mirror of his...and through its catoptric effects summoned up the usual, well-known shades. His contact with the other world was unquestioned.
110And so it happened that Rabbi Ismahel ben Elisha and his disciples, who were studying the book Yesirah and mistook he movements and walked backward, sank into the earth, to its navel, tnanks to the strength of letters.
111C'est une le^on par la suite. Quand votre ennemi se reproduira, car il n'est pas ii son dernier masque, congediez-le brusquement, et surtout n'allez pas le chercher dans les grottes.
112
113Our cause is a secret within a secret, a secret that only another secret can explain; it is a secret about a secret that is veiled by a secret.
114The ideal pendulum consists of a very thin wire, which will not hinder flexion and torsion, of length L, with the weight attached to its bary-center. For a sphere, the barycenter is the center; for the human body, it is a point 0.65 of the height, measured 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.
115If the eye could see the demons that people the universe, existence would be impossible.
116Je voudrais etre la tour, pendre a la Tour Eiffel.
117Madness has an enormous pavilion Where it receives folk from every region, Especially if they have gold in profusion.
YESOD
118
119The garland of the trumpet was set afire, and then I saw the aperture of the dome open and a splendid arrow of fire shoot down through the tube of the trumpet and enter the lifeless body. The aperture then was closed again, and the trumpet, too, was put away.
MALKHUT
120
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