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By Root 825 0

—the work of an unknown artist—I went about acquiring the little objects in the glass cases, which correspond to the images on the ceiling. They represent the fundamental elements of the universe: air, water, earth, and fire. Hence the presence of this charming salamander, the master-work of a taxidermist friend, and this delicate reproduction in miniature, a rather late piece, of the aeolipile of Hero, in which the air contained in the sphere, were I to activate this little alcohol stove, warming it, would escape from these lateral spouts and thereby cause rotation. A magic instrument. Egyptian priests used it in their shrines, as so many texts inform us. They exploited it to claim a miracle, which the masses venerated, while the true miracle is the golden law that governs this secret and simple mechanism of the elements earth and fire. Here is learning that our ancients possessed, as did the men of alchemy, but that the builders of cyclotrons have lost. And so I cast my gaze on my theater of memory, this child of so many vaster theaters that beguiled the great minds of the past, and I know. I know better than the so-called learned. As it is below, so it is above. And there is nothing more to know.’’

He offered us Cuban cigars, curiously shaped—not straight, but contorted, curled—though they were thick. We uttered cries of admiration. Diotallevi went over to the shelves.

“Oh,” Aglie said, “a minimal library, as you see, barely two hundred volumes; I have more in my family home. But, if I may say so, all these have some merit, some value. And they are not arranged at random. The order of the subjects follows that of the images and the objects.”

Diotallevi timidly reached out as if to touch a volume. “Help yourself,” Aglie said. “That is the Oedypus Aegyptiacus of Ath-anasius Kircher. As you know, he was the first after Horapollon to try to interpret hieroglyphics. A fascinating man. I wish this study of mine were like his museum of wonders, now presumed lost, scattered, because one who knows not how to seek will never find...A charming conversationalist. How proud he was the day he discovered that this hieroglyph meant ‘The benefices of the divine Osiris are provided by sacred ceremonies and by the chain of spirits...’ Then that mountebank Cham-pollion came along, a hateful man, believe me, childishly vain, and he insisted that the sign corresponded only to the name of a pharaoh. How ingenious the moderns are in debasing sacred symbols. The work is actually not all that rare: it costs less than a Mercedes. But look at this, a first edition, 1595, of the Am-phitheatrum sapientiae aeternae of Khunrath. It is said there are only two copies in the world. This is the third. And this volume is a first edition of the Tetturis Theoria Sacra of Burnetius. I cannot look at the illustrations in the evening without feeling a wave of mystical claustrophobia. The profundities of our globe...Unsuspected, are they not? I see that Dr. Diotallevi is fascinated by the Hebrew characters of Vigenere’s Traicte des Chiffres. Then look at this: a first edition of the Kabbala denudata of Christian Knorr von Rosenroth. The book was translated into English—in part and badly—at the beginning of this century by that wretch McGregor Mathers...You must know something of that scandalous conventicle that so fascinated the British esthetes, the Golden Dawn. Only from that band of counterfeiters of occult documents could such an endless series of debasements spring, from the Stella Matutina to the satanic churches of Aleister Crowley, who called up demons to win the favors of certain gentlemen devoted to the vice anglais. If you only knew, dear friends, the sort of people one has to rub elbows with in devoting oneself to such studies. You will see for yourselves if you undertake to publish in this field.”

Belbo seized this opportunity to broach the subject. He explained that Garamond wished to bring out, each year, a few books of an esoteric nature.

“Ah, esoteric.” Aglie smiled, and Belbo blushed.

“Should we say...hermetic?”

“Ah, hermetic.” Aglie smiled.