Foucault's pendulum - Umberto Eco [169]
“But you, after all,” Belbo said, without irony, as if the matter concerned him personally, “spend time with them. Which ones do you believe in? Or did you once believe in?”
“None, of course. Do I look like a credulous individual? I consider them with the cold objectivity, the understanding, the interest with which a theologian might observe a Naples crowd shouting in anticipation of the miracle of San Gennaro. The crowd bears witness to a faith, a deep need, and the theologian wanders among the sweating, drooling people because he might encounter there an unknown saint, the bearer of a higher truth, a man capable of casting new light on the mystery of the most Holy Trinity. But the Holy Trinity is one thing, San Gennaro is another.”
He could not be pinned down. I didn’t know how to define it—hermetic skepticism? liturgical cynicism?—this higher disbelief that led him to acknowledge the dignity of all the superstitions he scorned.
“It’s simple,” he was saying to Belbo. “If the Templars, the real Templars, did leave a secret and did establish some kind of continuity, then it is necessary to seek them out, and to seek them in the places where they could most easily camouflage themselves, perhaps by inventing rites and myths in order to move unobserved, like fish in water. What do the police do when they seek the archvillain, the evil mastermind? They dig into the lower depths, the notorious dives filled with petty crooks who will never conceive the grandiose crimes of the dark genius the police are after. What does the terrorist leader do to recruit new acolytes? Where does he look for them and find them? He circulates in the haunts of the pseudosubversives, the fellow-travelers who would never have the courage to be the real thing, but who openly ape the attitudes of their idols. Concealed light is best sought in fires, or in the brush where, after the blaze, the flames go on brooding under twigs, under trampled muck. What better hiding place for the true Templar than in the crowd of his caricatures?’’
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We consider societies druidic if they are druidic in their titles of their aims, or if their initiations are inspired by druidism.
—M. Raoult, Les druides. Les societes initiatiqu.es celtes contemporaines, Paris, Rocher, 1983, p. 18
Midnight was approaching, and according to Agile’s program the second surprise of the evening awaited us. Leaving the Palatine gardens, we resumed our journey through the hills.
After we had driven three-quarters of an hour, Aglie made us park the two cars at the edge of a wood. We had to cross some underbrush, he said, to arrive at a clearing, and there were neither roads nor trails.
We proceeded, picking our way through shrubs and vines, our shoes slipping on rotted leaves and slimy roots. From time to time Aglie switched on a flashlight to find a path, but only for a second, because, he said, we should not announce our presence to the celebrants. Diotallevi made a remark—I don’t recall it exactly, something about Little Red Riding-Hood—and Aglie, with tension in his voice, asked him to be quiet.
As we were about to come to the end of the brush, we heard voices. We had reached the edge of the clearing, which was illuminated by a glow from remote torches—or perhaps votive lights, flickering at ground level, faint and silvery, as if a gas were burning with chemical coldness in bubbles drifting over the grass. Aglte told us to stop where we were, still shielded by bushes, and wait.
“In a little while the priestesses will come. The Druidesses, that is. This is an invocation of the great cosmic virgin Mikil. Saint Michael is a popular Christian adaptation, and it’s no accident that he is an angel, hence androgynous, hence able to take the place of a female divinity...”
“Where do they come from?” Diotallevi whispered.
“From many places: Normandy, Norway, Ireland...It is a very special event, and this is a propitious place for the rite.