Foucault's pendulum - Umberto Eco [204]
“It must have been hard,” Belbo said, with comprehension.
“But who,” I asked, “are these barons von Hund who seek the Unknown Superiors....?”
“New groups sprang up at the time of the necklace farce, altogether different in nature. To gain adepts, they identified themselves with the Masonic lodges, but actually they were pursuing more mystical ends. It was at this point that the debate about the Unknown Superiors took place. Hund, unfortunately, wasn’t a serious person. At first he led his adepts to believe that the Unknown Superiors were the Stuarts. Then he said that the aim of the order was to rescue the original possessions of the Templars, and he scraped together funds from all sides. Unsatisfied with the proceeds, he fell into the hands of a man named Starck, who claimed to have learned the secret of making gold from the authentic Unknown Superiors, who were in Petersburg. Hund and Starck were surrounded by theosophists, cheap alchemists, last-minute Rosicrucians. All together, they elected as grand master a thoroughly upright man, the Duke of Brunswick. He immediately realized that he was in the worst possible company. One of the members of the Strict Observance, the landgrave of Hesse, summoned the Comte de Saint-Germain, believing this gentleman could produce gold for him. And why not? In those days the whims of the mighty had to be indulged. But the landgrave also believed himself to be Saint Peter. I assure you, gentlemen: once, when Lavater was the landgrave’s guest, he had a dreadful time with the Duchess of Devonshire, who thought she was Mary Magdalene.”
“But what about this Willermoz and this Martinez Pasqualis, who founded one sect after another?’’
“Pasqualis was an old pirate. He practiced theurgical operations in a secret chamber, and angelic spirits appeared to him in the form of luminous trails and hieroglyphic characters. Wilier- : moz took him seriously, because he himself was an enthusiast, honest but naive. Fascinated by alchemy, Willermoz dreamed of a Great Work to which the elect should devote themselves: to discover the point of alliance of the six noble metals through studying the measurements comprised in the six letters of the original name of God, which Solomon had allowed his elect to know.” !
“And then?”
“Willermoz founded many orders and joined many lodges at the same time, as was the custom in those days, always seeking the definitive revelation, always fearing it was hidden elsewhere—which indeed is the case. That is, perhaps, the only truth...So he joined the Elus Cohen of Pasqualis. But in ‘72 Pasqualis disappeared, sailed for Santo Domingo, and left everything up in the air. Why did he leave? I suspect he came into possession of a secret he didn’t want to share. In any case, re-quiescat; he disappeared on that dark continent, into well-deserved darkness.”
“And Willermoz?”
“In that year we had all been shaken by the death of Sweden-borg, a man who could have taught many things to the ailing West, had the West listened to him. But now the century began its headlong race toward revolutionary madness, following the ambitions of the Third Estate.It was then that Willermoz heard about Hund’s rite of the Strict Observance and was fascinated by it. He was told that a Templar who reveals himself—by founding a public association, say—is not a Templar. But the eighteenth century was an era of great credulity. Willermoz ereated, with Hund, the various alliances that appear on your list, until Hund was unmasked—I mean, until they discovered he was the sort who runs off with the cash box—and the Duke of Brunswick expelled him from the organization.”
Aglid cast another glance at the list. “Ah, yes, Weishaupt. I nearly forgot. The Illuminati of Bavaria: with a name like that, they attracted, at the beginning, a number of generous minds. But Weishaupt was an anarchist; today we’d call him a Communist, and if you gentlemen only knew the things they raved about in that ambience—coups d’etat, dethroning sovereigns, bloodbaths....Mind you, I admired Weishaupt a