Foucault's pendulum - Umberto Eco [240]
—Pauwels and Bergier, Le matin des magiciens, Paris, Gallimard, 1960, 2, vii
Now Belbo had managed to work Hitler into the Plan. “It’s all there, black on white. The founders of Nazism were involved in Teutonic neo-Templarism.”
“An airtight case.”
“I’m not inventing, Casaubon, for once I’m not inventing!”
“Take it easy. When did we ever invent anything? We’ve always started with objective data, with information in the public domain.”
“This time, too. In 1912 a Germanenorden group is formed, proposing the tenet of Aryan superiority. In 1918 a certain Baron von Sebottendorf founds a related group, the Thule Gesellschaft, a secret society, yet another variation on the Templar Strict Observance, but with strong racist, pan-German, neo-Aryan tendencies. And in ‘33 Sebottendorf writes that he had sown what Hitler reaped. Furthermore, it is in Thule Gesellschaft circles that the hooked cross appears. And who was among the first to join the Thule? Rudolf Hess, Hitler’s evil genius! Then Rosenberg! Then Hitler himself! And note that in his cell in Spandau even today, as you’ve surely read in the papers, Hess studies the esoteric sciences. Sebottendorf in ‘24 writes a pamphlet on alchemy, and remarks that the first experiments in atomic fission demonstrate the truths of the Great Work. He also writes a novel on the Ros-icrucians! Later he edits an astrological magazine, Astrologische Rundschau, and Trevor-Roper tells us that the Nazi chiefs, Hitler first among them, never made a move without having a horoscope cast. In 1943 a group of psychics is consulted to discover where Mussolini is being held prisoner. In other words, the whole Nazi leadership is connected with Teutonic neo-occultism.”
Belbo seemed to have got over the incident with Lorenza, and I built a fire under him to get on with his theory. “We can look at Hitler’s power as a rabble-rouser also from this point of view,” I said. “Physically, he was a toad, he had a shrill voice. How could such a man whip crowds into a frenzy? He must have possessed psychic powers. Perhaps, instructed by some Druid from his hometown, he knew how to establish contact with the subterranean currents. Perhaps he was a living valve, a biological menhir transmitting the currents to the faithful in the Nuremberg stadium. For a while it worked for him; then his batteries ran down.”
100
To 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.
—J. Cleves Symmes of Ohio, late Captain of Infantry, April 10, 1818; quoted in Sprague de Camp and Ley, Lands Beyond, New York, Rinehart, 1952,
“Congratulations, Casaubon. In your innocence you hit upon the truth. Hitler’s one genuine obsession was the underground currents. He believed in the theory of the hollow earth, Hohl-weltlehre.”
“I’m leaving. I’ve got gastritis,” Diotallevi said.
“Wait. We’re getting to the best part. The earth is hollow: we don’t live outside it, on the convex crust, but inside, on the concave surface. What we think is the sky is actually a gaseous mask, with points of brilliant light, which fills the interior of our globe. All astronomical measurements have to be reinterpreted. The sky is not infinite: it’s circumscribed. The sun, if it really exists, is no bigger than it looks, a mere crumb having a diameter of thirty centimeters at the center of the earth. The Greeks had already suspected as much.”
“You made this up,” Diotallevi said wearily.
“I did not! Somebody had the idea at the beginning of the last century, an American, a man named Symmes. Then, at the end of the century, another American—name of Teed— revived the notion, supported by alchemistic experiments and a reading of Isaiah. After the First World War, the hollow-earth theory was perfected by a German—I forget his name—who founded the Hohlweltlehre movement. Hitler and his cronies