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Foucault's pendulum - Umberto Eco [68]

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It’s obvious that there’s a connection between the Grail, the philosopher’s stone, and the enormous power source that Hitler’s followers were seeking on the eve of the war and pursued to their last breath. In one version of the Argonauts’ story, remember, they see a cup—a cup, mind you—floating over the Mountain of the World with the Tree of Light. When the Argonauts find the Golden Fleece, their ship is magically borne into the Milky Way, in the austral sky, where the luminous nature of God eternal is made manifest by the Southern Cross, the Triangle, and the Altar. The triangle symbolizes the Holy Trinity, the cross the divine Sacrifice of love, and the altar is the Table of the Supper, on which stood the Cup of the Resurrection. The Celtic and Aryan origin of all these symbols is obvious.”

The colonel seemed caught in the same heroic ecstasy that had impelled his Obersturmunddrang, or whatever the hell that German was, to the supreme sacrifice. Someone had to bring him down to earth.

“Where is all this leading?” I asked.

“Signer Casaubon, can’t you see it for yourself? The Grail has been called the Luciferian Stone, which points to the figure of Baphomet. The Grail is a power source, the Templars were the guardians of an energy secret, and they drew up their plan accordingly. Where would the unknown commanderies be established? Where, gentleman?” And the colonel looked at us with a conspiratorial air, as if we were all in the plot together. “I had a trail to follow, erroneous but useful. In 1797, Charles Louis Cadet de Gassicourt, an author who must have overheard some secrets, wrote a book entitled Le tombeau de Jacques Malay ou le secret des conspirateurs a ceux qui veulent tout savoir. By an interesting coincidence, his work turned up in Ingolf’s little library. He claims that Molay, before his death, set up four secret lodges: in Paris, Scotland, Stockholm, and Naples. These four lodges were to exterminate all monarchs and destroy the power of die pope. Gassicourt was an eccentric, of course, but I used his idea as a starting point from which to determine where the Templars might have located their secret centers. I wouldn’t have been able to understand the enigmas of the message if I hadn’t had some guiding idea. But I did have such an idea. It was my conviction, based oh abundant evidence, that the Templar spirit was of Celtic, druidic origin; it was the spirit of Nordic Arian-ism, traditionally associated with the island of Avalon, seat of the legendary civilization of the far north. As you surely know, various authors have identified Avalon as the Garden of the Hes-perides or as Ultima Thule, or as the Colchis of the Golden Fleece. It’s hardly an accident that history’s greatest chivalric order was la Toison d’Or, the Order of the Golden Fleece. Which makes it clear what the word ‘castle’ in the message really means: it refers to the hyperboreal, the northernmost castle, where the Templars kept the Grail, probably the mythical Monsalvat.”

He paused, wanting us to hang on his every word. We hung.

“Now let’s go back to the second command in the message: The guardians of the seal are to go to a place associated with bread. This instruction is completely clear: the Grail is the chalice that contained Christ’s blood, the bread is Christ’s body, the place where the bread was eaten is the place of the Last Supper, Jerusalem. It seems impossible that the Templars wouldn’t have maintained a secret base there, even after the Saracen recon-quest. I must admit that at first I was troubled by this Jewish element in a plan so deeply imbued widi Aryan mythology. But then I realized: we are the ones who continue to regard Jesus as deriving from the Judaic religion, because that’s what the Church of Rome has always taught us. But the Templars knew that Jesus was actually a Celtic myth. The whole gospel story is a hermetic allegory: resurrection after dissolution in the bowels of the earth, and all that. Christ is simply the elixir of the alchemists. For that matter, everyone knows that the Trinity is an Aryan concept anyway,

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