Potestate quam Daemones habent intelligendi.

The title page is as good a place as any to start.

Foucault's Pendulum falls into ten parts named for the sephirot, commencing at Keter, finishing at Malkut. Though it is not quite that straightforward, because nobody could be so immersed in Borges as Eco and not engage in some 'serpent-swallowing-tail'.

I have always loved the version of the Tree of Life in the book, but have never tried to trace it until this afternoon (being the Equinox), and the weekend of Yom Kippur. An image search led me to a copy of 'De Divinis Attributis quae Sephirot ab Hebrais nuncupantur eisudem; De Causis Antipathias et Sympathiae Rerum Naturalium, eisudem de modo et potestate quam Daemones habent intelligendi, ac commouendi conceptus animae, passionisque appetitus' (Venice, Dominicum de Farris 1589) of Caesar Aevolus, or Evoli, in an online catalogue for an auction held in 2003.

On the path between Netzach and Hod is a menorah and the Ark; from Chokmah appear rays, or a cast shadow; in the reproduction in the novel, it is perhaps not clear whether this is a blemish, but in the original it is clearly deliberate.

Julius Evola haunts the novel in a variety of ways; I doubt Eco chose Ceasre Evoli's illustration by chance. I'm not aware of the link ever being made before.

I take this as a blessing on our enterprise.

Comments

A Journey to the Moon

Viaje a la Luna 1 White bed on a grey wall. Across the bedclothes a dance unfolds 13 & 22. First two, then more till they cover the bed like ants. 2 The bedclothes are torn off the bed by an invisible hand. 3 Big feet run fast in black and white lozenged socks. 4 A frightened head gaze fixed on a point dissolves into a wire head against a backdrop of water. 5 Letters help help help double exposure a vulva moving up and down. 6 A long corridor traversed by the machine a window down the end. 7 A view of Broadway by night. 8 Dissolve to previous scene. 9 A pair of legs swing quickly. 10 Legs dissolve into a mass of trembling hands. 11 Trembling hands double-exposure a weeping child. 12 The weeping child double-exposure the woman who beats him. 13 Fade to the long corridor camera moving backwards fast. 14 At the end wide shot of an eye double-exposure a fish dissolving into what follows. 15 Falling fast through a window letters double-exposed in blue help help . 16 Dissolve...

The Thrice-Greatest Intellingencer.

The Divine Pymander of Hermes Mercurius Trismegistus in XVII books. Translated formerly out of the Arabic into Greek and thence into Latin and Dutch and now out of the original into English By that learned divine Doctor Everard. London Printed by Robert White for The Brewster and Greg. Moule at the Three Bibles in the Poultry under Mildred's Church. 1650 To the Reader Judicious Reader, This book may justly challenge the first place for antiquity from all the books in the world, being written some hundreds of years before Moses his time, as I shall endeavour to make good. The original - as far as is known to us - is Arabic, and several translations thereof have been published, as Greek, Latin, French, Dutch, &c. but never English before. It is a pity the learned translator - Doctor Everard - had not lived and received himself the hounour and thanks due to him from Englishmen, for his good will to and pains for them in translating a book of such infinite worth out o...

From 'Fable and Round of the Three Friends'.

When things in their clarity shattered among the daisies I realised they'd murdered me. They searched the cafes, the graveyards and the churches, Stove in the casks and cupboards, Smashed three skeletons for their gold teeth. Still they couldn't find me. Couldn't they find me? No. No, they couldn't find me. But they say when the Sixth Moon rose with the tide suddenly! the sea remembered the names of all the drowned.

Paul Summers Young

Search This Blog