Multi-column

Foucault's Pendulum

Thoughts

This could have easily been much shorter, but then again that would sort of defeat the whole premise of the book, and on that note --

I've never watched so many YouTube videos related to the subject of a book, sheesh, esotericism, mysticism, Kabbalah, Knights of Templar... which ultimately is why this book isn't my favorite, but it gets a decent review for the themes and when there is a plot line it's pretty damn cool. Otherwise, it's a whole lot of history that may or may not be factual (or important).

"You spend a life seeking the Opportunity, without realizing that the decisive moment, the moment that justifies birth and death, has already passed. It will not return, but it wasโ€”full, dazzling, generous as every revelation. "

Highlights

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Superstition brings bad luck.
--Raymond Smullyan, 5000 B.C., 1.3.8 ๐Ÿ”—

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sublunar ๐Ÿ”—

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I knew the earth was rotating, and I with it, and Saint-Martin-des-Champs and all Paris with me, and that together we were rotating beneath the Pendulum, whose own plane never changed direction, because up there, along the infinite extrapolation of its wire beyond the choir ceiling, up toward the most distant galaxies, lay the Only Fixed Point in the universe, eternally unmoving. ๐Ÿ”—

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The Pendulum told me that, as everything movedโ€” earth, solar system, nebulae and black holes, all the children of the great cosmic expansionโ€”one single point stood still: a pivot, bolt, or hook around which the universe could move. And I was now taking part in that supreme experience. I, too, moved with the all, but I could see the One, the Rock, the Guarantee, the luminous mist that is not body, that has no shape, weight, quantity, or quality, that does not see or hear, that cannot be sensed, that is in no place, in no time, and is not soul, intelligence, imagination, opinion, number, order, or measure. Neither darkness nor light, neither error nor truth. ๐Ÿ”—

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Ein-Sof ๐Ÿ”—

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But I realized that to neglect the Pendulum that hung from the vault while admiring the vault itself was like becoming drunk at the stream instead of drinking at the source. ๐Ÿ”—

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You cannot escape one infinite, I told myself, by fleeing to another; you cannot escape the revelation of the identical by taking refuge in the illusion of the multiple. ๐Ÿ”—

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chthonian ๐Ÿ”—

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velocipedes ๐Ÿ”—

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obsequiously ๐Ÿ”—

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telluric ๐Ÿ”—

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vulcanologist ๐Ÿ”—

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catoptric ๐Ÿ”—

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Demiurge ๐Ÿ”—

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homunculus ๐Ÿ”—

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Diotallevi told me that the first Sefirah is Keter, the Crown, the beginning, the primal void. In the beginning He created a point, which became Thought, where all the figures were drawn. He was and was not, He was encompassed in the name yet not encompassed in the name, having as yet no name other than the desire to be called by a name... ๐Ÿ”—

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But, forgetting die usual ghosts that haunted him, he discovered that playing with the word processor was a way of giving vent to a fifty-year-oldโ€™s second adolescence. His natural pessimism, his reluctant acceptance of his own past were somehow dissolved in this dialog with a memory that was inorganic, objective, obedient, nonmoral, transistorized, and so humanly inhuman that it enabled him to forget his chronic nervousness about life. ๐Ÿ”—

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He doesnโ€™t help you think but he helps you because you have to think for him. A totally spiritual machine. ๐Ÿ”—

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labile ๐Ÿ”—

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There is no discipline of forgetting; we are at the mercy of random natural processes, like stroke and amnesia, and such self-interventions as drugs, alcohol, or suicide. ๐Ÿ”—

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indolently ๐Ÿ”—

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If you donโ€™t stop, the word swallows itself as well, fattening on its own absence like a Cheshire-cat black hole. ๐Ÿ”—

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cabalistically ๐Ÿ”—

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the ten Sefirot: Keter, Hokh-mah, Binah, Hesed, Gevurah, Tiferet, Nezah, Hod, Yesod, Malkhut. ๐Ÿ”—

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rebuses ๐Ÿ”—

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By rearranging the letters of the book over the centuries, we may someday arrive again at the original Torah. But the important thing is not the finding, it is the seeking, it is the devotion with which one spins the wheel of prayer and scripture, discovering the truth little by little. If this machine gave you the truth immediately, you would not recognize it, because your heart would not have been purified by the long quest. ๐Ÿ”—

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The word must be eaten very slowly. It must melt on the tongue before you can dissolve it and reorder it. ๐Ÿ”—

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Mystic logic, letters whirling in infinite change, is the world of bliss, it is the music of thought, but see that you proceed slowly, and with caution, because your machine may bring you delirium instead of ecstasy. ๐Ÿ”—

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it is the holy cabala, or Tradition, and for centuries the rabbis have been doing what no computer can do and, let us hope, will never be able to do. Because on the day all the combinations are exhausted, the result should remain secret, and in any case the universe will have completed its cycleโ€”and we will all be consumed in the dazzling glory of the great Metacyclosynchro-tron.โ€ ๐Ÿ”—

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antediluvian ๐Ÿ”—

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This was all wrong. I was clinging stubbornly to an elegant but false hypothesis. It happens to the best scientists.
No, not the best scientists. To everyone. ๐Ÿ”—

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acrostic ๐Ÿ”—

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Hokhmahโ€” wisdom, knowledge, the primordial thought that contains, as in a box, everything, all that will unfold in creation. Hokhmah holds the essence of all that will emanate from it ๐Ÿ”—

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And then, in a fit of hate, as I worked again at Abulafiaโ€™s obtuse question โ€œDo you have the password?โ€ I typed: NO. ๐Ÿ”—

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the printerโ€™s pointillist anthill ๐Ÿ”—

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obstinacy ๐Ÿ”—

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amor fati ๐Ÿ”—

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You are always born under the wrong sign, and to live in this world properly you have to rewrite your own horoscope day by day. ๐Ÿ”—

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I believe that what we become depends on what our fathers teach us at odd moments, when they arenโ€™t trying to teach us. We are formed by little scraps of wisdom. ๐Ÿ”—

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If two things donโ€™t fit, but you believe both of them, thinking that somewhere, hidden, there must be a third thing that connects them, thatโ€™s credulity. ๐Ÿ”—

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Incredulity doesnโ€™t kill curiosity; it encourages it. Though distrustful of logical chains of ideas, I loved the polyphony of ideas. As long as you donโ€™t believe in them, the collision of two ideasโ€” both falseโ€”can create a pleasing interval, a kind of diabolus in musica. I had no respect for some ideas people were willing to stake their lives on, but two or three ideas that I did not respect might still make a nice melody. Or have a good beat, and if it was jazz, all the better. ๐Ÿ”—

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I always had the feeling that if you substituted the right phrase for another phrase, you could move from group to group. I amused myself by finding the right phrases. I modulated. ๐Ÿ”—

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philology ๐Ÿ”—

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the trial of the Templars. ๐Ÿ”—

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solicitude ๐Ÿ”—

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Belbo had a way of standing at the bar as if he were just passing through ๐Ÿ”—

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Rubicon ๐Ÿ”—

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His enthusiasm for the Plan came from his ambition to write a book. No matter if the book were made entirely of errors, intentional, deadly errors. As long as you remain in your private vacuum, you can pretend you are in harmony with the One. But the moment you pick up the clay, electronic or otherwise, you become a demiurge, and he who embarks on the creation of worlds is already tainted with corruption and evil. ๐Ÿ”—

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extrasystoles ๐Ÿ”—

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catafalque ๐Ÿ”—

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castigate ๐Ÿ”—

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expurgated ๐Ÿ”—

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Each of us is sometimes a cretin, a fool, a moron, or a lunatic. A normal person is just a reasonable mix of these components, these four ideal types. ๐Ÿ”—

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ad-hoc ๐Ÿ”—

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Cretins donโ€™t even talk; they sort of slobber and stumble. You know, the guy who presses the ice cream cone against his forehead, or enters a revolving door the wrong way.โ€ ๐Ÿ”—

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Morons will occasionally say something thatโ€™s right, but they say it for the wrong reason.โ€
โ€œYou mean itโ€™s okay to say something thatโ€™s wrong as long as the reason is right.โ€
โ€œOf course. Why else go to the trouble of being a rational animal?โ€
โ€œAll great apes evolved from lower life forms, man evolved from lower life forms, therefore man is a great ape.โ€
โ€œNot bad. In such statements you suspect that somethingโ€™s wrong, but it takes work to show what and why. Morons are tricky. ๐Ÿ”—

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paralogism ๐Ÿ”—

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mot juste ๐Ÿ”—

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syllogisms ๐Ÿ”—

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universal conclusions cannot be drawn from two particulars.โ€ ๐Ÿ”—

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The whole history of logic consists of attempts to define an acceptable notion of moronism. A task too immense. Every great thinker is someone elseโ€™s moron.โ€ ๐Ÿ”—

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garish ๐Ÿ”—

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Am I urging him to an act of freedomโ€”or am I using him to write my own book?
Transforming books with a word here, a word there. Demiurge for the work of others. Tapping at the hardened clay, at the statue someone else has already carved. Instead of taking soft clay and molding my own. Give Moses the right tap with the hammer, and heโ€™ll talk. ๐Ÿ”—

id830261642

Am I urging him to an act of freedomโ€”or am I using him to write my own book?
Transforming books with a word here, a word there. Demiurge for the work of others. Tapping at the hardened clay, at the statue someone else has already carved. Instead of taking soft clay and molding my own. Give Moses the right tap with the hammer, and heโ€™ll talk. ๐Ÿ”—

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soliloquize ๐Ÿ”—

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pirogue ๐Ÿ”—

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languorous ๐Ÿ”—

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betel ๐Ÿ”—

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And then I encounter you, my love, with those wrinkles around your eyes, your face still beautiful though worn by memory and tender remorse. I almost pass you on the sidewalk, Iโ€™m only a few feet away, and you look at me as you look at all people, as though seeking another beyond their shadow. I could speak, erase the years. But to what end? Am I not, even now, fulfilled? I am like God, as solitary as He, as vain, and as despairing, unable to be one of my creatures. They dwell in my light, while I dwell in unbearable darkness, the source of that light. ๐Ÿ”—

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plurality ๐Ÿ”—

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euphemistically ๐Ÿ”—

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Contretemps ๐Ÿ”—

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aegis ๐Ÿ”—

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inculcate ๐Ÿ”—

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The essence of the discipline is the comprehension of the underlying reasons for a thingโ€™s absurdity. ๐Ÿ”—

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Solecisms ๐Ÿ”—

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I belong to a lost generation and am comfortable only in the company of others who are lost and lonely.โ€™โ€™ ๐Ÿ”—

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stylite ๐Ÿ”—

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simoom ๐Ÿ”—

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sycophant ๐Ÿ”—

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potentates ๐Ÿ”—

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seraphically ๐Ÿ”—

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In those halcyon days I believed that the source of enigma was stupidity. Then the other evening in the periscope I decided that the most terrible enigmas are those that mask themselves as madness. But now I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth. ๐Ÿ”—

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effrontery ๐Ÿ”—

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pas de deux ๐Ÿ”—

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abjuration ๐Ÿ”—

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recidivists ๐Ÿ”—

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exculpate ๐Ÿ”—

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sententiously ๐Ÿ”—

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Belbo responded: โ€œCome on, cabalists donโ€™t believe in history.โ€ And Diotallevi invariably answered: โ€œThatโ€™s just the point. Everything is repeated, in a circle. History is a master because it teaches us that it doesnโ€™t exist. Itโ€™s the permutations that matter.โ€ ๐Ÿ”—

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Catharism ๐Ÿ”—

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Manichean ๐Ÿ”—

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esprit de corps ๐Ÿ”—

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Baphomet ๐Ÿ”—

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Mahomet ๐Ÿ”—

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syncretic ๐Ÿ”—

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Kundalini ๐Ÿ”—

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syllogism ๐Ÿ”—

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Whenever a poet or preacher, chief or wizard spouts gibberish, the human race spends centuries deciphering the message. The Templarsโ€™ mental confusion makes them indecipherable. Thatโ€™s why so many people venerate them.โ€ ๐Ÿ”—

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The protesters operated in an area beyond Largo Augusto; the fascists were entrenched in Piazza San Babila and its neighboring streets. If anybody crossed the line, there were incidents; otherwise nothing happened. It was like a lion and a lion tamer. We usually believe that the tamer is attacked by the lion and that the tamer stops the attack by raising his whip or firing a blank. Wrong: the lion was fed and sedated before it entered the cage and doesnโ€™t feel like attacking anybody. Like all animals, it has its own space; if you donโ€™t invade that space, the lion remains calm. When the tamer steps forward, invading it, the lion roars; the tamer then raises his whip, but also takes a step backward (as if in expectation of a charge), whereupon the lion calms down. A simulated revolution must also have its rules. ๐Ÿ”—

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You can be obsessed by remorse all your life, not because you chose the wrong thingโ€”you can always repent, atoneโ€”but because you never had the chance to prove to yourself that you would have chosen the right thing. ๐Ÿ”—

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Does it make sense to choose the wrong Opportunity just to convince yourself that you would have chosen the right oneโ€”had you had the Opportunity? I wonder how many of those who opt for fighting today do it for that reason. But a contrived Opportunity is not the right Opportunity. ๐Ÿ”—

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tentacular ๐Ÿ”—

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zeugma ๐Ÿ”—

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speleologists ๐Ÿ”—

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monomaniac ๐Ÿ”—

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compunction ๐Ÿ”—

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Counterfactual conditionals are always true, because the premise is false. ๐Ÿ”—

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๐Ÿ”—

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unassailable ๐Ÿ”—

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gematria ๐Ÿ”—

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philosopherโ€™s stone ๐Ÿ”—

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Argonauts ๐Ÿ”—

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Agarttha ๐Ÿ”—

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Synarchy ๐Ÿ”—

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If you take a map of Europe and Asia and trace the development of the plan beginning with the castle in the north and moving from there to Jerusalem, from Jerusalem to Agarttha, from Agarttha to Chartres, from Chartres to the shores of the Mediterranean, and from there to Stonehenge, you will find that you have drawn a rune that looks more or less like this.โ€
๐Ÿ”—

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perdition ๐Ÿ”—

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mythomaniac ๐Ÿ”—

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splinter group ๐Ÿ”—

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Binah ๐Ÿ”—

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Hokhmah ๐Ÿ”—

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If Hokhmah is the source, Binah is the river that flows from it, separating into its various branches until they all empty into the great sea of the last Sefirah. But in Binah all forms are already formed. ๐Ÿ”—

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The analogy of opposites is the relation of light to shadow, peak to abyss, fullness to void. Allegory, mother of all dogmas, is the replacement of the seal by the hallmark, of reality by shadow; it is the falsehood of truth, and the truth of falsehood.
โ€”Eliphas Levi, Dogme de la haute magie, Paris, Bailie re, 1856, XXII, 22 ๐Ÿ”—

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onomastic ๐Ÿ”—

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Amparo was steadfast in her faith. โ€œThe particular empirical event doesnโ€™t matter,โ€ she said. โ€œItโ€™s an ideal principle, which can be verified only under ideal conditions. Which means never. But itโ€™s still true.โ€ ๐Ÿ”—

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cangaceiros ๐Ÿ”—

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Who was that Italian philosopher who made that comment about black cats and coral horns? โ€˜Itโ€™s not true, but I believe in itโ€™? Well, I donโ€™t believe in it, but itโ€™s true.โ€ ๐Ÿ”—

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What happened to me was like what might happen to a pedantic ethnologist who has spent years studying cannibalism. He challenges the smugness of the whites by assuring everybody that actually human flesh is delicious. Then one day a doubter decides to see for himself and performs the experimentโ€”on him. As the ethnologist is devoured piece by piece, he hopes, for he will never know who was right, that at least he is delicious, which will justify the ritual and his death. The other evening I had to believe the Plan was true, because if it wasnโ€™t, then I had spent the past two years as the omnipotent architect of an evil dream. Better reality than a dream: if something is real, then itโ€™s real and youโ€™re not to blame. ๐Ÿ”—

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Picatrix ๐Ÿ”—

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fauteuil ๐Ÿ”—

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unheimlich ๐Ÿ”—

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redolent ๐Ÿ”—

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Isis cults ๐Ÿ”—

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umbanda ๐Ÿ”—

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candomble ๐Ÿ”—

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propitiatory ๐Ÿ”—

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syncretism ๐Ÿ”—

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ennui ๐Ÿ”—

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Exu ๐Ÿ”—

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orixas ๐Ÿ”—

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decans ๐Ÿ”—

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Apuleius ๐Ÿ”—

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nous ๐Ÿ”—

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Hermes ๐Ÿ”—

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Cyprian ๐Ÿ”—

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ialorixa ๐Ÿ”—

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metempsychosis ๐Ÿ”—

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Hesed ๐Ÿ”—

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sepulcher ๐Ÿ”—

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Atalanta Fugiens ๐Ÿ”—

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Naometria ๐Ÿ”—

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New Atlantis ๐Ÿ”—

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Arcana Arcanissima ๐Ÿ”—

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plenary ๐Ÿ”—

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Ahmose ๐Ÿ”—

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Great White Fraternity ๐Ÿ”—

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Alain Kardek ๐Ÿ”—

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positivism ๐Ÿ”—

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The belief that time is a linear, directed sequence running from A to B is a modem illusion. In fact, it can also go from B to A, the effect producing the cause...What does โ€˜coming beforeโ€™ mean, or โ€˜coming afterโ€™? ๐Ÿ”—

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Parmenides, points have been posited by science in an attempt to establish whence and whither something moves. But in fact nothing moves, and there is only one point, the one from which all others are generated at the same instant. ๐Ÿ”—

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Parmenides, points have been posited by science in an attempt to establish whence and whither something moves. But in fact nothing moves, and there is only one point, the one from which all others are generated at the same instant. ๐Ÿ”—

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They simply know, because they are willing to know. If we had all retained this receptivity to secret knowledge, we would be dazzled by revelations. There is no need to wish; itโ€™s enough to be willing.โ€ ๐Ÿ”—

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History does not happen randomly. It is the work of the Masters of the World, whom nothing escapes. Naturally, the Masters of the World protect themselves through secrecy. And that is why anyone who says he is a master, a Rosicrucian, a Templar is lying. They must be sought elsewhere.โ€ ๐Ÿ”—

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โ€œBut what do they want people to know?โ€
โ€œOnly that thereโ€™s a secret. Otherwise, if everything is as it appears to be, why go on living?โ€
โ€œAnd what is the secret?โ€
โ€œWhat the revealed religions have been unable to reveal. The secret lies beyond.โ€ ๐Ÿ”—

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โ€œRaceโ€”or culture, if you preferโ€”is part of our unconscious mind. And in another part of that unconscious dwell archetypes, figures identical for all men and in all centuries. ๐Ÿ”—

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The mystic is useful, because he is conspicuous. He broadcasts himself. Initiates, on the contrary, are recognizable only to one another. It is they who control the forces that mystics undergo. ๐Ÿ”—

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Mysticism is a degenerate form of contact with the divine, whereas initiation is the fruit of long askesis of mind and heart. Mysticism is a democratic, if not demagogic, phenomenon; initiation is aristocratic.โ€ ๐Ÿ”—

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Isaac Luria ๐Ÿ”—

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Creation, Luria held, was a process of divine inhalation and exhalation, like anxious breathing or the action of the bellows. ๐Ÿ”—

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reshimu ๐Ÿ”—

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qelippot ๐Ÿ”—

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Gevurah ๐Ÿ”—

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morass ๐Ÿ”—

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deontologically ๐Ÿ”—

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louche ๐Ÿ”—

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And then last year, when I saw the Pendulum, I understood everything.โ€
โ€œEverything?โ€
โ€œAlmost everything. You see, Casaubon, even the Pendulum is a false prophet. You look at it, you think itโ€™s the only fixed point in the cosmos, but if you detach it from the ceiling of the Conservatoire and hang it in a brothel, it works just the same. And there are other pendulums: thereโ€™s one in New York, in the UN building, thereโ€™s one in the science museum in San Francisco, and God knows how many others. Wherever you put it, Foucaultโ€™s Pendulum swings from a motionless point while the earth rotates beneath it. Every point of the universe is a fixed point: all you have to do is hang the Pendulum from it.โ€
โ€œGod is everywhere?โ€
โ€œIn a sense, yes. Thatโ€™s why the Pendulum disturbs me. It promises the infinite, but where to put the infinite is left to me. So it isnโ€™t enough to worship the Pendulum; you still have to make a decision, you have to find the best point for it. And yet...โ€
โ€œAnd yet?โ€
โ€œAnd yet...Youโ€™re not taking me seriously by any chance, are you, Casaubon? No, I can rest easy; weโ€™re not the type to take things seriously...Well, as I was saying, the feeling you have is that youโ€™ve spent a lifetime hanging the Pendulum in many places, and itโ€™s never worked, but there, in the Conservatoire, it works...Do you think there are special places in the universe? On the ceiling of this room, for example? No, nobody would believe that. You need atmosphere. I donโ€™t know, maybe weโ€™re always looking for the right place, maybe itโ€™s within reach, but we donโ€™t recognize it. Maybe, to recognize it, we have to believe in it. Well, letโ€™s go see Signor Garamond.โ€
โ€œTo hang the Pendulum?โ€
โ€œAh, human folly! Now we have to be serious. If youโ€™re going to be paid, the boss must see you, touch you, sniff you, and say youโ€™ll do. Come and let the boss touch you; the bossโ€™s touch heals scrofula.โ€ ๐Ÿ”—

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laconic ๐Ÿ”—

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purulent ๐Ÿ”—

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incipit ๐Ÿ”—

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perhaps it is simply that I have aged decades overnight, or that the fear that They will find me makes me speak as if I were now chronicling a collapsing empire as I lie in the balneum with my veins severed, waiting to drown in my own blood... ๐Ÿ”—

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paralogism ๐Ÿ”—

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Youโ€™re a coward when you feel youโ€™re a coward.
The masked avenger. As Clark Kent I take care of misunderstood young geniuses; as Superman I punish justly misunderstood old geniuses. I collaborate in the exploitation of those who, lacking my courage, have been unable to confine themselves to the role of spectator. ๐Ÿ”—

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โ€œIโ€™d be happy to give you some examples, of course. I would say that the ideal reader of a collection of this sort would be a Rosicrucian adept ๐Ÿ”—

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gnosis ๐Ÿ”—

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catechism ๐Ÿ”—

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Aleister Crowley ๐Ÿ”—

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New Numbers: 93, 118, 444, 868, and 1001. ๐Ÿ”—

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polemics ๐Ÿ”—

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The Isis Unveiled books must deal with the exact same subjects as all the others. They confirm one another; therefore theyโ€™re true. Never trust originality.โ€ ๐Ÿ”—

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erudite ๐Ÿ”—

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redivivus ๐Ÿ”—

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envoutement ๐Ÿ”—

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crepuscular ๐Ÿ”—

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nonplussed ๐Ÿ”—

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querulous ๐Ÿ”—

id831842409

It is the logic of research and discovery that is tortuous, because it is the logic of science. Whereas the logic of knowledge needs no discovery, because it knows already. Why must it demonstrate that which could not be otherwise? If there is a secret, it is much more profound. ๐Ÿ”—

id831846262

Ennoia ๐Ÿ”—

id831848754

satyr ๐Ÿ”—

id831854072

Agarttha ๐Ÿ”—

id831854296

Saint-Yves dโ€™Alveydre ๐Ÿ”—

id831854482

mesalliance ๐Ÿ”—

id831857292

for every complex problem thereโ€™s a simple solution, and itโ€™s wrong.โ€ ๐Ÿ”—

id831857446

โ€œThe one true answer?โ€
โ€œOf course. That thereโ€™s nothing to understand. Synarchy is God.โ€
โ€œGod?โ€
โ€œYes. Mankind canโ€™t endure the thought that the world was born by chance, by mistake, just because four brainless atoms bumped into one another on a slippery highway. So a cosmic plot has to be foundโ€”God, angels, devils. Synarchy performs the same function on a lesser scale.โ€
โ€œThen I should have told him that people put bombs on trains because theyโ€™re looking for God?โ€ โ€œWhy not?โ€ ๐Ÿ”—

id831859790

Now I know for sure. In those months especially, when he was navigating the sea of falsehoods of the Diabolicals, and after years of wrapping his disillusion in the falsehoods of fiction, Belbo remembered his days in *** as a time of clarity: a bullet was a bullet, you ducked or got it, and the two opposing sides were distinct, marked by their colors, red or black, without ambiguitiesโ€”or at least it had seemed that way to him. A corpse was a corpse was a corpse was a corpse. ๐Ÿ”—

id831860312

embouchure ๐Ÿ”—

id831861182

amatory ๐Ÿ”—

id831861392

elegiac ๐Ÿ”—

id831865023

Eleusinian ๐Ÿ”—

id831865452

โ€œThe route itself is ritual ๐Ÿ”—

id831865997

As we climbed from terrace to terrace, the gardens changed. Some were in the form of a labyrinth, others in the form of an emblem, but each terrace could be viewed in its entirety only from a higher one. Looking down, I saw the outline of a crown, and other patterns I had been unable to embrace as I was passing through them. But even from above, I could not decipher them. Each terrace, seen as one moved among its hedges, presented some images, but the perspective from above revealed new, even contradictory images, as if every step of that stairway spoke two different languages at once. ๐Ÿ”—

id831866494

naiad ๐Ÿ”—

id831866682

โ€œExcuse me,โ€ Belbo said to Aglie, โ€œbut your argument is simply post hoc ergo ante hoc. What follows causes what came before.โ€
โ€œYou must not think linearly. The water in these fountains doesnโ€™t. Nature doesnโ€™t; nature knows nothing of time. Time is an invention of the West.โ€™โ€™ ๐Ÿ”—

id831866875

any error can be the unrecognized bearer of truth. True esotericism does not fear contradiction.โ€
โ€œYouโ€™re telling me that, finally, all contradictions agree.โ€
โ€œQuod ubique, quod ab omnibus^et quod semper. Initiation is the discovery of the underlying and perennial philosophy.โ€ ๐Ÿ”—

id831867498

obsequious ๐Ÿ”—

id831867939

โ€œIn the first stage you must renounce all communication with other minds; in the second you project thoughts and images into beings, infuse places with emotional auras, gain control over the animal kingdom, and in the third stage you project your doubleโ€” bilocationโ€”like the yogis, and you can appear in different plates simultaneously and in different forms. Beyond that, itโ€™s a question of passing to hypersensitive knowledge of vegetable essences. Then, you achieve dissociation, you assume telluric form, dissolving in one place, reappearing in another, but intact, not just as a double. The final stage is the extension of physical life,...โ€ ๐Ÿ”—

id831868752

โ€œDo the pilgrims think itโ€™s the mother of Christ in flesh and blood? No, but they donโ€™t think the opposite, either. They delight in the similarity, seeing the spectacle as a vision and the vision as a reality.โ€
โ€œYes,โ€ Belbo said, โ€œbut the question isnโ€™t whether these people here are better or worse than Christians who go to shrines. I was asking myself: Who do we think we are? We for whom Hamlet is more real than our janitor? Do I have any right to judgeโ€”I who keep searching for my own Madame Bovary so we can have a big scene?โ€ ๐Ÿ”—

id831870259

Rebis ๐Ÿ”—

id831872717

I saw a sumptuous hall lined with golden tapestries, perhaps a nuptial banquet, with a princely bridegroom and a bride in white, then an elderly king and queen enthroned, beside them a warrior, and another king with dark skin. Before the dark king, a little altar on which a book was set, covered with black velvet, and a lighted candle in an ivory candlestick. Next to the candlestick, a rotating globe and a clock surmounted by a tiny crystal fountain from which a liquid flowed, blood-red. Above the fountain was a skull; from an eye socket slid a white serpent... ๐Ÿ”—

Awesome visuals, damn, some occult shit, it continues...

id831877206

Lorenza was breathing words into my ear. But I couldnโ€™t hear her voice.
The serpent moved to the rhythm of slow, sad music. The king and queen now wore black, and before them were six closed coffins. After a few measures of grim bass tuba, a man in a black hood appeared. At first, in a hieratic performance, as if in slow motion, the king submitted with mournful joy, bowing his meek head. The hooded man raised an ax, and then the rapid slash of a pendulum, the blade multiplied in every reflecting surface, and the heads that rolled were a thousand. After this, the images succeeded one another, but I had difficulty following the story. I believe that all the characters in turn, including the dark king, were decapitated and laid in the coffins. The whole room was transformed into the shore of a sea or a lake, and we saw six vessels land, and the biers were carried aboard them; then the vessels departed across the water, faded into the night. All this took place while the incense curled, almost palpable, in dense fumes, and for a moment I feared I was among the condemned. Around me many murmured, โ€œThe wedding, the wedding...โ€
Lorenza was gone. I turned to look for her among the shadows. ๐Ÿ”—

id831877641

The room now was a crypt or sumptuous tomb, its vault illuminated by a carbuncle of extraordinary size.
In every corner women appeared in virginal dress. They gathered around a cauldron two stories high, in a framework with a stone base and a portico like an oven. From twin towers emerged two alembics emptying into an egg-shaped bowl; a third, central, tower ended in a fountain...
Inside the base of the framework the bodies of the decapitated were visible. One of the virginal women carried a box and drew from it a round object, which she placed in a niche of the central tower, and immediately the fountain at the top began to spurt. I had time to recognize the object: it was the head of the Moorish king, which now burned like a log, making the water of the fountain boil. Fumes, puffs of steam, gurgling...
Lorenza this time put her hand on the back of my neck, caressing it as I had seen her caress Jacopo in the car.
The woman brought a golden sphere, turned on a tap in the oven, and caused a thick red liquid to flow into the sphere. Then the sphere was opened, and, in place of the red liquid, it contained an egg, large, beautiful, white as snow. The woman took the egg out and set it on the ground in a pile of yellow sand. The egg opened, and a bird came out, still unformed and bloody. But, watered with the blood of the decapitated, it grew before our eyes, became handsome and radiant.
They decapitated the bird and reduced it to ashes on a little altar. Some kneaded the ash into a paste, poured the thin paste into two molds, and set them in the oven to bake, blowing on the fire with some pipes. In the end, the molds were opened, and two pretty figures appeared, pale, almost transparent, a youth and a maiden, no more than four spans high, as soft and fleshy as living creatures but with eyes still glassy, mineral. They were set on two cushions, and an old man poured drops of blood into their mouths...
Other women arrived, with golden trumpets decorated with green garlands. They handed a trumpet to the old man, who put it to the lips of the two creatures still suspended in their vegetable lethargy, their sweet animal sleep, and he began to insufflate soul into their bodies...The room filled with light; the light dimmed to a half-light, then to a darkness broken by orange flashes. There was an immense dawn while the trumpets sounded, loud and ringing, and all was a dazzle of ruby. At that point I again lost Lorenza and realized I would never find her.
Everything turned a flaming red, which slowly dulled to indigo and violet, and the screen went blank. The pain in my forehead became intolerable. ๐Ÿ”—

id831877687

Mysterium Magnum ๐Ÿ”—

id831877843

โ€œThe rebirth of the new man through death and passion. ๐Ÿ”—

id832878173

Nibelungs ๐Ÿ”—

id832879053

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?โ€™โ€™ ๐Ÿ”—

id832879065

druidism ๐Ÿ”—

id832879436

dolmen ๐Ÿ”—

id832894802

I had always thought that doubting was a scientific duty, but now I came to distrust the very masters who had taught me to doubt. ๐Ÿ”—

id832913558

โ€œPow, archetypes donโ€™t exist; the body exists. The belly inside is beautiful, because the baby grows there, because your sweet cock, all bright and jolly, thrusts there, and good, tasty food descends there, and for this reason the cavern, the grotto, the tunnel are beautiful and important, and the labyrinth, too, which is made in the image of our wonderful intestines. When somebody wants to invent something beautiful and important, it has to come from there, because you also came from there the day you were born, because fertility always comes from inside a cavity, where first something rots and then, lo and behold, thereโ€™s a little man, a date, a baobab. ๐Ÿ”—

id832913594

โ€œAnd high is better than low, because if you have your head down, the blood goes to your brain, because feet stink and hair doesnโ€™t stink as much, because itโ€™s better to climb a tree and pick fruit than end up underground, food for worms, and because you rarely hurt yourself hitting something aboveโ€”you really have to be in an atticโ€”while you often hurt yourself falling. Thatโ€™s why up is angelic and down devilish. ๐Ÿ”—

id832913779

โ€œBut because what I said before, about my belly, is also true, both things are true, down and inside are beautiful, and up and outside are beautiful, and the spirit of Mercury and Manichean-ism have nothing to do with it. Fire keeps you warm and cold gives you bronchial pneumonia, especially if youโ€™re a scholar four thousand years ago, and therefore fire has mysterious virtues besides its ability to cook your chicken. But cold preserves that same chicken, and fire, if you touch it, gives you a blister this big; therefore, if you think of something preserved for millennia, like wisdom, you have to think of it on a mountain, up, high (and high is good), but also in a cavern (which is good, too) and in the eternal cold of the Tibetan snows (best of all). And if you then want to know why wisdom comes from the Orient and not from the Swiss Alps, itโ€™s because the body of your ancestors in the morning, when it woke and there was still darkness, looked to the east hoping the sun would rise and there wouldnโ€™t be rain.โ€ ๐Ÿ”—

id832914607

โ€œYes indeed, my child. The sun is good because it does the body good, and because it has the sense to reappear every day; therefore, whatever returns is good, not what passes and is done with. The easiest way to return from where youโ€™ve been without retracing your steps is to walk in a circle. The animal that coils in a circle is the serpent; thatโ€™s why so many cults and myths of the serpent exist, because itโ€™s hard to represent the return of the sun by the coiling of a hippopotamus. Furthermore, if you have to make a ceremony to invoke the sun, itโ€™s best to move in a circle, because if you go in a straight line, you move away from home, which means the ceremony will have to be kept short. The circle is the most convenient arrangement for any rite, even the fire-eaters in the marketplace know this, because in a circle everybody can see the one whoโ€™s in the center, whereas if a whole tribe formed a straight line, like a squad of soldiers, the people at the ends wouldnโ€™t see. And thatโ€™s why the circle and rotary motion and cyclic return are fundamental to every cult and every rite.โ€ ๐Ÿ”—

id832914635

โ€œWe move on to the magic numbers your authors are so fond of. You are one and not two, your cock is one and my cunt is one, and we have one nose and one heart; so you see how many important things come in ones. But we have two eyes, two ears, two nostrils, my breasts, your balls, legs, arms, buttocks. Three is the most magical of all, because our body doesnโ€™t know that number; we donโ€™t have three of anything, and it should be a very mysterious number that we attribute to God, wherever we live. But if you think about it, I have one cunt and you have one cockโ€”shut up and donโ€™t jokeโ€”and if we put these two together, a new thing is made, and we become three. So you donโ€™t have to be a university professor or use a computer to discover that all cultures on earth have ternary structures, trinities. ๐Ÿ”—

id832915240

Or, if you like, take the anatomy of your menhir, which your authors are always talking about. Standing up during the day, lying down at nightโ€”your thing, too. No, donโ€™t tell me what it does at night. The fact is that erect it works and prone it rests. So the vertical position is life, pointing sunward, and obelisks stand as trees stand, while the horizontal position and night are sleep, death. All cultures worship menhirs, monoliths, pyramids, columns, but nobody bows down to balconies and railings. Did you ever hear of an archaic cult of the sacred banister? You see? And another point: if you worship a vertical stone, even if there are a lot of you, you can all see it; but if you worship, instead, a horizontal stone, only those in the front row can see it, and the others start pushing, me too, me too, which is not a fitting sight for a magical ceremony...โ€
โ€œBut rivers...โ€
โ€œRivers are worshiped not because theyโ€™re horizontal, but because thereโ€™s water in them, and you donโ€™t need me to explain to you the relation between water and the body ๐Ÿ”—

id832915616

...Anyway, thatโ€™s how weโ€™re put together, all of us, and thatโ€™s why we work out the same symbols millions of kilometers apart, and naturally they all resemble one another. Thus you see that people with a brain in their head, if theyโ€™re shown an alchemistโ€™s oven, all shut up and warm inside, think of the belly of the mama making a baby, and only your Diabolicals think that the Madonna about to have the Child is a reference to the alchemistโ€™s oven. They spent thousands of years looking for a message, and it was there all the time: they just had to look at themselves in the mirror.โ€ ๐Ÿ”—

id832915837

TIFERET ๐Ÿ”—

id832916349

While Gevurah is the Sefirah of awe and evil, Tiferet is the Sefirah of beauty and harmony. As Diotallevi said: It is the light of understanding, the tree of life; it is pleasure, hale appearance. It is the concord of Law and Freedom. ๐Ÿ”—

id832916588

The real magician isnโ€™t the bleary-eyed guy who doesnโ€™t understand a thing; itโ€™s the scientist who has grasped the hidden secrets of the universe. ๐Ÿ”—

id832917999

declensions ๐Ÿ”—

id832918496

โ€œWhat if, instead, you fed it a few dozen notions taken from the works of the Diabolicalsโ€”for example, the Templars fled to Scotland, or the Corpus Hermeticum arrived in Florence in 1460โ€”and threw in a few connective phrases like โ€˜Itโ€™s obvious thatโ€™ and โ€˜This proves thatโ€™? We might end up with something revelatory. Then we fill in the gaps, call the repetitions prophecies, andโ€”voilaโ€”a hitherto unpublished chapter of the history of magic, at the very least!โ€ ๐Ÿ”—

id832918547

โ€œNo, we must overdo it. If we admit that in the whole universe there is even a single fact that does not reveal a mystery, then we violate hermetic thought.โ€ ๐Ÿ”—

id832918969

polygenesis ๐Ÿ”—

id832921153

Any fact becomes important when itโ€™s connected to another. The connection changes the perspective; it leads you to think that every detail of the world, every voice, every word written or spoken has more than its literal meaning, that it tells us of a Secret. The rule is simple: Suspect, only suspect. You can read subtexts even in a traffic sign that says โ€˜No littering.โ€™ ๐Ÿ”—

id832924345

โ€œThey never saw the connection between the philosopherโ€™s stone and Firestone.โ€
โ€œFor tomorrow, Iโ€™ll prepare a mystical interpretation of the phone book.โ€
โ€œEver ambitious, our Casaubon. Mind you, there youโ€™ll have to solve the unfathomable problem of the One and the Many. Better succeed slowly. Start, instead, with the washing machine.โ€
โ€œThatโ€™s too easy. The alchemistic transformation from black to whiter than white.โ€ ๐Ÿ”—

id832925152

Tomar ๐Ÿ”—

id832925213

Holy Sepulcher ๐Ÿ”—

id832927027

Archontics ๐Ÿ”—

id832927211

Massalians ๐Ÿ”—

id832937391

polemic ๐Ÿ”—

id832939314

โ€œIf the Plan exists, it must involve everything. Either it explains all or it explains nothing,โ€ ๐Ÿ”—

id832942094

unctuous ๐Ÿ”—

id832942270

Athanasius ๐Ÿ”—

id832942544

cingulum ๐Ÿ”—

id832959049

And so he is doing, mask behind a mask. I slowly fade, and he takes from me even the last light, that of obscurity. ๐Ÿ”—

id833314029

โ€œHavenโ€™t you ever seen the Monad Hieroglyph of John Dee, the talisman that is supposed to concentrate all the wisdom of the universe? Doesnโ€™t it look like a pendulum?โ€

๐Ÿ”—

id833314046

โ€œHavenโ€™t you ever seen the Monad Hieroglyph of John Dee, the talisman that is supposed to concentrate all the wisdom of the universe? Doesnโ€™t it look like a pendulum?โ€ ๐Ÿ”—

id833314058

๐Ÿ”—

id833317851

anamnesis ๐Ÿ”—

id833751807

dilettantism ๐Ÿ”—

id833753272

In the wretched modern world at its birth, the nobles need a place where they can come into contact with the new producers of capital, and the new producers of capital are looking to be ennobled.โ€ ๐Ÿ”—

id833756128

He praised all the new Masonic symbols, but said that an image that represented several things no longer represented anything. Whichโ€”youโ€™ll forgive meโ€”runs counter to the whole hermetic tradition, for the more ambiguous and elusive a symbol is, the more it gains significance and power. Otherwise, what becomes of the spirit of Hermes, god of a thousand faces? ๐Ÿ”—

id833756579

bibliomane ๐Ÿ”—

id833756876

โ€œMasonry was like Rickโ€™s in Casablanca,โ€ Belbo said. โ€œWhich turns upside down the common view that it is a secret society.โ€
โ€œNo, no, itโ€™s a free port, a Macao. A facade. The secret is elsewhere.โ€ ๐Ÿ”—

id833760650

sardonic ๐Ÿ”—

id833763366

Okhrana ๐Ÿ”—

id833764026

antipode ๐Ÿ”—

id833765686

ithyphallic ๐Ÿ”—

id833765782

auscultation ๐Ÿ”—

id833765999

orgone ๐Ÿ”—

id833767060

๐Ÿ”—

id833767386

โ€œNot bad, not bad at all,โ€ Diotallevi said. โ€œTo arrive at the truth through the painstaking reconstruction of a false text.โ€ ๐Ÿ”—

id833775897

wanting connections, we found connectionsโ€”always, everywhere, and between everything. The world exploded into a whirling network of kinships, where everything pointed to everything else, everything explained everything else... ๐Ÿ”—

id833776337

megalith ๐Ÿ”—

id833776618

I believe that you can reach the point where there is no longer any difference between developing the habit of pretending to believe and developing the habit of believing. ๐Ÿ”—

id833776809

I was becoming addicted, Diotallevi was becoming corrupted, Belbo was becoming converted. But all of us were slowly losing that intellectual light that allows you always to tell the similar from the identical, the metaphorical from the real. ๐Ÿ”—

id833885442

Why would this man, who so often showed a gift for observation and a taste for experiment, drown these few good ideas in thousands of pages overflowing with incredible hypotheses? ๐Ÿ”—

id833885799

Surely the Jesuits were constructing an immense, tremendously powerful computer that would draw a conclusion from this patiently accumulated, age-old brew of truth and falsehood.

๐Ÿ”—

id833887482

The Jesuits knew that if you want to confound your enemies, the best technique is to create clandestine sects, wait for dangerous enthusiasms to precipitate, then arrest them all. In other words, if you fear a plot, organize one yourself; that way, all those who join it come under your control. ๐Ÿ”—

id833900852

plenipotentiary ๐Ÿ”—

id833903701

rapprochement ๐Ÿ”—

id833910322

libertinage ๐Ÿ”—

id833914868

โ€œThe moral of the story?โ€
โ€œWho said stories have to have a moral? But, now that I think about it, maybe the moral is that sometimes, to prove something, you have to die.โ€ ๐Ÿ”—

id833914888

I am that I am.
โ€”Exodus 3:14 ๐Ÿ”—

id833915626

Proust was right: life is represented better by bad music than by a Missa solemnis. Great Art makes fun of us as it comforts us, because it shows us the world as the artists would like the world to be. The dime novel, however, pretends to joke, but then it shows us the world as it actually isโ€”or at least the world as it will become. ๐Ÿ”—

id833915635

โ€œThe fact is, itโ€™s easier for reality to imitate the dime novel than to imitate art. Being a Mona Lisa is hard work; becoming Milady follows our natural tendency to choose the easy way.โ€ ๐Ÿ”—

id833950963

diaphanous ๐Ÿ”—

id833951063

chthonian ๐Ÿ”—

id833952254

unctuously ๐Ÿ”—

id833954628

lubricious ๐Ÿ”—

id833954716

paroxysmal ๐Ÿ”—

id833954733

satyriasis ๐Ÿ”—

id833955586

But Redemption from what, old Rocambole? You knew better than to try to be a protagonist! You have been punished, and with your own arts. You mocked the creators of illusion, and nowโ€”as you seeโ€”you write using the alibi of a machine, telling yourself you are a spectator, because you read yourself on the screen as if the words belonged to another, but you have fallen into the trap: you, too, are trying to leave footprints on the sands of time. You have dared to change the text of the romance of the world, and the romance of the world has taken you instead into its coils and involved you in its plot, a plot not of your making. ๐Ÿ”—

id834210415

Isis Unveiled ๐Ÿ”—

id834210916

we were parodying the metaphysics in which he somehow believed. ๐Ÿ”—

id834224377

...Only the Plan explains the inexplicable bureaucracy of this genocide! Hitler was searching the Jews for the clue that would allow him to determine, with the Pendulum, the exact point under the earthโ€™s concave vault where the telluric currents converged. ๐Ÿ”—

id834224685

what lies beneath is equal to what lies above! ๐Ÿ”—

id834235779

โ€œLetโ€™s not go too far. Iโ€™d leave that last point hanging.โ€
โ€œLike the Pendulum.โ€
โ€œIf you like. We canโ€™t just say whatever enters our heads.โ€
โ€œNo, no. Strict scholarship, above all.โ€ ๐Ÿ”—

id834236123

Nothing can dispel from my mind the most reassuring thought that this world is the creation of a shadowy god whose shadow I prolong. Faith leads to Absolute Optimism. ๐Ÿ”—

id834236168

To invent a Plan. The Plan justifies you to such a degree that you can no longer be held accountable, not even for the Plan itself. Just throw the stone and hide your hand. If there really were a Plan, there would be no failure. ๐Ÿ”—

id834236214

Five paths to a single destination. What a waste. Better a labyrinth that leads everywhere and nowhere. To die with style, live in the Baroque. ๐Ÿ”—

id834236392

Why write novels? Rewrite history. The history that then comes true. ๐Ÿ”—

id834236468

I did not possess you, but I can blow up history. ๐Ÿ”—

id834236511

If the problem is this absence of being and if what is is what is said, then the more we talk, the more being there is.
The dream of science is that there be little being, that it be concentrated and sayable, E = mc2. Wrong. To be saved at the very beginning, for all eternity, it is necessary for that being to be tangled. Like a serpent tied into knots by a drunken sailor: impossible to untie. ๐Ÿ”—

id834237127

he came to realize that by inventing the Plan he had actually created. He fell in love with his golem, found it a source of consolation. Lifeโ€”his life, mankindโ€™sโ€”as art, and art as falsehood. ๐Ÿ”—

id834243222

๐Ÿ”—

id834244439

Beware of faking: people will believe you. ๐Ÿ”—

id834244491

But theyโ€™ve been told that God is mysterious, unfathomable, so to them incoherence is the closest thing to God. The farfetched is the closest thing to a miracle. ๐Ÿ”—

id834246125

Belbo had written it down, word for word, as if it were the colonelโ€™s memoirs. He narrated it like an initiate communicating the final secret. This, I believe, was to be a cure: he was returning to literature, however second-rate, to that which was not life. ๐Ÿ”—

id834248309

black dog ๐Ÿ”—

id834252470

How can a man rush to his own destruction simply because he runs over a dog? Yet thatโ€™s how it was. ๐Ÿ”—

id834252953

believe he really believed this; such is the power of frustrated desire. The file endedโ€”it could not have been otherwiseโ€”with the quotation required of all those whom life has defeated: Bin ich ein Gott? ๐Ÿ”—

id834256064

contretemps ๐Ÿ”—

id834257252

mellifluous ๐Ÿ”—

id834257484

Belbo returned to Milan toward evening, shut himself in his apartment with two cans of meat and some crackers, and turned on the TV. More Berlinguer, naturally. The news item about the train appeared at the end, almost as a footnote. ๐Ÿ”—

id834258302

But it didnโ€™t matter who he really was, because he was acting, had been acting for years, like a character in the story we were to invent only later. ๐Ÿ”—

id834258882

โ€œWho are you, anyway?โ€ Belbo shouted.
โ€œWeโ€™re the Tres,โ€ the voice replied, โ€œand you know more about the Tres than we do.โ€ ๐Ÿ”—

id834260665

What secret? The one that only he, Belbo, could reveal. The one that did not exist. ๐Ÿ”—

id834260971

the rabbi said to him: Son, be cautious in your work, because it is divine work, and if you omit one letter or write one letter too many, you destroy the whole world....We tried to rewrite the Torah, but we paid no heed to whether there were too many letters or too few....โ€ ๐Ÿ”—

id834261037

Rearranging the letters of the Book means rearranging the world. Thereโ€™s no getting away from it. Any book, even a speller. ๐Ÿ”—

id834261213

They were talking about us, about remaking our body through language. Now, listen. To manipulate the letters of the Book takes great piety, and we didnโ€™t have it. But every book is interwoven with the name of God. And we anagram-matized all the books of history, and we did it without praying. ๐Ÿ”—

id834261250

If you alter the Book, you alter the world; if you alter the world, you alter the body. This is what we didnโ€™t understand. ๐Ÿ”—

id834261485

โ€œAnd what are cells? For months, like devout rabbis, we uttered different combinations of the letters of the Book. GCC, CGC, GCG, CGG. What our lips said, our cells learned. What did my cells do? They invented a different Plan, and now they are proceeding on their own, creating a history, a unique, private history. My cells have learned that you can blaspheme by ana-grammatizing the Book, and all the books of the world. And they have learned to do this now with my body. They invert, transpose, alternate, transform themselves into cells unheard of, new cells without meaning, or with meaning contrary to the right meaning. There must be a right meaning and a wrong meaning; otherwise you die. My cells joke, without faith, blindly. ๐Ÿ”—

id834261582

Have you ever reflected that the linguistic term โ€˜metathesisโ€™ is similar to the oncological term โ€˜metastasisโ€™? What is metathesis? Instead of โ€˜claspโ€™ one says โ€˜claps.โ€™ Instead of โ€˜belovedโ€™ one says โ€˜be-voled.โ€™ Itโ€™s the temurah. The dictionary says that metathesis means transposition or interchange, while metastasis indicates change and shifting. How stupid dictionaries are! The root is the same. Either itโ€™s the verb metatithemi or the verb methistemi. Metatithemi means I interpose, I shift, I transfer, I substitute, I abrogate a law, I change a meaning. And methistemi? Itโ€™s the same thing: I move, I transform, I transpose, I switch cliches, I take leave of my senses. And as we sought secret meanings beyond the letter, we all took leave of our senses. And so did my cells, obediently, dutifully. Thatโ€™s why Iโ€™m dying, Jacopo, and you know it.โ€ ๐Ÿ”—

id834261968

Have you ever reflected that the linguistic term โ€˜metathesisโ€™ is similar to the oncological term โ€˜metastasisโ€™? What is metathesis? Instead of โ€˜claspโ€™ one says โ€˜claps.โ€™ Instead of โ€˜belovedโ€™ one says โ€˜be-voled.โ€™ Itโ€™s the temurah. The dictionary says that metathesis means transposition or interchange, while metastasis indicates change and shifting. How stupid dictionaries are! The root is the same. Either itโ€™s the verb metatithemi or the verb methistemi. Metatithemi means I interpose, I shift, I transfer, I substitute, I abrogate a law, I change a meaning. And methistemi? Itโ€™s the same thing: I move, I transform, I transpose, I switch cliches, I take leave of my senses. And as we sought secret meanings beyond the letter, we all took leave of our senses. And so did my cells, obediently, dutifully. Thatโ€™s why Iโ€™m dying, Jacopo, and you know it.โ€ ๐Ÿ”—

id834265962

Nezah, for some interpreters, is the Sefirah of endurance, forbearance, constant patience. ๐Ÿ”—

id834266847

Perhaps I was going in circles, crossing some of the rooms for the second time; perhaps I would never get out of this place; perhaps this groping among meaningless machines was the rite. ๐Ÿ”—

id834272610

Anathema ๐Ÿ”—

id834281918

From the far end of the nave, near the ticket desk and the bookstall, a roll of drums was heard, and the shrill notes of some flutes. Suddenly, the doors of four automobiles opened, and four creatures emerged. I had seen them before, too, on the poster for Le Petit Cirque.
Wearing fezlike felt hats and ample black cloaks buttoned to the neck, Les Derviches Hurleurs stepped from the automobiles like the dead rising from the grave, and they squatted at the edge of the magic circle. In the background a flute now played sweet music, and the four gently put their hands on the floor and bowed their heads. ๐Ÿ”—

id834287185

Hod, the Sefirah of splendor, majesty, and glory; ๐Ÿ”—

id834305452

Belbo hanged from the Pendulum would have drawn, in space, the tree of the Sefirot, summing up in his final moment the vicissitude of all universes, fixing forever in his motion the ten stages of the mortal exhalation and defecation of the divine in the world. ๐Ÿ”—

id834310870

He hadnโ€™t died as the victim of a Plan of recent manufacture; he had prepared his death much earlier, in his imagination, unaware that his imagination, more creative than he, was planning the reality of that death.
Somehow, losing, Belbo had won. Or does he who devotes himself to this single way of winning then lose all? He loses all if he does not understand that the victory is a different victory. ๐Ÿ”—

id834315180

I fled the Conservatoire to find again the city of all, but now I realize that the city of all is a catacomb with special paths for the initiated. ๐Ÿ”—

id834316417

La Tour. I was at the one place in the city where you donโ€™t see it in the distance, in profile, benevolent above the ocean of roofs, light-hearted as a Dufy painting. It was on top of me, it sailed at me. I could glimpse the tip, but I moved inward, between its legs, and saw its haunches, underside, genitalia, sensed the vertiginous intestine that climbed to join the esophagus of that polytechnical giraffeโ€™s neck. Perforated, it yet had the power to douse the light around it, and as I moved, it offered me, from different perspectives, different cavernous niches that framed sudden zooms into darkness. ๐Ÿ”—

id834317311

From the distance it winks affectionately, but should you approach, should you attempt to penetrate its mystery, it will kill you, it will freeze your bones, simply by revealing the meaningless horror of which it is made. ๐Ÿ”—

id834318102

The shame of it: here I was with the aging bourgeoisie, waiting for the revolution to subside. ๐Ÿ”—

id834318507

The only way to discomfit the Devil is to make him believe you donโ€™t believe in him. ๐Ÿ”—

id834319357

The conspiracy theory of society... comes from abandoning God and then asking: โ€œWho is in his place?โ€ ๐Ÿ”—

id834319612

In a crossword puzzle the words, intersecting,ย  have to have letters in common. In our game we crossed not words but concepts, events, so the rules were different. Basically there were three rules. ๐Ÿ”—

id834319680

Rule One: Concepts are connected by analogy. There is no way to decide at once whether an analogy is good or bad, because to some degree everything is connected to everything else. ๐Ÿ”—

id834319825

Rule Two says that if tout se tient in the end, the connecting works. From potato to potato, tout se tient. So itโ€™s right. ๐Ÿ”—

id834319849

Rule Three: The connections must not be original. They must have been made before, and the more often the better, by others. Only then do the crossings seem true, because they are obvious. ๐Ÿ”—

id834319881

We didnโ€™t invent anything; we only arranged the pieces. ๐Ÿ”—

id834320098

Herostratus ๐Ÿ”—

id834320351

We invented a nonexistent Plan, and They not only believed it was real but convinced themselves that They had been part of it for ages, or rather, They identified the fragments of their muddled mythology as moments of our Plan, moments joined in a logical, irrefutable web of analogy, semblance, suspicion.
But if you invent a plan and others carry it out, itโ€™s as if the Plan exists. At that point it does exist. ๐Ÿ”—

id834320497

There can be no failure if there really is a Plan. Defeated you may be, but never through any fault of your own. To bow to a cosmic will is no shame. You are not a coward; you are a martyr. ๐Ÿ”—

id834320775

If you feel guilty, you invent a plot, many plots. And to counter them, you have to organize your own plot. But the more you invent enemy plots, to exonerate your lack of understanding, the more you fall in love with them, and you pattern your own on their model. ๐Ÿ”—

id834320970

A plot, if there is to be one, must be a secret. A secret that, if we only knew it, would dispel our frustration, lead us to salvation; or else the knowing of it in itself would be salvation. Does such a luminous secret exist?
Yes, provided it is never known. Known, it will only disappoint us. ๐Ÿ”—

id834321168

when men stop believing in God, it isnโ€™t that they then believe in nothing: they believe in everything.
But everything is not a bigger secret. There are no โ€œbigger secrets,โ€ because the moment a secret is revealed, it seems little. There is only an empty secret. A secret that keeps slipping through your fingers. ๐Ÿ”—

id834321287

Initiation is learning never to stop. The universe is peeled like an onion, and an onion is all peel. Let us imagine an infinite onion, which has its center everywhere and its circumference nowhere. Initiation travels an endless Mobius strip. ๐Ÿ”—

id834321296

The true initiate is he who knows that the most powerful secret is a secret without content, because no enemy will be able to make him confess it, no rival devotee will be able to take it from him. ๐Ÿ”—

id834322720

internecine ๐Ÿ”—

id834324226

If Belbo spoke, all would know, and he, Aglie, would lose the mysterious aura that granted him charisma and power. But if Belbo confided in him alone, Aglie could go on being Saint-Germain, the immortal. ๐Ÿ”—

id834324477

If youโ€™re a sexual maniac, you donโ€™t want sex; you want the excitement of its theft, you want the victimโ€™s resistance and despair. If sex is handed to you on a platter, here it is, go to it, naturally youโ€™re not interested, otherwise what sort of sexual maniac would you be? ๐Ÿ”—

id834324497

We had awakened their lust, offering them a secret that couldnโ€™t have been emptier, because not only did we know it ourselves, but, even better, we knew that it was false. ๐Ÿ”—

id834324568

the story of the deciphering of the Plan, as we had reconstructed it, that was History. ๐Ÿ”—

id834324694

Not only does the magic word not exist, but we do not know that it does not exist. Those who admit their ignorance, therefore, can learn something ๐Ÿ”—

id834324862

It wasnโ€™t that he refused to bow to the lust for power; he refused to bow to nonmeaning. He somehow knew that, fragile as our existence may be, however ineffectual our interrogation of the world, there is nevertheless something that has more meaning than the rest. ๐Ÿ”—

id834338664

Looking at one instant forever doesnโ€™t mean that, as you look at it, time passes. ๐Ÿ”—

id834338792

He continued holding that virtual note, because he felt he was playing out a string that kept the sun in place. The planet had been arrested in its course, had become fixed in a noon that could last an eternity. And it all depended on Jacopo, because if he broke that contact, dropped that string, the sun would fly off like a balloon, and with it this day and the event of this day, this action without transition, this sequence without before and after, which was unfolding, motionless, only because it was in his power to will it thus. ๐Ÿ”—

id834339720

No one had yet told him that the Grail is a chalice but also a spear, and his trumpet raised like a chalice was at the same time a weapon, an instrument of the sweetest dominion, which shot toward the sky and linked the earth with the Mystic Pole. With the only Fixed Point in the universe. With what he created, for that one instant, with his breath. ๐Ÿ”—

id834340217

Diotallevi had not yet told him how you can dwell in Yesod, the Sefirah of foundation, the sign of the superior bow drawn to send arrows to Malkhut, its target. Yesod is the drop that springs from the arrow to produce the tree and the fruit, it is the anima mundi, the moment in which virile force, procreating, binds all the states of being together. ๐Ÿ”—

id834340825

You spend a life seeking the Opportunity, without realizing that the decisive moment, the moment that justifies birth and death, has already passed. It will not return, but it wasโ€”full, dazzling, generous as every revelation. ๐Ÿ”—

id834341969

truth is brief (afterward, it is all commentary). ๐Ÿ”—

id834342000

I understood it this evening: the author has to die in order for the reader to become aware of his truth. ๐Ÿ”—

id834345462

I should be at peace. I have understood. Donโ€™t some say that peace comes when you understand? I have understood. I should be at peace. Who said that peace derives from the contemplation of order, order understood, enjoyed, realized without residuum, in joy and triumph, the end of effort? All is clear, limpid; the eye rests on the whole and on the parts and sees how the parts have conspired to make the whole; it perceives the center where the lymph flows, the breath, the root of the whys... ๐Ÿ”—

id834345697

Why doesnโ€™t understanding give me peace? Why love Fate if Fate kills you just as dead as Providence or the Plot of the Archons? Perhaps I havenโ€™t understood, after all; perhaps I am missing one piece of the puzzle, one space. ๐Ÿ”—

id834345822

Where have I read that at the end, when life, surface upon surface, has become completely encrusted with experience, you know everything, the secret, the power, and the glory, why you were born, why you are dying, and how it all could have been different? You are wise. But the greatest wisdom, at that moment, is knowing that your wisdom is too late. You understand everything when there is no longer anything to understand. ๐Ÿ”—

id834345864

The truth of Malkhut, the only truth that shines in the night of the Sefirot, is that Wisdom is revealed naked in Malkhut, and its mystery lies not in existence but in the leaving of existence. Afterward, the Others begin again. ๐Ÿ”—

id834346616

I have understood. And the certainty that there is nothing to understand should be my peace, my triumph. But I am here, and They are looking for me, thinking I possess the revelation They sordidly desire. It isnโ€™t enough to have understood, if others refuse and continue to interrogate. They are looking for me, They must have picked up my trail in Paris, They know I am here now, They still want the Map. And when I tell Them that there is no Map, They will want it all the more. Belbo was right. Fuck you, fool! You want to kill me? Kill me, then, but I wonโ€™t tell you thereโ€™s no Map. If you canโ€™t figure it out for yourself, tough shit. ๐Ÿ”—

id834346843

It makes no difference whether I write or not. They will look for other meanings, even in my silence. Thatโ€™s how They are. Blind to revelation. Malkhut is Malkhut, and thatโ€™s that.
But try telling Them. They of little faith.
So I might as well stay here, wait, and look at the hill. Itโ€™s so beautiful. ๐Ÿ”—