White for Oxalá, blue and pink for Yemanjá, red and white for Xangõ, yellow and gold for Ogun … Initiates kneeled and kissed the threshold, touching themselves on the forehead and behind the ear.
“But is Yemanjá Our Lady of the Conception or not?” I asked. “Is Xangõ Saint Jerome or not?”
“Don’t ask embarrassing questions,” Agliè advised. “It’s even more complicated in an umbanda. Saint Anthony and saints Cosmas and Damian are part of the Oxalá line. Sirens, water nymphs, caboclas of the sea and the rivers, sailors, and guiding stars are part of the Yemanjá line.
The line of the Orient includes Hindus, doctors, scientists, Arabs and Moroccans, Japanese, Chinese, Mongols, Egyptians, Aztecs, Incas, Caribs, and Romans. To the Oxossi line belong the sun, the moon, the caboclo of waterfalls, and the caboclo of the blacks. In the Ogun line we come upon Ogun Beira-Mar, Rompe-Mato, Iara, Megé, Narueé … In other words, it all depends.”
“Jesus,” Amparo said again.
“Oxalá, you mean,” I murmured to her, my lips brushing her ear. “Calm down. No pasarán.”
The ialorixá showed us a series of masks that some acolytes were bringing into the temple. These were big straw dominoes, or hoods, which the mediums would put on as they went into a trance, falling prey to the divinity. This was a form of modesty, she explained. In some terreiros the chosen danced with their faces bare, letting onlookers see their passion.
But the initiates should be shielded, respected, removed from the curiosity of the profane or anyone who cannot understand the inner jubilation and grace. That was the custom in this terreiro, she said, and that was why outsiders were not readily admitted. Maybe someday, she remarked, who knows? We might well meet again.
But she didn’t want us to leave without sampling some of the comidas de santo—not from the corbeils, which had to remain intact until the end of the rite, but from her own kitchen. She took us to the back of the terreiro, where there was a multicolored banquet of manioc, pimento, coco, amendoim, gengibre, moqueca de siri-mole, vatapá, efó, caruru, black beans with farofa, amid a languid odor of African spices, sweet and strong tropical flavors, which we tasted dutifully, knowing that we were sharing the food of the ancient Sudanese gods.
And rightly so, the ialorixá told us, because each of us, whether he knew it or not, was the child of an orixá, and often it was possible to tell which one. I boldly asked whose son I was. The ialorixá demurred at first, saying she couldn’t be sure, but then she agreed to examine the palm of my hand. She looked into my eyes and said: “You are a son of Oxalá.”
I was proud. Amparo, now relaxed, suggested we find out whose son Agliè was, but he said he preferred not to know.
When we were home again, Amparo said to me: “Did you see his hand? Instead of the life line, he has a series of broken lines. Like a stream that comes to a stone, parts, and flows together again a meter farther on. The line of a man who must have died many times.”
“World champion of the metempsychosis relay.”
“No pasarán,” Amparo said, laughing.
Simply because they change and hide their names, do not give their right age, and by their own admission go about without allowing themselves to be recognized, there is no logic that can deny that they necessarily must exist.
—Heinrich Neuhaus, Pia et ultimissima admonestatio de Fratribus Rosae-Crucis, nimirum: an sint? quales sint? unde nomen illud sibi asciverunt, Danzig, Schmidlin, 1618; French ed. 1623, p. 5.
Diotallevi used to say that Hesed was the Sefirah of grace and love, white fire, south wind. The other evening in the periscope, I thought that those last days with Amparo in Bahia belonged under that sign.
You remember so much while you wait for hours and hours in the darkness. I remembered especially one of the last evenings. We had walked through so many alleys and squares that our feet ached, and we went to bed early, but we didn’t feel like sleeping. Amparo, huddled against the pillow in the fetal position, was pretending to read one of my little pamphlets on the umbanda, propping it on her knees. From time to time she would roll lazily onto her back, legs spread, the book balanced on her belly, listening to me read from the book on the Rosicrucians.
I was trying to involve her in my discoveries. It was a mild evening; as Belbo, exhausted with literature, might have put it in one of his files, there was nought but a lovely sighing of the wind. We had splurged on a good hotel; there was a view of the sea from the window, and the still-lighted closet kitchen offered the comforting sight of the basket of tropical fruit we had bought at four that morning.
“It says that in 1614 an anonymous work appeared in Germany entitled Allgemeine undgeneral Reformation, or General and common Reform of the entire Universe, followed by Fama Fraternitatis of the Honorable Confraternity of the Rosy-Cross, addressed to all learned Men and Sovereigns of Europe, together with a brief Reply by Herr Haselmeyer, who for this Reason was cast into Prison by the Jesuits and then placed in Irons on a Galley. Now printed and made known to all the sincere of Heart. Published in Cassel by Wilhelm Wessel.”
“A little long, isn’t it?”
“Apparently all titles were like that in the seventeenth century. Lina Wertmuller wrote them, too. Anyway, this was a satirical work, a fairy tale about a general reform of mankind, partly plagiarized from Traiano Boccalini’s Ragguagli di Parnaso.
But it contained a manifesto of about a dozen pages—the Fama Fraternitatis—which was republished separately a year later, at the same time as another manifesto, this one in Latin: Confessio fraternitatis Roseae Crucis, ad eruditos Europae. Both present the Confraternity of the Rosy Cross and talk about its founder, a mysterious C.R. Only later—and from other sources—was it learned, or presumed, that C.R. was one Christian Rosencreutz.”
“Why didn’t they use the full name?”
“The whole thing’s full of initials; they didn’t use anybody’s full name. They’re all G.G.M.P.I.; one is called P.D., an affectionate nickname. Anyway, the pamphlet tells of the formative years of C.R., who first visited the Holy Sepulcher, then set off for Damascus, moved on to Egypt, and from there went to Fez, which must have been one of the sanctuaries of Moslem wisdom at the time.
There, our Christian, who already knew Greek and Latin, learned Oriental languages, physics, mathematics, and the sciences of nature, accumulating all the millennial wisdom of the Arabs and Africans, as well as cabala and magic. He also translated a mysterious Liber M into Latin, and thus came to know all the secrets of the macrocosm and the microcosm. For two centuries, everything Oriental had been fashionable, especially if it was incomprehensible. ”
“They always go for that. Hungry? Frustrated? Exploited? Mystery cocktail coming up. Here…” She passed me a joint. “This is good stuff.”
“See? You also seek to lose yourself.”
“Except that I know it’s only chemical. No mystery at all. It works even if you don’t know Hebrew. Come here.”
“Wait. Next Rosencreutz went to Spain, where he picked up more occult doctrines, claiming that he was drawing closer to the center of all knowledge. In the course of these travels—which for an intellectual of the time was a sort of total-wisdom trip—he realized that what was needed in Europe was an association that would guide rulers along the paths of wisdom and good.”
“Very original. Well worth it, all that studying. I want some cold mamaia.”
“In the fridge. Do me a favor. You go. I’m working.”
“If you’re working, that makes you the ant. So be a good ant and get some provisions.”
“Mamaia is pleasure, so the grasshopper should go. Otherwise I’ll go, and you read.”
“No. Jesus, I hate the white man’s culture. I’ll go.”
Amparo went to the little kitchen, and I enjoyed seeing her against the light. Meanwhile, C.R. was on his way back from Germany, but instead of devoting himself to the transmutation of metals, of which his now immense knowledge made him capable, he decided to dedicate himself to spiritual reformation. He therefore founded the confraternity, inventing a language and magic writing that would be the foundation of the wisdom of generations of brothers to come.
“No, I’ll spill it on the book. Put it in my mouth. Come on, no tricks, silly. That’s right … God, how good mamaia is, rosencreutzlische Mutti-ja-ja … Anyway, what the first Rosicrucians wrote in the first few years could have enlightened the world.”
“Why? What did they write?”
“There’s the rub. The manifesto doesn’t say; it leaves you with your mouth watering. But it was important; so important, it had to remain secret.”
“The bastards.”
“No! Hey, cut that out! Well, as the Rosicrucians gained more and more members, they decided to spread to the four corners of the earth, vowing to heal the sick without charging, to dress according to the customs of each country (never wearing clothes that would identify them), to meet once a year, and to remain secret for a hundred years.”
“Tell me: what kind of reformation were they after? I mean, hadn’t there just been one? What was Luther then? Shit?”
“No, you’re wrong. This was before the Protestant Reformation. There’s a note here; it says that a thorough reading of the Fama and the Confessio evinces—”
“Evinces?”
“Evinces. Shows, makes
