“The Tabula Smaragdina,” Diotallevi said.
“What? No. Too difficult. It doesn’t say anything to me. No. What we want is something that suggests something else….”
“Isis Unveiled,” I said.
“Isis Unveiled! That’s good. Bravo, Casaubon. It has Tutankhamen in it, the scarab of the pyramids. Isis Unveiled, with a slightly black-magical cover, but not overdone. Now let’s continue. The second group: those who buy it. I know what you’re thinking, my friends: Manutius isn’t interested in the buyer. But there’s no law to that effect. This time, we’ll sell Manutius books. Progress, gentlemen!
“But there are also the scholarly studies, and that’s where Garamond comes in. We’ll look through the historical studies and the other university series and find ourselves an expert, a consultant. Then we’ll publish three or four books a year. An academic series, with a title that’s direct but not too picturesque…”
“Hermetica,” Diotallevi said.
“Excellent. Classical, dignified. You ask me: Why spend money with Garamond when we can make money with Manutius? But the scholarly series will act as a lure, attracting intelligent people, who will make suggestions and point out new directions. And it will also attract the others, the Professor Bramantis, who will be rerouted to Manutius. It seems perfect to me: Project Hermes, a nice, clean, profitable operation that will strengthen the flow of ideas between the two firms….To work, gentlemen.
There are libraries to visit, bibliographies to compile, catalogs to request. And find out what’s being done in other countries…. Who knows how many people have already slipped through our fingers, people bearing treasures, and we dismissed them as worthless. Casaubon, don’t forget, in the history of metals, to put in a little alchemy. Gold’s a metal, I believe. Hold your comments for later: you know I’m open to criticism, suggestions, objections, as all cultured people are. This project is in effect as of now.
“Signora Grazia, that gentleman’s been waiting two hours. That’s no way to treat an author! Show him in!” he shouted, to make himself heard as far as the reception room.
People who meet on the street… secretly dedicate themselves to operations of Black Magic, they bind or seek to bind themselves to the Spirits of Darkness, to satisfy their ambitions, their hates, their loves, to do—in a word—Evil.
—J. K. Huysmans, Preface to J. Bois, Le satanisme et la magie, 1895, pp. viii-ix
I had thought that Project Hermes was the rough sketch of an idea, not a plan of action. But I didn’t yet know Signor Garamond. In the days that followed, while I stayed late in libraries looking for illustrations about metals, at Manutius they were already at work.
Two months later in Belbo’s office, I found, hot off the press, an issue of The Italic Parnassus, with a long article, “The Rebirth of Occultism,” in which the well-known Hermeticist Dr. Moebius—Belbo’s new pseudonym, and source of his first bonus from Project Hermes—talked about the miraculous renaissance of the occult sciences in the modern world and announced that Manutius intended to move in this direction with its new series, “Isis Unveiled.”
Meanwhile, Signor Garamond had written letters to various reviews of Hermeticism, astrology, tarot, UFOlogy, signing one name or another and requesting information about the new series announced by Manutius. Whereupon the editors of the reviews telephoned Manutius, requesting information, and Signor Garamond acted mysterious, saying he could not yet reveal the first ten titles, which were, however, in the works. In this way the world of the occultists, stirred by constant drumming of the tom-toms, was now alerted to Project Hermes.
“We disguise ourselves as a flower,” Signor Garamond said, having summoned us to his office, “and the bees will come swarming.”
That wasn’t all. Garamond wanted to show us the flier (the depliant, he called it): a simple affair, four pages, but on glossy paper. The first page reproduced what was to be the uniform cover of the books in the series: a kind of golden seal (the Pentacle of Solomon, Garamond explained) on a black ground; the page was framed by interwoven swastikas (but Asian swastikas, Garamond hastened to add, which went in the direction of the sun, not the Nazi kind, which went clockwise).
At the top, where each volume’s title would go, were the words “There are more things in heaven and earth…” The flier extolled the glories of Manutius in the service of culture, then stated, with some catchy phrases, that the contemporary world sought truths deeper and more luminous than those science could provide: “From Egypt, from Chaldea, from Tibet, a forgotten knowledge—for the spiritual rebirth of the West.”
Belbo asked where the flier would go, and Garamond smiled like the evil genius of the rajah of Assam, as Belbo would have said. “From France I’ve ordered a directory of all the secret societies in the world today. It exists. Here it is. Editions Henry Veyrier, with addresses, postal codes, phone numbers. Take a look at it, Belbo, and eliminate those that don’t apply, because I see it also includes the Jesuits, Opus Dei, the Carbonari, and Rotary. Find all the ones with occult tendencies. I’ve already underlined some.”
He leafed through it. “Here you are: the Absolutists (who believe in metamorphosis), the Aetherius Society of California (telepathic relations with Mars), the Astara of Lausanne (oath of absolute secrecy), Atalanteans in Great Britain (search for lost happiness), Builders of the Adytum in California (alchemy, cabala, astrology), Cercle E. B. of Perpignan (dedicated to Hator, goddess of love and guardian of the Mountain of the Dead), Cercle Eliphas Levi of Maule (I don’t know who this Levi is; perhaps that French anthropologist or whatever he was), Knights of the Templar Alliance of Toulouse, Druidic College of Gaul, Couvent Spiritualiste de Jericho, the Cosmic Church of Truth in Florida, Traditionalist Seminar of Ecône in Switzerland, the Mormons (I read about them in a detective story, too, but maybe they don’t exist anymore), the Church of Mithra in London and Brussels, the Church of Satan in Los Angeles, the United Luciferan Church of France, the Apostolic Rosicrucian Church in Brussels, Children of Darkness and Green Order on the Ivory Coast (let’s forget that one; God knows what language they write in), Escuela Hermetista Occidental of Montevideo, the National Institute of Cabala in Manhattan, the Central Ohio Temple of Hermetic Science, Tetra-Gnosis of Chicago, Ancient Brethren of the Rosie-Cross of Saint Cyr-sur-Mer, Johannite Fraternity for the Templar Resurrection in Kassel, International Fraternity of Isis in Grenoble, Ancient Bavarian Illuminati of San Francisco, the Sanctuary of Gnosis of Sherman Oaks, the Grail Foundation of America, Sociedade do Graal do Brasil, Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor, Lectorium Rosicrucianum in Holland, the Grail Movement of Strasbourg, Order of Anubis in New York, Temple of the Black Pentacle in Manchester, Odinist Fellowship in Florida, the Order of the Garter (even the Queen of England must be in that one), the Order of the Vril (neo-Nazi Masons, no address), Militia Templi in Montpellier, Sovereign Order of the Solar Temple in Monte Carlo, Rosy Cross of Harlem (you understand? Even the blacks now), Wicca (Luciferine association of Celtic obedience; they invoke the seventy-two geni of the cabala)…Need I go on?”
“Do all those really exist?” Belbo asked.
“Those and more. To work, gentlemen. Draw up a definitive list. Then we’ll do our mailing. Include all those foreigners; news travels fast among them. One thing remains for us to do: we have to go around to the right shops and talk not only with the booksellers but also with the customers. Mention that such-and-such a series exists.”
Diotallevi objected that we shouldn’t expose ourselves in this way; we should find people to do it for us. Garamond told him to find some, “provided they’re free.”
“That’s asking a lot,” Belbo said when we were back in his office.
But the gods of the underworld were protecting us. At that very moment Lorenza Pellegrini came in, more solar than ever, making Belbo brighten. She saw the fliers and was curious.
When she heard about the project of the firm next door, she said: “Terrific! I have this fantastic friend, an ex-Tupamaro from Uruguay, who works for a magazine called Picatrix. He’s always taking me to seances. There, I met a fantastic ectoplasm; he asks for me now every time he materializes!”
Belbo looked at Lorenza as if to ask her something, then changed his mind. Perhaps he was becoming accustomed to hearing about Lorenza’s alarming friends and had decided to worry only about the ones that threatened his relationship with her (did they have a relationship?). In that reference to Picatrix he saw the threat not of the colonel but of the fantastic ex-Tupamaro. But Lorenza was now talking about something else, telling us that she visited many of those little shops that sold the kind of books Isis Unveiled wanted to publish.
“That’s a real trip, you know,” she was saying. “They tell all about medicinal herbs or list instructions for making a homunculus, remember what Faust did with Helen of Troy. Oh, Jacopo, let’s! I’d love to have your homunculus, and then we could keep it like a dachshund. It’s easy, the book says: you just have to collect a little human seed in a test tube. That wouldn’t be hard for you—don’t blush, silly. Then you mix it with hippomene, which is some liquid that is excreted—no, not excreted—what’s the word?”
“Secreted,” Diotallevi suggested.
“Really? Anyway, pregnant mares make it. I realize
