“What about the customers in those bookshops?”
“Fantastic people, people who talk with angels, people who make gold, and professional sorcerers with faces exactly like professional sorcerers…”
“What’s the face of a professional sorcerer like?”
“An aquiline nose, Russian eyebrows, piercing eyes. The hair is long, like painters in the old days, and there’s a beard, not thick, with bare patches between the chin and the cheeks, and the mustache droops forward and falls in clumps over their lips, but that’s only natural, because their lips are thin, poor things, and their teeth stick out. They shouldn’t smile, with those teeth, but they do, very sweetly, but the eyes—I said they were piercing, didn’t I?—look at you in an unsettling way.”
“Facies hermetica,” Diotallevi remarked.
“Really? Well, you understand, then. When somebody comes in and asks for a book, say, of prayers against evil spirits, they immediately suggest the right title to the bookseller, and, of course, it’s always a title he doesn’t have in stock. But then, if you make friends and ask if the book works, they smile again, indulgently, as if they were talking to children, and they say that with this sort of thing you have to be quite careful.
They tell you about cases of devils that did horrible things to friends of theirs, but when you get frightened, they say that often it’s only hysteria. In other words, you never know whether they believe it or not. Sometimes the booksellers give me sticks of incense as presents; once one of them gave me a little ivory hand to ward off the evil eye.”
“Then, if the occasion arises,” Belbo said to her, “while you’re browsing in those places, ask if they know anything about the new Manutius series, and show them our flier.”
Lorenza went off with a dozen fliers. I guess she did a good job in the weeks that followed, but, even so, I wouldn’t have believed things could move so fast. Within a few months, Signora Grazia simply couldn’t keep up with the Diabolicals, as we had come to call the SFAs with occult interests. And, by their very nature, they were legion.
Invoke the forces of the Tablet of Union by means of Supreme Ritual of Pentagram, with the Active and Passive Spirit, with Eheieh and Agla. Return to the Altar, and recite the following Enochian Spirit Invocation: 01 Sonuf Vaorsag Goho lad Balt, Lonsh Calz Vonpho, Sobra Z-ol Ror I Ta Nazps, od Graa Ta Malprg … Ds Hol-q Qaa Nothoa Zimz, Od Commah Ta Nopbloh Zien…
—Israel Regardie, The Original Account of the Teachings, Rites and Ceremonies of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, Ritual for Invisibility, St. Paul, Llewellyn Publications, 1986, p. 423
We were lucky; our first meeting was of the highest quality—at least as far as our initiation was concerned.
For the occasion the trio was complete—Belbo, Diotallevi, and I—and when our guest came in, we almost let out a cry of satisfaction. He had the facies hermetica described by Lorenza Pellegrini, and, what’s more, he was dressed in black.
He looked around circumspectly, then introduced himself: Professor Camestres. At the question “Professor of what?” he made a vague gesture, as if urging us to exercise greater discretion. “Forgive me,” he said, “I don’t know whether you gentlemen are interested in the subject purely from a professional, commercial standpoint, or whether you are connected with any mystical group…”
We reassured him on that point.
“Perhaps I am being excessively cautious,” he said, “but I do not wish to have anything to do with a member of the OTO.” Seeing our puzzlement, he added: “Ordo Templi Orientis, the conventicle of the remaining self-styled followers of Aleister Crowley…. I see that you are not connected…. All the better: there will be no prejudices on your side.” He agreed to sit down. “Because, you understand, the work I would now like to show you takes a courageous stand against Crowley.
All of us, myself included, are still faithful to the revelations of the Liber AL vel legis, which, as you probably know, was dictated to Crowley in Cairo in 1904 by a higher intelligence named Aiwaz. This text is followed by the faithful of the OTO even today. They draw on all four editions, the first of which preceded by nine months the outbreak of the war in the Balkans, the second by nine months the outbreak of the First World War, the third by nine months the Sino-Japanese War, and the fourth by nine months the massacres of the Spanish Civil War….”
I couldn’t help crossing my fingers. He noticed and said with a funereal smile, “I understand your apprehension. What I am bringing you is the fifth edition of that book. What, you ask, will happen in nine months’ time? Nothing, gentlemen, rest assured. Because what I am proposing is an enlarged Liber legis, inasmuch as I have had the good fortune to be visited not by a mere higher intelligence but by Al himself, the supreme principle—namely, Hoor-paar-Kraat, who is the double or the mystical twin of Ra-Hoor-Khuit. My sole concern, also to ward off evil influences, is that my work be published before the winter solstice.”
“I think that could be managed,” Belbo said.
“I’m most pleased. The book will cause a stir in the circles of initiates, because, as you will understand, my mystical source is more serious and authenticated than Crowley’s. I don’t know how Crowley could have activated the Rituals of the Beast without bearing in mind the Liturgy of the Sword. Only by unsheathing the sword can the nature of Mahapralaya be understood, the Third Eye of Kundalini, in other words. And also in his arithmology, all based on the Number of the Beast, he failed to consider the New Numbers: 93, 118, 444, 868, and 1001.
“What do they mean?” asked Diotallevi, suddenly all ears.
“Ah,” said Professor Camestres, “as was already stated in the first Liber legis, every number is infinite and therefore there is no real difference!”
“I understand,” Belbo said. “But don’t you think all this will be a bit obscure for the common reader?”
Camestres almost bounced in his chair. “Why, it’s absolutely indispensable. Anyone who approached these secrets without the proper preparation would plunge headlong into the Abyss! Even by making them public in a veiled way, believe me, I am running risks. I work within the environment of the worship of the Beast, but more radically than Crowley: you will see, in my pages on the congressus cum daemone, the requirements for the furnishing of the temple and the carnal union with the Scarlet Woman and the Beast she rides. Crowley stopped at so-called carnal congress against nature, while I carry the ritual beyond Evil as we conceive it. I touch the inconceivable, the absolute purity of goety, the extreme threshold of the Bas-Aumgn and the Sa-Ba-Ft….”
The only thing left for Belbo to do was to sound out Camestres’s financial capability. He did this with long, roundabout sentences, and finally it emerged that, like Bramanti before him, the professor had no thought of self-financing. Then the dismissal phase began, with a mild request of could we keep the manuscript for a week, we would have a look at it, and then we would see. But at this point Camestres clasped the manuscript to his bosom, said he had never been treated with such distrust, and went out, hinting that he had means, out of the ordinary, to make us regret the insult we had given him.
But before long we had dozens of manuscripts from eligible SFAs. A modicum of selectivity was necessary, since these books were also meant to be sold. Because it was impossible for us to read them all, we glanced at the contents, the indexes, some of the text, then traded discoveries.
And from this springs the extraordinary question: Did the Egyptians know about electricity?
—Peter Kolosimo, Terra senza tempo, Milan, Sugar, 1964, p. III
“I have a text on vanished civilizations and mysterious lands,” Belbo said. “It seems that originally there existed, somewhere around Australia, a continent of Mu, and from there the great currents of migration spread out. One went to Avalon, one to the Caucasus and the source of the Indus; then there were the Celts, and the founders of Egyptian civilization, and finally the founders of Atlantis….”
“Old hat. If you’re looking for books about Mu, I’ll swamp your desk with them,” I said.
“But this writer may pay. Besides, he has a beautiful chapter on Greek migrations into Yucatan, and tells about the bas-relief of a warrior at Chichén Itzá who is the spit and image of a Roman legionary. Two peas in a pod…”
“All the helmets in the world have either plumes or horse tails,” Diotallevi said. “That’s not evidence.”
“Not for you, but for him. He finds serpent worship in all civilizations and concludes that there is a common origin….”
“Who hasn’t worshiped the serpent?” Diotallevi said. “Except, of course, the Chosen People.”
“They worshiped calves.”
“Only in a moment of weakness.
