The Fama said that at the beginning someone had worked out a magic writing (why of course, the message of Provins), but that the Clock of God struck every minute “whereas ours is unable to strike even the hours.” Who had missed the strokes of the divine clock, who had failed to arrive at a certain place at the right moment? There was a reference to an original group of brothers who could have revealed a secret philosophy but had decided, instead, to disperse throughout the world.
The manifestoes breathed uneasiness, uncertainty, bewilderment. The brothers of the first lines of succession had each arranged to be replaced “by a worthy successor,” but “they decided to keep secret… the place of their burial and even today we do not know where they are buried.”
What did this really refer to? What sepulcher was without an address? It was becoming obvious to me that the manifestoes were written because some information had been lost. An appeal was being made to anyone who happened to possess that information: He should come forward.
The end of the Fama was unequivocal: “Again we ask all the learned of Europe … to consider with kindly disposition our offer … to let us know their reflections…. Because even if for the present we have not revealed our names … anyone who sends us his name will be able to confer with us personally, or—if some impediment exists—in writing.”
This was exactly what the colonel had intended to do by publishing his story: force someone to emerge from his silence.
There had been a gap, a hiatus, an unraveling. In the tomb of C. R., there was written not only post 120 annos patebo, to recall the schedule of the appointments, but also Nequaquam vacuum; not “The void does not exist,” but “The void should not exist.” A void had been created, and it had to be filled!
Once again I asked myself: Why were these things being said in Germany, where, if anything, the fourth line should simply wait with saintly patience for its own turn to come? The Germans couldn’t complain—in 1614—of a failed appointment in Marienburg, because the Marienburg appointment would not take place until 1704.
Only one conclusion was possible: the Germans were complaining because the preceding appointment had not taken place.
This was the key! The Germans (the fourth line) were lamenting the fact that the English (the second line) had failed to reach the French (the third line). Of course. In the text you could find allegories that were almost childishly transparent: the tomb of C. R. is opened and in it are found the signatures of the brothers of the first and second circles, but not of the third. The Portuguese and the English are there, but where are the French?
In other words, the English had missed the French. Yet the English, according to what we had established, were the only ones who had any idea where to find the French, just as the French were the only ones who had any idea where to find the Germans. So, even if the French found the Germans in 1704, they would have shown up minus two-thirds of what they were supposed to deliver.
The Rosicrucians came out into the open, accepting the known risks, because that was the only way to save the Plan.
We do not even know with certainty if the Brothers of the second line possessed the same knowledge as those of the first, or if they were given all the secrets.
—Fama Fraternitatis, in Allgemeine und general Reformation, Cassel, Wessel, 1614
I told Belbo and Diotallevi. They agreed that the secret meaning of the manifestoes should be clear even to a Diabolical.
“Now it’s all clear,” Diotallevi said. “We were stuck on the notion that the Plan had been blocked at the passage from the Germans to the Paulicians, while in fact it had been blocked in 1584, at the passage from England to France.”
“But why?” Belbo asked. “What reason can there be that the English were unable to keep their appointment with the French in 1584? The English knew where the Refuge was.”
Seeking truth, he turned to Abulafia. As a test, he asked for two random entries. The output was:
Minnie Mouse is Mickey’s fiancée
Thirty days hath September April June and November
“Now, let’s see,” Belbo said. “Minnie has an appointment with Mickey, but by mistake she makes it for the thirty-first of September, and Mickey…”
“Hold it, everybody!” I said. “Minnie could have made a mistake only if her date with Mickey was for October 5, 1582!”
“Why?”
“The Gregorian reform of the calendar! Why, it’s obvious. In 1582 the Gregorian reform went into effect, correcting the Julian calendar; and to make things come out even, ten days in the month of October were abolished, the fifth to the fourteenth!”
“But the appointment in France is for 1584, Saint John’s Eve, June 23.”
“That’s right. But as I recall, the reform didn’t go into effect immediately everywhere.” I consulted the perpetual calendar we had on the shelf. “Here we are. The reform was promulgated in 1582, and the days between October 5 and October 14 were abolished, but this applied only to the pope. France adopted the new calendar in 1583 and abolished the tenth to the nineteenth of December.
In Germany there was a schism: the Catholic regions adopted the reform in 1584, with Bohemia, but the Protestant regions adopted it in 1775, almost two hundred years later, and Bulgaria—and this is a fact to bear in mind—adopted it only in 1917! Now, let’s look at England…. It adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1752. That’s to be expected: in their hatred of the papists, the Anglicans also held out for two centuries. So you see what happened. France abolished ten days at the end of 1583, and by June 1584 the French were all accustomed to it.
But when it was June 23, 1584, in France, in England it was still June 13, and ask yourself whether a good Englishman, Templar though he may have been, would have taken this into account.
They drive on the left even today, and ignored the decimal system for ages…. So, then, the English show up at the Refuge on what for them is June 23, except that for the French it’s already July 3. We can assume the appointment wasn’t to take place with fanfares; it would be a furtive meeting at a certain corner at a certain hour. The French go to the place on June 23; they wait a day, two days, three, seven, and then they leave, thinking that something has happened. Maybe they give up in despair on the very eve of July 3. The English arrive on the third and find nobody there. Maybe they also wait a week, and nobody shows. The two grand masters have missed each other.”
“Sublime,” Belbo said. “That’s what happened. But why is it the German Rosicrucians who go public, and not the English?”
I asked for another day, searched my card files, and came back to the office glowing with pride. I had found a clue, an almost invisible clue, but that’s how Sam Spade works. Nothing is trivial or insignificant to his eagle eye. Toward 1584, John Dee, mage and cabalist, astrologer to the queen of England, was assigned to study the reform of the Julian calendar.
“The English Templars meet the Portuguese in 1464. After that date, the British Isles seem to be struck by a cabalistic fervor. Anyway, the Templars work on what they have learned, preparing for the next encounter. John Dee is the leader of this magic and hermetic renaissance.
He collects a personal library of four thousand volumes, a library in the spirit of the Templars of Provins. His Monas Hieroglyphica seems directly inspired by the Tabula smaragdina, the bible of the alchemists. And what does John Dee do from 1584 on? He reads the Steganographia of Trithemius! He reads it in manuscript, of course, because it appeared in print for the first time only in the early seventeenth century. Dee, the grand master of the English group that suffered the failure of the missed appointment, wants to discover what happened, where the error lay. Since he is also a good astronomer, he slaps himself on the brow and says, ‘What an idiot I was!’ He starts studying the Gregorian reform, after he obtains an appanage from Elizabeth, to see how to rectify the mistake. But he realizes it’s too late.
He doesn’t know whom to get in touch with in France. He has contacts, however, in the Mitteleuropäische area. The Prague of Rudolf II is one big alchemist laboratory; so Dee goes to Prague and meets Khunrath, the author of Amphitheatrum sapientiae aeternae, whose allegorical plates later influenced both Andreae and the Rosicrucian manifestoes. What sort of relationships does Dee establish? I don’t know. Shattered by remorse at having committed an irreparable error, he dies in 1608. Not to worry, though, because in London someone else is at work—a man who, everybody now agrees, was a Rosicrucian and who
