Status Updates From Foucault’s Pendulum

Poor idiot! Are you so foolish as to believe we will openly teach you the greatest and most important of secrets? I assure you that anyone who attempts to study, according to the ordinary and literal sense of their words, what the Hermetic Philosophers write, will soon find himself in the twists of a labyrinth from which he will be unable to escape, having no Ariadne’s thread to lead him out. —Artephius

Eco, Umberto

“You’re telling me that, finally, all contradictions agree.”

“Quod ubique, quod ab omnibus et quod semper. Initiation is the discovery of the underlying and perennial philosophy.”

Eco, Umberto. Foucault's Pendulum (pp. 328-329). Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Kindle Edition.

“Strange,” he said, holding out his hand. “We have been fellow-tenants for so long, and we introduce ourselves in the bowels of the earth a thousand miles away.”

Eco, Umberto. Foucault's Pendulum (p. 297). Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Kindle Edition.

"During the day you will approach the frog several times and will utter words of worship. And you will ask it to work the miracles you wish. . . . Meanwhile you will cut a cross on which to sacrifice it."

—From a ritual of Aleister Crowley

Eco, Umberto. Foucault's Pendulum (p. 268). Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Kindle Edition.