Foucault's Pendulum

As fans of Ishmael Reed's masterpiece novel, Mumbo Jumbo, Naoki Urasawa's Twentieth Century Boys, as well as Chris Carter's Millennium (although the second season was not exactly in the vein of what Carter would have done), we finally read Foucault's Pendulum. This is a novel we endeavored to read a few years ago on a Kindle but due to its length and subject matter, a text like this is meant to be read in physical form. Umberto Eco has created the ultimate anti-occult, anti-conspiracy theory book using a conspiracy and invented Tradition. This zany tale involves everything from Jewish mysticism, alchemy, Ism'ailism, and Candomble to the Templars, Rosicrucians, Paulicians, Nazism, Freemasonry, telluric currents and the Jesuits. It is also an excellent work for the bibliophiles and book editors, since the Plan concocted by the 3 Italian editors is really a masterful work of erudition and throws a number of references to major texts in the history of Western literature, esotericism, and even popular culture (Mickey and Minnie Mouse, for instance). 

In terms of the novel's structure, most of it is really Casaubon narrating the previous steps that led to him staying in the Musée des Arts et Métiers in Paris after hours to witness an occult gathering of various Diabolicals (believers in various strands of occultist knowledge who come to believe in the Plan concocted by Belbo, Casaubon and  Diotallevi). Occasionally, journal entries or literary pieces from the computer, Abulafia, of Belbo, provide additional narration of events that shape the novel. By the end, the three book editors, who initially approached the subject of the Plan with an inventive sense of humor, find themselves trapped in a whirlwind of curious and dangerous events. Along the way, Belbo is forced to revisit his memories of the latter days of Fascist Italy and lost opportunities while Casaubon tries to find another, deeper, meaning in the plethora of invented esoteric currents mixed together to in a deep way. 

While Umberto Eco did not seek to undermine the racial and Eurocentric biases that Ishmael Reed highlighted with Jes Grew, he managed to produce an intellectually sophisticated look at how the occult mind works and distorts to create new realities to make sense of their zeitgeist. This is why for each period, newly  invented "Tradition" is adapted to make sense of the world in the search for a higher truth. Perhaps more of the Diabolicals should have thought like Casaubon and Lia did about their own philosopher's stone...

Secrets of Voodoo

Milo Rigaud's Secrets of Voodoo is an introductory overview of Haitian Vodou that seeks to contextualize it within universal religion and theory. While one sometimes wonders how and why Rigaud reached certain conclusions (some are clearly inspired by Arthur Holly and cabalistic notions associating Jewish mysticism with ancient Egypt and Africa), it proposes some interesting theories about possible connections between Vodou and religions of the ancient world. Unlike Antoine Innocent, who proposed a possible link to ancient Rome, Rigaud, like Holly, goes back further in time to the ancient "black" civilizations of Ethiopia, Egypt, and Assyria. 

These societies, through their influence on Moses, who was allegedly a Vodou initiate, explain why Jewish mysticism and Biblical texts are relevant to explication of Vodou tenets and mysteries. In other words, Rigaud's fanciful theory for the origin of Vodou gives it a much deeper past and helps explain literary works like Ishmael Reed's Mumbo Jumbo. Reed, whose famous novel ties ancient Egypt to Haiti and "Jes Grew," ingeniously riffs on the work of Rigaud for an Afrocentric's wet dream. Zora Neale Hurston's retelling of Moses may also reflect the influence of Arthur Holly and Milo Rigaud since she conducted research in Haiti during the 1930s and was acquainted with at least the former.

Nonetheless,  Egyptian notions such as the ba and ka, as well as West African concepts and practices (Ife) are imaginatively linked and therefore can help explain some of the features of Vodou practice in today's Haiti. The idea of the solar cult, traced back to the black Ethiopian-Egyptian-Assyrian civilizations, is used to explain Legba, Erzulie (a lunar deity), and elucidate the reasoning behind several aspects of Vodou ritual, symbolism, and architecture. A trinity of sorts is proposed, consisting of Damballah, Legba, and Erzulie. However, due to the variety of forms Vodou rituals take across Haiti, with each houngan or mambo being the Pope of their temple, the Vodou pantheon and the ceremonies practiced take on several forms. Rigaud's book is largely focused on listing these in a general form for the reader. Anyone looking for more esoteric and occult interpretations may have to read Rigaud's other works or force themselves to read Arthur Holly's older texts.