WE HEAR OF peasants annually gathering upon their pilgrimage to weep outside some Bavarian chapel where six centuries past a flask of our physic Red Lion spilled and discolored the soil, so now they lift up their hands to praise what they consider miraculous. So does that reliquary holding four knuckle-bones of Ramon Lull work miracles at Mallorca while colleges founded across the continent dedicate their curricula to Ars Lulliana. And our world stands motionless since that is what the Church has taught, therefore earthquakes do not exist and tremors we experience are merely the consequence of febrile imagining. Bravo! Bravo! Let us silence the voice of commotion.
CIRCLES WIDEN. FRIAR Bacon would convince us how this world might be circumnavigated. Aye, perhaps. Contentious scholars disagree. Yet all swear he lends the devil his brain to whet, for which he deserves excommunication. Aye, perhaps. Even so he would separate common usage from theoretical understanding, and since there is much advantage to the former he thinks it superior—which many have called the trade-mark of a plebian mind. Ourselves, we find these indivisible. Sooner or later every man is caught among oppositions like a turtle in a net and overturned, stripped of hope. But we have studied deeper in his important book, Frater Rogerius Baco de Secretis Artis & Naturae, that privately was brought out by the Franciscan to discuss unnatural perfections of lightning and thunder—since by themselves nitre and sulfur and charcoal contribute nothing, whereas mingled they yield to command a monstrous foaming crack and most black foul stink. O, thoroughly foul! And he proposes to rarefy the atmosphere through vile flame which he expects to ignite with phosphorus! Or contrive an aeronautic chariot lofting passengers to and fro—out of this or that province! Or construct a Pump to inhibit and control the wind through pressures! In truth, our cunning friar waxes fat on speculation nourished by celibate dreams while drawing angles above triangles, mistaking intellect for soul.
NOTHING ABOUT NATURE may be incredible but we observe her. Now we could dwell upon Double Nativity and first or second sublimation, visible or invisible, without which no essence could be extracted from its animus. We might discourse upon sulfurs compounded or elementary, or three-fold Argent Vives and thrice as many cathartics. O yea! Now what of this Lion rampant in his mangy carcase? Or what of Christian sacrament? Ourobouros, that wily viper professing neither commencement nor end, devours his tail while we have consumed six decades questioning verities.
LO! COMES AN uninvited minstrel with a dirty cape and a boil suppurating on his nose criss-crossed beneath furious scars, one eye shut against us—some ancient soldier! Ripe enough, rank to be near, singing about savage divorce while the gods retreat and wicked angels comport, urging the world downward to impenitent violence, brigandage, plunder, when terrestrial equilibrium will be sacrificed, sailors be loath to navigate far from shore, Heaven lack for starlight and planets deviate, swerving out of their true direction, when earth’s atmosphere does not replenish itself, when fertile soil sinks to velleity leaving turgid fruits to rot unripe with venom. And from this much will come down faster than lightning even as men cry out too late in useless tongues—delivering their dream too late. Such a bundle of curiosities.
Rumors of a wandering magus conceived in heresy and mistrust . . .
IT MAY NOT BE WITHIN US TO WANT OR love what is foreign. Oriental alchymists teach that the body resembles a state with the diaphragm comparable to a palace, legs and arms to boundaries or suburbs, bones and joints to officials, blood to ministers, breath to the populace. But I wonder. Also, it is said they prescribe an elixir of potable gold, claiming this will suffuse interior organs to insulate us against mortal requirements because gold does neither rot nor melt although subject to lengthy burial with extensive calefaction. And I have heard they speak of one anointed except for the soles of his feet with the Grand Catholicon which inhibits decay, who would not walk but rode softly, expecting by this deception to swindle fate. Nevertheless he fell sick, dying from corruption after nine centuries. It seems improvident to denounce or mock unfamiliarities, but the heart and mind give contrary counsel.
AVICENNA ASSERTS THAT imagination exercises fearful power, sufficient to make a camel fall down groaning. I disagree while admitting that imagination is very strong, necessary to digest sensual perceptions. The fixed and jeweled stare of a toad I know to be fatal. That nubile witches enfeeble amorous men by some lascivious concentration of their gaze I do not doubt. And in Tibet the focus of thought produces demons called Egrigors. Then, too, I have observed whelps swimming upon the urine of patients afflicted with rabies—which could be simulacra swimming through iniquitous logic. How such matters precipitate in the brain I cannot be sure. I suspect that imagination might resemble a kind of Warmth or a fluctuous Light given to nervous anxiety.
I DOUBT IF the course of an injury derives from magnitude so much as the circumstances of acquisition. Under Gemini or Virgo or Capricorn very few prognoses can be favorable. Similarly, wounds contracted past noon are less auspicious than matinal injuries. But the intent of sidereal influence baffles us. By what principle does moonlight draw interior fluids outward, yet stimulate a salubrious warming within? Often the physician is reduced to wonder.
WHETHER NIGHT-FALL SHOULD be traced to a declining sun or to the ascendant stars of night I am unable to say, nor if occasional planets could be shaped like cucurbits, nor if aboriginal populations have descended from Adam, nor if Eve acquired her genitals by drinking snow-water after the fall from grace—as those people of Carinthia are thought
