PEOPLE HEARING THAT some alchymist could not multiply gold or has failed with his attempt to restore a sick patient—they exult, they say it could not be done. But the peasant whose crop was parched by drought, is this not identical? Only providence decides the moment when closed seeds unfurl. Now if the patient who accepts medical advice is observed to recover, it suggests that his physician was sent by God. Yet if he does not, this also is a sign. Inadequate doctors ripe with certainty abuse and ravage, whereas the initiate acquires facility through meticulous readings. I know very many things are inveighed against Theophrastus and very much I question his logic: how each skill or craft derives from God, how by faith our imagination he perfected, how sidereal effluents drip from above, and early portents signal early death—as planets shook before the crucifixion. Such sophistry gnaws against my being. I do not trust it. Yet by the magic of disciples his name persists: Alexander von Suchten, Leonhard Thurneyssen, Oswald Crall, Gerhard Dorn, Melchior Schennemann, Adam von Bodenstein and Peter Severinus—to say nothing of Fludd, Crollius, Rheticus, Faber, or the chymist Jan van Helmont. That he confounded pedagogues is established, ocean fish do not seek a river. Critics quaking with envy claim he brought little relief to arthritic old John of Leippa who lived then at Cromau. And John’s son Berthold, whose gross right eye he treated, went blind. Also there was a baron’s wife wracked by colic who turned epileptic because of therapies he administered. Thus they expect to count his worth, jackasses which snort and paw before the harpist, fools forgetting how frangible complexities trouble the progress of art. Judgments drift, we oscillate among rainbows.
MY THOUGHTS TUMBLE—rolling and bumping, pebbles in a tide. I know not how considerations be held inducible to reason if we are caught up by the net of love, music and flowers. What appears erroneous or doubtful may disclose its origin unwittingly since we were born at all adventure, because what fate prepares for us seldom reflects our expectation while the mind plays toward what it desires.
PERHAPS WE DO not see what we think, but as memory suggests. I have watched how moonlight prohibits leaves from stirring and how Noctambulous about his journey seeks communication with departed spirits. So the night offers access to unknown riches generous with imagining until what logic cannot teach we quickly apprehend. And I believe there is a private craft to the manufacture of dreams because this sounds reasonable, just as it seems clear how leguminous diets or a superfluity of fermented liquid may be the cause of frightening visions at midnight when responsibilities do not constrict the brain. Often it is said that eunuchs and celibates forget to dream, which I doubt, as I doubt that violations of moral authority inhibit sleep. But if so, what follows? Consider how Gabricus approached Beya as she slept, only to feel himself swallowed until the Stone of the Self withdrew. Therefore what is Beya except mercury? What is Gabricus except sulfur?
EUDOXUS HAS TAUGHT how Jupiter concealed himself, ashamed by his deformity. Then out of compassion Isis appeared and stooped to separate the entwined feet, thus restoring him both to himself and to society. Well, returning to a thing must imply that at some previous time we departed from it, consequently I wonder if we adumbrate the shape or spirit of tomorrow. Saturn tells us plainly how matter is created, annihilated and born anew because he devoured his children in order to spew them out, but where this leads I know not. I have become one that struggles at night against anonymous antagonists. I despair at insistent riddles. How does nature impetuously generate showers of frogs? Why does the carcase of a mule give birth to locusts? How precious metals be cast underground by the exhalations of rejuvenating mineral vapor I cannot explain, nor why men genuflect to shadows—toward what covenant. Hermetic nights do I consecrate to magistery, to imperative questions. I munch wort leaves. I strut forth reaping strange fields.
I HAVE OBSERVED venomous creatures crawl out from moldering festering material, dependent not upon their natural parents but necrotic waste, hence subject to fraudulent duplication by unscrupulous adepts: scorpions, maggots, slugs, hornets, red ants, spiders, midges and brendels—invidious eidolons begotten with the assistance of reflective morbidity. False mortals devoid of souls have been propagated spontaneously, figures conceived independent of terrestrial mud, fashioned from dissolute spermata—sprites and nymphs, fairies, giants, gnomes, scrats, pygmies. Priests would incriminate Beelzebub for miraculous contrivances, or Behemoth since he is the lord of blasphemies, or Isacaaron and Leviathon which are agents of lust and pride. It is true that satanic deputies could be responsible, but I have seen crafty barbers extract bloodied glass shards from the distended bellies of groaning patients or sticks with clumps of hair, and needles and ivory buttons. How often I see common motives serve uncommon events.
INNUMERABLE ENIGMAS WE attribute to Satan and call them his handiwork which are but consequences of natural philosophy, such as Alexander’s Pillars that are a monument to ambition,
