What should the answer be?
Minotaur. Cockatrice.
WAX melts on flagstone hearth,
gold overflows cupel. Chrysopoeia triumphant!
Trinity transmuted—blistered sand,
emerald glass. Centaur gallops,
resurgent. Alembic sings of tomorrow
and tomorrow and tomorrow.
EXOLUTION. Extasis.
Liquefaction.
Palingenesis invisible, indivisible.
LIGHT the queen of colors.
Furies ascendant,
cunning spirits play across centuries.
Was the Magisterium to blame
or those that sought it among false principles?
THE needle of Das Narrenschiff
does not waver. Out of each the next.
NEITHER beginning nor end
has Ourobouros.
TRUMPET. Drums.
Pike. Halberd. Torches
advance. Knight wearing golden armor
hesitates, bloody gauntlet lifts golden visor.
Rumors of a wandering magus conceived in heresy and mistrust that would resurrect us before the gates of Prague . . .
WE ARE TOLD THAT TIME IS A BRISK WIND bringing forth each hour some fresh proportion, and as our thoughts hourly change and narrow and differ without respite and are kept secret from all, so it happens with Time. Yet who is able to calculate the wind’s edge, fathom such mystery and purpose?
THERE MUST BE something within us surpassing reason, which goes by several names and is the cause or source of controversy, enabling us to discern spiritual truth. Yet we find shadows cast up from imagination which coalesce, and intersect, and divide so that we cannot rest but lie bewildered.
ALL THINGS HAVE been provided, they grow and flourish unassisted. Hence each mineral may choose its shape as does each flower. But if a man expects to employ or benefit from natural goods he cannot be complacent. We acknowledge that Iron is Iron, yet not by itself does it change into an axe or a knife or a ploughshare. Similarly, Corn would not choose the shape of bread without human guidance. Thus we assess each product.
FROM THE PERCEPTIBLE being of a thing, its nature manifest through sensible properties, haply we recognize its intent. Yet high matters arch on Creation’s order, so do they oppose confident exposition. Now whereas the purpose of vegetables, herbs, insects, animals and birds is not difficult to surmise through voice, texture, pigment or shape, humanity’s direction resists exposure. Hubris intervenes.
THAT THE CORPUS of Man be diversely mathematic, we admit, since when he stands upright with his arms outstretched and his heels together he makes an equilateral triangle, the mediety of which coincides with his genital organ. And if a circuit were to be inscribed from this point touching the apex of the skull with the arms positioned diagonally so that their fingertips meet the perimeter, and if the feet be separated by an interval equivalent to that which separates the head from the fingertips, such a circle might be divided into five equal parts. Now this we comprehend, being prepared to demonstrate, but of innumerable suppositions that we hear professed which bewilder and horrify us, we plead much ignorance. Man is the vas insigne electionis, he incorporates all. Therefore was he meant to be the stronghold of discovery and thus does he become the fittest subject for alchymic labor. He is the alembic supplied with precious material whose superiorities and inferiorities we would segregate. What is he if not a constellation suffused with strength to ignite the evening? Why has he been fenced with grace if not to rule the stars?
IT IS STATED that Man was compounded out of astral dust since his intelligence refracts light from many sources that furnish him. Still, disparate assemblies reiterate how few have found God, seeing only a distant reflection that reflects some other. Recipes for glory and wealth conspire against him, misadventures and schemes coalesce to debauch his patrimony and make him an unstable thing amid the redolence of moving flesh so that he languishes, bewildered by musical notes, ceremonies and reputations, profit and loss, so that he persists in elementary views of what he thought promised. And all of these dispositions conjoin to agitate his spirit until he appears to be a mute addressing others ignorant of his language who seeks refuge in fearful pantomime—a charade of sighs and grimaces.
IF WE LOOK upon Man as a little world, or Microcosm, being drawn from planets and stars and earth and other elements, we propose that he must be quintessential. But why? Because four integers constitute the materiate world, accordingly he must be fifth and tends upon what destiny was implanted by nature at his conception.
WE HEAR THAT as our God undertook to provide excellence and beauty and peace He perceived nothing more liberally endowed than Himself. Therefore, conceiving with His mind a substantive universe, He imagined it to be no different from His own Self. Therefore, humanity occupies a sphere coexisting among a plethora of others which are identical in majesty, harmony and indivisibility.
NOW, IF WE assume that we are shaped after God’s image we cannot help but ask upon consequences. Were we found rational or irrational, and to what cause? Say we discard logic while genuflecting to assurance, what legacy waits? Which passage leads from a labyrinth of error? Citrinity fails to enlighten us nor how the wind stands in Greece, so we proceed intermediate between heaven and hell. Ours is futile dust made with ravening flesh and soft clothes, a perishable morsel. Thus we decline, recreants ignoring intellect, tumbling into earth’s receptive lap.
WE HEAR IT claimed for Light that because we cannot exploit through number, measure or weight the tenuity of its elements, and because through chymistry we neither catalogue its form nor trap its essential spirit, Light describes a superiority to rival greatness. We offer this without angust metaphysic, we order no candle for inspection, arguing that the highest realm of ideas and archetypes is but a shadow, a semblance of beatific glory. Then how much more so is our immutable and faeculent world, the meager image of predominance.
DIVERS INSTANCES OF transcendent things may be observed to succeed out of others while requiring the annexation of nothing extraneous, such as milk coagulated into whey or butter or cheese, or purple grapes becoming red wine, or the determined moth which
