AS SURELY AS Jehovah charged miners with the onerous task of purifying ore so that mineral wealth may be extracted, so did He enjoin each alchymic physician to reconstitute Mankind. Once the body becomes reconciled with the spirit, delivered of gross impurity, Man will come striding forth to stun the universe with his eminence. Who could dispute his legacy were he to embrace the morning star?
THE SIGNATURE BENEATH which each hermetic novitiate labors we say is the Cross. This must be true because Man resembles an infant that was privileged to stand upright, surmounting what has determined him in order to observe and to approve his own validity. Therefore, Man makes himself subservient to that lacerating solitude which follows upon perception. Accordingly he feels anguish throughout his life, and dying takes precedence over complacent animals. Such is the Crown he was given, such is the Sceptre.
WE ASK WHAT becomes of religious prophets in our impious age. We recall how twelve merchants from Genoa sailing past Tunis wondered at the radiance that issued from a pyramid of rock, so forthwith put ashore and discovered the bloody corpse of Raimundus Lullius, stoned by Mahometans for whom the message of Christ’s apotheosis aroused unspeakable rage and loathing. That a man be right or wrong at his judgment seems no matter, he makes a beacon either way.
FROM THE ORBIT of the firmament we watch lights cast out by an astonishing hand that has determined their course, the pace and circuit of each—which ascends or declines—because no single thing can be superior to its equivalent and each was meant to fulfill its indecipherable purpose. But as we inhabit a stationary earth oblivious to its end, with faint ideas of Genesis and listen to reverberations of faint voices, how could we not feel subject to limits, like the helpless Mussel twisting against umbilical sinew. We ask when the light of life, which is the Golden Fleece, shall diffuse its glory around the body of the seeker.
LET US NOT abbreviate the curricula of philosophy nor grind and quibble against our lot. Why suck and chew a withered globe of dreams? Rather, let us like Synesius feel gratitude that we have been endowed with two pairs of eyes, one above, one below. Let us not compare our stipend to that of the Sun, nor to pleasant exsufflations of rising planets, nor to those circuitous pathways of love and remembrance nor of moments which affront and persecute the day by ordering each gesture, none of which can we establish, since the wisest instructors of chymistry and theology and mathematics have proved unable to document their existence. False exits delude us. Thus we pause, undecided between painted openings.
THERE IS CONCEALMENT to Metaphysic, but for every science its key, earthly or unearthly, since otherwise we are lost and travel perplexed, aggrieved, solitary and disconsolate. The benefit of learning we equate with that of experience, troubled, passive yet querulous, inciting what we deplore while pursuing moderate charities, afraid and censorious, seeking disparate comfort beneath senseless tides of music, but like an empty barrel booming portentous sound.
ARE WE NOT quick to observe the beauty of an uncurled rose? Yet superior attributes manifest themselves while the form disintegrates. And much as we annotate divinity with Galen’s De Usu Partium which we consider equivalent to the philosophy of Suarez, so with a single flower do we forecast the intent and progress of universal renovation that makes up prismatic images of joy and to all changeable things their changeless inclination.
NOW THERE BE many coarse movements to earth with equivocal shapes like Egyptian tricks, or that famous river Arethusa which loses its current one place only to rise up distant. Thus the world is as it was while men reiterate their lives round about the periphery, complete with flexible judgment. So must each anagogic philosopher seeking first principles theurgically prepare himself by passing among incandescent solutions and dissolutions and ordeals with corrosive tests. Indifferent to popularity will he advance from Centricities to Extremes, visiting the Indies—both greater and lesser—by which men implicate heaven and earth, Daphne or Phoebus, considering the harmony in liberation.
NOW THE CHYMIST with his trade prepares to analyze and distil and refine occluded liquid, whereas an alchymist at his craft sets forth to direct the novice through qualified reflections, and therefore he must demonstrate how the Magnum Opus begins. At first the initiate will observe Nigredo, or retrogression, during which components are relegated to primary constituents. Next appears Rebirth, while shadows reorganize their elements. Third appears the stage of Albedo during which matter whitens. Last he observes Rubedo, symbol of finality when transcendent matter surpasses yellow—whereupon an Imperial Infant arises beneath whose aegis the bitterest dregs and sords of humanity shall be protected.
LET US SAY our novice invests the Stone with its huge reward. He would not privately hold this talent for his collection of dry appointments but commit everything to his brothers, meditating upon how he was provided a treasure among bones since he will be required to give accounts by an inflexible judge that abhors periphrastic words. And if he act properly according to his understanding, so in accordance with theirs shall others act. Now this is true, although we have neither touched, watched, nor listened to the atoms of divinity.
OPPOSED BY TWO-FOLD labors of duality, because the secret of material transmutation promises neither more nor less than spiritual regeneration, the neophyte should undertake gnomic experiments against a foundation of inconceivable anguish, lest the crucible be shattered, lest he may vaunt irrational power. Nature we liken to a Sieve
