by John Crowley
11 Salt is a central ingredient of Paracelsian alchemy – maybe Paracelsus is the “wise man” here referred to.
THE SECOND DAY
Pretty soon my path entered the forest, and it seemed to me that all nature had also been getting dressed for this wedding. The birds sang so beautifully, the young deer skipped so happily, that it gladdened my old heart, and I couldn’t help singing too:
Sweet bird, be glad, and praise your Maker!
Lift your voice, and here’s the reason:
God’s provided well for you,
Everything in its right season.
Be happy, bird, with all you have.
Are you mad at Him who made you
Just a bird and not a man?
Bird, don’t let it cause you sorrow,
Believe it’s all part of His plan.
Be happy, bird, as who you are.
How should I argue with my God
I, who crawl ‘twixt earth and sky?
As if I had the power to strike
Against the powers set on high!
Be happy, Man, as what you are.
Angry that you’re not a king?
Perhaps the fault lies in your sins.
You think God misses anything?
He knows us now, and what we’ve been.
Be happy, then, with what you have.
I sang it out from my heart, and the forest echoed, and the hills seemed to repeat the last words. I could see a sort of meadow beyond the forest, where three beautiful tall cedars1 grew, making a cool shade that looked delightful; even though I hadn’t come very far, I was weary with longing and wanted to rest there. As soon as I came close, though, I saw a tablet attached to one tree. This is what was written on it:
Hello, Stranger! If you have heard something about the wedding of the king, this is for you. The bridegroom offers you a choice of four ways, marked by us cedars. All of them will bring you to the court, if you don’t get stuck. The first is short but dangerous, leading through rocky uplands you will hardly be able to pass through. The second is longer, and winds around, but it’s plain and easy if you use your compass and turn neither right nor left. The third is the true royal highway, running through various delightful scenes and shows of the king’s, but this road has been assigned to only one in a thousand. No living man may use the fourth way: it will burn, and is for spiritual bodies only. So choose which of the three you will go by, and stick to it – because whichever you do choose is the one destined for you by unchangeable Fate, and you can’t go back without risking your life. These facts will help you, but watch out! You don’t know how much danger you are putting yourself in, and if you know of any tiny fault that puts you on the wrong side of the laws of our king, you ought to go back the way you came right now.
As soon as I read this all my joy vanished. I was singing so loud a minute ago, but now I started to worry. Because of course I could see three of the ways ahead of me and knew that it was my choice which way I went.2 I thought that if I took the rocky way I’d have a bad fall or get killed, and if I took the long way I’d wander off into byways or be delayed somehow on the great journey. I couldn’t hope I was that one among thousands who could take the royal way. I could see the fourth way too, but it was bordered with fiery blasts, and I couldn’t even come close to it. So I fretted whether I ought to just turn back, not take any of these ways. I was sure I was unworthy. There was my dream, how I had escaped from the dungeon, but how could I rely on a dream?
The birds sang so beautifully, the young deer skipped so happily, that it gladdened my old heart, and I couldn’t help singing too…
I was terribly confused, and because I was so tired and hungry I took out my bread and cut a slice of it. I hadn’t noticed a pure white dove sitting on a tree above me, who saw this and came down, very friendly, and I gladly gave her some. I was enjoying her company when a nasty black raven, her enemy, attacked her and, paying no attention to me, tried to steal her bread. The dove could only fly away south, with the raven chasing her. I was so angry and hurt for her that I chased after the raven, and without noticing I ran a good distance down one of the ways the poster described. When I had driven the raven away and saved the dove, I saw what I had done – I had already started off on a path,3 and now (supposedly) I couldn’t go back without great danger.
This was all right in a way, but what was bad was that I had left my bag and my bread at the tree and couldn’t go back and get them. In fact as soon as I turned to go that way, a wind blew me back, so strong it nearly knocked me flat – but if I just turned around and went on, nothing stopped me.
If it was going to be so hard to go back at all, I would just have to face it and go on. I got to my feet and decided I would do everything I could to get to the end of the journey before nightfall. There really were a lot of byways to choose from, but I used my compass as I’d been told to do and didn’t budge from the Meridian Line of that road, even when the way was so rugged and impassable that I could hardly find it. I kept thinking about the dove and the raven, but I couldn’t figure out what they had meant. At last I could see, on a high hill, an imposing gate. I lit off toward it, though it was a long way from where I was and well off the path, because the sun was already setting behind the hills and there was nowhere else around there I might spend the night. I’d been allowed to blunder along wasting time until at last I saw this gate, but maybe I was meant to reach it.
It turned out to be a truly magnificent royal portal, all carved with figures and symbols, every one of which (I learned later) had a particular meaning. Above all this was a pretty large tablet that said If you have not been invited, go away! and other things that later I was told I shouldn’t reveal. Just as I stepped in, a person in a cloak of sky-blue came out. I gave him a friendly hello, and he returned the greeting, which was gratifying, but then he immediately demanded my invitation. I was so glad to have remembered to bring it! I certainly might have forgotten it – this person would later tell me that many others had.
He read my letter and not only smiled in satisfaction but bowed low.
“Come in, come in, my brother!” he said. “You’re certainly a welcome guest to me. Please, please tell me your name!”
I was very surprised at this welcome and said that I was a Brother of the Red Rose Cross. Now it was his turn to look surprised, and amazed, and glad.
“My brother,” he said then, “do you have anything that you can use to buy a ticket?”4
“Not much,” I said, “but if you see anything I have that you want, please take it.”
He looked me over and at length chose the water bottle I carried. In exchange he gave me a gold token which had nothing on it but the two letters S.C.5 “When it turns out to be useful to you,” he said with feeling, “please remember me.”6
I asked him how many guests had already got in, and he told me and apparently out of sheer friendliness gave me a sealed letter which he said I should give to the next porter inside. Night had come on while we stood together there, and now suddenly a huge beacon was set on fire on the tops of the gates, the outer and the inner, so that anyone still on the way would hurry to get in.
I could see that the path leading from this gate to the castle gate was bordered by walls and planted with fruit trees. Lanterns were hung on every third tree, and a beautiful young woman, also dressed in sky-blue, was moving down the avenue lighting the candles in the lanterns with a glorious torch. It was so amazingly beautiful to watch that I found it hard to get going; finally, though, I thanked the kind porter and went on. I really wanted to know what the letter said that he had given me, but I had no reason to mistrust him and I went on to the second gate.
Like the first gate, this one was covered with mystic symbols, and had a tablet on it which said Give and you shall receive. Right under this gate was a lion, chained up, very large and frightening, who rose up when he saw me and gave a terrifying roar.7 That woke up the second porter, who was lying asleep on a marble slab there.
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“Don’t be afraid,” he said, and he shooed away the lion. With my hand shaking, I gave him the letter the first porter had given me, and when he read it he too regarded me with great respect.
“Welcome, a warm welcome to the man I have waited a long time to see!” he said.
He took out a token too, as the first had, and asked if I had anything to buy it with. I had nothing left but my twist of salt, which he accepted very gratefully. The token he gave me also had only two letters on it, S.M. I was just about to ask him what this and the other token meant when a bell began ringing in the castle.
“Run! Run!” the porter told me, “or else everything you’ve done so far will be for nothing!” Already the lights above were going out. I ran so fast that I couldn’t hear what else he said. The same girl who had lit the lights was now racing behind me putting them out, and I never would have been able to see the way except for the light of the torch she carried. I just barely made it through the last gate – I was right next to her as she went in, and the gate slammed shut behind me so fast that a part of my coat was caught in it – I had to leave the coat behind, because I couldn’t get the porter to reopen the gate, not for me and not for the others I could hear outside calling to be let in – because (he said) he had given the keys to the young person, who now went off with them into the court beyond.
So there I was, inside the castle gatehouse, which as I looked around seemed so richly decorated and bejeweled that it simply couldn’t be equaled. On either side of the door to the castle was a pillar, and on each stood a figure with an inscription: one was smiling, and his sign said “Congratulations!” and the other, who was sad and hooded, had an inscription that said “Condolences!” All of it was so mysterious and weird that I didn’t believe the smartest man on earth could have deciphered it, but one day I myself (God willing) am going to explain it all and tell the world.
Within this gate was a fellow who asked me, again, to give my name, which was written down this time in a little vellum book with other names of those who were to be sent in to the Bridegroom. Here I finally was given the true guest token, which was smaller than the other two but much heavier. On it were only the letters S.P.N. Besides this I was given a new pair of shoes, because the floor of the castle there was polished and shining marble. My old shoes I was to give away to a crowd of poor people who, I now saw, were sitting by the gate very patiently and quietly.8 I gave away my shoes to an old man, and then two pages brought me into a small room, where I was asked to sit down on a bench. They stuck their torches into two holes in the wall and left.
I was alone. After a time I heard a noise, and what seemed to be a couple of men stumbled into the room and bumped into me, though I couldn’t see anyone. I had to put up with their bumping and shoving, since I couldn’t see where they were. “Please don’t do that,” I asked, but then somehow I perceived that actually they were two barbers, and so I sat patiently and waited for them to do as they liked. One of them (I still couldn’t see anyone) very gently cut the gray hair from the top of my head, though it was left long on my forehead and around my ears.9 I have to say this weird encounter was very upsetting, because they kept shoving me so hard, and I couldn’t see them, and I could only think that God was repaying my idle curiosity by letting me fail at everything.
But now the invisible barbers carefully gathered up all the cut-off hair and carried it away with them. The two pages came back in and laughed at me for being frightened. They had only spoken a few words to me, though, when a little bell rang.
“That’s the signal for everyone to assemble,” they said. “Let’s go!”
I followed the two of them along halls and corridors, through door after door, and up winding stairs, until we came into a great hall. A huge number of invited guests were gathered there, and they were of all sorts – kings, princes, emperors, noblemen, but also many men and women of every class, rich and also poor. I was shocked. What a fool you are, I told myself – you’ve gone and undertaken this journey, with all its toil and trouble, and look now – you know a lot of these folks very well and have never thought very highly of some of them, to tell the truth, and here they all are, and you with all your prayers and your begging just barely got in!
Well, that was the Devil talking, and as best I could I tried to just pay attention to what was going on. People I knew were coming up to say hello.
“Brother Rosencreutz!” said one. “You here too?”
“Yes, yes,” I said, “helped to get in by the grace of God.”
They all laughed at this, as though it was funny to credit the grace of God with such a trivial thing. We swapped stories about how we’d all got here, and it appeared that most of them had had to take the worst way and clamber over the rocks. We were called to the tables then by trumpets, though we could see no trumpets, and the crowd all hurried to get seats as high up as they thought they deserved, so I ended up at the last seat left in the lower-most table with some fairly seedy characters.10 The two pages who’d seen to the cutting of my hair came in, and one of them said Grace very beautifully, so well that it made my heart glad. Some of the bigmouths though ignored the two, and winked and made faces and vulgar gestures behind their hats.
Food was brought in, and everyone was served, and plates and cups came and were taken away, as if each of us had his own waiter, though no one at all could actually be seen. Those comedians around me, liberated by the wine, started bragging and telling tales of their supposed achievements; one had done this wonderful thing, this other one something better, the stupidest and most vulgar talking loudest. Ugh! When I remember the impossible deeds and absurd business I heard them talking about, I just want to vomit. They wouldn’t stay in the seats they’d got hold of but went around squeezing in next to the nobler guests and telling lies about deeds that neither Sampson nor Hercules could have done. This fellow’s ready to take the world off Atlas’s shoulders, that one’s going to leash Cerberus and bring him out of Hell. They went on and on, and the great lords were so naive, or the liars were so bold, that they got away with it! Now and then one would get his knuckles rapped with a knife, but they paid no mind, and if one of them did something like filch somebody’s gold chain, they’d all try similar tricks. Oh, one of them could see the Ideas of Plato, another could number the atoms of Democritus, and more than one knew the secret of perpetual motion. I suppose some of them were clever enough, but they thought much too highly of themselves. One tried to persuade the rest of us that he could actually see the invisible servants who waited on us, and might have been able to convince us if one of those waiters hadn’t smacked him right in his lying muzzle – after which he quieted right down, and others around him went as silent as mice.
Some of the men near me I had respect for. They behaved themselves and didn’t brag. They admitted that the mysteries of Nature were great and they themselves were small, and I was glad of that, but the whole loud mess made me almost regret I’d ever come here. These ill-bred braggarts crowding the high table when I was seated so low made me squirm, what with one of those same so-and-so’s mocking me for a fool right in my face. The thing is, I had no idea then that there was a further gate to go through; I thought this was the wedding itself, and that it would go on like this, this humiliation that I didn’t think I deserved at all. The Bridegroom or the Bride should have invited some other fool than me! Well, that’s what this bad world can do to simple hearts – though it did occur to me that, really, this harassment was just a part of that “lameness” that I’d experienced in that dream the night before. But as the uproar went on, this thought only made me feel worse, because there were plenty of people here boasting about their supposed visions and trying to make us believe their lying dreams.
A soft-spoken gentleman was seated next to me, and I overheard him talking intelligently about many matters. Now he turned to me.
“What do you think, brother?” he said. “If someone were to come teach those blockheads how to behave, would he be listene
d to?”
“Certainly not,” I said.
“The world’s determined to be cheated,” he said, “and can’t listen to those who want to help. Look at that boaster there, those ridiculous diagrams and foolish notions he’s trying to win people over with. Or those with the just-invented mysterious-sounding terms. Trust me, the time’s coming when their masks will be pulled off, and everybody will see the hucksters11 behind them. Maybe then what’s pooh-poohed now will be respected again.”
While he was speaking, the uproar worsened; but then all of a sudden music began, more solemn and moving than any I’d ever heard. Everyone fell silent and waited to see what would happen next. The music was made by a vast consort of what I thought must be many kinds of stringed instruments, and the harmonies so swept me away that I sat unmoving, and no one spoke for half an hour at least – even those who tried to open their mouths got a smack from some unseen source. I wished that even if the musicians remained invisible I could at least see their instruments.
The music ceased like that, and nothing happened for a long moment, until at the doors there came a blast of trumpets and roll of drums, as imposing as if the Roman Emperor were about to appear. The doors opened all by themselves, and the noise of the trumpets grew almost unbearable. Into the hall came thousands of little candles – not people with candles but candles marching in by themselves, rank on rank. Then those same two little pages, carrying torches, brought in a lady of angelic beauty, seated on a high throne, all gilded, that moved itself. It seemed to me this was the same young lady who had lit and then put out the lights along the avenue as I came in. She wasn’t dressed in sky-blue now, but in snow-white glittering with gold, a garment so gleaming we could hardly look right at it. The pages were dressed the same, though not so bright. When the throne reached the middle of the hall and she stepped down, all the little candles bowed down to her. We all stood up, and she nodded her head to us; we too made our bows, and she began to speak in the gentlest tone: