by John Crowley
—It was my father’s, the Emperor said. I found it today.
—He was a great and a good man, said John Dee, and I honor his memory.
Was it an illusion of the unlit room, or did he see the Emperor’s eyes grow moist?
—It is too hard for my understanding, he said, opening the book. But if you tell me I will listen. Take wine.
The Chamberlain poured from the huge ewer, and retired. They were alone. John Dee, who had attended the Queen of England and taught her alchemy, who had laid petitions before King Stephen of Poland, who had put into Maximilian’s hand a book dedicated to him in friendship as well as duty, was silent for a time, abashed: not by the presence he stood in, but by the unseen ones, whose hard message was his to speak.
He began to speak of his childhood. His father Roland had been a servant of Henry of England. He had grown up in London near the river. He had seen extraordinary things in youth, and had heard the voices of intelligences he could not see. Not any longer; not since he had reached man’s estate. Yet he had not forgotten that everywhere, in every atom, in every region of the air, kindly ones observe us, wish for our welfare, speak on our behalf before the Throne of God.
Now they had come to speak to him directly. Not to him, though; no, he could not hear them, his ears were stoppered and his eyes were blind; but by the grace of God he had found a friend, and with him he had received the angels’ news, and written it all down in twenty-eight books. Those books he had brought with him to this City, and the Emperor was invited to study them. He, like Dee, would see what they intended, what great climax the world approached, and what must now be done to meet it, and to make a new world, better than the old.
He did not hesitate to tell Rudolf that in order to realize the angels’ gifts and promises, the Emperor must turn away from his sins, and repent. Christ did not fear to say so to the mighty, and speak truth to power; and Doctor Dee’s commission was from Christ’s Angel Uriel. So he spoke. The Emperor (who had had five children by the wife of his favorite antiquary, who had neglected his duties to God and man, who had not opened his mail in a month, who wanted to die by his own hand or live forever) only regarded him, the untouched cup before him.
—I feign nothing, said the Doctor. Neither am I a hypocrite, or ambitious. I am not doting or dreaming. If I speak without just cause in this matter, I here forsake my salvation.
Unmoved, or at least unreadable (it was his Spanish upbringing, he could listen to anything without a change in his face, however his soul might be shaken), the Emperor at last arose from his chair.
—Do you, he asked, possess the Steganographia of the old Abbot of Sponheim, Trithemius?
—I do, said Doctor Dee. I copied it myself, many years ago.
—I have it. I have the Abbot’s own manuscript. Somewhere. He was a confessor of the first Maximilian, my father’s grandfather. The Steganographia tells how angels may be called. Hundreds of them.
—I tried his methods in youth, said Dee. No one came when I called. They cannot be compelled; they come when they choose. And so they did come in their time.
The Emperor clasped his hands behind his back and paced slowly. He was a shorter man than Dee would have guessed him to be, seeing him seated; his big head, the lantern jaw and beard.
—Maximilian once asked Trithemius, said the Emperor. Why can a wicked man get power over evil spirits, and force them to tell him secrets, bring him things, when a good man can get nothing out of an angel.
Doctor Dee bowed his head.
—They have been greatly generous to us, he said. They have completed my books, that I could not see to finish; they have given us other books of wisdom that the world will not empty for a thousand years. They have given us a stone of more value than any earthly kingdom.
The Emperor ceased his slow pacing.
—A stone?
—I mean a glass, said Dee. Wherein they themselves can be seen, and spoken to.
—Hm, said the Emperor. He resumed his walk, and it brought him again to the table, and the Monas.
—Can you make the Stone? he asked.
Doctor Dee knew what he meant, for he had been told that the Emperor would ask; and he gave the answer he had been instructed to give by the Angel Uriel:
—Yes, he said. With the help of God and His Angels, I can make the Stone. They have told me that I can succeed.
The Emperor fixed Dee with his hurt eyes, which could be read as doubtful, or eager, or needful, like a shy child’s: and John Dee understood why Uriel had spoken of Rudolf as he had.
—They intend you comfort, he said gently to the Emperor of all the earth. They do.
The Stone of the Philosophers and Elixir of Life is made from philosophic gold, which is gold created out of base matter by the virtue of the Stone. The only way to make the Stone is as a product of the work of making philosophical gold; and the only agent that can make such gold is the Stone. This is why the process is represented by the image of the dragon that consumes his own tail.
But the first step is to attempt gold, not philosophical but material; and the making of material gold is a simple thing.
The Earth and the world, as mother and father, make gold of baser matter, and you must do it the same way, and be mother, father, and midwife to the gold you make.
First, you must have a prima materia such as God made from nothing. Since God went right to work on this prima materia he made, and changed it by addition and division and combination to become all the things that are, you must re-create it for your work: you must subtract from some existent thing the additions of this and that which make it what it is—the earth, air, fire, and water present in their various degrees—and leave only the original ground of being, Substance naked, bland, indescribable. Any part of creation might be used—take shape-shifting Mercury, take lead, take horsepiss, they all have the same substance in them. This is why the wise workers have said the Stone lies all around us, in the air, in the street, in the field, unnoticed and precious.
So: when you have stripped away by degrees all that makes your base matter what it is, you need only add to it by degrees that which will give it the qualities of gold: that is, yellowness, nobility, softness, the proper weight, tastelessness, and all else gold has. How? You must put into it a seed, as a man puts a forming seed into the hot formless chaos within a woman’s womb, around which collects a human child. Gold grows from a seed projected within the chaos or gas or nameless Substance you have made of nameable matter.
In the same way gold has grown for ages in the mountains from which men dig it: from a seed planted in the dark womb in the beginning of the world. Your gold will grow the same, only quicker, for you will force it, as a gardener forces plums in his greenhouse: force it by heat to quicken and put forth.
What seed, though?
Of all the simple hard parts of the easy quick way of making gold this is accounted the hardest. There is not much that maddened workers have not tried. Sulfur first for its yellowness, with salt to fix it to the naked body of the matter; antimony, the wolf of metals; cinnabar, the Sun’s other metal; gold itself, then make it spread somehow throughout the corpse; or some concoction of all of these and others, calcined, distilled, fermented, coagulated or incerated. Until you have the seed of projection, the work cannot be finished; it cannot even properly be commenced.
Edward Kelley had the seed of projection. It was in a stone jar stoppered with wax, a minute quantity of a reddish powder, the powder that a spirit had given him in exchange for his soul. It might have been the demon’s own concoction, made to snare him as lime snares birds; or—as Kelley thought—it might be a bit of the seed mixed within the earth at the Creation to make gold grow, which the subterranean powers had been able to catch and save.
What unclean bargaining had gone on between those earthy powers and the airy spirit that had won Kelley’s soul? It didn’t matter, for the dog-faced thing that had accompanied him for years had been foiled and banished, the angel Madimi had
won Kelley’s soul back for him: so he was twice-saved now, and could never be damned again, no matter what he did. And he still had the demon’s powder.
—Today we begin, said Doctor Dee.
The Emperor’s chamberlain Spinola had arranged that they should have the house of the Emperor’s senior physician, a Dr. Hajek (known by reputation to Doctor Dee), who was away on the Emperor’s business. The house was well-furnished for the Work, of which Dr. Hajek was a devotee; there was a sound furnace of brick, and a collection of vessels, cucurbites, retorts, alembics; there were materials in their appropriate containers, such as picric, aqua regia, Mercurius, antimony, sal cranii humani, labeled in a neat German hand, the same hand that had spelled on the walls in the German fashion proverbs, saws, and instructions concerning the Work, more distracting than helpful, as were the vessels, instruments, and rare earths, if it came to that, little of which they would need.
Firewood in quantity they had purchased and piled in the yard, sorted by size and by wood, to be used as needed to make a hotter or a slower fire, ash, oak, yew, and pine each having its own heat. John, the boy, would bring what was asked for the insatiable fire to feed on, now gorging, now fasting.
When the athenor was sealed—the great egg-shaped vessel within which the agony was to take place—Kelley took the stone jar of powder from the wallet where he kept it, and gave it to John Dee. They wondered if it should be opened now, before the Work was begun, or only at that time when it was needed. With all his heart Kelley wanted to look upon it, but he would not let Dee unseal it. No: Keep it by you, he said; wait, he said, till all the rest is done; you will know when.
After two days of ablutions and abstention, when they had attended Divine Service and adored the Host and Chalice (figure and model of all transformations) and eaten (and drunk too, in the Bohemian fashion) that Elixir of everlasting life, then the fire was lit, and the vessel put within the furnace with anxious prayers and with trepidation, as though they meant to burn alive a friend, which indeed they did mean to do. And Kelley sank to his knees before the furnace, and felt his spirit tugged out of his body toward the shut doors and the vessel within.
The Work commenced in the sign of Aries, not Aries in their own world (where it was high summer, peaches ripening against the garden wall) but the sign that the Sun now entered in the very different heavens of the world-egg, the athenor, which Doctor Dee had set like a clock at the proper hour, to run through a whole year, twelve signs, twenty-eight mansions of the Moon, thirty-six decans, three hundred sixty degrees, three hundred sixty-five days and a few hours more. John Dee calculated that the alchemical year would fit within a day and a night.
They were to spell each other in tending to the fire, but when Kelley’s time was done (Dee turned the great sand-glass to begin his own) he could not be roused. He had knelt continuously before the furnace for eight hours. Evening had come, and its airs came in at the windows. John Dee took the dressing-gown from his own back and put it over Kelley’s trembling shoulders. And knelt to watch beside him.
Matter is a shut palace. Inside, in the inmost chamber, is the King, barren, idle, without issue; black melancholy sits in his face. His arms and feet might be shackled, he might wear a crown of obsidian bound with iron bands. Or he is sick, hurt with an old wound, and refuses all treatments, despairing; or he has armed himself against enemies and friends alike, double-locked his gates, set terrible guards, and weeps alone in anger and fear deep within.
Kelley could see the towers, beyond the border of this flowery mead, over the tops of that greening wood. Set out.
A pretty way entered the wood, but then he could not see how to get out. Yew, ash, oak, and pine held him with their branches; briars plucked at his flesh (how had he come to be naked?) and fear brought tears to his eyes. Though he had been here before, and had even come this far on past journeys to this place, he could not remember what was to happen next. He looked around himself, and knew that he was lost.
Lost.
He felt a terrible thirst, and even as he felt it he apprehended a spring, coming forth in the dark wood, and a silver stream fed by it; and he knelt gasping in gratitude to drink.
When he was satisfied and raised his head, the wood appeared to him differently: not wild but ordered, paths he had not perceived before leading in four directions; along one the moon was setting, along another the sun rose. It was the first day of May. Along the sunward path he saw coming toward him a boy, each stride carrying him so far it seemed his feet were winged, or that he glided on the sun’s beams toward Kelley.
Gratitude and gladness, like the gratitude he had felt swallowing clear water. He knew this youth, who would use him kindly, as a friend: look at his smile, that cast out care and anxiety, look at his feet and hands, winged. He would guide Kelley from the wood.
No sooner had Kelley given his heart to the youth than from the dark wood around there appeared three armed men, black grinning villains, one with a net, one with a glinting knife, one with a crossbow and cruel barbed arrow. O Christ Jesus the lad did not see them, and Kelley was mute; though he screamed soundlessly, the boy came on, and the arrow pierced his white breast, Kelley felt it pierce his own at the same moment. The iron huntsman with the net threw it over the shot bird. The third tested his knife’s blade against his thumb. And as the beautiful youth twisted and struggled silently, his winged hands were cut off at the wrists, and his pale blood gushed to mingle with the silver water of the stream; and then his feet, their wings fluttering wildly and vainly; and all that time his eyes regarded Kelley with a plea, was it a plea to help, he could not, or a plea not to forget, he would not.
He lay still, amputated.
The murderers, still grinning wickedly with white teeth, bound him securely in the net and bore him up upon a pallet of oak. Kelley followed the bier, sole mourner; but when they reached the gates of the shut palace he was carrying the hurt boy in his arms. The door was sealed with a seal, they could not get in, but when Kelley looked closely he seemed to recognize the seal. Yes he knew it:
It was without its oval cartouche or container, he wondered why, till he understood that it was all around him, crater or vas Hermetis, this world, these heavens, where now the summer constellations wheeled, the sign of Gemini, linked twins, he and the boy, in the house Lucrum.
The door opened as he gazed at the seal on it.
He carried the boy (nestled now against him like a sleeping child) down corridors of flint and darkness, past sleeping guards, through cobwebbed doors. The crippled child began to whisper in his ear: Take me no farther. Free me. Free me and I will make gold for you. I will make you rich. Free me and I will grant your dearest wish.
But Kelley knew he must stop his ears to these pleadings. He carried him to the last inmost door, the farthest chamber, marked too with the seal, as all the doors had been. There the King sat stony and inert on his throne. Kelley set down the child on the cold floor before him. Here is your son.
The King rose, bewildered joy in his face. My son! The boy held up his poor limbs to his father, as though to show his hurts, or maybe to fend off the big king, who came to him weeping with open mouth in happiness and grief, tears squirting from the corners of his eyes. As he approached, his mouth opened wider. Very much wider. He came over to his son where he writhed unable to escape, gripped the boy and with his great frog’s mouth consumed him: swallowed him whole, beginning with the head. Kelley had leisure to see the great gray molars, the shining tongue like a purple whale.
Down. Inside him. The King, astonished and goggling, held his belly and gulped. He went with burdened steps, arms extended for balance like a gravid woman, to his couch. And lay down to digest.
The sun entered Leo. It was high summer. Peaches ripened against the wall of the garden in the center of the palace. In the center of the garden was a pool, Kelley could not see the bottom. In the midday the King came forth to bathe. Oh he looked fine and young, vivified by his meal, removing his robes; like Jesus with o
iled locks and soft red mouth. Kelley looked on him and knew that he was himself naked. Nymphs helped the King descend into the jeweled waters. He rolled there in delight, laving his long arms and shapely legs, rolled again, lifting his white buttocks up, but now look, when he rolls back he has begun to come in two.
Looking with sweet reassurance upon Kelley, now do you see? Now do you understand? Two. He is with his Queen, who is himself. Look (the King-Queen seems to say), I caress and kiss her, she is mine, he too is mine. The nymphs laugh and touch each other, admiring. Kelley in the hot pour of summer sun that gilds the garden feels his own prick stand, how could it not, look how lovely, conjunctio oppositorum, no King no Queen but One only, they cry aloud in their clipping and coming, the waters foam in pleasure over their nakedness, O God they have sunk thrashing beneath the roiling surface of the pool, they gurgle and spit, and then are gone.
Drowned.
Kelley stared in horror. The pool’s surface settled, steaming. The sun was cruel. Then the water stirred, seethed, as though reversing itself, and there climbed out, silver skin streaming, eyes laughing, the winged boy, unhurt, healed though wingless, whole but now tame, more loving and wiser than before.
—Come, he said, kiss me, cease weeping. It is I.
It was dawn of the second day now. The boy John was asleep. Kelley had not moved from the cushion where he knelt; though he had slumped forward like an infant asleep, his eyes were open.
John Dee put a sooty forefinger on the natal chart he had cast for the birth and growth of the matter within the world of the athenor.