Alchymic Journals

by Evan S. Connell

  WE HAVE BEEN taught that when a man travels with darkness he need not feel despair, no more than one bathed in light, because both shall advance according to their preference. And there is a wheel which God directs or keeps in motion by multifarious signs while comets upon intersecting courses conspire to notify men of the future, although their paths diverge. Te Deum laudamus.

  NO DOUBT WE wander apart from inclinations, imagining our lives as furnaces of empyrean flame both incorruptible and inextinguishable whose virtuosity flows from the spirit, therefore what is annealed must be empty in the marketplace. Van Suchten reminds us of how novices that lust toward gold will pollute their senses by coveting what none can acquire, which means that our least hope of satisfaction is illusory.

  I KNOW THAT the highest mountain will be that which rests upon the deepest fundament, thus each alchymic novitiate looks to exceeding subventions. And since he was awarded this middle position between earth and heaven, so must he secure the best ground of hope for humanity’s development from a limited estate to one more exalted. Now, it is clear that from an onion sprout we do not harvest an apricot nor a walnut nor a cabbage head, nor anything except an onion. Thus we look to uncoagulate gold—which we call the habitat of mercury. Ecce signum.

  WITHOUT UNDERSTANDING WE know what we seek. Allegories perfect in rectitude, Christian oracles, dew from the point of a leaf. Thus do we enter the Castle to advise pilgrims on their quest, denounce false prophecy, persevere at sublimation, encourage dead trees to flower—declaring our great search with parable or sign. So by this jointure would we reconstitute those seven immaculate circles of Paradise.

  WE WOULD NOT adopt the Devil’s black-on-yellow livery nor commit evil on roof-tops. Threats, laments, cries of murder or abuse of any sort—this does but encourage our easement. Crippling punishment, censure—so much seems our messuage since what has been destined for superiority comes dressed in misreport. And all notice of accomplishment we withhold until a propitious instant, lest we dissipate our office with faint hope of restitution.

  NOTHING DO WE covet save the ineffable distillate of radiance achieved through multiplication of the subtle from the gross. Yet we do not divulge our procedure, which would be illogical since hieratic knowledge acquired by the obtuse or insensate could not benefit our holding. This wealth that we accumulate was intended to remain perpetually indescribable and ethically incommunicable. Enlightenment should be kept from avaricious sellers or buyers, knavish mercenaries that hope to mortgage humanity’s consignment. Why? Because no dividend shall accrue by distributing hermetic valuables. Were such administration advised, all is lost. Instead, we provide mystic instruction ornamented by allusion and augury and metaphor. Why is this? Because of a world we find enwrapped with obscurity. Dominus illuminatio mea.

  WE HAVE BEEN taught how endless rivers do not fill to the lip a bottomless bowl, nor should perishable teachers anticipate immortality. Hence, we disregard gasconades of expectation and wait on the presiding animus within, laboring to complete that craft which common chymists leave unfulfilled. The seed prefiguring regeneration would we withdraw out of base lead. Granted the beneplacit of our God, shall not morning be made but evening also?

  SINCE MAN IS Executive, epitome of the universe, encompassing within his spirit every principality and kingdom, we consider all things feasible. So we look to man as the supreme retort, an alembic, a cucurbit within which fermentation will occur and thoughts be distilled. Accordingly we mean to crystallize, to dissolve and to ferment and convert, to project, to purify. Thus the first step is calefaction of dross whereby we elevate lead toward that fulfillment which proceeds from annihilation of the self. And this may be achieved with the aid of remedial art so long as man governs the earth, however limited his body, which is why we look to each meridian.

  TO THE APPRENTICE disavowing telluric life through malice or indifference, no success is conceivable. Nor should talent compensate for one that hesitates while regenerating his soul. Truly are we advised by the philosophist to extract and hold within a cup that rare tincture, since at length it is given provided the supplicant prove worthy. But if we would succumb to false magistery, thirst or blindness may ensue. Adamantine walls separate Neophyte from Adept and roiling seas intervene, lest a novice set foot on iridescent sand.

  WOULD A MAN who owned a goose agree to pluck it and cook it, hold it up to his neighbor’s teeth and wipe away the grease? Assuredly not. Then what alchymist should encourage the lame or lead the blind? We think no seminarian depending openly on his senses was meant to profit from the puissant magistery of intuitive art, a subject wise men considered too precious for public expenditure. Nor is there benefit for sectarians, idolators, fanatics or dilettantes. Adepts avow that ancient riddles become two-edged instruments which carve out dainties for reverent initiates, yet slash the thumbs of greedy fools. Are not our lives varied and manifold and mightily surpassing measurement? Truly does Horatius say we have not been ordered to know everything. Nec scire fas est omnia.

  PERFECT APPREHENSION OF mortal affairs was not bequeathed us since the objects of our sublunary world continually change. Yet I think all concepts and substances must be harmoniously balanced. How else could we justify pyramids of office and of class and of rank? By itself every microcosm responds for an entirety, which enables us to cross toward the next. Matters interweave to separate afresh, blooming, flowering, commingling, mixed and unmixed. Why should not the lectern become an altar?

  IF, AS WE are taught, the earth was but recently formed, Man must be incomplete, destined to undergo three metamorphoses. Accordingly each neophyte seeks his place on the Catena Aurea, that resplendent chain of metaphysical theosophers descending from Ianna the Mesopotamian to Orpheus, Persephone, Odysseus and to our Lord. But what of myself? What of me, Lord Jesus? When shall I behold the tutelary angel? Swollen with desire yet denied Thy privilege, I become arrogant in my dejection. Still I look up to the high vault of Christianity.

  I TAKE THE cross surmounted by the rose to be the heraldic device of heretics, therefore Rosicrucians must be disciples of Martin Luther despatched to promulgate this most noxious and abominable faith. Abbé Gaultier has preached the subject. I wonder that men crouch behind such palisades of ignorance. Mounted upon lame donkeys they go galloping after the wind. Their spirits must be twisted, lapped in lead, dry cordage. See them flutter over books. Some believe the teeth of Jesus Christ were exhibited in Jerusalem beside a thumb of the Holy Ghost, a phial of St. Michael’s sweat, a gleam from that star followed by three Orient kings to Bethlehem. How are men induced, age after age, to confirm and reiterate unspeakable falsehood? I myself ask not where heaven stands. How could I demand the presence of my Lord?

  BECAUSE EVERYTHING FLOWS toward us from a single fountain with each compounded of primordial essence, it must follow that all stand related—all must be conjoined materially and spiritually, while dissimilarities that possibly exist or appear to exist between animate and inanimate entities must result from divergent growth. Yet where is the cause of ontogeny? Bernardino Telesio encourages us to inquire not through recapitulating sterile argument but employing the logical use of natural senses toward our surrounding—if heaven and earth be half-synonymous. And that being so, what choice have men but to praise their benefactor? Tullus Hostilius spurned his gods, only to recant when distraught. I wonder how God contrives to love those abjuring faith.

  THROUGH MEDITATION WOULD we become visible confidants of God, of involute mystery proceeding not from evident impressions, as we have seen the astral spirits of leaves brought to life out of ashes, so in time we may be likened to Christian apostles. And therefore I think that with the highest causes some exuberance of power must be present, just as the mystic transfiguration of a silk-worm holds within some enlistment to baffle reason, diverting the mind of an observer from philosophy to divinity.

  PROVIDENCE SUPPLIES OUR refuge, it provides a sanctuary upon which we depend, guiding our thought past egregious misapprehe
nsion by directing us gently toward the house of our Creator, to whom we appeal like thirsting animals gathered by the mighty dispensation of a limitless ocean. Yet how should the sweet blessing of divinity be limited to a restricted universe? Is not the eye of God attentive to His inimitable work? Was not all intuitively foreseen by an omniscient workman who makes no mistake? Pythagoras endeavors to persuade us how the earth resembles a planet similar to the moon where infinite mercy rules by virtue of which things frame their environment, holding shadows or vestiges or traces of indecipherable nature. I myself travel crookedly, questioning much. How can it be with men that no two lift similar prayers?

  DO WE NOT hang and tremble upon the hour? Yet in all things have we found theology, though the heart be mailed with oak and bronze and we have admired fruit pendulous on the bough. I believe holy indulgence coincides with mortal aspiration since we do not mount to heaven by a ladder, but we inquire and ask what should be resolved while the penitent abstains from dreaming, while the river slides and rolls.

  WHAT IS MORE prophetic than lost equilibrium? I have seen gold branch within the aludel. I have watched the Princess wearing a coronet of foliage squeeze milk from her breast to nourish our Regal Infant. And I have observed the Elder approach. Like a dilatory Franciscan that would lie abed while his brothers’ scythes sweep back and forth to gather a ripening harvest, so have I lain wrapped in conjuration. Apparitions vanish, strange fictions imprint their image upon a heart without consent. Therefore do I gaze upward to my shelter, my refuge. When shall I visit the heavenly city of Sarras?

  HOW SHOULD ONE request admittance by that alabaster gate were he not refashioned? Alchymic masters teach that with a purification of Gold we imply mankind regenerate. Silver, although it is precious and able to resist fire, undergoes less evolution, hence it is subject to corrosion by sulphur or nitric acid—which explains why we liken this rare metal to regenerate humanity at its lowest period of development. Dull and ponderous Lead depicts the unregenerate.

  LET US SAY natural forces could realign mercury with sulphur to make new minerals, then why could not magisterial artists duplicate such feats of transmutation within their alembics? Similarly, the mind and body of man consisting of loathsome effluent would shrivel, corrode and turn black—reappearing anew, incorruptible as gold. But we may no more expect a man to be what he is not than we may direct a pine to be an elm or copper to be silver, not unless both have been subducted to the quintessence which we know as Protyle. And upon this consanguinity we teach the mystical resurrection of Osiris, of Buddha, of our Christian Lord.

  AS THE CHIP of Lodestone suggests perfection across two poles, so does every spark of fire embrace the generating principle of its elements, thus fragments of existence proportionately live continent and fulfilled. Just as a man united with God becomes divinely empowered, at liberty to act or to meditate as he chooses, being no more than a palimpsest of his deity in consonance with reason, similarly our Stone appropriates to itself the imperial task of transmutation from what it was into what it promises. At that hour shall Mankind stand forth to the Antipodes burnished with truth, surpassing excellence. Ultima Thule shall prove no limit and stars take up positions as they did when the world unrolled. And I am content to wait and praise the interior shape of things—vapor virtutis Dei, Ruach Elohim—which brooded over the face of waters.

  IT IS TRUE that I am a poor novitiate and truly is my faith compared to a Hammer. So does my faith resound. So do I labor to defeat the sightless figure inhabiting my cell, struggling against duality. Nineteen years have I fought without success against myself. Like the creature Ourobouros annulling itself as circles round, I am become too young for death. Therefore I ask why shapes are sacrificed to resurrection more valuable than at their beginning, since the center is a circumference toward which all journeys tend.

  WHO KNOCKS? WHO? Some novice wearing a black skull-cap to hide both ears cropped in the pillory for coinage? Some lapsed or untidy pilgrim that digged up a corpse by Walton-le-Dale and stole to practice his necromantic art? From the plenitude of human souls I would inquire how many are not deformed.

  Rumors of a wandering magus conceived in heresy . . .

  FROM SCOTLAND TO GRIMY ENGLAND, from Portugal to Bohemia, from muddy Palestine to Germany pseudo-alchymists quarrel, boasting stupendous effects even as they pump the bellows. O yea! And we have met imposters more agile than roaches, desirous as Frenchmen hawking fragrant packets of crystal drenched with rose-water. But of that Great Magisterium—glistering, saffron-colored, faultless—slender evidence. Like some harsh powder brought from India or liquid resin exuded out of evergreens, iridescent while opaque, pliant yet more frangible than glass, simultaneously transparent, nacrous and malleable, it bathes in the light of planets by whose jurisdiction imperfections change.

  WE DOUBT THAT gold-weighted quartz responds to a quivering rod, or that precipitate milked from macerated butterflies spontaneously glows at midnight. Victims of abundant phlegm, does heavy rain inundate their dreams? We suspect not. Also, we doubt Sendivogius for asserting that concentrated bismuth expands beneath the rising moon. Indeed, sophistical rhetoric floats on the surface of our craft like froth upon fresh wine. Much we find gilded, varnished and bundled up in gaudy tissue flecked with mica to deceive the ignorant.

  O, WE HAVE been advised that in Egypt lives a rare bird yclept Ibis which walks up to stroke the Crocodile with its feathers so the monster squats paralyzed. And gossip of one that rises chittering to fly off when it sees the Horse. We hear further about a prodigious stone named Magnes brought over to Europe from an Eastern Isle which can know if a man’s wife be chaste, since when it is thrust underneath her pillow while she sleeps if she has been faithful she will begin efforts to embrace him, but if not she must kick at her husband and cause difficulty. Also, we have heard much about wonderful jugglers from India that have perfected the queer deceptive art for gathering up and applying formulas which make shrubs spring out of soil by manipulation through evocative gestures with their hands, but how they accomplish this Magic escapes our understanding. Yea, we do give ourselves to false prophets dictating marvels like fox-hounds that yelp after false echoes. Meister Archytus would remind us how discoveries materialize with ease to those that explore rightly, so how should a man control any substance unless by fixed attention to its behavior he deduce its law.

  HAVE WE NOT found copper counterfeited by varnishing iron with laminar malachite? Indeed. Likewise we simulate gold by obducting silver with white of egg. Surfaces heighten, true, but what endures cannot be subtracted. Accordingly we meddle with nothing out of kind, be this sulfur or salt or anything of such imposition. To the inimitable elixir alien matter appears reprobate. Do not dissemble by deceit nor misleading discourse.

  NOW WHAT? THIS Muslim yclept Rhases, born Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Zakariyya, explains how quasi-physicians root out snakes from a patient’s nose by thrusting into the nostril a gilded probe to bring forth blood with a dead worm of sliced liver. And they know how to draw water from an ear and slimy insects from teeth—O, they do this! Aye! And they will wring mucus out of interior body parts and draw up great bladder-stones, all having shifted by their hands that which they pretend to extract. Who would believe such a thing?

  WE AVOW BY man’s hindpart we have met talkative swindlers willing to traffic in posteriority for a moment’s wealth, charlatans that make up sparkling pyramids instead of funding ancient verities—mischievous spirits that choose to engage innocents with error by undermining the edifice of sound philosophy. So the earth whirls and rings about us to make its great noise, yet planting-time and harvest time have each their due return.

  LO! WHAT NEXT? An erudite Jesuit by name Athanasius Kircher notifies us how some Stranger visiting a youthful aspirant at his workshop dictated the recipe we seek! And graciously did he labor to help produce a congealing Oil that forthwith separated, reducing itself to dust while swiftly converting three hundred pounds of quicksilver into fresh hermetic gold
which could not through any test be adulterated or subdued—whereupon this benefactor departed, albeit we know not why. Then did our novice experience ambitious pains like midnight with a vacant bellie and set out to recapitulate the process. O yea! Woe! Since next we hear he delivered up his inheritance to questionable art. Were not men hatched from unlucky eggs? And among us how many are not insidiously nudged or buggered by that Advocate who takes such joy in blurring and smearing and contaminating sublunary affairs?

  RICALMUS PREPARES US his catalogue of farts and stratagems practiced upon the unwary by satanic agents with dishonest gestures and seductive appointments. O, it is true! Vipers lurk betwixt and behind green leaves. Hence are we reminded that as the bewitching vagabond appears most innocent, there should we walk most circumspect.

  MAGISTER SOLOMON TRISMOSIN discourses in Aureum Vellus how he encountered this wizard of secretive temperament that called himself Flocker and used a measure of lead fixed with brimstone to make it first rigid, then fluid, at last turning the metal soft as wax, and so contrived to draw out eight ounces of excellent silver. Afterward said Flocker went tumbling down a mine-shaft leaving for his legacy manifold notes and regrets, but about the process not much. So little develops by chance while too much exhibited as sacrosanct we mistrustfully deride, even as we suspect our Moon does not sail east—although clouds rush westward across her smiling visage. Well, Anno Domini 1598 from Rorschach comes a most grave manuscript alleging that by fortune’s grace our Solomon fell heir to Flocker’s heroic recipe and betook himself in travel about Asia where he was identified centuries later! O, mercy! Could Solomon live so long? We think not. Much we dispute, more we doubt. Perjuries blow off the wind, sapphires suck poison out of tumors, and as comets oppose their tails to the Sun we do grow evasive against majorities.