Alchymic Journals

by Evan S. Connell

  TAGLA! MATHON! JOHOVAM! Eloim! Five measures of sulfur, of saltpeter seven, of hazel twigs three. Nature’s time be long, the manner of her concoction uniform. Her fire appoints our need, therefore be Gold the precious plasm. Gold be insurgent! This is helpful—wrapped in frantic or obfuscous effort—yet what do such mutterings propose? We could as readily drown flies beneath a squirt of water as interpret mystic twattle, and we inquire as skeptics what is not boxed up with fraud? Is it best to frolic in obscuranties of expression or in expressions of obscurity? Ambiguities, wool, smoaky promise. Our wits do grow stuck at one place like the dried-out bristles of last year’s varnish brush. Where does such gibberish end? The nucleus of spagyric mystery is life and the glorious key there-to is Light, whose gleaming ore the alchymist exposes. What? What? Back and forth we swim, captive trout in a barrel. From this we should borrow a magnet, or chalybs from that, Diana’s Doves from elsewhere—flats and sharps to promote confusion. Mayhap we have drifted off to sleep in Hilary’s cradle at Poictiers whence so many travel full of prayer and ceremony and bring stunned relatives, where lunatics bed down to retrieve their brains.

  WE HEAR OF peasants annually gathering upon their pilgrimage to weep outside some Bavarian chapel where six centuries past a flask of our physic Red Lion spilled and discolored the soil, so now they lift up their hands to praise what they consider miraculous. So does that reliquary holding four knuckle-bones of Ramon Lull work miracles at Mallorca while colleges founded across the continent dedicate their curricula to Ars Lulliana. And our world stands motionless since that is what the Church has taught, therefore earthquakes do not exist and tremors we experience are merely the consequence of febrile imagining. Bravo! Bravo! Let us silence the voice of commotion.

  CIRCLES WIDEN. FRIAR Bacon would convince us how this world might be circumnavigated. Aye, perhaps. Contentious scholars disagree. Yet all swear he lends the devil his brain to whet, for which he deserves excommunication. Aye, perhaps. Even so he would separate common usage from theoretical understanding, and since there is much advantage to the former he thinks it superior—which many have called the trade-mark of a plebian mind. Ourselves, we find these indivisible. Sooner or later every man is caught among oppositions like a turtle in a net and overturned, stripped of hope. But we have studied deeper in his important book, Frater Rogerius Baco de Secretis Artis & Naturae, that privately was brought out by the Franciscan to discuss unnatural perfections of lightning and thunder—since by themselves nitre and sulfur and charcoal contribute nothing, whereas mingled they yield to command a monstrous foaming crack and most black foul stink. O, thoroughly foul! And he proposes to rarefy the atmosphere through vile flame which he expects to ignite with phosphorus! Or contrive an aeronautic chariot lofting passengers to and fro—out of this or that province! Or construct a Pump to inhibit and control the wind through pressures! In truth, our cunning friar waxes fat on speculation nourished by celibate dreams while drawing angles above triangles, mistaking intellect for soul.

  NOTHING ABOUT NATURE may be incredible but we observe her. Now we could dwell upon Double Nativity and first or second sublimation, visible or invisible, without which no essence could be extracted from its animus. We might discourse upon sulfurs compounded or elementary, or three-fold Argent Vives and thrice as many cathartics. O yea! Now what of this Lion rampant in his mangy carcase? Or what of Christian sacrament? Ourobouros, that wily viper professing neither commencement nor end, devours his tail while we have consumed six decades questioning verities.

  LO! COMES AN uninvited minstrel with a dirty cape and a boil suppurating on his nose criss-crossed beneath furious scars, one eye shut against us—some ancient soldier! Ripe enough, rank to be near, singing about savage divorce while the gods retreat and wicked angels comport, urging the world downward to impenitent violence, brigandage, plunder, when terrestrial equilibrium will be sacrificed, sailors be loath to navigate far from shore, Heaven lack for starlight and planets deviate, swerving out of their true direction, when earth’s atmosphere does not replenish itself, when fertile soil sinks to velleity leaving turgid fruits to rot unripe with venom. And from this much will come down faster than lightning even as men cry out too late in useless tongues—delivering their dream too late. Such a bundle of curiosities.

  Rumors of a wandering magus conceived in heresy and mistrust . . .

  IT MAY NOT BE WITHIN US TO WANT OR love what is foreign. Oriental alchymists teach that the body resembles a state with the diaphragm comparable to a palace, legs and arms to boundaries or suburbs, bones and joints to officials, blood to ministers, breath to the populace. But I wonder. Also, it is said they prescribe an elixir of potable gold, claiming this will suffuse interior organs to insulate us against mortal requirements because gold does neither rot nor melt although subject to lengthy burial with extensive calefaction. And I have heard they speak of one anointed except for the soles of his feet with the Grand Catholicon which inhibits decay, who would not walk but rode softly, expecting by this deception to swindle fate. Nevertheless he fell sick, dying from corruption after nine centuries. It seems improvident to denounce or mock unfamiliarities, but the heart and mind give contrary counsel.

  AVICENNA ASSERTS THAT imagination exercises fearful power, sufficient to make a camel fall down groaning. I disagree while admitting that imagination is very strong, necessary to digest sensual perceptions. The fixed and jeweled stare of a toad I know to be fatal. That nubile witches enfeeble amorous men by some lascivious concentration of their gaze I do not doubt. And in Tibet the focus of thought produces demons called Egrigors. Then, too, I have observed whelps swimming upon the urine of patients afflicted with rabies—which could be simulacra swimming through iniquitous logic. How such matters precipitate in the brain I cannot be sure. I suspect that imagination might resemble a kind of Warmth or a fluctuous Light given to nervous anxiety.

  I DOUBT IF the course of an injury derives from magnitude so much as the circumstances of acquisition. Under Gemini or Virgo or Capricorn very few prognoses can be favorable. Similarly, wounds contracted past noon are less auspicious than matinal injuries. But the intent of sidereal influence baffles us. By what principle does moonlight draw interior fluids outward, yet stimulate a salubrious warming within? Often the physician is reduced to wonder.

  WHETHER NIGHT-FALL SHOULD be traced to a declining sun or to the ascendant stars of night I am unable to say, nor if occasional planets could be shaped like cucurbits, nor if aboriginal populations have descended from Adam, nor if Eve acquired her genitals by drinking snow-water after the fall from grace—as those people of Carinthia are thought to acquire goiter—nor if living underground there be divers imperceptible creatures such as melusines, nymphs, sirens, lorinds, gnomes. But that we were given rudimentary senses in order to apprehend and thus direct our future, I have little doubt. Still, we seem compacted or locked into a kind of petrification. Human existence oddly replicates the life of stone, which I find curious. Regardless of how much knowledge a physician accumulates he will be surprised by anomalies—such as a white raven—which confute all of his books and all of his experience and what he has discovered at the sick-bed.

  I THINK EACH component of each organism enjoys its life, being succeeded by its death, so we meet resurgent orders of death and resurrection prosecuting life. Consequently everything interior that has conducted itself privately will emerge after deterioration to reveal a countenance. Thus, should some infant’s life conclude after five hours we surmise those bodily planets have made their circuit. Hence, the alchymic doctor looks to organic interactions, each having a predestined end and commencement.

  EXTRINSIC AND INTRINSIC worlds surely must correspond. Liver, brain, heart, lungs, spleen, bowels and kidneys—all of this implies concord between planets and organs. Hildegard teaches that every matter has been so devised upon exceeding grace that none consents to separation, each will surrender its being, each will quit or cease if prevented by force from mutual association.

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sp; I MARVEL AT the vigilance with which nature coordinates dissimilar entities. Why does she situate the lungs near the heart? For refreshment? No. A more important office of these indefatigable bellows is to inhale and to convey to the heart an ethereal spirit. So if we feel agitated we breathe with great passion because of spiritual waste which nature is attempting to restore.

  NO SENTIENT CREATURE has been denied a capacity for thought. In the case of animals, we observe their various affections and season of mating, the nourishment and care and defense of their young, their expressions of goodwill or hostility toward human masters, and so forth. All this being evident, it follows that the souls of animals must have been endowed with the ability to reason or with a propensity to meditate, but as this seems restricted to their appetites and desires they do not reflect upon the world’s renovation.

  VEGETABLES DISPLAY MENTAL faculties, however subordinate to those of humans, animals and minerals. They reproduce and augment themselves, they perceive changes of weather, they observe and conform to every season, they germinate at the appropriate hour—burying their roots, extending and developing their leaves—proving that they understand and foresee. If a vegetable has been planted in poor soil adjacent to rich soil, why does it lean toward the latter? How does it know? If the female and male are planted apart what directs their inclination? Great sympathies must exist to bring about the preservation of this terraqueous globe. Or like a foolish dog do I elect to bark at shadows?

  LET US ASSUME the refulgence of Venus were extinguished, then what attraction should persuade minerals or animals or vegetables or humans to proliferate? I cannot be sure, but men collect knowledge as they pluck fruit from trees, and since we do not deny our counsel overhead it follows that doctors should study the rise of pre-eminent planets if they would resolve uncertainties below.

  IT APPEARS THAT celestial embodiments of both sexes converse with each lavishing ideas upon its opposite, so that either will endorse a lascivious invitation. Hence they are subject to conspiracy, plotting together, albeit the forms of women seem more flammable.

  AS TO HOW feminine lust contrives to preside over masculine—this is because a fluid element requires a blazing element, which accounts for the wife who succumbs to internal craving while the husband is apt to become obstinate or contentious, suspicious and bewildered by her passion. Latent difficulties belabor him. Still he feels lost without his wife, since then he is but a peripatetic disembodied shade—an anguished voice striving to incorporate itself, because once she was the rib and crooked piece of him. Had she otherwise been created than from his body, how was concupiscence bequeathed to them both? We are told by Saint Augustine of the lamp dedicated to Venus which could not be extinguished, implying that blood and flesh have nothing to impart but relentless desire.

  NEITHER THE MASCULINE nor the feminine demands intercourse, merely its essential nature. Why should providence create but half a soul? Or how should Adam feel reconciled to Eve unless she arose within his heart? The woman to whom a man binds himself through intimate congress with declarations of fidelity becomes a part of him, nor can he divorce her by ceremonious pretext or separation, their constituence being one. Nor is it bone or flesh pledging to construct secret attachments so much as carnal intelligence. Even so she remains his best friend, his redeemer—for having lost the key to heaven, unconscious of that light extant in him before he went to sleep in spirit and wakened in the flesh, he would stoop down and lower himself to lower degradation if she did not stand on the threshold offering in exchange for that neglected refuge a vision of terrestrial paradise radiant with the promise of unification.

  I SUSPECT MEN are driven to seduce women by an impatience which is enlarged because of their counterpart’s proximity, or by speculation or by contact, as a splinter of dry wood ignites when exposed to the burning overtures of sunlight. Men become absorbed by visceral tendencies to reflection, hence passion inexorably mounts, which is the first cause of masculine fluid accumulating. Within the female corpus expedients further their own resolve much as the lodestone draws mineral by an inward-sucking of private necessity.

  TRIPLETS AND GREATER multiples occur if the frantic womb contracts with more than a single breath while gathering semen for itself. Should it accept the liquid of animals a mooncalf will be born, such is uterine strength.

  MENSTRUAL BLOOD THAT commixes with male sperm subjected to putrefaction creates the basilisk, which is poisonous and fatal, although this monstrosity does not live long, being recruited by Satan. Yet for what purpose? Alchymic physicians grope and stumble through swirling mist.

  WHENCE COMES THE Spanish disease? I attribute it to writhing succubi begot in brothels as a result of useless fornication. Although I believe this to be the cause, I admit uncertainty. Like the pseudo-medicus do I shift and feint and make systems so that one might think God consulted me to draw up His world out of my nothingness. As for parasites, I think these develop whenever male and female bodies are committed to lewd espousal. But how are they brought? By equatorial wind?

  DISCREPANCIES SUCH AS hare-lip, scabrous nerves and acephali might be a consequence of female imagining perhaps engendered by insufficient phlogiston resulting from befoulment of vapors in the evolutionary matrix. How often I meet outlines or accumulations of female thought, yet do they seem my own. What doublet is this?

  SHOULD FEMININE IMAGERY predominate during generative congress the woman will deliver a boy. Hence, the opposite must be true. But suppose that the pregnant woman, while clutching her knee, should think about a snail—then would the knee of this infant reproduce its mother’s thought? Yes. But why? In Pietra Santa lived a very devout woman who knelt to pray beneath a picture of John the Baptist, subsequently being delivered of a child with luxuriant hair and a long beard. As the seedling aspires to that firmament whence fell its procreative seed, all things necessarily return to the source of their inspiration.

  MONTHLY FEMALE BLOOD emboldens something diabolic in the heart whence it radiates but periodically returns, evaporating when subject to distillation. This is how sensual influences escape, expanding and contracting and darkening the aether, suborning the minds of men drawn down to these sour planetary exhalations of women—humidium menstrui. The odious red toad which dwells among brambles engenders astonishment when he bloats with magic, but his sorcery fails to equal that of this fluid which corrodes iron, mottles the looking-glass, blemishes the glow of polished ivory, turns linen black, empties bee-hives, blights green fruit and spoils the edge of razors, driving domestic creatures insane, sucking vitality from blossoms. I suspect it may be as perilous as that sealed image or concept of hatred which the toad, born with some natural aversion to humanity, nourishes in his brain, equivalent to the breath of a hag. Maria Prophetissa has taught the admixture of Man—pale semen, menstrual blood—luminescence brought to a Stone in the dark. Aye, this is possible.

  MUCH REMAINS TO be learned, but I think it has been documented in cases from Zurich to Madrid that the odorous undergarments of females during their period become saturated with excitement. Also, with the help of this noxious effluent wives are enabled to excel their husbands at wicked contrivance. So much appears indisputable, yet I recognize contingencies. Exposing falsehood is easier than disclosing truth.

  WITHOUT QUESTION THE minds of women anticipate endless journeys to kingdoms that men fail to descry. Yet toward what prospect? It is well known how during sleep they depart from their bodies in order to congregate on flowering meadows where they revisit and review the incontinent past by means of lubricious conceit, and I think many so employ or distract themselves while awake. What could be the nervous root of this? I admit I do not know, but satisfaction resulting from imagination encourages anxiety, hence I advise oestrual patients to avoid salacious dreams and shadowy apartments. I consider it possible that during sabbatic levitation some employ belladonna, seated astride foxes, goats, swine, bears, weasels, donkeys, or such-like lickerish animals which ravenously escort them through lo
w-scudding moist clouds rocking and howling with sensuous delight from Le Puys-de-dôme and Mount Paterno and the Horselberg slope as far as Portugal or the island of Crete. Whispering and muttering and inventing voluptuous gestures, they descend at midnight to model spirits on their own. As to why they do this, the cause may be Lucifer who understood that for mankind to grow rebellious and carnal and independent the sexes should be separate. Thus he sculpted and displayed to the eyes of mortal men his vision of a future, so that they became filled with enthusiasm and lusted for women who promised pleasures hitherto unimagined. Then with eagerness they grouped themselves about the Rebel—superseding the intent of Jehovah.

  THAT CONCUPISCENT WOMEN welcome fiendish embraces culminating in diabolic intercourse I think undeniable. Without contrition some admit guilt, others elect to remain silent as the cuckold goes about his business. We have heard how Elizabeth the Queen on her deathbed lay ringed with fire—for what I do not guess, although I suspect that the bodies of women majestic to behold contain dark and turbid entrails.

  WE OBSERVE HOW in the celebrated case of Walpurga Hausemännin she misled a susceptible bondsman, Schlumpberger, by devious argument until he participated in unholy congress. Having been reduced by query and torture, she disclosed that she copulated not with this man but the Devil himself—wearing his raiment—who privately had scratched his ensign upon her left shoulder, who inquired if she would mortgage her soul and with a quill guided her hand to the contract which she subscribed in blood. Further, she confessed to riding at night before this escort, straddling a pitchfork, and adored this Black Prince to whom she knelt and to whom she prayed, who slapped her in the face because she spoke the name of Jesus—whom she at once cursed and disavowed in order to be baptized afresh, renamed Höfelin. She admitted to rubbing her genitals with salve out of a box, of causing the death of four cows and various pigs and geese, and on Saint Leonard’s Day had exhumed the corpse of a child which she then devoured, collecting the hair and gnawed bones for witchcraft to sweep hail across a field at Siechenhausen. Also, she brought up frost beside the low gate at the garden of Peter Schmidt during some witches’ revel. And were it not for intervention by the Almighty she would have damaged more. So much being alleged, Herr Marquard, Bishop of Augsburg and Provost of the Cathedral, calling upon imperial prerogative, delivered to this sorceress a sentence of death by immolation and by Common Law remanded all of her goods to the Treasury. Bound and seated backward on a cart she was then transported to the place of execution where her right hand was amputated and her naked body subjected numerous times to a glowing iron. So that nothing about her would be visible above the earth or below, her ashes were emptied into the nearest flowing water. Thus was the manifesto of God corrupted. Punishment prevailed because it is understood how justice depends upon retaliation. Now, it appears plain that constellations mount toward heaven as opposites decline, this being paramount to the world. Still I wonder if the cause of lewd unconformity might be fuliginous aether emanating from a damaged skull, since what is exterior might affect what is interior. These influences I suspect are reciprocal, therefore subject to misfunction. Like the juggler an astute physician must toss or balance various concepts.