Alchymic Journals

by suffering. To what purpose then do we overlook that rare conjunction, trafficking in useless wealth from star to star?
DO FRAGILE PARTICLES grow agitated by our proximity? I believe they do because not one of us exists alone, so all objects must be subject to another’s posture. Then, as now, we are tied up with reciprocal currents. Yet if we were intended to embrace the moon, the sun, the planets and migrant stars, why should we embrace chaos within?
PROBLEMS TRY THE intelligence. Through prismatic crystal I have directed beams of sunlight, marveling ignorantly at the result since the proximity of light’s vital elixir eludes the most ingenious box built to catch its animus. I feel troubled and dismayed by such compulsive liberty. I find many things that transpire below are but a diurnal reflection of majesties overhead. Now my left eye, being secular, cagastric, carnal, I will close and keep closed while my other eye, being iliastric, looks to eternity. But is this wise? If imagination turns wherever I want, how should the course of my gaze be altered?
GRANTED THE ADMINISTRATION of our Lord, why am I distraught? Deo adjuvante, non timendum. Divinity burgeons in the heart. What is gold if not an itinerant ray of sunlight solidified? I have seen how sunshine acts against the earth, compounding metals until they sprout like crocus since everything below obtains sustenance from above. Have not diamonds multiplied in long-abandoned pits? Hence we look downward to fertility in an underground kingdom, to eternal life painting the dust. I perceive in this a mysterious arrangement of logic, albeit I know not the method. I labor at holy questions.
I HAVE SEEN the fecund seed separate and divide itself, disintegrating, dissolving, renouncing its existence to provide a nutritious matrix for the growing plant. Does this argue that corruption leads to fulfillment? I am bound by a circumference of mystery.
WITH WHAT GRATITUDE we look upward from ordure in the street to the glory of cathedrals, yet why is not the opposite true? Where does the dominion of conscience fall? I would inquire, but every question leads to another more paradoxical, more tenebrous. Bernard de Clairvaux, governed by his respect for the universe, sought refuge in contemplative restrictions. Anticipating guidance, I wait. I think the mind is embryonic, accumulating strength while it seeks perfection.
DAME HILDEGARD HAS extolled humanity’s deeds for influencing celestial light while the master speaks of stellar excrement that illuminates summer evenings. Nevertheless, both define the truth as a fertilized egg. How is it that both disregard the issue? Is not the body woven of starlight? Are we conceived in water only to rise screaming against the air? I see no deliverance outside the Church. Extra ecclesiam nulla salus.
NOTHING EXISTS THAT was not a consideration of our Lord, said the master, but I am weary of mysteries, of spirals. I am weary from gathering them in, I am sick. I am unsure what to think. I cannot climb up to heaven, I grow afraid of the South Sea. I know not what I am.
SUPPOSE THE ROYALTY I invoke is but some sliding element, then is the universe unstable? Should a tree overflowing with fertility provide shade for pilgrims? Is transient good sufficient? How did the allegoric labor of Hercules fulfill philosophy’s secret? Were not Helen born to Venus would she yet be a whore? Does the moon engender lunatics? Is not the avowed purpose of each hierophant to fabricate ultimate metal from blemished, penultimate matter? Adepts proliferate, plants decay. Demons meddle beneath the glory of provocative constellations and I am but a simple novice drowning. Still I praise God.
WATER DISPERSES ACROSS the multi-colored surface of earth, it takes up the hue and flavor of that area where it rests. So does man absorb his fundament and neglects to distinguish each thing from the next—awarding to multitudinous items equivocal shape or latitude, like a poor navigator unable to descry safe land who foolishly persists against the rim, content with one expanse.
OUR EYES WE trust to describe what we see, our ears to interpret noise, while lesser senses similarly enact their part. Nonetheless what was heard or seen, or otherwise apprehended, must prove erroneous because we rule mistakenly. Even as the testament of Thesaurus Philosophiae declares, what we would consider self-evident is but a malicious distortion so that we grovel and writhe through perpetual darkness, indifferent to heaven except as it rains or blows.
HAVE WE BEEN so registered that we must twist and complain, riveled of understanding, equivalent to beasts that perish ignorant? Blessed we call those resident mercuries of occult and imperial craft since without them we would be restricted to shallow sensitivities. Therefore the Jew, Philo, explains how God presides above mortal cogitation as though He dwelt in a palace. Dixit et facta sunt.
THROUGH STAGES OF flux we plummet—dizzily revolving corks that whirl around a watery vortex—incapable of resisting our own volition yet quick and anxious to explain anagrams secured within the closet of matter, redefining symmetries that are but the meanest crust of nature. Thus has Vaughan, the Welshman, decried humanity as presumptuous or ludicrous for attempting to weigh jewels concealed in a cabinet.
VALENTINUS ASKS WHAT are the circumstances of a thing, considering both form and matter, if neither principle nor ambience may be gathered except by rigorous trial. Yet what could be more ostentatious, more vainglorious than subjecting God’s counsel to doubt? His dimensions, being infinite, can be comprehended by our Lord alone. But I am a neophyte with moderate understanding, adrift on a limitless ocean.
EIRENAEUS WOULD HAVE us grasp and plunge into bottomless quicksilver that which simulates gold, whose centrality cannot be revealed either below or above save by its own revelation—which I take for the center rising everywhere whose circumference bends the light. This seems admirable, implying still higher perfection.
PLOTINUS ASKS HOW we should conceive of the illimitable. What is its idiom? How might such an image