Alchymic Journals Read online

  FRANCISCO GIORGI COMMENTS upon inestimable steep influences which pour ubiquitously out of heaven across the receptive surfaces of earth. I see in this a most marvelous neutrality, yet I notice how many seem inclined to moralize and grapple with fright if planets recede or advance, if new stars glow at the horizon, if comets lose or gain luster. Why is this? Do they fear what happens below or that omnipotence above? I am unsure. Angles intersect.

  KHUNRATH EXPLAINS HOW the universal medium of preservation and restoration shall be the Regnant Child which by its own equilibriate virtue contrives to expunge mortal suffering, thereby rectifying both provinces—both of corpus and mind—depending on the capabilities of each. But I would sound out first a cause. I suspect impurities adhere to their substance. I think acidity weakens the spleen, sugar expands the kidney, grief sours the lung and salts encrust the heart. I observe quick-silver trembling in the aludel. I watch menacing seeds sprout. And there is strange emptiness behind the moon.

  PORPHYRY HAS ARGUED that life’s wheel deviates from its axis so that our consequence must be dissolution. Now death betrays a duplicate structure—one which men understand where the body disassociates itself from the soul, but another comprehended only by philosophers in which the soul feels emancipated. Therefore, no physician should look to advantage in gold, nor intermediate benefits, searching instead for merit lest inimitable unities be denied while the source of the fountain flow undiscovered.

  VERULAM BELIEVES THAT by replenishing the impulse and vital principle, vis vitae, a corpus may be rejuvenated. Perhaps. Like planets that men invest with fancy, they are one thing, men’s image another. Thus it becomes a habit of metaphysic to ring changes about our Egg—around and about once more—with each note and cadence varying. All the same, very little turns smoothly for its song. So many men, so many opinions. Suppose we should burn a tree, enclosing ash, smoke, vapor and every other component within a cucurbit, adding to this a living seed. Will the tree be able to reconstitute itself? Yes, it will. But without the seed could it be vivified? No, because the principle of a plant does not subsist upon ashes nor upon smoke, but within the restitutory Mysterium Magnum from whence it must be urged to reclaim its vital semblance, endowed with qualities it once possessed.

  SUPPOSE A CHILD lovingly retained the sperm of his parents, would he not duplicate their configuration? Yes, of course, just as a pine tree is anxious to recreate its predecessor. Hence it must be commingling that makes the son to diverge and become estranged—to reject the sound of his father’s foot-step, to withdraw from his mother’s affectionate touch. Why does he fail to acknowledge superior regents? Upon what miscalculation would he admit no governance except his own? I account men’s souls equal but about their operation I note perplexing diversity.

  THOUGHTS THAT I conceive—are these mine? Or, being universal, do they but await apprehension? If the latter, then innumerable ideas exist which I am not able to grasp, as stars are created or extinguished at such a distance that men pass by oblivious. And the provenance of stars being infinite, like that of ideas, how does the realm of perception end?

  IN MY JUDGMENT the mind resembles an instrument focused upon delicate inquiry, and therefore man is driven to the resolution of puzzles. I have myself stood amazed to see silver burnished with ash of basilisk duplicating the magisterial gleam of gold. I have watched a birch tree cringe when the axeman approached. I have heard a violin register living torment with every note. I have listened to the yowl of a starved bitch discourse upon the largeness of suffering. Thoughtfully I walk back and forth like the god Morpheus with his horn and ivory box of dreams.

  MY UNDERSTANDING IS altogether tenuous, incomplete. Even so I have been persuaded of very much. I think minerals succeed through the transference of radical moisture and vegetables through some increase of efflorescent activity, but animals attempt to profit according to the exigencies of their being, because all things yearn for a nutriment to which they grow accustomed. Surely this is true, but why? Stones must fall, boiling water evaporate. What further leverage is required?

  WHAT CAUSES A seed to produce its fruit? Sponginess within the soil, which was authorized by heaven so that atmosphere and liquid succeed in finding access to the interior flame which presses up through earth’s core. By this inosculation are humid vapors subtly exhaled which corrupt or decompose the germs of things anxious to regenerate themselves. Thus each prepares and welcomes vivification.

  I THINK ATMOSPHERE might be a vital or pervasive spirit that begets both life and substance in men, encouraging and fulfilling, which is why I consider it not an element but a providential glue or a medium to provide coherence. And because it retains attributes of celestial mobility it is able to communicate with sleepers, disturbing them until they groan and twitch in dreadful efforts to escape while struggling against the mighty import of divination. That is why men dream. But as to why obsessed individuals dream with the impetuous desire of those miniature comets which flame across August, I do not know. I regard these as stones graven according to heaven’s face—Gamahei.

  IT SEEMS APPARENT how nature was not meant to be comprehended but acts magically. I cannot say why the dandelion that blooms at seven enfolds itself at five, nor why the pimpernel withdraws at night. What encourages such dissent? Were not both nurtured by soil and aether and sidereal radiance? Or how should the dog shake his tail when he is pleased but the lion if he is angered? What urges things to put forth their hidden attributes?

  WHAT GOVERNS PRIVATE intermissions of the heart? I have seen mongrels envy and bite each other just as men cull and steal and dispute and choose violent satisfaction, so all together become what they profess to despise. Then is this mankind’s republic? Out of the universe, seeing he was thus constituted, what does he anticipate? Who is he—this anomaly that forges iron like wax? I read upon his visage the look of ascendancy which is both awful and undecided.

  LIKE EZEKIAL UPON his dream I am full of wonder. Fundamental antipathies and sympathies coalesce to hinder man’s journey, as thistles do not flourish next to figs, nor grapes beside thorns. On the contrary, toward each must be the most exact and perfect intent, each according to its kind. Yet I notice how often men will select paths which diverge one direction but also another, so that they turn distraught and querulous and toward midnight reaching for a pillow they find a stone, by dawn mistaking dung beetles for gods.

  I BELIEVE THAT mankind subsists of four dissolving elements. Nevertheless, works fluctuate as do their private mercuries because calcination secures quick-silver and every imperfect body during disintegration fulfills itself with philosophic precipitate, which is mercurial water. What dissolves the sun dissolves also the moon, and harmony results from the analogy of opposites.

  SHOULD THE MID-DAY sun be collected underneath a hollow glass it will focus its effort to burn inward with terrible passion, yet the burning rays from a human heart provide no discernible warmth. How is this? If astral coordinates achieve equilibrium I think the heart might generate and distribute adequate fluid, but if balances have been disrupted the corpus succumbs to drought, so variable and importunate is this devious organ.

  I SUSPECT THAT blood resembles wine during its slow process of development. I would compare infant blood to grape-juice before fermentation, while that of an adolescent resembles fermenting Must. No doubt the blood of the aged is complete, liberated from harmful ebullience. Why, then, would old men expend themselves to gain frothy titles or deposit gilt paper in paper kingdoms? Each merits his scallop-shell of rest.

  ATOMS OF BLOOD presumably are round and smooth, gliding past one another without discomfort—in contrast to those of iron, which must be harsh and coarse. Atoms comprising a soul I imagine to be gelatinous or immature because of unfulfilled promise. Atoms of flesh must be formless—inert and sluggish. As to the brain, I suspect its particles are nimble, elusive. Philosophers argue that we should not speculate like apostles on substantial employment since time works about us, quilting and scorin
g innocence. I myself think arguments of philosophy more fatuous and sterile than breezes ruffling the North Sea. What sick man hearing them ever shook off his grievance?

  I PRESCRIBE LONG ocean voyages to counterbalance enervation because water serves as a powerful adjuvant toward phantasy, but if asked to explain this animus—I cannot. Or by gazing toward the wintry shoulder of Albristhorn I willingly rejoice with little comprehension. Hapless I reflect on my beginning in a yellow cloak, a student burrowing at darkness, an unread apothecary calculating circles by a cupping-glass whose vitals quaked at the sight of green wounds. I think I must be very far from the lap of eternity, stippled by pinchbeck rhetoric, Arabian conjecture. I am an alchymic doctor at the rim of the world and five days have I traveled without a compass.

  I MARVEL THAT innocuous physics be administered while the rich rioting with extravagance weigh up possessions and multitudes languish outside the Mineral Gate. If motion be a quintessence of its compelling impetus, upon what authority should mankind anticipate the new dispensation? How shall we watch amber and cassia and rarities cast up to the shore?

  BY WHAT LOGIC is the frog ugly? Was he not formed to express the nature of his inwardness? Therefore what man is deformed or vile or delirious except through a listener’s proclivity? Or how is any cleric served to preach and condemn in public if not to herald the commencement of idolatry? I would ask for the names and titles of six high priests that by virtue of their faith shook mountains apart to drive misconduct out. I ask how we could identify Satan except by his limping gait. Was this consequent upon man’s spiraling plunge from heaven? I would gather the purpose of Aramaic and Latin and Hebrew—if such tongues have been employed to praise diabolic agents. I would know what pseudonyms have been spoken by the Karcist lifting his hazel wand in the magic circle between two arches. Gnostics say divinity’s key was held by a snake that apprised us of its understanding, so how does grace penetrate any man dressed with disguise?

  WHY A RUBIGINOUS toad simmered in oil cures leprosy I cannot decide, but it is apparent how evil welcomes evil, which explains why a toad sucks venom from phagadenic ulcers. Worms may grow inside a walnut despite an impenetrable shell just as malignancies are able to gain entrance and threaten a contented body, although I find no reasonable explanation. It seems obvious that apoplexies, convulsions and lethargies feed upon transient humors engaged by disaffected particles of thought during sleep since accretions evolve in solitude. But what accounts for this? If I do not know, what else am I than a farrier sporting the doctor’s miniver hat?

  MONKSHOOD PLANT, JASMINE, tutia, camphor, mustard, pepper, anemones, passion flower, chymistry, sophistry, automata, logic, barbaric medicament, astronomy, exorcism and ancient craft—with so much am I familiar. Invigorating substances are known to me, or malleable metals that shine and ring. I could speak of pulverized resin, camel hair, bone marrow, luminescent ink, agents inhibiting rust. Clancular poisons as well as piss display their qualities like Japanese iron without pretext. Were it not for the introspective physician who should prescribe a treatment appropriate to humanity’s requirement? Now why were men granted two ears but a single tongue? That they might speak half as much as they listen. So it seems incumbent that the doctor rather than vomiting forth ignorance should pause to justify his prescriptions. I know how Botanus Europeus if applied to gangrenous ulcer must be submerged in dung and left to rot, since otherwise the malady suppurates. But why this has proved efficacious I am unable to decide. Nor can I explain how mercury heals that which it provokes. Why should arsenicals do likewise? And as vinegar is stirred into milk we note the separation of heterogeneous material into its elementary constituents, implying the inseparability of creation from degeneration. And since I have grown burdened with doubt I embrace doubt, that first rung on the ladder extending perpetually upward to wisdom. Knowledge makes a sharp scythe, I think.

  PEOPLE HEARING THAT some alchymist could not multiply gold or has failed with his attempt to restore a sick patient—they exult, they say it could not be done. But the peasant whose crop was parched by drought, is this not identical? Only providence decides the moment when closed seeds unfurl. Now if the patient who accepts medical advice is observed to recover, it suggests that his physician was sent by God. Yet if he does not, this also is a sign. Inadequate doctors ripe with certainty abuse and ravage, whereas the initiate acquires facility through meticulous readings. I know very many things are inveighed against Theophrastus and very much I question his logic: how each skill or craft derives from God, how by faith our imagination he perfected, how sidereal effluents drip from above, and early portents signal early death—as planets shook before the crucifixion. Such sophistry gnaws against my being. I do not trust it. Yet by the magic of disciples his name persists: Alexander von Suchten, Leonhard Thurneyssen, Oswald Crall, Gerhard Dorn, Melchior Schennemann, Adam von Bodenstein and Peter Severinus—to say nothing of Fludd, Crollius, Rheticus, Faber, or the chymist Jan van Helmont. That he confounded pedagogues is established, ocean fish do not seek a river. Critics quaking with envy claim he brought little relief to arthritic old John of Leippa who lived then at Cromau. And John’s son Berthold, whose gross right eye he treated, went blind. Also there was a baron’s wife wracked by colic who turned epileptic because of therapies he administered. Thus they expect to count his worth, jackasses which snort and paw before the harpist, fools forgetting how frangible complexities trouble the progress of art. Judgments drift, we oscillate among rainbows.

  MY THOUGHTS TUMBLE—rolling and bumping, pebbles in a tide. I know not how considerations be held inducible to reason if we are caught up by the net of love, music and flowers. What appears erroneous or doubtful may disclose its origin unwittingly since we were born at all adventure, because what fate prepares for us seldom reflects our expectation while the mind plays toward what it desires.

  PERHAPS WE DO not see what we think, but as memory suggests. I have watched how moonlight prohibits leaves from stirring and how Noctambulous about his journey seeks communication with departed spirits. So the night offers access to unknown riches generous with imagining until what logic cannot teach we quickly apprehend. And I believe there is a private craft to the manufacture of dreams because this sounds reasonable, just as it seems clear how leguminous diets or a superfluity of fermented liquid may be the cause of frightening visions at midnight when responsibilities do not constrict the brain. Often it is said that eunuchs and celibates forget to dream, which I doubt, as I doubt that violations of moral authority inhibit sleep. But if so, what follows? Consider how Gabricus approached Beya as she slept, only to feel himself swallowed until the Stone of the Self withdrew. Therefore what is Beya except mercury? What is Gabricus except sulfur?

  EUDOXUS HAS TAUGHT how Jupiter concealed himself, ashamed by his deformity. Then out of compassion Isis appeared and stooped to separate the entwined feet, thus restoring him both to himself and to society. Well, returning to a thing must imply that at some previous time we departed from it, consequently I wonder if we adumbrate the shape or spirit of tomorrow. Saturn tells us plainly how matter is created, annihilated and born anew because he devoured his children in order to spew them out, but where this leads I know not. I have become one that struggles at night against anonymous antagonists. I despair at insistent riddles. How does nature impetuously generate showers of frogs? Why does the carcase of a mule give birth to locusts? How precious metals be cast underground by the exhalations of rejuvenating mineral vapor I cannot explain, nor why men genuflect to shadows—toward what covenant. Hermetic nights do I consecrate to magistery, to imperative questions. I munch wort leaves. I strut forth reaping strange fields.

  I HAVE OBSERVED venomous creatures crawl out from moldering festering material, dependent not upon their natural parents but necrotic waste, hence subject to fraudulent duplication by unscrupulous adepts: scorpions, maggots, slugs, hornets, red ants, spiders, midges and brendels—invidious eidolons begotten with the assistance of reflective morbidity. Fal
se mortals devoid of souls have been propagated spontaneously, figures conceived independent of terrestrial mud, fashioned from dissolute spermata—sprites and nymphs, fairies, giants, gnomes, scrats, pygmies. Priests would incriminate Beelzebub for miraculous contrivances, or Behemoth since he is the lord of blasphemies, or Isacaaron and Leviathon which are agents of lust and pride. It is true that satanic deputies could be responsible, but I have seen crafty barbers extract bloodied glass shards from the distended bellies of groaning patients or sticks with clumps of hair, and needles and ivory buttons. How often I see common motives serve uncommon events.

  INNUMERABLE ENIGMAS WE attribute to Satan and call them his handiwork which are but consequences of natural philosophy, such as Alexander’s Pillars that are a monument to ambition, or the Caspian Gate whose iron bars Hercules could not bend, or those columns Caesar built at Rome by the hill Vaticanus, or those crenulate peaks mariners have reported which thrust steeply up from the Western Sea that are called antediluvian watch-towers. I wonder that we should look to phantasmagoria above fundamentalities.

  BEELZEBUB’S APOSTLES ARE alleged to debase and mislead men by masquerading as rocks, trees, cats, black lambs and owls, occasionally posing as delightful children. Also, it is said they seek out continent nuns. Perhaps. Testimonials flourish. But I suspect illness inhabits the brain as well as the body, and unlike our prescient sun that reads the sky for guidance I believe men seldom direct their course. Where do we look for counsel if a robin taps at the window, if a pullet crows like a cock, if a jackdaw flies down a chimney, if circling ravens alight on the church steeple? Let metaphysicians wrangle. I myself exclude necromancy, conjuration and all demonic partnership from alchymic therapies, because I am engaged with this craft for good, not to the prejudice of living things.