I wait on bridges I wait, struck, on forest paths and meadow’s fringes, hilltops and banksides, day in and day out, and I receive a southing as a gift. I’ll stalk that floating pole and frigid air by waiting here. I long for the North where unimpeded winds would hone me to such a pure slip of bone. It is an essence, a smooth condensation of the air, a curve. All you hold in your hand is a cool shred of shell, an inch long, pared so thin that it passes a faint pink light. The animal is long since dissolved, and its blood spread and thinned in the general sea. There is no way you can tell what kind of shell it had been, what creature it had housed it could have been a whelk or a scallop, a cowrie, limpet, or conch. I seek a reduction, a shedding, a sloughing off.Īt the seashore you often see a shell, or fragment of a shell, that sharp sands and surf have thinned to a wisp. “A kind of northing is what I wish to accomplish, a single-minded trek towards that place where any shutter left open to the zenith at night will record the wheeling of all the sky’s stars as a pattern of perfect, concentric circles. “For the Heavenly Father desires that we should see,” says Ruysbroeck, “and that is why He is ever saying to our inmost spirit one deep unfathomable word and nothing else.” But what is the word? Is this mystery or coyness? A cast-iron bell hung from the arch of my rib cage when I stirred, it rang, or it tolled, a long syllable pulsing ripples up my lungs and down the gritty sap inside my bones, and I couldn’t make it out I felt the voiced vowel like a sigh or a note but I couldn’t catch the consonant that shaped it into sense.” I won’t see this year again, not again so innocent and longing wrapped round my throat like a scarf. Last night Orion vaulted and spread all over the sky, pagan and lunatic, his shoulder and knee on fire, his sword three suns at the ready-for what? ![]() The planet tilts just so to its star, lists and holds circling in a fixed tension between veering and longing, and spins helpless, exalted, in and out of that fleet blazing touch. Mercurius: The Marriage of Heaven and Earth Enslave me and I am a dangerous enemy command me and I will make you mad give me life and you will die.” Obey me and I will be your servant free me and I will be your friend. ![]() If you find the way to raise me up again, you will find the philosophical sulphur, that is, the Red Stone and Elixir of Life. If you find the way to slay me you will find the philosophical mercury of the wise, even the White Stone beloved of the Philosophers. I am the spirit of metals, the fire which does not burn, the water which does not wet the hands. I am the one thing necessary for the whole Opus. For I am the watery venomous serpent who lies buried at the earth’s centre I am the fiery dragon who flies through the air. But I give you fair warning that unless you seek the true philosophical gold and not the gold of the vulgar, unless you heart is fixed with unbending intent on the true Stone of the Philosophers, unless you are steadfast in your quest, abiding by God’s laws in all faith and humility and eschewing all vanity, conceit, falsehood, intemperance, pride, lust and faint-heartedness, read no farther lest I prove fatal to you. ![]() “Know this: I, Mercurius, have here set down a full, true and infallible account of the Great Work.
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