Chapter 1

Say not, ‘I have found the truth’, but rather, ‘I have found a truth’.

-          Kahlil Gibran (1883 – 1931)

 

You will find something more in woods than in books. Trees and stones will teach you that which you can never learn from masters.

-          Saint Bernard (1090 - 1153), Epistle

he man flapped around the fire like an immense crow, his sooty black cloak whipping the dust into boiling clouds.  His face was dark with obscene streaks of grime that reflected the seething flames into which he gazed.  Streaks of reflected flame in the blackness of his hair made it appear as though a mob of meteors swarmed around his head.  The fire was intense, and here he was – a black shadow, a moth that had ventured too close and was in danger of being seared into a stump of carbon. 

The haggard crow was now leaning into the blast of flame, his face ruddy and his grimace as intense as though he was preparing to thrust his head into a spewing volcano.  Sparks flew off the threadbare sleeves and well-worn gloves as he thrust his pincers into the furnace.  Like a swarm of incandescent moths, sparks rose around and above his head and up into the flickering rafters.  With a stifled cry, he seized the luminous yellow-orange crucible in the tongs and pulled it forth from the fiery womb like a man attempting to snatch back his tormented heart from a searing Hell.

Dropping to his knees, Richard held out his glowing offering, and then twisted his wrists sharply, adeptly pouring the blazing mass into the iron mold that he had previously heated in the fire and greased with tallow.  Silvery liquid fire lunged into the waiting form, followed by increasingly thickening clots, the last of which he shook from the crucible.

Quickly, he began to drum rhythmically on the iron mold with his tongs, as he turned it around with one gloved hand to strike it from all sides.  A resonant chime sounded out with each blow.  Several times, he shook his fevered head, and a shower of sweat fell, hissing as it vaporized on the hot stones of the floor. 

Grunting, he upended the heavy mold, and with a thick metallic thud, a hard plug fell to the floor.  This hot ingot was soon in his thick leather mitts. He struck it soundly with a stout iron bar, knocking the largest part of the yellowish crust to the floor.  Turning the silvery mass this way and that, every bit of its leprous covering was struck off, revealing a shining mirror of metal. The gloves he wore protected his hands from the heat only enough to prevent a serious burn. 

He was exhausted from an evening of work; he had ceased to hear the body’s nagging messages some hours ago.  Now, the fatigue was too much to ignore.  It joined the chorus of aching knees and shoulders, and eyes burning and dry from the heat.  He dared not rub them.  His forehead was smudged from wiping away sweat with the back of his glove before it washed grime into his eyes.  Thirst and hunger pummeled him like spoiled angry twins.

At last, he carried his sacrament to the crude wooden workbench and dropped wearily into the nearby chair.

As he turned the little treasure with his finger, he admired its brilliance, like a tiny toy top of purest silvery metal.  Watching the reflected flames as they played on its stellate surface, he puzzled over the Magi, wondering if the star that they had followed had been any more marvelous than the one he now saw before him.  Would he ever be allowed to set eyes upon that which he so ardently sought?  Was it even possible that this coarse matter could hold so delicate a mystery as he believed?  Dozens that he had known, hundreds that he had studied had failed.  Could not even the few supposed adepts have lied?  The search for the Philosopher’s Stone was legendary, and the possibilities that it offered defied the imagination: the ability to transmute lesser metals like tin and lead to the purest gold with only a few grains of the Stone cast into molten metal, and, when used as a medicine, the immediate physical regeneration of the adept, not only curing the most serious diseases, but allegedly assuring physical immortality as well!

Was it even thinkable that ‘the Professor’ could have knowingly misled him?  Perhaps his mentor had become less careful as he had grown older. Perhaps the old man had been deceived. 

He longed for rest, and knew that it would not come before dawn began to paint the skies.  He settled into the uneasy comfort of those who long for a success that might never come.  The philosophical problem, once accepted, cruelly pinned a man through his soul, like a butterfly to the spreading board.  Simply stated, Richard understood that he could never say with certainty that any given path in alchemy would or would not yield the Philosopher’s Stone – not even those that he and others like him had already worked without success.  There could only be the possibility of certainty and exactness when a path met with success.  

Even this remote possibility offers a dim hope that quickly fades under examination. Once there is a success in the path of alchemy, once the work is completed in a certain way, under a set of specific conditions, there is no guarantee that the Alchemist has understood precisely the mechanism of Nature that ruled the processes of evolution.

Men once knew that the sun rose and set while the Earth stood still in the center of Creation.  Their sciences were still able to predict and measure astronomical events with great success, and to explain away the anomalies.  There is no satisfaction to be had in doing the impossible if there remains the possibility that a Copernicus can rip the Earth out of the middle of the Universe.

He stared at the furnace and then looked away, realizing that it could not answer the questions raging inside him.  He was tired. He understood that in some way his quest approached a spiritual arrogance.  It was foolish, perhaps, to try to discover the way of the Adepts, to confect the Philosopher’s Stone and become one of the Elect.  It was insolent to think that after having done this in one way that it must be done again in yet another way, and perhaps in another still, to be certain that Nature’s mechanisms had been truly discovered. 

He raised himself unsteadily, the sluggishness of his gate more like that of a man in his eightieth year than one scarcely half that age.  He attended to the furnace, preparing it for a period of rest.  After the next step, ‘marrying Luna with the scaly Dragon’, the grosser part of his labor would be done, and that which required strength and intense heat would give way to a period of patience and subtle manipulations.   Dangerous manipulations, he recalled suddenly.

Still, Richard looked forward to this next phase of the work, realizing that his thoughts and feelings would change along with nature of his labor.  The proximity to the fire, the hard labor and concentration that was necessary to prepare the crude matter set into motion a similar cycle of testing and near-torture inside him.  It was not unexpected, but it was nonetheless exhausting to confront the ghosts of despair, the thousand voices that urged him to take comfort in an ordinary life, content in the simpler pleasures of family and friends, and to close forever the door to his laboratory and his conceited pursuits.  

He knew that this was no longer a possibility, for he had long ago recognized the pattern of his life, had felt the interlocking of his little parcel of being to a larger whole.  It had been a simple affair, lasting moments of time, though profound – it had effected a gradual change in every aspect of his life. 

With a gloved hand, Richard picked up the crucible from the box of clay, where he had set it to cool after emptying it. He saw that beads of metal had begun to sweat through its bottom.  He gripped it hard and it burst into shards on the floor.  How fortunate that it waited until now to give up its strength!  It had come close to a final fatigue, when it would have spilled its treasure into the ashes to be lost. 

As he pushed the pieces into a little pile at the foot of the furnace with his boot, he wondered if his own body would last for as long as it was required.  Suddenly, he felt tired and dirty.  His stomach gnawed at him, and he needed to bathe – how unworthy it was to think that the sublime intelligence that had fashioned his form would permit it to break in the midst of its usefulness.

Still, he knew that the gnawing pains in his middle were signals that were not to be ignored without danger to his work.  Oftentimes he had found himself to be sick and his mind wandering when he did not listen to the body’s signals when they first came.  When they were ignored, he became increasingly careless, working for tens of hours without food or rest.  He had nearly died from the choking acidic fumes from a retort that broke due to his lack of attention.  It had taken days of rest and his gentle wife’s attention to restore him enough to think clearly, and to take up his work again.

He steadied himself and noted with a start the exhilarating smells of rosemary and lavender.  Melissa must have started a bath for him!  Now excited, he pushed his head through the door to their room, and was greeted by a generous smile.  “I suppose that you are still among the living?” Melissa queried, her voice sweet honey.  “Your shadow even looks dirty.  Get into the tub and I’ll scrub you good”. 

A scolding like this was a pleasure to receive.  Richard recognized that his wife was a true angel.  In fact, she had spent years living in a home the center of which was a consuming furnace devouring every spare coin and hour, with a man who devoted himself to reading the words of the long dead, who could not, at times, take notice of the needs of the living. How could one as tender as this, who thrilled in his every smile, be as selfless?  He dropped his seared and reeking garments and held his nose in mock disgust as she pushed them back toward the laboratory door. 

Melissa sensed that Richard’s work was at a new stage – this she could read in his mind.  She watched Richard squeeze and contort himself to fit as much of his frame as possible in the hot water.  Yes, she was able to read his thoughts like a child reads the fairy writing of frost on the windowpanes.  She could see clearly etched there his innermost thoughts and desires – she knew that he loved her and that he was a good man – and yet there was a darkness bordering on despair and eternal loneliness that outlined his gentleness and caused it to stand out in relief.  He needed her and she was there for him, as she had been for a long, long time.

Toward noon, Melissa paused in the garden, where she had been gathering herbs.  The summery sounds of the twittering birds and the gentle breeze had lulled her into a twilight state, and her hands had been working along, leaving her free to enjoy the passage of images and pleasant memories of other days like this one.  The sight of two golden birds chasing along the fence rows had triggered a sense of how special days like this one are.  Suddenly she realized that she needed to wake her sleeping companion before their students came! 

Pausing briefly in her work, she stood up straight and closed her eyes, mentally traveling to his sleeping figure, and spoke his name, “Richard”.  She gathered up her skirt, carried her basket into the house, and set it on the table in the center of the room.  Richard was sitting up on the side of their bed.  He stretched and reached for his shirt.  “Missy, I heard you call me”. 

“You’d better get moving or your students will see their master in bed.  Here, make the tea and cut some bread – you are not my master.  And do try not to make a mess!”

He felt good after his rest, like a man who has escaped a charging bull.  His heart beat strongly in his breast as he inhaled the generous smells of a summer day.  Quickly he made tea from the fragrant bee balm that Melissa had just gathered.  The bread was cut into thick slices and honey and butter were set out on the rude table. 

Melissa surveyed the room, and nodded her approval before joining him at the table.  “So there isn’t a mess to scold me about?” he asked, his head tilted quizzically. 

“Don’t start with me, Richard, or I’ll tell our students how pure your thoughts are when we are alone at night!”  They laughed, smiling at each other from behind cups of tea. 

“My thoughts are quite pure in that they are not adulterated; I am not thinking of anything else!”

They were laughing so hard that they didn’t notice that they were not alone until they saw Adam and Mary step into the room and hang their coats on the hooks beside the door.  “Do you need a coat on a day like this one?” Melissa asked.  “Is it going to get cold later today?” 

Adam started to stammer, and Mary said, “We are staying later tonight than usual, as we planned last week”. 

“We brought fresh meat,” Adam blurted out, holding up a large sausage.  Richard rose from the table and accepted the proffered gift, passing it to Melissa. 

Melissa cleared away the two plates and cups while the others took their places: Mary and Adam on one bench, and Richard on the other. Melissa squeezed along side of her husband, and joined hands with the others.  “God of all, God who created all that is by thought, God who lives within our breast and is there revealed, we ask that you will assist us as we strive to comprehend and apply Thy immutable laws.  We ask that we may assist in the Great Work on behalf of a suffering humanity.  So Mote It Be!”

- end of excerpt from The Portal - A Story of Love, Immortality and the Philosophers' Stone -

available from Triad Publishing August 27th, 2007