The Chemical Wedding, by Christian Rosencreutz

by John Crowley

  4 Christian’s initial dress was white belted with red.

  5 The laurel bough and laurel wreath signify achievement in arts or in games, awarded in the name of Apollo, god of the sun.

  6 A lot of alchemical imagery contrasts elderly kings or royal persons with young ones who are either born from them, or arise from their ashes, or result when the old ones become young again. The old kings are related to Saturn, the old god of time, whose metal is lead (each of the planetary gods had an associated metal); the transforming of old gray lead to young blond gold is one précis of the alchemical Work. Andreae here divides the old king into two and gives them each spouses also related to alchemical symbolism, though it’s hard to work out how they do the work that as symbols they ought to do. (The White Queen in much alchemical symbolism is the receptive, female principle, embodied in the albedo or white elixir; she or it is Luna, the moon, and has the power to transform ordinary substances into silver, the moon’s metal. When united with the Red King or male principle, the sun, the two become one and create or generate or give birth to the Philosopher’s Stone.)

  7 I have long puzzled over this observation of Christian’s. Why are his paradigmatic royal persons not sublimely beautiful, and what is his point in saying so? Maybe only because they are going to be sublimely beautiful at the end of the process.

  8 With the appearance of Cupid, the story begins an upward ascent in strangeness that continues to the climactic rebirth of the dead king and queen. Cupid is a key figure in the encoding of alchemical secrets; he is often “our Cupid,” meaning not the usual one, and stands for Mercurius/mercury. As presented here, he shares the boy Hermes’s qualities of teasing and tricking, and yet also for a kind of childish or blameless sexuality that belongs to the Greek Eros. (Some commenters, like Montgomery and the seventeenth century thinker Robert Fludd, want Cupid to stand not just for physical love but for divine or even Christian love, which seems like a stretch to me.) It is dangerous to underestimate or dismiss him, however, as Christian will learn.

  9 Like the tall clock in the artisans’ workshop, and the sphere showing the movements of the planets and the chiming watch in the previous paragraph, these moving statues are high-tech stuff of the period. They could be clockwork too, or could be made to move by wind or water moving through them. Some sang, like these, or at least made sound. (If these statues’ movements included walking, they were beyond any in existence, though.) Nothing more is made of them or said about them – just another scientific marvel.

  10 It seems that Cupid’s presence and his projection of sexuality is affecting the company. Certainly Christian throughout is pestered with thoughts of sex and of his own aging, which the young woman is suggesting she has ways of overcoming.

  11 The male pages and waiters are replaced now with smart and sexy young women. Alchemy was constantly concerned with the sexual urges and couplings of its substances, translating chemical reactions into the biological and the animate, and seeing incest, copulation, and generation in their processes.

  12 Each of the nine men makes sure that he has a woman either to his left or his right. But the women see to it that there are always two of them together. This leaves only one place where a man stands between two women. The Young Lady stands opposite him. She counts off and takes the seventh person to her right or left as her partner, and it’s a girl, and that girl does the same. The result is that girls always end up with girls. It’s easy to make a chart of the circle and count off.

  13 “Aufmachen,” which in modern German means to open, to open up, to let out. The 1690 Foxcroft translation has the crucifix “made from a pearl” and “wrought between” the king and queen, i.e. made or produced by them – they either made the crucifix from the pearl themselves or produced the pearl, as though they were oysters. Godwin (1991) has the crucifix, or the pearl, “revealed between” the royal pair. My rendering, though it may not be accurate, at least makes sense.

  14 The royal pair, unlike the symbolic other kings and queens, are dressed plainly in black, suggesting the nigredo, the first stage of the alchemical Work, in which the original material is reduced to a prima materia without qualities – it is death, rot, entombment, darkness, nothingness, from which the later stages will arise or be born.

  15 It’s common in older literature to interpolate a story within the story that tells a reflected or reversed or otherwise altered version of the events in the main story. Montgomery interprets the events in the play as both an allegory of the alchemical Work and as Christian and Biblical allegories representing (“of course”) the Covenant of God and Israel, the stages of history in the Book of Daniel, the appearance of Jesus, his rejection by the world, etc. Even a brief analysis of the play as an allegory of the Work would have to be lengthy and could be disputed. Orphans, king’s sons, love, loss, death, reanimation, exaltation, degradation, further loss, and final redemption and marriage can (of course) be found in thousands of stories.

  16 Like the old king, the Moor is an analogue of a character in the main story, one who is about to appear, with a different though similarly violent function.

  17 The most interesting thing about the play is how the heroine swerves from standard romance heroines and exhibits a dangerous sexuality, willfulness, and lack of steadfast virtue. If the play is an allegory of the Work, she’d most resemble the Mercury/Cupid figure who is degraded, dies, blackens (nigredo), and is reborn tamed, only to lapse and suffer more degradation before the final exaltation.

  18 The beasts seen in Daniel’s vision in the Biblical Book of Daniel: A beast like a lion with eagle’s wings; a beast like a bear with three ribs between its teeth; a beast like a leopard with four wings and four heads; lastly a beast with iron teeth and ten horns. These were commonly images of the successive ages of human history, and Protestant theologians of Andreae’s day commonly thought that the fourth and last age was about to end, and conflated these beasts with the beasts of Revelations.

  19 The king in whose court Daniel had his dream of the four beasts.

  20 Perhaps a reference to the struggle of the Holy Roman Emperor and the Pope. Or just melodrama.

  21 The royals are again in black, shedding their innocent white, and the whole room is in black – both funereal and appropriate to the nigredo stage of alchemy.

  22 This is in fact the last we’ll see of the old king and the middle-aged king and their spouses; their essences will eventually form part of the royal pair’s revival.

  23 This episode poses a few problems. Seven ships come over the bay from Olympus Tower accompanied by flames, and Christian understands they are the spirits of the beheaded people. The coffins of the royals and the box containing the Moor’s head are then each put aboard a ship. Then all the lights on the ships are put out. Six of the seven tongues of flame pass back over the bay to the tower. Do six of the ships also go back, bearing the six coffins of the royals, unload the coffins at the tower, and then come back to where the soldiers guard the shore? Or do the ships, with the coffins stowed aboard, wait for morning to go all together to the tower island? In the original, a marginal note in Latin says Cadavera avehuntur trans lacus – “The bodies are carried across the lake.” What then becomes of the seventh flame? Montgomery has a rather tortured argument that it is the spirit of Venus, in whose chamber the dead royals spent the hours between beheading and trans-shipping, but I can’t see it. If it’s the spirit of the Moor, it apparently stays with him on the ship, but why is it no longer seen? If the spirit-flames don’t accompany the bodies back across the water, what is their function? It may be, of course, that the “six” is simply an error, Andreae’s or a typesetter’s. I’ve left it as the literal translation states it. More complications of this (probably unresolvable) problem will appear on the following day.

  THE FIFTH DAY

  The night was passed, and the dear longed-for day had just broken, when I leapt out of bed, more eager to find out what was going to happen next than I was to go on sleeping. I put on my cl
othes, and as before I slipped down the stairs, but it was still too early and the hall was empty. I returned then, and asked my page if he would please take me around the castle for a bit and show me something special. He was agreeable (as he always was), and he led me down a certain staircase that led down under the earth. We came to a great iron door, and set into the door were tall letters, made of copper.1 They said:

  I copied this inscription down in my notebook. We opened the door, and my page led me through a dark passage till we came to another door, this one very small, which was not fully closed. “This door was opened yesterday,”3 my page said, “when the six coffins were taken out, and hasn’t yet been shut.”

  As soon as we went in, I beheld the most amazing thing Nature has ever produced, for the vault was lit by nothing but a number of immense jewels – this was, my page said, the king’s treasury! A tomb stood in the middle of the place, so fabulously rich I was amazed it was left unguarded.

  “You should thank your lucky stars,” my page said. “You are getting to see things that no other human has ever laid eyes on, except the royal family themselves.”

  This tomb was triangular. In the middle of it stood a large polished copper basin. The rest was pure gold and gems. In the copper basin stood an angel who held in her arms the branches of an unearthly tree which dropped fruit continuously into the basin. As soon as a fruit touched the water it became water itself and flowed away into three smaller vessels nearby. The whole thing was supported by three animals: an eagle, an ox, and a lion, standing on a splendid base.4

  “What does all this mean?” I asked.

  “It means,” he said (as had the door we passed through),“that here Lady Venus lies, the beauty who’s undone so many and robbed them of wealth, honor, blessing, and happiness.” Then he pointed to a copper door, let into the paving-stones of the vault. “If you want, we can go down farther.”

  “I’ll follow you,” I said.

  He lifted the door, and I went down the steps after him. It was pitch dark, but in a moment he opened a little box that held an ever-burning candle, and at it he lit one of the torches that lay there. I was growing extremely nervous, and I asked him very seriously if we should be doing this.

  “As long as all the royal persons are still asleep, we don’t need to be afraid.”

  In the room we reached was a rich bed, hung about with exquisitely embroidered curtains. We drew the curtains aside, and I saw Lady Venus. My page pulled off her coverlets, and there she was, stark naked,5 lying in such beauty, such an astonishment, that I was almost beside myself. I couldn’t tell if perhaps she was actually a piece of carven stone, or a human dead body, she was so entirely still and unmoving – I didn’t dare touch her to find out. At last he covered her again and drew the curtain; yet she had been imprinted, so to speak, on my eyes, and I saw her still.

  Beside the bed was a tablet, with these words written on it:

  I asked my page what this meant, but he just laughed and promised that I’d find out myself soon enough. He put out the torch, and we climbed out again. Now I could have a better look around in the vault, and discovered a number of small alcoves, and in each a little pyrite taper was burning – I hadn’t noticed this before, because the flame of the taper was so clear and steady that it resembled a jewel more than a flame. But these pyrite tapers were causing the fruit-tree that the angel held to melt away, even though it continued to produce new fruit.

  “Here’s what I heard old Atlas tell the king,” my page said to me. “When the tree is entirely melted away, that’s when Lady Venus down below is going to wake up, become the mother of a king…”7

  Perhaps he was going to tell me more, but just then little Cupid flew into the room. At first he seemed alarmed to find the two of us there, but when he saw how pale and stunned we ourselves were, more like the dead than the living, he had to laugh. “What ghost brought you here?” he asked me.

  “I got lost in the castle,” I stammered. “Somehow, I don’t know how, I ended up here. This page, my page, went looking for me everywhere, and just now has come upon me here. I hope I haven’t done anything wrong.”

  “Well, all right, my busy old grandpa,” Cupid responded. “But you might have played a mean trick on me, if you’d guessed what this door here is for. I’d better just lock it up.” And he put a big lock on the copper door I’d gone down by.

  Thank God he hadn’t found me sooner! My page was relieved too that I’d covered for him in a pinch.

  …I saw Lady Venus.

  “And yet, and yet,” said Cupid, still smiling. “I don’t think I can just let you off, seeing how close you came to stumbling on dear Mother.” With that, he thrust the point of his dart into the flame of one of the bright pyrite tapers, and when it was hot he pricked me with it on the palm of my hand. It didn’t hurt too badly at the time – I was just glad that I’d got away with so little harm done. Or so I thought.8

  Meantime everyone else had risen and gone down into the hall, so I snuck up to my room and then came back down again, as though I too had just awakened. Cupid, when he’d locked up those secret chambers below, came in too. He made me show him my hand, where there was still a little drop of blood. “Better be nice to him,” he joked to the others. “He’s not long for this world!” It amazed all of us that Cupid could flit about so cheerfully, without any sense of the dreadful things that happened the day before – he seemed entirely untroubled.

  Our president appeared, dressed for a journey in black velvet, but carrying her laurel branch as always. Everything was prepared, she said; we were to drink something and then quickly form up for the procession, so we drank and followed her in order out into the court.

  There lay six coffins. All my brothers of course assumed that the six royal persons were inside them. I knew better, but I didn’t know what the point was of these six empty ones.9 By each coffin stood eight hooded men. As soon as music was heard – awesomely tragic and dreary – the men lifted the coffins, and we went after them into that same garden where we had seen the unweighty people punished. A wooden pavilion had been set up there, standing on seven pillars and topped with a crown. Within it were dug six graves, and by each one was a slab of stone, but in the middle was a large hollow stone globe. Silently and gravely the coffins were lowered into the graves and the stones were laid over them and sealed. The little chest containing the head and axe of the black executioner – supposedly – was placed in the round stone in the middle.

  My companions were all completely fooled. They could only suppose that the royal corpses were now entombed. A large flag with a phoenix painted on it was raised above the building, perhaps to make monkeys of us all the better, I don’t know10 – I was just grateful to God that I knew more than the others did.

  When all these ceremonies were done, our mistress climbed up to stand on top of the stone globe. She spoke briefly, telling us that we should fulfill the commitments we had made, not shrink from the suffering and labor we must undergo but pitch in to bring these royal persons buried here back to life. “Rise up now, and come with me to Olympus Tower, to bring back the necessary life-giving medicines!”

  Of course we all cried out that we would, and she led us out through a little door in the courtyard that opened right onto the shore. There were the seven ships, all empty.11 Our president’s troop of girls had planted their own laurel branches on the ships’ decks, and they assigned each of us to one or another of them. When we were all aboard, the ships were commanded in the name of God to set out. From the shore those maidens watched us till they could see us no more, and then with the guards returned into the castle.

  Each of our ships had a great banner and was marked with its own sign. Five of the signs were the five Platonic solids, and my ship, on which the lady president also sailed, had the sign of the sphere. Each ship had only two crewmen, and we sailed in a particular order. In front went the small ship in which I guessed the Moor’s head lay, and which also carried twelve fine musicians. Its
sign was the Pyramid. Behind that ship three sailed abreast, and mine was the middle one. Behind us came the two tallest and grandest ships, decorated with many of the laurel branches and carrying no passengers; their flags were the Sun and the Moon.12 In the rear was one ship, carrying forty of the royal maidens.

  We crossed the wide bay and out through a channel into the sea itself,13 and what did we see but all the sirens, sea-goddesses, nymphs and mermaids waiting for us! They sent one mermaid swimming over to deliver a present from all of them in honor of the wedding. It was a huge pearl, glowing and perfectly round, in a rich setting, a pearl the like of which has never been seen, not in our hemisphere, and not in the New World, either. Our directress received it.

  “Would you all,” this mermaid asked, “like to stop your ships here for a while, and let us entertain you?”

  “Very gladly,” our president called down to her.

  She gave directions that the two tall ships flying the Sun and Moon should stand in the middle of a pentagon formed by the rest of us. The sirens and nymphs formed a ring around us and with the most delicate, sweet, piercing voices began to sing this song:

  What can be, on earth or sea,

  More lovely than true love?

  It makes us good as good can be,

  To neighbors each more neighborly.

  So let’s all sing, unto the king,

  So loud the sky and sea shall ring:

  We’ll ask, and all you answer!

  What gives sweet life to all?

  (It’s love!)

  What lifts us when we fall?