The Chemical Wedding, by Christian Rosencreutz

by John Crowley

  (It’s love!)

  We’re from our mothers born –

  Through love;

  Without it live forlorn –

  Dear love!

  Man lies in bliss with wife –

  It’s love!

  Babe sucks her breast for life –

  That’s love!

  What to our parents do we owe?

  Love, all love.

  What makes them patient with us so?

  It’s their good love.

  What can overcome the worst?

  It’s love!

  How do we find such love at first?

  Through love!

  So let’s all sing, our song resounding –

  In our queen and our true king

  Love with love by love increasing.

  Their bodies earthly, souls of fire,

  We’ll labor, suffer, never tire,

  By God’s great name, by His love’s flame,

  We’ll join them each to each again.

  By the time they had finished this song, so heart-shaking in its harmonies and melodies, I understood why Ulysses stopped the ears of his shipmates – I felt like the unluckiest man alive, simply because I was myself and not a creature as lovely and blessed as these. But the young mistress soon sent them away and commanded us to sail on. She sent to the mermaids a long red scarf for a reward, and they all dispersed into the sea.

  Well, I was coming to be very aware that Cupid had begun his work inside me, which wasn’t really my doing, I suppose. Since any lengthy description of these giddy feelings I felt isn’t going to do the reader any good, I won’t go into details. I understood, though, that the hurt I’d taken from Cupid was prophesied by the wound to my head I got in the dungeon of my dream on that first day. Let me warn you, then, about hanging around by Venus’s bed: her son Cupid’s not going to let it pass unpunished!

  We spent the rest of the time aboard in pleasant talk, and at length came in sight of Olympus Tower. The young mistress ordered some cannons fired to announce our approach, and almost immediately we saw a great white flag raised over the tower, and a little gilded craft set out to meet us. When it came close, we could see a very elderly man aboard, who was the warder of the tower, and guards dressed in white.14 We were hailed in friendship and our ships were conducted to the tower harbor.

  The tower stood upon a perfectly square island and was surrounded by a wall so thick that I counted two hundred and sixty steps in passing through it. Past the wall was a pleasant meadow, with here and there small orchards where exotic fruits – unknown at least to me – were ripening; then an inner wall circling the tower itself. The tower resembled seven separate towers bound together, with the middle one a little higher; inside, they let into one another, and each was seven stories high. As soon as we entered in at the gate, we were ushered away down to one side – obviously this was so that the coffins15 could be brought in without our seeing them, though of course no one else knew that.

  We were taken down into the very bottom of the tower, which was painted with striking murals but was very sparely furnished – basically it was a laboratory, where we were to crush and wash herbs and precious stones and other sorts of things and extract their essences, and bottle these and store them. Our young mistress bustled among us giving orders and making sure everyone had plenty to do; we were to be mere laborers here until we had done all that was necessary for the restoring of those beheaded bodies. I learned afterwards that as we worked, three of her girls were washing the bodies with care in a nearby chamber.

  When we had worked a good long time, we were given a little broth and a small glass of wine, and nothing more, which made it clear we weren’t here for pleasure. At the end of our day of labor everyone had to be satisfied with only a thin mattress, laid on the floor, to sleep on. I myself didn’t care about sleeping; I went out into the garden, and went as far as the outer wall. The night was perfectly clear, and I was happy to spend the time watching the stars. I happened upon a set of stone stairs leading to the top of the wall, and the moonlight was so bright that I dared go up them, and stood looking out at the sea, which was now quite calm.

  When I had oriented myself and studied the sky more thoroughly, I realized that on this very night an unusual conjunction of the planets could be observed. I had been thus looking out at sea for a good while, when just at midnight, as the tower clock struck twelve, I saw far-off the seven flames.16 They were coming over the sea, toward the island, headed it seemed for the midmost tower. I grew afraid, for as soon as the flames had gathered at the tower’s top, the wind rose, and the sea grew stormy; clouds covered the moon, and my enjoyment turned to terror. I scarcely had time to find the stairs by which I’d come up, and get down into the tower again. Whether the seven flames remained there at the tower’s top or went away again, I can’t say, because in the dark and the wind I didn’t dare go out again. I lay down on my mattress on the laboratory floor beside a gently murmuring fountain, and with that I fell asleep.

  So the fifth day, too, ended with amazing events.

  1 In alchemy, copper is the metal of Venus as lead is of Saturn and iron of Mars. Venus is a key but ambiguous figure in the alchemical process – she can symbolize both the unclean and chaotic matter with which the alchemist begins his work – she is referred to as the Whore – but she can also be the cold, chaste, moist substance related to the Moon and to silver.

  2 The letters are a simple substitution code, with odd symbols standing for letters in German. It’s mere mystification, since the page translates a moment later.

  3 The events are occurring in linkage with one another, truly resembling the cascade of events in an alchemical athenor. Venus is in the cold state preceding the beginning of the Work to revive the dead royals.

  4 The eagle, the ox and the lion are Christian symbols of three of the four Gospels. They are also three of the beasts who draw the car of Ezekiel to the throne of God. The fourth would be a winged man, who could be the central angel described here, except that this figure is explicitly female. The mystery isn’t lessened by the Page’s bland answer to Christian’s question – it’s just the translation of the coded copper letters.

  5 Montgomery notes the resemblance of the whole scene to the Tarot card called The World (XXI), showing a naked woman surrounded by the four animals of Ezekiel/the Gospels. What if anything the correspondence might signify can’t be known, as we have no knowledge that Andreae had any interest in or knowledge of Tarot; Tarot trumps weren’t commonly used as occult symbols until a later century.

  6 “When the fruit of my tree/Shall be entirely/Molten I will/Awake and be/A mother of a/King.” Again, the page will respond in a moment by translating the coded letters.

  7 The page attributes the mystic words to old Atlas.

  8 This moment with Cupid is the crux of one theme of the story, a theme or series of events that stands in a counterpoint with the triumphant story of the re-creation of the royal couple. Both are centrally about sex, but one is the inverse of the other.

  9 Starting here, certain of the brothers are going to be variously fooled and misdirected, so that only a small number end up participating in the culmination of the work.

  10 The Phoenix is periodically consumed in fire and then resurrects itself from its own ashes. A very common symbol throughout alchemical lore (and Christian iconography) of life arising from death. The brothers are able to read the symbol, which will add to their certainty that the bodies to be resurrected are buried below.

  11 This too suggests that the bodies have already been transported to the island; but in the next paragraph Christian guesses that the Moor’s head is still in the lead ship. So they aren’t all empty.

  12 These two ships ought to be carrying the coffins containing the king and queen; if they were transported the night before (see above), the imposture about the coffins is continuing.

  13 In alchemy, the undifferentiated prima materia the Work begins with. One alchemical text says the dea
d king must be marinated in the sea before being brought to dry land.

  14 The white clothes and the white flag can be understood as suggesting the albedo stage of the work, when the blackened corpse of matter has been washed in mercurial waters and turned white. Seas and white flags and seven-story towers and the phoenix are common in allegorical tales of things that happen in alchemical experiments – but it seems to me that CW can’t be an allegory of the alchemical work and a straightforward recounting of it at the same time.

  15 This sentence compounds the mystery of when the coffins arrive – it seems to say distinctly that the brothers are taken to one side so that the coffins can be secretly unloaded, though this ought to have happened the night before if they were all brought over then. Montgomery says simply “This took place the previous night,” without explaining how.

  16 Now they are seven again, and they are coming to the tower from across the water, apparently from the castle (where else?) Where have they been, doing what?

  THE SIXTH DAY

  Next morning, after we had awakened one another, we sat on our mattresses for a while and talked about what we thought might be going on and what might be yet to come. Some of us believed that the royal ones would all be brought back to life together; others said no, the death of the older ones would restore the life of the younger ones, but would also increase it. Others guessed that they hadn’t been executed at all, and that others had somehow been beheaded in their places.

  We’d been talking for a while when the old warder came in and greeted us. He looked at all we’d done the day before to see if everything had been completed just so. We had worked well and thoroughly, and he could find nothing wrong, so he put all the glass jars containing our products into a case.

  After a while a number of young men came in bringing some ladders, some lengths of rope, and some pairs of wings.

  “My dear boys,” the warder said to us. “Each one of you will have to carry one of these three things with you through the day. You can each choose which one you want, or you can distribute them among you by lot.”

  We all replied that we’d like to choose ourselves, but he immediately said, “No. No, we’ll do it by lot.”

  He made three little cards, and wrote on them “Ladder” or “Rope” or “Wings” and put them in a hat. Each of us had to draw, and whatever you got you were stuck with. Those who got the ropes thought they were the lucky ones; I happened to draw “Ladder,” which was going to be a lot of trouble, since the ladder was twelve feet long and very heavy. The ones with the ropes could just coil them over their shoulders, and as for the wings, the warder stuck them onto the backs of those who’d drawn them, and there they stayed as though they’d grown them.

  He turned off a tap at the fountain to stop it flowing, and we had to move it out of the way, and after everything was put away he left, taking the case full of jars, and locked the door behind him – we could only think we’d been imprisoned there. A quarter of an hour passed, and then suddenly a door covering a circular opening in the ceiling above was lifted, and who should look down on us but our own young mistress.

  “Good morning,” she said. “Come on up!”

  This was easy enough for those with wings – they immediately flew to the hole and through it – and we with the ladders saw now what they were for. The ones with the ropes had the hardest time, because as soon as those with the ladders reached the top we were told to pull up our ladders after us. The rope people had to fling their ropes up to catch an iron hook and pull themselves up, which resulted in plenty of blisters.

  As soon as we were all up, the opening was closed again, and our mistress kindly welcomed us. The room where we found ourselves was as wide as the tower and had six pretty chambers around it, raised three steps above the room itself. We were directed into these vestries or chapels, to pray there for the lives of the king and queen. The lady herself went out a small door till we had finished.

  When we had completed our prayers, twelve people came in through the small door – we recognized them as the musicians from yesterday – and placed in the middle of the room a thing – a puzzling object, somewhat long in shape, that my companions, I suppose, thought must be a sort of fountain or distillery. But I could tell that the royal corpses were inside it, for the oval base of the object was easily large enough to hold them one atop another. The musicians went back to get their instruments, and with oh-so-delicate music they conducted in our mistress and her attendant girls. The lady carried a casket, but the others had only branches and little lamps – though some brought lighted torches, which they gave to us. We were all to stand around this fountain in the following order: First, the young mistress, at A, with her attendants, c, carrying branches and lamps. Then ourselves, b, with torches; then the musicians, also at a, in a long row; then last some other girls, d, in a long row too. (Where these other girls came from, if they lived in the tower or had somehow been brought in at night, I didn’t know, for all their faces were covered with white veils, and I couldn’t identify them.)

  The young mistress opened her casket and took out a round thing wrapped up in a piece of green changeable taffeta. She laid this in the small top chamber of the object and then covered it with the lid, which was pierced with holes. The lid had a deep rim into which she poured several of the liquids we had prepared yesterday, and immediately the fountain started running. The maiden attendants stuck their lamps on points that surrounded the lower container, so as to heat the liquid. When it boiled, the fountain or still1 drew the liquid back up through the pierced lid into the small vessel and out through four pipes onto the bodies concealed within the large container. The liquids were now so hot that they would melt the bodies inside and reduce them to a kind of liquor. What I knew – but my companions didn’t – was that the round thing the lady had placed in the upper vessel was the head of the black executioner, and that head was what caused the super-heating of the fluids drawn up over it. The maidens carrying branches stuck them into holes in the great oval vessel; this might have been purely ceremonial, I don’t know, but some of the fluid running down into the large vessel spurted out the holes and over the branches, and then dripped back down in again, seeming somehow more brightly yellow.

  This distillation and melting lasted nearly two hours, the still running constantly on its own, though the longer it ran the weaker its action grew. Meanwhile the musicians went away, and we walked up and down in that room. It was easy to kill time there, filled as the place was with images, paintings, automata, organs, circulating fountains and similar wonders. When the still slowed to a stop and wouldn’t percolate any longer, the young mistress sent for a hollow golden globe to be brought. She opened a tap at the bottom of the large oval vessel and let all the matter that had been dissolved or liquefied by the boiling fluids – some of it deep red – run into the hollow globe. (The remaining fluid in the top vessel was discarded.) The whole object then was removed, and was obviously much lighter than it had been; whether it was taken somewhere and opened up, whether anything usable remained of the bodies that had been inside, I just don’t know. But I do know that the liquid that filled the globe was too heavy for six and more of us to lift, though by the size of it you’d think one person could have carried it easily. Anyway it was carried out through the door with a lot of effort, and we were once again left all alone. Overhead I could hear the sound of footsteps, and I remembered my ladder and got a grip on it.

  It was interesting listening to the opinions of my companions about that fountain or distillery and its action, for of course they supposed that the royal corpses were buried in the earth of the garden in the castle, and had no idea what had gone on here; I was again thankful that I’d awakened on that night and seen what I’d seen – it was helping me in carrying out our mistress’s great task.

  After a few minutes, an opening in the ceiling of this chamber was uncovered, as I had suspected it would be. The young mistress looked down on us and ordered us all to come up, a
nd we did it the same way as before – wings, ladders, ropes. I was a little annoyed that her handmaids could go upstairs by another way, and we had to expend so much effort, but I guessed there must be some good reason for it; handing them out and seeing to their use at least gave the old warder something to do in this process, but even those he’d given wings to only had that momentary advantage when they had to go up through the opening.

  When I got up, and the opening had been shut behind me, I saw that the golden globe was hanging by a strong golden chain in the middle of the chamber. There was nothing else in the room but the windows. Between each pair of windows was a brilliantly polished mirror with a door that could be closed over it. These mirrors were angled in such a way that when the windows on the side of the room the sun shone in on were opened, and the doors covering the mirrors were opened too, the light of the sun (which was in itself terrifically bright this morning) was reflected around so that the whole room was nothing but suns! The refracted light and heat were focused on the golden globe hanging in the center, whose surface was also highly polished, so what with the light everywhere you couldn’t even look at it, and we had to stare out the windows instead while the globe was heated to the right degree. I’ll say it again, on my honor – this was the most amazing spectacle of light that Nature could produce – there were suns everywhere, in every corner, and the golden globe was even brighter, and you could no more look right at it than you can look at the sun itself for more than a blink.

  The young mistress at length ordered the mirrors to be covered and the windows to be shuttered, to let the globe cool down a little. It was about seven o’clock now, and we were glad of it, thinking we might have time now for some breakfast. Well, what we got you might call a philosopher’s breakfast, “nothing in excess” for sure, though we weren’t left hungry. And the hope of great happiness later on – which the young lady often held out to us – made us forget any inconveniences and frets. I truly can say, about all my good companions, that they weren’t men whose thoughts dwelled much on their dinners; what they really wanted was to continue on this adventure in science and by means of it to contemplate the Creator’s wisdom and power.