by John Crowley
After supper, he took us into his cabinets of curiosities, which were built here and there in the bulwarks of the tower, and we saw so many astonishing natural products, and so many equally astonishing products of human invention in imitation of Nature,16 that we could have spent a year there studying them. We went over them by lamplight long into the night, but at last all we wanted to study was our beds; so we were taken to rooms cut in the wall of the tower, where the beds were rich and fine, and so were all the furnishings, which made us wonder why we’d had to make do with such skimpy accommodations before. From eleven o’clock at night till eight the next morning I slept soundly there, relieved now of all work and worry, tired after all the labors of the day and hearing the gentle hushing of the sea.
1 A. E. Waite, a scholar of the occult and an early publisher of CW in a modern version, calls this description “a confused text,” and indeed it is hard to discern how the thing is supposed to work. That the liquid heated by the lamps around the vessel where the bodies are is percolating up around the Moor’s head, being reheated there, and running back down, is my best guess.
2 It should by now be apparent that brothers are making their way up one story at each stage of the process till the seventh floor is reached.
3 A modern German commentator expands these abbreviations into a Latin phrase: Obligatio tolle bitumen minutum liquefactumque kantione ignique voltus bituminis tollitur golt. This would mean “You must take pulverized and liquefied bitumen and with fire and music [?] change the form of the bitumen to gold.” If this is right, it still doesn’t tell us its meaning in context. Bitumen is a black, oily product of the breakdown of organic compounds like petroleum – basically, tar. SANITAS. NIX. HASTA: I have seen no good explanation for this. “Sanitas” means health. “Hasta” is a spear. Montgomery connects it to a passage in Book XII of Vergil’s Aeneid, in which a wise physician cures Aeneas as he stands leaning on his spear (“nixus in hastam”). F. I. A. T.: “Let [it] be done [or made],” as in the opening line of Genesis: Fiat lux, “let there be light.” As an acronym, it remains obscure (to me; others have offered expansions they espouse).
4 The appearance of this inscription on the egg-box implies, even makes certain, that the ceremony of the death and rebirth of the king has happened many times. See below, note to the last page.
5 One commentator decrypts this line as “A.D. 1459” – the year the events in CW are supposed to take place. How it comes to be already prepared and the process described on it in the past tense is hard to explain. The coded line, however, might also (if looked at just right) be symbols of the twelve astrological signs interlaced with a central symbol, the Monad, described above p. 39.
6 Again, the transformation from the nigredo (blackened) state of the Work to the albedo (whitened) state. It seems to happen in the story as a continuous or repeated event or action rather than a single determinative one – like a theme in music. (See instances noted above.)
7 The “peacock” state of the Work – though most alchemical texts put this state after the nigredo and before the albedo. This is the end of the lesser stage of the Work. What remains in standard alchemical practice is the achieving of the rubedo or red stage, where the Red King is made and married to the White Woman; their son is the Stone of the Philosophers, able to perfect all substances.
8 Blue things are rather rare in alchemy, though Paracelsus compared the achieved Work to a sapphire. Projecting a blue color over the evolving Work is mentioned in some texts. The image of the big blue bird remains, as Christian says, mighty odd.
9 Another sequence of seven is completed.
10 The beginning of the rubedo stage.
11 This most important of all the chambers in the seven-towered castle is the eighth – which to my mind gives a bit more support to the idea that CW is best understood as a tale in eight days.
12 This secrecy and misdirection has roots in the alchemists’ elaborate ruses to keep others from understanding their processes. Those who know, know – as Christian does here.
13 We shouldn’t be surprised to see him here, since he is associated with his mother, Venus, whom Christian discovered in the same beautiful translucent inanimate state.
14 I find it wonderful and touching that in CW the participants in the allegory of the alchemical process seem such real persons. The royal couple apparently had no idea that this was going to be the outcome of their beheading.
15 Why the brotherhood should be built on tricks that separate some of the brothers from others is not explained – it’s just so.
16 Lorraine Daston and Katherine Park in their book Wonders and the Order of Nature (Zone Books, 1998) show how the Renaissance and Baroque imagination saw human works of art and craft as in competition with the productions of Nature (jewels, wonders, monsters, treasures), as though Nature were basically a superb artist. Early museums and collections were full of natural oddities next to works of art, and natural objects made more wonderful by being worked on by human artists – bejeweled, or inscribed, or embellished.
THE SEVENTH DAY
I woke up past eight and got ready quickly so that I could return to the tower, but the many dark passages in the wall led in so many directions that I wandered around for quite a while before I found the way out. The same thing happened to the others, until we finally gathered in the bottom chamber of the tower that had been our laboratory. There our lady had a new robe for each of us, all of yellow, and our Golden Fleece decorations were returned to us. When this was done, she told us at last the secret name of our order: we were all Knights of the Golden Stone.
After breakfast, the old warder presented us each with a gold medallion. On one side of it were these letters: AR. NAT. MI, which stood for “Ars, Naturae Ministra,” or “Art, the Servant of Nature.” On the other face it had TEM. NA. F., standing for “Temporis natura filia,” or “Nature, the Daughter of Time.” He warned us strictly1 not to try to take anything else with us from the tower.
We went down to the harbor, where our ships lay, but now far more richly decorated than before – it was impossible that all these amazing furnishings hadn’t been brought over in advance. There were now twelve ships, our remaining six and six of the old warder’s, which he had manned with well-armed soldiers. He himself, though, joined all of us knights in the flagship. Before us went a ship filled with musicians (he employed any number of musicians, apparently) to entertain us. Our banners were the twelve signs of the Zodiac, and the banner of our ship was Libra; it had a wonderful clock on deck, among other things, that showed not only hours but minutes.2 The sea was so calm that it was delightful to be on it, but the best thing of all was the old warder’s conversation. He knew so many wonderful stories I could have spent a lifetime listening to him.
We must have been traveling fast, for before we’d been at sea two hours, the lookout called out that he could now see the bay beyond, almost covered in ships – it seemed they must be on their way out to meet us, and in fact as soon as we had come through the channel into the bay, there were five hundred ships over the water! One grand one glittered with gold and gems, and the king and queen sat there with many lords and ladies and high-born maidens. As soon as we came in sight, their ship fired its cannon, and there was such a blast of trumpets, trombones, and kettledrums that all the ships seemed to dance on the water. The sailors brought our ships together, and there we dropped anchor. Old Atlas, the royal astronomer, stepped out from beside the royal couple and made a brief but elegant speech, offering us the king’s welcome and asking if we had brought him the Royal Gift.
Now imagine how confused and astounded most of our brother knights were as to how this king and queen could have got here – they expected they would now have to awaken those corpses buried in the garden! We four who knew better didn’t enlighten them, and pretended to be just as surprised as they were. The old warder then came forward and answered Atlas’s speech with a somewhat longer reply, in which he wished the king and queen all happiness
and many children, etc., after which he brought out a very curious little casket.3 I don’t know at all what was in it. The old warder gave it to Cupid – who had been hovering between the king and the queen – for him to keep.
Another celebratory volley from the cannons, and on we sailed, till we arrived at a different port than the one we’d first set out from – this one was near the gate at which I had first gone into the castle. There was a huge crowd awaiting us there, many of the king’s household, and hundreds of horses. As we went ashore, the king and queen both gave us their hands, every one of us, with great kindness.
So we were to mount up and ride the rest of the way to the castle entrance. Now here I have to ask you not to take what I have to tell as pride or boasting on my part – believe me that I wouldn’t even bother to tell the next incident, probably, if I didn’t have to. What happened was that all our company from the island was mixed with the lords and ladies from the castle, but the old warder and I (myself completely undeserving) were alone invited to ride beside the king and were each given a snow-white banner with a red cross to bear. Very likely I was only chosen because of my age, he and I being the only graybeards there.
I’d fastened to my hat (where once my four roses had been) those two tokens that the gatekeepers had given me when I first came to enter the castle. The young king took an interest in them.
“So you were the one who was able to buy these tokens at the gate?” he asked me.
I bowed and murmured very humbly, “Yes.”
The king laughed and said, “No need any longer for little tokens! You are, after all, my father!”4
Then he asked me what I had paid for the tokens with.
“One with water and one with salt,” I answered.
“Well!” he answered. “And how did you come to make such wise choices?”
I grew a little more confident at that and told him what had happened with my bread, and the dove, and the raven, and all that, and he was very pleased with the story. “It shows that God intended you to succeed here,” he said.
Just then we came to the first gate. The porter in the blue coat waited there, holding a petition, and as soon as he saw me beside the king, he gave this petition to me, begging me to remind the king how generously he, the porter, had treated me.
I asked the king about this man, what sort of person he was.
“He was once a very famous and celebrated astrologer,” the king said readily. “My father the king held him in high regard. Once upon a time, though, he committed a grave error: he snuck in to spy on the goddess Venus asleep in her bed. Of course he was found out and punished, and his punishment was this: he must wait at this first gate until someone comes along who can release him.”
“How,” I asked, “can he be released?”
“If someone can be discovered to have committed the same fault as he,” the king replied, “then that person must take the porter’s place, and the porter will be freed.”
This went like a shot right to my heart, for of course I was myself that guilty person. I said nothing, though, and only gave the porter’s petition to the king. When he had read it, he seemed quite alarmed – the queen, who with the Duchess of the Weights rode right behind him, noticed it. “What is it, my lord?” she asked. “What does the letter say?”
But the king brushed it off, put away the letter, and began to talk of other things, until about three o’clock we arrived at the castle and accompanied the king as he went into his hall.
The king immediately called for old Atlas his astronomer and with him retreated to a private room where (as I would learn) he showed Atlas the porter’s petition and ordered Atlas to ride immediately to the porter to find out more.
The king then joined us, and with his spouse took his seat amid the other lords and ladies.
Our young mistress spoke up, praising us all for our hard work and all the effort and sacrifice we had made. She asked that we all be royally rewarded, and asked that she too might receive what was due to her for fulfilling her commission. At that the old warder rose and testified to everything our mistress had said, and agreed that both she and we should be well compensated. What the king decided was that we were each to step up and make a wish of any kind, and it would be granted – because surely men of good minds such as ourselves would make wise wishes. We had until after supper to think about what our wish would be.
To pass the time till supper, the king and queen began playing a board game somewhat like chess, except that it had different rules, because it was played with Virtues against Vices – it was very ingenious the traps that a Vice could set for a Virtue, and the ways that a Virtue could escape and trap a Vice. It was so well-thought-out and took such cleverness to play that I wish we had the same game.
During the game, old Atlas came in again and whispered in the king’s ear. I sat and blushed – my guilty conscience was pricking me. The king summoned me and gave me the petition to read for myself, and it was about just what I guessed it would be about. The porter began by wishing the king prosperity and wealth and that his offspring might flourish far and wide and so on. Then he claimed that the time was come at last when he ought to be released from his servitude, because he had learned that Venus had been uncovered and looked at by one of the king’s guests. He had irrefutable evidence of this, he said, and if His Majesty would make the same investigation, he would find that in fact it was true, she had been intruded upon; and if this turned out to be not so, then he, the porter, was willing to stand at his gate for the rest of his life. Lastly he begged that he, even at the risk of his life and his happiness, might be allowed to come to this night’s supper in order to help identify the offender, and thus win his own freedom.
All this was powerfully expressed and showed the noble nature of the man, but to me it cut like a knife, and I wished I’d never had to see it. I thought desperately of some way to use my royal wish to resolve this, and I asked the king if there wasn’t something else that could be done so that the porter could be freed without leaving his post and disrupting the party with all this scandal.
“Oh no,” the king said. “Because of the special nature of his case, there’s only one way out for him. For this one night, we can let him come here as he asks.”
So someone was sent to bring him in.
Supper was laid in a spacious refectory which we’d never been in before, which was so perfect – but I’m at a loss how to describe it. We were conducted in with all pomp and circumstance. Cupid, however, was absent: he was, I was told, rather angry about the insult to his sleeping mother. In fact, the offense, which was actually my own, and the porter’s petition revealing it, made for a lot of disquiet: the king was doubtful how to go about making inquiries among the guests, because asking would reveal what none of them – all but one – so far knew. So he allowed the porter – who by then had arrived and been admitted – to see what he could learn, examining each of us, while the king himself tried to make the dinner as cheerful and convivial as he could.
Eventually everyone did liven up, and a brilliant conversation ensued, with all kinds of entertaining and perspicuous remarks and anecdotes. I can’t bring myself to describe how all the ceremonies and so forth that followed were carried out; it’s not necessary to the story I am trying to tell, and it’s not the reader’s business, but I’ll say that it wasn’t just the amounts we drank that made the talk seem wise and the ceremonies profound – no, this was the noblest, as it was the last, meal at which I was present. When it was all done, the tables were whisked away and a number of highly wrought chairs were set out in a circle, and all of us sat, including the king, the queen, their aged counselors Atlas and the old warder, and all the ladies and maidens.
A handsome young page then opened that beautiful little black book, and Atlas took the center of the circle and spoke. He said that His Royal Majesty hadn’t forgotten the services we had rendered, and how carefully we had done our duty, and for that reason he had elected us all Knights of th
e Golden Stone.5 He asked us to serve him further if ever he needed us, and also to swear to a number of principles. If we did so, His Majesty would treat us, his followers, well.
Atlas turned the page then and read the articles:
You knights shall swear that you will not give credit for our
Order and its works to any demon or spirit but only to God, your Creator, and to Nature, his handmaid.
That you will hate all immorality and excess and whoring, and not dirty your Order with such things.
That you will help any worthy person that you can with your skills.
That you will not use this honor for worldly profit or power.
That you won’t go on living longer than God wants you to.
We had to laugh at that last article; maybe it was put in after the others just for a joke.6
We swore to all of this on the king’s scepter and thereupon were installed as knights with all the usual ceremonies. Among the privileges granted us was power to work effectively in our own judgment against Ignorance, Poverty, and Illness. We were brought all together to a little chapel, and our knighthoods were ratified there, and thanks given to God. Everyone had to write his name in that chapel, and this is what I wrote:
The highest knowledge is to know you know nothing.7
Brother Christian Rosencreutz
Knight of the Golden Stone
A.D. 1459
Everyone else wrote what they thought was appropriate, and we returned to the hall, where it was time to come up with that wish that we’d been promised would be granted. The king and his council went off into a smaller chamber to hear what we wanted, one at a time. Since each of us went in alone, I don’t know what the others wished for. For myself, I thought that the most laudable thing I could do was to demonstrate some particular virtue in my wish, in honor of my Order; and I believe the most honorable virtue, anyway the one that’s always cost me the most to exercise, is Gratitude. Of course I could have wished for something precious and gratifying to myself, but I managed to suppress that impulse and vowed that I’d try to free the porter, my benefactor, even if it cost me everything.
