Endless Things (12 page)

So strong a wind that I thought the hill on which my little house was built would fly apart; but since I had seen the Devil do such things as this before (for the Devil had often tried to injure me) I took courage, and went on meditating, till I felt somebody touch me on the back.

This frightened me so utterly that I didn't dare turn. I tried to stay as brave and calm as a person could under the circumstances. Then I felt my coat tugged at, and tugged again, and at last I looked around. A woman, splendid and beautiful, stood there, in a sky-colored robe, a heavens covered with stars. She held a trumpet of beaten gold in her hand, and there was a name engraved on it, which I could easily read, but which I am still forbidden to tell. Under her left arm she had a bundle of letters, in all languages, which it was apparent she was going to deliver to all countries; she had large and beautiful wings too, full of eyes like a peacock's, that would certainly lift and carry her as fast as an eagle. I might have noticed other things about her too, but she was with me so short a time, and I was so amazed and afraid, that this was all I saw. In fact as soon as I turned around to see her, she started going through her letters, and pulled one out—a small one—and very gravely she laid it on my table; then without having said a word, she left. But as she rose into the air, she blew a blast on her trumpet so loud that the whole hill echoed with it, and for a quarter of an hour afterward I couldn't hear myself think.

All this was so unexpected that I had no idea what to tell myself about it, or what to tell myself to do next. So I fell to my knees, and begged my Creator not to let anything happen to me that would imperil my eternal happiness; and then, trembling, I went to pick up the little letter—which was heavy, as heavy as though it were solid gold, or heavier. As I was cautiously inspecting it, I found a small seal, with an odd sort of cross on it, and the inscription
In hoc signo vinces
, which made me feel a little better, as such a seal certainly wouldn't have been used by the Devil. I opened the letter tenderly; it was blue inside and on the blue in golden letters these verses were written:

On this day, this day, this

The Royal Wedding is!

If you are one who's born to see it,

And if God Himself decree it,

Then you must to the Mountain wend

Where three stately temples stand.

From there you'll know

Which way to go.

Be wise, take care,

Wash well, look fair,

Or else the Wedding cannot save you.

Leave right away,

Watch what you weigh—

Too little, and they will not have you!

Beneath this was drawn the Bride and Groom,
Sponsus
and
Sponsa
.

(Here Johann Valentin paused, dipped his pen again, and drew a figure, tongue between his teeth and pen held vertical, copying as best he could the hieroglyph of Philip à Gabella.)

I nearly fainted, having read this; my hair stood on end, and a cold sweat trickled down my side—for this must be the very wedding that I had learned about in a vision seven years before! I had thought about it constantly, and studied the stars and planets to determine the day, and here it was—and yet I couldn't have predicted that it would come at such a bad time. I always thought that I would be an acceptable and even welcome guest, and only needed to be ready to attend, but now it seemed God's providence was directing this, which I hadn't been certain about before, and the more I thought about myself, the more I found in my head nothing but confusion and blindness about the mysteries. I couldn't even understand things that lay under my own feet, which I encountered and dealt with every day; I didn't feel I was “born to see” the secrets of nature. I thought that nature could find a better disciple anywhere at all to entrust with her precious (though temporary and mutable) treasures than I could ever be. I certainly had not been wise, or taken care, or “washed well"—my inner physical life, and my social commitments, and my compassion toward my neighbors, all needed improvement. Life was always prodding me to get more; I was forever wanting to look good in the world's eyes and succeed, instead of working for the betterment of men. I was always plotting how I could make a quick profit by this or that scheme, build a big house, make a name for myself, and all that.

But those lines about the “three temples” worried me the most; I couldn't figure out what they meant at all. It occurred to me that maybe I wasn't supposed to know yet—for I wouldn't be worrying about any of this if it hadn't been thus revealed to me, maybe too soon. But I also thought that God had let me know that I really ought to be present at the wedding, and so like a little child I gave thanks to Him, and asked that he keep me always in awe of Him, and fill my heart every day with wisdom and understanding, and lead me (even though I didn't deserve it) to a happy ending at last.

So I got ready for the journey. I put on my white linen coat, fastened with a bloodred ribbon bound crossways over my shoulder. I stuck four red roses in my hat, so that I would be somewhat noticeable among the crowd. For food I took bread and salt, as a wise man had once told me to do in cases like this—I found it did me good. But before I set out, I got down on my knees in my wedding garment and asked God that, if what seemed to be about to happen really did happen, only good would come of it; and I made a vow, that if anything was revealed to me, I wouldn't use it for my own benefit or power in the world, but for the spreading of His Name and the service of my neighbor.

And with that vow, and in high hopes, I went out of my little room, and with joy I set out.

If all the world were made of letters and names, then a text out of nowhere could explode it, enter into its tissues like a germ or a seed, working both ways at once, toward foreword, toward epilogue, and remake its sense. That's what happened in Europe in 1615 when the Rosicrucian texts appeared, with their fantastic provenances and alphabetical prophets: or would have, if the world really were made of letters and names, and not the stuff it's made of. No one can account now for why these texts, unlike all the other wild prophecies, encoded romances, politico-chemical allegories, and religious polemics of the time, should have so taken the imagination. No one knows where either of the first two came from, who wrote them or why, what effect they were supposed then to have. The only name that can be identified for sure is that of the Lutheran pastor Johann Valentin Andreæ, who said he really did write the
Chemical Wedding
. Later he was sorry, and said he wished he hadn't written it.

Later.

Pierce in the little city below the ruins of Heidelberg castle read Dame Frances, who knew all about Christian Rosencreutz and Johann Valentin Andreæ and the
Chemical Wedding
, how it told of the founding of a Brotherhood of the Golden Stone, and of a wedding that takes place amid the magical gardens of a magical castle guarded by a lion. There are fountains described that are like Heidelberg's were. There is a knightly initiation, a little like the one whereby the real Frederick was really invested with the real Order of the Garter in actual Jacobean England. There is a play described in it that is like those the English actors really brought to Germany, and within that play a play. And look—the page was reprinted in Dame Frances's book—here in the
Chemical Wedding,
where the woman clothed as the sky and stars proffers her wedding invitation, right by the words
Sponsus
and
Sponsa
, there was (in the German) a crude mark that looks like, and in the English printings certainly becomes, the sign of the Monas, John Dee's own invention or discovery.

So she was right, and Johann Valentin's romance certainly does turn back to England, and the old English wizard, and that bright couple Shakespeare blessed, and their joined lions: the hopes the English placed in a smart dynastic coupling, the marriage of Thames and Rhine. But what if imagination could make it more? What if the hope then was that a
story
told about that wonderful and hopeful marriage might change its nature backward, and make it far more wonderful; what if language of the right kind, describing that more wonderful thing, could be powerful enough to change altogether what it described, even when what it described was something that had already happened?
Gematria
: the alteration of preexistent things by the alteration of the letters that constitute their true names, which first brought them into being.

And then to go on from there along the new way.

Pierce had come to think that magic, and stories intended to work magic, were made just opposite of the way stories in literature are made. In the stories of world literature, at least as he knew them in his own reading, one particular couple with a particular fate will stand for all couples in the toils of love and loss and struggle; Boy Meets Girl, Boy Loses Girl, Boy Gets Girl, or doesn't. But in magic, a general, universal couple—in alchemy the
Sponsus
and
Sponsa,
who near the end of the endless Work become pregnant with the Child who is the Stone—are at the same time each particular couple: they are Adam and Eve, Sun and Moon, Gold and Silver, Active and Passive, copper Venus and iron Mars, God and Mary, you and me, all of us at the work of generation. What they do is as though done by all, and the fruit of their union is for all to have, indeed all
do
have it just as soon as it's made. If it ever is.

So it would be no category error to identify one couple, one royal couple whom the whole world can see, with that general couple that is engendering the Stone. Because every couple can be so identified. That's what the
Chemical Wedding
did, and Frederick and Elizabeth were it, or It.

Beau Brachman once told him (whatever had become of Beau anyway, where was he now?) that there is no history. The world, he said, is like a hologram: break apart the photographic plate on which a hologram has been printed, and you can show that every part of it contains the whole image, if you look at it with laser light. Every part of every part, down to the smallest resolvable crumb. In the same way (Beau said) our original situation is present in every divisible moment of all succeeding situations, but (he said, and smiled that smile) you need a special light to see it.

If the Rose Cross was the
Monas hieroglyphica
, and the
Monas hieroglyphica
was the Golden Stone, and the Golden Stone was born of the coupling of the alchemical spouses, then (as in the best alchemical paradoxes) the Stone could only be generated by the action of the Stone, which, before it was generated, could not exist.

No wonder Andreæ called his work a comedy.

The culmination of the whole story, at the end of the Seventh Day, was the reception of the guests into the Order of the Golden Stone, after which they sailed away in their ships
. So Yates said. Sailed away: either for the Fortunate Isles of the West to live happily ever after, or more likely to all the lands of men, to undertake the universal reformation of the whole wide world.

But what she didn't say is that Christian himself is left behind.

For on an earlier day of the story, Christian, roaming the wonderful castle to which his letter admitted him, went farther than he should. A mischievous young page told him that in a deep-down chamber Venus herself lay buried or asleep—did Christian want to see? He showed Christian a trapdoor of copper they could go down by. And Christian, trusting and terrified, followed him down.

By the torch's light I saw a rich bed all made, hung with curious curtains. The page drew one aside, and there I saw the Lady Venus, stark naked—for he threw aside the coverlets too—lying there in such beauty, and somehow so astonishing, that I was almost beside myself. I could hardly say she wasn't a piece of marble carved, or a human corpse that lay there dead, for she was completely immobile, and yet I didn't dare touch her. The page covered her again, and drew the curtain, and yet she was still in my eyes, so to speak.

My page put out the torch, and we climbed out again to the chamber above. Just then, in flew little Cupid, who at first was a little shy in our presence, considering what had been done to
him
the day before; but seeing us both looking more like the dead than the living, he couldn't help laughing, demanding to know what spirit had led me here. I answered, trembling, that I had lost my way in the castle, and just by chance happened to come here, and that the page had been looking everywhere for me, and at last had found me here. I hoped, I said, that he wouldn't take it amiss.

"No, it's all right, my busy old grandpa,” said Cupid, “but you might easily have played a nasty trick on me, if you had known about this door. I'd better fix that.” And he put a strong lock on the copper door we had gone down by. I thanked God that he hadn't come upon us sooner! My page too was very glad that I had got him out of a tight spot.

Maybe Cupid believes him, maybe not, but the winged boy declares he has no choice but to punish Christian for coming so close to where his mother lies sleeping. He heats the tip of his golden dart in a candle flame and pricks Christian's right hand, laughing to see the blood well up. The mark will never vanish.

That naughty page. That cold goddess. That laughing boy.

The story of the wedding goes on from there. Guests are weighed and the lightweights expelled. The remaining guests travel to another, darker castle, where arduous labors of fire and water are undergone, plays are acted, boxes containing precious eggs are opened, and at last the dead king and queen are brought to life and the stone their son is manifested. Then the King (newmade, golden) brings the guests, all now sworn Brothers of the Golden Stone, back to the Wedding Castle. At the gate stands an aged porter—the very porter who once admitted Christian to these precincts, who was kind to him, who saw that he got safely inside. Long ago, the King tells the brothers, this porter came too as a guest to the castle, but after he was admitted he went wandering where he should not have gone, and spied prematurely on Mother Venus. For his sin he is condemned to stand here by the door, to let others in or keep them out, until the day when one comes who has done as he did, and who is willing to relieve him.