The alchemist Mystae used this promise of unlimited wealth to persuade his king to obtain for him the many ancient texts he required to work out the secrets of manufacturing a Philosopher’s Stone.
If a manuscript couldn’t be purchased, then it could be stolen, or its present owner persuaded to relinquish it through torture or murder.
If an important scroll was held by another kingdom, then it could fall into his hands as the spoils of a conveniently declared war.
Material considerations were unimportant when you were seeking the very transformation of man into his true, angelic state.
The language of these texts was ancient, frequently untranslatable; and even when he had managed to begin to gain a glimmer of the truth hidden within their words, each tract was deliberately arcane in its use of symbolism, deterring all but the most determined seekers.
He read of many truly remarkable stones, including many that had once graced an angelic crown, a crown that had shattered on falling to earth during the War in Heaven.
This was, depending upon the scroll or ancient clay tablet he read, the Treasure of Heaven, The Treasure of the Angels. Individual stones could be the Gift of Orion, or the Gift of Venus, enclosed within a casket, or lying under a shield.
The most important of all these stones, he decided, was one of the darkest, brightest green: the Tabula Smaragdina, or the Tablet of Hermes the Thrice-Great. It was a form of beryl, heliodor, and was said to have been inscribed with the Commandments of Samael; the very designs of the world itself, revealing the secret of primordial substances and transmutations.
This was the stone, he read, that had given Solomon’s architect Hiram the power to control the great serpent Shamir, who could burn any normal stone.
And yet – Hiram had thrown the stone away, casting it into a deep well!
Mystae had to know more, to obtain other ancient tracts.
At last, he found what he was looking for: Solomon had retrieved the precious stone, and placed it within his temple upon a triangular plinth.
But – the Knights Templar had diligently searched Jerusalem, dug deep into the areas around where Solomon’s great temple had once stood: and they, to the best of his knowledge, had found no such precious gem. They hadn’t even found the great twin pillars of Boaz and Jachin that Solomon had also placed within his temple.
Wait!
Mystae urgently pored over his notes, his vast collection of scrolls and tablets.
Yes, he had remembered correctly!
The two intricately carved pillars had been constructed by Hiram himself!
So, perhaps, Solomon hadn’t found the discarded precious gem after all: but he had discovered the two pillars, placing these within his temple instead – because the wise ruler had recognised that Hiram had recorded the designs and codes within the famously symbolic carvings.
Naturally, that meant he still had to find the missing pillars: but how much easier to find would they be than a precious stone?
*
When Mystae decided he was at last ready to track down the two pillars, he placed his most comfortable chair within the very centre of his courtyard, then seated himself there with a large satchel containing nothing but his most important books and scrolls.
Then, using what little magic he was capable of, he caused a tree to begin to grow directly beneath his chair.
As the tree swiftly grew, it carried him upwards until, branching out, it left him comfortably seated within the crook of its forking trunk.
Next, he caused the vast canopy of leaves to fill with air, air he heated with spells, until the captured air amongst the shielding leaves was far lighter than the surrounding air.
Shrugging its roots free of the constraining earth, the tree began to rise. To float through the sky, passing unhurriedly over the rolling green landscape below.
Mystae’s diligent searching of the ancient texts had finally informed him that he would find the two pillars on the floating City of Rueben.
He found it hard to imagine, of course, that a whole city could float upon the sea: and yet this is what his most reliable of tracts assured him was true, and so why should he doubt them?
And so, naturally, he wasn’t as surprised as he might have been when he finally caught sight of the fabulous floating city: a Venice of the Oceans, a city not just with canals but one that also channelled the power of the seas.
Mystae brought his floating tree down in one of the lesser squares, where he let it take root, and where it stands to this day, solid confirmation that everything told in this tale is true.
The city’s mayor enthusiastically greeted this magician of the air, having no qualms about letting him inspect the great, twin pillars standing in a room beneath his own home. As Mystae was led by the mayor down into this deep cellar, he heard the most amazing playing of a harp he had ever heard; one that surprisingly made him feel ever more determined to achieve his long sought-after goal.
On entering the room, he was even more surprised to find that the harp standing there wasn’t being played after all but, rather, was somehow magically strumming its own strings, a bright red gem embedded within the forehead of the wondrously carved angel glistening as if it were a tenderly beating heart.
Despite the wonder of this sight, it distracted Mystae only briefly from what he had really come here to see: the two immense pillars, each of which was graced by a coiling serpent.
He found his excitement hard to contain. Even as he drew near, he recognised symbols carved into the pillars’ sides that he had frequently come across during his many years of poring over scrolls and tablets. To anyone else, they would probably appear as little more than elaborate patterns, yet each entwining link turned them into a message, a code that had to be broken.
Avidly referring to his book of painstakingly crafted notes, he began slowly circling the two pillars, taking in their every detail, recording symbols he hadn’t come across before, planning on studying and comparing them later to find any similarity with other symbols he was aware of.
As he studied and drew, and made extra notes, he wandered innocently between the two pillars – and instantly found himself standing out in the cold air, on the side of a snow-capped mountain.
He glanced back at the pillars, briefly considered moving back through them, back – he presumed – into the mayor’s cellar.
Before he could decide on the right course of action, however, he was startled by a gloriously white hart seemingly appearing out of nowhere alongside him. And within its brightly glowing antlers, it held the glowing orb of Mercury (whose marriage to the copper of Venus throws off the leaden old man of Saturn’s Sun of the Night, giving birth to the sparkling gold of the Rising Sun, Hermaphroditus).
And within the blink of an eye, the orb became a heart.
‘The Deer's Heart!’ Mystae breathed elatedly, recalling the name any alchemist worth his salt gives his material when it has been boiled long enough.
The deer, as if startled just as much as Mystae, turned and began to unhurriedly prance away. Mystae followed, recognising the deer as being symbolic of the soul – the soul we must couple with the unicorn of the received spirit.
Would the deer lead him to the much sought after unicorn?
Above him, the air quivered with a vein of reddened light, a red he recognised as being similar to the precious stone embedded within the harp.
As this glow snaked through the air, it came to and coiled amongst the glow of other colours, a rainbow that arched down towards the base of an apparently endless wall surmounting the mountain’s summit.
The hart now turned off, galloped away, but Mystae continued heading towards the end of the rainbow, spying there the doorway to a small temple or chapel built into the wall’s foundations.
Within the temple, he came across a triangular altar of antler, supporting a brightly sparkling gem.
His heart leapt.
And then, in an instant, he was supremely dishearten
ed.
This wasn’t the green stone, the Tabula Smaragdina!
Yes, the stone lying before him undoubtedly contained a bright, glittering green. Yet it also contained honeyed hues, as well as the deepest red of the harp’s own stone.
It was jasper; a rainbow coloured jasper – that was all!
But wait, wait, wait!
He glanced up, following the soaring course of the arching then splintering rainbow.
Just as the streaks of red curved off towards the pillars he had walked through, as well as towards some other areas lying well out of his sight, the band of green similarly split into at least two branches, one of light green, one of darkest green – could that lead him towards a further set of pillars, beyond which he would find the Tabula Smaragdina?
He strode out urgently now across the harsh landscape, his eyes only on the glittering, serpentine green band, his mind on processing all this new information.
Had the rainbow jasper been Hiram’s stone, and not the Tabula Smaragdina? If the jasper linked up in some way with these other stones of similar hue, it might have given him merely a shade of their true power: a partial yet not ultimate control over Shamir!
As he walked, however, his original exultation was once again transformed into disappointment. Rather than arching back down to earth, as he had expected, the green band of shimmering light appeared to course through the air as endlessly as the wall.
He discovered why when he came across the two pillars: they had been knocked over, shattered. They lay in a multiple of splintered pieces upon the ground.
Who could do such a thing? he fumed.
*
When Mystae arrived in the land of Simeon, he was greeted there by a surprisingly large band of alchemists, every one of whom was, like him, seeking the Tabula Smaragdina.
Finding the pillars that should have led him to Tabula Smaragdina shattered, he had traced his way back along the snaking green streak of light, deciding to follow instead the lighter green band that had led him to a complete set of pillars.
Stepping through and beyond them, he had found himself in a land that had used its own heavenly jewel to grant a sword the power to anticipate the intentions of its wielder’s opponents.
It was undoubtedly a remarkable gift: yet it was hardly equal to the unimaginable powers promised by the Tabula Smaragdina!
The innumerable alchemists Mystae found himself surrounded by seemed to agree, the sparkling pastel green of their own gem spurring them on to seek the darker gifts of the Tabula Smaragdina.
Impressed by Mystae’s grasp of the problems involved in its manufacture, they opened their extensive laboratories up to him, expecting (foolishly) a fair share in his greater knowledge and glory.
For Mystae now knew far more than he was willing to divulge to them, his close study of the pillars having provided him with many extra clues to the processes of transformation.
He was ready, he believed, to attempt the creation of the Philosopher’s Stone!
With a specially sharpened blade of only recently forged iron, he carefully carved into the wooden floor of his laboratory a large pentagram; a representation of Samael’s Crown.
At one point of the pentangle, he placed an upright jar.
At another, he set down an inverted jar.
At the third, he laid a jar on its side, its open, wide-lipped mouth facing inwards towards the diagram’s point.
Almost directly opposite this, at the fourth point, he laid the jar down such that its open end faced the third’s.
Rather than a jar, the fifth point required the placement of a child’s skull, specially cleaned of every speck of flesh.
The necessary incantations were recited in a language that anyone listening in would fail to recognise as a language at all. He even nervously breathed, as ridiculous as it may sound, Ab'r-Achad-Ab'ra, the Sun-and Only-Sun – as indeed it seems to be when shining at its brightest.
Out of nowhere but empty space, a dark, leaden earth fell into the first jar.
The charged, misty air of a storm rose up into the second.
Into the third, there flowed a viscous, quickened water.
Into the fourth, a dancing plume of flame.
And into the patiently waiting fifth vessel – nothing.
Or, at least, it appeared that nothing was there.
But then, what did spirit look like?
For all Mystae knew, it could already be there: he had just expected to witness, perhaps, a spark or some such sign around the darkly hollow eyes of the skull.
And if not already there, it might well appear at some later point within the procedure.
For what reason, after all, would he be denied this most important element in the process? Hadn’t he given over his whole life to this venture?
Working with a resigned slowness, as instructed within his ancient scrolls, Mystae brought each vessel towards the diagram’s centre, where he had already prepared a plinth of coiled brass and copper.
He poured the water into the jar containing the earth, baptising the body, granting a knowledge of self.
He placed the one containing air on top, opening to opening, baptising the whole with the holy breath, and raising it spiritually towards its higher self.
He lifted this entire entity up onto the jar of flames, precipitating a merging into the universal one.
The skull went on the very top of everything, its gruesome, toothy grin somehow mocking.
It was nothing more than a slimy darkness bubbling away in the glasses stacked above the elemental flame. In that darkness lying behind the glass, he caught himself reflected, as if in the pure, glistening blackness of purest agate: and he saw that he was old before his years, wizened by a lack of healthy pursuits, of sleep.
His every might had been spent bending over poorly lit manuscripts, seeking a transformation for the better; only for his transformation to be for the very worst!
The ores of the wet earth began to streak through the darkness, like the pained veins of lightning in a tumultuous sky. A rust red, a stricken yellow, marbling the now otherwise pure black.
The veins entwined, like oddly hued vines.
And then, miracle of miracles – gold ran like crazed streams through the darkness.
A spectrally reflective gold, in which he caught sight of himself yet again: and in these streaks of purest material he wasn’t aged at all, but was young, vibrant, glowing – angelic!
He saw himself face to face as a heavenly being!
Of course!
This cracked, shattered gold, this gold of the splintered heavenly crown, revealed the seed lying in the dark material, the black soil of his body. Potentially, it revealed, he was of the highest heavenly royalty!
Yet then, abruptly, this image of the godly Mystae vanished.
Within the darkness, he was still aged, haggard. Within the quickened streams of gold – he was nothing!
What did it mean?
Had something gone wrong?
He glanced up towards the smirking skull, fearing he might never have captured spirit in there after all.
Unable to see beyond the sheer darkness of the eyes, he reached up for it: yet his hand was almost as translucent as the glass jars, the skull perfectly visible through what should be solid flesh and bone.
The flames beneath the glass roared, as if suddenly fed with the most favourable ether, making them stronger than ever. The glass itself began to melt, to drip like a candle of clearest wax.
He tried to stop the process, to remove the jar, to knock aside the flame. But his body was continuing to fade, so insubstantial now that he had no effect on the physical world about him.
Then – he stopped panicking.
He laughed.
Chuckled with satisfied delight.
I am a mirror to thee who perceivest me, he whispered to himself exultantly, remembering what he had read, what he had taken in and wholeheartedly believed. I am a door to thee who knockest at me. r />
He had achieved his goal!
His was an angelic being!
And while still here on Earth too!
*
The jars and mixture melted, merged, only the angled streaks of darkness and gold remaining separate, a blackened sky rippled with an eagerly onrushing dawn.
As it all became fluid, it ran in rivulets down through the flames, beginning to douse them with the odd irate hiss, the splutters of indignation.
Even when Mystae passed his arms directly in front of the heart of molten materials, he could clearly see everything, as if he were hardly there at all!
As the liquefying jars and their contents sagged, pooling across the plinth’s top, slowly hardening into a mirror, the skull dropped lower, its pitted eyes now staring directly into his.
And at last, those eyes of deepest darkness revealed the glowing white presence of spirit! A spirit that was being drawn into the skull through those black sockets.
Where was it coming from, this spirit? an intrigued Mystae wondered.
He glanced about the room, surprised once more to see that he was still swiftly fading. Surprised to see through those perfectly transparent arms a dead body lying on the floor.
The lifeless body of an old, haggard man.
The ‘heavenly’ Mystae gasped; a last gasp.
And he gave up the ghost, his very spirit disappearing as a final whisper into those eyes of sheer, unforgiving and endless darkness.
*
Chapter 24
As they had parted, Prince Argaret insisting he must continue his quest to return the stolen stones, promising also that he would return in a matter of weeks, Princess Lorica presented him with a shield; one proudly emblazoned with a dark circle of black agate, surmounted with the seed of the royal tree they had now founded. She also gifted him with a prized lance, it’s long, flowing pennant graced with a bright, soaring flame emanating from a chalice.
Seeking to avoid the impassable wall, the prince set off on the road leading towards the far off coast, intending on catching a ship there that could help him somehow circumvent that ridiculously immense obstacle.
The lands of Asher belonging to the princess that he travelled through seemed to be blessed with material wealth, the fields rich with corn, the herds and flocks as well fed as the people, the many farms and towns prosperous. Not long after passing over Asher’s borders, however, and entering the princess’s other lands of Naphtali, the lower slopes of the Mountain of Curses, he soon came to a wide strip of land that was little better than a wasteland.