Alchemical Fragments 1.1
There was I, in a luke-warm black sea.
Above me was a sky or cavern-ceiling.
Dim constellations of dubious form.
I kept swimming.
When I could not swim,
I floated.
I closed my eyes;
Accepted despair.
I awoke to a rhythmic beating of wings,
carrying me up.
...
The alchemist says,
"The spirit must be rescued
from the waters.
"It cannot be sieved or
filtered. It must rise
of its own volition."
...
The water floats, as a sphere,
touching not the glass of the retort.
The soul circumambulates
until it gives up its spirit.
The spirit is lifted
to escape the retort, guided
by the principle of the air,
the angel, the wind of paradise.
...
The angel is four wings,
brown and white.
...
The black water is found in the deep,
gathered in abyssal wells,
carried up, in dark earthen vessels.
Placed in the alembic,
the black water gathers, like an orb,
reluctant to touch the ignoble, the lowly
the earthly, the common, the things on
the surface of the world,
the vulgar walls of the alembic.
There, floating, the spirit forms
and swims on the surface
of the water.
But no spirit can gather
and, in circles, swim forever.
So when the spirit ceases to struggle,
it floats above the suspended water [...]
Above me was a sky or cavern-ceiling.
Dim constellations of dubious form.
I kept swimming.
When I could not swim,
I floated.
I closed my eyes;
Accepted despair.
I awoke to a rhythmic beating of wings,
carrying me up.
...
The alchemist says,
"The spirit must be rescued
from the waters.
"It cannot be sieved or
filtered. It must rise
of its own volition."
...
The water floats, as a sphere,
touching not the glass of the retort.
The soul circumambulates
until it gives up its spirit.
The spirit is lifted
to escape the retort, guided
by the principle of the air,
the angel, the wind of paradise.
...
The angel is four wings,
brown and white.
...
The black water is found in the deep,
gathered in abyssal wells,
carried up, in dark earthen vessels.
Placed in the alembic,
the black water gathers, like an orb,
reluctant to touch the ignoble, the lowly
the earthly, the common, the things on
the surface of the world,
the vulgar walls of the alembic.
There, floating, the spirit forms
and swims on the surface
of the water.
But no spirit can gather
and, in circles, swim forever.
So when the spirit ceases to struggle,
it floats above the suspended water [...]