Living between worlds
In one of the birds’ speeches from The Conference of the Birds, an excuse is offered for not undertaking the journey to the Simorgh, where the bird highlighted in the passage below is not wrong about rubies — about the life therein — but wrong about his reason for stopping there.
Finding authenticity between the stagecraft and theology of 18th century Western alchemy
A short dialogue buried in an 18th-century German alchemical anthology, Wasserstein der Weisen ('The Water-Stone of the Wise'), reprinted in 1743 and traditionally attributed to Johann Siebmacher, begins like a domestic quarrel. Nature appears as a central female power figure, speaking through a name other than the author's, and she arrives on scene with quite the temper. She calls the seeker a fantastical fool and a coarse ass who breaks glassware and burns coal until the fumes cloud his head (p. 118). Every other creature does its office faithfully, she complains, and only man, presuming to take up hers, strays from it (p. 120). For a text about sacred secrets, the opening is strangely familiar — not the voice of an oracle, but of someone who has been misunderstood one too many times.
This morning finds me dull, enveloped by the Grey¹, a consequence of the decisions I’ve made this year. Decisions I’ve made without regret. Decisions I’d make again and again. Decisions that will affect me for the rest of my life. A connection that is both blessing and burden. A circumstance unbidden — befallen.
When forming an understanding of anomalous experiences, it helps to ask the history and meaning of the concepts and terminology it has evolved from, and what those words were attempting to do. For that, the word “Spiritualism” and the history surrounding it is a worthy starting point, keeping in mind that people have had what is conventionally now known as ‘spiritual experiences’ throughout the world and history. The Encyclopedia Britannica in the early 20th century described “Spiritualism” as:
In my time and place on Earth, people still struggle with immoral and unethical reasoning at both the individual and structural levels of our civilization. We see it in the banal administration of our public institutions, the business ontology¹ of modern organizations, and the bias of large, wealthy commercial interests. And the result is unnecessary and avoidable suffering.
As a traveler on the road of an anomalous inner life, I can report that fatigue and a certain inability to fix my attention are its tolls now. It is the act of living two lives simultaneously, and today I feel that burden plainly. A choice made for the sake of two, and freely made — but a burden all the same.
It's only been a few weeks since I started sharing these pages, and I'm now better in command of my research and investigations than before I began. I must not underestimate what writing here has done for my understanding and my peace of mind.
I came upon this quote while searching a book from my library regarding what to make of alleged psychical (anomalous) experiences when corroboration is lacking or insufficient:
The 17th century French diplomat and cryptographer Blaise de Vigenère published a treatise on fire and salt. The title is literal — Traicté du Feu et du Sel — and the premise acts as alchemy at its most reductive, where the whole of transformation is compressed into a simple binary: two principles, two substances. Vigenère’s text, however, is actually stranger than its title suggests. It is not really about fire or salt. It is about the impossibility of speaking about anything for the first time. And the implication that an idea, once spoken, cannot be controlled or contained and may perpetuate beyond its source in ways its speaker never intended.
I believe people often talk too much and say very little. I see it in the small, subtle things. The constant circling without connecting. Answers orphaned of questions. Meaning divorced from cause. Motivations kept hidden like bandaged scars.