THE SIXTH DAY

Next morning, after we had awakened one another, we sat on our mattresses for a while and talked about what we thought might be going on and what might be yet to come. Some of us believed that the royal ones would all be brought back to life together; others said no, the death of the older ones would restore the life of the younger ones, but would also increase it. Others guessed that they hadn’t been executed at all, and that others had somehow been beheaded in their places.

We’d been talking for a while when the old warder came in and greeted us. He looked at all we’d done the day before to see if everything had been completed just so. We had worked well and thoroughly, and he could find nothing wrong, so he put all the glass jars containing our products into a case.

After a while a number of young men came in bringing some ladders, some lengths of rope, and some pairs of wings.

“My dear boys,” the warder said to us. “Each one of you will have to carry one of these three things with you through the day. You can each choose which one you want, or you can distribute them among you by lot.”

We all replied that we’d like to choose ourselves, but he immediately said, “No. No, we’ll do it by lot.”

He made three little cards, and wrote on them “Ladder” or “Rope” or “Wings” and put them in a hat. Each of us had to draw, and whatever you got you were stuck with. Those who got the ropes thought they were the lucky ones; I happened to draw “Ladder,” which was going to be a lot of trouble, since the ladder was twelve feet long and very heavy. The ones with the ropes could just coil them over their shoulders, and as for the wings, the warder stuck them onto the backs of those who’d drawn them, and there they stayed as though they’d grown them.

He turned off a tap at the fountain to stop it flowing, and we had to move it out of the way, and after everything was put away he left, taking the case full of jars, and locked the door behind him – we could only think we’d been imprisoned there. A quarter of an hour passed, and then suddenly a door covering a circular opening in the ceiling above was lifted, and who should look down on us but our own young mistress.

“Good morning,” she said. “Come on up!”

This was easy enough for those with wings – they immediately flew to the hole and through it – and we with the ladders saw now what they were for. The ones with the ropes had the hardest time, because as soon as those with the ladders reached the top we were told to pull up our ladders after us. The rope people had to fling their ropes up to catch an iron hook and pull themselves up, which resulted in plenty of blisters.

As soon as we were all up, the opening was closed again, and our mistress kindly welcomed us. The room where we found ourselves was as wide as the tower and had six pretty chambers around it, raised three steps above the room itself. We were directed into these vestries or chapels, to pray there for the lives of the king and queen. The lady herself went out a small door till we had finished.

When we had completed our prayers, twelve people came in through the small door – we recognized them as the musicians from yesterday – and placed in the middle of the room a thing – a puzzling object, somewhat long in shape, that my companions, I suppose, thought must be a sort of fountain or distillery. But I could tell that the royal corpses were inside it, for the oval base of the object was easily large enough to hold them one atop another. The musicians went back to get their instruments, and with oh-so-delicate music they conducted in our mistress and her attendant girls. The lady carried a casket, but the others had only branches and little lamps – though some brought lighted torches, which they gave to us. We were all to stand around this fountain in the following order: First, the young mistress, at A, with her attendants, c, carrying branches and lamps. Then ourselves, b, with torches; then the musicians, also at a, in a long row; then last some other girls, d, in a long row too. (Where these other girls came from, if they lived in the tower or had somehow been brought in at night, I didn’t know, for all their faces were covered with white veils, and I couldn’t identify them.)

The young mistress opened her casket and took out a round thing wrapped up in a piece of green changeable taffeta. She laid this in the small top chamber of the object and then covered it with the lid, which was pierced with holes. The lid had a deep rim into which she poured several of the liquids we had prepared yesterday, and immediately the fountain started running. The maiden attendants stuck their lamps on points that surrounded the lower container, so as to heat the liquid. When it boiled, the fountain or still¹ drew the liquid back up through the pierced lid into the small vessel and out through four pipes onto the bodies concealed within the large container. The liquids were now so hot that they would melt the bodies inside and reduce them to a kind of liquor. What I knew – but my companions didn’t – was that the round thing the lady had placed in the upper vessel was the head of the black executioner, and that head was what caused the super-heating of the fluids drawn up over it. The maidens carrying branches stuck them into holes in the great oval vessel; this might have been purely ceremonial, I don’t know, but some of the fluid running down into the large vessel spurted out the holes and over the branches, and then dripped back down in again, seeming somehow more brightly yellow.

This distillation and melting lasted nearly two hours, the still running constantly on its own, though the longer it ran the weaker its action grew. Meanwhile the musicians went away, and we walked up and down in that room. It was easy to kill time there, filled as the place was with images, paintings, automata, organs, circulating fountains and similar wonders. When the still slowed to a stop and wouldn’t percolate any longer, the young mistress sent for a hollow golden globe to be brought. She opened a tap at the bottom of the large oval vessel and let all the matter that had been dissolved or liquefied by the boiling fluids – some of it deep red – run into the hollow globe. (The remaining fluid in the top vessel was discarded.) The whole object then was removed, and was obviously much lighter than it had been; whether it was taken somewhere and opened up, whether anything usable remained of the bodies that had been inside, I just don’t know. But I do know that the liquid that filled the globe was too heavy for six and more of us to lift, though by the size of it you’d think one person could have carried it easily. Anyway it was carried out through the door with a lot of effort, and we were once again left all alone. Overhead I could hear the sound of footsteps, and I remembered my ladder and got a grip on it.

It was interesting listening to the opinions of my companions about that fountain or distillery and its action, for of course they supposed that the royal corpses were buried in the earth of the garden in the castle, and had no idea what had gone on here; I was again thankful that I’d awakened on that night and seen what I’d seen – it was helping me in carrying out our mistress’s great task.

After a few minutes, an opening in the ceiling of this chamber was uncovered, as I had suspected it would be. The young mistress looked down on us and ordered us all to come up, and we did it the same way as before – wings, ladders, ropes. I was a little annoyed that her handmaids could go upstairs by another way, and we had to expend so much effort, but I guessed there must be some good reason for it; handing them out and seeing to their use at least gave the old warder something to do in this process, but even those he’d given wings to only had that momentary advantage when they had to go up through the opening.

When I got up, and the opening had been shut behind me, I saw that the golden globe was hanging by a strong golden chain in the middle of the chamber. There was nothing else in the room but the windows. Between each pair of windows was a brilliantly polished mirror with a door that could be closed over it. These mirrors were angled in such a way that when the windows on the side of the room the sun shone in on were opened, and the doors covering the mirrors were opened too, the light of the sun (which was in itself terrifically bright this morning) was reflected around so that the whole room was nothing but suns! The refracted light and heat were focused on the golden globe hanging in the center, whose surface was also highly polished, so what with the light everywhere you couldn’t even look at it, and we had to stare out the windows instead while the globe was heated to the right degree. I’ll say it again, on my honor – this was the most amazing spectacle of light that Nature could produce – there were suns everywhere, in every corner, and the golden globe was even brighter, and you could no more look right at it than you can look at the sun itself for more than a blink.

The young mistress at length ordered the mirrors to be covered and the windows to be shuttered, to let the globe cool down a little. It was about seven o’clock now, and we were glad of it, thinking we might have time now for some breakfast. Well, what we got you might call a philosopher’s breakfast, “nothing in excess” for sure, though we weren’t left hungry. And the hope of great happiness later on – which the young lady often held out to us – made us forget any inconveniences and frets. I truly can say, about all my good companions, that they weren’t men whose thoughts dwelled much on their dinners; what they really wanted was to continue on this adventure in science and by means of it to contemplate the Creator’s wisdom and power.

After we’d eaten, we went back to work. The globe was cool enough now that we could lift it off its chain, which was no mean feat. Then we discussed how to divide it in half – which is what we were told we had to do – and decided that a sharp-pointed diamond might work best, which in the end it did. What was inside it was not red at all but white: a beautiful large white egg. We were so glad that it had come out well, because our mistress had been very worried that the shell might still be too thin and soft. We stood around this egg as pleased as if we’d laid it ourselves. But quickly the lady ordered it taken away, and followed it herself, and (as before) the door was locked on us. What she did elsewhere with that egg, whether it was treated in some way secretly, I don’t know, but I don’t believe so. At any rate there we were alone again and waiting till the opening to the fourth floor² was uncovered, to which we got up by our different means.

In this room we found a great copper basin filled with yellow sand, which was warmed by a gentle fire. The egg was laid in it and the sand raked over it, so it could complete its incubation. This copper thing was square; on one side these two verses were inscribed in large letters:

O. BLI. TO. BIT. MI. LI.

KANT. I. VOLT. BIT. TO. GOLT.

On another side were these three words:

SANITAS. NIX. HASTA.

The third side had only one word:

F. I. A. T.³

But on the back was a whole inscription:

THAT WHICH

Fire. Air. Water. Earth.

Were not able to strip from

The ashes of

OUR SACRED KING AND QUEEN

Was gathered by the faithful flock

Of Alchemists

In this vessel.⁴

I leave it to the experts to decide if this meant the egg, or the sand it was put in; I’m just trying not to leave anything out. That egg was ready now, and was taken out, but it didn’t need to be cracked, for the bird inside it quickly broke out by himself, and he seemed to be very glad indeed to be out, though actually he looked rather bloody and unformed. We placed him on the warm sand, and the young mistress warned us to tie him up securely or he’d soon be giving us endless trouble. We did that, and then his food was brought in – which was certainly nothing but the blood of the beheaded royal persons, diluted with the waters we had prepared. You could actually see the bird grow from drinking it, so fast that we could understand why our mistress had warned us about him: he bit and scratched so strongly that if we’d let him go he’d have done for any of us he could get. He was very wild, and completely black, until some different food was brought in – maybe it was the blood of a different royal person, but as soon as he consumed it all his black feathers molted, and he grew snow-white⁶ feathers instead. He was a little tamer too, but we didn’t trust him. He got a third feeding, and this time his feathers turned the most gorgeous array of colors⁷ I’ve ever seen, and he became so gentle and tame, and was so friendly, that our young mistress said we could untie him.

“This bird’s been brought to life and raised to adulthood by your hard work and the old warder’s kind permission,” she said, “which is good reason for a feast in its honor.”

She ordered that dinner be brought in and said we should take it easy now, since the hardest part of our job was over. We began to celebrate, even though we were still wearing our mourning clothes from the castle, which seemed to clash with the party. The young mistress was as always inquisitive, trying to find out which of us she could put to use in what way, and her talk at this dinner was mostly about Melting. She was very glad to learn that one of us turned out to be an expert in that topic, well acquainted with the literature. We were only three-quarters of an hour at dinner, and we still had to get up in turn and feed the bird, though he had stopped growing much. Just as soon as we’d taken the last bite, the lady disappeared, taking the bird with her.

Soon the fifth floor was opened up to us, and up we went in the same way as before, ready to go to work. There was a bathtub in this room, ready for the bird, and the bathwater was infused with some white substance that made it look like milk. The liquid was cool, and when we placed the bird in it he seemed to enjoy it, splashing around gently. The lamps lit under the tub began to heat it up, though, and soon it was so hot it was hard to keep him in it; we had finally to put a cover over the bath, with a hole in it he could poke his head through, and we kept him in there until he had lost all his feathers and was as smooth as a baby. The heat didn’t harm him in any other way, which I thought was remarkable, since the hot water had completely dissolved the feathers and colored the bathwater slightly blue. We uncovered the tub so the bird could get some air, and he jumped out on his own. He was so shining smooth that it was a pleasure to look at him. He was still a little wild, though, and we had to put a collar and chain around his neck to lead him up and down the room. Meanwhile a hot fire was built under the bathtub, and the liquid boiled away till it was reduced to a lump of blue stone,⁸ which we took out, crushed, and ground to powder. We used the powder to paint the bird’s naked skin all over. Now he looked really weird, because he was all blue, except for his white-feathered head.

So that was our job on that floor, and after the young mistress took away the blue bird, we were summoned up through the opening to the sixth floor.

This was a little troubling. There stood a little altar arranged exactly as the one in the king’s hall in the castle. The six royal things were on it, just as I’ve described them, the ever-burning taper, the black book, the watch, the planetary model, the fountain of blood-red fluid, and the serpent in the skull. The blue bird now made the seventh.⁹

First he had a large drink out of the fountain. Then he pecked the serpent until she bled profusely; this blood we had to catch in a golden cup and pour down the bird’s throat, which she hated and fought against. Then we had to dip the serpent’s head into the fountain, which revived her, and she crept back into her skull and wasn’t seen for a long time. The planetary sphere had gone on turning, and when it reached some satisfactory conjunction, the watch struck one; that caused the sphere to start turning again to make a new conjunction, until the watch struck two. We saw the sphere reach a third conjunction, and when the watch struck three, the poor bird just laid down its head on the book and allowed us to cut it off. (We’d already decided by lot which of us was to do this task.) He didn’t bleed at all, though, until we cut open his breast – and then the blood spurted out so fresh, and as clear as a fountain of rubies.¹⁰

We felt terrible in a way about this death, but still it seemed obvious to us that a naked dead blue bird wasn’t going to be of any further use, and we shrugged it off. We moved aside the altar and helped our mistress to burn the dead body (along with a small plaque that hung nearby) in a fire she lit with the ever-burning taper, and then to purify the ashes several times and put them in a cypress-wood box.

Then a really cruel trick was played on me, I have to tell you. After we had very carefully saved all the ashes of the bird, our mistress said, “Gentlemen, here we are now in the sixth chamber. Only one remains, and when our labors there are over, we’ll be returning to the castle to awaken our gracious lords and ladies. Now. I really wish I could say that all of you have behaved in such a way that I could commend you to the king and queen and see you all properly rewarded. But I’m afraid I’ve identified four lazy sluggards among you.”

Here she pointed out three of the company – and me.

“Because of the fond feelings I have about all of you, I’m not going to turn these four in for the punishment they certainly deserve. But they can’t just go on as if nothing had happened, so I’ve decided that they alone will be excluded from the seventh and culminating action, more glorious than all the rest. That’s punishment enough, and in this way they won’t incur any further blame from Their Majesties.”

Well you can imagine how we felt on hearing this. The young mistress certainly knew how to look stern, and we were soon crying our eyes out and believing we had just the worst possible luck. The young mistress sent one of the many handmaids that were always standing around to fetch the musicians, who were to blast us out the door with cornets, and they were so full of scorn and derision they could hardly blow for laughing. What hurt more was that our mistress laughed so hard at our grief, anger and distress; and it seemed that even some of our former companions weren’t all that upset about our disgrace.

The reality was actually very different. As soon as we went out and shut the door behind us, the musicians whispered to us to be brave and follow them up a winding stair. This led to a chamber above the seventh level,¹¹ right under the roof – and there was the old warder of the tower, whom we hadn’t seen all day, standing atop a small round furnace. He greeted us warmly and congratulated us that we’d been chosen for the final tasks by our young mistress. When we explained what we thought had happened, he laughed till his belly shook, that we had thought our good luck was so bad.

“It goes to show, dear boys,” he said, “that men never know what good God means to do them.”

While we were talking, the young mistress came running in with her box of bird-ashes, and (after she’d finished laughing at us) she emptied the ashes into a different container and filled her own box with other stuff. “I’ve got to go now and pull some wool over the other workers’ eyes,” she said. “You stay here and do whatever the warder tells you to do. And work hard—just as you really did work before.”

She went down onto the seventh level, opened the opening, and called down to our companions on the sixth to come up. What she did with them, or told them to do, I can’t say, for they were strictly forbidden to speak of it after, and we were too busy to spy on them. What we up above did was to saturate the bird’s ashes with the prepared waters until they became a thin paste. Then we cooked the paste in the furnace, and when it was hot we poured it into two little molds and set them to cool. We had some time then to peek down at our fellows below through a couple of openings in the floor. They were very busy at a furnace of their own, blowing on the fire with a pipe. They stood around, taking turns blowing madly, thinking they were the important ones and doing the important stuff. Then our old tutor called us to work again, and I don’t know what happened down there.

We opened our little molds – and inside were two beautiful, bright, nearly transparent figures, a male and a female, each about four inches long. They were like nothing I’d ever seen, and perhaps like nothing anybody has ever seen. They weren’t hard, but flexible and fleshly, like actual human bodies, though they were lifeless. I was immediately reminded of the body of Lady Venus that I had seen; I’m sure it was made similarly.

We laid these angelic babes on two little satin cushions, and for a long time we just stared at them, too stunned by their delicate beauty to do anything. The old warder wanted us to get busy and feed them with the blood of the dead bird (which had been saved in a golden cup). We were to do this by dripping it drop by drop into their tiny mouths. It made them grow, definitely, and as they grew they became proportionately more beautiful than when they were small. If the best painters of the world could have been shown them, they’d have seen how far Nature can outstrip anything they can do! Finally they were so big that we had to lift them from the cushions and lay them on a long table covered with fine white velvet. The old warder told us to cover them up to the breast with double silk taffeta, which we almost didn’t want to do, they were so unspeakably lovely. We had used up nearly all the bird blood on them, and they were perfect and fully grown; they had long, golden-yellow hair. That body of Venus that I saw had nothing on them.

They had as yet no warmth, no senses. They were dead statues, though they looked so natural and lifelike. The old warder made it clear we had to be careful not to let them grow too big, so he told us to stop the feeding and covered their faces as well with the silk. Bright torches were then set all around the table. I have to say that there was no real reason for the torches – the old warder had ordered them put there only so that we couldn’t see the souls that were soon going to enter into these bodies. I myself wouldn’t have been on the lookout for this big event if I hadn’t seen those flames of spirit twice before. I said nothing about that to my fellows and didn’t let the old warder know what I knew, either.

…I could make out a small opening, now shut – none of the others noticed it.

He asked us to sit on a bench opposite the table. After a time our mistress came in, with musicians and other accouterments, including two exquisite white garments such as I had not seen anywhere in the castle. I can’t describe them; they seemed somehow made of crystal, but they were soft, and not transparent – well, I just don’t know what more to say. She laid them on a table, and when she had seated her maidens around the room she and the old warder began a series of actions intended to seem magical but which were only to distract us from what was actually happening.¹² Remember, we were in the chamber just below the roof, which was curiously shaped: it arched upward in seven concave hemispheres, six around a central one, in which I could make out a small opening, now shut – none of the others noticed it.

After enough of this legerdemain, six maidens entered the chamber, each carrying a long funnel around which was wrapped a wreath of green, glittering, flammable material. The old warder took one of these, and after he had removed a couple of the torches at the head of the table, he placed one of the funnels in the mouth of the male body so that the wide end was directly under that opening in the roof. My companions were staring at the figures on the table, but I knew better – as soon as the papery wreath around the funnel was set afire, I saw the hole open above and a bright stream of fire shoot down the tube into the body. The opening in the roof immediately closed, and the old warder removed the funnel. The figure then definitely began to blink his eyes, though he barely moved otherwise, and my fellows of course thought that it had been the burning wreath of stuff that had brought him to life. Another funnel was then placed in his mouth, and the stuff around it lit, and the opening opened, and more soul went down through the tube.

The whole process was gone through three times for each figure; then all the torches were put out and carried away. The white velvet covering of the table was folded over the faintly stirring bodies. A farther room was then unlocked, to reveal a nuptial or birthing bed, which had been prepared for them. We carried the couple to the bedchamber, the velvet wrappings were taken off them, and they were put gently to bed close together. We drew the bed-curtains around them and left them there to sleep a long while.

The young mistress went off meantime to see how her other workers were doing. She later told me that they were very happy, because they were at the work of making gold – which is certainly a part of the Great Art, though not the main part, or the best, or the most valuable. They’d been given a portion of the dead bird’s ashes, so they believed that this was what the whole process had been for, and the gold they produced would be the thing that brought life to the dead.

But we all the while sat very still, waiting for the married couple to wake up. We’d only been waiting half an hour or so when who should fly into the chamber but little Cupid!¹³ After he’d greeted us all in his merry way, he flew to the bed, pulled open the curtains, and began teasing and pestering the couple there until they woke up! They were completely amazed to find themselves where they were, because as far as they knew¹⁴ they’d simply lain asleep from the moment they’d lost their heads till now. Cupid introduced them to each other, then stepped aside so that they could recover a little. Meantime he kept up his old tricks with the rest of us. “We need some music in here! I want music to cheer up these long faces!” So we had to go call in those musicians, who struck up a tune.

In a while our mistress returned. She humbly greeted the king and queen (who were still feeling a little faint) and kissed their hands. She brought them those two strange garments I tried to describe before and helped them on with them; then they stepped forth. Two fine but very odd throne-chairs were put out for them, and there they sat. We all congratulated them with the greatest reverence, and the king whispered how grateful he was to all of us, and that we were all in his very good graces.

It was five o’clock now, and the king and queen had to depart as soon as all their important regalia could be loaded onto the ships. We accompanied the royal couple all the way down the winding stairs, through all the doors and the surrounding walls and battlements, down to their ship in the harbor. They got on board, with a number of maidens and Cupid, and sailed away so swiftly that they were soon out of sight. I learned later that several tall ships came out to meet them, and in just four hours they’d crossed those many leagues of sea.

The musicians now had to carry all of our things from the tower into the other ships and make them ready for the return journey. This was taking a very long time, so the old warder gave an order, and a number of soldiers appeared who had been concealed in alcoves in the thickness of the wall. (I realized then that the tower was well protected against attack.) These soldiers made quick work of the packing and loading of our stuff, so there was nothing more for us to do but go have some supper.

When the table was all laid, the young mistress brought the four of us who’d been called the “lazy sluggards” in among our companions again. We were supposed to behave as though we were very downcast and all, and not laugh.¹⁵ Those others grinned smugly at one another, though it seemed a few of them did feel a little sorry for us as well. The old warder had supper with us, and he was a sharp moderator of our table talk: no one could give a clever opinion that he couldn’t turn right around, or stand on its head, and improve on – or at least speak knowledgeably about. I learned a good deal from that gentleman. It would be a fine thing if everyone could go and sit at his feet, and study his methods. Things wouldn’t go wrong so often and so disastrously in the world.

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.