THE SEVENTH DAY

I woke up past eight and got ready quickly so that I could return to the tower, but the many dark passages in the wall led in so many directions that I wandered around for quite a while before I found the way out. The same thing happened to the others, until we finally gathered in the bottom chamber of the tower that had been our laboratory. There our lady had a new robe for each of us, all of yellow, and our Golden Fleece decorations were returned to us. When this was done, she told us at last the secret name of our order: we were all Knights of the Golden Stone.

After breakfast, the old warder presented us each with a gold medallion. On one side of it were these letters: AR. NAT. MI, which stood for “Ars, Naturae Ministra,” or “Art, the Servant of Nature.” On the other face it had TEM. NA. F., standing for “Temporis natura filia,” or “Nature, the Daughter of Time.” He warned us strictly¹ not to try to take anything else with us from the tower.

We went down to the harbor, where our ships lay, but now far more richly decorated than before – it was impossible that all these amazing furnishings hadn’t been brought over in advance. There were now twelve ships, our remaining six and six of the old warder’s, which he had manned with well-armed soldiers. He himself, though, joined all of us knights in the flagship. Before us went a ship filled with musicians (he employed any number of musicians, apparently) to entertain us. Our banners were the twelve signs of the Zodiac, and the banner of our ship was Libra; it had a wonderful clock on deck, among other things, that showed not only hours but minutes.² The sea was so calm that it was delightful to be on it, but the best thing of all was the old warder’s conversation. He knew so many wonderful stories I could have spent a lifetime listening to him.

We must have been traveling fast, for before we’d been at sea two hours, the lookout called out that he could now see the bay beyond, almost covered in ships – it seemed they must be on their way out to meet us, and in fact as soon as we had come through the channel into the bay, there were five hundred ships over the water! One grand one glittered with gold and gems, and the king and queen sat there with many lords and ladies and high-born maidens. As soon as we came in sight, their ship fired its cannon, and there was such a blast of trumpets, trombones, and kettledrums that all the ships seemed to dance on the water. The sailors brought our ships together, and there we dropped anchor. Old Atlas, the royal astronomer, stepped out from beside the royal couple and made a brief but elegant speech, offering us the king’s welcome and asking if we had brought him the Royal Gift.

Now imagine how confused and astounded most of our brother knights were as to how this king and queen could have got here – they expected they would now have to awaken those corpses buried in the garden! We four who knew better didn’t enlighten them, and pretended to be just as surprised as they were. The old warder then came forward and answered Atlas’s speech with a somewhat longer reply, in which he wished the king and queen all happiness and many children, etc., after which he brought out a very curious little casket.³ I don’t know at all what was in it. The old warder gave it to Cupid – who had been hovering between the king and the queen – for him to keep.

Another celebratory volley from the cannons, and on we sailed, till we arrived at a different port than the one we’d first set out from – this one was near the gate at which I had first gone into the castle. There was a huge crowd awaiting us there, many of the king’s household, and hundreds of horses. As we went ashore, the king and queen both gave us their hands, every one of us, with great kindness.

So we were to mount up and ride the rest of the way to the castle entrance. Now here I have to ask you not to take what I have to tell as pride or boasting on my part – believe me that I wouldn’t even bother to tell the next incident, probably, if I didn’t have to. What happened was that all our company from the island was mixed with the lords and ladies from the castle, but the old warder and I (myself completely undeserving) were alone invited to ride beside the king and were each given a snow-white banner with a red cross to bear. Very likely I was only chosen because of my age, he and I being the only graybeards there.

I’d fastened to my hat (where once my four roses had been) those two tokens that the gatekeepers had given me when I first came to enter the castle. The young king took an interest in them.

“So you were the one who was able to buy these tokens at the gate?” he asked me.

I bowed and murmured very humbly, “Yes.”

The king laughed and said, “No need any longer for little tokens! You are, after all, my father!”⁴

Then he asked me what I had paid for the tokens with.

“One with water and one with salt,” I answered.

“Well!” he answered. “And how did you come to make such wise choices?”

I grew a little more confident at that and told him what had happened with my bread, and the dove, and the raven, and all that, and he was very pleased with the story. “It shows that God intended you to succeed here,” he said.

Just then we came to the first gate. The porter in the blue coat waited there, holding a petition, and as soon as he saw me beside the king, he gave this petition to me, begging me to remind the king how generously he, the porter, had treated me.

I asked the king about this man, what sort of person he was.

“He was once a very famous and celebrated astrologer,” the king said readily. “My father the king held him in high regard. Once upon a time, though, he committed a grave error: he snuck in to spy on the goddess Venus asleep in her bed. Of course he was found out and punished, and his punishment was this: he must wait at this first gate until someone comes along who can release him.”

“How,” I asked, “can he be released?”

“If someone can be discovered to have committed the same fault as he,” the king replied, “then that person must take the porter’s place, and the porter will be freed.”

This went like a shot right to my heart, for of course I was myself that guilty person. I said nothing, though, and only gave the porter’s petition to the king. When he had read it, he seemed quite alarmed – the queen, who with the Duchess of the Weights rode right behind him, noticed it. “What is it, my lord?” she asked. “What does the letter say?”

But the king brushed it off, put away the letter, and began to talk of other things, until about three o’clock we arrived at the castle and accompanied the king as he went into his hall.

The king immediately called for old Atlas his astronomer and with him retreated to a private room where (as I would learn) he showed Atlas the porter’s petition and ordered Atlas to ride immediately to the porter to find out more.

The king then joined us, and with his spouse took his seat amid the other lords and ladies.

Our young mistress spoke up, praising us all for our hard work and all the effort and sacrifice we had made. She asked that we all be royally rewarded, and asked that she too might receive what was due to her for fulfilling her commission. At that the old warder rose and testified to everything our mistress had said, and agreed that both she and we should be well compensated. What the king decided was that we were each to step up and make a wish of any kind, and it would be granted – because surely men of good minds such as ourselves would make wise wishes. We had until after supper to think about what our wish would be.

To pass the time till supper, the king and queen began playing a board game somewhat like chess, except that it had different rules, because it was played with Virtues against Vices – it was very ingenious the traps that a Vice could set for a Virtue, and the ways that a Virtue could escape and trap a Vice. It was so well-thought-out and took such cleverness to play that I wish we had the same game.

During the game, old Atlas came in again and whispered in the king’s ear. I sat and blushed – my guilty conscience was pricking me. The king summoned me and gave me the petition to read for myself, and it was about just what I guessed it would be about. The porter began by wishing the king prosperity and wealth and that his offspring might flourish far and wide and so on. Then he claimed that the time was come at last when he ought to be released from his servitude, because he had learned that Venus had been uncovered and looked at by one of the king’s guests. He had irrefutable evidence of this, he said, and if His Majesty would make the same investigation, he would find that in fact it was true, she had been intruded upon; and if this turned out to be not so, then he, the porter, was willing to stand at his gate for the rest of his life. Lastly he begged that he, even at the risk of his life and his happiness, might be allowed to come to this night’s supper in order to help identify the offender, and thus win his own freedom.

All this was powerfully expressed and showed the noble nature of the man, but to me it cut like a knife, and I wished I’d never had to see it. I thought desperately of some way to use my royal wish to resolve this, and I asked the king if there wasn’t something else that could be done so that the porter could be freed without leaving his post and disrupting the party with all this scandal.

“Oh no,” the king said. “Because of the special nature of his case, there’s only one way out for him. For this one night, we can let him come here as he asks.”

So someone was sent to bring him in.

Supper was laid in a spacious refectory which we’d never been in before, which was so perfect – but I’m at a loss how to describe it. We were conducted in with all pomp and circumstance. Cupid, however, was absent: he was, I was told, rather angry about the insult to his sleeping mother. In fact, the offense, which was actually my own, and the porter’s petition revealing it, made for a lot of disquiet: the king was doubtful how to go about making inquiries among the guests, because asking would reveal what none of them – all but one – so far knew. So he allowed the porter – who by then had arrived and been admitted – to see what he could learn, examining each of us, while the king himself tried to make the dinner as cheerful and convivial as he could.

Eventually everyone did liven up, and a brilliant conversation ensued, with all kinds of entertaining and perspicuous remarks and anecdotes. I can’t bring myself to describe how all the ceremonies and so forth that followed were carried out; it’s not necessary to the story I am trying to tell, and it’s not the reader’s business, but I’ll say that it wasn’t just the amounts we drank that made the talk seem wise and the ceremonies profound – no, this was the noblest, as it was the last, meal at which I was present. When it was all done, the tables were whisked away and a number of highly wrought chairs were set out in a circle, and all of us sat, including the king, the queen, their aged counselors Atlas and the old warder, and all the ladies and maidens.

A handsome young page then opened that beautiful little black book, and Atlas took the center of the circle and spoke. He said that His Royal Majesty hadn’t forgotten the services we had rendered, and how carefully we had done our duty, and for that reason he had elected us all Knights of the Golden Stone.⁵ He asked us to serve him further if ever he needed us, and also to swear to a number of principles. If we did so, His Majesty would treat us, his followers, well.

Atlas turned the page then and read the articles:

You knights shall swear that you will not give credit for our

Order and its works to any demon or spirit but only to God, your Creator, and to Nature, his handmaid.

That you will hate all immorality and excess and whoring, and not dirty your Order with such things.

That you will help any worthy person that you can with your skills.

That you will not use this honor for worldly profit or power.

That you won’t go on living longer than God wants you to.

We had to laugh at that last article; maybe it was put in after the others just for a joke.⁶

We swore to all of this on the king’s scepter and thereupon were installed as knights with all the usual ceremonies. Among the privileges granted us was power to work effectively in our own judgment against Ignorance, Poverty, and Illness. We were brought all together to a little chapel, and our knighthoods were ratified there, and thanks given to God. Everyone had to write his name in that chapel, and this is what I wrote:

The highest knowledge is to know you know nothing.⁷

Brother Christian Rosencreutz

Knight of the Golden Stone

A.D. 1459

Everyone else wrote what they thought was appropriate, and we returned to the hall, where it was time to come up with that wish that we’d been promised would be granted. The king and his council went off into a smaller chamber to hear what we wanted, one at a time. Since each of us went in alone, I don’t know what the others wished for. For myself, I thought that the most laudable thing I could do was to demonstrate some particular virtue in my wish, in honor of my Order; and I believe the most honorable virtue, anyway the one that’s always cost me the most to exercise, is Gratitude. Of course I could have wished for something precious and gratifying to myself, but I managed to suppress that impulse and vowed that I’d try to free the porter, my benefactor, even if it cost me everything.

So now I was called in. First the king asked me if, after I read the porter’s petition, I’d been able to glean anything about that reprobate among us. I didn’t hesitate; I just started in as plainly as I could to tell the whole story of how it was I myself who had stupidly fallen into that error, and I offered to take the punishment I deserved. The king and his council were dumbfounded at this sudden outburst and asked me to step outside for a moment.

I waited in agony while they debated, and when I was called in again, it was old Atlas who spoke to me.

Well, the answer was that my wish couldn’t be used to wish that.

“The king is so sorry that you, Brother, you of all people, one he loved above all the rest, stumbled so. But he just can’t go against our ancient customs. The old porter must be freed – and you must take his place.” He said the king hoped that eventually someone else who did what I had done might be discovered and apprehended, but the soonest that could happen would be at the wedding of his own son.⁸

This judgment almost killed me. I hated myself and my babbling tongue – why couldn’t I have just shut up! – but I soon got hold of myself.⁹ I told the king and his lords how this porter had given me a token, and had also sent a note recommending me to the next porter, and by their help I had got into the castle and stood up to the trial of the weights, and because of that I had been able to be part of all the wonders and delights that followed.

“Now it’s only fair that I should show gratitude to my benefactor,” I said, “because without him none of that would have happened. So thank you, my lords, for your sentence. I’m willing and ready to accept some burden for his sake.

“But now there is, if you please, the matter of my own wish for myself. And my wish, if it can be granted – it’s to be back in my home under the hill again.”

You see, my idea was that I could free the porter by my confession, and then my own wish could free me. Well, the answer was that my wish couldn’t be used to wish that. My wish that the porter go free, though, was granted, and the king said he was very pleased I had acted so generously, even though he was afraid I still didn’t know how bad a fix I had got myself into through my curiosity.

Anyway that good man was pronounced free, and I was sent out.

After me, others went in and came back out again happy as could be, which stung me all over again, since it seemed certain that I would live out my life sitting by that gate. Many gloomy thoughts were running around in my head, about what I was going to do, and how I would pass the time; and my final thought was that since I’m old and very likely haven’t much longer to live, this anguish and my humiliating job would quickly finish me off, and then my door-keeping would be over, and I could sleep in my grave. On the one hand it bothered me terribly that I had seen such superb things, only to be robbed of them. On the other I was glad that at least I had been accepted and found worthy, and not forced to depart in shame.

While I was brooding, the rest of the knights had got ready, and after the king and his lords had said good night to each one, they were taken to their rooms. But I, wretched man, had nobody to show me where I was to go, and all I could do was stand there tormenting myself. And just so that I would never forget for a moment my lowly function, I was made to put on the iron ring that the old porter had worn.

Finally the king spoke to me.

“This is the last time you are likely to see me as my guest and companion,” he said, “but remember that still you should always behave as a knight, and follow the rules of the Order you have sworn to.” He took me in his arms and kissed me, and by all this I knew for certain that in the morning I must in fact sit at my gate.

The other knights stayed to say a few kind words to me, and gave me their hands at last, asking God to protect me, and so on. Then the two old men, Atlas and the old warder, took me into a fine bedchamber, where there were three beds. Each of us took one, and there we spent almost two[…]

Here two pages or so are missing. The author of the foregoing, though he supposed that in the morning he would have to become the porter of the castle, in fact returned home.

1 It’s likely that the processes employed in the Olympus Tower are useless or even harmful anywhere else, though ambitious alchemical workers like these might be tempted to try them out.

2 Clocks that showed minutes were still rare in Andreae’s day. Around the time that CW was written, the great clockmaker-mathematician Jost Burgi is said to have invented (and made an instrument that could count by) seconds.

3 Montgomery thinks that the mysterious gift must be the crucifix formed from a single pearl that Christian observed being carried between the couple on their way to the play and the execution. Since he believes that the rebirth and reuniting of the king and queen are an allegory of the marriage of Christ and the Church, the connection seems obvious to him.

4 This apparently simple statement has given much trouble to interpreters. Rudolf Steiner (founder of Anthroposophy) takes it to mean that Christian is the father of his own “transformed faculties of knowledge” symbolized by the King. Jung sees it as a little metafictional joke: Christian, thus Andreae, is the “father” of all the characters in his book, a fact that a character in the book is here reminding him of. Much as I like that idea, I think a simpler interpretation is preferable: that the King recognizes Christian as the father, or one of the fathers, of his reborn self, thus needing no tokens to be in his presence.

5 Specifically not Knights of the Red Cross or Rosicrucian Brothers. They were formerly Knights of the Golden Fleece – on a quest, like Jason. Now they are Knights of the achieved Philosopher’s Stone.

6 Immortality was a goal of alchemy – the Philosopher’s Stone was also the Elixir of Life. These Knights are foreswearing such a personal pursuit – their skills are to be used to help others.

7 A variant of the remark of Socrates – “I know only one thing, that I know nothing.” It also seems to reflect Christian’s dejection at having passed so many tests and yet failed in the end.

8 An unexpected and yet winning aspect of this story to me is that the death and resurrection of the king (and queen) really have very little effect either on them or on the world. They’ve returned more beautiful and perhaps more noble (there’s no knowing), but they are essentially the same. The true and final aim of the alchemical Work – the creation of the Philosopher’s Stone from the copulation of the Red King and the White Woman – doesn’t happen, at least within the compass of the tale, and here the king predicts that his own son will have to undergo the same process he did, and will therefore be flawed and mortal like himself. (It may be that the old king and his spouse who were beheaded were in actual fact the young king’s parents).

9 It may be – Montgomery is certain of it – that the labors and the visions that Christian has undergone have made it possible for him to do this selfless deed. All the other redemptions (of the emperor in the weights trial, of the king and queen) cost him nothing of himself – but this one does. It is a key concept in Christianity as in alchemy that the seeker must expend all of himself to find that by which he will be restored to himself – he can’t save himself, but must trust in the powers he solicits.