The Alchemist

A Story by LE Berry

This story is of a mystical scientist who seeks the key to spiritual eternity during his life time in Medieval England.

What is it, what is the truth of perfection and how does it lead to eternity? It is a question which haunts constantly, my quest beginning when I was still a youth becoming aware of death as it encircled me like a noose.

The loss of a grand aunt, someone who had taught me of kindness, struck as a lightning bolt, the utter shock of it positively stunned me for days afterward. As I attended her wake, our family gathered around the casket where she lay. For the longest time I stood, staring at the frozen oddity that was now her. That image of death pierced me as nothing before or since ever had.

At the age of eight-teen I attended church for the first time as I sought to find answers. I found the rituals performed there empty and uninspired, the favored icon of faith as I saw it was positively horrific. Gazing up at it while others around me sang hymnal after hymnal of praise filled hope, I could only frown as the ugly death of their god was presented as a symbol of eternity. As if that abomination, that destructive act, could ever be a part of goodness or creation.

The book was read from as I continued to stare up at him who was so high above me as it was declared, my frown intact as I did. It was then that I heard the priest speak of him rising from his tomb, being brought back from the dead. Perking up my ears, I turned my attention to what was being said, learning here that eternity was meant for the saints and they alone.

Perfection. How did they obtain it? I heard of vows of poverty, fasting and constant prayer. The tedium of it all sounding quite dreary, and it did seem to me that what would come after this world must be a marvel of wondrous joy for the sainted to give up so much in this life.

Alas, being of the nature of a scientist I was a skeptic, and the heaven the faithful believed in seemed improbable. In the end I denied the father god, the one who was the source of such a heavenly realm. The problem you see was the devil, that evil which belied all the grandeur of such a ‘perfect’ god.

Left empty by religion, I contemplated perfection for myself, wondering if it was something which fades much as the stars do with the sunrise. They appear to do so, but it is an illusion, they are still there in their space of motion, we simply cannot see them with ordinary eyes. Imagine them in the bright of day and one could wonder forever.

At the age of twenty- five I was certain that I was a part of the brilliance of the stars, I shared the same spark and it was within me. I realized then that perfection is a part of natural continuance, no prayers or hymns to a flawed god were necessary to obtain eternity. The way to it would be found elsewhere and I would seek it out, I would find a way to create the key to it.

I realized at this time in my life that real knowledge is sought by individuals such as I, and that much of which is to be found in the written works of absolute truth is shaky at best; a grain of salt is needed with every theory which is hailed as proven. As I had read, salt is an essential ingredient, a solid which when met with a liquid, blends then binds into a form of unity, for it is understood that change plays a great part in that of perfection. The flowing of the two together, one of earth, one of water, are half of the elements of magic.

I was twenty-seven when I began my study of the magical world, where every example I would need for my experiments to begin was found in nature, that pure space untouched by the clumsy hands of men. In every season I would observe the change about me, leaves of deep green summer turning to red and gold in autumn. Followed by the dread of winter, that which seemed to mimic death. But it was in the spring that one could see the illusion of it as the newly formed buds appeared again. In nature it was proven to me that life once begun may change, but it does not end.

After several seasons of my study, it was upon certain nights that I would lie awake staring at the ceiling, looking through it at the stars above me, wondering again of that connection of the purest light, something of the human soul. I was being filled with priceless contemplation, there where uncommon men meet within the mind of intelligent design, while realizing that we become wiser in ever changing knowledge.

Immortality of the spirit is the only thing of value, as I grew older I understood it was the ultimate of human truth. What else is there to desire? I had encountered other alchemists, fools who sought to keep an immortal body, their potions promising youthful flesh as they sought to turn what is base material into something of lasting gold.

It is the travesty of alchemy, the materialists are, they never cease, always meeting a dead end. Turning away from what is useless I now sought to forge the key to eternity.

In my first experiment I used my own version of the Philosophers Stone, substituting red potter’s clay for salt, believing it to be more constant with the element earth. Instead of sulfur I used powdered bone which I believed represented the elements of air and fire combined; these I added to Mercury.

Unlike the materialists, I won’t be using the Stone to transform lead into gold; I would not waste my time on such a useless endeavor. The Key I have created will be used to realize the Phoenix, that of the spirit transcending beyond death.

The thirteenth century is a golden age of knowledge, and yet ignorance is found everywhere throughout the kingdom, most of it is born of sorry religion, there where children pray to their ‘lord’ to save them. It is only through the boundless possibilities of science that spiritual immortality can be known.