Part III: Concerning the Laws and Vital Conditions of the Hermetic Experiment
Chapter 4: Mental Requisites and Impediments, Part 4
Introduction: The Hermetic art demands a disciplined mind, suitable tools, and a pure heart to unlock divine wisdom. This section explores the practical and spiritual preparation needed, from choosing the right instruments to cultivating charity, to transform the soul into a radiant vessel of truth.
The Philosophic Vessel
The Hermetic art requires a suitable “vessel” to manifest its divine work, as Norton advises: “Ordeyne Instrumente according to the werke.” Vessels vary—small for separation, broad for circulation, narrow for correction—made of lead, clay, or glass, each chosen to harmonize with nature’s processes. Glass, especially the “morning stuff” vitrified from ashes, is prized for containing spiritual essences without leakage, as Vaughan notes: “The glass is one, simple, and easily carried.”
The adept must guide the crafting of these vessels, ensuring they align with the work’s intent. Norton humorously recounts the need for skilled assistance, as careless servants disrupt the delicate process. A faithful, diligent helper, as Solomon suggests, is “like thine own hearte,” essential for success.
The Ideal Environment
The Hermetic work thrives in specific environments, as Norton explains: “Places convenable” vary—dry and windless for some operations, bright or moist for others. Secrecy is crucial, shielding the work from disruptive influences like strong winds or corrupt impressions, which Agrippa warns can pollute the spiritual ether. The adept must choose locations that resonate with the art’s subtle energies, much like Virgil’s serene settings for his bees.
Vaughan emphasizes that the true furnace, or “Athanor,” is simple, requiring minimal effort, yet it holds the secrets of corruption and generation. The right environment ensures the “Central fire” of the work burns harmoniously, avoiding chaos.
The Heart of Charity
Success demands a “charitable seraphic mind,” as Vaughan instructs, rooted in faith and piety. The adept must avoid destructive passions, which disrupt the “sweet spirit of Peace” and cause division in the chaos. A heart aligned with divine love, as Agrippa advises, ascends in piety and descends in charity, uniting with the divine to open the “Door of Nature.” Without this, the work fails, as Zeno’s wisdom reminds: “Hear much, speak little.”
Closing: This chapter unveils the practical and spiritual requisites—vessels, environments, and charity—for mastering the Hermetic art. The journey into its operational secrets deepens in our next post, unveiling further wonders of this sacred pursuit.
Part III: Concerning the Laws and Vital Conditions of the Hermetic Experiment
Chapter 4: Mental Requisites and Impediments, Part 3
Introduction: The Hermetic art requires a disciplined mind and fervent prayer to unlock divine wisdom. This section explores the vital role of prayer, study, and moral purity in overcoming obstacles, guiding the adept to transform the soul’s essence into radiant light.
The Power of Prayer
Prayer is the cornerstone of the Hermetic art, as Iamblichus describes, divided into three stages: gathering the mind’s powers, forging spiritual bonds, and sealing divine union. This sacred practice, as Kirchringius notes, “nourishes the intellect, opens the soul to divine light, and expels mortal dregs.” Through prayer, the adept aligns with the divine will, receiving revelations that solve the art’s enigmas, as the Psalmist declares: “I called upon God, and the Spirit of Wisdom came to me.”
Geber and Norton emphasize that divine grace, sought through prayer, is essential for success. Without it, obstacles arise, or the work ends in failure. Prayer, paired with persistent effort, transforms the soul into a vessel for the “Divine Fire,” uniting it with eternal truth.
The Necessity of Disciplined Study
Success in the Hermetic art demands rigorous study, as Ricardus advises: “Examine the philosophers’ writings, for a sluggish mind cannot master the work.” Arnold and Lully stress subtlety of mind, manual skill, and divine favor, cultivated through books that sharpen the intellect. The adept must persevere, as Zachary urges, reading with patience to uncover the “vermilion path” of truth, ensuring the mind is prepared for the sacred labor.
This study, grounded in reason and faith, dispels ignorance and fortifies the soul, aligning it with the divine purpose. Without it, as Sendivogius warns, “God gives understanding, but you must work to use it.”
The Path of Moral Purity
The Hermetic art rejects impure motives, as Pierce the Black Monk declares: “Covetous men find it never.” The adept must embody meekness, mercy, and charity, living simply and prayerfully. This moral purity, as Job warns, avoids the pitfalls of greed and pride, ensuring the soul remains open to divine grace. Only through such virtue can the adept wield the art’s power without corrupting its sanctity.
Closing: This chapter unveils the power of prayer, study, and moral purity in mastering the Hermetic art. The journey into its practical secrets deepens in our next post, unveiling further wonders of this sacred pursuit.
Part III: Concerning the Laws and Vital Conditions of the Hermetic Experiment
Chapter 4: Mental Requisites and Impediments, Part 2
Introduction: The Hermetic art demands a pure and disciplined mind to unlock its sacred wisdom. This section explores the mental qualities needed and the obstacles to avoid, emphasizing faith, reason, and moral integrity as keys to divine transformation.
The Path of the True Adept
The Hermetic art, as Norton declares, is a “divine cure” to transform base metals into gold, granted only to those blessed with God’s grace and a virtuous heart. Success requires a stable, rational mind, free from avarice or pride, as Geber warns against those who chase wealth, unable to quicken the “aurific seed” of divine wisdom. The adept must pursue truth with unwavering faith, guided by reason to discern the sacred from the profane.
Eirenaeus illustrates this with a parable of seekers lost in “Cimmerian darkness,” mistaking false lights (ignorance, fantasy) for truth. Only those with disciplined intellect and pure intent can perceive the Hermetic light, aligning their will with divine purpose to unlock nature’s secrets.
The Dangers of Skepticism and Greed
Skepticism, especially the fashionable kind that dismisses the unfamiliar, is a major impediment. Geber condemns those who deny the art’s validity, presuming their limited reason sufficient, as Norton likens them to blind men attempting to paint. Such skeptics, lacking faith, block the path to truth, while the covetous, driven by Mammon, defile the divine light, risking spiritual ruin, as Job warns: “If I have made gold my hope, I have denied God.”
The Hermetic art requires sacrifice—abandoning selfhood for divine truth. Those who cling to greed or fleeting opinions fail to endure the fiery ordeal of wisdom’s purification, as Eirenaeus notes: “The art vanishes from impure hands.”
The Call for Disciplined Faith
The adept must cultivate a serene, diligent mind, as the Tractatus Aureus advises: “Be good, just, and ready to help mankind.” This disciplined faith, rooted in reason, aligns the soul with divine wisdom, transforming it into a radiant vessel. Norton emphasizes secrecy, taught “mouth to mouth” with a sacred oath, to protect the art from misuse, ensuring only the worthy wield its power.
Closing: This chapter unveils the mental requisites of faith and reason, and the pitfalls of skepticism and greed, for mastering the Hermetic art. The journey into its practical secrets deepens in our next post, unveiling further wonders of this sacred pursuit.
Homo Sapiens by Stanislaw Przybyszewski and translated by Joe E Bandel
“Strange, strange… the doctor said you should lie at least three days, and I have seen this expression of strength and energy in your face for a long time. You are different from all people.”
“Yes, yes, that is the new strength. Drink, drink with me… I was so little with you… Drink the whole glass out.”
They drank out and Falk filled the glasses anew.
He sat down beside her, took her both hands and kissed them. “We have not spoken together for a long time,” he said.
“Now everything is good, isn’t it?” she asked tenderly.
“It will become good. We will travel away from here… What do you think of Iceland?”
“Are you serious?” “You make so many new plans…”
“This time I am serious, because it is namely no plan. It occurred to me today, yesterday, I actually don’t know when, but I must away from here.”
Isa beamed. She did not want to tell him, but she found it unbearable in this boring city.
“Think, such a small fisherman’s house by the sea. Isn’t it? Wonderful! And the autumn nights when the waves play this terrible eternal music on the beach. But you will not be bored?”
“Did I ever get bored with you? I need no person, nothing, I need absolutely nothing if I only have you.”
“But I will often be away from you, very often. I will go out with the fishermen for entire nights, I will go into the mountains. And when we are together, we will lie in the grass and stare at the sky… But drink, drink then… Oh, you can no longer drink as before.”
“See then!” She drank the glass empty.
“And in this twosomeness: you and I, and you a piece of me, and we both a revelation of the immanent substance in us…” He stood up. “Isa! we will seek the God we lost.”
She was as if hypnotized.
“The God we lost,” she repeated half unconsciously. “You don’t believe in God?” he asked suddenly.
“No,” she said thoughtfully.
“You don’t believe one can find him?” “No, if one does not have him in oneself.”
“But that is what I mean: to find God, that means to feel God, to feel him in every pore of one’s soul, to have the immediate certainty that he is there, to possess the wild supernatural power that the God-feeling gives.”
“Do you want to seek another God, a God outside? What do you want this God for? I don’t want him. I don’t need him. I have the immediate certainty of the God-feeling, I feel him as long as you are there. I need nothing higher… And I will not tolerate such a feeling in you either. Then I will not go with.”
He looked at her long.
“How beautiful you have become now. As if a light had suddenly bloomed in you…”
Suddenly he lost balance and came into a strange rapture.
“Yes, yes, I mean the God who is you and I. I mean the holy, great My-You! Do you know what my you, my dark you is? That is Jahveh, that is Oum, that is Tabu. My you, that is the soul that never prostituted itself in the brain. My you, that is the holy soul that rarely comes over me, perhaps once, as the Holy Spirit came only once over the apostles. My you, that is my love and my doom and my criminal will! And to find my God, that means: to explore this you, to know its ways, to understand its intentions, so as not to do the small, the low, the disgusting anymore.”
Isa was carried away. They grasped each other violently by the hands.
“And you want to teach me to find and explore it in me?” “Yes, yes…” He looked at her as if he had never seen her before.
“And you will be in me?”
“Yes, yes…”
“I am yours, your thing and your you… Am I it?” “Yes, yes…” He began to become distracted.
“We are poor, Isa,” he said after a while, “I lost the whole fortune.”
“Throw the rest away too,” she cried laughing to him and threw herself on his breast.
Fear suddenly rose in him.
“You, you—if it is over tomorrow? I have such mistrust of myself.”
“Then I will pull you with.”
“But is it perhaps not only an over-fatigue, an over-excited mood that whips us into this ecstasy?”
He started.
“I lie, I lie,” he said suddenly hoarsely, “I have lied too much… Now…”
He broke off. The thought to tell her now everything, to tell everything in detail, shot through his head and grew into a great, maniacal idea.
“Isa!” He looked at her as if he wanted to bore into the ground of her soul… “Isa!” he repeated, “I have something to tell you.”
She started frightened.
“Can you forgive me everything, everything I did evil?”
The confession forced itself with irresistible power over his lips. Now he could no longer hold it back. He grasped her hands.
Homo Sapiens: In the Maelstrom by Stanislaw Przybyszewski and translated by Joe E Bandel
XI.
He woke up. Yes, really? He clearly heard a melody: deep, mystical bass melody and like a distant echo a tone and again a tone, isolated, whining in the treble. His whole soul threw itself into this holy melody and clung to it and wound itself up on it, curled together and widened with new strength: it felt so infinitely good. It seemed to him as if everything heavy, everything dull and terrible in his soul had dissolved, slowly dissolved and would now become the essence, the mad, soft longing of these tones… Never had he felt such a soft, blessed longing.
It was probably night. He did not dare open his eyes, it was so infinitely good to feel this longing. It was night, and he had a blessed, joyful longing for tomorrow, the hot, short, color-frenzied autumn day. It was probably raining outside too, but tomorrow, tomorrow the sun comes and will breathe the rain and gnaw further on the leaves: oh, this glorious sick purple-yellow…
Was he awake, was he really?
He still heard the melody, softer and softer, sadder and sadder, and he lay there, dissolved in this longing, dissolved in this pain that was actually no pain—no: a flowing back, a receding memory, a mad yearning for foreign, wide lands, for a great, orgiastic nature in which every flower grows into a giant tree, every mountain hides in the clouds and every river foams and rages without banks…
Then his heart began to beat violently. He grasped it with both hands… Yes, here, here between the fifth and sixth rib he felt the heart shock—he felt the heart tip first strike against the flat hand, then against two fingers, finally he pressed his index finger firmly against the spot… How it works! Did Grodzki perhaps first palpate his heart in this way?
He sat up in bed and supported his head in both hands.
Grodzki shot himself… That was what he knew for sure. He shot himself because he wanted to die. He died with will, he died of disgust, he no longer wanted to see the young day and the sick purple-yellow.
But why should he think about it? Should he destroy this blessed harmony in his soul again? But what did the strange man say? Falk, Falk, you do not know this harmony: it goes beyond all calm, beyond all holiness, beyond all bliss… But the man was mad.
Falk shuddered, he clearly saw the mad eyes of the stranger. He dug convulsively with his fingers into the blanket. Fear seized him anew, but in the next moment he became calm.
There was no doubt that he had finally come to consciousness:
He had namely fainted in the armchair when the stranger stole away from his room, now he was in bed, so he must have been carried to bed. Yes, and the button? The golden, blinking button was really on the desk… So he was awake and in full consciousness.
He felt a quite immediate, animal joy.
Then he fell back into the pillows and lay for a long time as if in a faint.
When he began to think again, he had risen from the bed and began to dress. But he was very weak. Half-dressed he lay down on the bed again and stared thoughtlessly at the ceiling.
Ridiculous how sloppily the ceiling was painted! The hook for the hanging lamp should actually be in the middle. Well. The ceiling is a parallelogram. Now I draw the diagonals.
He became quite furious.
Ridiculous! That was by no means the intersection point. The whole room was repugnant to him. He was locked in this narrow space with his dull torment, and outside the world was so wide…
Again he felt the hot longing, only far, far away—to the Pacific Ocean.
Yes, the Pacific Ocean! That was redemption. That was redemption to eternal calm, to eternal harmony without torment, without joy, without passions…
How his young heart trembled then! His limbs became so weak from the constant fear. Around the church on the lawn he saw people, many people, lying on their knees and begging God for mercy, he looked at them, his heart beat more and more violently, his unrest grew, sin burned on his heart like a fire mark. Now he was to confess, tell a strange person the shameful abomination… And in his desperate soul fear he took the prayer book and read five, six times with trembling fervor the litany to the Holy Spirit. And a peace returned to his heart, a holy, transfigured rapture, his soul became pure and wide like the hot noon around him. Now he had to go into the church. Then fear seized him. Had one not seen a black rider on a black stallion tumbling in the church at noon?… He crept cautiously to the sacristy door… He listened, then slowly opened the heavy door and staggered back in animal fright: before him stood the stranger. You destroyed his soul! he said solemnly…
“I dream! I dream!” cried Falk, woke up and jumped out of bed.
Isa started.
“It is me, Erik, it is me, don’t you know me?” Falk stared at her for a while, then breathed deeply. “Thank God it is you!”
“Tell, tell, Erik, what is wrong with you? Do you feel very sick? Are you better? I had such terrible fear for you.”
Falk collected himself with all strength.
To thunder! Should he not overcome the bit of illness, should he not finally once forget his small, ridiculous pains? it shot through his head.
“I am no longer sick at all,” he said almost cheerfully. “I only had a little fever, that remained from then,—he, he, I got the fever in the homeland, nothing more.”
His head suddenly became unusually clear.
You are sick, Erik, you are. Your body glows. Lie down, I beg, lie down. This morning you lay on the floor. The doctor said you should lie a few days…
He became a little impatient.
“But just let me… I have not been so clear and so light for a long time as right now. The doctors are idiots, what do they know of me? He, he,—of me…”
He pulled her to him. His heart suddenly overflowed with an overflowing cordiality and love for her.
“We will have a wonderful evening today, you bring wine, then we sit down and tell each other the whole night… Do you remember, just like then in San Remo on our honeymoon.”
She looked at him.
“I have never seen a person who is as strong as you. That is strange, how strong you are…”
“So I lay on the floor?”
“You cannot imagine what an uproar it was in the house…” “Well, just go now, afterwards you will tell me everything…”
“But was there not a strange person here?” asked Isa. “A stranger? No!”
“Then I probably dreamed.” “Surely.”
She went.
Falk dressed.
Of course you dreamed, dear Isa, you have strange dreams anyway.
He smiled satisfied.
He considered whether he should take tailcoat and white tie. It was after all the great feast of peace, the feast of calm, of eternal harmony.
He was in a state of triumphant rapture.
Now finally I have found myself, Myself, Me—God.
Was he still sick? His thoughts were heated. The inner excitement foamed trembling up…
Was it perhaps only a moment of a physical reaction after all this torment and fear?
What did that concern him? He had now forgotten everything. His body stretched in the feeling of a long unknown bliss and energy.
“Ah, Isa, are you already here?”
“You are doing strange gymnastics there.”
“I drive away the illness. But something to eat…” “Yes, just come to the dining room.”
He ate something, but without special appetite.
“I am as if newborn, Isa, quite as newborn. So rejuvenated. I suffered much. No, no, understand me correctly, I had no personal suffering, only the whole misery out there weighed on me and made me so miserable…”
Part III: Concerning the Laws and Vital Conditions of the Hermetic Experiment
Chapter 3: The Manifestation of the First Matter, Part 1
Introduction: The Hermetic art transforms the soul’s purified essence, the First Matter, into radiant divine light, uniting it with eternity. This chapter unveils the alchemical process of manifesting this sacred spark, guided by poetic visions and Theurgic rites.
The Tears of Isis
The soul’s essence, purified through Theurgic sacrifice, emerges as the “First Matter,” a radiant spark ready to unite with divine light. Vaughan’s poetic vision of Hyanthe, adorned in green damasks and shedding tears of pearl, symbolizes this essence—a divine water flowing from the soul’s contrite heart. These “Tears of Isis” are not mere illusion but a tangible force, bearing the soul’s truth in a crystalline vial, as pure as the philosopher’s stone.
This sacred water, born of divine sorrow, transforms chaos into harmony. As Hyanthe’s tears turn to rose water, the soul’s purified essence becomes a “silver torrent,” reflecting divine light and preparing the way for eternal union.
The Alchemical Transformation
The alchemical process, guided by reason and faith, dissolves the soul’s illusions to reveal its radiant core. Hermes instructs, “Dissolve the stone with pure water, not common, but a subtle fountain that sparks life.” This process—solution, sublimation, and fixation—purifies the soul’s essence through fire, as Khunrath describes: “Seek Three in One—body, soul, spirit—united in harmonious accord.” The soul, like a phoenix, rises from its ashes, radiant and reborn.
Eirenaeus advises, “Sow your gold in good earth, for he who destroys it reaps a hundredfold increase.” This sacrifice, like Achilles’ triumph, transforms the soul into a crowned king, adorned with the Sun’s diadem and the Moon’s crescent, radiating divine light.
The Divine Marriage
The culmination is a sacred union, the “marriage of Peleus and Thetis,” where the soul’s essence weds divine light. In this “Microcosmic Heaven,” colors of the rainbow signal reconciliation, as the soul’s purified spark, like a carbuncle, shines with eternal splendor. This divine light, born from the crucible of sacrifice, fulfills the Hermetic quest, uniting the soul with the universal source in a radiant dance of love.
Closing: This chapter unveils the First Matter’s transformation into divine light, a sacred marriage of soul and eternity. The journey into its practical alchemy deepens in our next post, unveiling further secrets of this sacred art.
Homo Sapiens: In the Maelstrom by Stanislaw Przybyszewski and translated by Joe E Bandel
“But you are fighting windmills. Do you believe that Napoleon is a great person for me? He is only that for you because he showed you with what ruthlessness and brutality one may proceed when it comes to satisfying one’s greed…”
Falk stared at him with feverish tension. But he did not grasp what the other said. And suddenly he saw Czerski’s face as if he had never seen it before!
“Strange, strange,” he murmured, staring incessantly at Czerski. He moved quite close to Czerski and spoke quite softly.
“See, you will commit crimes, no, no! don’t get upset. Understand me correctly, I mean what our society calls crimes. I know it. I suddenly saw it now. I believed you were sick or ate opium, now I know it. How? Suddenly. All at once. All political criminals get the same expression. I saw Padlewski in Paris, you know, he murdered the Russian ambassador… I saw him three hours before…
Falk sat down again. For a moment everything went dark before his eyes. But it passed immediately.
When you murder, you naturally have motives for it. Yes, I know, you have great love and great pity. And in what do the roots of your great pity stick? Only in the greed to realize the purpose you have before your eyes. In what does your greed differ from mine? Ha, ha, you don’t even listen to what I say, your
gaze is a thousand miles from here… Ha, ha, you don’t need to listen to it at all, but just tell me, in what will your crime then differ from mine? In that my crime remains unpunished, and you are punished with death. But I have the torment, and you have the happiness of sacrifice, yes—of sacrifice, Falk cried out.
Czerski started.
“What did you say now?”
“You have the happiness of sacrifice! And I have the torment.” Falk fell exhausted back into the chair.
“Naturally you will say I got all that from Nietzsche. But that is not true. What Nietzsche says is as old as the bad conscience is old…”
He straightened up again, his state bordered on ecstasy.
“You said you spit on all this. Didn’t you say so? Well, approximately so. And I agree with you! This with the overman… Ha, ha, ha… Nietzsche teaches that there is no good and no evil. But why should the overman suddenly be better than the last human? Ha, ha, ha… Why is the criminal more beautiful than the martyr who perishes out of pity? Where does the valuation between beautiful and ugly suddenly come from? Why? Oh, I love great suffering beauty, I love ascetic beauty… Ha, ha; I perhaps loved Janina because she is so extraordinarily thin… What do I know? Everything is nonsense! I spit on all that, I spit on the overman and on Napoleon, I spit on myself and the whole life…”
He looked around confused and suddenly became very serious, but then he began to speak again, quickly, hastily; he tumbled over himself, it seemed to him as if he could not say enough.
“I have told no one what I tell you. I admire you, I love you. Do you know why? You are the only one who has ceased to be himself… Yes, you and Olga—you both. I love you both for the sake of your love. And I love great love. That is the only feeling I love and admire. Don’t you hear how my heart beats, don’t you feel how my temples throb… But to love, one must have your faith, yes, the faith that has no purpose, only love, love, love is!.. He, he, he… I love, I admire, I crawl on my knees before this love that is the great faith. It is
so strange that precisely you, you levellers, you compassionate ones are the overmen! Faith, love makes you so mighty and so strong. I am the human on the extinction list. I am the last human. See: in the Polynesian archipelago there is a wonderful human race that will no longer exist in thirty, fifty years. It is dying out from physical consumption. My race is dying from physical phthisis. The lung of the brain, faith is rotted, eaten away…
Falk suddenly began to laugh.
“Ha, ha, ha… I had a friend. He was also such an overman as I. He was not as strong as I, and so he died from the debaucheries. When he was dead, I went to a café to think about death and to make clear to myself that he was really dead. I met there a fat and greasy medic who had muddled with us. I said to him: Gronski is dead. He thought a little. Then he said: I could imagine that. Why? I said. One must have principles, was the answer. One must have principles. If one has principles, one does not perish. But to have principles, one must believe, believe…
He suddenly straightened up and stood long almost unconscious. “It is my despair that speaks through me,” he finally said…
You are right, Czerski—the whole life, this disgusting life of the worm that eats in the flour, the life of small love… You are the first I have seen who has thrown that away, who has forgotten that… For you there are not these commandments for whose sake I suffer, because you are too great for that…
Falk suddenly seized his hand and kissed it. Czerski jerked violently and tore his hand away.
Falk looked at him long without saying a word, then sat down again. It seemed to him as if the fever had suddenly left him. He also didn’t quite know exactly what he had said or done.
Czerski was unusually pale. “Why did you come here?”
His voice trembled.
Falk looked at him calmly. They looked into each other’s eyes for probably a minute.
“I swear to you,” he finally said, “that I came for no small motives.”
“Is it true?”
“Yes, it is true.”
Czerski walked uncertainly back and forth a few times.
“I retract everything unpleasant I said to you—his voice was very soft, he seemed to have great difficulty fighting down his excitement. You are no scoundrel, Falk. Forgive me that I wanted to insult you.”
He went to the window.
A long pause ensued. Suddenly Czerski turned around.
“I didn’t know you,” he said harshly, “I believed you were unscrupulous… I wrote everything to Janina’s brother because I had promised him to watch over her. And now I have something else to think about.”
“You wrote to Stefan Kruk?” “Yes.”
Falk looked at him indifferently.
“Hm, perhaps you did well… But now farewell Czerski. I am glad that we do not part as enemies.”
Homo Sapiens: In the Maelstrom by Stanislaw Przybyszewski and translated by Joe E Bandel
Sacrifice was ridiculed because it is so infinitely hard to sacrifice oneself, because it costs so much struggle and despair. You say: I! But what is your I? Is it not perhaps an antidote against a bad conscience? Your I is only there so that you can transgress the small law that regulates your small desires… You, you, Falk, you are despite your self-glorifying individualism a small person. In what has your life exhausted itself if not in debauchery and sexual desire… Well, I do you wrong, you have done much, but was it not because you found a kind of atonement in it, tell me Falk, was it not to calm your bad conscience?
He stood almost threateningly before him, but sat down again immediately. “Why I you concerned about me?. I have nothing to do with you. I sit here ten hours and think that I have nothing more to do with you all. I have nothing personal about me anymore. My soul has widened, infinitely widened… You naturally don’t know what humanity is, because your lying brain, this flexible instrument in the service of your digestion, has made a concept of humanity, yes a concept, to be able to conveniently dissect, unravel and dispute it away. I don’t know this concept, but I know humanity as the root of my soul, I feel it with every beat of my heart, as the basic feeling that the sacrifice I bring to millions from my self is something else than the crawling and sweating and running after a woman. But now go Falk, I want to be alone before my departure. Just think that you are a small person, and you should have been one of the greatest. You, yes, you; you should have become one.”
Falk felt deeply shaken. But in the same moment a cynical shame overcame him that he let himself be shaken, it seemed to him as if his brain grinned at his helplessness.
“Do you eat opium?” he asked half unconsciously. Czerski looked at him seriously.
“Your brain is shameless,” he said slowly and almost solemnly. “Shameless!” Falk ducked under this look and these words. He stared at Czerski ashamed, he clearly felt two souls stretching up against each other.
“Yes, my brain is shameless.”
But immediately he regained his superiority. The cynical soul triumphed. He adjusted himself, smiled scornfully and said:
“It is very beautiful what you said there. Your criticism of our society was very good, although you did not go beyond what Nietzsche says in his *Zarathustra*, yes, the Nietzsche you so despise.”
He was silent for a moment to see how that would affect Czerski.
But Czerski seemed not to listen to him at all. He turned his back to him and looked out the window.
Falk was not surprised at all about it, he even brooded that he was not upset about it. He suddenly became sad and serious.
When he began to speak again, it was only to hear himself speak.
“You are right, my brain is shameless because it cannot grasp that your feeling ‘humanity’ has no causes, no causes that are not grounded in some experience. But that is how my brain is, it takes your soul state under the magnifying glass and analyzes it. You sat in prison. The woman you loved treacherously forgot you. Your loneliness, your bitterness, your pain and your despair finally produced this selfless surrender. So is your humanity not a lie, a great lie to save yourself from despair, is that not a lie to break the pain that caused these terrible torments, a lie of your physique in need of rest and recovery? You are now happy with your great lie and I am unhappy because my lie is small. But what does great mean? What small? My God, the concepts are lost to me, I usually don’t judge from a logical standpoint either. I know very well that the soul does not follow logical principles… But what did I want to say?… Yes, right…
Czerski suddenly turned around. “Do you want tea?”
“Yes, give tea, much tea… Yes! You condemn me, you called me a scoundrel. Isn’t that so, you did it? Why did you call me that? Because in my destructions sex was a motive. I speak destructions because the case with Janina is not the first. No…
He drank the tea hastily. The fever began to dominate him.
“Sex was the motive. Good! But—” again he lost the thread of thought; he thought long, then suddenly started triumphantly.
“Look at Napoleon. He is a classic example for all such cases.”
His face shone.
“You smile! No, I don’t want to compare myself with Napoleon at all. I only weigh motives against each other. What were his motives?… He, he: some say he was like the thunderstorm that cleans the air. But it is a ridiculous comparison. That the thunderstorm cleans is only accidental, if it weren’t, we would have to assume a providence, a pre-established harmony. He, he… those are only false conclusions. Give me another glass of tea.
Napoleon had to have motives though. Well: ambition for example. But what is ambition? You don’t believe that ambition is a fact… but—does that interest you?
“Speak only, that seems to calm you.”
“Yes, you have a splendid psychological eye. It actually calms me. So ambition is something enormously composite. A thousandfold parallelogram of forces, if you want. It is no basic drive like hunger and sex are. It is something that has developed from the basic drives. All these motives have the common root in the basic drives. They are only derivations, development and differentiation phenomena…
Falk laughs nervously.
“So see, see: all emotional motives have biologically and psychologically the same value because they come from the same root. He, he… those are special theories, they don’t have to be correct at all. I only wanted to prove to you that my action motives do not lag behind Napoleon’s in value at all.
In most cases, however, the motives are unknown, one doesn’t know why one does this or that… Well yes…
Falk had great difficulty concentrating. He literally suffered from thought flight.
Yes, so, the motives from which Napoleon destroyed can also only be derived sex drives… Isn’t that so? We can assume that as probable. But then you will say there is a great difference, to conquer a world and to make a girl unhappy… He, he, he… So you reproach me that I am too small a criminal? For to conquer a world one must destroy a world, and I have only destroyed a few girls. Now you will naturally say: Napoleon made a world happy. But in his thoughts, God knows, there was no intention to make a world happy. He did everything because he had to do it. In the psychic fact there is no purpose of consciousness at all. The brain only lies that in afterwards…
Part III: Concerning the Laws and Vital Conditions of the Hermetic Experiment
Chapter 1: The Experimental Method and Fermentation, Part 4
Introduction: The Hermetic art transforms the soul through a dynamic interplay of reason and wisdom, purifying its essence to unite with the divine. This section explores the alchemical process of balancing active and passive intellects, symbolized as the Sun and Moon, to awaken divine light within.
The Transformative Power of Reason
Alchemists teach that reason, when purified, becomes the soul’s guiding light, overcoming the illusions of passion and fantasy. As Plotinus suggests, one begins with a “portion of gold”—a spark of divine intellect—that grows through patient purification. Anaxagoras describes this intellect as infinite and pure, separating opposites (dense from rare, hot from cold) to create harmony. This “true Light,” the alchemical Sulphur, refines the soul’s raw essence, transforming it into a radiant vessel.
The soul’s journey, like Achilles’ triumph after Patroclus’ death, requires sacrificing the lower nature. Poetic myths—Hercules, Aeneas, Orpheus—symbolize this heroic will, dissolving sensory bonds to awaken divine virtue. Palingenius’ verse captures this: “Drown the youth in Stygian waters, dissolve his taint, and a golden spirit rises, perfecting all it touches.” This death and rebirth mirror the alchemical process, where the soul’s essence is reborn through purification.
The Sun and Moon of Alchemy
The Hermetic art balances the active intellect (Sun) and passive understanding (Moon) to achieve transformation. Hermes instructs, “Mortify two Argent vives together—the Sun’s radiant force and the Moon’s reflective wisdom—to create a unified spirit.” Plutarch notes, “The Moon reflects reason’s works, while the Sun’s strength overcomes all obstacles.” Synesius adds, “The lower eyes (senses) close when the higher eyes (intellect) see, alternating contemplation and action.”
This interplay, like Isis aiding Osiris, ensures the soul navigates chaos without succumbing to confusion. The Moon’s passive intelligence unravels obstacles, guiding the Sun’s active will to the divine source. As the Emerald Tablet declares, “That which is above is as that which is below,” uniting these forces creates a miraculous offspring—a soul refined into divine harmony.
The Heroic Will’s Triumph
The alchemical process requires a disciplined will, as seen in Aeneas’ quest for the golden bough or Hercules’ labors. The soul, guided by reason, overcomes the “turbulent waters” of sensory illusions, achieving a celestial state. Proclus explains, “The prophetic power unfolds truth, while the arrow-darting power subdues chaos, establishing unity.” This unified will, strengthened by wisdom, transforms the soul into a vessel of divine light, as Solomon’s proverb affirms: “Two are better than one, for their labor yields great reward.”
Closing: This section unveils the Hermetic art’s balance of active and passive intellects, purifying the soul to reveal divine light. The alchemical journey of fermentation deepens in our next post, unveiling further secrets of this sacred practice.
Homo Sapiens: In the Maelstrom by Stanislaw Przybyszewski and translated by Joe E Bandel
“That’s why it must be eliminated, just as one eliminates madmen who commit crimes without knowing it.”
“So only the harmful consequences decide about crime?” “Yes.”
“But suppose you blow up a factory for the sake of the idea and thereby plunge hundreds of families into misery, then you commit a crime because the consequences are criminal.”
“No! For thereby I bring my idea closer to realization and I bring millions happiness. When Christ spread his teaching, he knew very well that thousands of his followers would be sacrificed, so he delivered them to certain ruin to bring millions salvation.”
“You believe in God?” Olga asked absentmindedly. Czerski suddenly fell into great excitement.
“I believe in Jesus Christ, the God-man… But don’t interrupt me. I have the right to it, nature taught it to me. What decides about the pleasantness of a feeling? Not that it is pleasant in itself.
The habituation to opium is very painful at first, only in length becomes pleasure. So only the duration of the same decides about the final nature of the feeling. It is self-evident that the first consequences of a factory explosion are unpleasant, but…”
“So you will shrink from no crime?”
“No, no crime,” he interrupted her eagerly, “I will shrink from no action that guarantees my idea victory.”
“And if your idea is false?”
“It is not false, for it is built on the only truth we have: love.”
“But if your means are false?”
“They cannot be false, for their motives are love. By the way, I don’t want to resort to these means at all, even if I should hold it necessary. I have no program like the anarchists. I want to commit no act of violence so as not to be counted to a party that has violence in its program.”
“Out of vanity?”
“No; out of caution, only out of caution, so that the anarchists, thus a party, do not believe they have the right to regard my act as the consequence of their program.”
“You are ambitious.”
“No! But I am only in my act. I have only one right, and that is: to be. And my being is my act. Yes, I have an ambition if you want to call it so: to be, to be through my act. I am not as soon as I execute foreign commands.”
“Those are old thoughts, dear Czerski.”
“I don’t know if they are old, I got them in prison and so they are my own. I thought them out with great effort. I was not used to thinking as long as I was in the party. Now I have detached myself from everything to be alone and determine my act with my own thoughts.”
“And if you hadn’t got the money from Falk, would you have taken it?”
“Yes.”
“And what do you want to do now?”
“I want to teach people to sacrifice themselves.”
Olga looked at him questioningly.
“To be able to sacrifice oneself: that is the first condition of every act. I will teach the enthusiasm of sacrifice.”
“But to sacrifice oneself, one must first believe in the purpose of sacrifice.”
“No! The sacrifice does not spring from faith, but from enthusiasm. That is it precisely. See, all previous parties have faith but no enthusiasm. No, they have no faith, they have only dogmas. Social democracy has died in dogmatic faith. Social democracy is what every religious community is: it is faithful without enthusiasm. Is there a person who would go into the fire for his God? No! Is there a social democrat who would plunge into ruin without reservation, without hesitation, for his idea? No! They all have the calm, comfortable certainty of faith; their dogmas are iron truths for whose sake one, God knows, need not get excited. But I want to create the fiery, glowing faith, a faith that is no longer faith because it has no purpose, a faith that has dissolved in the enthusiasm of sacrifice.”
He suddenly fell into an ecstatic state. His eyes shone and his face transfigured itself peculiarly.
“So you speculate on the fanaticism of hate in the masses.”
“Fanaticism of love,” he said radiantly, “fanaticism of love for the infinity of the human race, love for the eternity of life, love for the thought that I and humanity are one, inseparably one…”
He varied the thought in the most diverse expressions.
“I will not say: Sacrifice yourselves so that you and your children become happy, I will teach anew the happiness of sacrifice in itself. Humanity has an inexhaustible capacity to sacrifice itself, but the fat church and fat socialism destroyed that. Humanity has forgotten the happiness of sacrifice in the fat, disgusting dogmatic faith. The last time it tasted it in the great revolutions, in the Commune—purposeless, only out of love for sacrifice, to enjoy once more the infinite happiness of purposeless selflessness… And I will bring this happiness back to memory through my act…”
He suddenly stopped and looked at Olga suspiciously.
“You probably believe I am a mad fantasist?”
“It is beautiful, very beautiful what you said there—I understand you,” she said thoughtfully.
He was silent long.
“Yes, you are right that those are old thoughts,” he said suddenly. “They touch in many ways what Falk expressed at the congress in Paris. I would have liked to kiss his hand then…”
He suddenly became very restless.
“But it did not become a life matter for him. His brain figured it out. His heart caught no fire… No, no—how is it possible to have such thoughts and not perish with shame that one can say all that cold and calm… See, that is the shamelessness of his brain, that it cannot shudder at it. His brain is shameless… He is a—an evil person. He is not pure enough for his ideas. One must be Christ, yes, Jesus Christ, the God of humans, the holy source of willingness to sacrifice.”
“You have changed very much, Czerski. By the way, I didn’t know you. Kunicki slandered you. I will think much about what you said…”
Olga stood up and looked at him shyly.
Over his face lay a transfigured glow. She had never seen anything like it.
“Take care of yourself, Czerski. You look very sick.” “No, I am not sick. I am happy.”
He thought long.
“Yes, yes,” he said suddenly, “yesterday I was still a small person. But now it is over, it is past…”
Anarchistbanjo's World 