Fausto took in a long breath. “I am ready.”
The words rang out of the monk’s mouth then, as though they were not coming from him but from the great cosmic expanses.
Body soul and spirit are in two contained,
The total Art may well from them be gained
It comes from one, and is one only thing
The volatile and fixt, together bring
It is two and three and yet only one.
He paused looking at Fausto very carefully. "What is the stone and does it live?"
The sum of his experiences since he met this enigmatic man, came flooding back to him and he opened his soul to their diaphanous clarity, pictures, so many in fast succession.....stone, stone, stone, is it alive? Round and round these words whispered, seven voices distinct, harmonies in unison. Does it live? "If I were stone." He told himself. "What would I be? What is a stone, if not earth sand, carbon? What is man if not blood bone and sinews, bundles of nerves, tangled muscles, membranes.......after all carbon? What did the monk once say? 'If you can understand how the stinking dung revolves in the same round as the fragrant flower so that the one may be transformed into the other, you have understood something of the secret arts of nature.' Dung promotes the growth of plants, animals graze on plants, which grow as a result of manure. One thing is transformed into another a circle of becoming the snake that seeks its own tail….Initiation. Since the passo he had understood the elements – what lived in the earth also lived in the quality of fluid which had the tendency to form drops and in it too something of an aeriform nature which tended to spread out in every direction and which lived in man in his breath and speech. And in it the fiery element dissolved separate being, so that from the cleft and scattered parts something new arose. He had sensed that the elements lived in every earthly formation. He thought of his visions in the chair of his dreams. The colours had represented things elemental, things soul-like and things spiritual, so too the triad of ‘it is two and three and yet only one’ the consequence of the Arquaeous, the severing into three; Thinking willing and feeling. Did he not do battle with the wilful knight, whom he vanquished with words - willing, the melancholy knight of the castle, whom he vanquished with the sword - feeling, and the inquisitor who was vanquished by the power of logic - thinking? Were they all then not one, that is, one within him? Were they but external manifestations of his own inner struggles? If so then, the rock could only be, in such a context, himself. The transformation of man, from Charcoal to diamond. From fool to wise man.....What lies at the heart of this difference? A transformation during the course of time, from black to brilliant purity? Transformed by the power of love! If man is a stone, then he must transform his stone, purify it in a crucible before it becomes not merely a stone, but a stone of the wise. Only then, will the cycle close, and man's breath become creatively clean. For it will no longer consist of carbon, whose poison kills, rather, it will be an outpouring of being that owes its existence to a moral deed. In the same way man owes his existence to the exhalation of Jehova, he shall one day in saecula be a creative God! Love, the great catalyst.”
'The stone lives…it lives....!" He cried. "I am the stone!
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