..by Lindsay Clarke, the book I'm currently inhabiting. It's marvellous.
Listen:
"My verse was obscure because I was obscure to myself. I was a young man then...a young fool. I heard the music but I had no inkling how serious these matters were. Or how dangerous."
He returned from a pained abstraction, and smiled at me a little ruefully. "I was much like you - infatuated with my own talent, worshipping only my own intellect...A crime for which, as Ficino points out, a capital punishment is appointed. And in the symbolic domain the punishment is entirely appropriate - dismemberment, beheading."
The undertaking of the Great Work actually has many forms - I've been engaged in my own version for years - and mostly, they sound very similar when you pass into the realm of symbols. Which is, in fact, the only way to do this Work.
Right, then - I'm off back to bed to nurse a broken brain and legs which won't work.
Pic: The Joust of Sol and Luna from Aurora consurgens (early 16th century); note that Sol’s shield has a lunar emblem, while Luna’s shield carries a solar one.
Read it about 12-13 years ago, and find now I can't remember much of the plot, other than that it was set in Norfolk.
ReplyDeleteIt's been reprinted, Steve. I can't think why I never read it the first time around, save that I was probably incapable of appreciating it.
ReplyDeleteThe descriptions of Norfolk countryside are particularly beautiful.