Sagesse, by H.D. (10)

Or is it the great tide that covers the rock-pool
so that it and the rock-pool are indistinguishable

from the sea-shelf and are part of the sea-floor,
though the sea-anemone may quiver apprehensively

and the dried weed uncurl painfully
and the salt-sediment rebel, "I was salt,

a substance, concentrated, self-contained,
am I to be dissolved and lost?"

"it is fearful, I was a mirror, an individual,"
cries the shallow rock-pool, "now infinity

claims me; I am everything? But nothing";
peace, salt, you were never useful as all that,

peace, flower, you are one of a thousand-thousand others,
peace, shallow pool, be lost.

projections

In my room, the world is beyond my understanding;
But when I walk I see that it consists of three or
four hills and a cloud.

(wallace stevens, CP, 57)

chang chung-yuan:

It is traditionally said by Ch'annists that before one is enlightened one sees a mountain as a mountain and a river as a river; in the process of attaining enlightenment, mountains are no longer mountains, rivers no longer rivers; but when one has finally achieved enlightenment, mountains are once more mountains, rivers once more rivers.

This creates a third world without knowledge,/In which no one peers, in which the will makes no/ Demands. It accepts whatever is as true,/ Including pain, which, otherwise, is false./ In the third world, then, there is no pain. Yes, but/ What lover has one in such rocks, what woman,/ However known, at the centre of the heart? ("Esthetique du Mal")

This, then, is not all. It's not enough, I know.
At least I'm still alive, as you may see.
I'm like the man who took a brick to show
How beautiful his house used once to be.
Bertolt Brecht

notes I took while working.... (wine bible)

champagne soils, white chalk soils; "chalk crescent, the area that spans from the British cliffs to Champagne was the basin of a vast prehistoric sea some 65 million years ago. When the water receded, it left behind minerals like quartz and zircon, fossils and sea urchins, sea sponges and other sea animals,"---producing vast quantities of(CHALK).

planctus naturae: The Complaint of Nature against the Erronious Alchymist

various alchemical vessels: alembics (stills), sublimating vessels (for converting a substance to a vapor then, upon cooling, to a solid); gourd-shaped retorts; more stills, alembics with two curved tubes proceeding from the head back into the body of the vessel (pelican shaped, used in distilling liquors by fermentation). pseudo-jean de meun (notes on text, 39-41)

To make asem
Carefully purify lead with pitch and bitumen, or tin as well; mix cadmia and litharge in equal parts with the lead. Stir till the mixture becomes solid. It can be used like natural asem.
[Reduction in the furnace must here also be assumed. The soft white alloy so obtained must have been a cheap and poor substitute for electrum or silver.]

the theatre of terrestrial astronomy

I will speak first of the inventors and restorers of the Art;
secondly, of the mutual conversion of elements, and how through the predominance of one element the substance of metals is generated;
thirdly, I will shew the affinity and homogeneity of metals, procreated in the bowels of the earth, their sympathies and antipathies, according to the purity and impurity of their Sulphur and Mercury; and that as metals consist of Sulphur and Mercury, they can furnish us with the first matter of the Elixir;
4thly, the preparation of Mercurial water;
5thly, the conversion of prepared Mercury into Mercurial earth;
6thly, the exaltation of Mercurial water;
7thly, the solution of gold by Mercurial water;
8thly, the preparation of the water or Moon of the Sages;
9thly, the conjunction of sun and moon;
10thly, the blackness, or Raven's Head, by means of which the solution and copulation of Sun and Moon do both take place;
11thly, the peacock's tail;
12thly, the white Tincture;
13thly, the perfect red Elixir.