In the Rosicrucian foundational text which appeared in Germany at the start of the 17th century: The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz, we find a curious evocation of early Communism in the form of a proclamation which the protagonist, known only as ‘RC’, hears in a dream prior to the commencement of his voyage to the Rosicrucian castle to take part in the Chymical wedding.
“The joyful time is drawing on,
When every one shall equal be,
None wealthy, none in penury.
Who er'e receiveth great Commands
Hath work enough to fill his Hands.”
We have seen how the secret societies have been behind violent social-change in the name of ‘equality’ often with the result that those judged part of the reactionary former controlling establishment and those who had been successful within the previous system, were violently executed.
During the performances described in the text of the Chymical Wedding we find something somewhat disturbingly and rather unambiguously described as the ritual execution of six individuals described as kings.
“Mean time a little Bell was tolled, at which all the Royal Persons waxed so mighty bleak, that we were ready utterly to despair. They quickly put off their white Garments again, and put on entirely black ones.
Finally, there steps in a very coal-black tall Man, who bare in his hand a sharp Axe. Now after that the old King had been first brought to the Seat, his Head was instantly whipt off, and wrapped up in a black Cloth, but the Blood was received into a great golden Goblet, and placed with him in this Coffin that stood by, which being covered, was set aside. Thus it went with the rest also, so that I thought it would at length have come to me too, but it did not; For as soon as the six Royal Persons were Beheaded, the black Man went out again; after whom another followed, who Beheaded him too just before the Door, and brought back his Head together with the Axe, which were laid in a little Chest.”
The ‘mysteries’ which are described in the Chymical Wedding are attended by a throng of what are called ‘virgins’. It is likely that this word is chosen because of the evocation of purity and even a certain sense of Christian sanctity, but it is deliberately used to convey a false impression. The fact that these events unfold within the ministry of some sixty ‘beautiful virgins’ and other epithets are used, like ‘gentle virgin’ as well as certain theatrical effects being employed such as being drawn on “a gloriously gilded Triumphant Self-moving Throne’ and wearing “a snow-white glittering Robe, which sparkled of pure Gold, and cast such a lustre that we durst not steadily behold it,” all worked in concert to create “a beautiful and moving spectacle’. But if the description used was merely ‘women’ and if we choose not to be emotionally swayed by the apparent grandeur and appearance of grace of the ritual and strip down the facts to the ritual murder by beheading of six people, followed by the beheading of the executioner himself, aided and abetted by a large group of women in cultic attire, then we can clearly observe that what the text really describes is something like a kind of early Satanic ritual murder whose affect is to traumatise and transform, and also implicate, those in attendance in the guise of initiates.
There are hints too at some kind of sexual element behind the Chymical Wedding, although of course since this text appeared in the early 17th century and was also a description of essentially secret rites, the hints are obscure, but a certain ongoing sexual tension is certainly evident and this is used specifically to tease RC who is depicted as a man somewhat advanced in years:
“As soon as we were come again into the Hall; one of the Virgins began: ‘I wonder, Sister, that you durst adventure yourself amongst so many Persons’: ‘My Sister,’ replied our President, ‘I am fearful of none so much as of this Man,’ pointing at me; This speech went to the Heart of me: For I well understood that she mocked at my Age, and indeed I was the oldest of them all. Yet she comforted me again with promise. That in case I behaved myself well towards her, she would easily rid me of this burden.”
Is there a hint then that the ‘virgin’ will willingly engage in sexual intercourse with RC if he behaves ‘well towards her’? Yet another passage makes some kind of insinuation about ‘sports’ between the men and the ‘virgins’, which cannot be divulged owing to secrecy.
“Mean time a Collation was again brought in, and every one's Virgin seated by him, who well knew how to shorten the time with handsome discourses: But what their discourses and sports were I dare not blab out of School.”
It is likely that one of the ‘rewards’ of being involved in the Rosicrucian mysteries was sexual gratification just as it is a key part of such Wiccan and Satanic ceremonies. Though they do not apparently give themselves up without a little literal ritual humiliation:
“This the Virgin perceived, and therefore began, ‘I dare lay anything, if I lye with him to night, he shall be pleasanter in the morning.’ Hereupon they began to laugh, and albeit I blushed all over, yet I was fain to laugh too at my own ill-luck. Now there was one there that had a mind to return my disgrace again upon the Virgin; whereupon he said, ‘I hope not only we, but the Virgins too themselves will bear witness in behalf of our Brother, that our Lady President hath promised herself to be his Bedfellow to Night’: ‘I should be well content with it,’ replied the Virgin, ‘if I had no reason to be afraid of these my Sisters, there would be no hold with them should I cause the best and handsomest for myself, against their will.’
The women then contrive a casting of lots to decide who will spend the night with whom:
“But now first arose a dispute how the business should be carried, but this was only a premediated device, for the Virgin instantly made the proposal that we should mix ourselves together in a Ring, and that she beginning to count from herself, the seventh, was to be content with the following seventh, whether it were a Virgin, or man; for our parts we were not aware of any craft, and therefore permitted it so to be; but when we thought we had very well mingled ourselves, the Virgins nevertheless were so subtle, that each one knew her station before-hand: The Virgin began to reckon, the seventh next her was again a Virgin, the third seventh a Virgin likewise, and this happened so long till (to our amazement) all the Virgins came forth, and none of us was hit; Thus we poor pitiful Wretches remained standing alone, and were moreover forced to suffer our selves to be jeered too, and confess we were very handsomely couzened.”
It is revealed then that the drawing of lots for be partners is a set-up, probably something which the women had pre-arranged in order to mock and humiliate the men, all within the long-term goals of the initiatory ordeal.
The initiate RC says “This indeed to me seemed a bloody Wedding, but because I could not tell what would yet be the event, I was fain for that time to captivate my understanding until I were further resolved.” In effect RC is refusing to make a conscious judgement about what he has seen, so he is entering a kind of hypnotised state where he is no longer capable of making value judgements about reality. This is very interesting and is the key to such rituals. That the person suspends their judgement and allow themselves to be guided. One can imagine what kind of atrocities might be possible by someone who surrenders their will and judgement to whatever occult influence has an interest in guiding it to suit their purposes.
Many of the ancient mysteries of Greece depicted ritualised murders and we can only guess whether actual murders took place or whether they were carefully staged enactments designed to resemble real murders. The Crata Repoa is a Masonic text from the 18th Century which supposedly depicts the mysteries of Ancient Egyptian Masonry but which resembles more a pastiche of haunted house adventures. This Egyptian revival formed part of the so-called Egyptian rite of Freemasonry and Manly P Hall, the celebrated 33 degree Masonic historian apparently chose to lend the Crata Repoa credibility by publishing it in his book Freemasonry of the Ancient Egyptians.
It is clear that the Crata Repoa is a lot of nonsense but it does reflect both what Freemasons believed might have taken place during Ancient Egyptian initiations and they could have drawn this conclusion by drawing on the broad themes of contemporary Masonic rites and what knowledge and rumour might have reached them about Greek mysteries, much of which has actually made its way into the current sphere of knowledge and is what are known as the great myths. One of the best examples of this is the myth of the Minotaur which in all likelihood, was probably a character in a ritual initiation which was said to be associated with King Minas’ palace of Knosos but may have taken place at the ancient quarries some 20 miles away on the same island of Crete where there was the Labyrinth Cave near Gortyn with a history of human settlement going back 7000 years; many islanders to this day consider the caves to be the labyrinth mentioned in the myth of the Minotaur.
All based on this ancient principle of
staging a spectacle in order to invoke or provoke specific thoughts, feelings,
and specific changes in mentality of the initiate we have the far more overtly
sinister and destructive recent phenomenon of what is known as Trauma Based
Mind Control.
As one of the ‘virgins’ tells RC: “this Death shall make many alive.” By which we can infer the meaning to be that the ritual deaths are designed to provoke the mind of the initiates in some way, to make them ‘alive’ that is, mentally transformed.
The following excerpt comes from a former Illuminati trainer known as Svali who was fairly active in conspiracy theory circles and gave several interviews within this community, but lately some of this specific information seems at risk of being lost in light of the wave of mass censorship which risks washing away all truth and ability to identify the evil hidden forces behind the stage of our society:
“I have seen set ups (oh, yes, they set up fake deaths, etc.) where a person was "burned alive" to teach the children not to tell. They are told that this is a traitor who disclosed, and now he is being punished. The person wasn't really a traitor and is in a flame proof vest, but the vision of a person on fire and screaming remains with 3 and 4 year old children for a lifetime. And, when they are adults, even if they DO leave, scenes such as this mean they won't tell many people for fear of being traced and punished.
Because I helped create a lot of set ups as an adult trainer, I became somewhat cynical and have chosen to disclose as a result, although I do fight intense fear even now at times. Try being buried in a wooden box for a period of time (it may have been minutes, but to a four year old it is an eternity), and then when the lid is lifted being told, "if you ever tell, we'll put you back in forever". The child will scream hysterically that they will NEVER EVER tell. I was that child, and now I am breaking that vow made under psychological duress. Because I don't want any other children to go through what I did or have seen done to others.”
https://www.wanttoknow.info/secret_societies/illuminati_bloodlines_svali#8
The crude and terrible purpose behind Satanic rituals fullfils many goals at once. In addition to implicating members in terrible and astonishingly evil crimes which guarantee to estrange them from decent society and bring them deeper into the Satanic fold, the purpose of mental and psychological transformation is rapidly completed. The brain-chemistry transformation which may take years to complete in conventional mystical secret society programmes can be achieved in a matter of days with the right shockingly unpleasant display in which the individual themselves may play a part. It is almost impossible to explain such a transformation to someone who has not experienced it but something like the desperate and profound personal transformation can be glimpsed in Dostoevsky’s great novel Crime and Punishment. It is likely that Dostoevsky himself could write so well about such a profound mental transformation since he himself was placed in an almost initiatory programme within the context of his impending execution for discussing banned books critical of Tsarist Russia, a sentence from which he was reprieved at the 11th hour.
The Chymical Wedding is assuredly a ‘transformative’ programme and we can observe the various moments of extreme stress and uncertainty the protagonist, a knight of the order of the Golden Stone known as RC, is placed under for prolonged periods, only for a slow reversal of the conditions and instead find himself in a kind of worthy glory, only to have other pressures piled upon him, more uncertainties and even mockery, all of which is designed to make him question himself, place him in personal insecurity and slowly destroy his ego leaving him, somewhat like the alchemical allegory of the Phoenix, ready to be ‘reborn’ into a new reality and fresh identity.
The term ‘wedding’ in the transformative sense of wedding the soul to some kind of higher reality first appears in Plutarch’s essay On the Soul:
“Thus death and initiation closely
correspond; even the words (teleutana and teleisthai) correspond, and
so do the things.
At first there are wanderings and toilsome running about in circles and
journeys through the dark over uncertain roads and culs de sac;
then, just before the end, there are all kinds of terrors,
with shivering, trembling, sweating, and utter amazement.
After this, a strange and wonderful light meets the wanderer;
he is admitted into clean and verdant meadows,
where he discerns gentle voices, and choric dances,
and the majesty of holy sounds and sacred visions.
That the wedding and close union of the soul
with the body
is a thing really contrary to nature may clearly be seen from all this.”
So we find passages such as this where RC is placed in uncertainty, discomfort and the feeling of ‘imminent danger’:
“…he bound each of us in a several place, and so went away with our small Tapers, and left us poor Wretches in Darkness. Then first began some to perceive the imminent danger, and I myself could not refrain Tears. For although we were not forbidden to speak, yet anguish and affliction suffered none of us to utter one word. For the Cords were so wonderfully made, yet none could cut them, much less get them off his Feet: yet this comforted me, that still the future gain, of many a one, who had now betaken himself to rest, would prove very little to his satisfaction.”
Or indeed the psychological results of witnessing the ritual beheading of the six kings, which, understandably, prevents him from sleeping:
“.. his intention was to lull me asleep, which at last I well observed, whereupon I made as though I was fast asleep, but no sleep came into my Eyes, and I could not put the Beheaded out of my mind.”
Whether Johann Valentin Andreae wrote The Chymical Wedding is debatable, especially as in his later life Andreas considers alchemy to be a subject of ridicule and astrology not to be serious science, and this does not accord with the Chymical Wedding which is resplendent with opaque and obscure references to astrology and alchemy but then so the Fama Fraternitatis itself is also critical of many aspects of so called alchemy as perhaps a serious scientific community might be who wanted to distance themselves from quacks and charlatans:
“But now concerning, and chiefly in this our age, the ungodly and accursed gold-making, which hath gotten so much the upper hand, whereby under colour of it, many runagates and roguish people do use great villanies and cozen and abuse the credit which is given them; yea, now adays men of discretion do hold the transmutation of metals to be the highest point and fastigium in philosophy.”
It is possible that Andreas wrote the tract as a detail of his experience but again this seems unlikely since the story is written from the perspective of an old man and it would be a stretch for Andreas to reframe what must be a personal narrative in this way.
Alchemy, although more often associated with the search for the Philosopher’s stone and the transmutation of base metal into gold is actually just a previous incarnation of what we call chemistry. The alchemy in the Chymical Wedding, which is wrapped up in allegorical and metaphorical references to the Greek Phoenix, seems to be the description of an authentic scientific experiment with various chemical reactions which at that time were seen as something mystical and the scientific lexicon at that time being lacking, were described in unfamiliar terms which uses the language of metaphor. The experiment described in the tract is carried out with all the gravity of a religious liturgy including music and ‘virgins’ shrouded in white linen.
The nature of the experiment and the accuracy of the narrative cannot be certain, but the facts laid out by the narrator are: that the coffins of the six kings and the black executioner, apparently executed the previous day are brought to a tower containing a series of laboratories at each floor of the tower. That the narrator and his fellows enter a laboratory where they distil the essences from various plants and minerals and put these into glasses, believing that the experiment would be able to restore the bodies to life, meanwhile, the women wash the bodies of the men. RC sees seven flames rolling across the sea, which he believes to be the spirits of the departed men, these flames advance to the top pinnacle of the tower in which the laboratory is located.
The next morning, they awake, having slept on mattresses in the laboratory at the bottom of the tower, there they discuss what might happen next: whether the men would be returned to life, or whether the experiment would produce an elixir which would give longer life to all, or indeed whether the men had really been killed at all and someone had been killed in their place. They then make their way up to the next room in the tower above them which they have to do with the use of a ladder, ropes or wings, where they are greeted by one of the women and the narrator believes a container is brought in which contain the six bodies of the beheaded men.
A round object wrapped in taffeta which is believed to be the head of the moor who executed the six kings, is placed in a kettle and covered it with a lid full of holes.
One of the compounds they had distilled, presumably something strongly caustic is poured into the kettle which is then brought to the boil and from the holes the liquid rises out and reaches the bodies below where it dissolves them into a liquid. A tap at the bottom of the container containing the dissolved bodies was turned and a very red liquid was removed from the casket and filled a large golden globe. Then the casket containing the bodies was taken away and he wondered if anything was left of the bodies and whether it was disposed of, but he noticed that they were markedly lighter but the liquid extracted from the dissolving agents from the bodies was heavier and in large quantity and needed to be borne by six men and it took a lot of effort to move the golden globe outside of the room.
After a moment of rest and conversation they are again instructed to come back up into the room above which for some reason they have to do again with the ladder, ropes and wings, while the virgins and attendants have their own special access which they are not allowed to use.
In this room the narrator now describes the golden globe in the middle of the room along with a series of polished mirrors and windows by which the sun shines onto the mirrors and thus onto the golden globe which created such a dazzle of light and heat that they could not look at it.
After the globe had cooled it was opened and inside was found a snow-white egg. This egg was then taken away. A little while later they were instructed to climb to the next level in the tower through a third hole to the fourth level of the tower, where they found the ‘egg’ being tended and a large copper kettle filled with yellow sand was being warmed over a fire and the egg placed in it.
It is well worth noting that the Red King and White Queen are alchemical terms and the ‘chemical marriage’ is the joining of these two disparate gendered compounds. The Red King is sulphur and the White Queen is mercury. The Moors head, is the third element ‘negrido’
The egg hatches and a hungry bird emerges which they must feed on the blood of the beheaded kings and the ‘bird’ goes through several changes, turning black, then moulting all his ‘feathers’ which were replaced by white ones and the bird grew ‘tamer’ that is possibly, less chemically reactive. He was fed again and his feathers became all coloured. The water was evaporated off until a blue sediment or stone was left which was ground and painted onto the bird. After a break they were let into a fifth room where the bird was put into a milky looking bath and was covered with a fine white powder. The bath was heated slowly and they had to keep the bird from escaping from the hot bath. The bird lost all his feathers to the bath which appeared to be blue of colour.
The bird is a metaphor which represents both a chemical substance but also the alchemist involved in a transformative experience. The first stage observed was the black feathers, which is said by some traditions to represent the first stage of meditation when there is only darkness in the inner world. The next stage is the white bird, or white swan which is said to be the awakening of the etheric body of light. The next stage is the pelican, consciously being able to use the etheric body, followed by the Peacock which represents astral body consciousness and finally the phoenix which is the freeing of the spirit from the bounds of the physical.
Briefly, the alchemical transformation of the initiate is said to be a seven-stage process. The terms used to describe this transformation are also terms widely used in chemistry although a concept such a putrefaction, otherwise known as ‘negrido’ or blackening no longer has any particular scientific relevance, nor do the mediaeval chemical transformations of ‘whitening’ or ‘reddening’.
If we look at the alchemical process psychologically then it is clear we are looking at a transformation of a person’s character, behaviour and general outlook and from analysis the burning, melting and reconstitution terminology used it is clear that a very real ego-death is taking place. The question is how do you kill an ego and what does such a thing really mean or imply? Well, from examining the events of the Chymical Wedding we can see that confusion, foreboding, nervous tension, fear and terror, are all instilled in the….we might call him victim as much as initiate or candidate but I suppose like the term ‘mystae’ since this word represents he who undergoes the mysteries and fundamentally I believe all mysteries have had the same intention throughout the so-called religious cults of the ancient world, I say ‘so called’ because the beliefs of the Ancients cannot really be indulged with the term religion since its priests were knowingly using their secret knowledge of science to deliberately trick and mislead what we might call their flock of initiates. We have often heard how the priesthood exerted great power during the various periods of the roughly three-thousand-year period of generally acknowledged Ancient Egyptian history. Power is attained generally through knowledge though violence is another method though generally a much less reliable one, and even if violence is part of the acquisition of power, which in the case of the Arab conquests of the 7th Century, the acquisition of profound and deep knowledge following the violent conquest guaranteed the supremacy of the Arabs for several hundred years before the rise of the Turks who in their turn conquered through violence then knowledge.
To make things even stranger and more confusing, the experiment and the terminology used in the Chymical Wedding is strongly suggestive of the experiment described in the 16th Century alchemical treatise The Rosarium Philosophorum. The Name Rosarium or Rosary does not refer to the Catholic Rosary beads but to a ‘rose garden’ as a metaphor for wise-sayings but just as likely the Rosarium evokes the Rosicrucians since it is so close in its content to the Chymical Wedding.
The text is strongly suggestive of some kind of chemical experiment but with the suggestion of some kind of spiritual subtext, many commentators despair of making sense of the text and instead pay more attention to the series of twenty fascinating and strange woodcuts which accompanied the appearance of the text in 1550.
Some of the images are said to have antecedents in other alchemical work in particular the German Book of the Holy Trinity produced in the early 15th Century by a German Franciscian monk. The book gives a specifically Christian treatment to what was considered occult and impious magic and the specific Christian context of this, and of the Chymical Wedding provided a broad acceptance in society of what had hitherto been treat with suspicion by the church authorities.
Adam Mclean with his well-regarded analysis of the woodcuts writes of the work:
“In that it sought to unite these two alchemical realms, the Rosarium set a style for alchemical literature of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, in which the physical process became a mirror for soul development, and the inner content of soul experiences became projected upon outer processes in the laboratory or the natural world.”
And this really is the accepted understanding of the significance of alchemical treatises, that they ostensibly describe a scientific process using contemporaneous scientific terms which also serve to simultaneously and obliquely describe spiritual, psychological and bio-chemical changes and transformations.
This may seem alien to us, this fusion of science and religion into an indivisible mass from which it is impossible to discern the glittering of spiritual truths from the solid lumps of science but as we have already discussed, in the ancient world science and religion were one and the same, because science was a jealously guarded secret and its mysteries were key tools for the priestly class to bamboozle, astound and enrapture their initiates.
The stages of the alchemical process of personal transformation are at the most basic, as follows: the first stage is calcination which is to subject something to extreme heat, so if we were to imagine how this metaphor might materialise within the context of some kind of initiatory mind-control programme then we would subject our mystae to extreme stresses and various other kind of pressures, in order to see which parts of him glow under the heat and which elements diminish and are burned off, figuratively speaking.
After this there is the sublimation or dissolution stage which is the chemical process by which a solid turns directly into a gas without passing through a liquid state. As this suggests, the calcination or burning causes extreme energetic changes in the person and they are entering a different stage of consciousness, one previously not experienced except during peak or extreme situations.
This is what is referred to by the bird losing its black feathers in the heat and turning to white as it is depicted in the Chymical Wedding. In the woodcuts which accompanied The Rosarium Philosophorum this stage is shown by the King and Queen sitting in a bath together, it is also represented by winged serpents and dark dragons.
Another image which appears in the Rosarium Philisophorum is that of a (green) lion eating the sun. In parallel to the actual chemical experiments carried out by the alchemists the sun represents gold which could be dissolved by sulphuric acid, represented by the (green) Lion.
The Green Lion is the purified Vitriol, possibly hydrated iron sulphate or the aqua regia acid that can dissolve even the noble metal gold. In one of the woodcuts, we see the Green Lion devouring the Sun and releasing red blood, the ‘blood’ represents the red philosopher’s stone being released from the reaction between aqua regia.
The next stage is separation and we can see that following the laboratory metaphor, impure elements are burned off or fused components separate into their respective elements. So, under the influence of what we can consider heat or agitation, the psyche in a sense, sees itself clearly for the first time. From this operation the ‘quintessence’ or ‘fifth element’ emerges, the hidden secret powerful depths of the mind and spirit.
The winged figure in the woodcut represents the integration of the
psyche with all the impurities having been burned off.
Something which historically had been described as ‘the air of God’ and even finer than light. Perhaps this is the stuff of the electromagnetic soul itself, or perhaps the soul is beyond even electromagnetism, the most powerful and fundamental force in the universe.
The next stage, Conjunction, this is the part referred to as the marriage of the sun and moon. It is a unification of the forces of the spirit, or quintessence with the material forces. This is symbolised by the woodcut of the king and queen in sexual congress.
Fermentation, also known as putrefaction is where the spirit trapped in the body sees the Earth around as something dead and that real life is beyond. The feeling of timelessness is often a symptom reported by those undergoing psychosis: they feel time is frozen or has vanished altogether and that what they are really experiencing is the frozen nature of our reality while their mind has been set to a different time-zone, namely of the eternity of the spirit. The pure quintessence from the previous alchemical stage has now realised it is here trapped on Earth, and though it has wings it cannot fly, please excuse the flowery metaphor but these are precisely the images which have been evoked and used to describe this particular stage in the ongoing mental process. This is followed by distillation or purification.
This alchemical process, can be applied to both the distillation and purification of a chemical substances like strong mineral acids from natural compounds, such as the elaborate distillation of sulphuric acid or what was known as oil of vitriol. Vitriol was so called because in nature it resembled glassy crystals usually found with gravel in mines where groundwater had drawn off iron-sulphate deposits. It was necessary to first calcify or burn the substance into ash, then dissolve or leech out the various compounds into water, then fermentation or putrefaction would have been the first stage of distillation which tended to create a highly malodorous substance as the organic compounds present in the sulphur for instance, would give the well-known smell of rotten eggs, which upon separation of the organic elements and distillation would produce the pure substance which could then be coagulated into a powder or ‘stone’ as it was then known. So, this alchemical process was basically a process of taking a natural impure compound, and through various treatments extracting the desired pure and rarefied compound, whether that be an acid, gas or crystal.
In the early 17th Century work The Azoth of the Philosophers we find what was later to become a Freemasonic moto which is often found inside the Masonic Chamber of Reflection, a small sombre room adjoining the main hall where the candidate awaiting initiation is placed. Along with the acronym there are several objects or representations of objects alluding to alchemical themes: “visita interiora terrae, rectificando que, invenies occultum lapidem which means ‘visit the interior of the Earth, rectify yourself and you will find the hidden stone’ which in turn is a metaphor for some kind of inner alchemical transformation and spiritual realignment which will reveal the secret substance of the soul.
Things however do not quite seem to go well in the end for our RC, or at least that is how it is made to appear, it is likely that events unfolded precisely as they were planned. Despite the feeling of ultimately being honoured with celestial visions and the great pomp and ceremony of the King and Queen and the untold number of finely attired ‘virgins’ RC commits, or rather is induced to commit an act reprehensible in the eyes of the King. He sees Venus naked:
"Here (said he) if you please, we may go further down"; "I still follow you" (replied I) so I went down the steps, where it was exceeding dark, but the Page immediately opened a little Chest, wherein stood a small ever-burning Taper, at which he Kindled one of the many Torches which lay by. I was mightily terrified, and seriously asked how he durst do this? He gave me for answer. As long as the Royal Persons are still at rest, I have nothing to fear. Herewith I espied a rich Bed ready-made, hung about with curious Curtains, one of which he drew, where I saw the Lady Venus stark-naked for he heaved up the Coverlets too) lying there in such Beauty, and a fashion so surprizing, that I was almost beside myself, neither do I yet know whether it was a piece thus Carved, or an humane Corps that lay dead there; For she was altogether immoveable, and yet I durst not touch her. So she was again covered, and the Curtain drawn before her, yet she was still (as it were) in my Eye.”
Throughout the 18th Century Isis veiled was a metaphor for modern science and unveiling Isis was a metaphor for making scientific discoveries. So here with the discoveries in chemistry of the alchemists the analogy of seeing Venus naked would be another allusion which only the initiate would understand the deeper meaning of.
Despite his page deliberately leading him to the chamber and even lifting up the covers so that he might specifically see Venus naked, he admits to his fault and as a punishment is told that he must take the place of the gate-porter. Indeed, the previous porter whom RC replaces is described:
“Now in the first place I asked the King what the condition of this porter was. He friendlily answered me, that he was a very famous and rare astrologer, and always in high regard with the Lord his Father, but having once committed a fault against Venus, and seen her in her bed of rest, this punishment was therefore imposed upon him, that he should wait at the first gate for so long until someone should release him from it. I replied, ‘May he then be released?’ ‘Yes,’ said the King, ‘if anyone can be found that has transgressed as highly as himself, he must take his place, and the other shall be free.’ This went to my heart, for my conscience convinced me that I was the offender, yet I kept quiet, and herewith delivered the supplication.”
We can infer that there is a feeling that after experiencing the unique initiation into the mysteries and to have the whole court apparently at your service in furthering your wisdom and spiritual knowledge you must again, take your place in the mundane world, now serving the order in a mundane fashion bereft and even excluded from the palace for ever more and only serving to allow entry to the next initiates into the mysteries:
“After me the rest were called for too, and came jocundly out again, which pained me still more, for I imagined nothing other than that I must finish my life under the gate. I also had many pensive thoughts running up and down in my head, what I should do, and how to spend the time. At length I considered that I was now old, and according to the course of nature, had few years more to live. And that this anguished and melancholy life would quickly send me from this world, and then my door-keeping would be at an end, and by a most happy sleep I might quickly bring myself to the grave. I had many of these thoughts. Sometimes it vexed me that I had seen such gallant things, and must be robbed of them.”
So the story ends on a strangely glum note, and perhaps the feelings evoked at the end by RC reflect the feeling the Illuminated consciousness might experience, to know that there is indeed a spiritual world waiting for him, but first he must live through the rest of his life in the material world, metaphorically 'door keeping' as he waits for his life to end until his soul can be free once again.
