My, my, that is one bootilicious teaser poster.
I appreciate and enjoy all this new mega fun and enlightening content, so thank you, FBG!
[quote=Sir Frederick Tanah-Chook]The Secret of Secrets? Does this refer to the Secretum Secretorum, said to be the correspondence sent by Aristotle to Alexander the Great? I note that this text includes mention of a cave in which was found the final resting place and mortal remains of Hermes Trismegistus (for whom the sealing of jars is named.) There, clasped in his dead fingers, was a tablet of emerald bearing exhortations of the Principle of Correspondence, followed by discussion of the relations between the Earth, the Sun and the Moon, and how the power of this understanding will bring to the bearer all the brightness of the world.[/quote]This is the biggest wink-wink-elbow-nudge-wink I’ve ever gotten from you. I’ve seen the Emerald Tablet’s contents referenced in multiple pieces of fiction, but I didn’t bother to search for it till you mentioned it:
http://www.sacred-texts.com/alc/emerald.htm
A translation:
(from Idres Shah)
- The truth, certainty, truest, without untruth.
2 )What is above is like what is below. What is below is like what is above. The miracle of unity is to be attained.
- Everything is formed from the contemplation of unity, and all things come about from unity, by means of adaptation.
- Its parents are the Sun and Moon.
- It was borne by the wind and nurtured by the Earth.
- Every wonder is from it
6a) and its power is complete.
- Throw it upon earth,
7a) and earth will separate from fire. The impalbable separated from the palpable.
- Through wisdom it rises slowly from the world to heaven. Then it descends to the world combining the power of the upper and the lower.
9 )Thus you will have the illumination of all the world, and darkness will disappear.
- This is the power of all strength- it overcomes that which is delicate and penetrates through solids.
11a) This was the means of the creation of the world.
- And in the future wonderful developements will be made, and this is the way.
- I am Hermes the Threefold Sage, so named because I hold the three elements of all wisdom.
- And thus ends the revelation of the work of the Sun.
Concerning verses #4-5, others have translated them (and the rest) differently:
(from Jabir ibn Hayyan)
4) Its father is the Sun and its mother the Moon.
5) The Earth carried it in her belly, and the Wind nourished it in her belly,
(from Sigismund Bacstrom)
4) The father of that one only thing is the sun its mother is the moon,
5) the wind carries it in its belly; but its nourse is a spirituous earth.
(from Fulcanelli)
4) The Sun is the father, the Moon the mother;
5) the wind carried it in his belly. Earth is its nurse and its guardian.
Speculation (herein lie spoilers galore):
Nadir is the diametric opposite of the zenith ("highest point") of a celestial sphere in astronomy. It’s also a good way of saying "abyss" or "lowest point" literally and figuratively. The astronomy part is slightly worrying since that implies an area outside of the planet Earth. I saw the Nadirgate.png icon before I saw the narrative text, so I originally thought it to be the threshold of Hell…and I still do, actually, but that’s not all. [spoiler]I also believe it’s the Bazaar’s hiding place for the child of the Sun and Moon, a wee baby star. The Neath is the "belly of the Wind", or the skull of a long dead Thunder God but tomayto tomahto. The Bazaar, the "Earth" representative, is the child’s nurse. This should be intimately tied to the Bazaar’s personal love story, its melancholy, its lacre, and its deep shames. Some of the Fourth City inhabitants had a clue:
The language of the city of the Silver Tree, but obscured. Once you’ve realised that, an evening’s work with magnifying glass and calculations is enough to yield - you think - the answer. THE LIGHT AT THE HEART IS THE DAUGHTER OF THE BAZAAR NEVER TO BE ACKNOWLEDGED. THE SHAMES ARE HERS TO RULE IS LIFE.
"IS" or "IN"? And how’d they know it’s female? :P What sort of mystical divination arts did they use to discern its sex? That fact presses on my mind more than the one of there being a child.
The devils are in league with the Bazaar to obscure the child’s existence and whereabouts. Their hunts in the Quarter are done to dissuade trespassers. The Forgotten Quarter is named the way it is because of its wistful air laced with amnesia courtesy of the Bazaar:
Why is the Forgotten Quarter… forgotten? Memories of the place fade quickly. Even journals are easily misplaced, or so it seems.
The Eyeless Skulls were those Fourth City individuals who came closest to the truth, thus the Bazaar blinded them from it both physically and mentally. As the darkness overcame their eyes, so did it also shadow their minds. This is why you’re dazed merely from owning the skull of such a person cursed by the Bazaar. Girl don’t want you knowing of her troubled past with the Sun, so step off.
Have you ever traded souls with the Infernal Sommelier? Notice how he treats them as edible foodstuff? But who would dine on such fare? I surmise the devils of Hell bring the child its milk in the form of souls. Delicious, delicious souls. One spirifer who strayed seems to know of their connection:
"Off the deep end. Stark raving. Souls are star-spores, she says. She’ll grow her own star down in the Quarter. Be a shame to waste all that sift, eh?" And here you are, recovering the Demented Spirifer’s soul-hoard. Those souls do sparkle.
Soul fuel is solar fuel. Whodathunkit?! Ah, this makes me want to collect some Coruscating Souls for my own pet star.
I shouldn’t paste any fate-locked content here, but I do feel recent fate-locked content released in the Forgotten Quarter and Spite come together rather nicely. Specifically, the option where you poke at the drunk spirifer.
If there’s a FL equivalent of the Emerald Tablet, it’s probably a jade slab crafted by the people of the Fourth City. The Bazaar’s love story is inscribed upon its surface through Correspondence sigils. Going back to the devils for a moment, we were first led to believe that they wanted the Forgotten Quarter to themselves for the sake of uncovering the Correspondence and its knowledge, so maybe they’re after the Emerald Tablet or attempting its translation. Secret knowledge in the Neath acts as both power and currency, so it’s double power where the Bazaar is concerned!
The Correspondence Stones are 7 in number. I first thought it was Mr Eaten’s name, but I now doubt it. 7 is such a prolific number. If there are 7 great labyrinths in the Neath and 7 cities to be purchased, are there also 7 sub-levels to the Neath? If "What is above is like what is below. What is below is like what is above. The miracle of unity is to be attained.", then are there 7 stairs in heaven to reflect the Neath’s 7 levels? In alchemy, there are classically 7 celestial spheres which link to 7 metals. In FL, I wonder what unity of the Above and Below produce. Could it be the mighty Philosopher’s Stone or powers akin to it? Is that the "primal power, locked away in the Masters’ vaults", the driving force behind the Marvellous?[/spoiler]
Many alchemists regard the Emerald Tablet as a cryptic recipe for the Philosopher’s Stone or an Elixir of Immortality, Isaac Newton included. His translation is also in the first link. Didja know he was an avid alchemist?
(Transcript of PBS NOVA interview with Bill Newman, historian of science at Indiana University. It’s educational and entertaining.)
An excerpt from aforementioned interview on the nature of codes and riddles in alchemy:
Q: Did alchemists think that they were going to discover powers they wanted to keep for themselves? Is that why alchemy is so veiled in secret codes?
A: That’s certainly part of the reason. You find alchemical treatises that claim that knowledge of the philosophers’ stone has to be kept secret, because if it gets out to the world that a particular alchemist has it, he’ll be strangled in his bed to extract the secret.
Q: It seems that Newton also wanted to hold tight to his secrets—he never published any of his alchemical work.
A: I think that, like other alchemists, he thought that alchemy promised tremendous control over the natural world. It would allow you to transmute virtually anything into anything else, not just lead into gold. There are other things, too, that probably were in Newton’s mind. For example, alchemists realized that if the philosophers’ stone were real and it got out to the public, it would ruin the gold standard. [laughter]
Q: I think what makes a lot of people think of alchemy as black magic is this bizarre language—phrases like "the Green Dragon" or the "menstrual blood of the sordid whore."
A: Yes.
Q: It’s mind-boggling to think of Newton writing those phrases.
A: Well, this was the enigmatic language of alchemy. I mean "enigmatic" in a quite strict sense: it was a riddling language. The best way to look at these metaphors is in the light of riddles. So the "menstrual blood of the sordid whore" is decipherable. It means simply the metalline form of antimony. That is the "menstrual blood" that’s extracted from the "sordid whore," which is the ore of antimony.
Q: It’s a coded language.
A: It is a code, and it’s clear that the alchemists delighted in this code. It’s almost a form of poetry. In fact, lots of alchemists wrote in the form of poetry, quite literally.
edited by Zeedee on 6/28/2013