[Today is Calvin’s 30th birthday. And I am pleased to report that, in holding meditative vigil while they slept, I received an incredible dedicative poem alongside an onslaught of visions, all in seeming exposition of and constellation with the person who is, in this life, our beloved Calvin. Looking at the timestamped bookends at the start and end of this transcription journey, I find myself always amazed at the relationship between time and image. Pocketed in and amidst the dictated words were (are?) remarkable visionary interludes—some of which appear to have lasted upwards of an hour! One particular sequence went from a sea of stars imploding back to their origin, to the very origin of light in a sea of limitless blue-black dark; another, a dizzying array of nested mythical animals and figures—griffins, arimaspoi, manticores, dragons, unicorns, and countless more (many of which were the first I’d seen and wholly unknown to me)—emerging and diverging from each other, a veiling~unveiling, overwhelming though highly humorous process. How can one measure the duration of an image, of a “string” of images? We only know it should we be lucky enough to archive&date whenever we surface for diachronic air. A moment in the imaginal can be an hour over here; and an hour over there, but a moment here. The unconscious is a miracle. To surface, a miracle. To get to bear forth words of blessing, of description, of love—especially for the one I love most—a miracle~] Received 7/14/2024 | 4:11-6:28am
Listen to the Recitation:
CALVIN
Who is this one of One?
What is your expression of the Divine — Cali-vine?
The Vine of Kali, the ana-lytic aspect, dissolving
Lens of incongruity, interdimensional alchemist.
Al-ⲕⲏⲙⲉ, “Black land” of flooded ancient Egypt,
Fertile but for the rich black Nile silt left on the banks
After the Flood;
The black toad, the primal (and final) stage of alchemical
Transformation, the nigredo, the blackening.
CONFESSION
The breaking down of old self, of ego, the layers
Of conditioning, of societal expectations, of repressed
Emotions. Darkness, chaos, dissolution; the facing
Of the Shadow, the depressed aspects of self.
Integration of this stage requires embracing wholeheartedly
The repressed aspects of self. Many of these are
Repressed for a reason. They are to be loved
Nonetheless. Receiving the demons relieves us
Of our demons.
Projections withdrawn,
Fantasies distraught
Dreams insown
Patterns recognized
Activations honored
Psychesoma recalibrated
Self-awareness of actions;
Following the dissolutary darkness is
Albedo: the white heron,
The second stage of personal transformation.
ELUCIDATION
Purification and cleansing,
Elimination of negative influences, impurities.
The reservoir of energy grows. The cistern
Fills, overflowing. The great cistern beneath
Constantinople, holy city of the divided isthmus,
Byzantium.
Comfort with self comes in
Emergence, increasingly authentic forma;
Prophet, to Nomad, to Hero, to Artist —
The Saeculum, tetra-seasonal:
From black summer to white fall;
The leaves become richly colored, as
Nutrients are pulled back, into the trunk.
An effulgence of life, unadulterated expression;
Illumination, elucidation,
Building relationship with the Self;
Conscious and Unconscious perspectives —
They all come to light, a light in the darkness
Which, a star in the night, defines the dark
So as to greater appreciate its vastness,
And the minisculity of light, mere twinkling
Yet visible through the entirety of space.
The sunrise, or the full moon,
The white substance is a pure body,
Refined by the fire, but lacking a soul.
There is no life here yet.
Bride, Silver, Moon.
Ablutio, the washing away,
The Dove to the Crow,
A world of opposites, differentiating
The differentiation is not final, but necessary
For the coming transmutation.
The image of the soul becomes real(ized)
A Galadriel in dreamtime, high-elfin warrior-queen
Glowing bright white, undeniable—
One could never wish to deny her.
She takes the hand and leads from golden
Brown leaves into winter, barren branches, trees
Bare, yellow. Nothing to block the yellow of the
Sun. Citrinitas: the golden calf,
The third stage.
EDUCATION
Where one's personal radiance
Is no longer reflective.
One emits from the very source of light.
The Union of male and female.
The hermaphroditic offspring, philosophical
Mercurius is born.
The light of an awakened soul shining in the dark,
The Moon, becomes the life-giving golden light,
The Sun, which transforms the fearful into courageous
Consciousness, a strange sea, not of water, nor
Of air, nor earth, nor flame. The conscious elder
Who lifts up the calf, not in exultation of the Calf,
But in glory of God. It is all an act of reverence,
Every act, every role, every feeling, every thing.
Everything.
Heraclitus described the sequence of change as
Melanosis (black), Leukosis (white), Xanthosis (yellow),
and Iosis (red).
The drowning king wears a yellow gown:
And as heat working upon that which is moist
causeth or generates blackness, which is
the prime or first colour; so always by decoction,
more and more heat working upon that which is
dry begets whiteness, which is the second colour;
and then working upon that which is purely and perfectly dry
it produceth citrinity and redness.
One dons four different garments in order:
The first, a "black silk doublet";
Then second, a "shirt as white as snow";
Then third, a "yellow vizard";
Then fourth, the "shirt that crimsons all the Spheres".
These are the colors through which the matter of
The Stone passed in the alembic.
The pristine wise gold of winter gives way to
The ripe red of spring. Rubedo: the crimson phoenix,
The fourth stage.
TRANSFORMATION
This is where life comes in.
In order to be alive, there must be blood;
Blood and passion enter the work, the Magnum Opus.
The 'redness' of life, no longer abstract,
There is true desire, eros, drive. Not reflective,
Not radiant. Alive.
Fully human, fully mortal, fully immortal.
Both/and; neither/nor; something else entirely
And all of the above!
The glorious state is wholly reanimated;
The devil is no longer autonomous, but
Joined in the profound unity of psyche.
There is warmth, an emotional depth
In relationship to the unconscious contents.
Here, the great work is finished:
The human soul is completely integrated.
The whole purpose of life is the cultivation
Of one's personality. That is the gem, the Stone,
The fiery bird, the goal, the purpose, the point.
Your personality is not honed until, red in the face,
It can no longer look back, nor in, nor out. It simply is
As there is no other way for it to be.
The signal of alchemical success,
The red-tipped branches, new growth
In alignment with the old shape.
What is new proceeds from where it came —
This has never not been true.
The outcomes of the process are completely accepted
Into a coherent sense of self, which then
Debuts in the world. The opposites taken in
And transcended, to become undifferentiated
While remaining distinct; the merger of ego and Self,
The Self has manifested its true nature, its "higher self"
Reunity of spirit, soul, and body; Mercury, Sulfur, and Salt
The Tria Prima, three-as-one-as-three.
And so the inner conflict is diminished, is resolved.
In alchemy the lion, the “royal” beast, is a synonym
for Mercurius, or, to be more accurate, for a stage
in his transformation. He is the warm-blooded form
of the devouring, predatory monster who first appears
as the dragon. Usually the lion-form succeeds
the dragon’s death and eventual dismemberment.
Black, Purple, Red, Yellow, Green, Orange, White.
1. Calcination, the black crow atop a skull;
2. Dissolution, the crow watches itself dissolve;
3. Separation, the earthbound crow splits into two;
4. Conjunction, the twin birds leave earth together,
lifting a five-spiked crown to heaven;
5. Fermentation, the two birds nest in a tree, brooding
over their egg, waiting for the birth;
6. Distillation, a unicorn lies on the ground
in front of a rose bush;
7. Coagulation, an androgynous youth emerges
from an open grave.
There are many orders. All are precise, and none
Are exact. Such is the sagery of the alchemist.
Some things must follow others. There is no skipping steps.
Climb the rungs in order, lest you fall off and land
Back at ground zero. Falling from on high is good too
Until one has fallen enough to know what it is to fall
And why it is one climbs. Of course, there is nothing
To escape from, and nowhere to go. And yet,
Go we must. There is a destination, somewhere
We are all going. As crazy as that may sound,
It appears to be true. Of course, the mirage is a fantasy,
And the fantasy may lead to an oasis,
And the oasis to a newfound love for the desert,
And that, to a great universal love for all that is.
There is space for every feeling. Disgust too.
There is boundless generosity of spirit.
Your spirit is boundless generosity itself.
An angelic grace,
A brilliant eye,
An incisive hand,
A commandeering pace,
An intelligent design,
A brazen face,
An oafish sentimentality,
A cat-like elegance,
The strength of lions,
The humor of holidays,
The graze of cattle,
The growth of spring,
The beauty of the sea,
The imperviousness of sky,
The impetuousness of space,
The impishness of a squirrel,
The abruptness of a beetle,
The depth of grass,
And the width of a bee's buzz—
You can but hope to capture
The essence of a person, in words
Hinting, intimating senses
To a far thrown mystery,
Embodied in a moment, experienced
For a lifetime. A length that is as long
As forever, as thankful as a breath;
Inhaled, I breathe you in: necessary for life.
Exhaled, I breathe myself, back into you.
Calvin: a name, a time, a place, a proper noun.
Proper, indeed!
I laugh, and I see, but a piece
Of the wholeness of you.

