#basically the first thing he does is compare the subject of the poem to SAINT SEBASTIAN

[sesamestreep]

absolute highlight of my night last night was looking up the publication date of Frank O’Hara’s Having a Coke with You and encountering a blurb from an online encyclopedia that described it as being written for a woman he dated.

like…bestie… Frank O’Hara??? you sure about that????

[twinkubus]

so so so with your triad of thomases, I have several questions: 1. how does this correspond to the Trinity, if at all? 2. in what ways do they help you understand aspects of being a Christ that Jesus himself kinda doesn't? (more to come in another ask, because i totally cannot fit the last question into this tiny box)

3. you have a Jesuit spiritual director, right? if so: have you told them about this framework, and what was their reaction to it? maybe it’s because I’m still extremely early in the conversion/discernment processes, but I always veer toward excessive scrupulosity and often am afraid of what Real Christians™ will think of my spiritual experiences (especially with, like, Mary and a couple of other saints)

ok SO!! i am not sure if my response is going to be in order but i WILL say some things and hopefully they will answer the questions: 

I got introduced to each Thomas in chronological order funnily enough, haha. some background: i just became officially catholic last easter, but I’d been involved in “the community” 2 years prior to that. before I was an atheist and even before that i was Lutheran. 

so when I first started doing Catholic things I thought it would be cool to get into, and I liked it a lot, but I didn’t think belief was possible for me. During this period Thomas the Apostle was (and still continues to be) extraordinarily relatable. this is a man who has spent the past three years being one of the 12 main apostles to jesus, and when he meets up with the gang after the crucifixion, everyone but him is going on about this amazing experience they’ve had with the resurrected christ. thomas has had no access to this. it might be something he wants, even very badly, but he cannot bring himself to believe unless he actually touches, is able to literally feel jesus’s wounds under his hand. and he does! he gets it! (I’ve used his response, “My Lord and my God” in a fuckton of poetry i feel like btw). Jesus says to him, “blessed are they who have not seen but still believe” and thomas has been great to like…look up to in both 1) certain personal experiences that I see as a sign of God and make me respond w/ astonishment & incredulity, and 2) I’m never gonna get to stick my fingers into Jesus’s side, but Thomas knows exactly the frustration I feel at not getting that, especially when it seems like so many people around me already have. 

there’s also this great caravaggio img, “the incredulity of thomas” 

(i really appreciate the apostles in general- judas is popular on here, and holds a special place in my heart, but he gets a little bit more exposure so let’s just talk about how the twelve are, especially in mark’s gospel, shown repeatedly to have no clue wtf they’re doing or who jesus is or why anything is happening. they fuck things up repeatedly, and are comprised of random people with no real theological training, and they’re the chosen ones. simon peter is the absolute exemplar of this. he constantly misinterprets what jesus does, goes way overboard, believes in jesus enough to get off the boat but not enough to stay on top of the water, and denies jesus three separate times to save his own skin on the eve of the crucifixion. and he’s the vicar of christ!) 

thomas aquinas happened a little further down the road, when i was in RCIA and reading basically everything I could get my hands on. aquinas is basically emblematic of that time-  do you want book recs? i can give them to you (i also have a word doc full of notes from things that i took from certain books that i can share if you want). but also i was on bishop barron’s website, word on fire, you may or may not have heard of it. i was extremely wary of it bc i found it from a conservative friend of mine’s fb page and was basically going on it just to be disappointed at shitty conservative things… but that wasn’t it at all and i instead got introduced to thomas aquinas. i watched a video of fr barron’s that explained thomistic theology and went :OOO because it gave me a couple new ways of thinking about God and… ok, aquinas is just great as well because he introduced me to this whole tradition of intellectual & rational catholic theology that i wasn’t exactly aware of? when I was an atheist the most “intellectual” christianity I knew was fundie apologetics which is basically shit, but there’s a lot of stuff in the catholic tradition that has faith and reason as positive complements to each other. depending on your background this coould seem an extraordinarily obvious point but it’s cool to be like “oh hey 13th century scholasticism laid the groundwork for rationality and empiricism etc”, and faith isn’t by any means exclusive of reason

also I really like aquinas as a person- he  was called “the dumb ox” and people in his classes thought he was really stupid because he was quiet and didn’t talk much….. and then he became one of the most influential doctors of the church 

i don’t have a good picture for aquinas so i’m going to start off the merton section with a pic of him: 

one thing that struck me is how peaceful/content he looks in like all of his photographs. he looks absolutely like he has been in touch with God and that’s phenomenal. 

I’d heard about merton’s most popular book, The Seven Storey Mountain, a while ago, but waited to read it until this july because I was worried I wouldn’t like it. That was an extremely bad move- I loved it. it’s a chronicle of his life from birth —> being a rowdy boy and pretentious english major —> converting to catholicism —> entering the trappist monastery Gethsemani in Kentucky.  He’s really funny/witty (please read this amazing acct of him driving a Jeep) and has a lot of amusing anecdotes as well as more #relatable things. I also recently read The Sign of Jonas which covers 7 years of his journals in the monastery, and that one just, fundamentally affected me in ways I’m sure I’ll still be finding way down the line. 

On an immediate level, he writes a lot of things about writing that I relate to as both someone who writes and is catholic. He had plans to become an author, and basically gave that up when he became a monk, He ended up becoming a bestselling author still, though- only after he had articulated his willingness to give up that goal. That’s amazing to me. He also worried occasionally about writing being bad for him or bringing him away from God but his superiors kept telling him to continue, that it was a good thing, etc etc.   So just on a level of “person who wrote and is a convert” he is relatable but he also has a lot of very good more “spiritual” insights/struggles/etc that I can identify with, esp. written in Jonas but I’d rec Mountain to read first to just get a better sense of his life, if you’re interested. 

On the subject of Jesuit spiritual directors- and Jesuits in general, I know a number of them- they’re imo some of the best the church has to offer. They’re also not necessarily an accurate representation, if you want to compare the experience i’ve had with them to like, some random parish in Nowhere, The Midwest. Like I’ve shared some things I’ve written with some of them, including a more recent poem that involved the speaker making out with the devil, and no eyes were batted. Another is also the source of all my jokes that I don’t want to say around my parents :P They’re good eggs. A non-insignificant amount of the ones I know are gay, too. 

RE: scrupulosity, I have two things to say, the first being that I don’t think you have to worry about that w/ spiritual experiences concerning Mary and the saints. Those are classics. People have literally seen apparitions of Mary and the Church’s response has been “yo, cool”. Sole focus on Jesus to the exclusion of anyone else is more of a Protestant thing, imo, and there are tons of people now that are perfectly orthodox gushing over how cool the saints are. 

My second thing on that is, alright, I know the feel to be overly scrupulous. I was scrupulous as SHIT when I was a Lutheran, and actually one of the processes of becoming Catholic for me has been trying to let go of that, and trying to learn that, A) it’s okay to get things wrong, and being wrong is part of the process of learning to get things right, and knowing what goodness is, otherwise we don’t have any of that and don’t truly know it, and B) God cares more about loving every part of us than any type of ostracization or punishment for “being wrong”. God is always approaching us trying to forgive us, and it’s that first approach that even enables us to ask for forgiveness in the first place. It’s not like God withholds love and forgiveness until we realize we’re caught up in something that doesn’t lead to our flourishing. The love and forgiveness is always there already, even if we’re in a situation that doesn’t let us immediately recognize it. 

OKAY THIS TOOK…MUCH LONGER THAN I THOUGHT OMFG I have to go to class but, I hope this was helpful in some way and feel free to ask me any question you might have abt this!!! 

[under-the-lake]

The Philosopher’s Stone: History meets Potterheads

‘I got this out of the library ages ago for a bit of light reading!’ [...] ‘I knew it! I knew it! [...] ‘Nicolas Flamel is the only known maker of the Philosopher’s Stone!’

J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, chapter thirteen, Nicolas Flamel.

[...] and finally killing one another, be stewed in their proper venome, which after their death, changeth them into living and permanent water; before which time, they loose in their corruption and putrification, their first natural formes, to take afterwards one onely new, more noble, and better forme.’

Nicolas Flamel (attr. to), Nicolas Flamel - his exposition of the hieroglyphicall Figures

Everyone who’s read the Harry Potter books is familiar with the Philosopher’s Stone. To my great surprise, not everyone who had read the Harry Potter  books was familiar with the fact that both Nicolas Flamel and the Philosopher’s Stone were actually part of History. So I thought I’d write a short bit about the real Flamel, the ‘real’ Stone and all the ideas around it, maybe not going back to Midas but just flirting with Alchemy, before getting back to Harry Potter and comparing what can be compared. This is just a tiny outburst of my brain. To make it a one-part thing this time.

1. The real Nicolas Flamel

Nicolas Flamel is a real person. He was born in France around 1340 (some sources say 1330) and died in Paris on 22nd March 1418. He was buried in the nave of the St-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie church, and his tombstone, which he designed himself, is currently preserved at the Cluny Museum in Paris. I’ve seen it there :) This stone has a nice story so I’ll just tell it here: The church was destroyed during the latest phase of the French Revolution, around 1797. The stones were used for many things. Flamel’s tombstone was noticed by an antiques seller one day, while he was doing groceries at the market: a woman was selling her spinach on it. The city of Paris bought it back in 1839.

Flamel escaped or got through the Black Death epidemic that spread over Europe in 1348 and killed between a third and half of the whole population. He actually lived through most of the Hundred Years War as well.

Flamel was a writer. He was sworn scribe of the university of Paris. He also sold manuscripts and owned two shops. His wife was called Pernelle (notice the different spelling with ‘Perenelle’ in the Harry Potter series) and he married her in 1368. Pernelle had been married twice before she wedded Flamel, and she brought the wealth of those two unions with her. That increased the fortune of the couple, and may have contributed to the legends of them having trunkfuls of gold at home. Their owning several estates didn’t help, nor did the fact that Nicolas used speculation as a means to get money. Flamel’s generosity is probably a bit guilty too in that matter, because even on his tombstone there is a list of places where he gave his money away generously, mainly churches and hospitals, from what I read. All in all, however, he wasn’t that wealthy. He lived comfortably and could make donations around him, but nothing in his will or his accounts shows any uncommon amount of money.

One of the houses Flamel had built for the poor is still standing in Paris, at 51 rue de Montmorency in the well-known neighbourhood of the Marais. It is actually the oldest stone house standing in Paris, built in 1407 by Flamel himself, and hosts a restaurant on the ground floor today, named after the noted citizen. There’s also a rue Nicolas Flamel next to the Louvre, which crosses a rue Pernelle.

There’s no way of knowing if the real Nicolas Flamel ever tried himself at alchemy, because there’s no record of it. However, the legend about Flamel’s wealth started spreading right after his death and might have been the root of the idea that he might have made the Philosopher’s Stone, because how could he have had so much money using ‘normal’ ways?

2. What Alchemy is about (shortly)

The popular idea about alchemy is that it’s an immature branch of chemistry and that it is completely empiric (which science is not, at some point, btw?) and that it’s obsessed with the transformation of vile metal into gold. Full stop.

Well, it’s not that plain.

Chemistry did indeed evolve from alchemy, and yes, purifying vile metals was one of the aims of the science, but that’s not all. Far from it.

Let’s start with the beginning. Where does the word come from? I was aghast when I found out. I thought it was Arabic. But no. Well yes. But Arabs had taken it from Greeks. And Greeks had taken it from the name they had given to Egypt, which itself was based on the Egyptian word for it, namely khmi, which means black earth (hieroglyphic 𓆎𓅓𓏏𓊖 - for those who can’t see this here, see picture below).

Alchemy isn’t something European. It was and is practiced all over the planet: Chinese, Indians, Egyptians, Greeks and Arabs have practiced that art at some point of their history. It is said to transcend all dogma and all religions.

The aim of Alchemy isn’t just material. Its goal is to reach the hidden reality that constitutes the essence of all truth and religions. The Absolute. This Absolute can’t be attained unless consciousness is set on a higher level. The ordinary is lead-like, while the upper level is similar to gold (wink, wink… Philosopher’s Stone...). If one reaches this golden level of consciousness, then everything will appear in their perfect form (like in after the Last Judgment in the Bible, or the Nirvana). It is the realisation of the Universal Redemption. It is a quest of the very secrets of Nature, Life, Death, Unity, Eternity and Infinity. So basically making gold is nothing to those higher claims.

The symbol showed here was made in the 17th century and shows the Philosopher’s Stone as a central element of the Work. And it reminds me a lot of the Deathly Hallows.

Throughout history, alchemists have been seeking many things, forming the Great Work:

- The Panacea, also called the Universal Medicine, which becomes, through its ultimate sublimation, the Fountain of Youth, the Elixir of Life. It cures all illnesses and transmutes the body into a body of light, omniscient, omnipotent and full of divine love.

- The Philosopher’s Stone, which is a prerequisite for finding the Panacea. It’s a sort of triumph over the vile part of humanity. It has the propriety of transmuting vile metals into gold.

Both sort of link with that truth of alchemists (and today’s philosophers and psychiatrists and pedagogists and all that crowd): ‘The root of all [man’s] troubles lies in their almost total ignorance of that which matters most: one’s true self‘. (Stanislav Klossowski de Rola, 1973)

3. The legendary Flamel

Many factors contributed to the building of legends around some people, mainly to try and support alchemy as an academic subject (which I’m sure the real alchemists wouldn’t have wanted for all the gold in the world). One of them is the constant attribution of treaties and other written works to known philosophers or people. Among those we find Aristotle, but also Flamel. No less than four books were attributed to his hand, posthumously, and some actually centuries after his death, with no proof of his having ever written them whatsoever.

From the 15th century on, alchemistic legends over people’s wealth have flourished too. Flamel was only one of the people rumoured to have made money through the means of the Stone.

From the Renaissance onwards, the increasing use of symbols in alchemistic writings has led to high-level discussions about them, creating an exegetic current that of course fed the already existing rumours. Those researches were conducted into the Bible but also into Greek mythology and medieval symbolic, trying to find clues and hidden meanings.

In Flamel’s case, not only his wealth, but the combination of it with interpretations of a stone arcade he had erected in the Saints Innocents graveyard in Paris, led to his legendary qualification as an alchemist. On that stone arcade there are two dragons (see picture above). The dragon being one of the most important animals in alchemy, alchemists have started building over that. A poem about dragons was attributed to Flamel, and in this poem he explains that one of the dragons is sulfur and the other mercury, two of the most important elements. That was enough, and Flamel was an alchemist for posterity.

In 1578 a French alchemist first introduced the idea of Flamel making the Philosopher’s Stone into one of his books, saying that Flamel went soon from being a poor scribbler to being a wealthy man. His idea was then added to the dragon story to back up that he was an alchemist, and the whole was spread through Europe. Only one thing was missing: a book. It was soon found: his exposition of the hieroglyphicall figures. It was published in 1628. This was probably never written by Flamel, and was more likely to be written at the end of the 15th or the beginning of the 16th centuries. The mention of contemporary people is proof enough that Flamel could never write it.

Flamel’s Legacy

However, to this day, Nicolas Flamel remains the most well-known French alchemist, and his name is probably forever associated with the making of the Philosopher’s Stone. Many writers throughout history have used his name and character, not only to make him the author of books, but using his doings, like Victor Hugo in Notre-Dame de Paris (see picture below), who makes his main character, the priest Claude Frollo, meditate in front of that dragon gate to the St Innocents cemetery. Among the 19th century French writers, Gérard de Nerval made a play of Flamel’s life, and Alexandre Dumas (the guy who wrote The Three Musketeers) used his life as well in La Tour Saint-Jacques (remember it’s the name of the church Flamel was buried in). Among the 20th century French literature monuments featuring Flamel and alchemy I must mention L’Oeuvre au Noir by Marguerite Yourcenar. If you can find a translation, read. Yourcenar is a magnificent writer.

Among other books, we must mention the use of Flamel’s name in the best-seller manga series Fullmetal Alchemist. Even Dan Brown used Flamel in his Da Vinci Code. And of course, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.

4. The ‘real Philosopher’s Stone’

Not only Voldemort wanted the Philosopher’s Stone. Obscure alchemists and more notable ones did too, and among them was Sir Isaac Newton!

The first mentions we have date back to 300 A.D. but renowned alchemists like Elias Ashmole claimed that it actually dated back to Adam who got the knowledge of it from God.

The Philosopher’s Stone has many names. The Heart of Gold, The Stone of the Wise, Diamond of Perfection are a few of them. The Stone is the materia prima of alchemy brought to its perfection, hence giving it that unique transmutative quality sought after by alchemists.

The making of the Philosopher’s Stone is the Great Work of alchemists, and it requires three stages of work over that materia prima, also called the Stone of the Philosopher. It first reaches a state of pure mercurial substance, then of incombustible sulphur and finally reaches Ultimate Perfection as a fixed, permanent tincture: the Philosopher’s Stone.

The Stone is a key stage to achieve the ultimate search of alchemy, which is a sort of resurrection of the mind and the body via the use of the Elixir of Life. This awakening gives the subject Wisdom and Love. They will know their true selves.

5. The Harry Potter-series and the Philosopher’s Stone

There are two places where the Stone or Flamel are mentioned (directly or not)  in sources in the first book of the Harry Potter -series, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. The first one is in this excellent description of Dumbledore on the Chocolate Frog card Harry gets on the Hogwarts Express:

‘Albus Dumbledore, currently Headmaster of Hogwarts. Considered by many the greatest wizard of modern times, Professor Dumbledore is particularly famous for his defeat of the Dark wizard Grindelwald in 1945, for the discovery of the twelve uses of dragon’s blood and his work on alchemy with his partner, Nicolas Flamel. Professor Dumbledore enjoys chamber music and tenpin bowling.’

J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, chapter six, The Journey from Platform Nine and Three-Quarters

The second one is in the book Hermione took from the library for a bit of light reading:

‘The ancient study of alchemy is concerned with making the Philosopher’s Stone, a legendary substance with astonishing powers. The Stone will transform any metal into pure gold. It also produces the Elixir of Life, which will make the drinker immortal.

There have been many reports of the Philosopher’s Stone over the centuries, but the only Stone currently in existence belongs to Mr Nicolas Flamel, the noted alchemist and opera-lover. Mr Flamel, who celebrated his six hundred and sixty-fifth birthday last year, enjoys a quiet life in Devon with his wife, Perenelle (six hundred and fifty-eight).’

J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, chapter thirteen, Nicolas Flamel.

Voldemort mentions the use he wants to make of the Elixir of life:

‘Unicorn blood has strengthened me, these past weeks … you saw faithful Quirrell drinking it for me in the Forest … and once I have the Elixir of Life, I will be able to create a body of my own …’

J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, chapter seventeen, The Man With Two Faces

As you can see, the conception of the Stone and of its alchemical properties is rather crude in Harry Potter. The main idea is that once you have it you can brew a potion called the Elixir of Life and that drinking it would prevent you from dying. That is what Flamel is reported to do, along with his wife Perenelle. I wonder if they aged physically or if the Fountain of Youth was actually keeping them physically young, like stopping the time or some other popular idea about that.

The other idea put forward by Rowling is that the Elixir of Life would allow Voldemort to get himself a corporal envelope. That means, I suppose, that there would be a potion in some Dark Magic book in the Restricted Section that would use the Elixir along with other ingredients to allow that recreation. Or it means that Voldemort knows about the metaphysical idea of resurrection central to the idea of getting the Absolute in alchemy and that he thinks it will regenerate his body while it’s something totally different. Again, his mere material way of thinking, power and greed, are misleading him.

The real alchemical property of the Stone, namely the fact that it elevates your mind and body to a supreme level of knowledge equal to gods is completely overlooked here. Is it due to the use Rowling wants to make of the Stone or of her not knowing what the Stone actually was for? Who knows. At any rate, it’s popular science that was chosen and that makes the Stone useable in the book. I can’t imagine how the story would have gone if it was Perfection that was the aim. Imagine Voldemort wanting to achieve purity? I mean another aim than purity of blood obviously (and he can talk, being Muggle-born). The only attempt to perfection is that material allegory of wanting to transform vile metal into gold, and it’s only mentioned because it was the first thought of Harry, Ron and Hermione when they found out about the Stone. That Snape wanted to be rich (Chapters fifteen and thirteen). It’s sort of completely secondary, as it’s secondary in alchemy to the attempt to achieve Universal Redemption.

6. Sources

Flamel Nicolas (attr. to), Nicolas Flamel - his Exposition of the hieroglyphicall Figures, 1624 https://vrijewereld.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/nicolas-flamel-exposition-of-the-hieroglyphical-figures-16421.pdf

Klossowski de Rola, Stanislas, The Arcane Doctrine of Alchemy, Thames and Hudson, London, 1973, 2013

Rowling, Joanne K., Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, Bloomsbury, London, 1997

Musée de Cluny, Paris: http://www.musee-moyenage.fr/collection/oeuvre/epitaphe-de-nicolas-flamel.html

Newton was an alchemist (two links):

https://www.biography.com/news/isaac-newton-alchemy-philosophers-stone

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3509833/Isaac-Newton-s-recipe-magical-Philosopher-s-Stone-rediscovered-17th-century-alchemy-manuscript-reveals-ingredients-thought-achieve-immortality.html

Philosopher’s Stone: http://historyofalchemy.com/list-of-concepts/alchemy/philosophers-stone/

Wikipedia, Philosopher’s Stone: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosopher%27s_stone

Wikipedia, Alchemy, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alchemy

Wikipedia, Nicolas Flamel: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas_Flamel

Wikipedia, Nicolas Flamel (French page): https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas_Flamel

Wikipedia, Rue de Montmorency: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rue_de_Montmorency