The Chemical Wedding: by Christian Rosencreutz: A Romance in Eight Days by Johann Valentin Andreae in a New Version

By John Crowley and Theo Fadel

Often described as an alchemical allegory, John Crowley instead decided this is the first science fiction novel.” After all it’s fiction; it’s about the possibilities of a science; and it’s a novel.” No matter what else it might be, it’s definitely one of the great outlandish stories in Western literature.” Illustrated throughout with weird and fascinating woodcuts by Theo Fadel.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Small Beer Press
• Release date: Nov 21, 2016
• ISBN: 9781618731098

John Crowley

John Crowley lives in the hills of northern Massachusetts with his wife and twin daughters. He is the author of ten previous novels as well as the short fiction collection, Novelties & Souvenirs.

Book preview

The First Day

It was just before Easter Sunday,¹ and I was sitting at my table. I’d said my prayers, talking a long time as usual with my Maker and thinking about some of the great mysteries the Father of Lights had revealed to me. Now I was ready to make and to bake – only in my heart, actually – a small, perfect unleavened wafer to eat with my beloved Paschal Lamb. All of a sudden a terrible wind blew up, so strong that I thought the hill my little house was built on would be blown apart – but I’d seen the Devil do things as bad as this before (the Devil had often tried to harm me), so I took heart and went on meditating.

Till I felt somebody touch me on the back.

This frightened me so that I didn’t dare turn. I tried to stay as brave and calm as a human being could under the circumstances. I felt my coat tugged at, and tugged again, and at last I looked around. A woman stood there, so bright and beautiful, in a sky-colored robe – a heavens covered with stars.² She held a trumpet of beaten gold in her hand, and there was a name engraved on it, which I could easily read, but I’m still forbidden to tell it. Under her left arm she had a bundle of letters, in all languages, which she was apparently going to deliver around the world; she had large wings too, full of eyes like a peacock’s,³ that could certainly lift and carry her as fast as an eagle. I might have noticed other things about her too, but she was with me so short a time, and I was so amazed and afraid, that this was all I saw. In fact as soon as I turned around to see her, she started going through her letters and pulled one out – a small one – and very gravely she laid it on my table; then, without having said a word, she left. But as she rose into the air, she blew her trumpet so loudly that the whole hill echoed with it, and for a quarter of an hour afterward I couldn’t hear myself think.

Till I felt somebody touch me on the back.

All this was so unexpected that I had no idea how to explain it to myself, or what to tell myself to do next. So I fell to my knees and begged my Maker not to let anything happen to me that would hurt my chances of heaven. Then, trembling, I went to pick up the little letter – which was heavy, as heavy as though it were solid gold, or heavier. As I was cautiously looking it over, I found a little seal, with an odd sort of cross on it,⁴ and the inscription In hoc signo vinces,⁵ which made me feel a little better, as such a seal certainly wouldn’t have been used by the Devil. I opened the letter very delicately; it was blue inside, and on it in golden letters a poem was written:

On this day, this day, this

The Royal Wedding is!

If you are one who’s born to see it,

And if God Himself decree it,

Then you must to the mountain wend

Where three stately temples stand.

From there you’ll know

Which way to go.

Be wise, take care,

Wash well, look fair,

Or else the Wedding cannot save you.

Leave right away,

Watch what you weigh –

Too little, and they will not have you!

Beneath this, images of the bride and groom were drawn – sponsus and sponsa.

I nearly fainted, having read this; my hair stood on end, and a cold sweat trickled down my side – I was sure that this was the very same Wedding that I had first learned about in a vision seven years before! I’d thought about it often since then, and studied the stars and planets to learn what day it would be, and here it was – and yet I couldn’t have known that it would come at such a bad time. I always thought that I’d be an acceptable, even a welcome wedding guest, and I only needed to be ready to go. But now it seemed Providence had a hand in the matter – which I hadn’t been certain about before – and the more I thought about myself, the more I found in my head nothing but confusion and blindness about higher things. I couldn’t even understand things that lay under my own feet, that I met with and handled every day; much less was I born to see the secrets of Nature. I thought that Nature could find a better student almost anywhere to entrust with her precious (though transitory) treasures.

I certainly hadn’t been very wise, or taken care, or washed well – my health and hygiene, my social life, and my relations with my neighbors, all could use cleaning up. Life was always pushing me on to get more; I was forever wanting to look good in the world’s eyes and get ahead instead of working for the good of everyone; plotting how I could make a quick profit by this or that scheme, build a big house, make a name for myself, and all that. But those lines about the three temples worried me the most; I couldn’t figure out what they meant at all (and I’d still be worrying about it if it hadn’t been revealed to me later on).

I was stuck between hope and fear, questioning myself over and over and finding nothing but faults and weaknesses, unable to calm down, still alarmed at the threats in that invitation. So I did what I always do – I went to bed, hoping that my good angel might appear to me in sleep and tell me what to do. And that’s just what I learned – for God’s glory, my own betterment, and, by the way, a warning to my neighbors.

I’d just fallen asleep when I seemed to be in this dark dungeon, chained there with a lot of others. There was no light at all, and we swarmed like bees over one another, which only made things worse. Even though we couldn’t see a thing, we’d hear somebody heave himself over the others when his shackles seemed to be a little lighter, though no one was offering to help him – we had no reason to help anybody get up higher, since we were all in there