David Foster talks about The Land where Stories End

Visiting Europe in recent times, I was struck by the hordes of young people from all nations, who feel the need to visit a city such as Florence, where they dutifully surround themselves with artworks depicting stories fom the Bible and Greek Myth, none of which they have previously encountered, and whose mysteries they cannot begin to comprehend. As ‘Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone’ is the one book they are certain to have read, I felt it incumbent upon myself to present them with a genuine fairytale.

‘The Land where Stories End’ has three components: a Madonna and Child from the early Renaissance, in which the Madonna, through Lippis’s genius, arouses the chi but not the penis; nine powerful alchemical woodcuts from the late Renaissance by Mattheus Merian; and a text, written by a poet trained as a chemist who believes he is living at the end of the Western Christian Civilization that begins with the Renaissance. All three components interract, and throw dark light one upon the other, so that the Mystery at the heart of Christianity is seen ( as indeed many alchemists, including Isaac Newton, did see it ) as the very work of the Philosopher’s Stone, the work of alchemy, undertaken by the woodcutter in my tale. He is, in Sufic fairy tale mode, a bit of a goose.

The tale is set in Dark Age Ireland, at a time when the Fairyland of the pagan Celt is being supplanted by the Heaven of the Saints. The oak-worshipping druids who converted, en masse, to Christianity, were the intermediaries here. I chose Ireland, because nowhere was the Blessed Virgin more revered, until very recent times, and many Australians of my generation were educated by Irish Catholics.

‘Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone’ offers, unsurprisingly, no insight into either the Stone or the Philosophy behind it. That it has turned lead into gold for Rowling, is beside the point. ‘The Land where Stories End’, in contrast, is genuinely hermetic. A patient reading will throw some light on the meaning of the Mystical Marriage. A cursory reading will find a work impenetrable to the intellect - that slovenly, ill-disciplined creature that nowdays demands to ‘understand’ at first glance every fiction it picks up, and by so doing renders itself quite impervious to myth and higher religion.

That the word ‘ hermetic’ has developed a secondary meaning of ‘ impenetrable’ ( hermetic seal ) forewarns us that its primary meaning - pertaining to the teachings of Hermes Trismegistus and thus magical, alchemical - is not easily expounded. But Jung was one who responded to hermetic power and understood its psychological force. Something of this power, mystery and beauty is conveyed in the woodcuts of Merian.

Alchemy has Greek, Egyptian, Arabic and Jewish roots. It arose in Ptolemaic Alexandria, home of the neo-Platonic Church Fathers Clement and Origen. Hermes Trismegistus is the name Greek neo-Platonists like Philo gave to Thoth, the Egyptian God of Wisdom, and His Mysteries. The whole school of Thought, described by British scholar A.E.Waite as ‘ The Secret Tradition’ has profoundly influenced Jewish, Sufic and Christian Mysticism, and may be detected in the Kabbalah, the Grail Legends, the Tarot, in certain aspects of ceremonial magic, in alchemy and in Rosicrucianism. I call it ‘ the dark and stormy road’ as I see it akin to the sudden enlightenment of Zen Buddhism, as distinct from ‘ the dry and dusty road’, the officially sanctioned path of dutiful piety. The third road, my ‘ bright and sunny road’ is the mystical marriage attained through no effort. St John the Divine speaks of this path as the object of Christian Resurrection. I have my Saint Finn quote John’s words from the Book of Revelation.

Read Frances Yates on The Rosicrucian Enlightenment ( 1972 ) and Elizabethan Neoplatonism Reconsidered ( 1977 ) and you may conclude, as I have, that the subject does not lend itself to non-fictional exposition. No, the fairy tale is the right place for alchemy, and that is where it is usually to be found.

Motives? I am concerned that the relationship between male sexuality and male spirituality is being lost sight of, not only by men, but increasingly by women, who now demand the hermaphrodite in marriage. I also feel a reawakening of male monastic impulse would be no bad thing, in this overcrowded, sex-obsessed world. I am, of course, deeply offended by JK Rowling’s brazen fraudulence.