The rose of Paracelsus

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Down in his laboratory, to which the two rooms of the cellar had been given over,
Paracelsus prayed to his God, his indeterminate God – any God – to send him a disciple.

Night was coming on. The guttering fire in the hearth threw irregular shadows into the
room. Getting up to light the iron lamp was too much trouble. Paracelsus, weary from
the day, grew absent, and the prayer was forgotten. Night had expunged the dusty
retorts and the furnace [2] when there came a knock at his door. Sleepily he got up,
climbed the short spiral staircase [3], and opened one side of the double door. A
stranger stepped inside. He too was very tired. Paracelsus gestured toward a bench; the
other man sat down and waited. For a while, neither spoke.

The master was the first to speak.

“I recall faces from the West and faces from the East,” he said, not without a certain
formality, “yet yours I do not recall. Who are you, and what do you wish of me?”

“My name is of small concern,” the other man replied. “I have journeyed three days and
three nights to come into your house. I wish to become your disciple. I bring you all my
possessions.”

He brought forth a pouch and emptied its contents on the table. The coins were many,
and they were of gold. He did this with his right hand. Paracelsus turned his back to
light the lamp [4]; when he turned around again, he saw that the man’s left hand held a
rose. The rose troubled him. [5]

He leaned back, put the tips of his fingers together, and said:

“You think that I am capable of extracting the stone that turns all elements to gold, and
yet you bring me gold. But it is not gold I seek, and if it is gold that interests you, you
shall never be my disciple.”

“Gold is of no interest to me,” the other man replied. “These coins merely symbolize
my desire to join you in your work. I want you to teach me the Art. I want to walk
beside you on that path that leads to the Stone.”

“The path is the Stone. The point of departure is the Stone. If these words are unclear to
you, you have not yet begun to understand. Every step you take is the goal you seek.

Paracelsus spoke the words slowly. The other man looked at him with misgiving.

“But,” he said, his voice changed, “is there, then, no goal?”

Paracelsus laughed.

“My detractors, who are no less numerous than imbecilic, say that there is not, and they
call me an impostor. I believe they are mistaken, though it is possible that I am deluded.
I know that there is a Path.”

There was silence, and then the other man spoke.

“I am ready to walk that Path with you, even if we must walk for many years. Allow me
to cross the desert. Allow me to glimpse, even from afar the promised land, though the
stars prevent me from setting foot upon it. All I ask is a proof before we begin the
journey.”

“When?” said Paracelsus uneasily.

“Now,” said the disciple with brusque decisiveness.

They had begun their discourse in Latin; they now were speaking German.

The young man raised the rose into the air.

“You are famed,” he said, “for being able to burn a rose to ashes and make it emerge
again, by the magic of your art. Let me witness that prodigy. I ask that of you, and in
return I will offer up my entire life.”

“You are credulous,” the master said. “I have no need of credulity; I demand faith.”[6]

The other man persisted.

“It is precisely because I am not credulous that I wish to see with my own eyes the
annihilation and resurrection of the rose.”

“You are credulous,” he repeated. “You say that I can destroy it?”

“Any man has the power to destroy it,” said the disciple.

“You are wrong,” the master responded. “Do you truly believe that something may be
turned to nothing? Do you believe that the first Adam in paradise was able to destroy a
single flower, a single blade of grass?”

“We are not in paradise,” the young man stubbornly replied. “Here, in the sublunary
world [7], all things are mortal.”

Paracelsus had risen to his feet.

“Where are we, then, if not in paradise?” he asked. “Do you believe that the deity is able
to create a place that is not paradise? Do you believe that the Fall is something other
than not realizing that we are in paradise?” [8]
“A rose can be burned,” the disciple said defiantly.

“There is still some fire there”, said Paracelsus, pointing toward the hearth. “If you cast
this rose into the embers, you would believe that it has been consumed, and that its
ashes are real. I tell you that the rose is eternal, and that only its appearances may
change. At a word from me, you would see it again.”

“A word?” the disciple asked, puzzled. “The furnace is cold, and the retorts are covered
with dust. What is it you would do to bring it back again?”

Paracelsus looked at him with sadness in his eyes.

“The furnace is cold”, he nodded, “and the retorts are covered with dust. On this leg of
my long journey I use other instruments.”

“I dare not ask what they are,” said the other man humbly, or astutely.

“I am speaking of that instrument used by the deity to create the heavens and the earth
and the invisible paradise in which we exist, but which original sin hides from us. I am
speaking of the Word, which is taught to us by the science of the Kabbalah.”

“I ask you,” the disciple coldly said, “if you might be so kind as to show me the
disappearance and appearance of the rose. It matters not the slightest to me whether you
work with alembics or with the Word.”

Paracelsus studied for a moment; then he spoke:

“If I did what you ask, you would say that it was an appearance cast by magic upon
your eyes. The miracle would not bring you the faith you seek. Put aside, then, the
rose.”

The young man looked at him, still suspicious. Then Paracelsus raised his voice.

“And besides, who are you to come into the house of a master and demand a miracle of
him? What have you done to deserve such a gift?”

The other man, trembling, replied:

“I know I have done nothing. It is for the sake of the many years I will study in your
shadow that I ask it of you – allow me to see the ashes and then the rose. I will ask
nothing more. I will believe the witness of my eyes.”

He snatched up the red rose [9] that Paracelsus had left lying on the table, and he threw
it into the flames. Its color vanished, and all that remained was a pinch of ash. For one
infinite moment, he awaited the words, and the miracle.

Paracelsus sat unmoving. He said with strange simplicity:

“All the physicians and all the pharmacists in Basel say I am a fraud. Perhaps they are
right. There are the ashes that were the rose, and that shall be the rose no more.”

The young man was ashamed. Paracelsus was a charlatan, or a mere visionary, and he,
an intruder, had come through his door and forced him now to confess that his famed
magic arts were false.

He knelt before the master and said:

“What I have done is unpardonable. I have lacked belief, which the Lord demands of all
the faithful. Let me, then, continue to see ashes. I will come back again when I am
stronger, and I will be your disciple, and at the end of the Path I will see the rose.”

He spoke with genuine passion, but that passion was the pity he felt for the aged master
– so venerated, so inveighed against, so renowned, and therefore so hollow. Who was
he, Johannes Grisebach, to discover with sacrilegious hand that behind the mask was no
one?

Leaving the gold coins would be an act of almsgiving to the poor. He picked them up
again as he went out. Paracelsus accompanied him to the foot of the staircase and told
him he would always be welcome in that house. Both men knew they would never see
each other again.

Paracelsus was then alone. Before putting out the lamp and returning to his weary chair,
he poured the delicate fistful of ashes from one hand into the concave other, and he
whispered a single word. The rose appeared again.

NOTES:

[1] The subtitle – “Mystical Story Examines the Tests Disciples Must Face in Their
Spiritual Journey” – has been added by us. “The Rose of Paracelsus” is reproduced from
“The New York Times Review of Books”, August 13, 1998. We have compared the text
to the Spanish language original in the volume “La Memoria de Shakespeare”,
Biblioteca Borges, Alianza Editorial, Madrid, España, 1997-2008, 82 pp., pp. 51-60.
Original title: “La Rosa de Paracelso”.

[2] “Athanor”, in the original text: the alchemical furnace.

[3] The spiral staircase is a Masonic and occult symbol. It represents a bridge between
the sky and the earth; the divine world and the material one.

[4] There is a symbolism in these words. In order to light the lamp, the master turns his
back to money and to all that it represents.

[5] The rose and the cross, or the blessing and the suffering, are two aspects of life for
students of esoteric philosophy. In the first pages of “The Voice of the Silence”, by H.
P. Blavatsky, this warning is made to the disciple: “… Thy Soul will find the blossoms
of life, but under every flower a serpent coiled”. (Theosophy Co. edition, pp. 6-7)
[6] Faith. In Spanish, Borges wrote “fe”, “faith”. In the version of “The New York
Times Review of Books”, the word used is “belief”.

[7] Sublunary world. In esoteric philosophy, the term “sublunary” applies to the
physical world and to the mortal dimensions of life. The Moon relates to the lower self,
or mortal soul. The Sun inspires the higher self or spiritual soul; and the Earth provides
humanity with physical bodies. Upon emphatically speaking the words “here, at the
sublunary world”, the candidate to disciple indirectly indicates he remains in the world
of the lower self, and therefore is not ready for any true discipleship.

[8] This short paragraph suggests two central ideas in esoteric philosophy, both of
which are taught in the work “The Secret Doctrine”, by Helena P. Blavatsky: 1) Deities
have to follow the Universal Law, and they are bound to work under it in every aspect;
and 2) The “fall from paradise” – the loss of that primordial wisdom to which humanity
had access one day – took place at the mental plane, and is transitory. In due time,
humanity will recover its primordial spiritual state.

[9] “Red rose”, or pink, thus in the Spanish original version.