Thursday, October 24, 2013

alchemy

Many voices, even from within their own ranks, were raised against the "obscure idioms" of the alchemists.  And their own account of their communication technique hardly sounds more encouraging..."Wherever we have spoken openly we have actually said nothing. But where we have written something in code and in pictures we have concealed the truth." -Rosarium Philosophorum, Weinheim Edition, 1990



Everything that deceives can be said to enchant. -Plato


In the matter of furnishing, I find a certain absence of ugliness far worse than ugliness. -Colette


It was in the very act of communicating with others that I came into a more intimate contact with myself. -Anias Nin


Sometimes I do fake Picassos myself. -Picasso


The thing is to become a master, and in your old age to acquire the courage to do what children did when they knew nothing. -Henry Miller


Oh my God. Something happened.  Lower the curtain.  last words of Chung Ling Soo



2 comments:

  1. doug, i read a book called shadow of witches, the first of a trilogy, and i read the second one too (forget the title) and it has a lot of stuff about alchemy. they weren't that great but for some reason i got a kick out of them. they're about witches, vampires, and imps or goblins or something, they live among the humans and always have, but they don't get involved with human politics, and they're not that friendly with each other. there's a whole secret parallel world. and then this one vampire falls in love with this witch, and all hell breaks loose. not great literature but kinda fun. and the alchemy stuff was interesting. love you doug!

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    1. I read a bunch of those books too…! Joseph Delaney, Veronica Roth, but I read one called Women of the Night, perfect short stories, and I'm reading Mary Shelly, wow! depressing and like all great literature, autobiographical. Read Jonathan Stroud's Bartimeus trilogy, great dystopian work and of course read Delany's Dhalgren. I have some Taschen books of alchemy.
      Funny, I wish I could paint like these also...

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