fiction by Sarah McLean
The old gods meet in the ruined temple once a month to discuss the state of things.
They don’t always all show up. This time, there are fourteen of them. They sit in a circle around what used to be the altar, and stare at each other with their myriad of eyes, beneath the crumbling statues of their ancestors. They don’t speak a language that any humans would understand. When they leave, it’s without sound. Gods are funny like that. They don’t stay for coffee at reception.
They were caught once. This is that story, and this is how we know what it is they do. I will tell you, so that when you find them in the temple, you will have some idea of what to expect.
I. Prima Materia.
It happened that an acolyte of the Alchemist’s Guild came to the temple ruins to gather herbs. Certain plants grew on the slimy walls that don’t grow anywhere else. The young man entered the temple as he always had, stepping carefully under a pillar that had fallen and was leaning against the opposite wall like a megalithic tree trunk, trying not to slip on the stone floor that was damp with weird, greenish ooze. Algae and ground water, he thought. He had recently begun his training at the Guild, and had only visited the temple twice before. It fascinated him. The dripping slime, even if it was just algae, would make for such an interesting alchemical reagent. Whatever it was that produced the strange ivy on the Cyclopean walls would have unique properties of its own. Studies on this had certainly been done by the senior members of the Guild, but this intrepid alchemist wanted to try some of his own. Because, why not? Why did one become an alchemist, if not to try strange experiments for the hell of it and see what happens?
He had finished collecting some of the slime in a slender glass bottle, and began scratching at one of the nearby walls, which had an inscription on it. Inscriptions are everything to alchemists. Some of their most treasured texts were weird things that someone had scribbled, somewhere, sometime. Herbs are not the only reason that alchemists come to the temple; they come mainly for secrets. Lost knowledge infests ruins. Everyone knows that. Scrawled on the wall in the language of relics.
Translated, it meant: You aren’t what you think you are. A profound secret. Perhaps that one should be taught before the ubiquitous “one is all and all is one,” or “as above, so below.”
The gods chose the ruined temple because it belonged to no one, and as such, was neutral territory. Their main topics of conversation are things beyond mortal comprehension, concerning places we have only seen in our dreams, if at all. They ask each other about solar rainfall and sweeping the base of the void and why there isn’t any sun in the islands anymore. (Which islands? I don’t know, but whatever sea they’re in, it’s not one of water.) What they don’t talk about, is transmutation. Or immortality. Or morals, or sex, or covetousness, or any of the other things that humans are concerned with. They don’t know what sin is. We’re as strange to them as they are to us, but unlike us, they don’t try to see us in their shape. When they do talk about humans, they are most interested in what humans do for them. They brag about how many offerings they get. They show off. They describe the temples built for them, what nice homes they are. They tell about how they inspire humans with visions and ecstasy at this or that ritual, and how fun it was, and then they leave. It’s not that humans are uninteresting to gods — humans are very interesting to gods — but they’re interesting in the same way metals are interesting to alchemists. Burn, boil, distill, sublimate, dissolve, ferment, and see what it does. Humans are the only animals who seek to understand gods, and don’t simply accept gods as being.
So, when the young alchemist had finished copying inscriptions and collecting ooze, and he found fourteen gods sitting between ancient pillars and statues, surrounding a slab of crumbling rock that used to be an altar… well. He screamed. The gods stopped talking and looked at the human who had intruded upon their meeting and made a series of noises — shrieks, burbles, whispers. They didn’t question the human. They just waited for something to happen. Either the human would stay, or he would leave. The man looked into the faces of Storm. Fire. Sun. Intoxication. War. Night. Sorrow. Growth. Movement. There were more, but the story varies, and it is not certain exactly which fourteen there were.
It is said that any human who looks directly into the face of a god, goes mad. This is not technically true. Gods are difficult to comprehend, and anyone who tries, goes mad. It is the nature of humans to try to make sense of things that don’t make sense. To see their true forms is to experience the incomprehensible, to shock the mind. That is why gods have their statues, so that they can have human forms and faces, makeshift bodies through which they can speak to us. If one is able to look upon the god’s face and simply accept it as it is, then they would not go mad, though this is because they are most likely a bit mad already.
The gods began to whisper among themselves again, and one of them stood up to try to talk to the visitor, who was standing stock-still as his brain tried to swallow. It walked toward him, moving as though its feet were a few inches above where the ground was supposed to be, hidden by its dark skirts. Run, the man thought, but he still didn’t move.
I don’t like alchemists, said the silent god with its non-voice. You aren’t fun. You aren’t useful. You try to be like us, but you just play with earth. What are you?
The young man blurted the first thing that came into his head. “You are not what you think you are!”
Oh, said the god. What do you think you are?
Moral. Clever. Capable. “Human?”
No. You are like us, but squished down into that tiny body, said the god. It turned around, and walked back towards the council, having said everything it meant to.
II. The Chemical Wedding.
The gods left, soundlessly. There was no point in staying and talking if a human was there, and they had run out of things to say by now, anyway. Only one stayed, watching the man with eyes like bronze and wondering at him. It had a flickering semblance of humanity. It was shaped something like a person in robes, and had eyes where a face should be, and something like horns or antlers on its head. The man recognized this as a god that he himself worshipped. This was the god that had written the first books on alchemy and magic. This god had a cosmic library all to herself that was full of all the knowledge in the universe. This god had built mountains out of clay and lit lamps with fire from stars. This god was beautiful, stunning. He projected his image of her over its shadowy true form, and it coalesced into the lovely woman that he had seen depicted in statues. Beholding the presence of divinity, the man sank to his knees. Desire for her swam behind his eyes. Was that sinful?
Alchemists try to fix the volatile, don’t they? The god’s voice was still a soundless whisper, but there was the shade of a sensual woman’s voice in it somewhere. Well, I am volatile. You are fixed. You need to become like me, and therefore I need to become like you. That is the way alchemy works, right?
“How do we do that?”
I don’t know. Do you know?
The man did know.
The green sludge was gone, replaced by clear, pale water that trickled over smooth stone that shined like gold. Below, there was a beautiful woman and a beautiful man. As he lay with her, sighing and trembling in her arms, she gently washed his nude body with the bright water. Both were off somewhere else. Above, their souls mingled in blinding light, searing darkness. There, the man felt only dimly connected to his body. He and the god were both beings of light and shadow, shifting, mixing, separating and combining again. His mind was on fire. Information and insights streamed through it between expansive bursts of ecstasy and madness. In this moment, he was aware of everything, connected to everything, he understood everything — everything the alchemists had been trying to accomplish for centuries. And they were wrong, the secret was not in chemicals and never was. The way to touch God was to simply reach out and touch god.
III. Aqua Vitae.
When the man came out of his haze, the god was gone. The temple was no longer bright and shining, it was again a dark ruin. Most of the information that had entered his mind in the strange wordless language of the gods was gone, like the fading ephemeral memory of a dream. But he remembered the important things. Are we all like that? he thought. We are all great beings confined to flesh, and the alchemist’s purpose is to become that great being while in the flesh, to be both at once? He stood up, and there was no slime on his body, or anywhere. Another inscription caught his eyes — this one was clearly modern, and scrawled by an alchemist. Maybe he had written it, in his madness: Solve et coagula. That was banal to him by now. In fact, everything was. The great secrets of the universe were all so obvious! Plain! It was when they sank in that the mind reeled.
Those who keep their sanity after an encounter like that usually become successful, especially as mages or alchemists. After his success, many others went seeking the gods in their meetings, hoping to see what they really look like under the masks that they give them. Most didn’t see them. Gods find you, even if they don’t intend to.
This time, there are once again fourteen of them, sitting around the empty altar. They speak of the ineffable. You have come to the temple to listen, and maybe you’ll find the answer to whatever truth you are trying to find.
