The First Rule of Alchemy
A mirror in the desert. Framed in brass, reflecting the oasis and the desert beyond.
Nearby, a young man, the apprentice, kneels in the sand, while the elder, the alchemist, sits on a chair, which itself is on a gorgeous rug. The alchemist, smoking a long pipe and blue smoke rises directly upward. There is no wind. The sun has begun setting. The alchemist is not a chilly, silent type of master. He is gregarious, loves to tell stories, gives encouragement and praise to his student. He is easy and soft and only serious when he needs to be. The alchemist looks at the sky and smiles, tamps his pipe out onto the sand, stows it away for safekeeping. Then claps his hands and smiling turns to his apprentice. “Now you will learn the first rule of alchemy!”
The apprentice’s eyes widen, “The first rule? I’ve been learning alchemy from you for 2 years now, master!”
“Indeed, indeed! But I have not taught you the first rule. When I first took an apprentice, I thought that I could teach alchemy directly. I felt that my master had taken me on a roundabout journey through alchemy, but I knew I could do better. That the easiest way was to teach the first rule first. But I was mistaken. My first student heard the rule and left me shortly after. You see, the first rule is a doozy! A shocker! You’ll deny it at first, but you’ll see in time that it is so.” The apprentice nods, unsure what to say in response.
“Come here. Stand in this mirror! Look at you! You are a man! When you first came to me, I thought you might be too young, but I am glad you have stayed! Are you ready to hear the first rule?”
“Yes!”
“The first rule of alchemy is…” The alchemist pauses for effect. “You do not know what you want.”
The apprentice turns left then right, expecting some magic gust of wind, or the sky to darken.
“Seriously? That’s the first rule?”
The old man chuckles. “Yes! Shocking, isn’t it?”
“But…of course, I know what I want. I want to learn alchemy! That’s why I’m here. How could I not know what I want?” “Do you? Let me ask you this. Do you want to have your body wracked with pain? Do you want to be hunted by genies in the desert? Do you want to risk your mind with the uttering of sorcerous words?”
“No! Of course not!”
“Do you know that you need to suffer all those things if you want to learn alchemy?” The alchemist’s eyes are twinkling. “Well…I know there will be hardships.” “If you want to learn alchemy, you must also want all those pains. The very path to mastery requires you to suffer. But you say you do not want to suffer. So do you want to learn alchemy? Look at your own eyes in the mirror and let me ask you again.”
The apprentice looks at himself in the mirror, his master standing just behind him.
“Do you want to learn alchemy?”
“Yes!”
“No! What you want is to have the power of alchemy now, as you are, without the hardships. If you could have that power now with a snap of your fingers, you’d have it wouldn’t you? ”
The apprentice opens his mouth, then pauses. Tentatively, “I would. But it wouldn’t be alchemy would it?”
“Correct! Well done! Do you see how you can even stare yourself in your own eyes and tell yourself a lie? That you want to be an alchemist but what you really want is just the power of alchemy?”
The master smiles and continues. “So, either you want to learn alchemy without the hardships, which isn’t alchemy, or you don’t want to learn alchemy because of the hardships. This is the first rule: You do not know what you want!”
“What does that have to do with alchemy? That’s just psychology.”
The master claps his hands and laughs. “Yes! Very good! But is this first rule true just of you? Are you the only thing that doesn’t know what it wants? ”
“Well, no. Surely other people are the same way.”
“What else?”
”Well, dogs and other animals, maybe? Are you thinking of groups of people? Or a nation?”
“That’s a clever answer! What about the sand? Does the sand know what it wants? Hmm?”
The apprentice paused and searched around. He hated feeling like the answer was obvious but being unable to produce a reasonable response.
“The sand, the sky, you and me. None of us know what we want. We are constantly changing, and constantly ignoring that we do not know what we want. All things may change, but they either do not wish to go through the transformation, or they wish that the transformation was not the transformation. That rock, that sand, this sky. All things with desires that do not match the reality of transformation. This is the power of alchemy, to bring about change, even in the face of mistaken desire.”
