The Third Rule of Alchemy
The apprentice kneeled in front of the table. The master sat in a nearby chair; a leather-bound book open on his lap.
A gold bar, a silver coin, and a lump of green copper ore, and a tiny iron bowl mounded with dirt were displayed on the table. These objects rested on an intricate, red and blue table cloth made of cotton.
The apprentice had been kneeling before the table for hours now, focused on his master’s last question, “Which of these should you want to be?” He wanted to get this right, to show his master that he was listening and learning everything his master taught. He hoped that if he could discern the lesson, the master would finally show him the real secrets.
“Master, I have an answer to your question.”
“So soon!” The alchemist said with a chuckle. “Well, then, tell me your answer. Which of these should you want to be?”
“At first, I thought it was the earth. ‘We are made of dust’ and so on. Shouldn’t I want to be what I am?”
“Hmm!”
“But then I considered, isn’t the gold most valuable, most prized, more rare than the others? Shouldn’t I want to be the best?”
“Go on.”
“The silver coin caught my eye next. Not only is it made of valuable stuff, but it is itself immediately useful. I could take it to any market in the world and trade it for other goods and services. I should want to be useful!”
“So silver then?”
The apprentice continued, “But the copper ore has the most potential of all the things. It has yet to be shaped and made, and in time, could be anything. I remember you told the story about how our minds can be either the old oaks or acorns. Opportunity and potential are created in the richest minds, so shouldn’t I want to be that?”
The alchemist smiled. He loved this boy and loved the rigor and discipline the boy brought to the practice.
“But I know you are sneaky and there is always a hidden lesson behind the obvious. Could I not be the table? The cloth? All those things? Perhaps this is intended to be the lesson from the Emerald Tablet, ‘As above, so below’?”
The apprentice looked at the alchemist expectantly. The alchemist tried and failed to hide his amusement. “It seems you have it all figured out then.” The alchemist returned to his reading.
The apprentice opened his mouth to speak, then turned back to the table and the objects to study them. A few minutes passed, then apprentice said, “I understand now. All of these things are made up of parts, just like we are made of parts. It’s the things we have in common that matter not the differences.”
“Are you guessing?”
“Yes…”
“So, let me ask again. Which of these things should you want to be?”
“I admit that I do not know.” His head sunk.
“Good. There is no shame in not knowing.” The alchemist closed his book, grunted as he rose, and walked to the table.
The alchemist waved his hands over the objects. “What makes any of these things better than the other? You listed several qualities and ways of measuring these things.”
He continued. “We are made of all these things and more. You envision yourself an alchemist, a scholar, a magician. But even when you arrive there, you will be more than those things and will go on to become more than what you are when you arrived.”
“My apprentice, I do not aspire to make you into myself, to transmute you from apprentice into an alchemist, because I cannot make you turn from one thing to the other and I cannot make you myself. I aspire to provoke you into transformation, to become whatever it is you will become. I say this because I have mastered the first and second rules of alchemy. Remember the first: You do not know what you want. The second: have no loyalty to your former self. To make you into myself would be to assume I know my own desires and yours. How can I possibly know what sort of thing you will be as an alchemist. How could you? And I know that who I have been is not who you will be. So it is with a master and an apprentice.”
The alchemist held up his thumb and two forefingers. “Learn then the third rule: Transform radically. Here you were tempted to be gold or silver or the table or this room. There,” the alchemist touched his apprentice’s heart with one finger, “you are tempted to be an alchemist, famous, powerful. You wish for things you know. Why did you not wish to be a dandelion? Why not the horror in a man’s heart? Why not the father of Enki?”
“But Master, those things were not on the table.”
“Yes.” The alchemist tapped the apprentice’s forehead. “Exactly.”
