Mercurius, or, the marriage of heaven and earth

1 Calcination. 2 Solution. 3 Separation. 4 Conjunction. 5 Putrefaction. 6 Congelation. 7 Sublimation. 8 Projection

'In 1952 a country clergyman called Smith begins his tortuous quest for the Holy Grail of alchemy--the Philosophers' Stone which transmutes base metal to gold and confers immortality. As he pits himself against the bizarre perils of the Great Work, it becomes clear that his arcane transformations are as much spiritual as chemical....Thirty years later, Eileen comes to live in Smith's vicarage. In the medieval cellar she unearths a hidden manuscript and begins to read of secret fire and mysterious prime matter, a green lion and a raven's head, a fatal conjunction of king and queen, a descent into Blackness and putrefaction....In separate but interwoven accounts, Smith and Eileen strive towards the one thing necessary for the Work's success--the great Secret guarded by the paradoxical Mercurius....'

Hardcover