The Keys of Heaven

an unusual account

Substances: Trichocereus

A long time ago and far away, West of the Land of Green Ginger but East of Hy Brasil, North of Lyonesse but South of Ultima Thule, in the shadow of Tir Na Nog there lived the youngest of three brothers. He had no trade to inherit so he spent his life in quest of adventure through alchemy.

One day in his wanderings (with some companions whose tales will doubtless be told another time) he found a glass castle. The old guardian of the castle offered to sell him some plants. The old man assured him they were magic plants, called Saint Peter's Thistle by the inhabitants of Eldorado where they are grown for their strange and occult powers. Now our young hero was of the Old Ways but he respected all other sincere beliefs, except those of human sacrificers, Jehovah's Witnesses and Scientologists. So he bought the beautiful fleshy allies for a few ducats and set out for home.

When he got home he cut off a portion of one of the plants and weighed it. It was 13 apothecary's drachms in weight so he crushed it with a magical food-processing device with 26 drachms in weight of water. He boiled the mush and added 10 drops of oil of vitriol. After leaving it for half a candle-mark he boiled it again. While it was still scalding hot he strained it through a muslin shirt. Saint Peter's Fingernails appeared miraculously in the dry residue.

He then powdered 2 drachms of pure chalk and placed it on a glass plate. He put this in a sealed room with a drying daemon. He occasionally entered the room to add another small measure of the fluid to the chalk until it was all dry. He then powdered the magically charged plaster with a mortar and pestle. Then he took the rare foil made from the metal alchemists prepare from alum and made seven little packets from it. These he filled with all of the plaster and sealed them. Then he took a fine needle and perforated the foil to allow the spirits to escape.

He then purified himself by bathing and removing his beard.

He heated two heavy steel knives in a fire and filled a bottle with the fumes from the plaster. One of the packets burst into flame because the knives were too hot, a burnt libation. He inhaled the fumes of the other six packets and retained the fumes in his lungs until it could no longer be seen. This had taken him two-thirds of a candle-mark.

The hour-candle had barely melted down half a mark when he noticed a door where there had not been one before. Another half-mark and the door was fully open and he wandered into some strnge vaults he had never known were in his house before. The decorations of the caverns were in every style imaginable and some only barely comprehensible. Landscapes, portaits and abstract paintings all charged with meaning that barely eluded the touch of his reason. Four candle-marks after the first fumes he curled up in a warm corner of the caves and slept deeply. His dreams were beautiful and strange.

When he woke seven candle-marks later he was back in his own room feeling refreshed and profoundly cleansed in body and spirit.