What follows is a treatment of the first act of a theatrical play I wrote in the winter of 2022. The play was conceived in the tradition of a Hermetic dialogue. It is a language-laden staged expression. A production of the piece may be conceived as a simple reading to having realistic settings or minimal furnishing to represent various settings. It may also be conceived as a multi-media presentation.
The text is further conceived of as portraying a real event, not a symbolic representation of events. The main characters are polyglots; when the play begins, the characters speak in multiple languages (German, French, then English). This multilingualism was a mainstay of Renaissance Europe. The English versions of the German/French dialogue are written in brackets in the dialogue.
The dialogue is written in the style of early Middle English. I will publish the treatment of the second act and the epilogue in a separate post.
Characters
Count Michael Maier: composer, physician, author (52)
Monsieur René Descartes: mathematician, philosopher (24)
Elizabeth Stuart, Queen of Bohemia (24)
Frederick V, King of Bohemia (24)
A woman (also the narrator)
A Catholic priest (also the narrator)
Treatment of Act I
September 1620, Prague Castle Gardens
René, a young mercenary and mathematician in the service of the Catholic Duke Maximillian of Bavaria, has left said service and made his way across northern Germany to find a way into a gala held at Prague Castle in honor of the newly crowned Elizabeth Stuart, Queen of Bohemia. He knows that Count Michael Maier, the famed composer, and author of the most celebrated Atalanta Fugiens emblem book, would attend. René direly wants to discuss Maier’s work. The 50 fugues from the masterwork are heard throughout much of the act.
René has been pondering a geometric mathematical idea/model that had incessantly occupied his mind. But, he hasn’t been able to articulate it–until he reviewed Atalanta Fugiens a year ago. Although he was still at the precipice of putting to words his grand mathematical work, which he was loosely referring to as analytic geometry, he couldn’t capture the enthusiasm he felt as he poured over the mathematical ideas of the day. He sensed that the key to unlocking his thinking lay in that work of Maier’s celebrated emblemata, Atalanta Fugiens. He has come to Prague to meet the famed German master with the hope that he would glean what the Atalanta Fugiens’ secret was.
René also knows that the Catholic Duke he was serving was secretly preparing plans to attack King Fredrick V of Bohemia, who had just moved his court from Heidelberg to Prague. The battle was set to commence sometime in the winter. Although René trained much of his life to someday serve as a professional military officer, he was more interested in military engineering; He did not want to die in a senseless war…not when he was so close to a breakthrough in mathematics.
The play begins in the afternoon of a fall day in 1620 in the Royal Garden of Prague Castle. The castle gardens have many concrete benches and overhangs to sit on. While taking respite from the day-long gala being thrown in honor of Elizabeth Stuart, the new Queen of Bohemia, Count Michael Maier, the then-famed author and the renowned physician to royals, smokes his tobacco pipe and hums one of the melodies of Fugue 1 from Atalanta Fugiens.
Maier is reminded of words his father spoke to him when he was younger and, as such, enters a soliloquy (in standard American English) that establishes his father’s prediction of what would happen in Prague and throughout all of Bohemia. He and his father dreamed of a revolutionary different way of living that defied both the reformed Protestants AND the Catholics of the land–a new framework for living justly, based on a naturalist philosophy, a turning away from the stale Christianity that had gripped Europe coming out of the Dark Ages; a return to ancestral, archaic ways, guided by their ingenuity and fate in one another. He also reveals that he prays the young King will heed the word that Maier brings and must share this day during the celebration.
Though Maier gave up on the possibility of Prague as the alchemical and artistic capital of the future world and moved away from Prague some ten years ago, if the young king doesn’t show temperance and patience, he will be pulled into a battle, for which, no one will come to his aid. A trap was being set by the Catholic Church to completely eradicate Lutheranism from the German lands and ensure the dominance of the Holy Roman Catholic Emperor, Ferdinand. The dream of the archaic revival burgeoning in Prague that Maier, along with a long line of other master alchemists, and gushing forth artistic and technological innovations to advance the Great Work, guided by reason, would be dashed asunder.
René, accompanied by a young French woman from the gala, enters the gardens and spots Count Maier. In French, he explains to his friend that this is the man he is looking for, so he shoos her off playfully. René, who had been practicing his German, approaches Count Maier and greets him in German. But Maier quickly sees that the man is a Huguenot struggling with German, so Maier offers to speak with René in his mother tongue French. But Maier’s French is much worse than René’s German. Both men agree to engage in discussion in English.
The remainder of the play, except any soliloquy, is spoken in Early Middle English.
René introduces himself as a mathematician and a great fan of Count Maier’s work. René tells the aged man that he was also an amateur composer, having just composed a minor work for his teacher, Isaac Beeckman. Of course, it’s nothing compared to the masterwork Atalanta Fugiens represents, which is why he claims he sought Maier out–to discuss the multimedia work that had taken much of Europe by storm. René continues to win Maier’s good graces by discussing the ideas he had picked up from a group called Rosicrucians (which startles Maier). He had read the Fama Fraternitatis Rosae Crucis manifesto being distributed through Europe, declaring the existence of a secret brotherhood of alchemists and sages preparing to transform Europe's arts and sciences, political, and intellectual landscapes. René was fascinated by this mysterious brotherhood he had searched for across Europe for several years. He also mentions that no one knows who wrote the Fama Fraternitatis and gently, carefully implies that perhaps Count Maier was the author.
Rene: I have come to learn about the tenets of late Aristotelianism and the revived Stoic philosophy of the Greeks. But I am much more interested and inspired by Martin Luther’s Protestantism which is not for sale like the Catholic Church was. I want to move the world away from magical thinking and toward a more philosophical approach to life with Christianity still in place. Still, in matters of nature, politics, and economy,…we say that states should be guided by logic and reason, not pious religious revelatory authority.
Maier commends René. He is intrigued by René’s grasp of Maier’s previous publications and the implication that Maier may’ve been one of the unknown authors of the Fama Fraternitatis and so indulges René in discussion (with caution). Maier attempts to convince René that although his working philosophy is partially correct, what is missing from his formulation is the occulted chemical ideas of the ancients like the legendary hierophant Hermes Trismegistus, Pythagoras of Crato, the Divine Plato, Nagarjuna of India, the Taoist Wei Boyang, and many others.
The two men engage in dialogue on multiple matters. They begin with Maier’s assertion that chemistry and other approaches may be used to bend nature to benefit and heal mankind. But he states that the same chemical, Hermetic tradition, can be used to commute the essence of a person, the soul, to an ecstatic state of hyper-existence. Maier also posits that the Protestant Reformation was a sham, and until the specter of Christianity is lifted from Europe, the future of the Old and New World could only lead to death and destruction. René was on the right track but careening toward a horrible blackness that he couldn’t foresee–if magic is taken out of the equation, humanity falls apart, as it did in the olden times.
René is confused. First, he clarifies using Maier’s “chemistry” instead of “alchemy.” Maier confirms that he no longer uses “alchemy.” He only refers to his work as chemistry in medicine. René continues to lay out his confusion–he couldn’t tell if Count Maier was speaking against Protestantism, Catholicism, Magic, or god.
Maier tries to explain. He takes on the defense of the Rosicrucian brotherhood, of which Maier confirms that he is well aware. Like the Rosicrucians, Maier dedicated his life to the quest for the highest goal of alchemy: the philosophers’ stone. Maier explains that this mysterious substance could transmit lead into gold, heal the sick, and even reverse aging.
In both his printed works and his practice as a doctor, Maier had to strike an uneasy balance between the old-fashioned Galenic medicine of the universities and the new healing paradigm of Paracelsus, a great Swiss alchemist who pioneered the use of chemical medicines. Maier faced a theological dilemma because the Paracelsian practice was believed to involve supernatural forces. The Lutheran faith of his upbringing did not permit contact with the supernatural realms outside of the Church and its established sacraments.
Yet the Rosicrucians were not only alchemists — they also claimed to practice the Paracelsian arts of summoning angels and nature spirits. Consequently, anyone publicly defending their program — as Maier did in his Silentium post clamores not three years ago and Themis aurea not two years ago — risked persecution amid the rising sectarian hostilities of the Catholic Revival.
Maier: 't's not a catholic revival yond we needeth. The German people needeth an archaic revival.
Despite this risk, powerful men among the European royalty and nobility were willing to pay much money to obtain the secrets of alchemy, magic, and astrology. This esoteric knowledge was passed orally or written down in private manuscripts.
René interrupts and explains this point Maier has made is precisely what René wants to know about. In the work itself, Maier had all but made the point that the engravings in Atalanta Fugiens held secret meanings–meanings that, when decoded, could lead to revelations.
Maier warns René that secrets are kept secret for good reasons. René shouldn’t be so keen to discover the secrets but why they were occulted in the first place. Maier tells René the story of a man he knew once, long ago, that conferred this way of thinking onto him. Maiers explains that he met this storied man from Persia and known as Ibn Sina when Maier was 33 years of age. Like Maier, Ibn Sina was a polyglot. But, although the man couldn’t be much older than his 30s, he claimed to be more than 600 years old. Maier tells the tale of a dream Ibn Sina once had that he was trapped inside a hot room–a room inside a cabin designed with multiple stoves so that the cabin can act as a stove to protect the people inside from the freezing temperatures outside). While inside the stove cabin, Ibn Sina had three visions. Maier then tells the visions to René, and after each, the two engage in discourse to determine what the vision may’ve meant.
In the first vision Ibn Sina has, he is suddenly surrounded by ghosts and picked up in a whirlwind that throws him into a Catholic Church. Ibn Sina was greeted by a man he knew well from his youth inside the church. The man then gives Ibn Sina an unusual melon, explaining that it comes from another land. After eating this melon, Ibn Sina finds himself slowly hunching forward and remaining completely bent at the hips while standing. Not being able to stand, he utters some words in Farsi, praying to Zoroaster to relieve him of whatever evil it was causing this experience he was having when suddenly, the church, his friend, the ghosts, and his hunch disappear. Ibn Sina sits still for a full hour. Then, he falls into a deep sleep.
René becomes still and discusses the meaning of the vision. In the vision, Ibn Sina takes the mysterious melon from a trusted friend, but the melon isn’t a melon. It was an evil that caused Ibn Sina great pain and discomfort. Both men conclude the basis of the Gnostic/Rosicrucian principle of a demiurge, which René thinks of as an evil demon.
Maier awaits to see if René will conclude that the Abrahamic god may be the demon discussed. He asks René why René may speculate the vision takes place in a Catholic church. But René avoids the finer point, almost out of fear. He encourages Maier to tell what the second vision was.
In the second vision, Maier explains that Ibn Sina was awakened by an astoundingly loud, thunderous clap from the deep sleep he fell into. As he rises, he sees that his bedroom is filled with bejeweled red, green, and blue sparks. Ibn Sina is mesmerized by the sparks glistening in his room. But he fears the thunderous clap that awakened him. While surrounded by these sparks, Ibn Sina calms his mind and thinks of his fear as a sequence of events that leads up to his fear manifesting in shock or terror. By breaking his fear into components, he can analyze the matter, which calms his anticipation of another clap. Calm and delighted, Ibn Sina falls asleep again.
René becomes still again, and the men discuss the meaning of the vision. René is confused. Maier explains that the sparks that appeared in the room Ibn Sina was sleeping in (in the vision) represented the idea that the divine has left pieces of themselves within us, that the spark of the divine is inside our mind and can be accessed in dream states. But Maier counters with his interpretation that a revelatory god isn’t necessary to save us from our fears. We can solve our problems by analyzing them through induction or deduction of empirical evidence.
René implores Maier to continue onto the final vision, but Maier seems distracted. He won’t tell René why his mind is heavy. So, René cleverly convinces the master to get his mind off of the matter by telling Ibn Sina’s final vision.
In the final vision, Maier explains that Ibn Sina told him he found himself in a room with a table. On the table were two books, a Farsi-to-Arabic dictionary and a book of poems by Shams-ud-din Muhammad Hafiz. Ibn Sina opens the book of poetry when suddenly, he notices another man in the room. He can’t make out the man’s features, and the two don’t communicate. But Maier is unusually comfortable with the presence of this mysterious man. Ibn Sina reads the book, and the first sentence he utters in Farsi is, “Which way should I go in life?”
René is most enthused at this part of the vision, as he had been asking these questions, searching for truths in life.
Ibn Sina then leafs through the copper-plated pages of the book of poetry to find an answer to the question. But the remaining pages are filled with geometric shapes and what appear to be notations for exploring the stars, plants, medicine, and designs for fascinating devices. Then, as suddenly as they appeared, the book and the mysterious man disappeared. But Ibn Sina doesn’t awaken. He seems to remain in this dream and can’t tell if he is still dreaming or awakened from the ecstatic vision. And so, while still dreaming, Ibn Sina begins to analyze and interpret the dream he is still in.
In the process, he awakens. Ibn Sina becomes further entranced as he now believes that he was dreaming, that he was dreaming, that he was dreaming.
René becomes still. He now clearly understood what the idea was formulating in his mind. Both men conclude that the third vision must convey that everything must be questioned, including the existence and matter itself. Excited, René proclaims that the revelation he had been wrestling with for the past months was about more than the principles of analytic geometry. It was about the application of a scientific method to natural studies and philosophy René, now in his ecstatic state, claims three conclusions: 1) matter and form are not separate, 2) the rejection of divinity as an explanation for anything, 3) It’s only through the comingling of poetry (art), science, and philosophy that humankind will find salvation.
But René becomes perplexed suddenly. He inquires of Maier the following: Ibn Sina’s visions implied that not only must all institutions be questioned and methodically investigated, but even the self must also be questioned. After all, if even God may not be a god, are people real? Is the soul real?
Maier conveys one final story to René. The story of the floating man. He asks René to imagine an adult man who appears, floating in space. His limbs are stretched out, so they can’t touch each other. He is blindfolded, his ears are covered–he is completely deprived of all senses. He floats without seeing, hearing, tasting, feeling, or smelling anything. He has no experience with any objects. René confirms that he is imagining such a man. Maier then asks:
Maier: Is the sir acknown of his existence?
René is astounded and even further confused. After clarifying questions, Maier explains that Ibn Sina answered “yes.” The man in the experiment can affirm his existence simply by understanding that he can affirm anything. Because he thinks he exists.
In a monologue, Maier discusses ideas such as
Reason and rationalism
Life could be but a dream
The existence of a concept akin to what we refer to as god (Ontology)
The dilemma of dualism and what the ancient Vedic hymns refer to as Advaita
The monologue concludes with this attestation: despite these seemingly rational conclusions, this marvelous new science of doubting, falsifying, and breaking ideas into their parts for analysis and induction …still came to Ibn Sina in a magical, visionary, and divine experience!
René is incensed, partly because he finds that his enthusiasms of philosophical thought were just unaccounted-for language that a 600-year-old man had already thought, but partly because he argues Maier cannot take a position. To make progress, René contends that mankind must avoid focusing on divinity and recognize that our will is the will of the divine, and as such, we should pursue logic and reason as our guiding light; abandon the divine by becoming one with it.
Maier takes offense to René’s assertions and explains to the young mathematician how his chemical, magical, paganic, ancient ways are trying to do exactly what René was demanding. He begins by discussing a few well-known magical concepts and how they can be explained by natural means:
The Oracle of Delphi (gases from the ground cause the woman to hallucinate)
The Eleusinian Mystery (the use of mind-altering plants to induce visions of the divine)
But throughout these explanations, he is distracted by the heaviness of his mind. To desolate the exchange, René implores Maier to speak his mind.
Maier shares the story of Fredrick and Elizabeth’s union, their interest in saving Europe from the grip of Catholicism and Protestantism by establishing Prague as the world’s capital of alchemical and magical exploration–a Bohemia full of artistic, creative rhapsody in pursuit of serving the true nature of existence. However, he tells René that he was recently visited by the mysterious Ibn Sina, who foretold a coming battle where Fredrick and Elizabeth’s dreams of an alchemical kingdom to turn the world into a paradise once more would be thrashed.
Maier had accepted the King’s invitation to attend the Queen’s gala only if he could privately talk with Fredrick about a matter of great importance. Maier, also wants this alchemical vision to come to fruition and, as such, wants to convince Fredrick not to fall for the trap being set that would ensure his defeat at the upcoming battle, deposing him of the Bohemian throne. If Prague is lost, so will the past decade of artistic and technical flourish throughout Bohemia. Maier gave up many years ago, so he and his wife moved away from Prague. But what he learned from Martin Luther, the corruption he saw that hid away in the churches of Europe, implored him to take this one last action by attempting to subvert the ensuing battle for Bohemia being beckoned for by Ferdinand, the Holy Roman Catholic Emperor as well as King James of England.
The act crescendos to an exchange wherein Maier exclaims to Descartes that the King of England plans on betraying his daughter, the Queen of Bohemia. Although all expect England to come to the aid of Bohemia if the Catholic/Protestant wars resume, thanks to his communication channels, Maier has learned that King James would rather keep the peace than come to the aid of his daughter.
Click here for the treatment of Act II and the Epilogue.