For treatment of Act I, click here…
Treatment of Act II and Epilogue
The evening of Act I, September 1620, Prague Castle Library
Maier agrees to allow René to accompany him in the library of Prague Castle that evening, where the German master would secretly rendezvous with King Fredrick and Queen Elizabeth. As the day-long Gala continues and the music from the court players is heard in the distance, Frederick and Elizabeth enter the library and immediately discover René, whom Maier passes off cleverly as his secretary and most trusted associate.
Maier explains that Ferdinand II, the Holy Roman Emperor, and the Germanic Catholic League under Maximilian, Elector of Bavaria (for whom René was technically still in service), as well as Elizabeth’s father, James the VI, the King of England, were going to betray the young king and queen who were trying to build Prague as the capital of a new alchemical kingdom. Elizabeth is insulted by the idea that her father would not come to defend her queendom, but Maier convinces her that it is, in fact, what the plan is.
René confirms the plot by outing himself to all as a mercenary for Maximilian. But he assures them all that he had deserted their forces and that the reason he was there in Prague with Count Maier was to warn Fredrick of the betrayal.
Although Maier is betrayed himself, he is taken by Frederick, who waxes poetic and intellectual about the horrors of Catholicism and Protestantism. He insists that a victory at the oncoming battle would be the only way that their newly founded kingdom in Prague could survive, and as such, they must prevail. It was only that way that the Rosicrucian Enlightenment would take hold in Europe. Maier is infuriated because he is unsuccessful.
Frederick and Elizabeth return to the gala, dismayed but determined. René and Maier remain behind in the library. Michael recognizes that he has failed in his last effort to save the dream of a magical, artistically driven (as opposed to divinely) kingdom and that Ibn Sina’s warning never to lose one’s soul was well in the process of already being ignored. René, in attempting to console him, enrages him further. Maier is incensed that he was fooled into believing René is merely a budding mathematician and cursed himself for letting his age and vanity get the better of him. The two argue, Maier, taking the position that the future of Europe will be soulless if the Catholic Church prevails. René, a Catholic himself, begins to take offense, ironically, and the argument turns into a fight initiated by Maier.
The fight ends when René accidentally throws Maier out of the library window, to his presumable death. René escapes the castle in fear and horror.
Epilogue
February 1650, Stockholm, guest bedroom of French Ambassador Chanut
As the set is reformed, a narrator (played by the woman who plays the Queen of Bohemia) explains that although the nearly sixty feet fall that Maier took that evening should have killed him, he survived the ordeal with serious injuries because Maier landed in a large pile of manure. Two years later, Maier would ultimately die from an internal injury (caused by the fall) which brought on a chronic illness that killed him.
The narrator then tells the story of what René did with what he learned from Maier that fateful evening and how he turned the ideas–into his own. She explains that some two months after Maier’s fall from the library window, Maier and his wife moved to London. The Battle of White Mountain destroyed what became known as the Bohemian Revolt causing Fredrick and Elizabeth to flee to Fredrick’s uncle, Prince Maurice Stadtholder of the Dutch Republic, for refuge. The two dreamers spent the rest of their lives in exile in the Netherlands.
The Battle of White Mountain began what is today known as the 30 years war which ended the lives of five to eight million people across central Europe (not only from battle, but from the ensuing famine, disease, etc.) and gave the Catholic Church an even stronger stranglehold on the people, commerce, and politics of the world. Witchhunts quickly became commonplace, not six years after the evening René and Maier met. The Protestants were persecuted for a decade, jailed, and tortured. Other Christian inquisitions, such as the Roman Inquisition, the French Wars of Religion, the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre, and the missional propaganda work by the Catholic Revival, were given even more credence by the uneducated, undernourished, and helpless masses. Galileo Galilei was murdered under the Roman Inquisition, for example, in 1633. There was the Inquisition of Venice which wasn’t abolished until 1806, and the Portuguese Inquisition not abolished until 1821. The last execution of the Inquisition was in Spain in 1826. It was the execution by garroting of a school teacher named Cayetano Ripoll for purportedly teaching Deism in school.
The narrator continues to explain that, ultimately, the European enlightenment was waylaid by the new sciences and technologies it engendered over the coming centuries through what became known as the American Revolution and the Industrial Revolution. The dreams of spiritual science were shattered. Alchemy was now Chemistry–just like Maier wanted.
René became a venerated philosopher and lived a good life with two servants, albeit he never took a wife. He did bear a daughter. René died of a strange respiratory infection in 1650 while in residence with the French Ambassador Chanut, in Stockholm.
The narrator explains that there is a legend that is told in hallowed libraries and universities and churches across the world. The legend was that on his deathbed, René was visited by a Catholic priest…
We transition to the bedroom of the French ambassador. René, now the same age that Maier was when first the two met, lies in bed, ill as can be. A thunderous clap is heard, followed directly by a knock at the bedroom door, which startles, then frightens René. In a twilight state, René proclaims that he could not tell if he was awake or asleep. A Catholic priest with a distinctly Persian accent comes into the room and consoles René to rest again. For the remainder of the epilogue, the priest’s face is not seen by the audience.
When René calms down, the priest takes out what appears to be a wand with two metal snakes wrapped around it. The priest then tells René that he knows that René took nearly all of the ideas Maier had conveyed to him, the learnings from the man named Ibn Sina, and claimed them as his own. During the exchange, the priest hovers the wand over René, and René notices a distinct odor coming from the tip of the wand, where the two snake heads meet.
The priest then continues to comfort the frightened René because René seems to be losing his ability to speak or move. But he is still awake and listening to the priest who condemns him for his lack of discretion with the secrets he had learned, for the age of doubt and atheism that his new “marvelous science” would bestow onto man, turning all of humanity into the very automatons of the first vision Ibn Sina had experienced; ultimately leading to the creation of the greatest weapon known to even the ancient gods of the Greeks, Egyptians, and Mesopotamians...one powered by light that would murder millions on millions of people in the future. He had foreseen it.
René dies, in terror. The Catholic priest then unfurls all of his garbs and reveals the clothing of a modern, well-dressed man of the 21st century. The female narrator joins him, and together, they explain that the exchange between Maier and Descartes that came before the Battle of the White Mountain didn’t really occur. Although René Descartes and Michael Maier, as well as Frederick and Elizabeth, were real historical figures, and the ideas and events portrayed were nearly entirely accurate, there is no evidence that the two men ever met. But the contribution that the ancient world of magic and alchemy that Maier represented should not be thought of lightly or forgotten as merely a historical step toward the future. Ibn Sina’s warning to be discrete and to occult the truth until initiates are ready must be adhered to once again. Because entire worlds can be destroyed and created in just one afternoon.