Chapter 10 is here! In which Yelen & Yelena perform some experiments in Yelen’s alchemy tower, and Yelen makes some grisly confessions about his tyrannical past.
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Music Credits:
Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Intro/Outro: Quinn’s Song: The Dance Begins
Soundtrack: Morgana Rides, Redletter
Alchemy
I’m going to dig into alchemy and magic in As Below, So Above, but here you get a look at exoteric alchemy as it was practiced 200 years before our story is set.
Exoteric alchemy is essentially proto-chemistry; esoteric alchemy is a psychological-spiritual practice. They were often inextricably linked, and in As Below, So Above, the actual performance of the alchemical process is an external and internal one, and will also inform the structure of the whole book.
Yelen describes exoteric alchemy and its practical applications only. He wasn’t interested (as a man) in the spiritual transformation of the alchemical process.
This is highly ironic, as his physical transmutation results in a spiritual rebirth and development, and you can trace the esoteric stages of his growth and cyclical behaviours leading to eventual improvement through his backstory and through the novel itself.
This came about accidentally in this novel, and I decided from this that I wanted to delve into it more deliberately, so As Below, So Above was born – and one character [Armel] who appears right at the end, will be a bridge character between the two stories.
I also like the idea that magic is affected by planetary alignments like the tides are affected by the moon, and I’m looking forward to playing with the solar system and constellations and astrology of the world a bit more too.
In this book, none of this has much of a direct bearing on anything except to enrich the worldbuilding, and to set you up for some Easter Eggs in later stories where it might actually be IMPORTANT that the light of the Baleful Star renders some concoctions poisonous… So crossover readers can point at that and scream to themselves because they already know what’s going to happen. I haven’t planned this yet, but that’s the sort of thing I like to play with.
In the meantime… enjoy this episode!
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