mercurius the marriage of heaven and earth

His usual hobby-horses, such as structuralist anthropology and Fortean phenomena, are much in evidence, as is his penetrating, common (and uncommon) sense mind. Harpur himself interjects only occasionally, with footnotes and occasional, more extensive endnotes, elucidating particular points. Both jump from philosophical and psychological speculation on the alchemical opus to their everyday relationship with the village and the local environment. Eileen’s manuscript is a combination of Smith’s diary, together with her own. Echoes of disaster and nefarious intrigue haunt Smith’s legacy, still felt by some residents of the village, and suffused through the buildings and landscape of its rural locale. Her hunger for gnostic insight leads her to start piecing together Smith’s experiments-including a debatably successful attempt at the Great Work-and his particular take on the alchemical quest. Here, it seems, she discovered the alchemical diary of the town’s vicar in the 1950s, a certain “John Smith”. Having broken off their relationship suddenly, riven by spiritual dislocation, Eileen had fled to a run-down vicarage in a small West Country village. The premise is that an ex-lover of Harpur’s left a manuscript on his London doorstep while he was out. Well, imagine my delight in discovering that Harpur’s novel was not only a warmly absorbing read, a gripping narrative peppered with crisply evocative images and deeply engaging characters it is also a masterful blend of fiction and non-fiction. I guess my attention is just too occupied by rooting for “information” and inspiration in non-fiction. I call my lack of interest in fiction “mysterious”, because whenever I get round to a novel, I invariably love it.

I knew that Patrick Harpur, author of two of my favourite books ( Daimonic Reality and The Philosopher’s Secret Fire) had also done “a novel”, but as ever my mysterious lack of interest in reading fiction seemed destined to leave it in the shade. I never got round to Colin Wilson’s fiction.

Mercurius the marriage of heaven and earth