Description

The Storyteller is often associated with Mercury. As the scribe of the heavens, Mercury is the god of language. Often depicted as a jester, he entertains the gods with his quick wit, sharp tongue and slight of hand. As the messenger between worlds, one can understand how Mercury is the original storyteller, as he reports what he sees above to the below, and what he sees below to the above, creating a bridge between the seen and unseen through the power of the Word.

This is why the throat chakra is associated with this particular step of alchemy.

When a story is told, a new world is formed in the precious space of the imagination. But it is not the words alone that have the power to form new worlds, it is the spirit behind them… This spirit behind the sacred word is what is referred to as the “logos”.

Before a story can be told, an event must occur that gives rise to it. The event itself is like the putrefaction stage of Fermentation, in that any compelling story deals with some level of suffering. Something has to die in order for the subject to live, whether literally or metaphorically.

It is in the telling of the story that the greater truth, meaning and magic of it comes alive. It is the storyteller that has the gift to embody the Spirit of the story, so that whoever may be listening can find themselves woven into it as if it is the story is crafted just for them in this moment…

By allowing the material, or in this case, the event, to die, it naturally transforms until suddenly a rainbow appears out of the rotting material. This rainbow is akin to the iridescent film one finds atop a puddle of rainwater in a parking lot. One may see a rainbow in unlikely places, but Fermentation invites us to never forget that this rainbow derives from long gone creatures that roamed the earth millions of years ago, each undoubtedly with a story to tell…

This rainbow effect is what the alchemists refer to as the “Peacock’s Tail”.

In this way, the phenomenon of the alchemical Peacock’s Tail symbolizes a timeless story from which all great stories stem from, and that is the story of transformation itself.