TAVOLA SMERALDINA

The fiery tongues of a thousand suns dance on my emerald-coloured face.
(from the book Hermetic Gold. Apocryphal Stanzas of the Stellar Lighthouse)

Long, long ago…
As those who remember say.
As those who have reported say.
In the night of time, among the shadows of forgetfulness…

Following its final victory in the third and last universal war against machines, the human race (or at least what was left of it) revived among other things the necessary practice of exploring space. And it was in this context, to further the exploration of the shining abysses of time and space – which never ceased to ambush desire and its inseparable companion, imagination – that the Tabula Smaragdina initiative was launched: to constitute an archive aimed at expanding cosmic consciousness and conscience.

Nevertheless, the dogma that had triumphed (“No more machines!”) prohibited the use of any kind of mechanical intelligence – whether used to amplify or even to simulate the abilities of living creatures and their biological structures – relegating them to merely auxiliary and prosthetic roles. As a result, a race of golems was generated from seeds of mud mixed with knotted clusters of arcane words evoking the unnameable names of a primigenial God. And so it came about that this progeny of the word and the immortal body came to constitute a legion… a small legion which, scattered across the resplendent cosmic flux, from time immemorial hunts and inspects, records and reads the pages of reality. As the eyes and ears of humanity, the golems have continued to preserve and divulge information and reports down to the present day. Their input is an integral part of the patrimony of the Tabula Smaragdina, whose text today constitutes the map and weave of Allness.

What follows here is an extract of the reports by Thaddaeus the golem – also known as The Squinter, although the explanation of this appellation has been lost somewhere among the nebulae – one of the wiser voyagers of the vast cosmic reaches.

TAVOLA SMERALDINA
by Claudio Romo
Translation by David Haughton
Hardcover, 60 pages, 195x250 mm
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ISBN:9788857609065