{"id":4899,"date":"2013-08-09T21:08:27","date_gmt":"2013-08-10T04:08:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/?p=4899"},"modified":"2016-04-07T15:52:51","modified_gmt":"2016-04-07T22:52:51","slug":"hermetic-mysteries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/?p=4899","title":{"rendered":"Hermetic Mysteries"},"content":{"rendered":"

I<\/span>t\u2019s impure. It\u2019s an impure situation. There\u2019s this Department of Esoteric Studies, and once upon a time the cruel demiurge would vomit up cash and grants and all manner of free sodas to keep it in operation, only, now . . . it doesn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t take up the slack,\u201d says Mr. Gulley. \u201cI don\u2019t mingle my gold with demiurge business.\u201d<\/p>\n

He\u2019s afraid of the demiurge getting under his skin.<\/p>\n

It was corrupted. The whole academic environment was corrupted, you understand? Money had come in and taken it down. Money had turned it from this thing where kids get to grow up and become better, become heroes, become people who fight off wolves, into this thing where a teacher can\u2019t afford to walk out across the demiurge pits and go to the grocery and buy cup ramen and poison for their students any longer.<\/p>\n

The lightbulb god is underfunded and goes out.<\/p>\n

The third and seventeenth hermetic mysteries are lost.<\/p>\n

And the final paperwork comes in, you know. The thing that says: that\u2019s it. You\u2019re out. It\u2019s all done. Corrupted. Tarnished.<\/p>\n

And here was the miracle. Here was the alchemical mystery, the magic ladder, the holy tree. Thatcould stick that paperwork in the middle of that diagram, and hold it under the light of Saturn, and purify those flaws away, and turn that final paperwork into funding.<\/p>\n

The aqua regia was effective.<\/p>\n

The impurity was cleansed from stuff, and now there is funding, bright and gold.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut where does it come from?\u201d people ask, like there\u2019s an answer. Like funding comes from somewhere. But here\u2019s the secret. Here\u2019s the alchemy. Here\u2019s the mystery. Funding\u2019s like gold, like purity, like perfection.<\/p>\n

It doesn\u2019t come from somewhere.<\/p>\n

It is a thing that arises. It is a manifestation of the will; of hope; of dreams; of choice.<\/p>\n

That and the light of Saturn, of course, and the aqua regia, and the proper diagrams, which is why, if you\u2019re still undecided on your career path, Esoteric Studies is the definite and proper choice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

t\u2019s impure. It\u2019s an impure situation. There\u2019s this Department of Esoteric Studies, and once upon a time the cruel demiurge would vomit up cash and grants and all manner of free sodas to keep it in operation, only, now . . . it doesn\u2019t. \u201cI can\u2019t take up the slack,\u201d says Mr. Gulley. \u201cI don\u2019t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4900,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"series":[48],"class_list":["post-4899","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-strange-encounters","series-strange-encounters"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/Strange-Encounter-2.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4899","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4899"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4899\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6197,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4899\/revisions\/6197"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4900"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4899"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fseries&post=4899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}