“So Taborlin fell, but he did not despair. For he knew the name of the wind, and so the wind obeyed him. It bore him to the ground as gently as a puff of thistledown and set him on his feet as soft as a mother’s kiss.”
Wind’s fairly important in this book. I could argue that it’s even more important in WMF, but that detours us from our goal (Remember, the “continue reading” is to protect Kingkiller virgins from spoilers).
Why wind? Why mention the control of wind and even inversion of wind? What’s wind to do with alchemy?
During sublimation, a vapor escapes the mercury. The alchemist must capture that vapor and through solution and distillation turn it into water. If you looked at the Emerald Table, you’d see the fourth law: “The wind carried it in its womb, the Earth is the nurse thereof.” Maier thought this means that sulphur (the masculine) is carried inside Mercury (the feminine) as the raw goods of the work. In the middle of sublimation and distillation, we see Hermes flying through the air like wind. Here’s Zoroaster’s Cave:
Our stone in the beginning is called water; when the body is dissolved, Ayre or Wind; when it tends to consolidation, then it is named earth, and when it is perfect and fist it is called Fire.
They also called that mercurial mist the zephyr, and it often symbolizes the white stone of the albedo. The Alchemist by Ben Jonson refers to Sublet’s puffer, Face, as billowing the flames. “That’s his fire-drake,/ His lungs, his Zephyrus, he that puffes [sic] his coals [sic].”
Tuesday, December 7th I will be at Ozark Christian College speaking on Harry Potter and Christianity. Go to L13 at 7:00 pm for the lecture, or go 
Tears, laughter, fearful trembling and awkward silence all rambled out of me during my first viewing of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1. If you have not seen it, go see it – but if you have not read it, go read it… then see it.
