glands and pave the way for what will come hence. Like water, so with milk. Likewise clarified butter. Each element denser than the one before, each held for longer, building patience and reserve in the bearers, testing stamina, for the act to which they are progressing will brookno weakness, yield to no emotion.
The couple have perfected their systems, are utterly indifferent to the heaviness in their perineums. Now comes the last step, the supreme test of the bodies to be able to withstand what is to follow, a rite of the adepts. It is then that the king brings out a small container from which he pours two or three spoonfuls of purified quicksilver into a shallow dish. Mercury, that strangest of metals, element of the gods, catalyst of transmutation. Heavy in its fluidity, protean in its sturdiness. Like how the mind is, or ought to be. For the first time, as the metal is breathed in, globes of sweat appear on their skins, one pale, the other coppery. The granule of heat born at the bottom of the spine has set the solar plexus alight. Soon the blazing fire is sent slithering by this fierce agent to every extremity of the body, heat is spreading in widening circles, temperatures are on the rise, feet and the mind baking alike in the kiln of flesh. Desire possesses them completely without their in the least possessing it. The edge of the world as also its navel as also the seed from which it sprouted into being, the square brick altar as also the sacred fire kindling within as also the sacrificial or symbolic offerings poured into it, so many signs winding into each other to make up the touching, desiring bodies.
A thousand sighs, a hundred peakings with just the kingâs fingers on the frets of the queenâs flesh that glint here and there in her skin as light from the moon shifts across her body. On and on he plays her like a
vÄ«nÄ
, her music streaming in a delicate symphony of sounds,
ragas
that know no crescendo, no culmination.
At last the vulva surrounds the phallus, engulfs it. Like dark space engulfing matter, like a lake possessing a mountainâs image, like night covering the gloss of the world. Like a wedge his torso locks into her wet angular thighs.
Conjoined, moist, glistening bodies that have become their own altars, their own pious mandalas with tiers descending one inside the other, home to all peaceful and wrathful deities dancing in the concentric arcs of the mind, pointing within at the pure land, a blueluminous tiny square space in the heart of which shines the
Vajra
, the indestructible, all destroying mace of Indra, which is also the thunderbolt which is also the forever glittering diamond of bliss and emptiness and oneness. Symbols here are useless, loosening away from the thing itself, they show their infirmity, reflecting and cancelling out one another in their own hall of mirrors. Device, word, knowledge finally merge together on this, the third night of the supreme coitus, to help the participants riding the wheel of great bliss,
Cakrasamvara
, to transcend the wheel of time,
KÄlacakra
, itself.
When they separate, when a new dawn breaks, when the king leaves the queenâs bed, the two have exhausted the entire spectrum of desire within themselves. Never will they come together again like this, never will the flame of longing flicker in the body of one for the other with such intensity. But is it desire alone that has been exhausted? Or memories too? If not completely, then in some measure the past has begun to disintegrate. A slight gap has opened that will widen and be filled anew. Different passions will arise and grow and in time repaint the mindâs canvas, for life itself has not ceased yet. Whereas the queen will be pulled by the boardâs lure, the magic of its shifting currents, the king will put his strange liquid metal to new, unbelievable uses, most significantly to the prototype of the flying machine lying discarded in some corner shed of the palace.
At
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