Jean-Marie Blas De Robles - Where Tigers Are at Home

“Among those nations that have granted divine rights to sentient creatures I see none more excusable than those who worshipped the winds; they are invisible, like the grand master of the universe, & their source is unknown, like that of the deity. We should, therefore, not be surprised if the winds have been worshipped by the majority of nations as terrible & unfathomable forces, as marvelous workers of the storms & of the calm of the world & as the masters of nature; you will know what Petronius said: primus in orbe Deos fecit timor … 2The Phoenicians, as vouched for by Eusebius, who gives an account of the theology of these nations, dedicated a temple to the winds. The Persians followed their example: Sacrificant persæ , Herodotus says, soli & lunae & telluri & aquæ & ventis . 3Strabo confirms that in almost the same words.

“The Greeks imitated one or the other of the nations I have just cited. When Greece was threatened by the expedition of Xerxes, they consulted the oracle at Delphi, who replied that they needed to make the winds favorable to them to get their aid, so they made sacrifice on an altar dedicated to them & Xerxes’s fleet was scattered by a furious storm. Plato, in the Phaedrus , reports that in his day there was an altar consecrated to the wind Boreas in Athens. And Pausanias tells us that there was an altar at Sycion for the sacrifices that were made to soothe the anger of the winds.

“The Romans fell into the same dreams, according to Virgil they sacrificed a black sheep to the winter winds & a white one to the Zephyrs. And the Emperor Augustus, despite his enlightened outlook, being in Gallia Narbonensis & dismayed at the violence of the Circius wind, which is still called the wind of Cers in Narbonne & which blew down houses & the biggest trees & yet made the air marvelously salubrious, made a vow to consecrate a temple to it & did indeed build it. It is Seneca who tells us that in his Naturales Quaestiones .

“Finally the Scythians, according to Lucian, swore by the wind & by their sword, which they thus recognized as their god.

“And man, who has always been regarded as a microcosm, that is, as a small world, has his winds like the great world. And these winds, in the three regions of our body as if in three different climates, set off tempests and storms when they are too abundant & too swift, & give refreshment to the blood, to our animal spirits & to our solid parts, & health to our whole body when they are gentle and regular in their movements; but it only takes a pressing abundance of these enclosed winds to create an incurable colic, a windy dropsy or a knotting of the bowels, all of which are fatal ailments. The Egyptians, therefore, awarded divine status to these winds of the small world as the originators of sickness & health in the human body. And Job seems to confirm their view when he says, O remember my life is wind … However, they prefer the fart to all the other winds of this small world, perhaps because it is the cleanest of all or because it makes a loud noise as it escapes from its prison, thus imitating the sound of thunder & this meant that it could be regarded by that nation as a small Jupiter the Thunderer who deserved their worship.

“Let us, however, thank the Lord for rescuing us from all these aberrations by the light of faith; whatever the power we admire in these natural agencies to do us good or ill, let us regard them solely as steps on a mysterious ladder by which we must ascend to the adoration of the Creator who afflicts or favors us by the ministrations of the greatest or least of his creatures, following the unfathomable commands of His providence.”

Christina of Sweden was delighted with this learned dissertation. She promised my master her support in maintaining & enhancing his museum, then left. My master was exhausted, but pleased to have withstood this little storm so well; he slept solidly for eight hours, something that hadn’t happened for a long time.

Kircher had acquitted himself well & returned to his studies without delay. He continued to be inundated by the wave of celebrity unleashed by the publication of Œdipus Ægyptiacus , with the result that there were not enough hours in the day for him to reply to all the questions & honors that came flooding in from all over the world. It was during this period, if I remember rightly, that a certain Marcus, a native of Prague, paid tribute by sending him a manuscript that was extremely rare but indecipherable, since it was written in a language that was entirely made up. Athanasius recognized it as the missing part of the Opus Tertium by the philosopher Roger Bacon; he put off the translation until later &, unfortunately, never found the opportunity to complete it.

The next year, 1656, flew by like a dream. There was nothing to disturb my master’s good humor, apart from the most disquieting rumors from the Farnese palace. Christina was living in grand style, with no regard for Roman sensitivities, & this set the tongues wagging. The sole woman among the hundred or so men of which her court consisted, she threw herself unreservedly into any fancy her imagination suggested. On her orders, the fig leaves had been removed from the statues in her palace, the pictures lent her by the Pope — all with devout or instructive subjects — had been replaced by mythological scenes more fitting for a brothel than the residence of a new convert, & her courtiers did not hesitate, to the despair of the majordomo Giandemaria, to strip bare the palace of the unfortunate Duke of Parma, even removing the trimmings from chairs & brocade curtains to sell to wealthy commoners in the city. Cardinal Colonna had become so infatuated with the young Queen that he had to be sent to his house in the country & a young nun, to whom she had taken such a fancy she wanted to remove her from Our Lord’s service, had to change convents!

It was at this time that my master caught a stomach chill, from having eaten too much fruit, as he thought, during Lent. This indisposition was unfortunate, Christina having invited us, along with various other ecclesiastics, to a concert she had arranged as a sign of contrition. Having, since the early morning, tried all known remedies with no improvement, Kircher was in despair. Fortunately, just as he was coming to a decision to decline such a prestigious invitation, my master remembered a vial he had recently been sent by a missionary in Brazil, Father Yves d’Évreux. This vial, the Jesuit had said in his letter, contained a sovereign powder for all ailments that, in addition, helped to restore the vigor of a mind exhausted by study; he had, he said, often observed its effects both on the Tupinamba Indians, from whom he had obtained it, & on himself. As far as he had been able to ascertain, this remedy came from a certain liana they called Guaraná ; it was mixed with rye flour, the sole purpose of which was to make it into little balls that were easier to swallow.

In this dire situation, Kircher did not hesitate for one moment; following Father d’Évreux’s instructions to the letter, he ate one of the pastilles I made up for him with a little holy water. And where all the secrets of our pharmacopoeia had failed, the savages’ medicine produced a miraculous result: less than an hour after he had taken it, my master felt better. His stomachache and the fluxion disappeared, the color returned to his cheeks & he found he was humming a cheerful tune. He felt he had recovered not only his health but also the energy & sharpness of mind of his younger days. There was never anything so surprising as this metamorphosis & we were grateful to the Indians for the gift of this providential cure from so far away.

Kircher was making jokes all the way to the Farnese palace. His good humor was so infectious that we both fell about laughing several times at trifles that weren’t really that funny.