I remember exactly where I was when I made the decision.
It was at the top stacks in Duane Library, looking out the window over Edwards Parade.
I’m going to do it, but just how am I going to do it?
Each week we would meet with our Jesuit academic advisor to discuss topics in class, or review and papers we were writing. It was a time to get feedback on the current semester.
I didn’t plan it, I just kind of asked.
With such an interest how would one go about doing that?
My advisor didn’t miss a beat; it could have been the most mundane question asked of him.
If I was serious about studying it, I was to begin with alchemy, as that was the most recent and well-developed of it, and from there work my way backwards to the ancient world, eventually ending at Egypt.
As any conversation with a Jesuit involves a writing assignment, I was given two weeks to have a first draft on a research paper on alchemy.
I was told to explore the stacks in the Keating Hall library, the place where books go to be forgotten, the books nobody reads or even care if they exist anymore.
It took the staff ten minutes to find the key to open the door, and the lights took almost as long to warm up and come on.
It was there that I found them- shelves of books on alchemy.
My paper had a good start, and would still need a few more revisions, but with the new semester coming up some adjustments would need to be made.
Classes in philosophy, mythology, Latin, and Ancient Greek, along with some other Jesuits who I would be interested in talking to.
It would not be enough to academically learn what I was asking, as that relegated the subject to a curiosity, or a dead science. To command the Gods as they did, or at least compel them, understanding how they thought was the key.
Not just reading the translations from a modern perspective but being able to read them with the same or similar mindset as the time they were written.