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Iggy the Dwarf about eleven thousand words 205-270 Milan St. Toronto, ON (416) 928-1231 bradramseytoronto@gmail.com MISCELLENNI by Iggy the Dwarf

R a m s e y | A N O N T O L O G Y O F S H A P E S H I F T E R S | P a g e | ii THE ISOLATE 1. THE BEGINNING Linnaeorum scriptorum ‘Exterior Homo’ nec hominem in familia mamaliam nec genitus hominium in veritate, sed in nostris temporibus, illis homines in mundi sciantur in generale homenes esse.1 You might laugh or might simply say that I am so very weak. You might even feel sorry for me. Regardless, if you feel sorry for me, or cast the myriad darts and wound me as you come to think of me as being too weak to resist the temptation to laugh at; or you simply ignore me; or you think of me as being somehow hilarious, in that you consider me to be a laughingstock: nevertheless, it is not without entire ignorance in 1 Linnaeus’s ‘External Man’ is neither a human being in the mammalian family nor a true offspring of humans, but in our times, those people in the world are known to be people in general.

R a m s e y | A N O N T O L O G Y O F S H A P E S H I F T E R S | P a g e | iii that I have rather valid ideas about my faults, just as well as you might come to have your own ideas about my faults which might be different or the same as my own ideas, but just as valid, and how you may pertain them to be, or not to be, like ideas and validity, in general. You might indeed come to have ideas about me, which are no less valid and true as my own ideas, and which are derived from this book which I have written over many soulful nights spent wide awake as the Isolate. Regardless, in my lifetime the solar barge of Ra, the Boat of Millions of Years, has been exchanged metaphorically for the Mesektet. Fire spitting cobras guard the gates of darkness and the underworld. (To be precise the Egyptian hours required the divine services of that ancient civilization’s priesthood of the gods. The

R a m s e y | A N O N T O L O G Y O F S H A P E S H I F T E R S | P a g e | iv sundial divided the day into twelve hours, which were marked with ten equal divisions. The first and the last hour of the day were also observed by the priesthood when the sundials failed to note time. Each hour of darkness was perceived as a specific region of the night sky of the physical world and the sky of the underworld, through which Ra travelled on the Mesektet. Meanwhile protective deities personified the hours.) Yet, I did not ask for Ra to leave the Boat of Millions of years. I did not ask for that great ancient civilization to collapse. I did not ask for humanity to be destroyed. It just happened. So let me learn of Thoth, the god of wisdom. Let me see his face, the long-beaked bird, the face of an Ibis. Let me be a complete baboon, in homage to Thoth, because his head was often described as resembling a baboon.

R a m s e y | A N O N T O L O G Y O F S H A P E S H I F T E R S | P a g e | v Let me invoke thee, God, by Thoth, who might then settle all the gods’ disputes, as he was always supposed to have done so, often by tricking them. For I am a dwarf who lives among the underclasses of Toronto, among giant chameleon’s, which effect the shapes of men and women – yet, that which are neither nor. For what if there are beings here today who came from outer space? Do such extraterrestrials exist on Earth now, who manipulated the elements, by throwing, mixing, and solidifying; or using heat to liquefy and congeal? Did they transmute into human beings, into ‘Homo Exterior,’ who are apparently only externally the same as ‘Homo Sapiens?’ If so, how many people died, who were incinerated or liquified, transformed, crushed, and congealed, and their chemical properties expropriated by the

R a m s e y | A N O N T O L O G Y O F S H A P E S H I F T E R S | P a g e | vi extraterrestrials, those beings which cooked and devoured Man, referring to him as turkey? Are there any humans left alive? I am uncertain. Nor can I answer the question: “Is humanity extinct?” I only remember from a time before, not many decades ago, that there was an authentic humankind who is here no more. But why belabor the point? Why fret? Concede, therefore. Resistance is futile. Praying being an accoutrement of the opiate of a former age En masse. But to speak of gods – as if there are many – somehow like a pagan. Where is your Christ who shall lead you onto a new Christian kingdom and paradise? Or if you are honestly a mystic, by name and race, indeed Iggy the Dwarf, why burn all your tapers for Thoth, instead of succoring the psychic light of the Kabbalah?

R a m s e y | A N O N T O L O G Y O F S H A P E S H I F T E R S | P a g e | vii If all of which you are implying is that I am lonely and alone, I nevertheless shall at once be just so esoteric as a Hermetic philosopher of the occult. Yet are you, in turn, a kabbalistic race of Abraham? I ask you that, because in a thunderclap the sky darkened upon a late summer’s afternoon in nineteen eighty-eight, and that day you transmuted into the people who I have since added up as people who are either long since missing or dead. Humanity died – humanity lived on. No sooner was it the day’s news that there existed young-upwardly-mobile-professionals, and being a ‘Yuppy’ was enviable, that political correctness cleansed the English word “man” from the spoken and written language in the nominative of every job title. No sooner had I begun to suffer from the

R a m s e y | A N O N T O L O G Y O F S H A P E S H I F T E R S | P a g e | viii inertia of deep philosophical doubt of what was even normal or the norm, that when I asked my new peer groups to advise me, they only then replied rhetorically with the very question itself, “What is normal, anyway?” How Zen you now appear to me to be, Howard and Susan! I am referring to the weirdness of the parents of my then new steady girlfriend, who bought a perfectly fine house in Forest Hill and had it torn down and replaced with their dream home, featuring a frontend two car garage on a lot only sufficient for an overly steep ramp for their driveway, and that was only one example of a defective home regarding its overall design disaster, another defect essentially being because they were very new people to the planet acting like they were normal

R a m s e y | A N O N T O L O G Y O F S H A P E S H I F T E R S | P a g e | ix people from Oshawa, Ontario, who had just moved into Forest Hill neighborhood. Certainly, had I not been such a neophyte amnesiac of the post-apocalypse, I would have known that they were not cool people, and neither was my girlfriend a cool person. Accurate memory of the loud bang in the late summer sky of the previous year might have perhaps saved me more time and spared me the humiliation and angst of my young adult life from not having the slightest idea why everything was not even cool anyhow, before it never again would be that sick for me, either. Good thing the paint job came with the house Jennifer, or it might have cost the whole neighborhood a lot of money. Just like everything I might outright deny as even being humanly possible by now if I was really paying attention at the

R a m s e y | A N O N T O L O G Y O F S H A P E S H I F T E R S | P a g e | x time – and not honestly suffering from being an amnesiac dwarf – that family and their home that seemed like everything else just to blend in back then, and not shout out, “‘Homo Exterior!’” might have in retrospect however, caused me to become not so much the make of the odd man out. But since I just brought up the subject of the Kabbala, and that incongruous topic right after I asked permission to invoke thee, God, by Thoth, I have not forgotten that I have much to learn about my own good taste also and being a true human being. Since every Kabbalist says it is a certain fact that, “As above, so below,” the least of which I have learned is that there is a cause for every effect. Moreover, I should pay attention to my polarity or feel even worse off about a time for which I had much to be grateful despite it all, Lord.

R a m s e y | A N O N T O L O G Y O F S H A P E S H I F T E R S | P a g e | xi Yet I purpose, from the Beginning, to say a few words which illustrate my first impressions about the spiritual heritage of all Mankind, the Kabbalah; that it predates and therefore eludes Post Humanity of the discovery to identify it with any religion, nation, or ethnicity; that it is a corpus of spirituality, wisdom, and lessons; that it is neither mastered by rote obedience to laws and commandments, nor by adherence to literal interpretation of scriptures; that it is often defined as the mystical tradition of Judaism; yet, it is not a “religion” of any Lord, who by His divinity brandishes His mightiness with bouts of punishment to cause Man to fear the consequence of, and therefore prove in his subsequence, life’s paradox and logic. That is because when the Creator brought the world into being, it was not His intention to include pain and suffering. Indeed, if

R a m s e y | A N O N T O L O G Y O F S H A P E S H I F T E R S | P a g e | xii it teaches us about the temptation and fall of primordial Man, it also teaches us about chaos that always surrounded him, and made him captive, and that his unity with the Creator is something that can always be regained. If a great squid seeming to always stand upon its many limbs at beckon call to ‘Homo Exterior,’ conveyed those beings to our skies in a scene that seemed to portray a shadowy Octopus’ Garden, then every creature capable of such magnitude on Earth, has now perforce been killed; that creature, appearing in natural light to be a green color, was completely motionless and offered no defense at the time of its death. ‘Homo Exterior’ who was conveyed here and a multitude of planets before, all the while devouring and causing extinctions as it leaped through space tempted by gluttony, which has left the Earth all but void of ‘Homo Sapiens,’ has

R a m s e y | A N O N T O L O G Y O F S H A P E S H I F T E R S | P a g e | xiii ended its journey here. Any survivors of its debauch, must trust that in a paradox that its vanity to sustain itself in the likeness of its latest prey, shall not cause widespread damage to more populations of substances on Earth. Yet, how shall such appetite and life on Earth find satiate and constantly subsist? Allowed to escape the earth, its journey through space would have continued to cause extinctions in galactic proportions, and the Earth remains a place of all that temptation now affords its kind. Kabbalah, in common with other spiritual traditions, teaches that the negativity that afflicts humankind came about through the temptation and fall of primordial man. The kabbalists have used the word chaos to describe the negative circumstances that surround us – the “Murphy’s Law” environment in which things will go wrong if they possibly can. Chaos is indeed an apt word. It is the opposite

R a m s e y | A N O N T O L O G Y O F S H A P E S H I F T E R S | P a g e | xiv of harmony with the Creator, or more precisely, the unity with Him that once existed and will one day be regained.2 2 Rav P. S. Berg, The Essential Zohar: The Source of Kabbalistic Wisdom, Three Rivers Press: New York, 2002. From, “Part One: Foundations: The Zohar and Kabbalah.”

R a m s e y | A N O N T O L O G Y O F S H A P E S H I F T E R S | P a g e | xv THE ONTOLOGY OF SHAPESHIFTERS INTRODUCTION Linnaeus’s ‘External Man’ is neither a human being in the mammalian family nor a true offspring of humans, but in our times, those people in the world are known to be people in general. In the philosophy of being, to make an ontological distinction by applying categories of being, which in theory concerns genera and kinds of entities3, will determine the widest and most fundamental class to which ‘Homo Exterior’ belong. Firstly, the shapeshifters shall be grouped into a common ontological system of categories of being which include substances, properties, relations, states of affairs, and events. Secondly, the degree to which fundamental ontological concepts 3

R a m s e y | A N O N T O L O G Y O F S H A P E S H I F T E R S | P a g e | xvi including particularity and universality, abstractness and concreteness, ontological dependence, identity, modality, properties and relations, and the reality of things, pertain to the categories of being of ‘Homo Exterior,’ or shapeshifters, shall be discussed. Finally, a brief history of the categories of being shall be examined to welcome constructive criticism, of the ontological distinction applied to this work, as a beginning toward a true Linnaean classification of the misleading genus and species presently known as ‘Homo Exterior.’ However, some words about modality and the question of whether ‘Homo Exterior’ is a necessary or contingent being are useful since that issue has been held by some philosophers as the highest division of being4. Contingent beings are beings whose 4

R a m s e y | A N O N T O L O G Y O F S H A P E S H I F T E R S | P a g e | xvii existence is possible but not necessary, and necessary beings, on the other hand, could not have failed to exist. Despite speculations that there are shapeshifters in the world such as David Icke discerns, and at least one suggestion that the Klingon language is not a mechanical language in the field of linguistics, but rather a natural language, nor of the fictitious Klingons, rather more likely spoken and written widely among ‘Homo Exterior,’ there are as yet not sufficient observations with which to prove an hypothesis which might lead to a theory that the shapeshifters are necessary beings, and could not have failed to exist. Subsequently ‘Homo Exterior’ are contingent beings, whose existence is possible but not necessary; as possibly being extraterrestrials from outside our solar system who did not dwell on Earth before the mid to late twentieth-century, the last one to

R a m s e y | A N O N T O L O G Y O F S H A P E S H I F T E R S | P a g e | xviii five decades prior to the end of the second millennium, and that moreover, they continue to populate the planet in numbers whose magnitude remains guesswork at this time.

CHAPTER ONE: THE SUBSTANCE OF SHAPESHIFTERS The beings called ‘Homo Exterior’ are extracted from a substance. Their properties are derived from that substance, but they are distinct from it. Subsequently, the shapeshifters so named ‘Homo Exterior’ are substrata, or like Kant’s thing-in-itself: And we indeed, rightly considering objects of sense as mere appearances, confess thereby that they are based upon a thing-in-itself, though we know not this thing as it is in itself, but only know its appearances, viz., the way in which our senses are affected by this unknown something. — Prolegomena, 325 Substances are particulars that are ontologically independent, existing all by themselves. 5

RAMSEY / MISCELLENNI / 20 They are concrete, spatiotemporal entities. Attributes or properties are borne of substances and show what the substance is like. Moreover, substances can undergo change. Substances existing before, during, or after change, are described as persisting substances which gain or lose properties because of that change. In contrast, universals are what particulars of properties have in common, namely characteristics or qualities. In other words, universals recur in many particulars, like the colour of green, which is to say that greenness is a universal characteristic or quality of the attributes or properties, for example of unripe bananas and a green bicycle. Substances are classified into monist, dualist, or pluralist varieties, according to how many are said to populate the world. In the monistic view of Stoicism, there is only one substance

RAMSEY / MISCELLENNI / 21 called pneuma or God. Cartesian dualism recognizes two substances: mind and matter. Pluralist philosophies of substances include Plato’s Theory of Forms and Aristotle’s hylomorphic categories. THE STOIC VIEW Pneuma is the soul of Zues (God) and makes the human soul (psyche). It is the active, generative principle that organizes both the individual and the cosmos. It structures matter and constitutes being in inanimate objects. Pneuma has been described as the “breath of life,” which is formed of the element of air that is in movement, or wind, and which is mixed with the element of fire, as it pertains to warmth. The three kinds of pneuma depend on their proportion of fire and air. The first kind

RAMSEY / MISCELLENNI / 22 of pneuma is tonos, which supplies cohesion or hexis to things, and constitutes being in inanimate objects. The second kind of pneuma is a life force which gives physis to the attributes or properties of substance, which enables growth and characterizes them as alive. The third kind of pneuma, in its most rarified and fiery form, is the soul or psyche. It pervades the living body, governs its motion, and conveys the powers of perception and reproduction. The rational soul or logica psyche, which grants the force of judgement to a mature human being is sometimes called the fourth grade or kind of pneuma. Thus, pneuma is the active generative principle that organizes, not only the cosmos, but also the beings of ‘Homo Exterior.’ Their tonos supplies their hexis or cohesion as those beings. Yet, since ‘Homo Exterior’ are shapeshifters, and do not

RAMSEY / MISCELLENNI / 23 always appear in the shape of human beings, they potentially exist in a plurality of hexes. Moreover, while it is necessary that the life force pneuma gives them physis, which enables their growth, and makes them alive, their psyche or soul which governs their motion and conveys to the shapeshifters the powers of perception and reproduction, is most likely different in genera and kind of entities since they are ‘External Man’ and only resemble the genus homo. Neither are they homo sapiens, nor are they of familia mammalia. Likewise, their force of judgement, or logica psyche is different from individual mature human beings since they are beings of ‘Homo Exterior,’ or shapeshifters. Yet they are pneuma. Their attributes or properties express what pneuma is like; their universals recur as characteristics or

RAMSEY / MISCELLENNI / 24 qualities in common with other beings, such as the attributes or properties of human beings, and those of inanimate objects in the cosmos, in which pneuma is present. That is because pneuma is the soul of Zues (God) and the generative principle or “breath of life” which organizes the individual and the cosmos, structures matter, and constitutes being in inanimate objects. CARTESIAN DUALISM Ontological dualism as it relates to substance, asserts that mind and matter are the two distinct foundations of being. It is the Cartesian belief that what is mental can exist outside the body, but that the body cannot think. The mind-body problem is a philosophical concern which pertains to mental states of the mind and physical states of the body. For example, feelings of

RAMSEY / MISCELLENNI / 25 sadness in the mind cause people to cry. Similarly, changes in the body’s chemistry via drugs such as antipsychotics or SSIRs, can significantly change one’s state of mind. These examples question whether the mind and body are two distinct entities, and potentially supports the belief that the two of them causally interact. These reflections also raise this metaphysical consideration: if the mind and body are a single entity, then are mental events explicable in terms of physical events, or vice versa? The causal relationship between mental states and physical states are strongly clear in shapeshifters. States of consciousness when beings of ‘Homo Exterior’ are in human form, may cause the mental state of sadness and so may manifest in the physical event of crying. Likewise, drugs such as antipsychotics or SSIRs

RAMSEY / MISCELLENNI / 26 significantly change shapeshifters state of mind while they are beings in human forms. It appears, therefore, that the mind is causally related to different physical states of the body. However, it is also clear that the minds of shapeshifters is causally related to different bodies as well as the physical states of those bodies. Thus, depending on the different transmutations their bodies undergo, mental states of consciousness such as the feeling of sadness may or may not manifest in the physical event of crying. That is because such mental and physical states typical to ‘Homo Sapiens’ are only limited to the possible beings into which shapeshifters transmute. The idea of transmutation, however, seems to be a certain mental state of all beings of ‘Homo Exterior’ regardless of the kinds of bodies they have. Thus, the type of mind a shapeshifter has is causally related to

RAMSEY / MISCELLENNI / 27 its physical state, or more specifically the type of beings which ‘Homo Exterior’ form. Whether the mind and body are a single entity among beings of ‘Homo Exterior’ seems unlikely. Rather, certain mental states may be explicable by the physical states of their bodies; or, vice versa: the form or body of a shapeshifter may explain the mental states of every being of ‘Homo Exterior,’ and their mental states may explain their bodies. However, the ability of beings of ‘Homo Exterior’ to shapeshift, is a fundamental quality of either the mind or body of the beings of ‘Homo Exterior’. These considerations fall under the banner of the mind-body problem as they relate to the cartesian dualism of ‘Homo Exterior.’

RAMSEY / MISCELLENNI / 28 PLATO’S THEORY OF FORMS Plato’s theory suggests that the physical world is not as real or true as Ideas, translated from the Ancient Greek language into English as the word ‘Forms.’ Forms are timeless, absolute, and unchangeable. They are the non-physical essences of all things, of which objects and matter in the physical world are mere imitations. Through the character of Socrates in his dialogues, Plato sometimes suggests that these Forms are the only objects of study that can supply knowledge of a substance. Forms are the essences of objects, without which a thing would not be the kind of thing it is. For example, there are countless trees in the world, but the Form of tree-ne#ss is at the core and is the essence of all of them. Horses, beauty, goodness, men, women, and even shapeshifters, have a form. The

RAMSEY / MISCELLENNI / 29 phenomena of these forms are mere shadows of a world of Forms which is transcendent to our world of substances and is the essential basis of reality. A Form is aspatial, which means it is transcendent to space. It has no spatial dimensions, nor location in space. It is non-physical, nor is it simply an idea in the mind. It is rather super-ordinate to matter, and extra-mental, and has been compared to a “blueprint of perfection.”6 A Form is also atemporal, in other words it is transcendent to time. Because a Form is atemporal it does not exist within any time-period, rather it supplies the formal basis of time. It is neither eternal, nor mortal. Although the Form of shapeshifting is timeless and unchanging, physical shapeshifters are in a constant flux of existence. The Form of shapeshifting is 6

RAMSEY / MISCELLENNI / 30 unqualified excellence, yet beings who are shapeshifters are qualified and conditioned. The perfect Form of shapeshifting is a distinct singular thing which causes the phenomena of shapeshifters, and the multitude of those contingent substances in the world today. HYLOMORPHISM The Ancient Greek language originally had no word for matter, so Aristotle adapted the word hyle to explain that every physical object is made of the same basic substance, and every entity or being (ousia) is a compound of matter and immaterial form. Hyle (or wood, matter) correlates with the shape of a substance. Although there can be intellectual hyle, sensible hyle is composed of four elements – fire, water, air, and earth – which exist in a combination of hot, moist, dry, and cold, which

RAMSEY / MISCELLENNI / 31 are united to form everything. Matter is something out of which something is made. The matter of syllables is made from the matter of letters. Yet, hyle is a relative concept, and counts as compared to something else which is also hyle. As letters are the hyle of syllables, syllables are also hyle as they relate to words. Sensible hyle involves the form (eidos) which our sense organs perceive the thing to be. Forms are involved with qualia such as colors, textures, tastes, smells, and sounds. A soul is the form of a living hyle, or that which makes a living thing alive. Aristotle says that a soul is related to its body as a form (morph) is related to matter. Moreover, the soul as the body’s substantial form enables personal identity to persist over time. Although a child’s body consists of different matter than does an adult’s body, it nevertheless shares a soul by which

RAMSEY / MISCELLENNI / 32 throughout a person’s life, that person’s body can be identified by the soul that forms that person. In subsequence, Aristotle says that a person’s body is no longer that person after it dies. A shapeshifter is a living body or hylomorphic entity. Each individual shapeshifter is a substance, a combination of form and matter, and for Aristotle there is no form which is shapeshifter-ness. Rather, Aristotle’s views are more compatible with how modern science describes a living thing, viz., a combination of matter and energy, or every entity and hyle. CONCLUSION Whereas it might be a soul, or mind, which describes the qualia of ‘Homo Exterior’ in terms of their existence as contingent beings, regardless the underlying substance of being,

RAMSEY / MISCELLENNI / 33 or Kant’s thing-in-itself as exemplified in the Cartesian Dualism, Hylomorphism, the Stoic view of pneuma, or the invisible form of shapeshifting-ness of Plato’s theory of forms, enables the philosopher of being to begin to identify the substances of ‘Homo Exterior.’ The next chapter examines how several fundamental ontological concepts further describe the substances of shapeshifters.

RAMSEY / MISCELLENNI / 34 CHAPTER 2 FUDEMENTAL CONCEPTS OF SU BSTANCE

RAMSEY / MISCELLENNI / 35 1 SPAGYRICS To the alchemist, the transmutation of metals from imperfection to perfection involves several practical methods. Mix one with the other, and then separate the pure from the impure. There is nothing but the process of permutation, set in order through perfect alchemical labor. Although all substances are liquefied to a single mass, nevertheless each stay in its nature whatever it is. Thus, this is the judgment that can be passed on corporeal mixture. Yet concerning spiritual mixture and communion of the metals, it should be known that no liquefaction is spiritual because such

RAMSEY / MISCELLENNI / 36 spirits can never exist without bodies. Though the body should be taken away from them and mortified, nevertheless, they would always acquire another much more noble body than the former. And this is the transmutation of the metals from one death to another; that is to say, from a lesser to a higher, namely Luna; from a better into the best and most perfect; that is, Sol, the brilliant and altogether royal metal. It is true, then, that the six metals – Mercury, Jupiter, Mars, Venus, Saturn, and Luna - always generate a seventh or produce it from themselves. Fluidity is the nature of heat and life; hardness, consolidation, and immobility in its coldness are death. The five cold metals are Jupiter, Venus, Saturn, Mars, and Luna. To be brought into a state of liquefaction, there must be the condition of the heat of fire. When the metals liquefied by fire are

RAMSEY / MISCELLENNI / 37 removed, coldness renders each hard and immovable. However, Mercury stays fluid and alive continually, not by having a cold and damp nature, but a warm and fiery nature. Subsequently, heat is life, but cold is the occasion of death. Sol is pure fire, yet not alive but hard, for the five cold metals – Jupiter, Mars, Saturn, Venus, and Luna – affect the firmness of Sol. Thus, celestial fire is cold and congealed, and such is the celestial body of the Sun. Its fire, therefore, does not have the power of burning fire, for Sol is liquefied by the five cold metals and is coagulated in being. Luna and every metal derive their origin and are generated from the other six. From Saturn, Mercury, Mars, Venus, and Sol, comes Luna. Moreover, Luna is composed not only of the six spiritual metals but also their corresponding virtues, which are

RAMSEY / MISCELLENNI / 38 the seven planets and the twelve zodiac signs. Altogether, twelve virtues are thus posited in one corporeal metal. From the planet Mercury and from Aquarius and Pisces, Luna has its liquidity, its bright white color, and its firmness in fire. From Mars, with Cancer and Aries, comes its hardness and clear sound. From Venus, with Gemini and Libra, comes its degree of coagulation and its malleability. From Saturn, with Virgo and Scorpio, comes its homogeneous body and gravity. From Sol, by Leo and Virgo, comes its purity and resistance to the power of fire. Thus, in the spirit and body of Luna - by its composite - nature and wisdom exist. By the destruction of corporeal substance - its crushing and subsequent liquefaction - comes the virtue of a malleable substance. Consequently, the Alchemist, who artificially

RAMSEY / MISCELLENNI / 39 prepares the metallic body, by the spirit of the metal, by transmutation, makes a more noble and perfect body. Perfectly united, the metallic spirit and body are safe from the corruption of elementary fire. Then, Sol, the seventh metal, though it is pure fire – in outward appearance most beautiful and most brilliant – is congealed in its very destruction, by the other six metals, and becomes externally a heavier, colder, and homogeneous body, which unlike elementary fire, does not burn. It is a composite of incorruptibility. Mercurius Vivus, or living Mercury, the earthly substance, is thought to be living because it is not cold and moist by its nature, but rather highly warm and moist. Due to its warm and moist properties, it stays in a constant state of fluidity. If it were cold and moist, it would resemble ice, solid and cold, requiring

RAMSEY / MISCELLENNI / 40 the heat of fire to liquefy. This is how Mercury distinguishes itself from the other six metals, which are all cold. According to magicians and hermetic philosophers, Mercury is alive because it is "swift" and cannot be killed, congealed, or coagulated. The virtues of the seven metals, as their spirits intermingle, compete to manifest their powers and spirits, striving to be the master of liquefaction and transmutation. The six other metals try to congeal the warm and moist fluidity of Mercury by absorbing its virtues. By interacting as the seven metals, or however many the alchemist chooses, the vapors or spirits of the metals mutually influence one another, undergoing transmutation from one virtue to another. The spirits or vapors of the colder and less fluid six metals are agitated by

RAMSEY / MISCELLENNI / 41 the heat until a more perfect, virtuous, and pure substance is achieved. Alchemy has no other purpose, intention, or subtle endeavor than to transmute kinds of metals from one to another. Alchemy is otherwise called Spagyria and according to De Colica, it is a kind of lower heaven, by which the sun is separated from the moon, day from night, medicine from poison, and what is useful from what is refuse. Thus, the stars are the informing virtue and cause the virtues of all stones. The Sol and Luna of the firmament are nothing but stones themselves, and the terrestrial stone comes from the celestial stone – from outer space – through the same fire, coals, ashes, by degree, as all substances have the virtues of its own nature in its sphere or plane and the added virtues of the bodies in space.

RAMSEY / MISCELLENNI / 42 For the ball of earth was thrown, mixed, ground, and coagulated, and liquefied into a geological mass amidst the firmament. Its expanse is the elementary nature of Earth. It has taken its form through transmutation from the virtues of the substances by which it was formed, both corporeal and astronomical. If, in the universe, there is quicksilver, as was reasoned that Mercury is alive, and supposing the Alchemist can make silver and gold, or the physicist can change one element into another by radioactive decay or nuclear bombardment, the limits of the bodies, or corporeal substances, and their virtuous forms, are, in elemental theory, as numerous as the stars and the planets and satellites that orbit them. The jeweler cuts precious stones, yet the stars are the informing spirit of all stones…

RAMSEY / MISCELLENNI / 43 IUDICIO DEUM CHAPTER ONE: THE PENULTIMATE DEMISE OF CELTIC FOREMOST AGES Since I am Iggy and not icky and have learned the difference between the two since infancy – the distinction between right and wrong, good, and evil, love and hate, prosperity, and destitution – I accuse you, Sophists, and your deceitful words. You accuse me, who was not begotten but instead sprouted from the branch of an apple tree and was surnamed Apple by Apple. I was born to Mary, the son of Ignatius Apple, who spoke with an astrologer, who had direct knowledge about the quintillions of stars in the nocturnal sky. Sophists, you claim I am ignorant and know nothing, labeling me a repulsive dwarf from Helvetia. Yet, I am aware of the

RAMSEY / MISCELLENNI / 44 quintillions of stars in the night sky, near the apple tree where I was born. This knowledge was bestowed upon me by a traveler who had visited every planet, unless there was only one, among those very stars. He came like our satellite in orbit shining, and seriously considering the songs of a merman and his choir of mermaids, remains at sea among men. Aha! Sophists sprung from depths to the grasslands of Helvetia, a Celt, I honor the foremost of all ages penultimate as a quintillion-fold in splendor that were anterior to the tribute arrogantly acquired by Rome, and I never swore by Jove but swore anyhow. I am not inferior, yet our arts compete against each other. What should be thought of each other’s arts? Only my descendants deemed unworthy, yet a time of grace shall emulate me. Although I may be a mere dwarf, known as Iggy, I am the

RAMSEY / MISCELLENNI / 45 author of histories of the lives of Hermes, Archelaus, and others. They were the Spagyrists, and they refute claims made by your idols, who falsely proclaim themselves as authentic fathers and saints. They know not, as a dwarf knows, by the number of stars, the immense value of ancient knowledge contained in the Emerald Table. This knowledge surpasses the art and experience of the philosophy, alchemy, magic, and other practices taught by you and your followers. No prince or king was ever able to subdue the ancient Egyptians, and thus the emperor Diocletian ordered the burning of the Spagyric books. However, I, Iggy the Dwarf, have preserved knowledge beyond what the emperor could ever acquire. This knowledge will one day bring retribution upon you, Sophist, as you bear the burden of the yoke that now rests

RAMSEY / MISCELLENNI / 46 upon your neck. While the Emperor ordered the burning of all Spagyric books within his reach, he failed to eradicate them completely. Therefore, I will be famous for this history, which purposes even the high culture of Helvetia as being among the penultimate demise of Celtic foremost ages. At the end of that age, the Helvetians were one of the Celtic peoples. The Celts were a collection of Indo-European confederations in Europe and Anatolia, who spoke the Celtic language and shared similar cultures. The main Celtic powers were the Gauls, the Celtiberians, and the Gallaeci of Iberia; the Britons and Gaels of Britain and Ireland; the Boii; and the Galatians. The Gauls, a tribe of Celts in mainland Europe during the Iron Age and the Roman period, were known as the Gauls

RAMSEY / MISCELLENNI / 47 because their homeland was 'Gallia' or Gaul. Their language was Gaulish, a continental Celtic language. In the 5th century BC, during the first age, they founded the La Tène culture north and west of the Alps. In the final phase of the Hallstatt culture, which was widespread across Central Europe, gradually, at the northwest edges of Hallstatt, north of the Alps, within the region between the West on the valleys of Marne and Moselle, and part of the Rhineland nearby; also, in modern Bavaria, the Czech Republic, Austria, and Switzerland, which formed a province, and joined the western area Alsace, the Gauls of La Tène traded for luxury goods with the Greek colony at Massilia (modern Marseilles) on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, and with the Hallstatt areas up the Rhône and Saône rivers, who were controlled by tribal

RAMSEY / MISCELLENNI / 48 chiefs, who lived in forts among the hilltops in the lands. The bulk of the population lived in small villages or farms in the countryside. At the end of Hallstatt, the Etruscans expanded in colonization to border the Celts in north Italy, the Rhône trade route declined, and trade crossed the Alps to the Greeks, also in the middle Rhine, of iron ore, with the Marne and Champagne regions, and Bohemia. All of this made La Tène very wealthy, and a localization of the Gauls from Marne to Moselle with trading links to the Po Valley approximated to the Golasecca peoples and the Bohemians in the east, with separate links to the Adriatic across Alpine routes with the Venetics. With swords and helmets, the Gauls expanded to modern France, Germany, and Central Europe, Hispania, Italy, the Balkans, and as far as Asia Minor. Trade in that age flourished until the Gauls lost the

RAMSEY / MISCELLENNI / 49 Mediterranean because of violent conflict with the Etruscans and Romans. Brennus defeated the Romans and sacked Rome, but at the end of the first century, Julius Caesar’s conquest of Gaul destroyed the civilization and assimilated them into Roman culture, a Gallo-Roman culture, such as led to the sophistication of arts at the hands of Romans, precisely as it would affect Helvetia concurrently near the beginning of the common era. Thus, in Roman victors’ almanacs, a center of preeminent civilization and art has come to be known for trade routes of iron and luxury goods, and not such philosophy, which must be distilled from a time well after that age, which is prone to all the sophistry I have libeled against you. Was it not your sophistry, yet also your hegemony, two hundred years after independence, when the Roman Empire

RAMSEY / MISCELLENNI / 50 imposed the use of the Julian Calendar upon Gaul, that the solar-lunar calendar, the Gaulish Coligny calendar, was set in motion? Cast in bronze, inscribed in Gaulish with Latin characters and Roman numerals. The Gauls needed to reconcile the disparity of the other's timekeeping with the cycles of both the moon and sun. They kept time according to the lunar cycles, a custom rooted in ancient Celtic traditions. Each month always begins with the same moon phase. To keep the twelve-month Julian calendar, which follows the sun, in sync, the Gauls devised a mathematical arrangement of adding an extra month every two and a half years. Thus, a five-year cycle contains sixty-two lunar months. These months are divided into a "bright" and a "dark" fortnight each. The earlier calendar, which predates the Iron Age, was based solely on the moon and recorded rites and cults.

RAMSEY / MISCELLENNI / 51 Thus, the Celts found it both practical and philosophically important to align the Julian Calendar with their own age-old traditions. This precedent harkens back well to before Romanization, and well before the Bronze Age, and emphasizes the fallibility of sophistry in comparison to the bright and dark equanimity and soundness of ancient alternating fortnights governed by the lunar cycle. The Celtiberians lived in the central-northeastern Iberian Peninsula in the foremost ages. Strabo mentions them as being a branch of the Celts. They spoke the Celtiberian language and wrote it by adapting the Iberian alphabet, in the form of their own script. Numerous inscriptions are extant, yet the Ebro River divides the tongue from non-Indo-European speaking peoples.

RAMSEY / MISCELLENNI / 52 Celtiberian tribes who spoke and wrote in the same alphabet were the Arevaci, Pellendones, Belli, Titti, and Lusones; occasionally, the Berones, Vaccaei, Carpetani, Olcades or Lobetani. Upon their fall, the entire region had become a Roman province known as Hispania Citerior. Protracted struggles against the Roman Empire, the Cimbrian War against the Germanic Cimbri, and the Sertorian War, though fought gallantly, could not forestall Romanization. Ephorus believed that Celts inhabited the Iberian Peninsula as far as Cadiz, from the end of the Bronze Age until they were subsumed as a Roman Province. Protected by a warrior elite, the Celtiberians were transhumant, a form of pastoralism where they lived as nomads, moving livestock between summer and winter pastures, and sometimes to higher pastures in the summer and

RAMSEY / MISCELLENNI / 53 lower ones in winter. Although most Celtiberians had a permanent home, a certain number of people necessary to tend the livestock were protected by warriors to prevent thieves from plunder. Cattle made them rich. The warrior elite lived in hillforts, or 'castros', and controlled the grazing territories. During the height of the Celtiberians' power, in the first age, these hillforts were made of stone walls and defended by ditches. They relied heavily on the strength of iron. Wealth in livestock by pooling resources was the capital of large extended families. In the upper valleys of the Tagus and Douro rivers, as well as along the Iberus (Ebro) river, in modern Soria, Guadalajara, Zaragoza, and Teruel, they were governed by a military aristocracy or elite. In increasingly urbanized areas, metalworking became the prominent industry, producing horse

RAMSEY / MISCELLENNI / 54 trappings and prestigious weaponry such as the two-edged sword and the 'lancea' or throwing spear, as described by Varro. The clan, which served as the basic political unit for families, eventually transitioned into organized cities known as 'oppida.' These cities had their own minted coinage and often formed and dissolved alliances, influenced by the surviving members who maintained a clan allegiance to each oppidum. Although the cities focused more on metalworking rather than cattle herding, alliances continued to shape political strategies and tactics, rooted in clan structures. The fall of the Celtiberians began with the Carthaginian and Roman conquests. The Celtiberians, in a coalition of Vaccei, Carpetani, and Olcades, attacked the Punic army when it was preparing to cross the Tagus River. During the Second Punic

RAMSEY / MISCELLENNI / 55 War, the Celtiberian warriors served as mercenaries for Carthage and crossed the Alps under Hannibal’s command. Under Scipio Africanus, many of the Celtiberians' alliances changed against Carthage and its allies in Spain. Rome captured the Punic empire in Spain, and some Celtiberians challenged the Roman victory with border clashes. Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus destroyed three hundred Celtiberian 'oppida' and settlements. The Celtiberians refused to pay tribute to Rome or provide military support, formed a confederacy, and constructed a defensive wall, allying with neighboring towns. Thus, it amounted to the stronghold of Numantia that withstood Rome for almost a century. A ditch and palisade surrounded the stronghold, with a wall ten feet high. Towers were placed at every hundred feet along the wall, mounted with

RAMSEY / MISCELLENNI / 56 catapults and ballistae. The Celtiberians blockaded the nearby river with logs, moored by ropes tied to the shore. Knives and spearheads were embedded in the logs, which rotated in the strong current of the river. Sixty thousand Roman soldiers besieged Numantia in seven camps, and the Celtiberians, in starvation, sent envoys to Scipio, who demanded 'deditio' or absolute surrender. The Numantines slew their ambassadors, grew filthy over the following eight months, and resorted to cannibalism. Many chose suicide rather than surrendering to Scipio. Such was the fear that Rome was wrong without resort that families poisoned themselves, weapons were burned, and Numantia was set ablaze. Few survivors would turn themselves over to Scipio; more than likely, they were sold as slaves. Lasting four years, the final resistance to Rome, known as the

RAMSEY / MISCELLENNI / 57 Sertorian War, during the century before the common era, buried the Celtiberians. Indeed, it is better to be caught dead than be caught wearing a toga and being accused of being Roman. On all accounts, I can always swear off cannibalism and the Holy Eucharist of transubstantiation; on no account can I swear off Rome and perjure on trial.

RAMSEY / MISCELLENNI / 58 CHAPPTER TWO: IN MEMORANDA OF THE DESTRUCTION AND THE INCORRUPTIBILTY OF CORPOREAL SUBSTANCE, SEPTEMBER 23, 2023. Of the destruction of corporeal substance – that which is external, visible, and movable – all liquefactions are manifested in that substance. Any substance is both a living and corporeal spirit, which is surrounding, and flowing, and when prevented from this status, is in a state of discontent. Celestial powers, which are the elements of quintessence, are powers that, in the process of destruction, cannot add or diminish in the elements or quintessence. But that which is a corporeal elementary power that can be destroyed liquefies to the celestial or infernal powers, which do not obey the elements. Neither does one of

RAMSEY / MISCELLENNI / 59 them have the faculty of acting against quintessence, but in each of the elements, its own power and means of action remain. Therefore, there is nothing of value located in the body of a substance that is not virtue, and that virtue proportionally exceeds the body in proportion to the destruction of a corporeal substance. To the alchemist, the transmutation of metals from imperfection to perfection involves several practical methods. Mix one with the other, and then separate the pure from the impure. There is nothing but the process of permutation, set in order through perfect alchemical labor. Although all substances are liquefied to a single mass, nevertheless each remains in its nature whatever it is. Thus, this is the judgment that can be passed on corporeal mixture. But

RAMSEY / MISCELLENNI / 60 concerning spiritual mixture and communion of the metals, it should be known that no liquefaction is spiritual because such spirits can never exist without bodies. Though the body should be taken away from them and mortified, nevertheless, they would always acquire another much more noble body than the former. And this is the transmutation of the metals from one death to another; that is to say, from a lesser to a higher, namely Luna; from a better into the best and most perfect; that is, Sol, the brilliant and altogether royal metal. It is true, then, that the six metals – Mercury, Jupiter, Mars, Venus, Saturn, and Luna - always generate a seventh or produce it from themselves in being. Fluidity is the nature of heat and life; hardness, consolidation, and immobility in its coldness are death. The five

RAMSEY / MISCELLENNI / 61 cold metals are Jupiter, Venus, Saturn, Mars, and Luna. To be brought into a state of liquefaction, there must be the condition of the heat of fire. When the metals liquefied by fire are removed, coldness renders each hard and immovable. However, Mercury remains fluid and alive continually, not by having a cold and damp nature, but a warm and fiery nature. Subsequently, heat is life, but cold is the occasion of death. Sol is pure fire, yet not alive but hard, for the five cold metals – Jupiter, Mars, Saturn, Venus, and Luna – affect the firmness of Sol. Thus, celestial fire is cold and congealed, and such is the celestial body of the Sun. Its fire, therefore, does not have the power of burning fire, for Sol is liquefied by the five cold metals and is coagulated in being.

RAMSEY / MISCELLENNI / 62 Luna and every metal derive their origin and are generated from the other six. From Saturn, Mercury, Mars, Venus, and Sol, comes Luna. Moreover, Luna is composed not only of the six spiritual metals but also their corresponding virtues, which are the seven planets and the twelve zodiac signs. Altogether, twelve virtues are thus posited in one corporeal metal. From the planet Mercury and from Aquarius and Pisces, Luna has its liquidity, its bright white color, and its firmness in fire. From Mars, with Cancer and Aries, comes its hardness and clear sound. From Venus, with Gemini and Libra, comes its degree of coagulation and its malleability. From Saturn, with Virgo and Scorpio, comes its homogeneous body and gravity. From Sol, by Leo and Virgo, comes its purity and resistance to the power of

RAMSEY / MISCELLENNI / 63 fire. Thus, in the spirit and body of Luna - by its composite - nature and wisdom exist. By the destruction of corporeal substance - its crushing and subsequent liquefaction - comes the virtue of a malleable substance. Consequently, the Alchemist, who artificially prepares the metallic body, by the spirit of the metal, by transmutation, makes a more noble and perfect body. Perfectly united, the metallic spirit and body are safe from the corruption of elementary fire. Then, Sol, the seventh metal, though it is pure fire – in outward appearance most beautiful and most brilliant – is congealed in its very destruction, by the other six metals, and becomes externally a heavier, colder, and homogeneous body, which unlike elementary fire, does not burn. It is rather a composite of incorruptibility.

RAMSEY / MISCELLENNI / 64

RAMSEY / MISCELLENNI / 65 ABOUT MYSELF My mother, whose name was Mary, lived on a ship at sea with her parents. Her father was an officer of the British Navy, and officers were permitted to have their family live on board with them during times of peace. I often wonder how my mother felt with very few friends at sea, not having any appropriate love interest, but being of the age to want to marry. One evening, sitting on a comfortable bench on the deck alone, as she often did, a man whom she had never seen before approached her. She might have been afraid and called for the midshipmen to sound the alarm, but his disarming manner and the import of his words held her steadfast. He introduced himself and explained why he had to meet her.

RAMSEY / MISCELLENNI / 66 He told her, "I have just stepped onto this planet and have taken a human form." Upon asking who he was, where he came from, and the nature of his true form, he told her that in the night sky, where they were then, beneath the canopy we all see, there are a quintillion stars, and if it is somehow a general belief among the people of Earth that there is at least one planet and satellite orbiting those stars, then he must have been from them all. Furthermore, he came to Earth to meet my mother and her parents specifically, to leave a child to her. That son, he told her, would know his full purpose when he was an adult and would feel his calling in a catastrophic time that humanity faced. It was then that her mother joined them, and her father too, and what that family heard next left them with much to think about. For this Starman told them that this planet was ruled by

RAMSEY / MISCELLENNI / 67 God, as it was written among the sacred and holy writings of the authentic world religions. In those cases when an otherworldly birth is required, then the most proximate canonical or Holy Book must be followed verbatim in proximity to where that conception occurred, so as not to offend the Lord, who is invisible to people but nevertheless exists for the well-being of the whole planet Earth. Then he explained that because the ship they were on was a naval vessel from Britain, the Holy Bible made it necessary that the birth she would have could only be a virgin birth. Moreover, he would transmute into semen and exist only as the offspring of the virtue of who he was when he met my mother, and as her son related in her descent of her both her mother and father’s ancestry on earth. The child would thus only have earthly

RAMSEY / MISCELLENNI / 68 ancestors from her side of the family, as he had no descendants on Earth, by being God. Finally, he told them it must be done, and that the child should be born in Helvetia, or modern-day Switzerland. There was no amount of time to consider anything else but accept his purpose, which he stressed was a necessary fact that would have to occur. My mother, her mother and father, hardly fully thinking the matter over, found themselves alone. It was within a month after that night's encounter with the Starman and his transmutation, that the ship's doctor informed my mother that she was pregnant. She recalled the date of conception as being none other than the night they still spoke about among themselves as a family.

RAMSEY / MISCELLENNI / 69 On careful thought, they made plans that Mary, although British in nationality, would give birth in Switzerland, which was in ancient times Helvetia. Her father, by writing to the Swiss Confederation and filling out the necessary applications, was granted landed immigrant status for my mother, his wife, and himself. They then purchased a home in the lower region of the French-speaking Alps. My full name on the official Swiss Birth certificate was given as Ignatius Quintillion Apple by Apple. Ignatius Apple was my grandfather's legal name. Quintillion is my middle name in memory of the Starman who appeared that night before her, and the name of my father was entered on the birth certificate as being Quintillion Star. Then my mother, unwed, changed her name Mary Apple to Mary Apple by Apple and I took that

RAMSEY / MISCELLENNI / 70 surname also, which remains as surnames go, as far as I know, exclusive to my mother and me. As our family’s story is told it was only some semen and Mary Apple that we understood was in nature an example of a veritable virgin birth. When I used to ask my mother about my father's whereabouts, she would simply say that he was at sea. It was an inside joke of hers, as I later came to know the unconventional circumstances of my conception. I exist solely because of the mysterious visitor my mother encountered that night, and I may never know who my biological father was, except that he transmuted into the semen which fertilized her ovum, which developed, for nine months, as a healthy fetus in my mother’s womb, until the day I was born in 1969.

RAMSEY / MISCELLENNI / 71 My life could have been normal among the people of Switzerland, but for the unexpected fact that I was born a dwarf. This fact was overlooked by my mother's obstetrician and my pediatrician. However, while sitting beneath a tree and nursing me one day, several feisty short people, whom my mother immediately understood were dwarves, attempted to persuade her to give me up to them, claiming that I was not a human and belonged with them. My mother vehemently protested, as did my grandmother who was present. Nevertheless, the undeniable truth remains that I was among the dwarves, known to many as Iggy, and hence my penname, Iggy the Dwarf. It is indeed remarkable that I am a dwarf among the dwarves of Helvetia, and this has captivated the curiosity of all those involved, considering my mother is

RAMSEY / MISCELLENNI / 72 human and so was the visitor in any form we understood him to be who appeared that fateful night on the ship. The dwarves were adamant that they played no tricks in relation to my birth, and we accepted their honesty. Such was the mystery surrounding my existence that rumors spread among the people of Helvetia, suggesting that my mother was a virgin mother of God, drawing parallels to the biblical Mary. However, these speculations were later dismissed based on the trust placed in my mother's word of honor, that we might be killed with so high a thought of our miracle. I soon grew up as just another dwarf and lived with my human mother in the lower Alps, and lived as was deemed best as a dwarf among the dwarfs of Helvetia. Any calling I might have, which was foreseen by the visitor to the planet, came in

RAMSEY / MISCELLENNI / 73 the late 1980s when I was eighteen years old. On a late summer’s day, I heard what sounded like thunder, and disbelieving that there could be a storm on such a clear day, looked up to the sky. It seemed like a shadow of long arms, much like the tentacles of a gigantic octopus, and there were dwarves descending to the ground from the sky. They landed and appeared identical in form and appearance to the folks they were near, fully clothed. Not only that, but to our surprise, after a month of strange times and quarrels, my mother and I still felt like ourselves, but we were left wondering how many authentic dwarves were left alive in Helvetia, or indeed the world, and how many more were alien shapeshifters. By word of mouth, passed down through the authority of friends, the fullest weight by consensus related that the aliens as it then stood far

RAMSEY / MISCELLENNI / 74 outnumbered us and even enjoyed eating us, euphemistically calling us "turkey." Only my mother and I could be sure that I was a real dwarf of Helvetia and not a shapeshifter, and I felt sure of my mother’s true nature as the human parent I always knew her to be as an unquestionable fact. It was popularly believed that authentic dwarves were fewer in number by a great magnitude than before the shapeshifters came, and fewer in proportion in number relative to the entire number of aliens was a probable conclusion. My mother and I then wondered what had befallen human beings. That very concern for humanity burned inside me and became an obsession. It was my calling; I decided to be a secret agent and live among humans to assess what, if anything,

RAMSEY / MISCELLENNI / 75 had happened among them. Had the same invasion befallen them? My life among humans has been difficult. From the time I was eighteen, I have been considered odd-looking, often called a midget, sometimes more politely, a little person. Not only that, but the burning question I had to discover was whether the shapeshifters were among humans or not. This has led me to frequently experience bouts of mania and insomnia. I was early on diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder, a condition like manic depression, with the exception that the manic state lasts notably longer in the sufferer than it does in true bipolar cases. Now in my middle age and finding no recognition among my social workers, doctors, or friends who have come or gone, of any memory that in the 1980s there was any alien presence or

RAMSEY / MISCELLENNI / 76 invasion of shapeshifters, the best advice given to me, by a social worker with lived experience of mental illness, was to not let it consume me, lose great amounts of sleep and health over my questionings, but to express them artistically. I was reading Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and the passages of the monster’s words of lament to Dr. Frankenstein about hiding himself from humans because he would only frighten them. The monster mentioned overhearing the happy life of a family and their children, whose land he had taken upon himself to settle in and who kept out of their way, to ensure they never saw him because he knew they would fear him. He expressed the immense profundity he felt while reading Milton and other authors, who spoke in such an elevating way about the preciousness of human existence. He inspired me to compose

RAMSEY / MISCELLENNI / 77 the poems you read in this book, in the form of adaptation, with much intertext based on many authors of whom Mary Shelley and her contemporaries would have read when they were modern authors. The purpose of this experiment I indicate in the preface below; they are written to discover if any such traditional poetry is welcome in society among shapeshifters, from the perspective of the underclass. For that is the class I have found myself living amongst most, having the diagnosis I was given, and living like many people as dependents of the social welfare system on disability. I gravitated toward poetry naturally, as do many writers, before writing in prose. I am left with the question, yet unanswered, that still rules my life. It is the question of whether

RAMSEY / MISCELLENNI / 78 'Homo Sapiens' experienced the 1980s invasion of shape-shifting aliens, and if met with a blank stare or disbelief, I have the second problem to solve, as to whether the invasion either in its entirety did not affect humans, or worse, that so few exist, such few numbers of humans remain to advise me of what really happened. I have only by remaining in sporadic contact with Dwarves in Helvetia some justified true belief of a trust that a multitude of ‘Homo Sapiens’ live some where in light years from Earth in the trust that if they are not eaten by ‘Homo Exterior’ might return to our world, in the outcome of a thirst-five year duration, from 1988-2023, and one which I must witness at least, before returning to the place of my birth origin.

RAMSEY / MISCELLENNI / 79 One thing that I was able to do during my life among the underclass, with its underworld connections, was to invest in a shipping business. By filling a ship with transport goods, by a set form of rudimentary questions about the contents that required safe passage by sea – questions such as “Is it alive or dead?” and “Is it animal, vegetable, or mineral?” and qualifying the cargo by narrowing the field or disqualifying it from transport, I soon was able with three partners I joined to purchase a small fleet, and left it in a trust that they would run the company from Switzerland, and safekeep my stake in the business, while I sought the fate of humanity abroad in North America. Before I left, I spoke with my mother of her father’s belief of distant relatives who owned land in Britain, which was known in general to be rich with oil and natural gas deposits, but

RAMSEY / MISCELLENNI / 80 which was never exploited because there had been a shipwreck off the coast and no survivors, and for drilling to occur, it was thought by the families of the departed, that the ocean floor and the land should not be developed. However, I knew by my mother’s recollection of that family’s land, that the bodies had been recovered and buried elsewhere, and there was no outstanding reason to prevent the progress of the energy industry in England. Before returning to North America at the age of twenty-eight, I approached this family, and the true owner of the land I met was a Lord of the upper house of parliament in Britain. He and his wife had a young daughter who, I recall, was only six years old at the time. By understanding I developed with the family, I gave instructions to my partners that when my shipping

RAMSEY / MISCELLENNI / 81 company had made me sufficient wealth to buy, restore, and hold tenure of a certain Baronetage in Britain, they were to purchase it on my behalf. The Lord and Lady, to whom I presented myself, accepted that when I returned to them in my middle age, I would have permission to court their daughter, so long as she was not against the idea. I told the child a fairy story when I was with her of terrible shapeshifters and a dwarf who was bound to be far away on another continent on a mission to ascertain what calamity had befallen the people of Earth. She listened closely to my tale and fell asleep in her mother’s arms upon the last few words I spoke that I would return, and the young lady would become a Baroness, if only she could bear such a one as so disregarded as a dwarf deemed as maladjusted in the mental health system of North America.

RAMSEY / MISCELLENNI / 82 My fame as a poet received some critical attention when CBC Radio featured my work in 2015. This was mainly due to the popularity of a website I created, where I posted my poetry. One poem, titled "The City," caught the attention of the afternoon host of a radio program. They interviewed a doctor to discuss whether I accurately depicted professionals who work with consumer survivors, such as psychiatrists and doctors in long-term care facilities. The doctor confirmed that the poem provided an accurate portrayal, not only of himself, but also of doctors in general, and social workers. Furthermore, he believed it was a realistic depiction of the typical life of a consumer survivor. The fame of the website grew beyond Canada and reached overseas in Britain, and thereafter CBC Radio reported that a

RAMSEY / MISCELLENNI / 83 direct descendant of Lady Ottoline Morrell, the aristocrat who hosted a literary circle of friends, and who was the Lady portrayed, in T.S. Eliot’s Portrait of a Lady, took offense to my pastiche titled “The Hourglass Hostess”, for drawing an intertextual relationship or inference, that the late Lady Morrell was somehow being compared to a prostitute. My intention was not to suggest that whatsoever, but because of this grave criticism, my poetry website gained even more notoriety. The truth is, I have only once visited a prostitute and I am now celibate. Any suggestion that there was a real prostitute, as described in the poem, while I was living in a different part of Toronto than now is false. However, there was a prostitute who seemed to live in her own house in my old neighborhood. She used to walk her dog during the day and sometimes spoke with

RAMSEY / MISCELLENNI / 84 men in the area. I could not help but notice her as a familiar face around and about. I knew the house where she lived and would see her male visitors come and go. It left little doubt in my mind that she was a Lady of the Evening. I now live between Jarvis St. off Dundas St., where there are plenty of prostitutes to be seen by night, close to New Regent Park off Parliament St., in a community client-tenant subsidized building. I rent out on subsidy, what might be called a cute bachelor in a rental listing written for the average person in the market for a small and bright apartment. Although the neighborhood can be a little dangerous, or at least colorful, the reality is that there are many prostitutes living in my community who work for their lodging and cocaine. The most unfortunate members of their profession become addicted to crack when

RAMSEY / MISCELLENNI / 85 they find out that their pimps have no more use for them as breadwinners. The saddest part is that they are more time than not reported as missing persons by their parents, and I wonder if they even realize that fact. They are likely brainwashed to believe their parents are dead, even as they become recovering addicts and reach rock bottom, often in a much-dilapidated state. I was surveyed by telephone one day and told that they were asking specifically the ten most important poets alive today their opinion of what was the most important book to be published that year. At first, I thought it was simply a crank call and could not believe that I, as an unpublished author with little recognition, except for some publicity on local radio, would be honored as one of the ten most important poets of our time. Nonetheless, I answered that the discovery and publication of a

RAMSEY / MISCELLENNI / 86 palimpsest of one of Archimedes' books on mathematics was immensely significant. This book was believed to be lost to modern civilization, but it was found superimposed on a scroll of papyrus in its full length with a religious text. The publication of this work brought it to the attention of classical scholars for the first time in modern history. Indeed, I thought at first that what I was writing was perhaps some kind of metaphorical palimpsest but stood corrected when I realized that the art form is postmodern, and formalist by no means, and that such near-contemporary authors as Cecil Day Lewis, the late father of the famous actor Daniel Day Lewis, wrote many such poems as did other poets in the course of their careers of the mid to late twentieth century.

RAMSEY / MISCELLENNI / 87 Some of this poetry was previously published by the publisher named Literary Pastiche, under a pseudonym, in collections in breve, and out of print titled, The City, The Flower's Celandine, and An Evening Pastiche. Moreover, a collection titled Wordsworth'an Palimpsests appeared in a Canadian literary journal known as The Eclectic Muse in the year 2015. Despite some positive reviews and much marketing, as well as a press release for the premiere edition of the first publication of my poetry in book form, I live rather anonymously and am no closer to completing my mission to discover whether 'Homo Sapiens' have become endangered or vulnerable as a species of hominids on this planet, resulting in an alien invasion of shapeshifters. At this time, however, as I wait to find out of some news of ‘Homo Sapiens’ return to Earth (by what means I know not) I

RAMSEY / MISCELLENNI / 88 must be very close to joining my mother, now in her seventies, at my Wessex Palace, to be introduced to the little girl, whom I lulled to sleep, now thirty-two years old, to consider in faith my true identity as the Lord Duke of Wessex Suffolk and other titles I have, in trust my family is safe and secure as the result in this passage of time spent discovering more in the outcome of what has been profoundly felt by us all in the world among near and far uncharted regions of space who choose to enjoin and be sound among us in this God blessed post-human world of an ancient Abraham ancestor we must account as miraculous, but lacking full disclosure.