EDITOR’S NOTE: Samuel Araya previously explored his process for illustrating The King in Yellow in “The Darkening of Materials,” “No Mask,” “But Stranger Still,” “The Tatters of the King,” “Aldeberan and the Yellow Sign,” and “The Stranger.”
This piece was the initial spark for my interpretation of this edition of The King in Yellow. I was reading about alchemy and the first phase of the magnum opus of the alchemist, which is “Nigredo,” the darkening of materials, or the dark night of the soul. (Alchemy is pretty much a spiritual practice.) Being in a particularly dark time of my life, the verses of “Cassilda’s Song” held special interest for me.
Along the shore the cloud waves break,
The twin suns sink behind the lake,
The shadows lengthen
In Carcosa.Strange is the night where black stars rise,
And strange moons circle through the skies
But stranger still is
Lost Carcosa.Songs that the Hyades shall sing,
Where flap the tatters of the King,
Must die unheard in
Dim Carcosa.Song of my soul, my voice is dead;
Die thou, unsung, as tears unshed
Shall dry and die in
Lost Carcosa.
“Cassilda’s Song” is indeed nigredo, the darkening before the light of revelation at the unmasking of the stranger that visits Carcosa. The signs associated with it are (among others) the raven and earth. (The raven head was done as a separate piece, which was part of my alchemical studies, then overlaid in the general composition.)
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Samuel Araya
Ascencion, 2018
