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[Alexandr Korol]

Then I remember that somewhere I had a picture where a little square was depicted, representing the four elements, and that in addition to these four elements there were also some three others, like a little triangle. I found that picture, and it confirmed everything — meaning, there is the Sun, the Moon, and the third one is precisely the star I discovered. And I believe I advanced very quickly, because I initially assumed I would only be exploring the fifth element, fire, throughout the entire eighth volume. But here I’ve already leapt ahead — now everything is clear about the Moon as well, and now even the star. Of course, it’s possible that over the course of the eighth volume there will be a deeper decoding of all these elements. But what do we see? We see that in this illustration, in the triangle within the square, in addition to the three corners, there is also something at the center, considering that this is a tetrahedron. And this center — there it is written that it is the philosopher’s stone, and consequently, that is already the eighth element, the eighth corner, meaning God. But Big Alexander hinted to me that when I discovered those four elements, the fourth one actually contained three earthly ones, remember — sky, earth, and underworld — and the fourth was something entirely on the other side, something otherworldly, where, as he said, the gods live, the spirits. That was this winter — meaning night, meaning death. And here it’s as if the same analogy, as he was hinting, but only not in the human world, but in the world of the gods. And so there is, accordingly, the Sun, the Moon, the star, and then something else — a kind of ether as well. And now I’ve already started searching, naturally, for the eighth element — or, more precisely, the fourth of this triangle, or the eighth of all the elements I’ve discovered. So now I’ve found the seventh element — the star (in quotation marks, “Mercury”, though perhaps it’s named differently, there are various theories). And the eighth must again be some kind of ether or a dodecahedron — something of that kind. So it must be something connected with the otherworldly.

And that’s when I stumble upon a little phrase used by the alchemists: anima mundi — the world soul.