Carcosa Bound

From one perspective, Christianity is basically an operative necromancy within a reskinned Egyptian pantheon and a monopolistic orientation.

The Medici Chapel in Florence reinforces this perspective: a magnificent structure to memorialise this most incredible bloodline.

The Hall of the Princes is magnificent, and well worth seeking out. It is personally challenging for the sheer audacity, of the balls of these guys. Truly, this is a place of the Glorious Dead.

Holy bones, in pretty boxes

It also houses and displays a mighty collection of bejeweled vessels, and their precious and macabre contents: a wide assortment of sainted finger, hip and arm bones. Seeing these relics of the all-too-human beholders of extreme spiritual insight was both humbling and challenging.

How do we remember our saints, now? Do we even have saints anymore? Does our culture have the vitality, commitment and belief in itself to produce them?

A sketchy scenario: Medici transhumanism?

Throughout, I couldn't help but notice the insistence the Medici line was extinct. It had the hallmarks of doth protesting too much; the official statement is given frequently, on almost every sign. I know enough about how messages are made true, or true enough; repetition legitimises, as YouTube odd-time-signature music magus Adam Neely often says.

Against better judgment, I do sometimes indulge in the filthy yoga of conspiratorial wrongthink; a habit picked up in wilder, more marginal days. Are the Medici extinct? Did they just… move, and open up under a different name? Or was something more twilight and curious taking place?

Basically: Did they find a way to radically sustain their lifespans? Clearly they were masters of the laws of the Iron Triangle, of time, resource and quality; as any project manager knows, it starts with you; the first project you manage is yourself.

These people were geniuses at bringing together the right elements to make apparently impossible things happen.

The pursuit of radical life extension has strong precedent; sages and princes have been working on this forever. Especially during the Renaissance, with the resurgence of Neoplatonism, developments in alchemy, and increased flow of texts and technologies between East and West.

One adjacent example is presented in Peter Mark Adams’ provocative work The Game of Saturn. He recasts the recently-resurfaced Sola Busca tarot as a coded initiatic tradition for directed metempsychosis, and suggests this was used for this purpose by the Venetian and Milanese elite about the same time.

It seems highly unlikely that the Medici – a family with a vast global network of intelligenciers and informers; those whose members recovered the works of Plato and Hermes Trismegistus; who revolutionised money and information transfer; who ignited a golden age of creativity and innovation – would be ignorant or uninterested in this or similar technologies, however conditional and sketchy they may be.

Or – perhaps the last in line were unable to keep up with the terms of their deal, or found a better one. Anna Maria Luisa de Medici was survived by no children, but did plan for the completion of the memorial to her glorious clan, as well as keeping their treasures within this most magnificent city.

A place of power: dream bigger

At any rate, the Medici Chapel is a testament as real and cold as the artfully worked stone, to the glory of these mighty princes.

It stands, a place of power that expands the spirit, and lifts the line of sight up, out and beyond. You can’t enter this place and not leave with an augmented sense of human potential. It calls you out: dream bigger.