How would an alchemist seeking the lapis or Philosophers Stone picture it in his mind? (The Tractatus aureus says the precious Stone is "altogether vile", but aside from that...) Would he imagine an amorphous lump, a perfect sphere, or a brick? Would it be oily or dry, dull or polished, cold or warm to the touch? Would it be fused into a dense solid, or porous, ventilated like a honeycomb? Such grossly materialistic speculations demean the spiritual associations the stone evokes, no doubt, but in seeking the recipe for numinous objects I have found it useful to ask myself such questions... To return to the morphologies - I have deliberately restricted the choice to basic forms and objects, at least for my first tentative experiments. If an object can be inserted into the phrase "the object is ________-shaped", (e.g. cigar, bullet, barrel, or teardrop-shaped) it will usually qualify for selection. Other objects qualify as nearly archetypal "signs for themselves" (e.g. gallows or gibbett, coffin, and house [7] ). It is a basic "building block" quality that I seek. Certain forms, by their inclusion, automatically disqualify others. Hourglass, for instance, renders dumbbell superfluous, because the latter is too nearly the former on its side. NEXT>>

7. House not pictured in the Second Morphological Table.