Strange Alchemy

I had a dream of dying men
naked, hanging from the World Tree by their necks.
When suffocation at last took their life, I watched them cum;
pearly fluid fell to the earth, and mandrake grew.

The mandrake looked like a man, and the plant was an homunculus.

The Gods of the old world took the sacrifice and gave life to the symbol
but men were not satisfied. They wanted magic, and apparition,
they wanted to control the lightning.
And so, they took to strange alchemy and rituals
that made the Gods hide their eyes in shame for foolish men.

By the keys of mercy and the secrets of wisdom, in my dream I saw
a wicked magic, not of the Gods.
I watched apocryphal men, those in search of infinity,
draw themselves into visions,
and I realized that the beginning and the end was the same;
the entrance, the path, the exit, it did not matter.

These men made puppets of the Gods magic, and paid.

I watched in my dream as men prayed unholy prayers,
submitting themselves to tortures and their spirit avulsed from the body.
Was it science? Sacrifice? Transcendance?

It was what they wanted, and they faded from reality completely.