Page 19 - GALIET THE KING AND THE CORPSE: The Four Cardinal Corners and the Quest of the Blue Cloak, the Mask and the Sword IV GALIET THE KING AND THE CORPSE: The Four Cardinal Corners and the Quest of the Blue Cloak, The Mask and the Sword

air. Therefore, Ksantisila’s sophocating circle is no milk libation, it rings with hair splitting, marching malefices that flash “double, double, toil and trouble, fire burn and cauldron bubble, double, double, toil and trouble, fire burn and cauldron bubble...”14 This is Ksantisila’s trace: a malevolent, infinite circle that “hovers in the fog and filthy air.”15 Prepared for ritual worship, Ksantisila awaits, at the periphery of his magic circle, the vital arrivals of King Trivikramasena and Vetala to effect histransformation. Ksantisila’stracingofthemagiccirclewith “bone powder”, his placing of “pitchers of blood on cardinal points” and the presence of “two human eyes”, “human flesh” and a “skull with immaculate teeth”, near a fire, suggests that these homogeneous and heterogeneous body parts (homoimeries and non-homoimeries) are the primordial elements and potential for life. Yet this new being requires other three primordial elements to ensure sustenance: fire (Agni), breath (Vetala-Brahman) and logos (Vac-King Trivikramasena). As such, Ksantisila’s magic circle is not a symbol of permanence, unity, wholeness or of undifferentiation like Parmenides’ sphere, rather, a symbol that favors the dynamism of metamorphosis: Ksantisila is to be possessed and become another: more divine, more perfect, more complete 3⁄4
14 Shakespeare, William. Macbeth. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998. I.I.13. 15 Shakespeare, William. Macbeth. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998. I.I.13.
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