It’s the Water of Life ceremony. Outsiders aren’t usually invited to this.
Water of what?
It’s this … poison or potion harvested from … I don’t know what.
Ground-up bug chitin, I heard.
Postgraduate adrenochrome, that’s what I heard.
It’s lethal, potentially. Unless that lethality is neutralised. The drinker has to enter into a coma-like trance. Then covert the toxic elements on a molecular level. If you fail, you die. You’re poisoned. But if you succeed …
Then what?
You unlock the entirety of supervisorial memory. And along with it, all the secrets of philosophy.
I don’t understand.
It’s a kind of PhD regression, that takes you back through PhD past lives, kinda. Look, we all had PhD supervisors, right? And they had supervisors?
Sure.
This is a way of accessing their memories, their experiences. Going all the way back.
All the way back to where?
Look, postgraduates are always in the line of the philosophical equivalent of apostolic succession. Take Io. She was supervised by …?
Professor Ron Flowers, at Essex.
The guy forced into retirement?
Fucked too many students or something …
And who supervised him?
Someone quiet famous, actually: Eloise Springer.
And who supervised her?
That’s going pretty far back. She was American. I think it was …
Hannah Arendt. It was Hannah Arendt.
Fuck off. Look it up.
Eloise Springer … supervised by Curt Broadstairs … supervised by HANNAH ARENDT. It’s fucking her!
See, a direct apostolic line to Hannah Arendt. To old Europe. Pretty fucking cool.
Well, the water of life is supposed to release the accumulated wisdom of the chain of supervisors. To let your supervisor through you. And then your supervisor’s supervisor and so on, all the way back.
And Hannah Ardent was supervised by Heidegger, right? And Heidegger was supervised by … Someone dead clever.
The water of life – if it actually exists – means that the postgraduate student becomes legion. Becomes multiple. The whole tradition speaks through them …
And has it happened? Has any postgraduate actually become legion?
I’m not sure. There are dangers, I know that. Things can go wrong. You can channel other forces.
Dark ones. There are all kinds of entities out there.
The Bug right?
It’s like taking ayahusca. The whole process needs careful supervision.
Yeah, but there’s more to it. Sure, they’re looking for a way to unlock the memory of all supervisees. And supervisors. As a way of bridging space and time. But there’s more.
There’s been a deliberate programme, that’s lasted hundreds, if not thousands of years. A careful matching up of certain supervisors with certain supervisees. The Golden Path, it’s called. A secret supervisorial pathway.
Steered by who?
I’m not sure … I don’t know who’s doing it. Anyway, the aim is to produce the postgraduate to come, who will not need supervision. Who will recall all the lessons of previous supervisions, all the cycles of PhD study, going all the way back. To wherever there was a teacher and pupil. Wherever there was instruction. A postgraduate who will be able to … see into the future. Escape the wheel of postgraduate supervisions. Experience time in a new way. And save the humanities …
The K'fitzat ha-Derekh.
The what?
They borrowed the name from the Zohar. The K'fitzat ha-Derekh will lead the all the humanities postgraduates to liberation.
So who’s going to drink the water of life tonight?
I’m not sure. Only the PhD student at the brink of submission can endure it. You need at least an MA and three years of full time PhD study. You’re at your strongest when you’re just about to submit your dissertation …
And if it goes wrong?
Shrugging.
Work in Progress 