The Adventures of Christian Rosy Cross by David Foster (1986)

When is an allegory only a partegory? Or even just a bitegory? This manages to be all three. The overt story is one of a young man of the Middle Ages searching for alchemical furtherance - becoming an initiate of an order, undertaking all sorts of mentorship, experimenting with mercurial and other combinations in the quest for gold. He travels east to Damascus via Venice and discovers something called the Vegetable Stone which leads to more questing fomentation. He gets caught up in a helix of political vying, spouts a great deal about wise ways, and finally is 'reformed', becoming an inquisitor and travelling back to Europe to flush out heretics and teach what he has learnt. The covert story can be seen as a drug parable, but it slips in and out of vision. Its main period of clarity occurs while Christian, the young man, is in Damascus and using the Vegetable Stone. It takes him to Damcar, a dream-version/enlightened-state chemical edition of the city. The Vegetable Stone is presumably hash. Those around Christian loom up out of the fug as potential covert characters, too - the Gatekeeper might be a common or garden drug dealer, or he might be a supplier cum experience-leader. The Viceroy and the master of the brotherhood Christian joins appear also to be contrasting pathways to experience, either personified or more notional. All of this is couched in Foster's predictably louche, modern terminology, slangy and comically immediate, nothing to do with the historical period. It is also melded and folded with his trademark intellectual swagger; philosophical points made every few lines, ideas traded generously. As usual with this author, clarity is the loser: to return to the terms at the start - this is rarely if ever an allegory, occasionally a partegory, most of the time a bitegory. The focus is dim. And, also as usual with this author, he's already realised that, and allowed himself an out in the introduction - apparently it's 'very ambiguity conforms to the Hermetic tradition'. That smacks to me of those knowing squeaks most first year literature students will remember from often drug-addled conversations at 3am: "Exactly! This book is boring! But it's supposed to be! Because the author is slyly commenting on exactly that subject! Boredom!" Yeah, sure. Well, nah. Though it may conform to the Hermetic tradition, it doesn't to the best allegorical one. But I still can't help feeling admiration for the ideas in this, as in most of Foster. They're in the cauldron with a lot of other stuff which needs refining out or distilling up, though.