Love, Chariot, Justice, Hermit, Wheel

6. The alchemical Lover: Juno and Jove, Mars and Venus, the son to be.

Here are some examples of the tarot lover card: the so-called Cary-Yale, the first known card, followed by the PMB, and then, two centuries later, the Noblet. You can see what the dominant theme is: two lovers with a blindfolded Cupid overhead.
 
This imagery corresponds to one of the dominant thenes of the Rosarium and its descendants: the coniunctio between King and Queen.

The text says that the pair are brother and sister. That might be an allusion to Egypt, where it was well known that the Pharaoh married his sister, or to Adam and Eve or Jupiter and Juno. To me it looks as though the woman was considerably older than the man, and the artist made them mother and son. If so, there might be associations to Oedipus.

In the Rosarium woodcuts of 1550, there are only two people, no Cupid. But I see the dove as comparable to the Cupid overhead on the Lover card.In some later versions there is actually a winged boy in place of the dove, perhaps influenced by the tarot card. The first is the conceptio from the Pandora, c. 1500; the second and third are from Mylius's Anatomia Aura, 1628. I include two from Mylius, because the child doesn't get its wings until the pregnatio, after the Queen has absorbed the King). These emblems resemble the Cary-Yale and PMB Love cards. It is hard to know which way any influence would have gone.

Another illumination is more parallel to the Marseille Lover card. That one occurs in the c. 1420 series of illuminations for ms. apostolica vat. lat. 1066. There a woman stands between the King and Queen, as though either to bless the marriage or to be their initiation leader in what follows. Instead of a child on top, rain falls from a cloud, and a rainbow surrounds the head of the woman in the middle. The text identifies her as Juno, identifiable by the rainbow that accompanies her, as well as the peacocks.

The trash-can like things are to me reminiscent of alchemical containers. The text refers to unguents, i.e. aromatic oils. A double meaning is possible.

Rain from clouds is a feature of many Rosarium-based alchemical illustrations, in the mundificatio or "washing", which immediately follows the conceptio in the sequence.

Juno is the goddess of marriage; so it is be surprising for her to be in the sequence, to bless the union of the king and queen. The same would apply to the older woman on the card. Yet there may be another meaning, since a similar lady occurs in several other illuminations in the same manuscript. As someone bigger than Juno, a female initiator, she may be leading the king and queen through a series of initiations. It might be as in Mozart's Magic Flute. There it is not enough that Tamino and Pamina love each other. They must also prove themselves in initiations that follow.

De Rola (in Alchemy: the Secret Art) says that the rainbow makes her Iris, the female Mercury, conductor of souls to the underworld. That is one of the functions of an initiator, to lead souls into a symbolic underworld.

The mythologist Natale Conti wrote a compendium of stories about the gods in 1551, entitled Mythologies. In it he includes what he specifically calls an alchemical interpretation of Juno. He calls her "water of Mercury," and says, among other things (I have already quoted the second sentence below, in relation to the Popess, but I give it again to situation that quote in context):

She is in charge of marriages because "she is the means for conjoining the sulphuric vapors, Venus and Mars, as it were, and because before the distilling process, she is joined with Jove, and the two together engender the alchemical Sun, hence her being called the wife of Jove. She is the queen of the Gods because she controls, dissolves, joins, separates and constrains the metals, which are named after various Gods. (Anthony DiMatteo, Natale Conti's Mythologies, A select translation, p. 81)

Here again we see Juno depicted as that which brings about the transformation of others, in this case envisioned as vapors and metals, in other words their initiator into higher stages of development. As for the "alchemical Sun" engendered by Jupiter and Jove, perhaps that is why there is a sunburst around Cupid in the French cards that we see starting in c. 1650.

In the same series of alchemical illuminations as the one I have just shown, there is one that might fit Daimonax's interpretation of the Conver Lover card, in which the older lady, by touching the phallus (which he imagines her reaching for on the card, above), changes into the younger lady (http://www.bacchos.org/tarothtm/6amour1.html).

The illumination has Juno on the left side and Venus on the right.

Juno, although of much wealth, was said to have been confined to the upper air by Jupiter, "hung down a golden chain from her hands" (DiMatteo p. 77). In the illumination, consequently, we see her in a tower, counting her gold, with a golden belt. The peacock's tail also suggests the golden chain.

Venus, for her part, was said by the alchemists to have been born from the foam that was generated when Jupiter flung his father Saturn's testicles into the sea. Conti gives the alchemical interpretation of this act. First, he says, the say that "Jove" represents a certain salt-derivative from "Saturn," which is another salt. Then:

...because this "Jove" carries off within himself the "virile parts," that is, cuts off and separates the sulphur hidden within the salt, the residue being received into a vessel placed for the reception of it, he is said to have cut off the potency of Saturn. And since salt sinks down in water, "in the sea," Venus is said to be born from this compound of salt and sulphur. (DiMatteo, p. 77).

It seems to me that this "potency of Saturn," the sulphur hidden within the salt, could just as well, by its toucht, serve to renew an older lady as merely give birth to a younger. In alchemy, I am speculating, the effect of the elixir. when it comes into contact with an aging body, is to act as a fountain of youth. In contact with base metals, correspondingly, it changes them to gold.

This process, called multiplicatio in alchemy, might be what we see in the manuscript as the coins accompanying Juno, goddess orf riches. But there is the juxtaposition of that picture with the one on the right, of Venus. On the left is the middle-aged Juno, cooking in her oven (we can even see the fire buening at the bottom), and on the right, Venus on her seashell. The red spots on Venus are identified in the text as roses, sacred to Venus. But de Rola says that such spots in alchemical treatises are characteristic of the Stone in the final stages of preparation, "the red flowering out of the white" (Alchemy the Secret Art p. 57). So the two women might be the same substance at different stages, before and after contact with the elixir under heat.

At least that is one interpretation that occurs to me. The fountain of youth was a popular theme in 15th century frescoes; perhaps it is based in an alchemical teaching about the elixir, in which the birth of Venus gets an odd twist. However it is something that would happen at the end of the process, not in its early stages as Daimonax finds it in the tarot. The card from this perspective perhaps hints at what is to come.

The Etteilla "marriage" card draws on a tradition that had a priest between the two lvoers, taking the place of  Cupid..

 However its closest predecessor is an alchemical image from the 1618 Golden Tripod of Michael Maier, again showing the conjunction of the elements.
 
In this case, what accomplishes the coniunctio is the alchemist, the adept, which is what the priestly figure stands for. The female figure--Juno, "water of Merury,"--is something in the retort itself, the ingredient there that accomplishes the union. That is to be sure the main concern of the alchemist, not to glorify his role but to understand what is happening in the process in front of him.

7. The Alchemical Chariot: the alchemical Sun and the Son of the Sun

Here are some early versions of the Chariot card, starting with a c. 1450 card from Ferrara, then the Milan card of 1440, and finally the Catelin Geoffrey card of 1548 Lyon. Notice the colors of the horses. 

 The "Marseille" style cards are at the right. Noblet is in the center; I have here the original, in which the red is now faded This stle of card was already present in the 15th century, as can be seen by the fragment of a card on the left, estimated at c. 1500. In the 18th century, the two colors were removed. It seems to me that the two colors are an important feature, or at least that one is restrained while the other isn't. They are the male and female from which the son, actually the "alchemical sun" is engendered. 

O'Neill says that what corresponds to the Chariot card is the stage in alchemy that he calls "the birth of the philosopher's son," "the first union, the Royal Son," or "the triumph of Apollo or Mars." Moreover (p. 287):

The birth of the philosopher's son only completes the first stage of the operations. The King's son must die, be buried, travel through the underworld and be resurrected into a higher unity. Thus, the Chariot card represents Apollo, the sun god, about to travel into the sea to initiate the "night sea journey."

O'Neil's account of the King's son in alchemy is very close to the interpretation I quoted earlier from Natale Conti in 1551. Conti says of Juno:

...before the distilling process, she is joined with Jove, and the two together engender the alchemical Sun... (DiMateo, Natale Conti's Mythologies, p. 81)

O'Neill refers us to ms. palat. 1066, where there are images with chariots. One is of Apollo leading his horses skillfully. There are also the nine Muses, a typical accompaniment to illustrations of Apollo, the son of Jove if not of Juno. When with the Muses, he usually is shown with his lyre. Here he has a bow and arrow. That is also one of his attributes, the weapon with which he kills the Python of Delphi. A black crow and a red man sit on the chariot, two of the colors of alchemy. The text that goes with the illumination is about Apollo. The crow is part of Apollo's myth and a typical accompaniment; I don't know how the red man fits into his myth, although red men occur often enough in alchemy. The horses are reddish and whitish, corresponding to some versions of the tarot card.

Another illumination in palat. 1066, the one immediately following the one of Apollo, has a younger person at the reins, and a devil grabbing them. Below him the same figure being helped out of the water and put into a tomb. The accompanying text is about Phaeton, the son of the sun god Helios, who tried managing the chariot of the sun but couldn't control it. Struck by a bolt of lightning from Zeus, he falls out of the chariot to his death, where his sisters mourn him.

The illustration is in some respects typical of illustrations of Greek mythology at that time. But what is usually shown is just the fall out of the chariot (for example, in the" tarot of Mantegna" Sun card, shown at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mantegna_Tarocchi. In the comments accompanying the illumination, no devil is mentioned, nor do the sisters help him out of the water and into a tomb.

The scene in the alchemical illustration seems to me to be one of volatilization and then fixation, in an early stage of the process. Vapors from the heated substance in the alchemist's retort are released into the tubing above it, where it will condense on the sides. They are in a state of heat and agitation, in other words, of high-flying aspiration. Similarly, the man on the chariot is seeing with his mind's eye the ideal images of the upper world that he is now recalling, and at the same time trying to guide his horses accordingly. But he is out of contact with the horses and the rest of the material world. He doesn't even have reins; all he has is his voice. For one horse, that is enough, but not for the other. The chariot is headed for disaster. But it is a purifying disaster, like the boiling over of the alchemist's substance, because the boy will return with more knowledge than he had before.

As far as the Chariot card, it is not clear whether the mature Apollo or the immature Phaeton applies. I would think Phaeton, but perhaps it is intentionally ambiguous.

A problem with the images in palat. 1066 is that they are not in an unambiguously alchemical manuscript; they are in a manuscript talking about the Greek gods. It might help to see what in the unambiguous alchemical imagery corresponds to these images of Apollo and Phaeton.

Unfortunately O'Neill does not give us anything; so I will try. After the marriage of King and Queen, what follows in the Rosarium series is the act of coitus, in a bath. Next, the bath has turned into a tomb, and we see one body with two heads; and third, a small boy ascends into the sky from the fused body. It is this small boy that I identify with O'Neill's "royal son." Here are what the 1555 woodcuts look like (http://www.rexresearch.com/rosarium/rosarium.htm). Number 5 is top left, 6 bottom left, and 7 on the right.

The first is the "coniunctio or coitus"; the second (below the first) is the "pregnatio, or putrefactio"; and the third is the "extractio, or impregnatio animae" i.e. impregnation of the soul. For the third image, the motto is

Here the Four Elements are separated,
And the Soul is most subtly severed from the Body.

So far only this last scene is relevant to the Chariot card, in that it shows a young person in the air. What about the other scenes, between the marriage and the little boy? Well, they are not in the tarot, at least not explicitly. If the Lover card was meant to represent the hieros gamos of Isis and Osiris, anticipating that of God and Mary--then that may include the death scene, because Osiris was already dead, and Isis would soon join him. Isis in effect was making love to Osiris in his tomb.

In the Marseille-style Lover card, Cupid corresponds to what we are now taking as the Royal Son. It is a Cupid who has lost his wings and is all grown up. Now it is the allegory of the Phaedrus that most clearly applies, and the three parts of the soul. The rational part, the charioteer, is quite a bit separated from the other two. If we can say that the rational part is the immortal part, then in that sense it is separated from the mortal parts, in that he is on one level, they are on another, and there is nothing connecting the two. But how does this relate to the Apollo and Phaeton images?

I think the relationship will become closer if we see an additional image from Mylius's Anatomia Aurea of 1628, the "Coitus" image, right before the two I showed in connection with the Lover card. I will show "Coitus" first; the others will follow (I take these images from de Rola's Golden Game).

In the Coitus image, the King says. "Come my beloved, let us embrace and generate a new son who will not resemble his parents." The Queen replies, "Here I come to you, most eager to conceive a son who shall have no equal in the world." These comments, although they come from the Rosarium text, are what is new in our understanding of the imagery. Psychologically, it is very much a recipe for inflation if communicated to the child. According to de Rola, the lady in the vessel in the top image is the Mercury of the Wise. and the youth is the Sulphur of the Wise. De Rola comments (Golden Game p. 207).

The sexual embrace of the purified Principles causes pregnancy, which, as the winged Spirit at the top of the vessel shows, is a Volatization of the Fixed.

He is referring to the child in the "Pregnatio" image. It is the same result as I got for the Phaeton illumination, volatization. It will be followed by sublimation.

Whether by accident or design, the embracing couple with the child above them is pictorially similar not only to the early tarot Love cards but also to the Marseille-sryle Chariot cards, the two horses taking the place of the embracing couple. Both here and in the account described by Conti, the sequence goes directly to the "engendering of the alchemical Sun" without the intervening "putrefactio" of the Rosarium; in the process, the man has disappeared from the vessel in the "Praegnatio"because he has been fully absorbed by Lady Mercury. The old king is dead, and his successor and heir flies overhead.

In the Rosarium sequence, the volitalization is the little boy flying up from the tomb into the clouds. The sublimation comes two emblems later, when the boy returns. That stage, it seems to me, is what corresponds in the Phaeton myth to Phaeton falling from the sky.

 One version of the Rosarium image, a year earlier than the well-known 1550 version, actually shows a child falling rather than flying (http://www.alchemywebsite.com/virtual_museum/rosarium_side_gallery_sources.html. This is of a second volitization-sublimation process in the sequence, emblems 14 and 16, which involves a little winged girl; I presume that the sequence has a similar image earlier for the little boy.

In such a manner does the charioteer come to earth after living in the clouds of his ambitions. Something similar happens in the tarot as well, when the Wheel of Fortune turns and the Charioteer finds himself at the bottom of the wheel (see section 9 below). It is the Charioteer as Alexander the Great, poisoned at a banquet, or Julius Caesar, assassinated in the Capitol.

8. Alchemical Justice:the alchemist's tool for weighing, cutting, balancing.
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Here are some early tarot Justice cards, the PMB of c. 1455, a card found in the Sforza Castle of unknown age, but probably around 1600, and the Charles VI card of the 3rd quarter of the 16th century in either Florence or Bologna.

In the alchemst's laboratory, scales are for weighing ingredients so as to know their proportions relative to each other. Sometimes specific proportions are given in the texts, and sometimes not. But it is important to know what combinations produce the results that are described in the text. The various scenes with scales indicate the importance of balance in the work, with the four elements used equally. Below, a monk (variously identified as both Roger Bacon and Basil Valentine) holds equal portions of fire and water, while the cloud (air) and stone (earth) balance each other. He exclaims, "Make the elements equal and you will h have it."   (Image from Michael Maier's Tripus Aureus, 1618, as reproduced in de Rola's Golden Game p. 119.Quote is from s Maier's Symbolae Aurea Mensae, 1617, p. 450, as cited by Fabricius, Alchemy p. 92).

Measured quantities are also a part of the process of creation, from the random combinations of chaos, as in the illustration below, from Caneparius, Petrus Maria: de atramentis cuiucunque generis, Venice 1619 (in Fabricius, fig. 155, p. 90).

Other relevant images are cited by O'Neil in Tarot Symbolism, p. 278: Fabricius figs. 30, 254, and 325. Fabrocois's fig. 30 has scales with water and fire, like the one with the monk. Figs. 254 and 325, from the Mutus Liber of 1677, show the alchemist and the soror preparing ingredients for the retort

The two illustrations so far do not show the sword that is present in the card. It sometimes appears in alchemy as well. Here are two examples. In the first, a Justice-like figure stands guard over a sealed retort while the Stone cooks. The words on the neck of the retort are "Sigillum Hermetis," "Hermetic Seal," according to Fabricius p. 145. De Rola says that "the scales and double-edged sword respectively symbolize the weights of Nature and the Secret Fire" (p. 125). She has probably used the sword and scales to make sure the proportions of the various ingredients inside were right. I would guess that the sword represents the knife that the alchemist would use to cut off any excess.

Here is another illustration with both scales and sword. (from De Alchimia, by Pseudo-Thomas Aquinas, 16th century, as reproduced in de Rola, Alchemy, the Secret Art, pl. 43, and Jung, Psychology and Alchemy p. 300).

Certain ingredients are being added to alchemical Saturn, so as to free his potency. In this case, what is being freed seems to be the children he has eaten. In this case, the lady with the scales holds in her other hand a pitcher of water, with which she washes the figure of the new or renewed king as well as the old king. This pitcher connects her to the pitcher-carryin ladies in the tarot, i.e. those in Temperance and the Star.

9. The alchemical Hermit: student and teacher of the Art, spirit of Saturn, guide, one who has taken the path to the light

THE HERMIT AND HERMES TRISMEGISTUS

One interesting thing about the Hermit card is the name. It originally was simply "The Old Man." But by the time of the Noblet we see him called "L'Ermite," The Hermit. The same spelling is in "Chosson," 1672, the prototype for the Conver. Yet in Conver (below, the 1781_ the title is spelled differently: "L'Hermite."

"Hermite" is an Old French spelling of the word. Why was it changed in the 18th century? Perhaps to suggest an association with Hermetism and its mythical founder, Hermes Trismegistus.Alchemy was one of the so-called Hermetic arts, one that claimed Hermes Trismegistus as its legendary founder (for example, in Mylius's Opus medco-chymicum of 1618, which depicts a sequence of 168 seals of the "philosophers" of alchemy, from ancient to modern times, Hermes Trismegistus is the first).The "Hermite," then, is a follower of the first alchemist.

THE HERMIT AS A CHILD OF SATURN

There is also Saturn, in his Renaissance characterization, and those born under Saturn. The PMB Hermit has a clear association with Saturn. We can see the association by comparing it with the "Mantegna" Saturn of just a decade or two later(below). Besides his general appearance, the hourglass also was associated with Saturn, in the identification, already made in ancient times, of Cronos and Chronos, Saturn and Time. (Notice here also the headgear: the layers of the PMB's connect him to the Pope; the snail-like hat of the "Mantegna" connects it with the Leber Fool and the Sola-Busca 4 of Batons.)

In alchemy, Saturn was typically shown naked except for a loincloth, and lame, missing one leg below the knee. He is associated with death, decay, lead, and the blackness, or nigredo, when the alchemical substance has been burnt and, in alchemical imagery, the soul has left the body and life seems without spirit (image from Mylius, Philosophia Reformata 1622, Emblem 6; in Fabricius, Alchemy fig. 173, p. 102).

In the Rosarium sequence, we are in a stage shortly after the ascent of the little boy. In emblem 8, the little boy returns to the dead body. He does not look much like the Hermit--on the other end of life, in fact--but like the Hermit he is returning from the heights, into a world dominated by melancholy (the dead body, the clouds). (Image: http://www.rexresearch.com/rosarium/rosarium.htm.)

O'Neill describes the alchemical Hermit as the mystic's inner "evil old man...dying and decaying within him." But not everything Saturnian is evil, or worthy of death. To be sure, those born under Saturn are afflicted with melancholy, but some of them, by virtue of that very melancholy, also see beyond the visible into the realm of prophecy and divine inspiration. Agrippa (Three Books on Occult Philosophy, 1533, Book I Ch. LX) listed three types of divine melancholy. According to Tyson's notes to the printed version (probably drawing on the account in Saturn and Melancholy), this positive side of melancholy went back to pseudo-Aristotle in antiquity, in the 13th of his Problems; in the Renaissance, it was revived by Ficino.

That is is another side of the alchemical adept: melancholy much of the time, isolating from society, but also no stranger to spiritual ascent. So we have pictures like that below, of a man in isolation yet in contact with his spirit and soul (the two little birdlike creatures). This man is not, as O'Neill describes him, "within himself, sealed in the 'philosophical egg' or alchemical vessel...overcome with sadness and suffering" (Tarot Symbolism p. 279). The lines in the picture, I think, link him to the other world, a perceived in ecstatic states (Image: Daniel Stolcius de Stolcenberg, Viridarium chymicum figuria cupro incisis adornatum et poeticia picturis illustratum 1624, fig. XCIX, after Basilius Valentinus, De occulta philosophia, 1603. I take it, following O'Neill,Tarot Symbolism p. 279, from Fabricius fig. 193, p. 109.)


THE HERMIT AS GUIDE

In my section on the Pope, one possible correlate in alchemy was seen to be the Guide in the 1582 Book of Lambspring. A similar correlation may be possible for the Hermit. Early on, as we see in an image probablyfrom Bologna of the early 16th century, he was shown with wings, the only male figure in the tarot that I know of, before the Angel of Judgment, to receive this honor. That motif was borrowed from the engraved depictions of the famous "Triumphs" of Petrarch, a sequence in poetry in in which Love triumphs first, but is triumphed over by Chastity, in turned triumphed over by Death, who is trumphed over by Time, who is triumphed over by Eternity. The figure with wings was Time--after all, Time flies. He also had crutches and similarly on the card (I take these from Kaplan Encyclopedia of Tarot vol. 2).

Here is a corresponding example from the Book of Lambspring, Emblem 12, the one  following the one I gave for the Pope card. Below it is the motto as represented on the Sacred Texts reproduction of text and images (http://www.sacred-texts.com/alc/hm1/hm113.htm)

In 17th century alchemical imagery, the alchemist was sometimes shown with a lantern like the Hermit's, following in Nature's footsteps, as Maier says in his motto for the image (de Rola, Golden Game, p. 103).

To him who concerns himself with Alchemy.may Nature, Reason, Experience, and Reading be guide, staff, spectacles, and lantern.

Or is it Wisdom, in O'Neill's words, "the 'Anima Mundi', the goal of human life? Whichever, it is the alchemist as searcher; in that case, his despondency comes from his inability to get to where he wants to go. However I think the dominant image is that of the adept, someone already in touch with the divine, which we see in the folds of his robe as the rising sun (left to right: Noblet x. 1650, Dodal c. 1701. Conver 1761).


10. The Alchemical Wheel of Fortune: the circulation in the apparatus, up and down. 

I have already referred once to the Wheel, as carrying the subject of the alchemical process up and down through the alchemical vessels, in particular down from the heights of the alchemicl Sun. Here are three early  examples. What I find interesting about the ones on the right and left is that the figure on the bottom is not merely resting, but hanging on for another go-around. As in alchemy, the cycles repeat over and over.

 Later cards, however, follow the example of the PMB. A 16th century printed card, still needing to be colored, shows that a person has the head of an ass going up, is a complete ass on top, and only has the rear end of an ass going down, as the experience as humanized and wisened him. He is completely human when he is off the wheel and just resting.

On the other hand, there is no figure on the bottom at all in the Noblet and others of that type that followed. There is water on both sides, from the ass figure to emerge out of on the right and fall into on the left. I would guess that the water is to represent birth and death, and that the rise and fall is to depict an entire life. That, it seems to me, simplifies life and of courseas well as getting away from the alchemical meaning.

One wheel depicted in alchemical illustrations is the great wheel of the spheres around the earth. In one,a small winged creature represents the soul; I presume that it descends through its 22 levels and then reascends the same way. The number 22 is probably chosen because it is the number of Hebrew letters, but its coincidence with the number of trumps is suggestive.

In the other one, the woman is the Queen of Heaven, the world-soul, with two chains, one to the ape below and the other to God. Probably it is suggested by Juno's chain, which kept her in the highest reaches of the air. That she has one foot on the earth and one on the land is probably an attempt to link her with the Star card. The spheres move in a cyclical course around the center. Both illustrations are from Robert Fludd's Utriusque Cosmi, 1617. Thus they are both comparatively late in the development of alchemy. ( First Image: Fabricius, Alchemy p. 15; second image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/chemheritage/3554063495/.)

Before tarot, the early 15th century Heilege Dreifaltigkeit shows a person on a wheel, as one of three instruments of death used in the Middle Ages ((Image scanned from Laurinda Dixon, Bosch p. 269). I am not sure how it worked, but it must have been painful. The other means of death are hanging from a rope and having one's head cut off, which are reminiscent of trumps 13 and 14 (the scythe and the rope).Alchemically, it was a matter of torturing the metal with heat to remove impurities and speed up the "maturation" process. The process was described as a succession of "regimens," each dominated by a particular planet (see e.g. Philalethes, http://www.rexresearch.com/alchemy/opntranc.htm).

The Wheel then shows the motion of circulation, the round of evaporation and condensation that constitutes the purification of the Stone. Each rise and fall purifies one a little, in lifetime after lifetime, until the purity of the Stone is reached.