by Dmitry Moiseev

Apr 27, 2024

Dmitry Moiseev discusses Miguel Serrano’s Ultimate Flower, where the search for a magical city becomes a mystical exploration of destiny, love, and immortality.

In Ultimate Flower (1969), a masterpiece of late magical prose, the Chilean writer Miguel Serrano tells the story of the search for a magical city, which his Master told him about in one of the South American esoteric circles. This is a story about a city inhabited by amazing creatures that have nothing to do with ordinary mortals — creatures who are supposed to be called to become prophets of the New Age, and who keep the secret of eternal life. It is called the ‘City of Caesars’ in honour of the conquistador Francisco César, who claimed to have found the forbidden city in 1528. The location of the city remains a mystery, and its search was declared the main goal of the esoteric circle of the Master.

The members of the secret Order, after having passed the initiation, had to be ready to devote all their efforts to discovering the City of Caesars. According to a legend preserved from the time of the conquistadors,

the City had golden walls and the roofs of the houses were encrusted with diamonds. Bells played throughout the City, but the sound seemed to come from another world. The inhabitants were neither born nor did they die; they were eternal and spoke an unknown language. Thus the City was enchanted, and it was affirmed that if it were violated, then the world would end.

So, the Master of the Order, about whom Miguel Serrano writes, gave his apprentices the task of finding the forbidden city. The apprentice had no right to return to the Master until he provided him with his description of the city, his own personal discovery. The Master gave the participants of the esoteric circle the following parting words:

It is everywhere … not only on Lake Nahuel-Huapi or in the far distant part of Patagonia, but right here in the center of Santiago even on Matta Street or Lira, or Carmen or Recoleta. You are there at all times and you breathe its air every time you inhale; yet when you think you have found it, it will have disappeared, and you will have suffered one more deception. You will only find it when you are no longer looking for it, or when you have become convinced that it doesn’t even exist. Thus it is everywhere and nowhere; it is both existent and non-existent. Physically, it takes the shape of a square with an entrance that is almost impossible to find. One has to go around it dozens of times before discovering it; sometimes even years are needed, although it may also be discovered in a second.

Serrano writes that his personal and very intensive search for the city took many months. He wandered the streets, forests, and parks in search of mysterious signs; sometimes alone, sometimes with friends from the Order. One warm night he passed by the clock tower. Suddenly, a woman’s hand opened the door, and a young girl with very white skin came out. Serrano describes this vision as follows:

‘It is raining’, she said. ‘Who will enter the Circle tonight?’ But it was not raining, and the night was warm. I tiptoed up to her and said, ‘Please let me enter.’ She smiled but apparently without seeing me. Then she took my hand and placed it against her breast… I slept with my head resting on the snow-white breast of that young woman. My whole being questioned her about the City… I spoke of all this in the meeting of the Circle. I told everything and confessed my error in thinking that the City was located within that white body. That night I had travelled over all of the contours of that marvelous woman’s body from her diminutive feet up her legs, through her womb, over her breasts and head, in search of the entrance to the City, while all the time her eyes did not see me, lost in imaginary rain.

The Master finally interrupted Serrano and asked him: ‘You came to describe the City. So what does it look like?’ Don Miguel replied: ‘The City is like a flower made of colored paper.’

This is a reference to the very beginning of Serrano’s text — to the place where he remembers his childhood spent in the country. Let us turn to Serrano’s memories in which he clearly felt the perfection of nature, and then something important happened:

One day I saw a hand emerge from the bell of a flower and wave to me, urging me to come near. To my childish eyes, it seemed perfectly natural that a hand should come out of a flower, and I therefore went over to it. My only worry was that I was not able to enter it as it seemed to want me to; I simply could not fit. Shortly afterwards the flower wilted, and its leaves and petals fell to the ground. I gathered them up in hopes of bringing them back to life, but of course was not able to do so. Then I thought of making a paper flower, and spent many days cutting one out and painting it with bright colors. Once it was finished, I took it out into the garden and planted it where the other flower had been. My hope was that if the flower was made well enough, the hand would reappear. But when it did not come back, I realised that my flower could not compare to those of the garden which had been made by God. At that moment, I stopped being a child: never afterwards was I able to speak freely with the flowers and plants of the garden. Without realising it, I had entered into competition with God, and so compromised my innocent relationship with nature.

Why did Serrano’s fruitless search for the city through the body of a woman lead to memories of an artificial flower that he tried to create as a child as a challenge to God and his unmatched skills?

The answer to this question is contained in Serrano’s recollections of communicating with the vision of Princess Papan, the sister of Montezuma, the Aztec ruler of the city of Tenochtitlan. According to legend, she died, but was not buried, and a few months later returned to life, talking about her impressions of death. The Chilean writer describes his meeting with the princess on the verge of dreams and reality:

She belonged to another Circle and had a City of her own. Hers was called Agharti and was located in the Himalayas. In essence it was the same as ours. She had chosen to have a certain illness in order to have time to contemplate her City without being disturbed by the events of our time. In a real sense, she had died and come back to life, and that is why I knew she might be also called Papan. I used to sit by her, in front of an open window through which the sun played. I told her about the Circle, about my friend who had disappeared, and above all, about the flower of my childhood.

Serrano and the princess were discussing various issues of being, dreams, and visions, and at one point she asked a question: ‘You will have to tell me about love. Have you ever loved?’

Serrano replied:

I have searched for the City in the bodies of women… I have penetrated them and gone over them as though they were a country. Once I knew a woman who was either mad or a saint. She was in the care of an old crone who wore paper leggings. Yet we never understood each other, and I believe that we even harmed each other without knowing it, having given false indications to each other… I don’t remember well, and in fact I know nothing, absolutely nothing at all, about the women I have loved.

Then the princess said:

That simply means that you have never loved. You simply have no idea of love as an absolute concept. Loving is knowing. It is also like a crime since it involves death, burial, and resurrection. For how otherwise can one possess the body of a woman? One cannot penetrate the walled city without first subduing its inhabitants. Thus, love is something that is very serious. Today it is completely forgotten… Love in fact is a strange and secret chemistry, in which the androgynous is born. This is true and complete love; everything else is different. Have you ever noticed how impossible it was to fuse yourself with the person you thought you loved, even though sleeping in the same bed? There is always something separating you, a thread of air, a different dream. Can the lovers be truly united if each one dreams a different dream? If you ever begin to dream the same dreams as your love, then you will be able to create the new star, the star of Him-Her.

At that moment, Serrano remembered the truth that his Master had told him: ‘It would be impossible to enter the City without a Queen.’ Subsequently, he received a letter from his imaginary princess with a more detailed explanation:

He who loves, gives eternity to his lover; he renounces eternity only to gain it later on. … I write these lines at the witching hour. … I think the Wedding, the sacrifice, is rapidly approaching. Love is like a sphere: it cannot be seen or understood on all sides at once, as the Fish with the Three-Eyes saw everything in the city of Nandur. However, I will make it so that you will always be cold like the ice in the Antarctic, because I will be buried within you. You will no longer need an external sun because you will have the White Sun inside you.

The White Sun that Serrano’s imaginary princess was talking about is the ‘star of Him-Her’. It may also be the solution to Serrano’s quest for the City of Caesars, a metaphor for immortality. The princess told Serrano, ‘Loving is knowing’, and also, ‘You begin to dream the same dreams as your love.’ Thus, the key to solving the mystery of the Ultimate Flower in many ways lies in following a vision that inspires. True immortality is found in a couple in which spiritual unity with a partner encourages you to dream the same dreams and immerse yourself in knowing each other in a dream and in reality.

The mysterious princess Papan, who had haunted Serrano, died along with the vision and settled inside him, having entered his soul. This is a metaphor of dissolution, characteristic of sacrificial love, in which one of the partners acts as a teacher and a living guide to the subtle world. At the same time, the relationship does not have to be like this — moreover, in its harmonious version, it leads precisely to the creation of new stars — the White Sun that will shine in each of the partners, and the radiant energy of which will embrace each of the two. It is only in this unity, and not in ‘going over bodies as though they were a country’, that the true sign of immortality is hidden, which in each individual life can be revealed to us.

Then, with the acquisition of the White Sun, the true Ultimate Flower will bloom.