seeing and ending

What do we see when insights burst forth? I think we see connections: this goes with that; as above, so below; heaven in a grain of sand, eternity in an hour. We see too that "you" (or "thou") and "I" are one; that God (or the Goddess) and "I" are one. The two worlds once separate start to click together and each click turns on a new light.

Some alchemists identified this as a false end of the opus. All of these dazzling coloured lights seem to resemble a Final Fireworks Display. The goal has been reached, hurray! However, as Adam McLean writes of the encounter with the Peacock's Tail:

Many people who have this experience in their inner life often falsely assume they have reached the end of the work, and attained inner transformation and enlightenment. The inner vision of the Peacock's Tail, beautiful though it may be, is merely a digestion of the polarities of the black and white stage. These must be transformed further into spiritual tinctures, if we hope to have any permanent transformation within the soul.

The Peacock's Tail or Cauda Pavonis is also associated with the rainbow and the goddess Iris as messenger of the gods. In "Mysterium Coniunctionis", Jung writes of this connection:

The cauda pavonis announces the end of the work, just as Iris, its synonym, is the messenger of God. The exquisite display of colours in the peacock's fan heralds the imminent synthesis of all qualities and elements, which are united in the "rotundity" of the philosophical stone.

These beautiful insights, then, are like an announcement of the end but not the end itself, just as the beautiful arch of the rainbow announces the return of sunshine after rain or the return of hope after despair.

And even if "I" am the Goddess Herself, so what? What follows next?

Blossoming of peacock eyes
Never answering the why's
That's the safest course to take
Let new questions e'er arise