A & A: Cool Alchemy Stages! The Cooking

Alison....yeah, I liked what Anthony said about the fever purifying the body. (is that what he said? ha! Can't remember now...but I liked it!)

Heat. Sounds like you're cookin' Alison! You know in Alchemy....when all of your Self just COOKS together in a great mixing?

Looky here: "So over steaming retorts (*the cooking*heat* the meditative alchemist dreamed deep visions and wrote them down as chemical transformations. Although every artifex used his own methods in his own way, the opus alchymicum, the work to cook the Lapis, divides roughly into four basic procedures or regiminia:
the nigredo (blackening), the albedo (whitening), the citrinitas (yellowing), and the rubedo (reddening). Each stage begins with decay and ends with rebirth and coniunctio, the chemical synthesis of two substances that alters both--and a counterpart to the Jungian view of transference (therapist + client = something new) and to the psyche's transcendent function, which unites the psychological opposites.

To apply his scheme: nigredo = shadow work, albedo = anima/animus work, citrinitas = Wise Old Man/Wise Woman work, rubedo = Self work. (***Oooh I love this part!!***)

During individuation each of these archetypes surrenders part of its energy to the probing ego and part to activating the next, deeper archetype. The Self archetype, symbolized by the Lapis, is the core."

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Alison what stage do you feel you're at right now?? It really does feel like you're in one of the 4 different stages of Cooking and transforming...

Yip!

love T

Taken from this excellent article