Nigredo: The Blackening
The blackening is the phase most fear to confront and many spend lifetimes avoiding and resisting this process, and would rather skip to the whitening healing phase, resisting to endure the blackening many can get stuck in a perpetual loop of healing, yet never being healed. For example, how many choose to react with cognitive dissonance to universal and personal harsh truths than face them head on, this is due to unconscious fear and resistance.
Within this process, is purging the stagnation, facing the inner critic, and negative constructs of self, in which the remedy is a process of reframing the challenging experiences in one’s life and ciphering wisdom from these experiences, so that we can be empowered.
Calcination is the burning up of the Prima Materia into ash.
The process uses the hottest blue Maldekian flame of the alchemist to dissolve and coagulate.
Association with the planet Saturn and lead.
Materia prima is the feminine, it is the moon, womb, mother creation archetype. She is the dew of the aqua permanens, which unites hostile energy into wholeness.
Thrown into the fire of the Athanor.
This is the process of calcification, putrefaction and decomposition, one is confronted with our deepest shadow aspects and traumas. This is when we can burn it up and HEAL our core wounds!
This experience is reminiscent of the archetypal initiation journey of the shaman, ubiquitous to many indigenous cultures. In which the neophyte is hurled into the underworld, torn to shreds by demonic forces, then must rise out and reassemble. Transmuting the pain, fear, ignorance, sickness and destruction, into wholeness, courage, wisdom, health and creative inspiration.
Taking responsibility and accountability for our thought, actions and emotion in this reality field.
Moving out of victim hood and facing our true selves, with authenticity.
Seeing it for what it is, so it can be transformed into something which empowers us.
Within the blackening phase one is also confronted with dissolution and separation.
Feeling or coming to the realisation that much of what one once knew no longer holds validity. A reorganisation of the psyche is often at play.
Shadow work can be very isolating, and one may have times no one else can grasp what the neophyte is experiencing. This can bring the realisation that no one else can save us, we must take responsibility for our own healing and act in productive ways to move through this, into alignment and self-awareness. One may get torn into a thousand pieces yet knows one’s capability to rebuild into something greater and be empowered by the challenge.
Drawing the circle of the magician is the way to get through the first gate.
Albedo: The Whitening
The bird of paradise can only come to someone with an open hand. The peacock phase. The process of putrefaction the hot flame has burned things up, transmuting and absolving. The allegory of Heaven (the volatile feminine) and Earth (the fixed masculine) have married in the alchemical wedding. Under the purifying light of the moon, one attains pure awareness of self.
This is the stage of conjunction and catharsis. One emerges out of the underworld, with newfound wisdom and appropriate action to heal.
Letting go of what no longer serves us in our lives and integrating the new wisdom found in the shadow work, as to create more awareness.
Reframing one’s attitude on one’s life into something more constructive and what can strengthen us to reach our innate potential.
Becoming receptive to healing, purifying the physical body and observing ones thought and emotion, with objective discernment.
We begin to turn our attention outwards, becoming the objective perceiver of the world at large, seeing big picture truths, without bias or conditioning. Instead from a place of neutrality and knowing, with a reflective ability to see the collective shadows. This ability to see the entire spectrum of polarity in the world at large can sometimes feel like a step backwards into the blackening, yet there is a newfound spiritual maturity and wisdom, which enables the neophyte to be comfortable with the burden or responsibility of knowledge.
Rubedo: The Reddening
Sublimated and purified further to create the stone of the wise. This is when we step up in our level of conscious awareness and thus great responsibility. Maintaining this stage takes great vigilance and discipline, as one can slip back to the earlier phases. Yet each time that reddening is attained it becomes more like a muscle memory imprinted into the individual’s energy field. Learning to master, sound, consciousness, energy, frequency and vibration.
In terms of consciousness, this is when we have begun to really establish our foundations of wisdom and put this gnosis into a practical application in physical reality. The ability to mentor and teach is a natural flow of transmission and magnetism. Being present in the here and now is the ultimate gift. One is fortified in their energy field and respected for their magnitude by all forces. One has the ability to reconcile paradoxes and master polarity.
One solidifies and refines one’s practices and is in alignment and a conduit for the higher force energy. The Sol spark shines bright, no longer eclipsed. When one has done a lot of the work transmuting and learning and is now reaching mastery in their practices and in their thought, emotion and reaches a more elevated level of consciousness and spiritual maturity. One who has authority and full awareness of ones thought and emotion and can direct it in the most beneficial way. This is the stage of the alchemical process in which spirit merges with matter, in alignment. The phoenix rises from the ashes and of the blackening, after the burning of the hottest flame.
One has mastered the universal laws of metaphysics and eternal axioms and disentangled and dismantled the Metatronic gridwork overlay, connecting back to the spindle (9) of the universal tree of life. Fully surrendering. Knowing thyself.
The diamond heart of Philosophum, in Lapidem
A diamond can only be formed under great pressure. This is the process of individuation (principium individuationis) and self-actualisation. One may have reached immortality of body and soul; this process can often take lifetimes. One becomes the Kundara (ascended master).
Once the Magnum Opus (Great Work) is completed, one comes to a place of activated core ignition and bio-spiritual re-genesis, ascension in this physical plane. This is a process of condensation, rejuvenation and crystallisation, in which the philosophers stone, has completed the process of turning base metals to the gold of omnipotent consciousness. Yet never think you have fully arrived at any destination, this process will continue to unfold and blossom, this is only really the beginning of the journey. There are many veils to pierce and gates to enter, now you have the key and can build the bridge.
By Tala Linden
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