Alchemical operational procedures provide us a way to understand alchemy:
It is very difficult to understand alchemy as we find it in the original writings. We encounter a wild, luxuriant, tangled mass of overlapping images that is maddening to the order-seeking conscious mind. My method of ordering the chaos of alchemy is to focus on the major alchemical operations. After the prima materia has been found, it has to submit to a series of chemical procedures in order to be transformed into the Philosophers' Stone. Practically all of alchemical imagery can be ordered around these operations, and not only alchemical imagery. Many images from myth, religion, and folklore also gather around these symbolic operations, since they all come from the same sourcethe archetypal psyche
AOP ¶ 0There is no exact number of alchemical operations, and many images overlap. For my purposes I have chosen seven operations as the major ones making up the alchemical transformation
AOP ¶ 0I use the Latin terms, e.g., calcinatio instead of calcination, solutio instead of solutions, and so on, in order to distinguish the psychological processes from the chemical procedures:
AOP ¶ 0Calcinatio
Solutio
Coagulatio
Sublimatio
Mortificatio
Separatio
Coniunctio
Each of these operations is found to be the center of an elaborate symbol system. These central symbols of transformation make up the major content of all culture-products. They provide basic categories by which to understand the life of the psyche, and they illustrate almost the full range of experiences that constitute individuation
AOP ¶ 0