ALCHEMY'S INNER DECAY

INVESTIGATOR'S OWN PSYCHIC BACKGROUND

Everything unknown and empty is filled with psychological projection; it is as if the investigator's own psychic background were mirrored in the darkness. What he sees in matter, or thinks he can see, is chiefly the data of his own unconscious which he is projecting into it. In other words, he encounters in matter, as apparently belonging to it, certain qualities and potential meanings of whose psychic nature he is entirely unconscious. This is particularly true of classical alchemy, where empirical science and mystical philosophy were more or less undifferentiated

CHEMICAL TRANSFORMATION

FOUR STAGES ARE DISTINGUISHED BY COLOURS

Four stages of the alchemical process

Melanosis (blackening)

Xanthosis (yellowing)

This division of the process into four was called the,the quartering of the philosophy. Later, about the fifteenth or sixteenth century, the colours were reduced to three, and the xanthosis, otherwise called the citrinitas, gradually fell into disuse or was but seldom mentioned. Instead, the viriditas sometimes appears after the melanosis or nigredo in exceptional cases, though it was never generally recognized

Whereas the original tetrameria was exactly equivalent to the quaternity of elements, it was now frequently stressed that although there were four elements (earth, water, fire, and air) and four qualities (hot, cold, dry, and moist), there were only three colours: black, white, and red. Since the process never led to the desired goal and since the individual parts of it were never carried out in any standardized manner, the change in the classification of its stages cannot be due to extraneous reasons but rather to the symbolical significance of the quaternity and the trinity; in other words, it is due to inner psychological reasons

The nigredo or blackness (fig. 115) is the initial state, either present from the beginning as a quality of the prima materia, the chaos or massa confusa, or else produced by the separation (solutio, separatio, divisio, putrefactio) of the elements. If the separated condition is assumed at the start, as sometimes happens, then a union of opposites is performed in the likeness of a union of male and female (called the coniugium, matrimonium, coniunctio, coitus) followed by the death of the product of the union (mortificatio, calcinatio, putrefactio) and a corresponding nigredo

Mercurius senex exhales the spiritus and anima. The raven is a nigredo symbol. Jamsthaler, Viatorium (1625). Color transcription by Adam McLean.

From this the washing (ablutio, baptisma) either leads direct to the whitening (albedo), or else the soul (anima) released at the “death” is reunited with the dead body and brings about its resurrection, or finally the “many colours” (omnes colores), or “peacock's tail” (cauda pavonis), lead to the one white colour that contains all colours

At this point the first main goal of the process is reached, namely the albedo, tinctura alba, terra alba foliata, lapis albus, etc., highly prized by many alchemists as if it were the ultimate goal. It is the silver or moon condition, which still has to be raised to the sun condition. The albedo is, so to speak, the daybreak, but not till the rubedo is it sunrise. The transition to the rubedo is formed by the citrinitas, though this, as we have said, was omitted later. The rubedo then follows direct from the albedo as the result of raising the heat of the fire to its highest intensity. The red and the white are King and Queen, who may also celebrate their “chymical nuptials” at this stage (fig. 116)