Another essay on Alchemy
The painful process of inner transformation.
I wrote this essay 6 months ago, and it sat in my drafts.
As Hermetics and alchemical verbiage make their way into the mainstream internet, I cringe because I do not like sounding like everyone else.
Or any part of the mainstream noise of catchphrases and trends..
But I am proud of this writing, so I’m sharing it.
I do not skim along the surface of this work.
I have personally walked this long, hard path, which is why I am good at what I do. But I will not write about it- or at least in the same way, again.
For those who have had to walk the painful, brutally honest path of death and rebirth, I commend you.
I stand amongst you.
ALCHEMY
The Fragmentation and Transformation of Self.
Our minds and psyches are formed from the moment we come into existence.
Do any of us make it out of childhood without conditioning, trauma, loss of culture, or broken family dynamics?
Conditioned by a system that worships money and status, we chase security and live cautiously, covered, to fit into the societal norms that provide it for us.
Our true nature is continually overridden as we carefully conform to fit in the palms of acceptance extended out by others.
A breakdown of authenticity takes place.
A slow abandonment of the true self.
Once adulthood arrives, we go on to make decisions based on the conditioned mind of the false self. Shaping our lives to fit into the boxes of others.
Through the years, you end up further and further away from your truth.
The fear of being misunderstood holds us captive.
The fear of being the subject of gossip or being scrutinized for our attempts at realignment compels us.
It usually feels impossible to change our own patterns.
Particularly when those patterns suit the needs of others, regardless of whether they meet our own.
Do you notice how those individuals, who benefit from our misaligned selves, express the most contempt at any sign of one’s action towards
self-sovereignty?
We will continue to abandon and mold ourselves into foreign shapes until we are so non-distinctive that we are entirely void of our primary essence.
At this point, a rupture happens.
It has to.
The false self, built within a misaligned life, will lead the true self so far astray that fissures form. Those fissures turn into cracks, and the cracks finally begin to break.
Open.
The emotions within our human systems are connected to the element of water.
When these breaks begin to occur, the water of these emotions pressurizes into crashing waves of unmet needs and feelings.
Depending on how much has been stifled, the watery rupture, like the breaking of a dam, will burst forth in a cataclysmic way.
The bursting is painful. Messy. Destructive.
The journey back to your true self begins with your own suffering.
Alchemy refers to this breakdown process as Nigredo.
NIGREDO
The Blackening.
The chaos and destruction of material breaking down.
It’s putrefaction.
Decay. Dissolve.
Most people find themselves in this alchemical process of Solve + Coagula when they hit that wall in their life, so hard that their rupture begins.
The phase where the part of their identity that has adhered to the false construct begins to crack.
The pain in this process is not just about the thing that is facing its demise. The abandonment of oneself is what becomes evident.
The true self accepts loss and change in a different way from the false self.
The false self clings to the identity and the superfluous ego.
The false self feels embarrassment and shame-this is the marker of the ego death. It’s essential to recognize when these superficial fears arise, as they stem from the ego part of our nature rather than from our true inner essence.
Many hit their walls of awakening through disillusionment.
Disillusionment involving one or several emotional betrayals.
We live in a culture built on illusion.
Fantasy. “Status”. An artifice.
We are constantly sold ideals.
Life’s deception is one big act of betrayal.
Parental deception takes that a step further.
Spousal deception. Friendship deception.
The ultimate betrayal of self-deception.
That total loss of self-truth is the final stake, driven straight into the heart.
That will be the day you wake up, and your life feels like one big lie.
The blackening journey back to the true self is long and grueling.
Sometimes it can take years.
As we begin to unwind the false constructs by peeling back layers of ourselves, we meet ourselves with honesty. Truth-telling requires radical acceptance.
No more lying or abandoning oneself to meet the needs of others.
No more false constructs or hiding behind your shield of strength.
You'll need to meet yourself exactly where you are.
Where you really are. Who you really are.
No more fronting or bolstering.
Humility is key.
And depending on how far you’ve drifted from the truth of your nature, this might be the hardest part.
Accepting that your life isn’t what you pretend it to be.
Speaking about it honestly, so you’re not hiding behind a veil or casting that perpetual illusion to others.
If you want to reconstruct your life through your one true will, you must, in fact, get brutally honest first.
The journey backwards is one of humbling. Lowering. And truth-telling.
The lies I had told myself up to this point were pretty astounding in hindsight. One can come up with endless excuses for all the harmful things, poor choices, and destructive behaviours.
The false self is fantastic at that.
But now, we’re at ground zero.
Nigredo is in full effect. We’ve hit our wall. Our world is crumbling.
Now what?
We dive into the shadow work of truth-telling.
The second stage of the Alchemical process.
ALBEDO.
The Whitening.
Where we face our shadowy, blackened, fragmented parts with radical honesty.
We shine our all-seeing light on it all and begin the process of self-scrutiny.
The work begins.
The Albedo process is the part met with discipline.
We have to begin confronting and facing our false selves.
We have to make changes in our lives. We have to choose differently, and depending on how old you are, some habits and behaviors have become deeply entrenched in our psyche.
Albedo is pure, unfiltered effort, and the work is hard.
We change pathways in our brain through new routines.
The raw psyche needs structure. It needs discipline.
It can’t transform itself through words and good intentions.
You have to show up to the work every single day.
Evaluation: You have examined all of your fragmented parts with scrutiny. What parts are you keeping? What parts are you ridding entirely?
As you separate and compartmentalize parts of yourself, you then throw them into the metaphorical forge of fire.
Fire is the element of purification.
Heat equals effort, action, discipline, practice, and ritual.
This is where Magic comes in. Or any type of spiritual philosophy that involves a discipline and practice geared towards self-exploration and development. One that prioritizes meditation, mastering the mind, and rituals of a higher nature.
Magic is this practice.
Ritual and theurgy are frameworks designed to bridge you into your higher echelons of being.
All designed to connect you to the will of your true self.
Aleister Crowley describes Magic as “The science and art of causing change in conformity with will.”
WHAT IS THE WILL?
The will is the electrical current flowing through your being.
It is divinely ordained. Assigned.
Often, people confuse the will with desirable ambitions, such as goals, careers, and material pursuits.
The will is not a petty or fleeting desire.
It is the blueprint for what you become in your most authentic form.
The highest potential and expression of self.
Standing in your will means standing fully empowered and whole.
The will is power. Your power.
The outstanding work of being a “human becoming” is to live in accordance with your one true will.
The study and practice of Magic aligns you with that current.
The discipline and work clear away noise, conditioning, fear, and self-deception.
Magic in theurgy offers a framework for connecting you to higher spheres of being. Worshipping spirits links you to the various aspects of yourself.
Magic is growth.
Magic also reveals where you lack will.
What parts of yourself are disengaged, weakened, or undisciplined?
Magic doesn’t lie to you because you can only receive from it what you put into it. Similar to training for a marathon, only those who show up to run every day will develop the stamina to complete the race. The work reveals itself back to you.
Through the work and the discipline, we enter the third process.
Coagula.
Bringing the fragmented parts back together.
RUBEDO.
The Reddening.
Turning Matter into form.
After we forged and disciplined the fragmented parts.
Burned away what no longer serves and fortify what remains, we begin to reassemble the self into a higher and improved form.
One that is fully aligned. Honest. Authentic.
We become a fully integrated version of the fragmented self.
Our separated parts become fused.
This is paired with what I describe as the REINVENTION.
A self fully realized, free of illusion, and one of your very own creation.
The fun part.
The Phoenix is born again and rising out of the ashes.
The emergence.
This is you.
Exactly as you want to be. Precisely as you are meant to be.
Alchemy and Magic is designed to transform you.
Change is the goal.
These sacred practices are not to reinforce bias.
They are to free you of it.
A liberated and fully empowered way forward.
Fully charged.
Fully present.
Wonderful 🤩