Overview:
Solve et Coagula is alchemy's main slogan which means Dissolve and Coagulate.
Alchemy derives from the terms “Al”, meaning Art, and “Khem”, meaning Egypt; so together, it stands for “The Art of Egypt”. It is an ancestral science and art of achieving exoteric (outer or material) and esoteric (inner or spiritual) perfection. Alchemy is to chemistry what astrology is to astronomy. Material perfection is for metals, gold, and for humans. Longevity: spiritual perfections is gnosis enlightenment. The term is now broadly applied to any process of positive transformation, particularly in the realm of consciousness and the arts. To me, alchemy has always been a very colorful and amazing concept. I feel that life is made of alchemy- part science and part art. If it was all science, you could just write down stuff you want to accomplish and they would get done. If it was all about art, then chaos would abound and we'd never develop tools to be better people. It's both.
Project 1- Alchemical Symbols
15th-17th century Alchemists were believed to be working for the devil, so they coded their chemical processes with runes and symbols. Today, deciphering them can be challenging, because one alchemists rune for iron, can be another's tin. The seven linked symbols are: gold (Sun), iron (Mars), copper (Venus), mercury (Mercury or Hermes), lead (Saturn), tin (Jupiter), and silver (Luna or moon). The triad is still extremely important to alchemy.
Project 2- Zodiac
The connection between astrology and alchemy has its genesis in the fifth and fourth century BC, in the philosophies of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle and the metallurgical skills of the ancient Egyptians. Astrology and alchemy are in essence looking at the same thing functioning on different levels or different realms. To put it simply astrology deals with the celestial realm and alchemy with the sub-terrestrial realm of the same thing; the movement and manifestation of spirit. Astrology interprets the meaning of the planets and zodiac, alchemy interprets the meaning of the elements and metals. The planets are embodied intelligence; the metals are intelligent bodies.
Project 3- Philosopher's Stone
The Philosopher’s Stone sought by alchemists for its supposed ability to transform base metals into precious ones, especially gold and silver, is also similar to the Elixir of Life. It was also thought to cure illnesses, prolong life, and bring about spiritual revitalization. The philosopher’s stone, variously described, was sometimes said to be a common substance, found everywhere but unrecognized and unappreciated. The quest for the stone encouraged alchemists from the Middle Ages to the end of the 17th century to examine in their laboratories numerous substances and their interactions. The quest thereby provided a body of knowledge that ultimately led to the sciences of chemistry, metallurgy, and pharmacology. The process by which it was hoped common metals such as iron, lead, tin, and copper could be turned into the more valuable metals involved heating the base material in a characteristic pear-shaped glass crucible. Color changes were carefully watched, black indicating the death of the old material preparatory to its revitalization; white, the color required for change into silver; and red, the highest stage, the color required for change into gold.
Project 4- 7 Hermetic Principles
Correspondence- as above so below; as below so above
Vibration- nothing rests, everything moves, everything vibrates
Polarity- everything is dual, everything has its pair
Gender- is everything; everything has its feminine and masculine principles
Cause and effect- everything has its effect, everything has its cause
Mind- the all is mind, the universe is mental
Rhythm- everything flows, a pendulum for example, swing manifests is everything
Project 5- 22 Tarot Card Conversion from Alchemy (12 Alchemical Operations, 7 Metals, and the Peacock's Tail, Dragon, and Phoenix)
Calcination: When discovering the inner self, like in meditation, this is by very nature a reduction of bodily awareness, and becoming more aware of the more subtle energies that are the foundation of our lives.
Coagulation: The inseparable union of the fixed and the volatile into one mass that is so fixed that it can withstand the most violent fire, and that it can communicate its fixedness to the metals that it transforms. In other words, the mind has been refined to such an extent, that the awareness of our divine essence has become permanent, it has become so 'fixed' that nothing can throw us off anymore.
Fixation: fixating the volatile is an ongoing process that starts from the moment of Blackness throughout Whiteness, and with Redness fixation has attained its maximum degree. It is becoming ever more aware of our inner mind and divine essence and making it part of our everyday life.
Dissolution: The reduction of a body to its primal matter, or elemental principles. Turning our awareness aware from every life and the physical body towards the inner energies.
Digestion: Digestion is transformation from one substance to another in order to obtain something more useful.
Distillation: when the volatile ascends it has in itself the fixed that will fix the volatile afterwards. It is a continuous circulation. 'Fixing' is like holding the awareness. When one becomes aware of the more subtle energies in one mind, by 'distilling' the lower everyday consciousness to more subtle consciousness, one needs to hold this higher awareness.
Sublimation: Our everyday consciousness is really very immature and limited to conditioned reflexes, instincts, programs. Therefore it needs to be sublimated, being dissolved to its underlying energies, and purifying them, so they can become perfect, which, in essence they already are, but they were obscured by a lot of impurities.
Separation: This separation happens when the matter becomes black; then the separation of the elements begin. That blackness changes into vapor; this is the earth that becomes water. That water condenses and falls back onto the earth, and makes it white; that whiteness is the air. After whiteness redness comes, that is air that becomes fire. With meditation, awareness separates itself from the bodily consciousness. The first thing you experience when you close your eyes is blackness. When discovering the inner world at the beginning, their energies are like water compared to earth or body. When refining your inner world, your experience will become more and more subtle, and the Hermetic Philosophers compared this transition in terms of the elements, from earth to water to air to fire.
Incineration: Action where more and more mercury is added to the matter which is becoming sulfur, be it to multiply it, be it to make the perfect elixir. A term not often used, but applied to the end process, when divine awareness has become totally fixed into the body.
Fermentation: Which the Philosophers call properly fermentation, is the elixir operation. It does not suffice to complete the big work, to push the work to the red color. The practice of the stone finishes itself by two operations; the first one consists in creating sulfur, the other is about making the elixir, and this last one is done by fermentation. The projection will be in vain if the stone is not fermented.
Multiplication: The powder of projection is being multiplied, be it in quality, or quantity into infinity according to the liking of the Artist. It consists in redoing the already done operation but with more exalted and perfected substances, and not with the previous rough materials. The entire secret, according to a Philosopher, is a physical reduction into mercury and a reduction in its primal matter.
Projection: The Hermetic Philosophers call their projection powder, a powder which is the result of their Art, that they project in very small quantity onto the imperfect metals in fusion, by means of which they get transmuted in gold or silver, according to the degree of its perfection.
Mercury, planet Mercury: the substance, the Matter to be worked on. For the Hermetic Alchemists it is of course you, yourself, and your body, your mind (ie. emotions and thoughts) and your divine essence.
Lead, planet Saturn: the beginning of the state of Blackness. The Matter is putrefying and dissolving.
Tin, planet Jupiter: the color gray that appears at the end of the process of Blackness, when the Matter has been purified to almost a perfect white.
Copper, planet Venus: the citrine color.
Silver, the Moon: the white color, corresponding to the state of Whiteness or Albedo. The Matter has been completely purified.
Iron, planet Mars: It is the state during which the Matter starts to become red.
Gold, the Sun: the red color or Rubedo. Here the Matter is called Red Sulfur, among other terms.
Peacock’s Tail- The peacock's tail has become a well known symbol in alchemy, although it is a later addition to the alchemical symbols. Dom Pernety explains it as: "These are the colors of the rainbow which manifest themselves on the matter during the operations of the stone."
Dragon-The dragon, a mythological beast, appears frequently in alchemical manuscripts. Generally, the dragon is a symbol for philosophical mercury, or the Matter that needs to be transformed in the Great Work. In other words, it is another symbol for yourself, or you inner world. Because the dragon is an animal, it can also be taken for the lower, animalistic nature of man, furthermore because the dragon is sometimes taken to represent the Earth, that is the body. The dragon needs to be killed because of the wild, untamed animalistic tendencies, and thus comparable with the untamed emotions of a normal person and then signifies the stage of putrefaction.
Phoenix-The phoenix is a mythical sacred sun bird which originated in ancient mythologies that, when near the end of its life builds itself a nest of myrrh twigs that then ignites; both nest and bird burn fiercely and are reduced to ashes, from which a new, young phoenix arises, reborn anew to live again. In alchemy the phoenix is the symbol for the red sulfur, which is the end of the Great Work at the stage of Rubedo or Redness. The Great Work has been accomplished and man has been reborn.
Project 6- Albedo, Nigredo, and Rubedo
Nigredo (Black)-In alchemy, nigredo, or blackness, means putrefaction or decomposition. Many alchemists believed that as a first step in the pathway to the philosopher's stone, all alchemical ingredients had to be cleansed and cooked extensively to a uniform black matter. It can also become a metaphor for ‘the dark night of the soul, when an individual confronts the shadow within'
Albedo (White)- Following the chaos or massa confusa of the nigredo stage, the alchemist undertakes a purification in albedo, which is the washing away of impurities. This phase is concerned with "bringing light and clarity to the prima materia (personal material)"
Rubedo (Red)- Rubedo is a Latin word meaning "redness" that was adopted by alchemists to define the fourth and final major stage in their magnum opus. Both gold and the philosopher's stone were associated with the color red, as rubedo signalled alchemical success, and the end of the great work.
Project 7- Emerald Tablet
The Emerald Tablet is the core foundation of Hermetic Philosophy and instructs in the art of practical alchemy and confection of the Philosopher’s Stone.
“That which I have said of the operation of the sun is accomplished and ended.”
Project 8- Thoth
Thoth is the Egyptian god of writing, magic, wisdom, and the moon. As Thoth was credited with the creation of a number of branches of knowledge, such as law, magic, philosophy, religion, science, and writing, he was thought to be an infallible judge capable of rendering completely just decisions. The Greeks admired him so greatly that they credited him as the originator of all knowledge on earth and in the heavens. Because of Hermes Trismegistus (Greek) being associated with alchemy, magic, and spiritual knowledge, this archetypal stream has in some circles become synonymous with Thoth (Egyptian). Thoth was the author of the Emerald Tablet, but was adopted more by Hermes as a series of sacred texts that are the basis of Hermeticism. He was responsible for teaching humans how to interpret nature and write down their thoughts. He is credited with being the inventor of writing, mathematics, music, astronomy, architecture, and medicine. He recorded the visitors’ teachings in hundreds of books and succinctly summarized it in the Emerald Tablet.
Project 9- 7 Stages of Spiritual Awakening
Stage 1- Unhappiness and emptiness
Stage 2- Perception shifts
Stage 3- Seeking answers and meaning
Stage 4- Finding answers and experiencing breakthroughs
Stage 5- Disillusionment and feeling lost
Stage 6- Deep inner work
Stage 7- Integration, expansion, joy
Project 10- Flowers and Milk of Sulfur
The symbol for sulfur stood for the element, but also something more. Sulfur, together with mercury and salt, made up the Three Primes or Tria Prima of alchemy. The three primes could be thought of as points of a triangle. Sulfur represented evaporation and dissolution and is a very fine powder that is produced by sublimation and deposition.
Project 11- Marriage of the Sun and Moon
The alchemical marriage of the sun and moon relates very closely to the alchemy slogan 'solve et coagula', is the process of dissolving (moon) in order to coagulate (sun) the essential, each time refining the process more and more until it is pure spirit (marriage)
This takes place in man when the heart and mind are joined in eternal union and occurs when the positive and negative poles within are united and forms the union that makes the philosopher's stone.
Fire and air are masculine while earth and water are feminine. The sun is male, and the moon is female. The Sun is sulfur -- the active, volatile and fiery principle -- while the Moon is mercury -- the material, passive, fixed principle.
Project 12- Transmutation Circle
All Transmutation Circles are made up of two parts: The circle itself is a conduit which focuses and dictates the flow of power, tapping into the energies that already exist within the earth and matter. The 2nd part is the design is consisting of Kimbly’s arrays.
Project 13- Kimbly's Arrays
Made by Solf J. Kimbly, the crimson alchemist
Transmutation arrays that were tattooed on his palms to represent the orchestration of explosions
Project 14- Bottle Alchemy (Elixir of Life)
Salt- protection
Lead- growth and accomplishment
Stone- your spirit
Leaves- your essence
Moon water
Project 15- Azoth
The Azoth is said to embody all medicines, as well as the first principles of all other substance and the mysterious evolutionary force responsible for the drive towards physical and spiritual perfection. Thus, the concept of the Azoth is analogous to the light of nature or mind of God. The term was considered by occultist Aleister Crowley to represent a unity of beginning and ending by tying together the first and last letters of the alphabet of antiquity; A/𐤀 (Aleph, the first character in the Phoenician alphabet and the Prima Materia), Z (Zeta, the final character in Latin and the Ultima Materia), O/Ω (Omega, the final character in Greek) and Th/ת (Tav, the final character in Hebrew). In this way permeation and totality of beginning and end symbolises the supreme wholeness and the universal synthesis of opposites as a cancellation (i.e. solvent) or cohesion (i.e. medicine), and in such a way is similar to the philosophical "absolute”. Because the Azoth is believed to contain the complete information of the whole universe, it is also used as another word for the Philosopher's Stone.
Project 16- The Lion Devours the Sun
‘The Green Lion Devouring The Sun' is a popular alchemical symbol. To a non-alchemist, the green lion eating the sun is a metaphor for when a person’s consciousness is overwhelmed by violent, frustrated desires and destructive tendencies. In contrast, when the green lion eats the sun in a person on a higher spiritual path, for example, an alchemist, the person allows the green lion to eat them in order to be purified or to become spiritually golden. To naturalist alchemists, the Green Lion metaphor described the process whereby plants use the rays of the sun to facilitate their own growth; a process we call photosynthesis. Lastly, on an exoteric level, this is a metaphor for when the green liquid sulfate called “vitriol” purifies matter, leaving behind the gold within the matter.
H. P. Blavatsky, an 18th century Russian occultist, philosopher, and author who was the lead theoretician of Theosophy, an esoteric religion that wrote the Theosophical Society in 1875. Blavatsky believed the aspirant green of the lion could also be related to the heart, which is represented as the 4th green chakra. The animal being a lion was because of the many endeavors people must seek to become awarded into the Arts of Occult Knowledge. These people must show courage and bravery; similar to the lion, who holds no fear. Consuming the sun is the alchemy symbol of God's energy; of quiet, peace, and love for the soul within you and reach for sunlight because of its beneficial focus on your being, your breath, on your energy flow through your body.
Project 17- Crowing of Nature Series (Putrefaction and The Dove)
Putrefaction is the process of decay or rotting in a body or other organic matter.
A person is comprised of three separate components: body, soul, and spirit. The body is material and the soul spiritual. Spirit is a kind of bridge that connects the two. The dove is a common symbol of the Holy Spirit in Christianity, in comparison to God the Father (soul) and God the Son (body).
