Seven Stages of Alchemy
Sapta Rasāyana — Seven alchemical processes
The great work of transformation through seven alchemical stages. Map your spiritual and psychological metamorphosis.
Positions
-
1
Calcination - Burning
Question: What must be burned away?
Fire stage. What ego structures, beliefs, or attachments need to be reduced to ash? The destruction that precedes rebirth.
-
2
Dissolution - Liquefying
Question: What is dissolving?
Water stage. What rigid forms are breaking down? The melting of calcined remains into fluid potential.
-
3
Separation - Filtering
Question: What must be separated?
Air stage. Distinguishing essence from dross. What is worth keeping and what must be discarded?
-
4
Conjunction - Uniting
Question: What opposites are joining?
Earth stage. The sacred marriage of opposites. What inner polarities are coming together?
-
5
Fermentation - Enlivening
Question: What new life is stirring?
Inspiration stage. The death that brings new life. What is being reborn from the union?
-
6
Distillation - Purifying
Question: What is being refined?
Purification stage. Repeated cycles of evaporation and condensation. What essence is being concentrated?
-
7
Coagulation - Embodying
Question: What form is emerging?
Gold stage. The Philosopher's Stone. What new, integrated self is crystallizing? Spiritual made physical.
Jungian
Alchemical opus as individuation
Fourth Way
Transformation of substances
Sanskrit
Rasāyana (path of mercury/transformation)
Related Concepts
Individuation
The process of psychological growth and self-realization whereby a person becomes the unique, whole individual they are meant to be—the integration of all psychic contents.
Integration
The psychological process of bringing unconscious contents — the Shadow, the Anima or Animus, repressed capacities, disowned qualities — into conscious awareness and incorporating them into a more complete sense of self.
Enneagram
A nine-pointed diagram symbolizing universal process—enclosing the laws of Three and Seven working together.
The Work
The entire system of practical efforts for self-development—self-remembering, observing, struggling with mechanical habits—requiring discipline and continuous effort.
Trogoautoegocrat
The universal reciprocal maintenance by which everything lives by feeding on something else and serving as food—the harmonious exchange of substances throughout cosmos.
Exioëhary
The 'sacred sperm'—the most potent result of transforming all three being-foods.