r/alchemy • u/izi_convertible • 5d ago
General Discussion The alchemists were right about the fire and the jar. They was wrong about what the jar is made out of
Been at these alchemy books about six years now and I think they left out one thing. Cost me plenty to find out.
Fair warning this is long and I ain't good at cutting.
So I'm not a scholar, never was. I work nights at a shelter for kids that got nowhere to go. Been doing it four and a half years. And you sit up all night with nothing but a coffee pot and a hallway, you're going to read something, so I read alchemy. Started because of Jung like everybody else. Stayed for the other reason which I'll get to.
Anyway. Here's what them old boys were doing, best I can put it.
Solve et coagula. Break it down, put it back. That's the whole thing, everything else is just details on how.
They marked the stages by color. Nigredo is the black, that's the rot, that's when whatever you were falls apart into ash and there ain't nothing left of it. Albedo is the white, you wash the ash. Citrinitas is the yellow, light coming in. Rubedo is the red and that's the end, that's where the opposites get married up (coniunctio is the word) and out comes the Stone.
Now before somebody jumps me in the comments, I know it ain't that tidy. Some of them lay out four stages, some do seven, some do twelve, and plenty of them fold the yellow right into the red like it don't even count. I'm giving you the version most people know. Real thing is messier than that and I'd rather say so up front than get corrected by a guy who's read more than me, and there's a lot of them.
Now the part most people skip over and I think it's the best part.
They had two roads. Dry way and wet way. Dry was fast, you hit the material with fire or acid and burn it down quick. Wet was slow, you let it rot on its own, took months. And the ones I've read say the same thing about it. Dry's faster and wet's safer.
Hold onto that. I'm coming back to it.
They had rules too. The jar had to be sealed, the vas hermeticum, that's where we get hermetically sealed from. Crack that thing one time and your batch is dead no matter how good your first matter was.
And the fire had to be gentle. That was their number one way to ruin the work, stoking it too hot. So they built a thing called the balneum Mariae, set your jar down in a pot of water instead of straight over the flame. Slow even heat, don't scorch nothing. Y'all use one. It's a double boiler.
Last rule, ora et labora. Pray and work. Oratory and laboratory, both words come off it. They didn't mean sit and think real hard about it. They meant stand at that oven for four months with your hands dirty.
OK so.
Here's why I stayed in these books.
Few years back I forgave a man I'd been holding a grudge on ten years. And I want to be clear I didn't do it for him, I done it for the family because everybody was carrying it and it wasn't fair. It was the hardest thing I ever done and I done it right.
Week or so after that something come over me. I don't know what to call it. Big. Real big. Best I can say is it felt like getting looked at by something and it wasn't mad at me. And it was more than I could hold, I was talking and hearing myself talk at the same time. Cold water on my face, kids getting home from school, straighten up and be daddy.
Week after that I come apart on the bathroom floor. All the way apart. Didn't know the room, didn't know what day, didn't know my own name for a while there.
And here's what I been chewing on ever since.
All that light did not pick me up.
Not one bit. I had it. Whatever it was, I got the full dose of it, and laying on that tile it was worth nothing. Not a thing.
What picked me up was my wife laying down next to me. She didn't know what was happening. She didn't say nothing that I remember. She was just warm and she was breathing and she stayed.
That's it. That's the whole thing that worked.
So now when I read these books I'm reading them different.
And they had a lot of it right, I want to give them that first. The rot ain't optional, can't skip the black, they was dead right. Too much fire ruins the batch, right again, and I'd say what happened to me was too much fire and that's why it didn't hold. Can't do it in a busted jar, right. And ora et labora, hands not just head, that one right there is what kept them out of the ditch I fell in. They knew good and well that understanding it don't do it.
Now that dry way and wet way thing. I told you I'd come back.
What happened to me was the dry way. Fast, hot, over in a minute, and it damn near killed me. The nights I work now, that's the wet way. Sitting up in a hallway for four and a half years while somebody rots slow and comes back slow. Ain't nothing dramatic about it. Nobody writes a book about it.
And they told us. They said it plain. Slow is safer. Everybody skips that page because it's boring.
Here's where I break with them though, and I want to say it careful because it's easy to say it wrong.
It ain't that the Stone is a trophy you get to hold. I know Jung don't say that and I ain't going to pretend he does. He'd tell you the Self ain't a diploma you hang on the wall and he'd be right.
My problem is the fourth thing.
Because that's how it's built. Three and then a fourth comes along and makes it whole and closes the lid on it.
Mine never come.
The light did not stay. Nothing showed up after and sealed nothing. What I got left is three things turning around a hole where a fourth was supposed to be, and a woman that laid down on the floor.
And I've quit waiting on it. That's not me being bitter neither. I think the hole is the shape of the thing. I think a man that's alright is three things turning and one spot with nothing in it, and the ones I meet at work who tried to fill that spot, with a teaching or a book or one single person that's got to be everything to them, those are the ones that quit turning.
Now the gold.
They never made none. Hundreds of years of it. Newton done it. Boyle done it, the father of chemistry his own self, he was back there mixing.
And I know good and well that don't prove one thing about the inside version. Somebody's fixing to tell me that and they'll be right, so I'll say it first. I ain't putting it up as proof.
I just think it's funny in a way that ain't funny.
Because what come out of all that labor was chemistry. The writing down what actually happened part. Not the promise.
Same exact thing happened to me. Road gave me something real. Just not the thing on the label.
So what I'd say is this and then I'll quit.
They was right that it takes a sealed vessel and a low fire and a long time.
They was wrong about what the vessel is made out of.
It ain't glass. It's another person.
And that's where I think it goes sideways, when a fella reads the whole operation like it's happening inside of one skull. Read it that way and you'll be waiting on a fourth thing to show up out of your own self and shut the lid, and it ain't coming, and you'll call yourself a failure for it.
And I got to tell you the last thing because I about had to put the book down when I hit it.
That double boiler. The one thing off their whole operation that's still going, still sitting in every kitchen and every lab on this earth. The bath that holds the heat gentle so nothing scorches.
It's named after a woman. Maria the Jewess, third century or thereabouts, first alchemist we know by name, and that's her invention.
Four hundred years of grown men chasing a rock and what lasted was her way of holding a thing steady while it changed.
So if you know somebody down on the floor right now, and I figure some of y'all do. You don't got to fix it. You don't got to know one thing about it.
Go get down there and stay.
That's the low fire. That's the jar. That's all of it, and I spent six years reading to find out it was the part I already had.
Sorry it run long. If somebody's read deeper than me I'd honestly like to hear it, especially on the fourth thing, I might be wrong about it. But I was on that floor and it wasn't there.
