Alchemy Revisited

Mortificatio, putrifactio, conjunctio. I’ve been pondering alchemy again lately. Maybe these Latin words ring a bell, however faint, somewhere in the recesses of your memory too. Some of our ancestors, no doubt, were dabbling in alchemy—the secret science, philosophy, and mysticism that describes twelve experiential states of being (like these three, but not given in a fixed order) necessary to the process of transformation. I’ll hone in on the two most important of those twelve in a moment. 

Since earliest times human beings have been seeking to engage, harness or hack into universal patterns of transformation through alchemy. These wisdom teachings have shown up around the world—in medieval European texts, in the classic Chinese Taoist text, The Secret of the Golden Flower, and in the more ancient text, The Emerald Tablet, which is traced back to Hellenistic Egypt and the legendary Hermes Trismegistus. 

Distilling the elixir of life, finding the philosopher’s stone, and transmuting base metal into gold are some of the working metaphors of the alchemical quest for transformation, but solve et coagula is the prime formula of the twelve alchemical states. It is a powerful root metaphor that captures the intimate workings of not only how the soul is purified, clarified, and awakened but also how the soul is evolved. 

During the last thirty years of his life, philosopher-mystic Dr. C.G. Jung used the information he parsed from alchemical texts to map the psycho-spiritual process of individual transformation. My spiritual teacher, Lee Lozowick, also delved into what he called “Divine Alchemy,” especially as it applied to art, performance, creativity and inner work. Both of these visionary men were interested in how we can translate this symbolic language to make it useful in practical ways. 

Solve et coagula is a Latin phrase that refers to the reduction of a solid substance into a liquid state, from which it is then re-formed as a solid. It is an instruction to dissolve that which is solid or crystallized into a liquid, then allow it to take form anew. A radical change has taken place, and it required passing through a liminal, in-between state.

This in-between state is a powerful mystery to contemplate. Looking at solve et coagula through the lens of quantum physics, we can learn more about what the ancient alchemists were up to. Light exists as both wave and particle. A wave has no limits; it exists everywhere. As soon as we try to measure it (make it solid) or interact with it in any way, the wave disappears everywhere except at the point of observation or measurement, where it has now become a particle with a specific character. (Thank you, Zivorad Slavinski.) In other words, when a wave is observed, it becomes a particle. What is most extraordinary is that it is the element of awareness –a conscious witnessing, an interaction or relationship between—that catalyzes the transformation from wave to particle. 

Alchemy invites us to participate consciously in this process as inner work. One practical way to do this is through observing ourselves intimately, without judgment, with an intention to open up and let go of attitudes, opinionated stories, entrenched positions and cherished beliefs, allowing these to dissolve or die when the time is right. This, alchemy tells us, is required to realize the next level of our own being. But, how to embody this essential wisdom? It happens on the ground, in the helter-skelter minutiae of life, in the decisions we make, on the threshing floor where we separate the wheat from the chaff. Jungian analyst Joseph Leigh commented:

For many of us, our psycho-spiritual work is stymied because we have come up to a kind of threshold, or perhaps even more accurately we are standing at the edge of a great cliff, psychologically. And the Self is asking us to cast away the things that no longer work that we have outgrown—or, maybe are even preventing us from maturing to the next step. Our fear of dissolution can become so great that we fight against the Self. We fight against life, because we lack a philosophy of dissolution. ….

 [Shadow work] is an act of personal crucifixion. We start with what we find most deplorable about the world and others. Jung’s radical teaching was that each individual must look for the nodal point of reality in ourselves that corresponds to the despicable thing that we are sure is outside of us.

Jung himself wrote volumes on this “philosophy of dissolution.” One of his pith statements is, “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life, and you will call it fate.” Like almost everything, this particular kind of work begins with intention and is carried forward on the wings of courage—having the sheer grit to bring honesty and curiosity to those things we do not like “out there” and looking within ourselves to recognize even a thread or speck of that quality, stance, or attitude. It’s a powerful inquiry that can dissolve denial and projection, making room for a new clarity to dawn. 

We have all been through experiences of solve et coagula in different areas of our lives, many of them recurring to have a gradual effect. The arcs of our life experience contain many of the stages of alchemy—when identifications, relationships, forms and concepts that have been vital to us for a very long time are broken down, usually by events out of our control. Along the way, there is decay (putrifactio), pain and grief (mortificatio), and yet, viewed over stretches of time, there is some kind of rebirth.

While I’ve shed many tears over the years in the alchemy of life, there is tremendous freedom in truth, and beautiful surprises as well, when a moment suddenly opens up to liberating vast space and the phase of exaltio or exaltation is present. Sometimes the process takes years or decades, because the in-between stage can last for a long time while we stew in confusion, wait and wait, get lost and wander in the woods. At the same time, solve et coagula could happen in one day or in a single moment. 

Lee often gave the teaching, “The acceptance of whatever arises in the moment completes whatever it is, so it is free to subside, to go away. It may arise again in the next moment, but it will be a different fear, a new moment, another opportunity. When you practice that way, you can be happy for no reason.” There is grace and mercy in that statement. The short or long of it is that things do dissolve and come back together, but different, and we are wiser for it. May the wisdom of alchemy reveal its secrets to all in the crucible of life!

Mary Angelon Young