[S1E12]: The 4 Stages of Alchemy: Understanding The Process of Transformation

In this episode:

• Learn the four classical stages of alchemy and why skipping stages disrupts transformation
  Why the "dark night" (nigredo) is essential for real change
  How to identify which stage you're in and avoid rushing the process
  Understanding the Philosopher's Stone as both tool and outcome

The Aligned Alchemist's Transformation

The term "alchemist" in our context symbolizes transformation and working with unseen forces while being willingness to be seen for who we truly are. 

This podcast is dedicated to those who are open to unique perspectives, willing to question the status quo and are seeking to understand and embrace transformation in both their personal and professional lives. It's about unleashing your creative genius and finding success by being true to yourself.

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Transcript

PLEASE NOTE THESE TRANSCRIPTS ARE FOR ACCESSIBILITY: THEY ARE AI GENERATED AND THERE MAY BE SPELLING AND GRAMMAR ERRORS:

Hey everyone, welcome back to the Aligned Alchemist. Today's a quick episode. I'm not even going to do an introduction and I'm not going to do music. And this episode is, I wanted to talk about the four stages of alchemy. It's a very high level episode. It's kind of theoretical, but it's something nobody talks about.

Alchemy is a very, trendy and cool world in the personal development space. But I bet if you asked most people what alchemy is, they have no idea what the actual foundational stages of alchemy are. And I think these stages are extremely important to understand. And I think these stages are extremely important to assess where you are.

In these four stages, if you're drawn to this podcast, I'm not talking about people who know me personally. I'm not talking about people who are curious about the insights I give on human design. I'm talking about the people who are drawn to this podcast just because of the kind of the vibe I bring to the podcast and are interested in this kind of notion of alchemy.

If you were drawn in that way, you're in a process of alchemy. And so I'm going to kind of list out the stages at a high level. . And I think it's actually really useful to find out what stage you're in, so there's a sense of awareness. And alchemy is an ongoing process. We are always growing and evolving and changing, but there are times of building and then there are times of alchemy because one of the stages of alchemy is breaking down and we can't always be breaking down if we want to build.

This is especially true if you want to build a business or anything that has long term benefits. Value. There's a reason why in astrology, the signs of Taurus and Scorpio are opposite. Taurus is associated with building step by step and building something solid, solid earth. And Scorpio is associated with shedding.

It's the snake. It's this notion of constant alchemy. And the balance of the two, the polarities of the two are what keep us in check. They are what prevent us from being stagnant. But you can see if you are leaning in to any one of those two directions, then you're You're not actually building and so the happy medium would be to be In the middle of stagnation and evolution, real evolution, not high level personal development nonsense that is just surface level content that makes you feel good.

All right. So there are four. There are three main stages to alchemy and the first one is the blackening.

This is known as negretto and it is a compressing force that creates the darkness ready for transformation. Often kind of referred to as dark night of the soul, , crucible. It's a very necessary pressure. And isolated process required for breaking down existing forms. It's pressure. It's compressed pressure.

And it serves as an agent that really forces you to confront in personal development, shadow material, things in your life that aren't working. It's the, you wake up and things have to change. It's the situations that cause you to assess why this isn't working. It's the come to Jesus moment, whatever you want to call it, it is that, that's the Negretto.

And It is very, very necessary because it's the first part. And so the whole notion of love and light consciousness and love and light spirituality and love and light personal development. leaves that out. There is a necessary ring of fire that is part of alchemy and part of the alchemical process and anyone who's gone through Deep shit in their life had to go through that because you cannot have light without dark There is a reason why we have a moon with multiple cycles and all the moon with the multiple cycles are a reflection of the Sun It's various stages of darkness and various stages of lightness On my Instagram account, there is a picture of a hippopotamus and, uh, hippopotamus.

It was, I was taking an art class during the pandemic and, uh, it's made with charcoal. eraser. So you kind of made the, uh, you kind of made the drawing with charcoal pencil and you smudged it, and then you'd use eraser to create that contrast of white so you can see the darkness. And without that contrast, there is no form.

So that's stage one.

The second stage is known as albedo, the whitening. This is purification. This is clarity emerging. This is the dawn after the dark and in India. Well, I should say in Hindu ceremonies, which is majority of India People were white cremations, which is funerals And so it's this notion of purification of the soul before they start their next journey So the purification process is extremely important purification process in modern society could be Maybe you had a period of depression and you ate crappy food, or you are doing drugs, or other kinds of toxic behavior.

And then all of a sudden you wake up and you're like, I'm going to change my life. And maybe you go to a sauna and you go to the gym and you change your diet. Maybe you throw away stuff. You know that feeling we always feel the need to throw away stuff. In one of the episodes I talked about the shedding skin and throwing away those clothes.

You know, that is part of spiritual hygiene. That is part of energetic hygiene. It's getting rid of stuff. I love throwing away stuff. I love getting rid of stuff. I am not so great at paper organization and, , digital organization. It's something I'm thinking I might hire someone to help me with because I tend to put it off, but I feel so good when it's done because I, it's energy, all kinds of clutter is energy.

And so you kind of get through the darkness and you step into the place of purification and in business and in life, purification is what we know as clarity. Right. Clarity is you can see and then you can take action from a place of clarity. You can decide who you're going to hire. You can decide what offers you want to do.

You can decide, okay, I'm going to move. You can decide, okay, I'm going to break up with this person. You can decide, okay, I'm going to, get a personal trainer or I'm going to start working out or whatever it is you got to change that the darkness. Told you and in business, this is really really important.

And I think in business We are often rushed in this process There are four stages for a reason and we try to make them concurrent and I was trying to do that a little bit Intentionally just out of pressure of oh if I take a step back. I already started all these things. I started the podcast I started this I need to keep going probably a little bit of fear about losing momentum and I've changed my tune on that because I'm just starting to see a little bit of clarity , but it's not time yet.

And that's where I use astrological timing for a lot. Not just in my own chart, but in , the macro collective of when it's time to be in crucible phase and when it's time to be in outward phase. And of course, my own intuition and my own life, like that's always the first primary. But you notice that there's often a period of retrogrades and pop culture astrology makes retrograde seem like this big flipping thing and you know, it's great for Cosmo or whatever people read now.

Like I said, I'm Gen X. My references are old. Whatever people read now that draws clicks about, you know, Mercury retrograde and this is that your ex is going to call you and whatever, whatever it gets a click, Mercury retrogrades are a time of slowing down their time of reassessment and reevaluation. And the, the deep retrograde of Mars retrograde, which we're still in, once in a very blue moon, Mars retrograde in Cancer and Leo hasn't happened since 1977.

That is very, very powerful, everyone. It's more powerful if you're Mars ruled. Which I am, and it's more powerful if, you know, it hits, it's hitting key points or planets in your chart or coinciding with a period of time in your life where you're already ready to reassess your life direction. And there's a reason why Mars retrograde, if you look at the time frame, it started October 7th.

And it goes until May 2nd. Crucible energy takes time. And there's a reason why retrogrades have what they know as shadow periods. Now, not all astrologers believe with this, but there's pre shadow, which is kind of like presentation of what you can expect, the actual retrograde, and then the post shadow, which is an integration period.

A time when clarity has emerged, but you're not quite ready to move forward. You shouldn't be running with scissors yet, because you could just chop down the wrong thing, or cut down the wrong thing. So, that's the dawn after the darkness, and that's the Albedo. Number three is the Citrinus, yellowing. You can see kind of the Latin in some of these terms.

And the yellowing is solar consciousness. Now that's associated with the sun. Now you can really see. Now you've got light and you really can start to integrate the things you've been through. And you, there's a dawn, there's an understanding that's formed and that's would be when you would take action.

If you're a business owner, that would be when you launch the thing, you do the thing.

and you make the move. You're deciding like I'm going to move or whatever action you're going to take. Very soon, I'll figure out who the audience for this podcast is. I don't have to get references from all over the place, but for now, we'll, we'll keep it vague. And, the final piece is the Roberto, which is the red inning.

That's the completion. That's the integration. And what, that's what they known as philosopher stone, if you've heard that term. So the philosopher still stone is both the tool and the outcome because the. The stone itself is the agent of transformation once you've gone through those four stages, if you didn't skip over any of those four stages, and you allowed yourself to really do those stages correctly, then.

You have the Philosopher's Stone and the Philosopher's Stone allows you to continually evolve, continually transcend, continually navigate while maintaining wholeness. You don't have to keep breaking everything down to start over, but you've got to have that first. So those are the very, very high level back of the envelope of alchemy.

I'm sure someone who is an expert in it would say this is an oversimplified version. I think it's sufficient for the purposes of this podcast. And so I would like you to do. Two things, I would like you to think about if you are, like I said, fit the criteria of the people I think are attracted me surely for the alchemical kind of more esoteric messages of this podcast.

If you're in a period of alchemy, are you in one of those four stages? And which of the four stages are you in? Because understanding that is going to help you understand one, give you a lot of grace, but also to make sure that you're not being impatient about the stage that you're in. So you're not screwing up the process.

You know, like any woman who's ever gotten a perm or gotten color done, right? There's a process to coloring your hair and you got to go in those stages or you're going to end up with like. fried orange hair, right? Same thing with alchemy, right? And that's what it is. You're changing the chemical structure of your hair.

There's got to be a process to the way that you do that. Personal alchemy is no different. Business alchemy is no different. And if you are a solopreneur, a business is personal alchemy. You know, those famous things where there's no better, greater personal development journey than starting a business.

Absolutely true. I've never run a business like owning a gym or have owning a franchise or doing something that's a little bit more less involving of my personal self. So I can't speak for business in general, but all the businesses I had were businesses of personal evolution. Even when I ran a supplement line and a product line that was not me selling myself, there were so many areas.

of personal evolution I had to go through to become the person who could do that, and who could navigate the challenges that I went through in that whole process. You become a different person as a result of it. So that there is alchemy as a result of doing anything where you take risk, anything where you step outside of the bounds of society, anything where you do something where people think that you're crazy.

That's alchemy. That's personal development. You don't have to be a business owner to go through alchemy. We all go through challenges in our lifetime That's just what is speaking to me to speak about right now So the number one was to really think about what stage you're in and number two Is to think about where you're trying to rush yourself in that stage We're out of external pressure or other pressure.

Are you Trying to force the stage time is time Seasons are seasons for a reason if I was all of a sudden to run out in the snow right now and plant a bunch Of summer gardening seeds because I want to have tomatoes in June instead of in September Well, that doesn't work because that's how it works.

Right? So honoring the stages so , if you are not honoring the stages, is it because you're putting too much pressure on yourself? Or is it because outside forces are putting pressure on you? . I think coaching can be very, very useful, but anybody who has a business owner has had times where they said, I got some of my biggest growth when I didn't have anybody.

In my life because it's a time where you can be on your own timing when you have someone you're paying on a monthly Basis and a high high cost you feel a pressure to be performing and moving forward at a rate That might be faster than what you want So I've personally taken a step back from all external guidance with respect to business at least because I'm doing my own alchemical process And I would feel rushed if I had somebody else on board and I'm using different Mentors in my life and people I have as sounding boards who I value their input to keep me on To keep me from going crazy, but I'm not really investing in someone right now because for that reason and so Where are you allowing yourself to be rushed?

You know, sometimes we do it for financial reasons or this or that it's almost like find another source of income If you're a business owner so that you can honor the process the way that you want to that's my personal opinion I tend to move slowly I'm a peer generator and so, you know, one of my episodes was how sacral beings speed up by slowing down There is kind of an overlap theme to this not quite because alchemy is a human experience but you got to get what I'm saying and I think that's it.

And that's kind of what I'm coming to the conclusion on with my project, my this, my that so far. Like I said, this whole thing and one of my, probably the last episode of the season is I'll really talk about the origins of the podcast. I hinted at it earlier, but I'll be a little bit more explicit about it and it'll make it obvious as to why.

I've kind of been changing and pivoting and evolving and this isn't like a build with me in public type of brand. That's not really I'm trying to do. I'm just kind of sharing lessons as it makes sense when I'm on their side of it. And I, I'll talk a little bit about why the, I mean, as, as you know, this brand started with me channeling.

This wasn't like, I'm going to start a spiritual business and here's my core avatar and here's my three offers and this is my lead magnet and all this stuff. It was not my own timeline. And so I've been kind of figuring out like, is this something I want to do? What am I doing with this? , who am I passionate about working with?

What am I passionate about talking about? And what is something that people are not talking about? Because there's a lot of the stuff that I'm interested in that is very, saturated. And a lot of it has kind of been watered down and dumbed down, and it's not really a space I really want to play in as much.

 But also from a bigger perspective, , I have big ideas. I have big ideas. And so, I am taking a step back to get clarity because I'm realizing I'm still in stage one and conscious reality creation, which is something I believe in.

I am, have a vision and a particular individual I want to call in who will be a guide for me when the time is right, once clarity emerges to help me with the integration process. So I writing that person down, manifesting that person into reality, , because that, that's a very specific individual I'm looking for.

that's it. I don't know if you got something out of this or not. Hopefully you did. And again, the four stages of alchemy are the blackening, which is the darkness, dark night of the soul, degredo, breaking down, decomposition, then there is number two is albedo, which is the whitening, that is a purification, that is the dawn after the dark, that is clarity emerging.

Number three is Citrinus, Citratinus. I may not be saying that right. Yellowing, that is the solar consciousness. That is the understanding coming to be that is starting to be integration. And finally, there's Roberto, which is reddening. And that is the completion, the integration, and kind of the achievement of the philosopher's stone, which is the ability to then continue to evolve and transform.

While you maintain your wholeness alchemy in a nutshell think about those questions I asked you see where this applies to in your life and let me know if you got any insights. Text me in the show notes and I'll see you in the next one.