I've been doing alchemical fire circles (alchemifires) with the Vegas Vortex and related groups for a decade now. It's been interesting to watch the process refine and change over the years, and I made the effort to go to a variety of different fires so that I could see how the various branches of the Fire Family did their own thing. Mostly I've interacted with the West Coast off-shoots. I'm glad I got to three of the Hawaii/Oahu events before that group chose to disband at the end of 2012. There were a few years where there was some really fun experimentation and exploration in terms of ritual structure and alchemical metaphors, but things seem to have settled down much more now.  Illumination is clearly the next-gen of circles but so far it's working on disseminating the established culture, or at least that's the direction it seemed to take in year two.  If I get the chance to go see how Four Quarters does their alchemifires, I'd be curious about that one.

A few years back I took Robert Bartlett's Prima class on practical lab work and seeing how all the alchemical metaphors and material applied to actual laboratory chemistry was fantastic. In turn, this inspired me to start looking at laboratory procedures and how we might find new ways to play in ritual, riffing off other processes versus sticking to just the classical seven-phase structure.  For my own ritual work, I've been working with nine phases, adding Multiplication and Projection at the end after Coagulation.  It makes more sense to me to not just be standing there holding gold, and to do something after making it as the proper conclusion.

" I, Saturn, the greatest of the planets in the firmament, declare here before you all, that I am the meanest and most unprofitable of all that are here present, that my body is weak, corruptible, and of a swarthy hue, but that, nevertheless, it is I that try you all. For having nothing that is fixed about me, I carry away with me all that is of a kindred nature. My wretchedness is entirely caused by that fickle and inconstant Mercury, by his careless and neglectful conduct. Therefore, I pray you, let us be avenged on him, shut him up in prison, and keep him there till he dies and is decomposed, nay, until not a drop of his blood is to be seen."

~ "The Twelve Keys of Basil Valentine," from Ein kurtz summarischer Tractat, von dem grossen Stein der Uralten...', Eisleben, 1599.

Having had this recurring Ripley Scroll thing, as I mentioned last week, I got to exploring the work of George Ripley more, and his Twelve Gates writings.

1. Calcination
2. Solution
3. Separation
4. Conjunction
5. Putrefaction
6. Congelation
7. Cibation/Nutrition
8. Sublimation
9. Fermentation
10. Exaltation
11. Multiplication
12. Projection

Not only do I think there could be benefit in having the metaphorical ritual/inner process not end with Coagulation (creating the gold), but I also found from my own work that having more and shorter phases across a long period of time makes for a more smoothly flowing ritual.  There's less up-and-down as far as actions which mark the time, and it's easier to give more intentional action to a shorter period of time.  Less loss of momentum.  We already have an established structure at work in the community, so introducing a variation isn't that difficult.  It's sort of like how Illumination tried something last summer that was sort of like the usual affinity group process but they changed the metaphor and didn't assign specific group leaders.  There were enough attendees who were familiar with collaborative improvisation to hold the hands of everyone else who was freaking out from never having done it before.  In my perfect world, I'd like to do this at MayFire where almost everyone knows the drill, and we'd just play the game with some new pieces.  One catch to that might be that it is such a small event, having more groups would make them too small to be practical about this.  Illumination which runs double to triple the size of a MayFire could be more suitable.

Gates one through four are standard.  Putrefaction is really interesting, because at Vortex fires rotting is lumped in with Calcination and I think it would be really interesting to have done some purification work and then take a deep dive down to see exactly what the shit is at that point.  Congelation is a thickening and slowing down.  The Cibation phase is the perfect spot for literally "feeding" the ritual or group.  I'm not yet sure how a group would enact Sublimation.  That's rare enough physically as it is.  Fermentation is standard.  Exaltation, Multiplication and Projection seem like a great way to energize and head to the end.  Bring the energy up, expand it and then connect it to the world outside the ritual space.  Seems like a natural to me.  Ripley has a section after the gates he calls the Recapitulation and that seems like the afterglow part of the ritual.  I need to research more into the phases and explore their facets.  I also think the symbolism of "gates" could be significant.  

I'm still working out the manifestation of cob house workshops and festival fires for the spring and summer.  May has the potential for one cob workshop and two potential events.  In earlier May is MayFire in Vegas and (hopefully) at the end of May will be another Northwest Alchemy Conference.  I haven't heard from Karen since late summer so I guess it's time to go poke her and see what's up.  June or July could have cob building.  June has Shakespeare in Ashland.  Early July I usually house-sit for the 'rents, later July has a faerie festival potential.  And August is Illumination. 

Somehow, once upon a time, my housemate and I agreed to take another friend's treadmill which wasn't doing anything at their house.  And for a while, it did something in our garage, and then it took became just another thing to put things on.  Last week my sister found someone who was willing to be the next residence for the treadmill, so a huge space just opened up in our garage.  Behind where the treadmill was is a fairly comprehensive pile of boxes, most of which belong to me and many of which haven't done much since I moved to the Emerald City (on the winter Solstice 2005). 

I'm slowly making my way through the boxes.  I have a box that is now the "to be shredded box," and I'll probably borrow my dad's very sturdy home shredder to take care of that pile as I can feed more stuff into it compared to the teeny one I have.  Stuff that is garbage, goes right into the garbage can in the garage.  Same for stuff that can go right to recycling.  I have a box started that is for items to go to the thrift store.  So far, lots of what I've gotten into is paperish, but I know it'll get more thrifty when I get down to heavier boxes at the bottom of the stacks.  Some of it's funny, some of it is bizarre (as in why do I still have this junk?) and it's very much Nigredo work.

Take good heed for this your fire
The fire with water bright shall be burnt
And water with fire washed shall be
The earth on fire shall be put
And water with air shall be knit
Thus ye shall go to purification
And bring the serpent to redemption
~ David Beuther, Universal und Particularia... Hamburg, 1718

More Ripley Scroll energy. I had the extreme good fortune to see one in person in London in the summer of 2012. The British Museum had just discovered they had something like only the 23rd one to exist, and it had been sitting uncatalogued in their basement for several hundred years or something like that.  My meditations on Yule about finding a new formula upon which to possibly base an alchemical fire circle ritual led me to delve into Ripley's Twelve Gates. 

This blog then did something I've been trying to do for about a year and a half, and that's recover the lost originals from the early portion of the European trip.  My iPad crashed during the download and, for reasons that are still unclear, various other photo software programs never could access or find the originals.  However, the media function here can access that hidden folder, and I stumbled across them while looking through my photo files for images for this blog!  There's no coincidence in alchemy.  I get it.  There's a lot of work to be done to actually recover and organize them, but I have my missing larger file size photos from Glastonbury and London.  My GSW pics from that trip were all fine, but the really personal magickal stuff (totaling just over a thousand images) from early in the trip were cloaked until now.