The deeper I get into alchemy, the more I look at components of electional astrology, correspondences and alignments.  Here’s how things shake down for my Yule vigil over Friday night into Saturday.

From sunset to sunrise can be (almost perfectly) broken into nine equal time portions.  I apply an alchemical framework to those divisions, something I first learned as part of a ritualized community but I don’t work with just seven alchemy phases anymore because I feel the classical seven is a good metaphor for teaching but actually incomplete for genuine magickal workings.  I fee the practitioner is able to be more effective by performing Multiplication and Projection after Coagulation, and before cycling back to Calcination.  I like to see how the planetary hours flow when compared to the framework and I look for alignments, what I think of as significant power points, those are the moments that might be appropriate for ritual what-not.

The actual moment of winter solstice is 2:23pm Pacific time.  According to alchemical astrology, Friday is attuned to Congelation and has active/positive energy, and Saturday is not only a Full Moon but it’s attuned to Fixation and is also active/positive, more so than Friday.  This is where stuff I've been doing more internally since Samhain comes out and becomes external work.  This is when the seed of Projectio from Samhain, which was been planted in the fresh black Nigredo and has been undergoing Mortificatio and Putreficatio in the six weeks since will now have heated enough to ignite, and move into the phase of Calcination.  

Christmas has come. The God is in the egg. I have prepared a rug for my God, an expensive red rug from the land of morning. He shall be surrounded by the shimmer of magnificence of his Eastern land. I am the mother, the simple maiden, who gave birth and did not know how. I am the careful father, who protected the maiden. I am the shepherd, who received the message as he guarded his herd at night on the dark fields. - Carl Jung, artwork and writing from, THE RED BOOK  

All of the below times were calculated by a person in Seattle, WA.  Your timings will vary.  When I mark out points of significance, I'm indicating a point that can be used to start, a point that could be the peak in the middle, or a point which could be chosen as a finish.  It all depends on what you are trying to accomplish. 

2:13pm - Moon planetary house starts

2:23pm - the Winter Solstice 

2:55pm - Saturn planetary hour starts

3:37pm - Jupiter planetary hour starts

4:19pm, Mars planetary hour starts  

4:20pm - sunset in Seattle and the beginning of the Calcination phase.  Something about a Mars hour colliding with 4:20 reminds me of the 4 of Swords from the Tarot of the Silicon Dawn where the two figures are sitting out the fight for a moment to smoke a pipe together.

5:37pm - Sun planetary hour starts

6:04pm - Dissolution 

6:55pm - Venus planetary hour starts

7:48 pm - Separation

8:13pm - Mercury planetary hour starts

9:31 - Moon planetary hour starts

9:32pm - Conjunction - here we have another alignment, where the Moon hour and Conjunctio work come together.  Alchemically, Conjunction aligns with Venus, the heart and the completion of the Lesser Work.  The Moon in alchemy is Distillation.  How can you work with Moon and Venus energies, to both refine and combine?

10:49pm - Saturn planetary hour starts

11:16pm - Fermentation

12:07am - Jupiter planetary hour starts

1:00am - Distillation

1:25am - Mars planetary hour starts

2:43am - Sun planetary hour starts

2:44am - Coagulation - in alchemy, Coagula is the Sun and the completion of the Great Work, so about a quarter to three in the morning by my reckoning and ritual is double Sun and may be one of the most potent moments of the night.  

4:01am - Venus planetary hour starts

4:28am - Multiplication

5:19am - Mercury planetary hour starts

6:12am - Projection

7:55am - Saturn planetary hour begins Saturday

7:55am - sunrise in Seattle - And with one final alignment, the vigil ends right as a hour of Saturn which starts Saturday begins.  Stay up or plotz as you need.

8:37am - Jupiter planetary hour starts

9:19am - Mars planetary hour starts

9:49am - Full Moon - bonus.  You can work this energy now or tonight.

10:01am - Sun planetary hour starts

What I find really interesting is that I wrote out the alchemical phases on paper first, then marked which points would break the nine into three equal chunks and when I added the planetary hours, they aligned with the start, the two division points and the end.  That’s part of why I opted to share this.  

My health finally recovered enough that I felt it appropriate to take a mini-retreat made possible by my parents doing some travel and wanting a house-sitter.  I waited until I'd had my glorious Hobbit late night last Thursday and traveled south on Friday afternoon.  It was one of those long-haul busing actions.  The second leg of that was me and about four dozen, hardened, urban middle-schoolers.  It was interesting to watch my aura auto-deploy itself:  in a space where the standing room was sardine-tight, no kid wanted to sit next to me but had no issue sitting next to any of the older-looking adults. 

I got to spend about four days on the shores of Lake Washington with Mt Rainier seemingly sitting just on the other side even though it's really a couple of hours away by car.  Yes, it's that huge.  It's blanketed with snow and is just beautiful.  There are an amazing number of hummingbirds there, taking advantage of the feeder my parents have hanging out on the deck.  When Kalla came by on Saturday we went outside so she could photograph the mountain, and the birds were zipping right past us, totally at ease and playing with each other.  That night we went to the luminary display around Greenlake.  It was nice, not too cold and dry. 

"When you see your matter going black, rejoice, for this is the beginning of the work."

- Rosarium Philosophorum

I have finally begun an undertaking that is an elementary and classical step in alchemy, and interestingly, one which many modern alchemists overlook.  I'm surprised that I didn't do this sooner, but then it also makes sense that I am doing this now as the sign that I am ready to do this, and wasn't supposed to do this before now.  I am about to begin my work with the seven essentials.  This is a course of spagyrics attuned to the planets and the days.  People who dismiss laboratory alchemy are those that tend to discount or miss this process in alchemical growth.  In straight-forward terms, the alchemist assembles seven spagryic tinctures, one for each planet and you take them as appropriately attuned on each day of the week for a year.  

As with all alchemy, there's no one way to do this.  In fact, one of the methods is to start completely randomly.  Others say to start based on choices made from one's own astrological chart.  Others work with plants native to where they live.  When I took Robert Bartlett's PRIMA class, he talked about this and how ingesting the plant medicine would bring about alchemical understanding no matter how you chose to start, and just by doing so, the process would unfold and offer up guidance in its own way.  Sort of like, if you just start walking the path, you'll learn and get there along the way.  While the taking of spagyrics is said to lead to comprehension and effects that can't happen any other way, it's in the making of your own spagyrics that is supposed to really bring about deep insight and subtle knowledge. 

For my first round of this, I am going to be working with spagyrics made by Al-Qemi, of which I already have an assortment.  I had to order a couple of planets for which I didn't have a representative tincture, and I did that using a pendulum to select the plants.  While I take these, I will work on a series of tinctures that I prepare myself, with the plants chosen based on things I grow myself or which come into my life or otherwise indicate they are part of the series. 

My sister found a friend to take the treadmill we have in our garage that we got from another friend of hers, and so this next week, when I am done with my mini-retreat, the garage should quite literally begin to open up.  I will have access to a variety of things of mine that are boxed up behind where the treadmill is now.  A definite dross pass through the garage is going to happen.  I'll be curious to see what's been stashed down there which I have forgotten.  I know there is some kitchen stuff in those boxes, but I can't be exactly sure what else.  Probably art supplies, and undoubtedly a goodly amount of novelty accumulation.  I'll get to confront feelings of needing to keep things with the fact that I have not had to use or access those things in about seven years.  Nigredo, anyone?  One other side effect of the garage makeover should be being able to have a bit more lab space.  I'd like to get my cordial stuff situation down there and not be in the kitchen with it as much. 

This coming weekend is going to be sort of stupendous.  Friday night I'm going to do my traditional Yule vigil, ahead of the actual moment of Winter Solstice on Saturday morning, about an hour after sunrise.  Damn, that's gonna be one hella long night, but then again, it always is.  Saturday itself has a variety of options.  From Saturday night into Sunday morning, I have been invited to attend a Yule vigil held by a couple I met at the cob workshop this past summer.  Most likely I will try and do the Unsilent Night Seattle event (dependent on weather), at 7:30pm and then head over to 2nd Yule when that finishes up.  I am going to bring all my tea gear and offer gongfu-style service to whoever is attending.  These are geeky, kinky peoples so I'm really looking forward to it.  It's going to be extra nice because my aunt and uncle in Boston gifted me with a water warmer off my Amazon wish list for the holidays.  Now I'm really ready to crank out the tea!  I'm looking at it as being like two nights of fire with the first being serious magickal workings and the second being a party fire.  Thank goodness it's not really fires because two sixteen-hour stints on my feet less than 12 hours apart would be rather painful.  I'm really looking forward to rocking the Gojira slippers the second night.  That crowd should dig on them.