Just a little over a week ago, sunset time finally got late enough it reached 5pm.  Whew... there's something about that little bit of shift that suddenly makes everything change.  Just about and about doing errands I overheard a handful of conversations about how the slightly longer day is now perceptible and how that seems to have lightened the mood.  Of course, the impending Super Bowl is helping now too.  But the sunset will slowly continue to creep later and later until it peaks just after 9pm come summer solstice.  We saw blooming snowdrops on Bainbridge Island yesterday, and some pink camillias that had opened already.  Both there and here in town I've seen bulbs starting to put up shoots.  We thaw, we melt, we dissolve...  

I keep three mini shrines at home, along with a more substantial "alchemical" altar.  The minis are organized around Nigredo, Albedo and Rubedo.  For many years now, I've had a figurine of Sekhmet as the deity for the Rubedo, relating to the Crone and the red of the desert where I do a lot of magickal work, but I got the message a while back that she was no longer appropriate in that slot for me.  As the two other shrines have images and not statues for the related Goddess, I have been considering the replacement image.  It was clear as soon as I got to see the higher-res image that the picture I took of the Black Madonna at Chartres was to be the new deity.  That cathedral has two Madonnas (one above, one below), but the one I am speaking of is the Black Madonna de sous terre, the one underground in the crypt adjacent the ancient Druid well.  I will frame the print I made.  My Sekhmet statue will be re-homed at the temple in the Nevada desert the next time I am there.

"The Determination of our Diana's Tears consists only in their perfect and indissoluble Union with the fixt Vegetable Earth, philosophically prepared, purified, and spiritualized: for the love of which they are forced to leave their first universal undetermined Property, and be clothed with a determined particular one, which is required to this our Circulatum Minus."

~ from Circulatum minus Urbigeranum, or the Philosophical Elixir of Vegetables, with The Three certain Ways of Preparing it, fully and clearly set forth on One and Thirty Aphorisms. By Baro Urbigerus. A Servant of God in the Kingdom of Nature. Experto Crede. London, Printed for Henry Faithorne, at the Rose in St. Paul's Church-yard, 1690.

I was emailing with my friend C and it turns out one of the new spagyrics she is taking is the same as one of the new ones I got to round out my seven essentials.  What I'm working with is Pfaffia paniculata aka Suma (Sun), Wild Yam (Moon), Notoginseng (Mars), Cordyceps sinensis (Mercury), Turmeric (Jupiter), Sarsaparilla (Venus) and Myrrh (Saturn).  All these spagyrics are from Al-Qemi in Oregon, whose tinctures I've been working with since 2008.  I have had the good fortune to try many of their wondrous plant medicines over the years including some strange samples they make just for themselves.  If you meet them at events, see what's on their tasting menu if they are offering one.  I used pendulum divination to determine what plants to take.  If any of the bottles run out before the end of the year, I'll ask at that time if I'm to keep taking the same plant or pick a new one which aligns with the same planet.

I've been trying to figure out which book/guide to work with when it comes to choosing plants to make my own spagyrics.  I have two which focus primarily on the topic, from somewhat different approaches (good) but sometimes they outright conflict each other (confusing).  As with all things alchemical, there are some marked differences between various sources in regards to which planet different plants are said to correspond.  I think I'm going to really consider what grows in my yard and is most readily available (hey, a use for my over abundance of aloe vera!) and then see what the predominant planetary association is.  I should also dig up the material in my archive on the doctrine of signatures as that's probably going to come into play too.  The first of the spring 2014 gardening catalogs have started to arrive, so I have to see what jumps out at me there too.  We've had such a damn dry winter I don't know what to expect for spring weather at all.  I'm really not up for having a repeat of last year's June-uary. 

One major bump has arisen in my 2014 manifestations.  The dates for the NW Alchemy Conference shifted from Memorial Day weekend to first weekend in June.  I'm already booked for Shakespeare in Ashland the first weekend in June.  I emailed everybody and said I was still up to contribute to planning and all, but that for obviously conflictive reasons, I would not be at the conference this year.  Poo.  The slideshow of alchemy adventures in the UK will have to hold for now.  I checked a few other event dates and emailed another about timing to start to head off any more of this sort of thing.  My manifestation is slipping...

I've spent a lot of mental time revisiting Glastonbury lately.  There were so many layers of magickal history laid down there, I can see why some people go there for a visit and then never leave.  You could spend your lifetime peeling them back like so many layers of onion skin.  Here's one of the smaller chunks of the Abbey found on the grounds of the historic site and modern church.  There is a specific spot marked as being the graves of King Arthur and Queen Geneviere too.

When King Henry VIII took the throne, Glastonbury was still the seat of religion in England, and the Abbey in Glastonbury was rich as shit, and Hank wasn't down with that at all.  He sent some guys to take care of the Abbot, which resulted in the Abbot being hanged, drawn and quartered.  After that, London became the seat of English religious practice and the Church of England was free to dominate the playing field.  I found a website ahead of my trip to Glastonbury where a woman recounts how she conversed spiritually with the last Abbot of Glastonbury and he supposedly communicated to her that part of why he got offed was due to his practice of alchemy.  That's probably worth another look-see.

"Silver is less bounded by aqueous immaturity than the rest of the metals, though it may indeed be regarded as to a certain extent impure, still its water is already covered with the congealing vesture of its earth, and it thus tends to perfection."

~ from "The Stone of the Philosophers" by Edward Kelly, published in Tractatus duo egregii, de Lapide Philosophorum, una cum Theatro astronomiæ terrestri, cum Figuris, in gratiam filiorum Hermetis nunc primum in lucem editi, curante J. L.M.C. [Johanne Lange Medicin Candidato]., Hamburg, 1676.

Legend has it that Edward Kelly (magickal compatriot of John Dee) found some philosopher's stone while wandering the ruins at Glastonbury Abbey one day.  I can't help but imagine it like finding someone's dropped part of their stash on the ground.  "Dude, check it out, I found some Philosopher's Stone just lying on the ground at the Abbey..."  "Whoa, man, that's like so red....let's fire it up and transmute!"  However, that account was published by Elias Ashmole, and John Dee's own diaries give a different account.  I'm now going to remember this as one of those quasi-fictional moments in history, where there's the history and then the fictional romantic account and then my own pop-culture imaginings. 

One of my fairly recent fictional explorations of alchemy was a book called The Alchemist's Door by Lisa Goldstein.  While many fictions like to cast John Dee as a villain, this book had him as a somewhat befuddled magician, caught up in a web of intrigue due to the actions of Kelly.  He winds up fleeing to Bohemia (Poland) where a Rabbi and some alchemists help him stop Kelly's nefarious plans.  In the end, I found the book to have done a good job of riffing off actual history of the period and the mythology of the golem, but it was lighter in actual alchemical content than I hoped.  Alchemy is treated more like a character who the story rather hopes doesn't appear but inevitably peeks in a time or two. 

When I was first introduced to the alchemical process, the mysterious Peacock's Tail phase was described as falling at the end of the Albedo, right before Rubedo starts.  The more I've read and worked my own process, and learned more about laboratory alchemy, I've come to feel that it's more suited to falling at the end of Nigredo, before one begins to move into Albedo.  In my transposing of alchemical phases onto the Wheel of the Year, the Peacock's Tail happens after Yule (Calcination) and before Imbolc (Dissolution).  This year the flash of color(s) that signaled the event had to be the photo recovery.  Normally at this time of year it feels very wet and Solutio, but we've only just had our first whole week of rain this winter this past week and already that's stopped, so it's been more of an inner process this year.  But the feeling of things dissolving, thinning and separating gently is still lurking in there.

I've been doing a lot of bottle washing lately, hoping to get some cordial flavors finalized and portioned out soon.  I have to sit down and do labels.  I repeated a couple of fruits this year so those should just need typographical updating.  I have to start thinking where I want to plant the apple tree in the ground next month.  Time to start watching overnight temps.

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. 

I sat for several hours last Friday night with pendulum and grimoires, seeking the symbols for my left ankle tattoo.  It was divined that the emblems accompanying the original spiraling path shape need to be removed for clarity and construction due to intended size and medium, and some specific alchemical notations included instead.  The five symbols are copper, filter, oil, saffron and Virgo.  The overall design is going to follow the overall shape and appearance of the design which illustrates the Egyptian perception of the flow of energy between heaven and earth.  The fire circle at Forestdance the year I went to Costa Rica turned out to be this pattern, with a main fire and a root fire.  That added second fire is part of the Illumination fire structure too.  One cool detail that doesn't happen at the Oregon fires which did happen in Costa Rica was the brewing of a tea from plants on the land each night to support an aspect of each night's fire. 

"Things bright and clear being so obtained
The King and Queen being begot togeathere
Being put presently in the Secret Prison,
Feed them with heavenly Dew; not Watry things."

~ from 'A warning to the false Chymists or the Philosophical Alphabet by Thomas Rawlin' folios 14-55. This work was printed in Latin, Thomas Rawlin, Admonitio de Pseudochymicis, seu Alphabetarium Philosophicum in quo refutatur aurum potabile Antonii, 1611.

I got involved with the rangoli team the last night at Illumination 2013 and showed them this same design.  The two guys heading it up discussed for a bit and then dug out the jugs of playa dust they'd collected at Burning Man 2012 and used that to lay most of the design.  We ran short for some of the inner bits and the color changed slightly if you knew what you were looking for.  The smaller symbols got dropped out for space considerations but we kept the scarab.  On my ankle, I'm going to take that out too because I'm down to just a few inches of size. 

There are some days approaching which are positively-attuned and in the phase of Fixation, and that seems like a good time to get inked, so this might be happening next week.  It'd be healed before P-con if I do that, which would be another vote for next week too.

Speaking of cons, last Thursday I had my second night of ECCC minion training.  It was everything you ever wanted or needed to know about the show floor area and how it works or doesn't work.  It was raining, but I had a new umbrella with me (so it functioned the way it was supposed to) and I found a different bus stop to wait at to catch a bus home afterward than last time.  Everything went much faster.  Two sessions down, two to go.

Last Saturday I got together with Kalla.  We have both been busy with family for the last couple of weeks.  There was actual sunshine, it was a gorgeous winter day.  We went up to Saint Edwards State Park in Kenmore, WA.  It used to be a monastery and then a seminary.  They have a wonderful, Paganish, stone structure called the Grotto out behind the old seminary building.  I got some great macro images of spiderwebs.  After our outdoor adventures, we grabbed some dinner and had a very serious pow-wow about K's con workshop and plans beyond.  Very productive banter.  I had delicious yam tacos, but something in them set off several hours of inflammatory aches and pains and I haven't figured out just what it was.  ...le sigh...

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.