The Tattooed Alchemist

Posts for Tag: alchemical

Kindle The Fire Of The Sages

The heat of distillation can be quite fierce.  We just had a week-long run of 85-90 here in the Emerald City, in case anyone was wondering just what people mean when they say 'climate change.'  As with any time of extremes, as much as people complain, the extra challenge tends to make you drop away what's superfluous and just deal with what's necessary.  Not unlike when I'm attending a festival.  I'm definitely distilling across multiple areas of my life.

I have some filtration on my plate this week more specifically.  The influences are pretty good and it's time my cordial stocks were replenished.  I just have to work out how to do it in the cool garage versus the overheated kitchen.  We're pretty much helpless to cool the kitchen until the overall temps drop.  I've made some great headway on a few spots in the yard as the heat makes for very dead weeds and those suckers pull right up.  I want to yank a bunch of vine-ish stuff out from under the butterfly bush we have in our northeastern corner of the yard (my zone) and get a flowering shade plant mix in there instead. 

For this is the most excellent substance of the Sages, and is rejected only by the foolish. Its substance is like, but its essence unlike, that of gold. Transmute the elements and you will have what you seek. Sublime that which is the lowest, and make that which is the highest, the lowest. Take quicksilver which is mixed with its active sulphur; put it into a well-closed vial, and one alembic, plunge one-third of it into the earth, kindle the fire of the Sages, and watch it well so that there may be no smoke. The rest you may leave to me. I ask you to do no more, but only bid you follow my unerring guidance.

from The Remonstration of Nature, made to the erring alchemists, and complaining of the sophists and other false teachers. Set forth by John A. Mehung.

It's a fortnight until I'm on the road, so lists have formally started and piles are messily taking shape just about everywhere.  The challenge to stay warm where I'm headed will be moderate for brief times but there's a dampness/dryness factor that seems to be to be more the key than how hot/cold.  I have to figure out how to overlap fire circle clothing with choices appropriate to being with my family and going out to dinner and stuff for four days too.  That's going to be a bit of a weird mix.  I had a big phone call with my incense sister in Vegas the other night and we've both got lists of stuff to bring for bringing it on.  We joked that although changes in how things run this year are going to free up most attendees from juggling costumes and props, some of us are just going to still be doing it.   

And speaking of Las Vegas, that funky concept of me house-sitting for my friend and taking care of her critters for three months while she goes to Costa Rica is still moving forward.  I now have a time frame.  Her departure and return travel dates are November 29, 2014 thru until March 6, 2015.  Talk about your distillation process, I've got to boil it down pretty simply and quickly:  can I really live in Las Vegas for December through February?  That just plain takes P-con out of the equation, and I'd be in town for Mysterium already.  I'd be there for the holidays, that would be interesting.  My friend actually proposed that I just stay after Fall Fest straight through all November, but I just dropped an event on my calendar for the first weekend in November, so I think on my end I'm going to try and work it so I head to Vegas two weeks early and get oriented with the animals and all.  I still have to check off a lot of things before this is a locked-in done-deal, but like I said, it's still moving forward.

The Indissoluble Bond Of Body And Soul

In my alchemical wheel of the year, the summer solstice is distillation.  A series of events and activities that began earlier in the year are all now coming to a time of finer planning and attention to detail.  Given that we're still in Mercury retrograde, it means going a bit slower and understanding that things will come together more at the last minute, and that's okay.  Expressing the energies of distillation means more mindfulness in decisions.  My word back at MayFire was "choice."  I have to make more discriminating choices now.  


We've actually had summer-warm weather in the Emerald City lately.  The garden is full of color, but we got enough water to top off all the barrels with the last storms so we've been able to ignore the hose for a bit longer.  It's time to hit the walking-path-edge of the lawn again, to differentiate it from the formal meadow.  Walking to the solstice parade, I took a photo of a fantastic patch of wild sidewalk garden which I felt was a perfect example of what we're trying to grow.  I think I want to give Dad back his weed whacker and get a tiny push mower for our needs instead.  It will wind up being a LOT quieter, and without having to deal with a cord, it might be a lot easier too.

For as the soul lives and moves in all the members of the body, so that spirit lives and moves in all elementary creatures, and is the indissoluble bond of body and soul, the purest and most noble essence in which lie hid all mysteries in their inexhaustible fullness of marvelous virtue and efficacy.

from The Sophic Hydrolith; or Water Stone of the Wise, That is, a chymical work, in which the way is shewn, the matter named, and the process described; namely, the method of obtaining the universal tincture.

A minor confusion about scheduling and just what got communicated in email has been cleared up, so my house=sit starts Wednesday, not Sunday.  That's good actually.  It might rain over the 4th of July.  I'm sure people will still be firing off more than enough things no matter what the weather. 

After the house-sit comes the family gathering.  It would seem that there are plans in the works for some skeeball in a location on the Oregon coast known especially for this.  I think skeeball was the only thing I can every say I loved about the Jersey shore.  After some debate about who really wants to go where on the way down the coast and who wants to visit other people on the way home, I've been swapped back and forth between the two family cars and have landed back where I started:  with my parents dropping me off at Illumination.

On the fire family front, I'm in part of the opening ritual the first fire at Illumination, and things have moved forward a notch in regards to some stuff under-development in the Vortex.  I have sacred items to start assembling for August, some incense, some mugwort from the yard.  Time to start keeping an eye out for any sudden fall travel deals.