I have a couple of spagyrics that I wish to make, and with that process comes Calcination.  It's how most people think of the start of the alchemical process, skipping the Putrefaction and Mortificatio that come ahead of it.  That's one of the first lessons of lab alchemy versus a purely spiritual approach.  It becomes clear that almost no process starts with fire, and that spiritual alchemy probably shouldn't either.

Recently, there was a post I read on Tumblr from an acquaintance, himself working on Calcination, and he was describing how difficult it was to achieve it.  He had plant material in a closed crucible in his home oven, running as hot as it could for several hours, and did not have white ash.  I sat down, went over a lot of my notes, looked in a few books and here's my post-Calcination interpretation of what is happening.  Or more accurately what is not happening.

Calcination is where a material is burnt to the point of white ash.  As much as a kitchen oven will clean itself by burning the layer of cooking grease on it's interior to ash, that does not mean a stove can burn anything else to white ash.  In all honesty, it's not hot enough.  The whole point of an oven is to provide controlled, precise heat so as to NOT burn what you are heating.

Really hot fires have access to lots of oxygen, and they have extreme temperatures.  Let's look at campfires.  They burn to white ash if made hot enough, but will leave blacken chunks of charred wood if not.  Campfires burn between 700-1200 degrees depending on the wood used, the structure of the fire (how the wood is stacked) and turbulence (airflow over the burning material).

The first thing Robert Bartlett said to us about calcination  when I took his Prima class was not to do it in our kitchens, and then he just started laughing.  Apparently he gets asked about this all the time.  Unless you have a wood-burning stove, and calcine inside that (which Robert sometimes does), a conventional cooking stove is not the tool to be using.  Aside from a lack of heat, you also don't want all the crap that gets burnt off to get in your house or all over where you prepare food.  You're doing chemistry, not baking a cake. 

So, if kitchens are not the place to calcine, then what?

Good question.  Calcination is best accomplished in the open air, with an open container, over open flame.  Get outside and use your barbecue or a camp stove or a fire.  Put your material to be calcined into a steel container.  Have something with which to turn or stir the material as it cooks. 

If you have plant material that has been in pure grain alcohol, you can light the alcohol and burn the material somewhat, but that's not enough fuel to consume the entire quantity at a level to produce white ash.  That's another Calcination assumption beginning alchemists make that doesn't work for them. 

With a kitchen stove, you can heat a material for five or six hours and just have black carbon.  Over a camp stove, you can usually get to white ash in an hour because the area you are heating is focused and concentrated. It will always vary with what you are working with, and how large a quantity you are attempting to burn. 

Take any and all fire precautions.  Wear fire gloves when handling anything you have been heating, even if only for a little while. 

In the Julian calendar, which was being used in England when he was born, Isaac Newton was born on December 25, 1642.  When the Gregorian calendar went into effect, that shifted his birthdate to January 4, 1643.  One website I read proposed that the two dates should frame "The Ten Days of Newton," and it should be celebrated as a holiday period in honor of the many discoveries and developments that came from Newton's explorations.  That would make a good Pagan holiday out of something scientific...

Nor is it possible to make those distinctions between the Mystic and the Occultist that have from time to time been attempted; as when it is averred that the former follows the path of Love and the latter the path of Power and Knowledge.

from THE SECRET FIRE: AN ALCHEMICAL STUDY by E.J. Langford Garstin

An interesting meditation I have been pursuing for some time now is "How do you tell what's real alchemy?"  How do you judge who knows their alchemy and who doesn't?  During my recently-ended association with the Grey School, I considered the one other person who was primarily associated with the alchemy department to be inexperienced and their teachings flawed based on their approach and explanations, or viable lack thereof in the latter.  In the last few weeks I was told by a friend of a duo on Kickstarter working to raise funds to start an alchemy laboratory and make spagyrics.  Having read their pitch and watched their video, I felt they don't demonstrate an appropriate level of knowledge and experience for what they are attempting to do.  Their recently added FAQ which states they just joined the IAG doesn't carry any weight in that all you have to do to join is pay your reg fee.  I emailed a few questions, and while the guy who answered seemed nice enough, the reply I got is that they are about to go into the cannabis oil biz and sort of run an alchemy lab on the side.  I'll stick with buying my spagyrics from the folks in OR who I met back in 2007 for now.

How much opinion comes from educational experience?  How much from association?  For me, both of those are easily a solid two-thirds of what informs my decisions.  The last third, which I've just recently come to name, is "the fire."  At the Esoteric Book Conference, I had a great conversation with a man and bought a deck of meditational alchemy cards he made.  He gave me a slim booklet of compiled artwork on the side for free, because he said he could see I had the fire for alchemy.  The spark, those flames, are something I look for in fellow alchemists.  That woman at the school and those guys on the internet.... I'm not feeling the heat, I'm not seeing the fire.  

Moving from the macrocosm to the microcosm, how do I judge my own alchemical growth?  I follow the Wheel of the Year as an alchemical cycle, moving from calcination through to projection, and then repeating.  Yule is calcination.  What do I need to burn away?  What am I doing to obscure myself?  What is my dross?  I'm not surprised I finally left the Grey School this year.  It wasn't serving my magickal growth.  My original goal in joining the school was to study alchemy, and that wasn't happening.  I had issues with how the school was being run, how the curriculum was developed and I feel that most of the teachers don't hardly practice magick themselves.  That last month there I was continually aware of being in an inflamed state of mortifactio. 

I got through my two solstice vigils in better physical shape than I anticipated.  The solo one was my longest yet, and I only dozed off once about 5:15am and woke up after about 15 minutes.  I broke the night into nine alchemical phases and did an appropriate spagyric each phase.  I picked an incense for each using my pendulum, and drew a Goddess affirmation card too.  For something I found in the toy/game aisle of the thrift store for just a few dollars, those cards have been amazing.  I should bring them to use for a daily draw at PantheaCon.  At the second vigil I was at the apartment of a couple I met at the cob workshop this past summer.  Among their other guests was the guy who owns The Purple Store (where my 'unapologetically purple' t-shirt comes from) and a man who was part of the Pagan group who staged the ritual at the alchemy conference last May.  He was the one handing out the small keys at one of the gates.  I offered several rounds of gongfu tea in the night, and the new water warmer (gift from my aunt and uncle in Boston) worked beautifully.  

Perhaps I'll revive my alchemical tea ritual at the alchemy conference....