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...

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....

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.