Chapter
12

The White Phase

In This Chapter

• Reclaiming the essences of mortification

• The White Light of the Albedo

• The operation of separation

• The operation of conjunction

• Personal separation and conjunction

In the previous chapter, our matter suffered through the mortifications of the Black Phase of alchemy. However, the blackness is now slowly giving way to light, and a new day is dawning. The matter has died and is being reborn. Psychologically, we have experienced the death of old habits, beliefs, judgments, projections, and dependencies, and a new person is emerging.

We have entered the second phase of alchemy, the White Phase or Albedo, which is a purification of the matter that survived the Nigredo. It results from a washing or cleansing of the products and their reunion on a new level of purity.

Spiritually, the whiteness of the Albedo is the brilliant white light at the end of the dark tunnel between death and the afterlife. The alchemists believed our souls, which are the immortal essences of our being, follow the same progression through the phases of alchemical transformation as do substances in the lab or the facets of our personalities.

The Whitening

The Albedo phase of alchemy grows out of the blackness of the Nigredo in a gradual process of cooking and purification. This stage is extremely important in the overall progress of transformation, because any remaining contamination or impurities that make it through to the third and final phase can ruin the whole experiment.

Albification is a chemical term for the process of whitening. The word comes from the Latin words albus, meaning “white,” and ficare, “to make.” Albification is accomplished by washing, scrubbing, grinding, or bleaching with chemical agents.

Albification releases the purified essences of the matter, and the goal is to separate these essences from the dross and waste materials of Nigredo. One of the biggest difficulties during Albedo is keeping these pure essences from recombining with each other or picking up contaminants until the alchemist has isolated them. The final operation of the Albedo is to combine the pure essences into a new incarnation or body.

Another characteristic of the work during Albedo is that the alchemist discovers the underlying duality of the substance she is attempting to transform. The level of purification is so great that the fundamental duality of nature is observed in the experiment. In other words, the essences revealed turn out to have opposing positive and negative qualities. In personal transformation, the opposing essences are the masculine and feminine characteristics of the personality, which the alchemists referred to as the King and the Queen.

Symbols of the White Phase of alchemy include the naked King and Queen standing next to one another, as well as more abstract images such as baptismal fonts, silver chalices, fountains from which two streams of water flow into a single basin, or two lions sharing one head vomiting forth a stream of liquid.

Other symbols include a white dove, white swan, white dragon, white Queen, white rose, white stone, and white mercury. The full moon and the morning star, Venus, are also symbols. In mythology, Aurora, the Roman goddess of the dawn, is often used by alchemists to refer to Albedo.

The alchemists believed they could only accomplish the Albedo with divine grace through a merging of the powers Above and the powers Below. The actual mechanism of whitening was regarded a mystery that could not be explained, and during this phase, the alchemist spent much time in prayer and meditation. The Benedictine alchemist Anthony-Joseph Pernety (1716–1796) said of this stage: “When the alchemist sees the perfect whiteness, the philosophers say that one has to destroy his books, because they have become superfluous.”

The operations that take place during the White Phase are two processes that involve applying the Elements of Air and Earth. After these two operations are completed, the essences of the matter at hand will be fused inseparably together to create an exalted matter at a new level of strength and integrity the alchemists called the Stone.

The Separation Process

Separation is the alchemical operation of disuniting, dividing, cutting, or breaking down substances to retrieve their basic constituents or essences.

Chemically, it is the isolation of the components of dissolution by filtration and then the discarding of any ungenuine or unworthy material. To ancient Egyptian alchemists, separation was represented by the compound sodium carbonate, which separated out of water and appeared as white soda ash on dry lakebeds. The oldest known deposits are in Egypt. The alchemists sometimes referred to this compound as Natron, which meant the common tendency in all salts to form solid bodies or precipitates.

In the laboratory, the components of the polluted results from calcination and dissolution are usually separated out by a process the alchemists called “inhibition” or holding back. The most common method of inhibition is filtration, in which material is separated out by passing it through a screen or porous paper.

Other methods of separation include settling, decomposing, skimming, sifting, or agitation with air. Sometimes more sophisticated methods such as layered (or fractional) melting or distillation are used. The result is that any ungenuine or unworthy material is discarded, and the essences are isolated in separate containers.

The alchemical cipher for separation is the astrological sign of Scorpio. The Egyptians associated Scorpio with a descent into the underworld to bring back knowledge of universal truths, which is a perfect metaphor for the separation process. Other ciphers for separation were stylized filters and funnels, as well as piles of sand used for filtering liquids.

Images of separation include double-edged axes, swords hanging down from above, knights wielding swords, and scenes of dismemberment. The splitting of the Red Sea is sometimes used as a metaphor of separation, as are scenes from the Apocalypse. Alchemical engravings show white birds flying over a burning or blackened countryside. The destruction symbolizes the results of the earlier operations of Nigredo, while the white bird represents the essences saved by the separation process.

Personal Separation

Separation on the psychological level is the rediscovery and isolation of your essence or true self. During personal separation, you lift yourself out of the quagmire of your broken personality and recognize your true self. The operations of Nigredo have broken down your personality into your most basic traits and desires, and during the first stage of Albedo, you become aware of the pure essences within and isolate them from ego complexes and unwanted subconscious elements.

A typical alchemical drawing of the separation operation is shown in the following illustration. Separation requires decisive action, as suggested by the armored male figure with the sword. The process involves cutting into the heart of the subject of the work at this stage to reveal the deepest essences of soul and spirit. The great egg about to be cut open represents the sealed Hermetic vessel that contains these essences. That vessel can be a retort in the lab that contains a solution from which the essences must be saved, or it could represent the deeper aspects of your own personality or subconscious that must be exposed to the light of consciousness to succeed at personal transformation.

Separation of the essences.

Personal separation requires a certain amount of objectivity and honesty about your strengths and faults and what is worth salvaging from your old personality. Dissecting and discarding what is no longer relevant or useful is an important role of the separation process. The goal of separation is to preserve what is genuine by removing it from contaminating influences and keeping it safe for further alchemical transformation. This stage is about getting beyond the restraints to your true nature, so the real you can shine through.

The Conjunction Process

If the preceding operations were successful, only the most genuine and essential parts of the matter are left to work with. The next step in the alchemy of transformation is the conjunction, which is the recombination of those saved elements into a new compound or purer substance. In terms of the Four Elements, conjunction is the union of the Elements of Fire, Water, and Air to produce a purified or reborn Earth Element.

The process begins with commixtion, which is a mixing or commingling of the saved essences from separation. Vessels of conjunction have two glass globes or sections joined by a middle chamber in which the mixing or commingling occurs.

However, just bringing these essences together in the same vessel is not enough to accomplish this important operation. The essences must create a new compound, which the alchemists called the child of the conjunction. If the recombination of essences does not produce a new compound, the alchemists felt that material impurities or negative spiritual energies had polluted the process and the whole experiment had failed.

The alchemists saw the coming together of essences during conjunction as a sexual union or mating of chemicals to conceive a child, which was the new compound or alloy. For this reason, many of the drawings of this stage of the work show the King and Queen embracing or making love. Not surprisingly, the bird of conjunction is the cockerel—the young and virile rooster.

The alchemical cipher that stands for conjunction is the astrological Earth sign of Taurus, the virile bull. The bull was sacred to ancient Egyptians, who used it to symbolize fertility and growth. They even timed the plowing of their fields and mating of cattle with the rising of Taurus in the heavens.

Other images of conjunction include rams and satyrs, double-chambered furnaces, rope or chains binding opposing entities, birds chained to earthbound animals, and two streams coming together in one stream. Often engravings show the King and Queen in reconciliation at this stage, with Hermes or Mercury in between or joining them with an embrace or handshake.

Personal Conjunction

Psychologically, conjunction is the union of the opposing parts of our personality, the masculine King and the feminine Queen. The alchemists referred to this initial reconciliation as the fetus or Lesser Stone, and after it is accomplished, the initiate should be able to clearly discern what needs to be done to achieve permanent enlightenment, which would become the Greater Stone or Philosopher’s Stone.

Drawings of conjunction usually show two animals, vessels, or other objects being mixed or joined in some way. In the following illustration, we see the alchemist patiently waiting for the conjunction process to begin. He has successfully separated and isolated the purified essences of soul and spirit, which are depicted by the two birds facing opposite directions in the retorts. The bird in the inverted vessel on top is spirit and the bird in the vessel below is soul. Once these opposing essences are mixed together, nature takes over. This is indicated by the alchemist pointing with his right hand to a plant on the ground. The stone cube that holds the vessels suggests this is a process of physical manifestation that takes place in real time and space. The whole process is like breeding animals, in that you can only bring the living essences together and hope for the best.

In spiritual terms, the essences of conjunction were the very soul and spirit of the alchemist, and their union was known as the Sacred Marriage (see Chapter 20). Alchemical images of this blessed event include the sun and the moon uniting in the sky, two white birds raising a crown into the heavens, red and white lions or dragons sharing one body, or elaborate outdoor wedding celebrations.

The conjunction of opposing spirits.

Because the marriage partners in the Sacred Marriage of conjunction were essences of soul and spirit within the alchemist, many alchemical texts described the marriage as an act of incest. To church officials, who took such metaphors literally, this was one more example of the immorality of alchemists.

Many people confuse the terms soul and spirit; however, the ancients saw these as two distinct entities. Spirit, the inner King, is constantly striving for change and betterment, while soul, the inner Queen, is happy with things as they are and wants only to settle down.

Spirit is associated with energy, aggression, expansion, and intellectual pursuits, while soul is associated with matter, passivity, contraction, bodily sensations, and emotions. Spirit craves action and adventure, feeds on abstract concepts, and seeks objective unifying principles. Spirit is responsible for business, science, technology, and the patriarchal world in which we live. The soul, on the other hand, craves memories and reflection and prefers storytelling over theorizing. Her language is art and music, and food for the soul comes from subjective feelings about everyday objects and relationships. Spirit is focused on the future but requires the passion of the soul to succeed, and for that reason, spirit must always seek out soul and court her favors.

The union of spirit and soul within an individual produces a third kind of consciousness that combines masculine and feminine ways of knowing into a deeper awareness. The Egyptians called it “Intelligence of the Heart,” while medieval alchemists referred to this blossoming of wisdom as the “Philosopher’s Child.” It is the merging of thought and feeling to produce a highly intuitive state that was considered a direct experience of reality.

What does conjunction feel like on the personal level? Many adepts through the ages have compared it with the development of a spiritual fetus within, something new and unexpected, a wonderfully refreshing presence that emerges from the suffering and darkness of the Nigredo.

In the later stages of alchemy, this golden presence becomes an incorruptible “stone” in the sense that it survives untainted no matter what happens. No matter how confusing things get in your life, no matter what emotions swell up within you, no matter where your thoughts take you, no matter how cruel or inconsiderate others are toward you, you will have this solid refuge inside that is very much like a personal stone. This stone in your personality creates a feeling of deep integrity and confidence in everything you do.

THOTH’S TIPS

Conjunction is the doorway to a new level of empowerment, whose secrets are revealed only at the highest levels of initiation. You must progress a little further in your apprenticeship before you can appreciate this powerful Hermetic mystery. We will return to conjunction to take a look at its deeper significance in Chapter 20. In the meantime, two books by psychologist Edward Edinger that explore this topic in depth are The Mystery of the Coniunctio (Inner City Books, 1994) and The Mysterium Lectures (Inner City Books, 1995).

Conjunction is a prerequisite to progressing further in alchemy. It is the culmination of the work Below in the realm of matter, habits, and thoughts, and the beginning of the work Above in the realm of energy and spirit.

But conjunction is the operation where most failures occur both in the lab and on the personal level. The child of the conjunction is often stillborn and the work must be abandoned. That is, if the child is the product of an experiment, it might fail to create a new compound. If it is tincture, the plant essences may die or lose their life force when mixed in alcohol. On the psychological level, the child could be a new mental attitude of confidence and optimism that cannot survive in the everyday world of family, co-workers, and stressful responsibilities. For those reasons, conjunction is often called the turning point or pivotal operation in alchemy. If the child of the conjunction survives, it will be nurtured and grow into something entirely new and empowered during the operations of the Red Phase of alchemy.

The Least You Need to Know

• The White Phase of transformation is known as Albedo and begins at the darkest moment of the Black Phase.

• Separation is an operation of the White Phase that involves removing or isolating the surviving components of the Black Phase from their contaminated and impure environment.

• Conjunction is an operation of the White Phase that works to recombine the purified essences of the Black Phase into a new compound or higher manifestation.

• Personal separation involves finding the essences of the true self within and protecting them from any contaminating influences.

• Personal conjunction is about recognizing the essences of soul and spirit within and uniting them in a new level of consciousness and spiritual awareness.