Sigils And Circuit Boards

The Magnum Opus, or the Great Work, is the process by which an Alchemist creates a Philosopher’s Stone, capable of turning Lead into Gold.

First, a Philosopher’s Stone is not an object that is made, but a person that you become. Alchemical Lead is not black toxic metal in our pipes but the heavy and the toxic that weighs down your heart and your spirit. Alchemical Lead is the old emotional scars that refuse to heal, and the old habits that used to keep us alive, but now keep us hurt.Conversely, Alchemical Gold is not the shiny metal in coins and jewelry, but completeness. It is wholeness. It is well developed and healthy traits that come out of deliberate and careful response to life’s challenges. Alchemical Gold is Growth. The Magnum Opus is the process by which an Alchemist finds and transforms their Lead into their Gold. There are three, four, twelve, and fourteen step processes, but I prefer the Seven Step process, often called the Planetary Metallic process. Each step has a laboratory process associated with it, as well as a Metal, Planet/ Roman God, and Chakra(this one is a little rough, but whatever helps you understand). 

You could look at this as a magical process of developing and refining your spirit, allowing it to become its most divine self. You could also look at it as a psychological roadmap for processing trauma. I prefer to think of it as both.

Process: Calcination

Metal: Lead

Planet:Saturn

Chakra: Root

Symbol: ♄

Calcination is the process of burning until ash. It is fiery, it is angry, it is the beginning. If you do not yet know your Lead, you find it here. Functionally, Calcination is figuring out What’s the Matter, and throwing everything you have at it. This is the time for screaming and stomping. This should leave you feeling drained and hollow, but also invigorated. This is activation energy for what is yet to come.

“I was wronged” “I’ll show them” “Burn it down”

Process: Dissolution

Metal: Tin

Planet: Jupiter

Chakra: Sacral

Symbol: ♃

Dissolution is the process of mixing with water until dissolved. It’s a sharp contrast with Calcination, and is a time to cool down after all the hot emotion previously. It is primarily a process of sorrow and mourning. Mourning of who you could have been. Mourning the loss of the part of you that you fed to the fire. Mourning what has, and what has not. It also serves as a buffer between Calcination and Separation, allowing some time to cool off between feeling your hurt and making boundaries to prevent that hurt. You will probably cry. You might cry a lot. This is ok, and means it is working. Not crying is ok too. 

Process: Separation

Metal: Iron

Planet: Mars

Chakra: Solar Plexus

Symbol: ♂

“Separate earth from fire, the subtle from the gross, with great care and ingenuity”- The Emerald Tablet. 

This is where we start to peel away at our lead. We have burnt it to ash, washed it clean, and now it is time to separate the superfluous from the heart of the Matter and figure out what’s REALLY going on. This is also the time for drawing boundaries.  What must stay, and what must go. Now that you’ve emotionally processed your Lead, It’s decision making time. 

Process: Conjunction

Metal: Copper

Planet: Venus

Chakra: Heart

Symbol: ♀

In conjunction, we take the disparate parts that were previously separated and put them back together, this time with love and compassion. This is also where the process starts to turn outward, and it’s a great time to reach out to those who you care for most for validation and compassion. It’s not uncommon for folks in this stage to sound “I love you, man” drunk, or horny drunk, despite not having consumed any alcohol. I urge you not to act on that horny drunk feeling, not out of a desire to keep sex out of Alchemy (no way am I gonna do that) but to hold onto that energy and carry it through to the next process.

Process: Fermentation

Metal: Mercury

Planet: Mercury

Chakra: Throat

Symbol: ☿

Fermentation is… odd, to say the least. In this step we take everything we’ve worked on, bottled it up, and shoved it in a closet somewhere. It  doesn’t feel like anything is happening. You’re just… maybe a little bubbly. Maybe not. If you’re doing an alchemical fire circle, we go from dancing in circles around the fire chanting our feelings out to… the Time Warp? “Slap Happy” is a pretty good description of the phenomenon. I always have trouble here, because I feel like I should do something, but the thing to do is nothing.

Process: Distillation

Metal: Silver

Planet: Luna

Chakra: Third Eye

Symbol: ☾

Distillation is the process of getting the essence of the Matter. It’s a reflective process, often looking back at all the previous processes for themes and patterns, and putting it all together into a coherent picture. Look back. See where you’ve been. See how far you’ve come. Where does that road point? 

Process: Coagulation

Metal: Gold

Planet: Sol

Chakra: Crown

Symbol: ☉

Coagulation is sometimes called Crystallization. This is the manifestation of the entire process. You are complete. You are whole. Your Matter has been reintegrated into you, and you are now stronger for it. You know what to do. You know how to do it, or at least how to get started. You’ve processed your trauma, and you can move on with your life.

Like, I get that you want to reblog a cool post about how awesome the goddess is, but maybe rethink sharing it if it’s got some sort of crap about how “males just don’t understand our connection to the goddess! Don’t let men scare you out of celebrating your feminine power!”

They call others “Genderists”

They usually use the phrases “trans activist”, “trans activism” and talk about how horrible they are

They call themselves “gender critical”

Talking about how men are always violent and women are always Pure

They say females instead of women

Look at the usernames for phrases like “rad” “terf” and usually references to genitalia

When you reblog (if not straight up post) terf shit here I can assure you Artemis, or Aphrodite, or whoever, is not proud of you.

I, as a trans boy, along with my trans sisters and nb siblings, belong here just as much as cis women. Period.

We have terfs who admit that ace discourse was their first step towards radfem ideas. We’ve had multiple break downs of how terfs and radfems try to radialize other people by using ace/bi/pan/nb/queer/etc. discourse. We’ve had multiple break downs of how popular exclusionist arguments use the same faulty logic and arguments that radfems use.

I’m not Wiccan, but I’m a hobbyist folklorist and really into Appalachian folk magic and herbal medicine! That said, it seems like you’re asking if there is any concrete, peer reviewed evidence that herbs have magical or spiritual properties to them, and the answer is no.

We can’t prove with an experiment and a control group that which can only be observed spiritually and magically.

Another great example is basically everything that hurts vampires. Garlic? Powerful antibiotic. Silver (used in mirror backs)? Powerful antibiotic. Sunlight? UV radiation and no water is hell on most tiny life. Holy water? Water you're not allowed to shit in, you fucking animals.

Actually, a LOT of aromatic herbs are aromatic because they're surrounding themselves in some kind of antifungal/antibacterial/pesticide. A lot of those fungi/bacteria/pests will just as soon fuck up our food as it will an undefended flower.

What white people hear: never use sage ever, don’t ever buy it, don’t own it, don’t even look at it.

Look, y’all. There’s a couple of facets to my talk today.

1) Yes! You can buy sage! You really, truly can! Buy it from either native sellers (go to a powwow! Eat our food, buy our stuff, watch some dancing!) Or buy it from a seller who sources the sage from native people. Pick one. And no, buying it from 5 Below doesn’t count.

2) you CANNOT smudge. This isn’t just you “shouldn’t”— this is a YOU ARE INCAPABLE OF SMUDGING. Waving a sage stick around your doorways IS NOT SMUDGING. It is smoke clensing. Smudging, depending on the tradition and tribe, could easily have dancing and drums involved. You, as a white person, do not have the cultural BACKGROUND to even know how it works. At all. Period.

3) please, for FUCKS SAKE, stop making posts here on tumblr where you tell other white people about cultural appropriation and what they can and cannot do. Please stop, your license has been revoked because none of you bother to get the facts right. We native people are FULLY CAPABLE OF DOING IT OURSELVES. Consider instead: a) reblogging our posts where we talk about it! We’re here! We have made posts!! b) Making a post that states what we said and then LINKS BACK TO US. Screenshot with a link if you must. Stop centering your own voices in these conversations. You are already centered in everything, stop centering yourselves in a native space.

I’m tired of this nonsense, y’all.

two things i had to read with my own two eyeballs today

Most house cleansing are pretty chill and polite. You need something with much more malicious intent than burning some herbs and sprinkling saltwater to get anybodies panties in a twist. (I’ve had to do more and, believe me, you’ll know the difference. It’s not pretty.)

If it worked for grandma, and it worked for you, that’s probably because you were raised with grandmas symbols. If it worked for the doctor in some Native American tribe, and it’s not working for you, it’s probably because you don’t know WHY any of it’s there, and the symbols are meaningless to you. You don’t know the stories or have the memories or traditions that the magic draws from, you’re just some asshole burning random leaves and annoying your neighbors.

AlL tHaT iS Is i aM????

It’s like someone dropped the three books in the occult section with the coolest covers into a blender with some Beatles cover albums and a TED talk on string theory, and slathered the results on a keyboard. It’s not even a word salad, it’s a word smoothie.

I do not care if you are cleansing the space. Either put the fire out entirely or use something else- like sound or motion.

I do not care if you are making an offering to the land spirits. Use another offering such as water, song, or wildlife-safe foods. 

If I see unattended smoke, I will tell you to put it out. 

This is why you don’t just... leave it. You shouldn’t be able to just leave it. If you can just walk out of a room with a candle burning or whatever, you should not be using fire in ritual because you can’t treat fire with respect, and it’s obviously not a useful symbol for you.