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Topsy-turvy stairs

Shooting date: Late May 2026

"It must be known that there are four principal regimens of our stone, namely to dissolve, wash, conjoin and fix, such as you see in the second scheme. To dissolve is to divide bodies, and to make matter.

To wash is to inhumate, to distill, to ascend and descend.

To conjoin is to impregnate, to whiten and to redden.

To fix, however, is to ferment and to betroth.

Solution converts the stone into its first matter, that is, its water, washing into air, conjunction into fire, fixation into spiritual and tincturing earth.

Whence the Philosopher: When you have water from air, and air from fire, and fire from earth: then you will have the full art: Because when the four elements are then well and perfectly prepared, and all these the master of the work and fire does well in one vessel alone, in four grades, namely of the four colors of conversion."

— Philosophia Reformata, c. 1622 by Johannes Daniel Mylius

Nicola Samorì, “A.F.P.”

Marvin Dorwart Cone (1891–1965), “Habitation”