Alchemical Consciousness States and the Solve et Coagula Process

With this support, generally the faculty of waking is inhibited, self-consciousness becomes thin and we dream. Indeed "the fluidic man has made a kind of cementing, of petrification with the anatomical body. The senses are turned toward the material. Sight, touch, smell, hearing, taste are extended to feel well the things of this world. The state of waking on the material plane is total" T. Palamidessi. To enter this state they say one must proceed calmly, starting from absolute bodily immobility, avoiding those interior and exterior "viper strikes" that would have made the experimenter immediately fall back into an ordinary bodily state of waking, catching them first and blocking them, adapting to them in such a way as to always maintain even a minimal state of self-presence to then expand and fix after detachment. Here then is another application of the motto "Solve et Coagula": to dissolve consciousness, the bonds that it has with the physical body, so as to allow it to slip into another interior state –such as the dream state– in which the body does not intervene and here, therefore having escaped the hegemony of the physical body, to coagulate consciousness itself by resuming waking consciousness but this time without the hindrance of the physical body. In this image taken from the Leiden papyrus, we can see a representation of this procedure in which the alchemist, putting the body to sleep as if in a coffin, but keeping himself with consciousness wide awake, opens the subtle and interior world and his soul can ascend to heaven. This new state of consciousness, which –as we said– is sometimes called the state of doubling since consciousness finds itself as if separated from the body, is treated in depth in the 6th Notebook of Archeosophia in which the techniques necessary to achieve such a state are also provided. Precisely for its analogy with the process of death, this operation has been called by alchemists not only separation, doubling, dissolution, first extraction of mercury from its mine, etc... but also mortification and has sometimes been represented with the black color: "the black and dark color expresses the state of the body when its soul has been removed, in place of this the white smoke must burst forth (this new state of fluidic consciousness) which multiplies its waters" Testament of Morienus. The final term of this phrase, that is "multiplies its waters", refers to the multiplication of dream states and visions that are no longer mitigated by the presence of the body, so the alchemist in this state can be easily deceived by dream images produced by himself, as often happens to us in the dream state. Therefore the alchemist to overcome these illusions must do exactly what he did with the physical body: that is, put to rest, calm and soothe and, in a certain way, detach himself from his emotions and from his own thoughts, always remaining awake, but without them. In doing so he establishes dominion over what are called elements in man: that is, earth in reference to the physical body, water in reference to emotions, air in reference to thoughts. When alchemists speak of conquering the elements and establishing dominion over them, as their first meaning they refer to this procedure and to dominion over the elements in man before those outside of him not yet individuated. The alchemist must "do training to withdraw the senses from the physical world and open them to the etheric world, then to the astral, after to the mental and finally to the pure spiritual" T. Palamidessi, 6th Notebook of Archeosophia. BREAKING OF GOLD: At this point the Alchemist has reached a certain degree of dissolution, he now by means of fire must bring the putrefaction to completion with a series of operations that are often symbolized by the destruction of gold. It is a long and difficult thing so much that Alchemists often say that "it is more difficult to destroy Gold than to make it". The purpose of breaking the gold is the total dematerialization of the Ego, which is a very difficult operation. It consists in evoking a solvent of consciousness (hence the ravenous wolf -sometimes also indicated as the Green Lion) that is capable of totally dissolving the bonds with matter and the enslavement of the Ego to matter. This particular and definitive dissolution is fundamental to be able to reconstruct ex-novo a structure of consciousness in a Christic key and restore to metals their characteristic virtues. "Whoever does not know the destruction of metals (dissolving the knots of consciousness), necessarily does not know their construction according to nature" The Secret Book of Artephius. In this image the process is symbolized by a wolf (which suggests a voracious solvent) that eats a King, symbol of Gold, other times the same symbol is considered as one of the possible variants of the Green Lion that eats a sun or a red Lion, or of anything green (which would represent in this meaning the solvent) that devours or destroys anything red or gold. In the first key Basil Valentine specifies: "Throw to this Wolf the body of the King so that it may receive nourishment (dissolve the nucleus of consciousness by means of this powerful solvent). When it has devoured the King, make a great fire and throw the Wolf in it to consume it entirely and then the King will be liberated. When this is done three times (in relation to the three principal knots of consciousness Will Wisdom and Love), then the Lion will have triumphed over the Wolf and this one will find nothing more to eat in that one. So our body is good for the Work". PUTREFACTION AND CLOSURE IN THE PHILOSOPHICAL EGG: Here then to proceed in this process called putrefaction the alchemist must close himself in himself, separate himself from the world, withdraw far from all disturbing influences while this process has been triggered. "Putrefaction is so effective that it destroys the old nature and the old form of decomposing bodies, transmutes them into a new state of being to give them completely new fruit. Everything that lives..."