The Seven Stages of Alchemy

Book One, Being of Truth

1

Calcination

“There’s a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in”

Leonard Cohen

2

Dissolution

“You are a soul with a body, not a body with a soul.” 

3

Separation

“Healing is the process of releasing and correcting disharmonic energy.” 

4

Conjunction

“When I let go of what I am, I become what I may be.”

Lao Tzu

Alchemy of Becoming

5

Fermentation

“Mindful living is the choice to harmonize life and self in authenticity.”

6

Distillation

“From seeing is believing to believing is seeing.”

7

Coagulation

“Be the change you want to see in the world.”

The Seven Stages of Alchemy

Book One, Being of Truth

1

Calcination

“There’s a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in”

Leonard Cohen

Calcination, Book One

The Alchemic Foundation

Calcination is the willingness to break ourselves down, to see the cracks for what they are and to be willing to let the light in. Calcination is the very start of your journey. For whatever reason (trauma, emptiness, yearning, longing) you have pressed that ‘pause button’ and in doing so, there is a shift within you. You will come to appreciate that most of the great learnings in this journey come from the pauses we allow. They are almost always deeply reflective and somehow stirring. We spend so much time masking who we are, being what we are expected to be by convention, societal norms, by so-called standards of ‘normal’ and successful’, that we are a stranger to ourselves.

Purpose of Stage

Calcination is about breaking down; giving yourself permission to break down your façade with the courage to do some self-examination. Don’t think that others will give you permission to do this. Don’t think that others should grant you the permission to do this. This journey is about self-empowerment. It must start with you. There is no blaming the world, there are no valid excuses. As hard as this is, you will come to appreciate that accountability for who you are and what you are is yours alone. That is the key to self-empowerment. You are only as empowered as your willingness to hold yourself accountable for the choices you make.

The trick here is to be non-judgmental about what comes up in these pauses. Simply be curious. Let things bubble up to the surface. Later parts of your journey will deal with what surfaces. But for now, simply be open, accepting that Calcination is revealing the opportunity for healing and the promise of a new relationship with yourself. Like any new habit, you will come to appreciate these pauses to uncover your unique inner landscape. You will in fact come to crave them as giving your day a different quality. So simply try to be aware of that element of quality. See if you can find a pattern in the days you honour that pause as investment in yourself compared to the days you do not. The habit is reinforced through awareness.

The Experience

Now this can feel uncomfortable and unfamiliar. The busyness of life offers many distractions and justifications from honouring these pauses. The problem is the pause often raises uncomfortable questions we would rather not face. And the truth is that we have been subtly discouraged from ‘daydreaming’ or meditating if it interferes with the ‘doing’ in life. Ironically it is the ‘pauses’ that are considered indulgent and a distraction from getting on with the all-important ‘doing’ of things in life. How we have this all backwards!

The word ‘indulgent’ is rather significant. The work of this journey requires you to throw out any notion that your journey is somehow an indulgence. Preparing for this journey requires that you carve out time for yourself to expand that pause. Essentially you are introducing a new habit or pattern into your life which requires focused and quiet time. It is not ‘reward’ time after all of the ‘doing’ in your day has been accomplished but rather time that is front-end loaded with the freshness of the day before you. You simply cannot show up for yourself exhausted or depleted. You must remind yourself that this precious time, no matter how short, is the most important ‘time-out’ in your day. This is the most important investment you will make.

You are this investment. Experience what it feels like to be that most precious of resources. You are untapped pure potential. You are working to create changes to your wellbeing and to your life that emanate from within. The mistake we make is to think that if we make investments in our external lives, (that new something or someone) that these new investments or acquisitions will produce the right kind of changes within us. And they may for a time, but the ‘fix’ is unfortunately temporary. The only real and lasting change to what we experience in life comes from changes to our ‘inner landscape’. The changes to our ‘outer landscape’ then and only then, begin to follow suit. The order is important. We must be the change within that becomes the catalyst for what we want to experience on the outside, meaning changes in our relationships, circumstances, and outcomes in life. If life is not working for you, or if life is not everything you think it could be or should be, go within to address this.

2

Dissolution

“You are a soul with a body, not a body with a soul.” 

Dissolution, Book One

The Alchemic Foundation

In alchemic terms the Dissolution stage involves the suspension of elements in liquid to render them malleable, as a precursor to change. In your spiritual journey you have to park your skepticism to become less rigid and open to unseen forces that cannot be perceived by our five senses. For some it means taking a leap of faith. The magic of this journey is in your connection to unseen energies both in the form of information and ‘beings’ of the energy realm that will guide your way forward. Now this a stretch for most people starting out and this is where Dissolution comes in. It requires an openness, a willingness to suspend our rigid beliefs in favour of a ‘what if’ scenario of possibilities.

Purpose of Stage

You have to experience this unseen realm of energy to come to believe in its hidden powers. The fact is that there is so much more ‘out there’ than what we can sense with our five senses. To do so, you are invited, indeed urged, to suspend your disbelief that there exists a whole vast realm beyond what we can see, smell, feel, taste, and hear. What we believe is locked-in solid by our third dimensional experience. We navigate life through our interpretation of the ‘reality’ of what we see, hear, smell, taste, feel. However, this offering is to open yourself up to a whole world beyond our physical sensory field. This is the essence of your journey.

Our five senses act as filters. They filter out everything outside of a narrow range of frequencies. In the scheme of things, our sensory range is quite limited. We know this. This is science. There are colours some animals can see like ultra-violet light that we cannot. X-rays and other forms of imaging expand our range through the use of technology. There is a sound range dogs can hear that we cannot. Bats and dolphins navigate with something called echolocation which is a way to detect motion and objects through sound. While this list of examples could go on and on, the point is that there is proof that we operate within a narrow band of frequencies that are part of a much larger spectrum. Indeed some physicists contend that the spectrum is infinite.

The other aspect of our sensory filters is that they create the illusion that everything is separate, in other words, that there are boundaries between us and between us and plants, animals and rocks, earth, water and air. We also live with the illusion that matter, like the chair you may be sitting on, is solid. The very opposite is true. Part 6 of Book 1 or Level 1: Being of Truth, provides a brief synopsis of the science behind the fact that we are all connected through a vibratory field of energy. Everything though appearing separate, solid or stationary, when viewed at the sub atomical level (think pixelated) is actually always in motion and interconnected through a field of energy. We live in a vibrant, interconnected world.

If this isn’t enough, we have to wrap our minds around the fact that stuff like emotions, feelings and information are all forms of energy. Space is not empty as once thought but an incompressible vast field of information in the form of energy. We have to understand that space is not something up there or out there but within us. That energy and information travels right through us informing and animating our bodies.

Some people are born with extra-sensory powers, and they can readily access aspects of this unseen energy realm. For most of us though, these powers lie latent within us. We all have them but like an unused muscle, they are dormant and even if they are experienced from time to time, we tend to dismiss them as some strange, momentary blip that will pass. We do not heed the potential that they offer to empower us with their ‘super-powers’.

The methodology in Book 1 is an invitation to connect to these powers. The way to connect to them is through what is referred to as our ‘inner landscape’. We go within to discover, explore, and eventually master this powerful source of knowledge that is beyond the known. And it is within this inner landscape that you connect to your higher guidance.

The Experience

Now connecting to your higher guidance can seem like a strange experience. When we are open to this possibility, when we are prepared to take that leap of faith, we can actually connect quite easily. Indeed we are often shocked to discover that this relationship was there all along. Connecting to your higher guidance is a deeply personal experience and like any new relationship, you are getting acquainted. This relationship can be experienced as a connection to higher guidance in the form of the angelic realm, intergalactic beings, your soul self, or with Source or God.

The energies that lie unseen are referred to as the field of ‘subtle energies’ and you use your body as a kind of pendulum to explore asking and receiving answers from this realm. It is truly fascinating. There are other techniques to connect and a great resource in this regard is a book entitled “The Alchemy of Becoming: Muscle Testing for Self-Discovery by Tiffany Garvin.

The magic potion of this alchemic journey is your connection to this guidance. It is customized to what you need. No two people will have the same experience though you will all share in the miracles of transformation. You are on a journey to raise your level of consciousness and consciousness is the master key to unlocking your potential to become all that you are meant to be in body, mind and soul.

3

Separation

“Healing is the process of releasing and correcting disharmonic energy.” 

Separation, Book One

The Alchemic Foundation

The preceding Dissolution stage provided you with the know-how and practice of connecting to your higher guidance. This relationship is essential to the healing work of this stage. Indeed, your trust and belief in this relationship are deepened with the personalized guidance that you receive. This is the alchemic stage of separating and isolating base elements to purify each one of them.

You now understand that the quest to raise your level of consciousness is intrinsically linked to the vibrational signature you hold. The easiest way to raise your vibrational signature is to identify and remove low frequency emotions. You literally are making room for higher frequency emotions to animate you and reset your vibrational signature.

Purpose of Stage

Low frequency emotions become trapped or become blockages within our physical bodies and as such they compromise our health. They in fact cause a kind of distortion and even as our bodies regenerate, they replicate the original distortion. All disease is a state of ‘dis-ease’ or disharmony of the energies in the organs affected. Releasing trapped emotions and clearing energy blocks restores harmony to the functioning of our body.

There is a particular order in which these trapped emotions are to be released or cleared, in a pattern that is unique to you. Your higher guidance knows this pattern. Furthermore, trapped emotions are to be released one at a time and each one is associated with a particular event or circumstance. This is akin to the children’s game of pick-up sticks. Picture the low frequency emotions as in a unique scattered pattern as you let go of your bundle of sticks. Each stick represents an event in your current or past life that has scarred you. Now higher guidance will bring into your awareness what the top uppermost stick in that pile represents as an event which gave rise to a trapped emotion. You release or clear that particular emotion and that stick is removed to reveal the next one now available for release or clearing without disturbing the pile. And so you continue until all the sticks are dealt with.

Book 1 presents these low frequency emotions as a graphic code. Your thinking mind is bypassed using the specified encoded grid tables so that your mind cannot interfere with what is brought to you by your higher guidance. It is an ingenious method so that you cannot possibly think your way through this process.

All of this sets the stage for an even deeper process of deprogramming and reprogramming. This work presents in layers and calls upon you to go deeper into the reveal of your programming. This is a layer of subconscious behaviours underpinned by a set of beliefs you don’t even realize you subscribe to. This is all brought from the deep to the surface through this magical guidance. There will be many ‘aha’ moments as what is revealed resonates deep within your knowing.

You will undoubtedly be surprised at just how many events in your current incarnation have resulted in your having trapped low frequency emotions and stuck energy blocks. You will be amazed at how many beliefs underpin misguided behaviours. There is a great deal to unpack.

You will be asked to record the emotions and the order in which they are brought into your awareness. Do so. In time you will detect certain patterns to the events and emotions. The same emotion can be revealed to you in different settings or circumstances in your life. This often happens as the distortion of trapped emotions calls forth circumstances in which that same emotion is likely to be experienced in a repeated pattern. Look for these patterns as they have likely defined much of your life. You can only break free of a pattern with the awareness of its existence.

The Experience

This all seems like serious business to entrust to a new relationship with your higher guidance. There are two important things to remember. You will be concerned that you don’t always get it right. Perhaps you have got the wrong emotions or associating it with the wrong event. Perhaps you feel your connection to higher guidance is shaky. Higher guidance assures all of us that they do what your car’s GPS does. It recalibrates even if you do not have it quite right. The second thing to know is that you are never given anything that you cannot handle. This is really important. Most of us have had traumatic experiences that we do not want to relive lest they layer on more trauma on top of the original one. This will not happen. Yes, it may bring back memories, even tears, but trust that higher guidance is assuring you that you are ready for this work. You are never given anything you are not prepared to handle.

This stage is long and intense, it can last many months. Be patient. In the Separation stage you really discover yourself in a way you have never done so before. You discover what has held you back, what emotional issues and traumas underlie your physical and mental challenges, what behavioural patterns sabotage your relationships, career, and yourself from achieving your full potential. This is a lot. There is no room for denial, bitterness or regret. Acceptance and compassion for yourself and all others is a must. Above all you trust in your higher guidance which only has your best interest at heart. And in the trust of where your higher guidance takes you, there is healing and that is the magical part.

You may also become aware that you are slowly separating from habits, or people or events that no longer serve you. This is part of the shifting taking place. You find yourself gravitating to different people or experiences. You may find yourself eating more consciously. You may find yourself somehow lighter and brighter. All of this may seem strange even uncomfortable for you and indeed for others witnessing the changes within you. This process is revealing a different truth of who you are liberated from the low frequencies which have held you back. Aspects of your life are bound to change as they mirror the changes within you. There is more work to do on this in later stages of this alchemic journey but for now simply be an observer of your shifting interests. Be curious and explore this new liberated self. Get reacquainted.

4

Conjunction

“When I let go of what I am, I become what I may be.”

Lao Tzu

Conjunction, Book One

The Alchemic Foundation

Conjunction in alchemic terms is to join together. In the English language, words that join phrases such as ‘and’ or ‘because’ are said to be conjunctions. After all the activity in the preceding Separation stage of cleansing and purifying, you need time to reorder and “come together”. Conjunction is at the heart of your transformation. All that has taken place in the preceding stages was preparation and all that is to follow this stage is refinement and mastery. So the extent of your transformation is set at this very important stage.

Purpose of Stage

 Separation brings many things into your awareness and it is in that awareness and in the affirmation of clearing and releasing that the frequencies within you are altered. From a frequency point of view, you no longer have the same frequency composition and, by virtue of that, you no longer have the same vibrational set point. You come into the Conjunction stage a jumble of altered frequencies and they need time to integrate and harmonize as one. Your vibrational signature is the harmonization of your frequencies.

This is a deceptively quiet stage. It is akin to the cocoon stage of the butterfly. From the outside the cocoon appears dormant and even lifeless, but that belies the incredible transmutation taking place within as the former caterpillar dissolves into a liquid and is reordering itself to become what it is meant to be as butterfly.

Forgiveness is one of the skills which dictates the quality of your transformation. Forgiveness is not something you focus on in the Separation stage. The reason for this is that you cannot whole-heartedly forgive at the same level of consciousness that gave rise to the act requiring forgiveness of either yourself or of others. Forgiveness is only possible from the perspective of higher consciousness looking down and reflecting back at what transpired with a new elevated acceptance, understanding and compassion. You are at that higher consciousness level in Conjunction.

There is no blaming, victimizing, or justifying actions in forgiveness. Forgiveness is the acknowledgement that there is growth and learning to be gained no matter how egregious the act. There is great freedom in forgiveness, particularly of self. You learn to surrender, then there is a graceful acceptance and finally a gratefulness ensues in this magical process. When every act of forgiveness is seen as having gifted you with an opportunity to grow, your work is complete. Forgiveness ensures the quality of your transformation.

The Experience

This stage is often thought of as the most difficult. It requires patience and understanding. It is deep quiet, reflective work. Things bubble up from the Separation work and you can feel a roller-coaster of emotions. The new frequencies are finding their way to integrate. In many respects this stage is a mini Calcination stage as it echoes a breaking down within you to allow the re-adjustment of the new frequencies within you. This is reordering not as you once were, but that of which you are becoming. This can be exhilarating and uncomfortable from one moment to the next. You are not going crazy, you are reordering.

You will want to get through this stage quickly to ‘get on’ with your journey. This will not serve you. Your higher guidance will let you know when you are ready for the next phase. Give this stage all the time it requires. Book 1 provides three skills for you to work on during this quiet time. Each of them is an aspect of healing and each of them will greatly dictate the quality of your transformation. Transformation is a given, but the quality of your transformation is not predetermined.

Alchemy of Becoming

5

Fermentation

“Mindful living is the choice to harmonize life and self in authenticity.”

Fermentation, Book One

The Alchemic Foundation

The Fermentation Stage in ancient alchemy is the process of elements interacting with and adjusting to each other and their environment. In Book 1 you and your life are these elements, where this interaction seeks harmony to find resonance between the altered you and your everyday life. One cannot be in separation from the other. You come to this stage in an altered state of vibration. You have done the work to reassemble the purified frequencies into a new reordered self, but life may be playing out at your former frequency.

Purpose of this Stage

After all the hard work accomplished in the Separation and Conjunction stages, you begin to feel more settled and complacency can set in. In your enthusiasm to get on with life, there is a tendency to forget that there is more work to do. The Fermentation stage is about both refinement and ‘stickiness’.  Your new truth, authenticity and sovereignty are what you bring to this stage. However, this stage will put all of that to the test. Think of it as the butterfly emerging from the cocoon about to test its new-found wings. The butterfly has only ever known life as the ground-dwelling caterpillar. But its environment has now changed. It cannot be butterfly and continue to have ground-dwelling habits.

Life is what will test you. You are reordered but your life has not yet been reordered. Life is an act of your creation reflecting every choice you have made. So here you are with one foot in the higher vibration of this new you, and one foot in the lower vibration of life as it was created by your former self. This is a recipe for imbalance and teetering between worlds.

The refinement process is to calibrate your frequencies with changes you now need to make to your life. Your choices must be different to create a higher resonant field to match your elevated vibrational signature. When we fail to do so, we feel the dissonance. And you will now feel this dissonance in a palpable way. Book 1 introduces practical ways to examine every aspect of your life to ascertain where there is dissonance and where alignment is needed. Either you make the necessary changes to your life, or you revert to a lower vibrational level.

The Experience

Now what may be called for is refinement and not necessarily whole scale changes to your life. As the saying goes ‘You don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater’. There is a lot of good in your life worth keeping. Whatever the nature of the changes or refinements, they all start from within. It is a mistake to think that externally driven changes will produce the vibrational alignment you are seeking at this stage. They are to emanate from the heart outwards. This will ensure that you are letting go only that which no longer serves you and refining what needs to be kept.

These changes whether small or large can be painful and distressful to you and others. We are programmed to seek stability through the familiar. Others in your life may be very confused with the changes they see in you. They may feel like you are abandoning them at some level and any sorrow or guilt that ensues will hold you back. This is where you practice the exercise of your authenticity with heart-centered compassion. It is not about judgment or exclusion. Rather there is the need for transparency and understanding of where you are headed. It is not permission you are seeking from others but their willingness to honour your path and for you to honour theirs.

If you do not have a practice of meditation, reflection, energy healing or yoga, this is an ideal time to incorporate such practices into your life. Such practices all relate the space of mindfulness as necessary to this stage.

6

Distillation

“From seeing is believing to believing is seeing.”

Distillation, Book One

The Alchemic Foundation

You enter into this stage to master all that you have learned and practiced. Distillation is the final purification process to reveal your true essence. The essence of who you are is honed through life’s perpetual challenges. Life is not perfect, but it is meant to perfect you. This means that you are meant to grow through life’s challenges and the choices you make. You have done considerable work to reorder yourself and to upgrade your life. However, the dance between you and your life is a perpetual opportunity to refine yourself through ever-deepening awareness and introspection that are the hallmarks of mastery. 

Purpose of this Stage

In “The Alchemy of Becoming” methodology, Distillation is the mastery stage. In the preceding Fermentation stage, your upgraded self is put to the test of life’s challenges. In the Distillation stage, you invoke the intelligence of the third eye to challenge your belief systems enabling you to see beyond your current reality. You acquire the wisdom and insights to observe yourself from a perspective of higher consciousness. Higher consciousness will bring light and empowerment to a life happening from your mindful choices.

Responsibility and accountability for your choices is a key understanding you are introduced to. The choices you exercise, the actions and words you choose create the present moment and that present moment determines the trajectory for all the moments that follow. You are contributing to the unfolding of universal consciousness with every thought, emotion, and manifestation. You are a conscious co-creator of the universe. There are skills to acquire as mastery to this incredible life-force that you are. Book 1 provides foundational skills on how to ‘be’ and manifest from a state of higher consciousness through the powers of observation, mindfulness, and through challenging your underlying belief structures.

The Experience

Distillation changes the way you perceive and respond to your life experiences. Life is not happening to you but happening from within you. When you take responsibility for your choices, when you shift from reacting to what is happening to responding from a place of truth and sovereignty, you do so with mindfulness. The need for drama and trauma so often part of the collective experience, no longer fuels you. Rather, you find yourself gravitating to people and situations that feed your soul. Your wants and desires once a reflection of the societal expectations of others, better align with your inner sense of health and well-being. It does not happen all at once, but you will come to identify with the greater purpose of ‘Being’ and ‘becoming’ rather than what you ‘do’ in life. There are those in your life that will honour the shifts within you while others will feel increasingly uncomfortable. We are all mirrors to each other and moving forward with understanding and compassion is part of your growth.

7

Coagulation

“Be the change you want to see in the world.”

Coagulation, Book One

The Alchemic Foundation

This is the final stage of your alchemic journey at this level. This is the stage where everything you learn, every purification you undergo, every invitation to shift into higher frequency, integrates. This is the stage of embodiment, of bringing into body all that you have become through the work of this methodology. This is the embodiment of your new-found sovereignty and authenticity. You become one with the realignment of your expression of who you are as sovereign and authentic. It is not a final state but one that continuously evolves to fully live in this empowered state. You are ‘en-light-ened’ as in welcoming greater light, greater truth as embodied through your Being.

Purpose of this Stage

It is not sufficient to have undergone the work of the preceding six stages and not do the final and critical work to fully embody the process. This journey is designed to empower oneself through the learning, understanding and practices offered through this methodology. However, this final stage is to bring all that you have gifted to yourself through your work, into a unified entity of body, mind, and soul. The learning, understanding and practices you have undergone assimilate. They become internalized, seamless, and indistinguishable from who you are and by extension, through how life is an extension of yourself. Indeed, this is no longer life happening to you but life now emanating from within you as the higher frequency you now hold. The goal here is to embody higher frequency or higher consciousness. Embodiment is the completion of the transformation from ordinary to extraordinary. You, as becoming extraordinary in higher consciousness.

The process of embodiment takes intention, perseverance, and skill. The work at this stage, as provided in Book 1, is to bring awareness to the power of expression through your choice of words. Words transmute thoughts and learning into form. You empower thoughts through giving them words. Actions are based on the activation of words, whether directly from thoughts or through the spoken or written form of the words themselves. Words have universality through agreement to their meaning, but your choice of words is unique to you. You project a vibrational signature and a vibrational tone, both of which are unique to you. So how you express is an indication of the degree to which your level of consciousness is fully embodied as you.

Furthermore, there is a responsibility inherent in the choice of words. Words both inform and transform the world around you. Our presence in this physical 3-dimensional world anchors us in a persistent perception of separation. We think we can limit the impact of our thoughts to matter only to self, or that the impact of words can be confined to that or whom they are directed. Such is not the case in the reality of Oneness of collective consciousness.

The Experience

Sovereignty and authenticity are foundational to the progression to higher states of consciousness. You live your truth as sovereign and authentic. It is not someone else’s idea of truth or your worth but your ownership and responsibility to that essence of who you are. There are no excuses, nor blame, nor victim mentality. This is only the harmonious alignment between your inner and outer landscapes.

It is not easy to maintain one’s sense of authenticity in a world that strives for conformity and that is highly judgmental, drawn to drama and to a large extent controlled through fear. It is the path less travelled. Nonetheless, the paradox is that we are to honour the sacredness of inclusiveness. Our quest to embody higher consciousness must never be mistaken for being above anyone nor separate from the collective. We all are here by choice and there are lessons to be learned by each of us in honouring the level of consciousness we hold individually and as a collective. As we live our truth, we give permission for others to explore their own truths. As we express in authenticity, we give the freedom to others to live in theirs.