Alchemist’s Lexicon

The Alchemist’s Lexicon: A Guide to the Architecture of the Soul

This glossary defines the core concepts within the 6-Stage Alchemical Model. Use these reference points as you navigate the Research Archive and the Vision Archive.

At a Glance: The 6-Stage Journey

Stage	Name	Key Theme	The ‘Human’ Experience
Stage 1	Nigredo	Confronting Shadow	Finding the first light within a daily life crisis.
Stage 2	Albedo	Purification	Achieving inner peace and authentic soul-clarity.
Stage 3	Citrinitas	Solar Awakening	Surrendering the ego to a higher spiritual power.
Stage 4	Rubedo	Landing/Totality	Fully embodying wisdom into the physical self.
Stage 5	Aurarius	Universal Flow	Moving from ‘I am doing’ to ‘Life is doing through me.’
Stage 6	True Stone	Ultimate Reality	Living as the whole; where the map is surrendered.

Section: The Methodology

These are the tools used to observe the work.

Lived Vision Recreation (LVR): Unlike subjective ‘art’, an [LVR] serves as an objective visual record—or raw data from the inner laboratory—a depiction of the soul’s internal architecture as it truly appeared.
Ontological Blueprint: The intrinsic underlying ‘skeleton’ of Reality that can be known directly as the deepest part of our true being when we free ourselves from the individual psyche and our personal filters, emotions, biases, and ego-identifications.

Phase I: The Inward Stone (Stages 1–4)

The path of individual healing and psychological integration.

Stage 1 | Nigredo (The Blackening): The first stage of the work, often sparked by a crisis in our daily lives. It involves confronting the Shadow and dismantling old ego structures to allow the first seeds of genuine healing to take root.

Stage 2 | Albedo (The Whitening): A stage of purification and psychological clarity. Here, the soul is washed of historical ‘stains’, leading to self-acceptance and a new, authentic way of walking through the world.

Stage 3 | Citrinitas (The Yellowing): The ‘Solar Dawn’ or Crown Awakening. This represents the peak of individual spiritual realisation, where the ego surrenders to a Higher Power and the ‘Royal Marriage’ (Coniunctio) of opposites occurs.

Stage 4 | Rubedo (The Reddening): The maturation of the Inward Stone. It is the stage of ‘Landing’, where spiritual wisdom is fully embodied into the physical self, achieving a psychological totality strong enough for the demands of the mundane world.

Recursive Note: In Phase II (The Outward Stone), the Albedo recurs as a universal purification, where individual perspective dissolves into the collective sight of the Anima Mundi (see Station 5).

The Transition: Sublimatio (The Second Ascent): A refined alchemical process that bridges Phase I and Phase II. While the first ascent involves rising consciousness above the personal shadow, this ‘Second Ascent’ involves the sublimation of the integrated ego itself. It is the journey beyond the Rubedo to even higher subtle forms of consciousness where we reach our Essential nature.

Phase II: The Outward & True Stone (Stages 5–6)

The dissolution of personhood and the grounding of the Universal.

The Void-Point: The silent source of the Absolute, where the individual self dissolves and births the universal consciousness of the Unus Mundus (One World).

Unus Mundus (One World): Derived from the research of C.G. Jung and physicist Wolfgang Pauli, this represents the state where the boundary between the internal mind and the external world dissolves. This is the lived experience of meaningful coincidence (synchronicity), where the ‘me’ and the ‘not-me’ function as a single, coherent whole.

Anima Mundi (Soul of the World): The living, spiritual essence connecting all things. In the Outward Stone, the seeker no longer experiences the soul as ‘internal’, but as the very fabric of the external world.

Stage 5 | Aurarius (The Outward Stone): The transition where individual gold becomes aware of its universal interconnectedness. The seeker dissolves into the universal, navigating a process where the unseen begins its tangible manifestation in the world around us.

Impersonal Logos: The primary, structural power of the universe—the shift from ‘I am doing’ to ‘Life is doing through me’. Unlike the personal ego, the Logos is the unconditioned source through which Reality flows.

Recursive Note (The Moon Threshold): Entrance into the Logos at Station 8 requires first passing the Moon Threshold (Station 7). This is the visionary boundary where the archetypal psychology of the 20th century (Jung) salutes the passage of the seeker into the raw, structural intelligence of universal functioning. (See The Moon Greeting in the Vision Archive).

The Great Descent: The reverse movement of the alchemical path. It is the intentional return of universal frequency into the density of physical matter—the process of grounding the infinite within the finite.

Multiplicatio (The Multiplication): The alchemical law encountered at the start of the Outward Stone. Here, the concentrated power of the Inward Stone begins to radiate and ‘multiply’ its own innate power of divine goodness and truth into the world.

Viriditas (The Greening Power): A term famously used by Hildegard of Bingen, representing the divine, fertile force that reclaims the world. As a vital pillar of the 6-Stage Model, Viriditas serves as the ‘signature’ of the Absolute as it descends into physical matter. It brings spiritual life to the ‘Brown Earth’ of Stage 6, transforming the dry structures of the ego into a fragrant, fertile presence within the heart of the city.

Fixatio (The Somatic Landing): The final ‘fixing’ of the volatile spirit into a stable, biological form. It is where the Great Work meets the blood and bone, making spiritual realisation an unshakeable fact of the physical existence.

The No-Trace State: The ultimate maturity of integration where the extraordinary becomes the ordinary; the divine gold is hidden perfectly within the leaden grey of the city. The ego is so thoroughly aligned with the Impersonal Logos that there is no awareness of even being enlightened; existence simply flows as the unconditioned expression of Reality.

Stage 6 | The True Stone: The ultimate maturity of the Great Work. All maps and models are surrendered as existence is lived as the infinite, unconditioned whole—the divine gold finally fixed into the brown earth of daily life.