[E13] The 4 Stages of Alchemy: Understanding The Process of Your Transformation

In this episode:

• Learn the four classical stages of alchemy and why skipping stages disrupts transformation
• Why the "dark night" (nigredo) is essential for real change
• How to identify which stage you're in and avoid rushing the process
• Understanding the Philosopher's Stone as both tool and outcome

👠Snake/Shoe Episode Referenced in This Episode 

🔑Golden Nugget Episode Referenced in This Episode

IG Hippo Post Mentioned:

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The Aligned Alchemist's Transformation

The term "alchemist" in our context symbolizes transformation and working with unseen forces while being willingness to be seen for who we truly are. 

This podcast is dedicated to those who are open to unique perspectives, willing to question the status quo and are seeking to understand and embrace transformation in both their personal and professional lives. It's about unleashing your creative genius and finding success by being true to yourself.

Keywords (yah know ...how people find this show)

alchemy, alchemical transformation, nigredo, dark night of the soul, spiritual growth, Philosopher’s Stone, stages of alchemy, personal growth, spiritual transformation, self-discovery, alchemical process, inner transformation, transformation journey, alchemy and change, personal development, spiritual journey, alchemy wisdom

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Transcript

Hey everyone. Welcome back to the podcast. Today's episode, we're gonna talk about the four stages of Alchemy. It's a high level episode, a little bit theoretical, but it's something that nobody talks about, and since the name of the brand is the Aligned Alchemist, alchemy. It's a very trendy and cool word in the personal development space, but have you actually asked people I. What alchemy is, they probably have no idea what the actual terminology is and what the four foundational stages of alchemy are. I think these stages are really, really important to understand and they are important to see, so you can assess where you are on your journey.

If you are drawn to this podcast, if you're drawn to me. You are in a process of alchemy, whether or not you recognize it or not,

you are going through some kind of transformation, evolution, expansion, rebirth,

and so I'm gonna list out these four stages At a high level. I. When you understand what these four stages are, you can assess where you are in this process and you have a level of awareness. Alchemy is an ongoing process and we're always growing and evolving and changing, but there are times of building and then there are times of alchemy because one of the stages of alchemy is breaking down.

We can't always be breaking down if we wanna build. And that's especially true if you wanna build a business or anything that has long term benefits. There's a reason why in astrology, there's a polarity between the sign of Scorpio and the sign of Taurus. Taurus is associated with building step by step, bringing, bringing solid earth.

It's building something solid. It's planting those seeds in the spring, and Scorpio is associated with shedding. It's the snake, it's the death time, it's shedding. And Scorpio is the season that we're in right now, neurologically this year, and also collectively with all of the outer planet transits that are happening.

So it's a balance of the two, and that's what keeps us in check. That's what prevents us from being stagnant. But if you're leaning into any one of those energies, you're either being stagnant or you are evolving so much, you're kicking up the dust so much, you're never actually building anything. So the happy medium is this to be in between those two.

In between stagnation, evolution, and I, I mean real evolution, not like high. Level, personal development, garbage nonsense, where it's like surface level content that just makes you feel good. Real alchemy and real transformation is ugly, right? So there are four main stages to alchemy, and the first one is the blackening.

This is known as reto, and it's a compressing force that creates the darkness ready for transformation. It's often referred to as Dark Night of the Soul Crucible Energy. It's very, very necessary pressure, and it's an isolated process required for breaking down existing forms. It's compressed pressure and it serves as an agent that really forces you to confront what they call shadow material or aspects of your subconscious or things that you haven't.

Even been aware of coming to the surface so that you can deal with it. Things in your life that are not working, it's waking up and things having to change. It's those situations that cause you to assess why is this not working? It's that come to Jesus moment, whatever you wanna call it. That's the reto.

And this is a very, very necessary part of the process because it's the first part. So this whole notion of love and light, consciousness and love and light, spirituality and love and light, personal development leaves that out. And there's a very, very necessary ring of fire that is part of the alchemy.

It's part of that alchemical process. And anyone that's gone through deep shit in their life that's had to go through that, because you cannot have light without dark. There is a reason why we have a moon with multiple cycles and all the moon with the various stages is, is a reflection of the sun. It's various stages of darkness and various stages of lightness.

On my Instagram account, there is a picture of a hippopotamus. I was taking an art class during the pandemic and. So I put that photo up and what it is, is it's made with charcoal and eraser. So you made the drawing with the charcoal pencil, and then you smudge it, and then you use the eraser to create that contrast in the art so that you can see the actual shadows of the hippopotamus.

Without that contrast, there is no form. That's stage one. Stage two is the Alberto, it's the whitening. This is purification, this is clarity emerging. This is the dawn after the dark, and in India, well, I should say in Hindu ceremonies, which is the majority of India, people wear white at cremations, which are what funerals are.

And so this notion of purification of the soul before they start their next journey is a key part of the process. So the purification process is extremely important, and in modern society, this could be maybe you've had a period of depression, you ate a bunch of crappy food, you are stagnant, you let yourself go.

You are doing drugs, you are engaging in other kinds of toxic behaviors. You are numbing out on social media. And then all of a sudden you wake up and you're like, I'm gonna change my life. Maybe you go to the sauna, maybe you go to the gym, maybe you start doing yoga. Maybe you clean, change your diet, you throw stuff away.

You know that feeling that we get when we throw stuff away. It's literally spiritual clearing. You know, one of the other episodes I think was when I talked about shoes and snake skins, I said. I talked about shedding skin and throwing away those old clothes. That's part of spiritual hygiene, that's part of energetic hygiene.

It's getting rid of stuff. I love throwing stuff away. I love getting rid of stuff. So even organizing digital files, which I'm not the best at, or those tasks, it's all kinds. Of clutter because clutter is energy and stagnant energy. As you get through the darkness and you step into a place of purification in business and in life, that's what's known as clarity.

Clarity is when you can see, and then you can take action. From that place, you decide who you're gonna hire. You decide what offers you wanna do. You decide, okay, I'm gonna make the move. I'm gonna break up with this person. I'm gonna get a personal trainer. I'm gonna start working out, or whatever it is you do to change yourself outta that darkness.

And in business, this is really, really important. In any creative project, this is really important because in business we often get rushed in the process. There are four stages for a reason. We try to make them concurrent. And I was doing that a little bit. With this podcast unintentionally,

and I was putting too much pressure on myself to have it all figured out too early in the process. And then I took a step back and I said, what's going on here? And the reality is I had already started the podcast and there was fear about losing momentum. I've changed my tune on that because I'm just starting to see a little bit of clarity, but it's not time yet.

And that's where I use astrological timing a lot. Not just in my own chart, but in the macro collective of when it's time to be in crucible phase and when it's time to be an outward phase. And of course, my own intuition and life like that's always the first primary for you. But you'll notice there's often a period of retrograde.

And pop culture astrology makes retrogrades seem like this plague flipping deal, right? It's fucking good for Cosmo or whatever. People read. Now, like I said, I'm Gen X and my references might be old. Whatever people read now that draws clicks. Mercury retrograde and your ex is gonna call you and whatever.

It gets a click. Mercury, retrogrades and retrogrades in general are a time of slowing down. They're a time of reassessment and reevaluation. And the deep, deep retrogrades that happen once every few years. For example, Mars only goes retrograde every two years, which we're still in. That's once in a blue moon, Mars retrograded in cancer, which is the sign of the subconscious and childhood patterning, and that in Leo, which is the sign of creating something that hasn't happened since 1977.

It's a very, very powerful time. It's more powerful if you're morals ruled, which I am.

And obviously more powerful if it's hitting key points or planets in your chart or coinciding with a period of time where you're already ready to assess your life direction. And there's a reason why Mars retrograde, if you looked at the timeframe, it started October 7th, and it goes until May 2nd.

Crucible energy takes. Time. Something that in modern society we have not allowed for, and there's a reason why all retrogrades have a shadow period. Not all astrologers believe in those I do. There's a pres shadow presentation of the issue, what you can expect, what are you gonna be working on. Then there's the actual retrograde and then the post shadow, which is what did you learn and integration.

This is a time when clarity has emerged in the post shadow, but you're not quite ready to move forward yet. You're not running with scissors yet because you could chop down the wrong thing or cut down the wrong thing, but that is that dawn after the darkness. That's that Alberto. Number three is citrus, the yellowing.

Now obviously these are all Latin. And the yellowing is solar consciousness

that's associated with the sun. Now you can see now you've got light. Now you can really start to integrate the things that you've been through. There's an understanding that's formed, and that's when you take action. If you're a business owner or a creator, that's when you launch the thing. You do the thing, you hire the person, you make the move.

Or maybe you're moving or whatever action you're gonna take,

that's when you take that action. And the final piece is the Roberto, which is the Reding. That's the completion, that's the integration, and that's what's known as the Philosopher's Stone, if you've heard that term. So the Philosopher's Stone is both the tool and the outcome. The stone itself is the agent of transformation.

Once you've gone through those four stages, if you didn't skip over any of those four stages and you allowed yourself to really do those four stages correctly, then you have the philosopher stone and the philosopher stone allows you to constantly evolve, constantly transcend, constantly navigate while maintaining wholeness.

You don't have to keep breaking everything down to start over. But you've gotta have that first. So those at a very, very high level are the four stages of alchemy. I'm sure that someone who's an expert in there would say, this is an oversimplified version. I think it's sufficient for the purposes of this podcast.

And so I would like you to do two things. Number one, I'd like you to think about.

If you're in a period of alchemy, are you in one of those four stages? And which of those four stages are you in? Because understanding that is really going to help you understand, well, one, give yourself a lot of grace, but also make sure you're not being impatient about the stage that you're in so you're not screwing up the process.

You know, like any woman who's ever gotten a perm or. Gotten color done, right? There's a process to coloring your hair and you've got to go through those stages, or you're gonna end up with like fried orange hair, right? The same thing with alchemy, and that's what it is. You're changing the chemical structure of your hair.

There's gotta be a process to the way you do it. Personal alchemy is no different. Business alchemy is no different. And if you're a solepreneur business is personal alchemy. You know those famous sayings like there's no greater personal development journey than starting a business? Well, yeah. I've never run a business like owning a gym or having a franchise or something that's a little bit more less involving of my personal self.

I can't speak for that kind of a business. But in all the businesses that I've run. They were businesses of personal evolution. Even when I ran a supplement line and a product line, it was not me selling myself, but there were so many areas, a personal evolution, so many rings of fire I had to go through to become the person who could do that and who could navigate those challenges.

And so I went through a whole different kind of alchemical process. You become a different person as a result of it. So there's alchemy. As a result of doing anything where you take risk, anything where you step outside of your comfort zone, anything where you step outside of the bounds of traditional society, where you do something where people think you're crazy, that's alchemy, and you're probably doing that if you're listening to this podcast.

That's personal development. We all go through challenges in our lifetime

and. Per one of my other episodes, it's how are we alchemizing those mistakes, that wisdom into gold and also real gold? And who do we become as part of that process?

So number one is I wanted you to really think about what stage you're in. And number two, I want you to think about where you're trying to rush yourself out of external pressure or other pressure. Are you trying to, four stages. You know, seasons are seasons for a reason. If all of a sudden I was gonna run out in the snow right now and plant a bunch of summer gardening seeds because I want tomatoes in June instead of September, like that's not how it works, right?

You gotta honor the stages, you honor the seasons, and if you're not honoring the stages, is because you are putting too much pressure on yourself, or is it become some outside force is putting pressure on you. I think coaching is very, very useful. But anybody who's been a business owner has at times when, you know, they've said, you know, the biggest growth I ever got was when I had didn't have anybody in my life.

Because it's when you're in your own timing, you're honoring your own process of evolution. When you have somebody you're paying on a monthly basis or a retainer at a high cost, you feel like pressure to be performing and moving forward at a rate that might be faster than what you want. So personally, I've taken a step back from external guidance with respect to business at least because I'm doing my own alchemical process and I'd feel rushed if somebody else was on board.

And I have different mentors in my life. I have tribe, I have seasoned people that I use as sounding boards. Of course, I use my human design to find out who I should best synergize with, right? That's always part of the process. And I, Val, whose val input I value based on their real experience to keep me from going crazy.

But I'm personally not investing right now at that level for that reason. There'll be time for that. That's not the time right now. And I've learned that from past mistakes. I've alchemized those past mistakes, those past lost dollars into wisdom for the project I'm doing right now. So where are you allowing yourself to be rushed?

Sometimes it's for financial reasons. That's why I always think that it's better to get an external source of income. You know, the, that whole thing of like, you know, burn all the bridges and if you're not in it, to win it all in whatever, that's all bullshit. Those are great like isms on Instagram, but sometimes having external money so you can honor the process and the way that you want to do it, especially if you're a sacral being, if you're a, even if you're a manifesting generator and you build faster, we build through response and it takes time.

So one of my past episodes was, you know how sacral beings speed up by slowing down. There's kind of an overlap theme to that, right? Alchemy is a human experience in general, but you get what I'm saying by this.

So that's kind of where I'm coming to with this podcast in terms of my process and. One of the later or last episodes of the seasons, I'll talk about the origins of the podcast. I hinted at it earlier, but I'll be more explicit about it and it'll be obvious as to why I've been changing and pivoting and evolving so many times.

Some of you see this, if you listen to all the episodes, there might be different names I use for the podcast. If you're watching on YouTube, you're totally a witness to it because the podcast cover has changed so many times.

And even though this isn't like a build with me in public type brand, although I do share some stuff on my email list about the different experiments I'm doing, I'm just kinda sharing lessons as it makes sense because you know, this brand started out by me channeling, and I've spoken about that before I started live channeling Collie.

This wasn't like, oh, I'm gonna start a spiritual business and here's my core avatar and here are my three offers and here's my strategic plan and here's my lead magnet. None of that. It was not on my timeline, it was not on my choosing. And so I've been kind of figuring this out. Is this something I wanna do?

And more importantly, what do I wanna do with this? And who do I wanna work with and what am I passionate about talking about? What is something that people are not talking about? Because there's a lot of stuff that I'm interested in that's very saturated. A lot of it has been watered down and dumbed down, and it's not really a space I wanna play in as much, but also from a bigger perspective.

I have big ideas about things I wanna do in my life and in my platform, and so I am taking my time to get clarity. Because I'm realizing that I am still in the alchemical process at the time of this recording, and I'm using that awareness to not rush the process. Additionally, I am very much into conscious reality creation.

And so I have a vision for a particular individual I want to call in when the time is right. Once clarity emerges, once the initial mutation processes are complete, who's going to help me with the integration process? Who's gonna help me with the projects I'm working on? And so I'm writing that person down.

I am manifesting that person into reality because it's a very specific individual I'm looking for. So I don't know if you got something outta this or not, but I hope you did. Again, the four stages of alchemy are the blackening, which is the darkness, dinar of the soul, breaking down decomposition. Number two is the Alberto, which is the whitening that is purification, that is dawn after dark.

That is clarity emerging. Number three is citrus yellowing solar consciousness. That is the understanding.

That is the start of the integration. And finally, there is Roberto, which is the Reding. That's the completion, the integration, and the kind of achievement of the philosopher stone, which is the ability then continue to evolve and transform without breaking everything down, so you're maintaining your wholeness.

In the process. That's alchemy. In a nutshell, think about those two questions I asked. See where you applies in your life. Text me in the show notes if you got any insights. Love to hear them. Thanks for listening. I'll see you on the next one.