Alchemical Self-Actualization: Calcinatio
On the Nature of Fire and Spirit — Alchemical Self-Actualization #1
Introduction
Fire has never failed to captivate the human psyche. It’s majestic to watch. Seemingly alive, it jumps and pulsates, self-consumed as it devours what it touches. It moves with an erratic yet eternal rhythm. There is something about it that feels so familiar, like we are watching the essence of who we are flicker in a strange dance.
To the alchemists, fire was an incredibly important element. It was one of the original four elements that formed the world. The process of burning and heating—calcinating—was seen as one of the first steps to carry out in the alchemical process of discovering the philosopher's stone, the lapis philosophorum (their idea of the Self).
Alchemy, as Jung was apt to point out, was a distinct spiritual system that attempted to detail the inner process of transmutation, ultimately attaining a refined sense of self. On the surface it may have appeared as a literal attempt to turn certain base metals into gold, but underneath these experiments were hidden metaphors and techniques designed to change leaden inner states into spiritual gold.
Jung described the alchemists as projecting their unconscious psychic contents onto these arcane substances in question. In doing so, they were able to activate their unconscious minds and facilitate the individuation process, alchemizing them into an integrated, holistic and transpersonal-oriented self. Jung went on to use these techniques to describe his own psychoanalytic theories, revitalizing this ancient art.
While this does work to a degree, Jung was rather shy in his utility of alchemy, perhaps simply to push the emphasis on intellectualizing and analyzing our issues. Perhaps even because the essence of the transpersonal-Self was too difficult to accept for the intellectually oriented person (let alone the psychology community at the time, or even the rest of the world). Perhaps too that there was simply not enough psychological research available during his life. Fortunately for us, there is. There are certain themes in alchemy untouched by Jung and other modern thinkers that, through reframing (and building on other systems of Self integration), can be utilized in ways that directly and deeply affect our lives.
This article will be the first in a series that will detail these alchemical processes to shed light on understanding full spectrum Self-actualization. We will bring in various theories and beliefs about what it means to integrate the Self to contextualize as well as further teach us how to utilize these transformational processes that alchemy gives us.
For this first installment, we shall be focused on the element of fire; what that looks like, how it feels, and how to facilitate and integrate this alchemical experience.
Alchemical Process as Streams of Self-Actualization
Consciousness is multifaceted. Trying to distill the inner workings of consciousness into the mind alone is an error that we still haven’t collectively reconciled. It’s too easy to simply reduce the complexities to mere brainwaves or to localize consciousness to solely be a product of neurons and synapses. While the mind is the seat of our most integrated and solidified level of awareness thus far, it is wrong to assume that this level is all there is.
Numerous theories have attempted to describe the far-reaching nature of consciousness and just how extensive and pervasive it really is. While many have tried, no one has really come close to truly describing it, which I doubt will ever be the case. Consciousness is inherently formed through a never ended sea of perspectives, all which point to something ineffable at its core.
Of all these theories, one that has stood out to me has been that of Ken Wilber’s. I’ve written a few introductory articles on his theory which you can find here. The reason that his theory stands out to me in such prominence is that Wilber diligently amassed as many different perspectives as possible, finding the commonality within them. He doesn’t try to create new ideas, but rather synthesizes different models into a general and incredibly useful shape.
So how does this relate to alchemy? Well, by conceptualizing the different levels of awareness and consciousness, we can sketch out the territory for alchemical transmutation. At its core, alchemy is about transmuting, that is, fundamentally changing the essence of something into something else. By working with these powerful symbolic metaphors, we can elevate and integrate the lower levels that have been severed through pain and trauma.
Jung’s work was primarily from the mental level of consciousness, just beginning to stretch upwards into the transpersonal dimensions. His theories center around intellectualizing issues, finding patterns, coming to deeper understandings, all to soothe and open the mind up to the higher possibilities.
This is deeply profound and necessary. However, without proper grounding in the levels below, this only results in dissociation and spiritual bypassing. When the physical body, the senses, and the emotional levels are not in-tune and harmonized, the mental level is ungrounded and will fail to ascend beyond its position as an observer. You will come to know God by name, but never feel the vital essence of the Holy Spirit coursing through your being.
When we utilize our imagination, we can connect to these lower levels and re-integrate them. Fundamentally, we are looking to connect our imaginative capacity with our tangible physical sensing body. This is where the magic happens. This is where we can enter into calcinatio and feel, actually feel the burning of our burdens and the purification of our soul. We sit in the fire of our desires and frustrations until all that is false within us has burned away, leaving the ethereal, opalescent portal towards heaven open and flowing.
It can also be helpful to visualize these different levels of consciousness as different alchemical states themselves. The emotional level feels watery when engaging with it. The mental level has a distinct aridity. When these two states converge, a chemical reaction takes place. This is alchemy. When the cooling waters of emotion drench the steaming forge of the intellect, something fundamentally changes. Smoke or steam is produced, and this clashing of opposites will bring forth increased consciousness.
The largest issue for many here is the identification with one or the other. To put it simply, we are made up of parts. These parts exist in varying forms across the different levels of consciousness. During the process of ego formation, we usually (unknowingly) identify with some parts over others. Through an intricate process, we develop an internal ecosystem that establishes a solid sense of self and identity.
If we are primarily identified with the mental level (as a majority of people at this point in our collective evolution are) we will experience ourselves as dry, arid, and overall dissociated. Our experience of the self will be in this de-energized state where we will conceptualize the self rather than feel the self intrinsically. Emotions will then erupt in various forms; from bouts of anger, to rage, to anxiety and impulsiveness.
When the emotional, physical, and vital levels are not integrated, the mind must overcompensate—and inevitably fail. Overall, the mental level is composed of just a few of your overall parts. If the mind is dominant, the parts that are identified within the other levels are, in effect, ignored. Ultimately, they will be repressed to the unconscious, regress, and erupt into consciousness through untamed emotional states.
Usually, our desires that enact themselves through our behavior are reflections of what these ignored parts are really wanting—union within the whole of consciousness.
Simply by acknowledging the desires without acting them out and, most importantly, allowing the energy to exist fully in your body, does the underlying need get met and an ignored part can return as a piece of your overall, conscious self.
Allowing this experience, sitting in the fire of the desire as it expresses itself consciously within you, is the experience of calcinatio.
On the Alchemical Nature of Fire
Who hasn’t been mesmerized by a candle—transfixed by its erratic movements and its flickering dance to an unknown song. How its center never moves, yet scintillates with exuberant vitality. Just as much was likely our early ancestors' reaction to witnessing this godly essence as they first learned to harness and utilize its potent capacities.
Fire has such a long history in the mythologies of our species. Many have regarded its discovery as the spark of consciousness itself, such as in the myth of Prometheus stealing divine fire from the gods and giving it to humankind. This trickster messenger motif is incredibly potent. Just as fire can literally spontaneously combust, so too can insight and consciousness suddenly explode into awareness. One moment is pitch black, the next bathed in light.
Prometheus was deeply punished by Zeus for stealing fire and giving it to humans. Perhaps the gods knew how dangerous this element was and knew that, like fire, our newfound awareness could potentially turn the world to ashes. In many ways they were right.
The spark of fire—expressed through the human experience as desire—has indeed burned through much of the world. Impulsivity, craving, and obsession alone have driven many towards lives of self-sabotage and recklessness. Not to mention the deleterious effects that anger, rage, and bloodlust have inflicted, ripping through the calculated guise of many a level-headed person; being just conscious enough to have the capacity to control fire, but not enough to genuinely channel it into something productive and beyond oneself. Such has been the evolution of symbolic fire.
When understanding alchemical fire, it is easiest to look at it from two polarities. On one hand, we have fire associated with divine insight—the spark that generates conscious awareness, the ever-present flame of the Holy Spirit as it glows with transcendental vitality. On the other, we have the hellfire of bad decisions and of being overcome with tempestuous desires.
These are, fundamentally, the same impulse. The Desire for God and transpersonal union is not that different from the desire for sex. What differs is the degree of scope, of full-spectrum awareness and understanding of the self and the reality of consciousness.
To best explain this, let’s briefly detail the process of consciousness integration.
Consciousness is moving through a process of knowing itself. What begins as an impulse from pure, transcendental source consciousness (hence the original fire symbolism), moves through the different stages of evolution as it creates beings that have higher and higher capacities for integrating different levels of understanding and complexity.
As humans, we have an incredibly powerful ability to unite these different levels of awareness into a more highly integrated level. This is why in the inner work space we speak in terms of parts, and different “split-off” aspects of the self that must be reharmonized. Really, the self (at least from our limited, human perspective) is made up of limitless different aspects that are all trying to get their own individual needs met, with the fundamental overarching need of union with the Self, with a transpersonal center of wholeness.
Running with this idea, we can see how the original fire, the impulse for complete re-union of self understanding is fragmented through the different parts of who we are. Our individual parts all have their own fiery impulses. They are all experiencing the radical movement of fire as it generates desire towards something. But just as fire is completely unpredictable and hard to contain, so are these individual desires. They are often all moving in seemingly different directions.
This is where the profound ability of calcinatio comes into play. By acknowledging these different desires, by coming into contact with these parts, allowing them to express the energy behind the desire within you (without unconsciously acting on said desire), and by sitting in the fire of frustration as a part of you doesn’t get what it wants, this part is instead purified and reoriented towards what it needs—thus comes transpersonal re-harmonization and union with the totality of source consciousness.
It’s best to remember that the consciousness itself is attempting reunion. The externalized behavior is solely a reflection, an “acting out” of this impulse. The exact desire doesn’t need to be realized in the material world, outside of the self, for the energy to satiate itself. This is the key here.
On Self-Actualization
This brings us now to look at how we can utilize this experience to Self-actualize. Speaking in an empirical sense, Self-actualization was a process studied and documented by psychologist Abraham Maslow. Noticing a pattern in successful and emotionally content people, Maslow sought to understand what made some people better off than others. Through his studies, he described the process of Self-Actualization.
What everyone immediately thinks about when it comes to Maslow is his hierarchy of needs. Yes, this was an incredibly valuable asset to his discoveries, but it would be wrong to condense all of his ideas onto this two-dimensional model of growth.
Maslow instead advocated not for a strict ascension of needs being met (although this still played a role in the overall process), but a general “growth/Self-actualizing mindset” versus a “deficiency mindset.” Simply being oriented towards Self-actualization allowed one to be in alignment with satiating “higher” level needs.
This alignment with one’s highest potential opens the doorway to accessing the divine fire of the Self. Needs and desires emanating from this level intrinsically relate to wholeness. This divine fire is the essence of “Holy Spirit,” that all pervasive sense of life that courses through all and everything.
At their core, all desires and needs are seeking this union.
When we are operating from a place of deficiency, of separateness, our desires will be tinged with self-sabotage. These desires are distortions of this fundamental desire. It is rooted in remaining separate, in perpetuating dissociation. It is an instinct towards death.
Maslow remarks that the needs of the lower levels must be met first before one can ascend the hierarchy and integrate the higher levels. If we understand that these needs are reflections of consciousness as it attempts union, we can see how these desires don’t need to necessarily be met externally, but only realized and integrated with the conscious experience of the self.
All that is necessary is that the energy behind the desire is given permission to be experienced within the body. To allow yourself to feel the fire of desire rack through your body, to be witnessed by your conscious self. That is calicinatio.
It’s best to remember that these parts are just like people. Fundamentally, we all just want to be witnessed, to be seen for who we are. These parts are no different. They just want a chance to live out their experience while someone watches.
The Anima/Animus and the Illusory Nature of Desire
I would like to give one final note on the nature of desire, particularly how it relates to Jungian psychology.
As I mentioned, our desires are all fundamentally the same—the attempt of our separate parts to integrate within the whole of our conscious experience. When we deny this intrinsic nature, our parts try to get our attention through any means they can. The product is our desire towards external experience. The part is projected externally, where we can see it and begin to integrate it.
In Jungian terms, our desirous projections are ruled by the Anima and Animus. Generally, we discover this as a projection onto a romantic other. It could realistically be anytime we are consumed by our muse, by our otherworldly infatuation with anything really, that we are possessed by our Anima/us.
What is critical to understand, and perhaps saddening, is that these projections are just that—projections. They are an illusion. They are the reflection of our own internal selves splattered on the world around us.
When we engage in pursuing these projections, we are convincing ourselves that what we see is separate from us, and not pieces of who we are. We remain stuck in deficiency consciousness as we are always seeking wholeness outside of us rather than within. It’s always a losing game.
When we surrender our desire to find who we are outside of us, and burn in the frustration, the agony, the turmoil of what we perceive as our needs not being met, we come out the other side as what the alchemists called purified earth.
Liberated from the illusion we can operate from the Self, from wholeness, and trust in ourselves that our instinctual impulses come from the soul rather than from a separated ego. This is why the Anima/us lies at the border of the ego and the Self in Jung’s theory.
Concluding Remarks
As we can see, alchemy has some profound implications in the extensions of self-healing and actualizing. Far from being a medieval science, and far from being simply a projection of cognition, alchemy is about the visceral experience of levels of consciousness as we surf through it all towards wholeness.
One final note I would like to add on the experience of alchemical fire is the nature of intuition. Esoterically, intuition is linked with fire. It comes through in a flash of awareness—a spark of insight that produces a certain knowing of the topic at hand. Like the proverbial lightning bolt, it illuminates and breathes fiery life into the mind of the person experiencing it.
Our intuition isn’t localized to one specific place in the body. It is a mix of mental imagery and gut reaction. A flash that resonates throughout the body.
Learning to listen to and act on our intuition requires a degree of spontaneity and speed. It comes in fast, we must react fast. This works well if one is in alignment with their Self or their soul. Not so well if one is acting from a place of need.
When we’ve learned to distinguish between the fractured desires—between the impulsive fire that leads towards self-sabotage and our sense of genuine soul desire—we can act on a true divine impulse. We can trust these instinctual knowings, knowing that they emanate not from egoic drives, but from a place much more holistic and integrated.
This is the gift of facing the calcinatio process. By allowing our false desires to burn through us, we clear the space for a higher channel. Intuition can pour down and invigorate our experience, leading to a synchronistic and expansive worldview built on a solid sense of momentum. We become truly aligned.
Overall, this alchemical process I’ve delineated here can be distilled to a simple remark—give yourself permission to feel your feelings. All of your feelings. Good and bad. Positive and negative. When we can actively hold space for, and expand our window of tolerance, we won’t have any repressed desires that “act up” through over-charged projections and cravings. Simply allowing yourself to be yourself is the antidote to much personal suffering.
To dig deeper into our desires, we can start by continuously asking ourselves this one question—what do I really want? You may be surprised at how deep this question will take you.
In the next article, we will be discussing the solution process, the experience of alchemical water and how to work with and integrate the emotional body.
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