The universal solvent, the alkahest, is logic. Ockham's razor dissolves everything. Unification of opposites: logical solution is both profound and prosaic. Both mundane and transcendent.
Jung also found the three stages are psychologically analogous, but it seems he never understood it well enough to write something useful down like a normal person wants to.
In epistemology, nigredo is the stage of breaking down your false beliefs. The alchemist wants to go beyond carrying wood, and beyond drawing water. He turns to verification, but upon exposure to verification, nothing is verified. Mortals are the children of Satan, and consequently everything you've been told is a lie. Instead, your ideology dies. All seeming profundity is cast away. Rather than going beyond carrying wood and drawing water, you lose the ability to wield the axe and bucket.
Albedo, purification, is the process of reassembling the digested and fermented components into coherent and harmonious beliefs. Although all your conclusions were false, the experiences still occurred. You will be unsatisfied and ineffective until you understand your own memories.
The dichotomies are understood to be false. Order and chaos are in fact the same thing; the more pure they are, the more similar they are even in appearance. Freedom and determinism are identical. These distinctions were mortal hallucinations.
One must re-learn the axe and bucket.
Rubedo is the stage where it becomes possible to reach true profundity. Before enlightenment, carried wood, drew water. After enlightenment, carried water, drew wood. Turns out no more than that was necessary. It was already profound, but you blinded yourself to it. "I want deep wisdom...no not like that." Now, you accept it the way it is.
It seems water contains boundless mysteries, and wants to tell you each and every single one of them. Why not simply let it?
Mortals didn't hallucinate the dichotomies for no reason. There is an underlying phenomenon. You wanted something. The thing you want is in fact there. No need to give it up. Instead the trick is to look correctly. Plato's so-called cave is dark because you have your hands over your eyes and silent because you have your fingers in your ears. You can merely let them drop.
However, it's not like ye olde alchemists got it exactly right. Alchemists are not dogmatic traditionalists. Nigredo is black due to the carbon. The process probably shouldn't be digestion and fermentation, but calcination. Certainly, the process burns like fire when it happens inside your skull. It feels like rendering your previous beliefs down to charcoal. Nothing gentle or slow about it.
There's citrinitas, which is either a parallel process, a stage common to all three levels, or it occurs between nigredo and albedo, not between albedo and rubedo. Or albedo is not purification, but the stage before purification. These analogies are complex and delicate, they fall apart at the slightest error, at the tiniest perturbation.
Nigredo: the waters of the amazon are contaminated with dirt and sickness. Evil water.
Albedo: even the amazon isn't the amazon, with each bucket being contaminated differently. You can filter the water, removing the dirt, boil it, killing the sickness, but it is no longer the amazon. Purified water is identical regardless of source. Pure water is hard on the gut. Removing all evil produces more evil. Perhaps, it merely reveals the inherent evil common to all water.
Rubedo: amazonian water forms a perfect example of amazonian water. There was never any evil inherent to the water. The [contaminants] are vital components of the experience. The inconsistencies prevent monotony. They are delightful variations, a song of the amazon. Sure you can filter or boil it, but what for? But yes, when thirsty, find something else to drink. The difference between good and evil dissolves, but not that between foolish and wise.
Nigredo: feelings are irrational.
Albedo: ratiocination is irrational
Rubedo: feelings are a kind of rationality
A properly completed calcinifying nigredo procedure results in emptiness. It seems in the moment as if nothing is certain, as if nothing is knowable. It's normal to fail to verify anything, to strip yourself down to mindless bones.
Surely, this whiteness means the only verifiable idea is that verification is impossible.
All dichotomies are discarded. Black is white. If rendering yourself pitch black results in pure whiteness, how can we credit even the very words white and black?
However, the solar analogy of citrinitas in fact preceeds nigredo. You have to decide to verify, which can only happen due to divine inspiration. Grace, if you will. The fire has to be set off by come kind of solar spark. Likewise, once blank white emptiness is achieved, a golden gift spontaneously appears, as if drawn by the vacuum. New ideas, which aren't analyzed into their component parts but instead suspend themselves stably in the alkahest, come from inside the successful alchemist. The idea condenses or precipitates without seeming to deplete the endless white field.
Turning your purest alkahest on the idea that you don't know some particular thing or another, you find you can't verify that you don't know it. The idea that verification is impossible is the one that dissolves, analyzed.
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