With Olympian goals, we focus on satisfying worldly desires.
When seeking greater self-awareness, our focus shifts away from achievement, and "going for the gold" becomes the search for light, for illumination.
Below, the language of alchemy--converting base metals into gold--provides nine metaphors for aspects of awakening that parallel Enneagram patterns:
- Calcinatio--purifying by fire, subjects the basic material to intense heat, driving away alien substances and leaving a pure, whitened ash. Psychologically speaking, this works on the mind and ego, burning away the false self. The whitened ash represents releasing fixated illusions of reality.
- Solutio--melting hard hearts and entrenched positions, uses the purifying and dissolving properties of water to return the ash to its basic state so it can be worked with successfully. This dissolution works on the heart, releasing buried emotions.
- Solificatio--making things real, represents moving from the lower to the higher mind. Our deep intention to change is not limited by rational thought and conscious goal attainment, but rather our thoughts are enlightened, transformed into light, a vision of what's possible.
- Nigredo--separating the extraneous from the real. This aspect of alchemy means putrefaction or decomposition, all ingredients cleansed and cooked to a uniform black matter, representing the moment of maximum despair, the dark night of the soul, the dying of inner chaos and doubt, discovering authentic essence.
- Separatio--separating wholes into components, separating the essence of dissolution from its wastes. This refers to dismembering the personality, retrieving the energy released by dissolution of negative beliefs and emotional blockages.
- Mortificatio--killing or dead-making, consciously working on reduction of ego attachments; in Jungian terms going inside ourselves to embrace the shadow so our self reflects the whole instead of a dissociated part.
- Sublimatio--infusing with spirit, transmuting to a higher form. In chemistry a solid, when heated, passes directly into gas and ascends to the top of the vessel, where it resolidifies. Metaphorically, we are made spiritual, we move above.
- Coagulatio--mastering the forces of nature--accessing our own soul power to change our reality on all levels. This refers to earth and to being solid, to a chemical reaction that produces a new compound. We are stable in our newfound peace, accustomed to our spirit-based self.
- Coniunctio--uniting apparent opposites to make a larger whole. Here we unite conscious and unconscious, balance masculine and feminine principles, increase our intuitive insights and synchronicities, entering into psychological wholeness.
