Wednesday, August 22, 2007

A Notation for Edinger's Alchemical Operations

I find it handy to have a symbolic notation for alchemical processes. According to The Philsopher's Stone Dom Pernety first associated processes with signs of the zodiac in the eighteenth century. Alas his twelve alchemical operations are in no way compatible with the seven which Edward F. Edinger applied to Jungian Psychology in Anatomy of the Psyche. Hence I've made my own notation for Edinger's processes:

Calcinatio: Intense heating of a solid in order to drive off water and all other constituents that will volatilize. Only fine, dry powder remains.
Solutio: Turns a solid into a liquid. The solid seems to disappear into the solvent as if it had been swallowed up.
Coagulatio: Turns something into earth.
Sublimatio: Transforms earth into air; a fixed body is volatilized.
Mortificatio: Killing, experience of death. (Synonymous with Putrefactio.)
Separatio: Discriminates composite mixtures of its component parts.
Coniunctio: Two substances come together and create a third with different properties.