COAGULATION

Everything comes together as it was meant to be. You have witnessed the transpersonal reality and are immune to the vicissitudes of everyday life.

The old limited world is coming to an end, and the new world offers undreamt-of vistas and infinite possibilities. Even more amazing, you are now able to exist on multiple levels and in any situation without diminishment of consciousness. Your purified Self shares its power and awareness with the One Mind of the whole universe. In chemical terms, Coagulation is the precipitation or sublimation of the purified ferment from Distillation. In alchemical metallurgy, the baser metals are transformed into incorruptible gold during this stage. The symbol for Coagulation is a stylized cipher depicting the permanent union or fusion of opposites.

Personal Coagulation is first sensed as a new confidence that is beyond all things. Coagulation incarnates and releases the refined Ultima Materia of the soul, which the alchemists also referred to as the “Greater Stone.” Using this magical touchstone, the “Salt” of alchemy, the alchemists believed they could create an elixir that would cure all diseases and heal all wounds on all levels. During Coagulation, the body is made spiritual, and the spirit is made corporeal. Coagulation thus transcends both heaven and earth and produces a new incarnation that can survive in both realms. On the personal level, this often manifests as out-of-body experiences ¾ the creation of a Second Body, the Golden Light Body, a permanent vehicle of encapsulated consciousness that embodies the highest evolution of mind.

Just before the final Coagulation occurs in people, they might appear to be self-involved due to their preoccupation with finding the divinity within. Afterward, they exude a unique higher Presence and steady confidence in their daily activities, and others begin to see them as authentic and whole persons whom they want to emulate. People sense the divine Presence and sometimes want to worship it, not realizing it is just an example of what they can themselves become. Worldly concerns recede, and hidden spiritual forces take on a new reality. You must respect the new freedom and perspective you have achieved at this plateau, for in all likelihood, a new round in your personal alchemy will begin soon on a higher level still.

The alchemists believed that ultimate success came in three broad stages they called “magisteriums,” to which they gave the names of different Stones. During the First Magisterium, the Lunar Stone is created. It represents gaining control over the body so that every fiber and tissue is purified and relaxed, free of knots of tied-up emotional energy. The Second Magisterium, the Solar Stone, is achieved when the mind is controlled through willpower so that fear and ego do not interfere. The Third Magisterium is the union of the Lunar and Solar Stones with the cosmic Presence to create the Stellar Stone (or Astral Body).

Seen another way, the Lesser Stone is created during Conjunction, the Marriage of the King and Queen in which we become centered and gain control over mind and body. Coagulation, then, is the union of the Lesser Stone with the powers Above to create the Greater Stone. Having achieved that Greater Stone, you have broken free of genetic, environmental, and astrological restraints to your being and are free to express the bliss of your true presence ¾ your personal Stone.

At this stage, you are born into the universe and have arrived at a new plateau, the Greater Mysteries of the ancients. This is true atonement with the mind of God, and it allows you to enter the “graduate school” of spiritual instruction where you learn to exist within the Whole Universe ¾, both the seen and unseen, manifested and unmanifested. However, getting into “heaven” is not the final stage of alchemy. There is really an eighth step in the Emerald Tablet’s formula, a step off the ladder of transformation and a return to where we started. “Its inherent Strength is perfected,” we are told, “if it is turned into Earth.” Successful Coagulation is only made real if it “descends again to Earth” and continues in the alchemical processes of Projection and Multiplication to perfect other people and all matter. In this view, we are truly the “Salt of the earth.”