The Secret of the Spiral. Taming the Quantum Dragon and Its Elemental Fire.

Paradiso by Gustave Dore.

Consciousness is the primordial ocean. Heaven heaves the quantum wave of life, the Holy Spiration of living light sent forth to know itself as Soul. At first this wave must have been ignorant of its own pre-sensory Presence, and so fell into the dualistic and mechanistic corporeality of matter (mater, mother, matrix) where it could reflect in the mirror of objects (money, others, beliefs, etc) seemingly separate from itself. The virgin waters were pre-pregnated with the Spirit of the ouroboric Serpent, the id; and so the heavenly "Word" becomes flesh, "as above, so below."

The giant wavicle of a spiral galaxy.

 The words spiral, spirit, spire, and inspiration have connections which help to clarify the underlying pattern. Spirit means breath or wind, and is the basic life-force or flow of consciousness. It is depicted in Old Testament and Hindu mythology as the fiery breath of God that creates all things; the quantum furnAce from which springs the movement or heave of creation. Jung says we experience spirit in the body as the libidinal desire towards self satisfaction.

Ancient rock art.

This holy spiration or fiery breath of consciousness (kundalini) is the universal Snake/Serpent/Dragon seen in nearly all cultures, who must be tamed and raised up (sublimated) to unfold its full and sublime potential. "Just as Moses lifted up the Serpent in the wilderness, so shall the Son of Man be lifted up" (John 3:14).

"Be ye as wise as serpents and as innocent as doves" (Matt 10:16).

"I, John, asked, 'Lord, did not the serpent teach them to eat?' The savior smiled and said, 'It was I who caused them to eat.'"
(The Apocryphon of John, Nag Hammadi Library).

Was Jesus a gnostic Ophite, Sethian, or Naassene, who was teaching how to raise the fiery Serpent of Kundalini on the staff of the spine?

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Spiral spire on St Mary's Church Chesterfield.

The Serpent snakes through hisstory as the wave of libidinal consciousness, reflecting off objects and experiences, seeking for fulfillment, hungry for something that seems to be outside itself? The fiery Snake is the fallen consciousness within us all, searching for our missing wholeness, our "better half" or "soul mate." The sublimed Spirit (holy wine) must find and mate (unite) with the cUp of the Soul if it is to be at one. So not only must we understand the fallen spirit, knocked unconscious in the flesh, but also the sol-like Soul or core of our true Identity with whom we desire intercourse.

The serpentine wavelength (green consciousness) is split in two when it falls
into duality and matter, and reflects off objects.

The ego is my worldly identity based on what I look like, the roles I play in society, what I own or possess, how rich I am, etc; but the transcendent Soul is the real treasure I must find, the alchemical gold of my spiritual Identity hidden in quantum SpAce. But how to cross over from the duality of object-reflective human being to the singularity of Self-reflective quantum Being?
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"In this world you see everything but yourself, but there, you look at yourself and you are what you see." Gospel of Philip.
   

Sub-atomic interactions.

How is the wave-like or Snake-like spirit to shed its old skin of corporeality and find its "new skin" of the Self or Soul? It must become Self-reflective instead of object-reflective, individual (undivided) instead of separate. The physical world of time is dualistic and based in polarity: positive/negative, good/evil, male/female, life/death, etc. The Soul is non-dual and based in wholographic singularity; it is our wholeness or wellness, which to the separate ego looks like a downward spiral or black hole. St Francis said,"Who you are looking for is who is looking." The spirit of consciousness must eventually coil back in on itSelf instead of projecting onto an objectified world.

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The Snake and the mirror, photographed near the Louvre, Paris.
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The spiration of spirit or wave of consciousness, through meditation, psychological understanding, introspection, and life experience, starts to turn in on itSelf in ever-deepening spirals of Self-reflectivity. In so doing it leaves behind the sensory world of separation and makes the paradigm shift in consciousness from mechanistic duality to quantum singularity. By coiling in on itSelf seven times, the Serpent increases its fiery light and also the volatility of consciousness (link) until it explodes into enLightenment at the eighth level of the fixed Star. Alchemical solification bursts forth as the Spirit becomes a sol-like Soul.

Left: The Self-reflecting spiral of non-dual consciousness.  

Right: The Yin Yang wavicle, pointing and waving since ancient times,
sleeps within the unconscious id, waiting to be activated.
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Am I prepared to make the leap of faith into the downward spiral of Nirvanic extinguishment? Nirvana literally means "blowing out." How to commit psychological suicide; let go of my mental life; embrAce the wrath of the disintegrating Alien from SpAce. I think that death is not something that happens suddenly at the end of life, but is a process that must be integrated consciously and is always hovering above us like a threatening force. Alien spirit (consciousness), having crash-landed into mental matter (i.e. thoughts, worry, beliefs, etc) spirals in on itSelf, coalescing in Self-reflective solification, the coronation of nature. Heaven heaves the holy spiration of Soul, whose wholographic countenance (holy face) glistens in the primordial ocean of supreme Being.
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 A Mayan, Chinese, Alien, and African Ouroboros or self-devouring Snake.

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The Ouroboros (tail eater) is the Freudian id (instinctual desire) prior to the formation of ego consciousness; the seed of the Spirit or Word in the primordial ground of being. "The seed is the word of God." Jesus (Luke 8:11).

This great sexual and primeval Beast of knowledge and force of nature is the Self-devouring, Self-impregnating (tail=penis, mouth=virgina), Self-circulating, Self-sacrificing/shedding, Self-fulfilling, Self-awaring, Self-fruiting, Self-crowning monstrum of reconciliation.

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In the chapter "the Quantum Grail and the Quantum Serpent," from Philip Gardiner's book, The Serpent Grail, he says, "In light of the evidence we have uncovered during our years of research, we believe that the ancients understood the 'quantum state' long before quantum theory was formulated. According to shamans this quantum state was something that could be experienced through the shamanic trance state, which was often described as being simultaneously alive and dead. We suggest that the snake itself was seen as something neutral, much like the quantum subatomic entity we know today, which, depending on how we observe it, expresses itself as either a particle or a wave."

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A few examples of spiral suns.

A scientific trinity is revealed in the quantum fabric of the universe. The light of fusion contains the spiral, wave, and point of life. The shadowless sun emanates these wavicles of intelligent energy into the mechanistic darkness of materiality. "But the darkness has not understood it" as the source of consciousness. The whispering solar-wind reveals the meaning of the quantum Word! 
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The wavicle of the quantum Soul is both the head (particle/point) and body (wave) of the Snake. Coiled in on itSelf the Serpent (spirit, pneuma, breath, wind) transforms by intensifying the fiery light of consciousness until it blows itSelf out of mental matter and time, into what Krishnamurti calls, "thoughtless awareness."
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"My kingdom is not of this world.
The wind bloweth where it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.
The righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. He who has ears, let him hear." Jesus (John 18:36, 3:8, Matt 13:43).
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"The Great Serpent Mound is a 1,348-foot-long, three-foot-high prehistoric effigy mound located on a plateau of the Serpent Mound crater along Ohio Brush Creek in Adams County, Ohio. The serpent head has an open mouth extending around the east end of a 120-foot-long hollow oval feature. Scholars posit that the oval feature symbolizes an egg or the sun." (Wikipedia).

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The secret of the spiral unfolds the quantum wave of life, which rises up as the sublimating Spirit of elemental fire and gives birth to itSelf as the firePearl divine, the so-called Serpent-Sun;  Spirit into Soul reconciled. The solarization of consciousness completed. The glyph of the Word understood.
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The meaning of the quantum Word, remembered, has a strange resonance; for how could I have forgotten it for so long, when it is the source of light without which I could not even be ignorant of its meaning?
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A final twist in the Serpent's tail/tale hermetically seals the sacramental process of alchemical distillation. The capStone is placed upon the totem polarity of life. A crown appears atop the Ouroboros sublimed, sealing the volatile pneuma/spirit/wine in the vacuum of the alembic; suffocating the senses; performing the sacramental "crowning of nature," the coronation of the Serpent. The raised energy of libido/mortido cancels itself out of time and mental matter, piercing the veil of Isis; entering into the mystery of the winged Serpent-Sun.
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Enter the Dragon

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Enter the Dragon;

its fiery breath to ashes

will blacken and burn,

suffocating the senses.

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Enter the Dragon;

the white belly of the Beast;

where thoughts dissolve away

into Nothingness.

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Enter the Dragon;

demon creature of yore;

force of death's wish

and dissolution.

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Enter the Dragon,

spreading wings wide,

to fly transcendent

into Heaven's red sky.

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Enter the Dragon

with the crown of the King,

and find the Pearl Stone

pregnant within.
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The fiery Serpent is hermetically sealed

with the crown of the King. The Ouroboros
alchemically circulates, its fiery breath distilling
 out as quintessence or holy wine (spirit) into
the cUp of the Soul. When no more colour
changes occur and the unconscious libido or
life-force is fully sublimated, the crown seals off
the wave (process) and the point of life dawns
in the mind; horns into crown refined!

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Salvator Mundi (Saviour of the World), Da Vinci.
"The kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls.
When he found one of great value he went away and sold everything 
he had and bought it." Parable of the Pearl, Matt 13:45-46.
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"When you go down into Egypt
and bring back the one pearl
that lies in the middle of the sea
and is guarded by the snorting serpent,
you will be heir in our kingdom."
"I remembered the pearl.
And in my royal robe of brilliant colours,
I arrayed myself, wholly."
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(The Song of the Pearl, Acts of Thomas.)
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Prima Materia as the Earth Element, and the Animal Spirit of the She-Wolf.

"The wolf as prima materia, devouring the dead king.

In the background: sublimation of the prima materia

and rebirth of the king. Maier, Scrutinium chymicum (1687)"
(Jung, Psychology and Alchemy).
The She-Wolf is summoned up from Hades! The Shaman/King
extracts elemental Meaning from Earth's primordial ground.
The luciferic Christ, the Beast of Heaven, is exorcised
from Hades, up into consciousness!... good and evil reconciled.  

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I've always related well to the two masculine elements of Fire and Air (Wind, Pneuma). But the Earth element in consciousness has been a struggle for me to comprehend. In China it is represented by the Earth-Pig; and in western mythology and alchemy by the Dog or Wolf.

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Hercules, the solar Hero, capturing Cerberus, and 
bringing the Beast up from Hades into consciousness.

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Nowadays we would medicate and put the "Black Dog" (depression) back to sleep.
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"I am the Living One; I was dead, and behold I am alive for ever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and Hades." (Jesus, Rev 1:18).
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"When Herakles was set the task of descending into Tartaros to capture Cerberus, the three headed dog which guards the way to Hades' kingdom, Hermes went with him... and with Hermes help, Herakles brought Cerberus back to the upper ground [of consciousness]." Freda Edis, The God Between.

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In the Fusion of the beginning the prima materia contains all four elements as One primordial substance. As a result of light's fall into matter the elements split into four and became the primal chaos or con-fusion of consciousness.
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"The chaos is a massa confusa that gives birth to the stone. The hylical water contains a hidden elemental fire. In the treatise 'De Sulphure' hell-fire is attributed to the element earth as its inner opposite. According to Hortulanus, the stone arises from a massa confusa containing in itself all the elements. Hence the prima materia is often called lapis." Jung, Psychology and Alchemy.
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Shaman in Wolf Headdress.

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The animistic Shaman descends into the underworld of archaic forces. There he is torn to pieces (dismemberment) in order to experience the universal or quantum Self, the ancestral grand-Being of All.

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"The psychological danger that arises here is the disintegration of personality into its components, a real schizophrenia. Disintegration is the fate that overtakes Gabricus: he is dissolved into atoms in the body of Beya, this being equivalent to a form of mortificatio. In the hero myth this state is known as being swallowed up in the belly of the whale or dragon." Jung.

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Anubis, the jackal headed guide of the dead.

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The Dog is the guide to the underworld of yet-to-be integrated potential. Jung calculates that the average person is about 10% conscious, leaving a huge iceberg underwater. When it is heated by the fire element and starts to rise up into consciousness, the risk of being swamped, overwhelmed, or drowned by primordial chaos is great. It contains the gods or archetypal forces of the universal Mind.

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The animistic shaman, Christ, using the animal spirits of the innocent Dove and wise Serpent, descended into Hades in order to raise the dead from materiality and separation. The "new wine" he miraculously created is the nectar of the gods composed of the four elements, brought up out of chaos/con-fusion, and restored to wholographic singularity.
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"Quintessence is a thing that is spiritual, penetrating, tinging, and incorruptible, which emerges anew from the four elements when they are bound to each other." Isaac Newton.
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Chaos, the She-Wolf, suckling Romulus and Remus.

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Consequent to all this, I feel I've solved one of life's paradoxes: the need to be "grounded," and also, the desire to fly into Space? Paradoxes occur when we try to reunite the elements, Water with Fire, Earth with Air, etc. They don't appear to mix at first. Yet, miraculously, it can be done. We can walk on Water, fly through the Air, turn Water into Wine (Quintessence), frolick through Fire, etc, and marry together the opposites, e.g. male/female.

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Earth dog gets Air-borne?

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In the past my masculine preference towards transcendence caused me to become spacey, which is what I wanted. But I noticed that my spaciousness was unbalanced, and I needed more feminine earthiness. This implied processing the fallen spirit of immanence, the She-Wolf in the ground of archaic consciousness, Hades. Or, going under the Rainbow as well as over it.

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The three-headed bitch devours the animistic Shaman! ... and rebirths him as the dog-Star in the grounded SpAce as the Lapis divine. The fallen luciferic light is returned to Heaven.
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The Dog Star, Sirius.

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"The shaman is usually depicted with a dog or wolf as his companion, and this image has been drawn in the sky as the constellation of Orion (the shaman) and Canis Major (the dog). The latter constellation contains Sirius, the brightest star, also known as the Dog Star." Philip Gardiner.

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Lapis lazuli, Stone (Earth) and

Sky (Air) reconciled.
"Lapis elevatus cum vento,"
the Stone uplifted by the Wind on high.
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A Light Darkly.
The wedding (together) of good and evil.
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Lucifer's light
darkly shines in my mind;
illuminating the ignorance
of worldly designs.
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Depression's ebb
sinks into the abyss;
suffocating the senses
in the nothingness myst.
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The thinking of thoughts
no longer apply;
their use for survival
is seen as a lie.
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The struggle and toil
in the duality dream,
is a projection of stories
onto Oneness's Screen.
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Strange is the vision
that looks back from death's side;
the world's an illusion
lit by God's Eye.
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"Why do you call me good?

No one is good except God alone."

(Jesus, Mark 10:18)

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The divine light of eleMental consciousness, fallen (or carried) down into Hades' archaic and fertile ground with the "light bearer," our lord Lucifer, is raised up on the wings of desire, into the mind of Christic awareness.

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Earth, Water, Air, and Fire are aspects of consciousness corresponding to Jung's four functions: Sensation, Feeling, Thinking, and Intuition.
Sensation grounds me for the work.
Feeling flows watery emotions and desires.
Thinking brings order to chaos, and power over my lower nature.
Intuition fires imagination and artistic creation.
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The Watery Beast, Leviathan; and Alchemical Rubedo as a Bloody Sacrifice!

 

The Leviathan, brooding  in the primordial
waters of consciousness.

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How to Catch a Monster?!

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I caught a Serpent by the tail,

and pulled her from the Sea.

But when I saw her size and motion,

I turned and tried to flee!

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But Beast was hungry too,

and wouldn't let me go!

Caught me by her pull;

her violent undertow!

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Now I'm consumed whole;

consummated as her feast!

Pregnant with new meaning,

I wait to be released.

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Blackening to white,

God's Creature on me dines.

Reddening to gold,

she sublimates sublime.

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Dragon births her Pearl,

born of a Monstrum wise.

Reconciles the opposites;

unearths her unearthly Child!

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"Jonah (Oannes), linked to the Roman god Janus, is clearly a serpent deity. Today, the beast that swallowed him is described as a whale, but in fact the Bible describes it as a 'large fish' in a context that recalls the Leviathan, the great serpent associated with kundalini, the Earth power and underlying force of the universe. The fish and the serpent have been interchangeable for centuries." Gardiner, The Serpent Grail.
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Rubedo, the final stage in the alchemical process, and the reddening of consciousness, is preceded by Albedo (whitening) and Nigredo (blackening). "Jesus was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and his clothes became as white as light." (Matthew 17:2).
Go trans-figure!?

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Jonah and the serpent Fish sent by God;
with the scroll of the one "Word" made manifest,
and its Solar meaning, digested and understood.
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The myth of Jonah goes basically thus:

"He sailed for Tarshish to flee the Lord."

"The Lord sent a great wind on the sea."

"Jonah fell into a deep sleep."

During the storm he was sacrificed as "an innocent man" to appease the wrathful God.

"But the Lord provided a great fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was inside the fish three days and nights."

Jonah's prayer in part:

"You hurled me into the deep,

and the currents swirled about me.

You brought my life up from the pit.

When my life was ebbing away,

I remembered you, Lord.

Those that cling to worthless idols

forfeit the grace that could be theirs.

But I will sacrifice to you.

Salvation comes from the Lord."

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"And the Lord commanded the fish,

and it vomited Jonah onto dry land."
The journey of the Shaman through the fiery belly of the Beast is a universal motif.

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The Biscione Serpent.

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"The Hebrew root word of Leviathan means 'to cleave' or 'to divide,' an allusion to the division in consciousness, which is itself seen as the root of human ignorance." Gardiner. But the spirits of Air, Water, Earth, and Fire eventually recombine as a fifth elemental essence divine, Wine, the holy blood of new life.

"Quintessence is a thing that is spiritual, penetrating, tinging, and incorruptible, which emerges anew from the four elements when they are bound to each other." Isaac Newton.

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The daimonic Welsh Dragon. The
red, watery Beast sprouts wings.

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"I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast." Rev.

I guess it is a function of the goddess to conceive and rebirth. The mytho-logical Meaning of the immaculate concept of the one "Word" made manifest is known to her. The meaning of love is known to those who are inside her passion. The watery and fiery blood of sacrifice reddens my mind with fusion. The con-fusion of good and evil divides the mind.

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"The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life." Jesus admits to suicide!... (John 10:17)... sheds the old skin for the divine shine.
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Alchemical "Rubedo" dawns on my psyche as a winged and feminine creature. Green consciousness sublimates sublime by devouring solar energy: black (depression) to white (schizophrenia) to red (spiritual suicide/sacrifice). Then the alchemical process is hermetically sealed with Gold, the crowning of nature.

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The green Lion eventually digests the diffracted colours/qualities of consciousness, transcending its lower nature, and trans-figuring out the higher Meaning of Light.
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The alchemical Green Lion devours the sun.

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My interpretation of this enigmatic emblem goes:
green consciousness tries to digest the higher meaning and
energy of the symbolic Sun; but, being green, he makes a meal of it, 
spilling the holy blood or holy wine down to Earth, where 
it seeds as the immanent Spirit divine, made manifest 
in the prism of life in diversity, and begins the alchemical
and gestational journey back to the Heavens, water into Wine!
The up-pointing tail indicates the way home to the completion 
of the circulatory process of alchemical distillation.
( To see the recovery of the fallen Spirit, link to my post: 
Rubedo coagulates into the "Carbuncle of the Sun." )
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Rubedo: the Lion catches its prey!

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Alchemical Rubedo

more deeply reddens in my mind.

I am become a blood sacrifice
to Dionysus!

Holy Wine refines,

from circumcision to crucifixion,
birth to death inclined.

The Sun, from black to white,

then to red, fuses

golden in my psyche.
Serpent puts on Lion's face,
green turned Gold refined. 

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Chnoubis, the gnostic sun-god and monstrum,
whose archetypal and quantum function is to reconcile
the play of opposites into singularity.
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Ouroboros.
My depiction of the alchemical processes
of nigredo, albedo/cauda pavonis, rubedo,
and the birth of the Stone/Pearl/Wavicle.
The serpentine sublimation of the spirit results
in the solarization of consciousness.
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"That which is above is as that which is below.
Its father is the Sun; its mother the Moon.
The Wind bears it in its belly; the Earth nurtures it.
This is the process."
(the Emerald Tablet) 
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In the crown-sealed alembic, the three birds represent Nigredo, Albedo, and Rubedo. The diffracted light/life of consciousness sublimates sublime through the trans-figuring out of the One Word made flesh. Its mytho-logical Meaning is extracted as Quintessence, the Holy Wine or Nectar of the Gods, hermetically and safely sealed in the vessel of the Son.
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Spirits reacting in a bottle! The Raven, Dove, and
Phoenix are ths spirit-birds of transformation. The
Red Phoenix (fireBird) consumes itself and gives 
birth to itSelf as the Lapis.
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I am finally sealed safe in the danger-zone of conscious volatility, safe-guarded and safely conducted by the superVision of my lord, Mercury.

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Alchemical pictures from
Adam Mclean's alchemy
website.
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"Luna gives birth to the Red King,
the sum of all perfection, the Stone
itself, whose golden orb and sceptre,
robe of royal purple and golden aura
proclaim his absolute majesty."
Francis Melville.
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 The dragon symbolizes the visionary experience of the alchemist as he works in his laboratory and "theorizes." The dragon in itself is a monstrum--a symbol combining the chthonic principle of the serpent and the aerial principle of the bird.

The dragon is probably the oldest documented pictorial symbol in alchemy. It appears as the tail-eater in the Codex Mercurius of the tenth or eleventh century, as the One, the All. Time and again the alchemists reiterate that the opus proceeds from the one and leads back to the one, that it is a sort of circle like a dragon biting its own tail. It is therefore called circulare (circular) or rota (wheel). Mercurius stands at the beginning and end of the work; he is the prima materia. 
As dragon he devours himself and as dragon he dies, to rise again as the lapis. He is the play of colors in the cauda pavonis (linked, see 1.4 The Peacock's Tail) and the division into four elements. He is the hermaphrodite that was in the beginning, that splits into the classical brother-sister duality and is reunited in the coniunctio, to appear once again at the end in the radiant form of the lumen novum, the stone. He is metallic yet liquid, matter yet spirit, cold yet fiery, poison yet healing draught--a symbol uniting all opposites.

From: spiritualalchemy.iwarp.com