CALCINATIO
The first stage is steeped in the symbolism of fire.
It involves the frustration of desire until the emotions exhaust themselves.
Fire cleanses, the imagery here is almost always that of a wolf and lion.
The lion personifies the lordly passions of “I want” and the wolf is perpetually hungry.
These animals have been connected over centuries with passions, with hunger and pride and arrogance and desire.
In alchemy there is an imagery of cutting off the lions paws, if looked at in another way it is an extremely sophisticated model of the frustration of our desire.
A lion cannot claw or pursue its prey if it has no front paws.
What is reflected in the calcinatio is not repression or moral condemnation; it is a voluntary sacrifice so that something else can emerge.
Frustrated love is one area in life where a calcinatio occurs most often. Frustrated ambition in our life too brings on the same issues. This desire burns away a great deal of dross, if it is entered into with consciousness.
Normally if the person cannot have the object of his or her desire there is great deal of frustration of desire; there is a great deal of anger; the other person or an outer circumstance is blamed; or there is some kind of sodden self-pity and self-denigration.
But if the response to such a situation contains some recognition of its potential creativity, and the person can contain the anger and frustration and rage without blame falling on either the beloved or oneself; or on circumstances that frustrate the ambition; until something begins to transform from within, then this kind of experience can become one of the greatest shapers of a solid sense of personal identity.
The individual who has experienced such frustration but has interpreted it solely as one’s own or someone else’s fault can never grow beyond the lion or the wolf— there is a basic uncompromising greed and destructiveness which festers in the unconscious, often quite out of reach of the person’s awareness. This in turn can trigger all kinds of external situations, to the horror of the individual involved.
Very often dreams will arise during such periods which reflect the problem of frustrated desire. The only alternative for this state of affairs is for the wolf or lion to be burned in the fire of the calcinatio, or have the paws amputated.
The lion can be viewed as the primitive form of the renewed king; for true individuality and potential for kingship the primitive passions must be burned first.
Jung focuses on the Mars aspect which is the hot male principle and when viewed with the metaphors of the astrological horoscope we can examine progressions and transits involving mars.
There is always a risk with element of passion, even if one gets one’s desire the reality is almost always somehow short of the fantasy.
You can see why the calcinatio stage of the alchemical opus is important for the individual; it provides an opportunity for the primitive infantile passions to be experienced for the first time; and such an experience is necessary as a component in the opus; without it there is no possibility of alchemical gold!
Powerful Saturn transits and progression hitting a birth chart also suggest calcinations experiences.
There are emotional manifestations as well as physical manifestations of the calcinatio like infections and fevers which are bound up with the image of frustrated desire.
The fire in the calcinations burns as well as purifies and enlightens.
Passion is a great catalyst, perhaps the greatest we have, and frustration of passion is the essence of this stage of the opus.
As we go through these transits and progression; they are cyclical; a little stone is formed; each time they come back around, a little bit more stone is formed. Once there is even a tiny piece of stone formed one does not suffer in the same way.
Perhaps one does not need to suffer at all if one has conscious cooperation with what is happening. These are our deepest experiences and our greatest spur to individual growth.
And so it is…..