Four volumes · One evolving enquiry
A Course in Modern Alchemy
A contemporary map of inner transformation, bringing alchemical symbolism, Buddhist philosophy, psychological insight and lived experience into conversation.
The Great Work
A map for examining experience
The old alchemists described matter changing through black, white, yellow and red. This course treats that colour sequence as a language for changes in subjective experience: the recognition of conditioning, its gradual clarification, the deepening of insight, and the return of understanding to ordinary life.
It is not an attempt to collapse different traditions into one doctrine. Western alchemy, Buddhist philosophy, depth psychology, mysticism and personal reflection each contribute a different kind of map. Their agreements can be illuminating; their differences must also be respected.
The course is therefore best read as an extended enquiry. It offers concepts, images and practices to test against experience, not a belief system to adopt or a status to claim.
The colour sequence
Four stages of transformation
The stages provide orientation rather than a rigid ladder. Insight, confusion and integration can overlap, and earlier material is often revisited from a different depth. Sequential study is recommended, but each volume also serves as a reference in its own right.
Nigredo
The raw material comes into view.
Nigredo begins with conditioning, division and the limits of the familiar self-story. It explores the Shadow, the structure of experience, traditional maps of awakening, and the lived uncertainty that can follow disruption or insight.
Guiding question: What is operating here before I explain it?
Albedo
The material is clarified and refined.
Albedo examines purification without moral perfectionism: how shame, karma, volition and habitual reaction may be understood more precisely, and how the apparent watcher is itself brought within the enquiry.
Guiding question: What becomes possible when reaction is seen clearly?
Citrinitas
Illumination is examined rather than possessed.
Citrinitas moves into emptiness, non-duality, subtle obstruction and the nature of awareness. It considers both gradual and sudden approaches while asking how insight can avoid becoming another identity or metaphysical certainty.
Guiding question: What remains when the usual centre cannot be found?
Rubedo
Understanding returns to the world.
Rubedo is concerned with embodiment: relationship, language, creativity, responsibility and ordinary life after the search for transcendence. Its developing materials reflect an enquiry still being lived rather than a finished claim to completion.
Guiding question: How does insight become useful, humane and ordinary?
The teaching architecture
Four ways of looking
Each volume is organised around four recurring viewpoints. Their purpose is not to divide experience into separate subjects, but to prevent any single language—mythic, technical, aspirational or autobiographical—from claiming the whole territory.
Mythos
Symbol, story and cultural memory. Myth gives shape to experiences that may resist literal description.
Dharma
Conceptual and technical models of mind, matter, conditioning, causation and release.
Object
The apparent goal: maps of practice, awakening and the states or transformations the seeker imagines ahead.
Subject
The one apparently travelling: lived experience, interpretation, identity and the return to everyday life.
A suggested learning rhythm
How to use the website
The online course combines videos with written chapter pages, summaries, key terms and references. It can be read freely, but a slower rhythm usually leaves more room for discernment.
- OrientRead the stage introduction before entering its chapter catalogue.
- StudyWatch or read one lesson at a time, following unfamiliar terms only as needed.
- DistinguishSeparate direct observation, interpretation, inherited teaching and speculation in your notes.
- IntegrateReturn to ordinary conduct, relationships and responsibilities before drawing large conclusions.
Books and website. The online pages are supplementary learning resources. Where feasible, the physical books are recommended for sustained reading, annotation and reference; the website is especially useful for video teaching, navigation, glossaries and continuing revisions.
Care and grounding
Spiritual language is not a diagnosis
This course is educational and reflective. Difficult mental states should not automatically be interpreted as awakening, purification or a necessary Dark Night. Intensive practice is not a substitute for sleep, relationships, medical care or psychological support.
The Nigredo introduction contains fuller guidance on pacing, warning signs and current UK mental-health resources.