What Happened Before…Nigredo

If you are ‘new’ to alchemy, this is where you might start. In the first part of this course we define the ‘raw material’ out of which the alchemist fashions the Philosophers Stone. Using primarily Buddhist models of the mind, supplemented by Gnostic and Kabbalistic understanding, we learn about different types of reality and how our reality of causes and conditions arises.

In the first two parts of this course, Nigredo and Albedo, our work is personal and follows the Hinayana Path — that is, the path of the solitary practitioner — as one might expect for an alchemist. The Hinayana Path is in many ways a prerequisite for the more mystical Bodhisattva Path which is necessary for the highest ‘perfection’ of the Philosophers Stone. This Great Path and the related Diamond Vehicle are covered in Citrinitas and Rubedo.

Whilst a very detailed understanding about the mechanisms of consciousness is probably not necessary, it can help the more skeptical mind rationalize some very big leaps of faith. When we explore ‘omniscience’ and ‘immortality’ it is helpful to have a suitable theoretical framework with which to consider such concepts.

This course is about spiritual enlightenment — something which is as difficult to describe as it is to believe. However, we must not be dissuaded just because we neither can understand nor can believe it. Those that remain curious are developing a mental faculty called ‘I will know the unknown,’ which is an unarticulated belief that there is a deeper layer of reality or existence than just that which we can sense or think.

“The beginning of wisdom is this: Get wisdom. Though it cost all you have, get understanding.”
— Proverbs 4:7