This is what people get for taking everything at face value, and not understanding alliteration, metaphor, simile, and other literary devices.
https://thalira.com/blogs/quantum-codex/alchemical-stages-nigredo-albedo-rubedo
You gotta break it down for us, friend
It’s like ancient rulers and would-be mages involved in magick and alchemy trying to transmute base metals into gold, for power over people. It was all just trying to explain integration of the shadow and individuation, transmuting base instinct into achievement of potential in a society designed to keep us mentally, emotionally, physically enslaved. Dude took it literally.
I appreciate the additional explanation, I just wasn’t clear on your angle. Stories about people going mad over metals has to be one of earliest meme formats.
You’re welcome. Magick is about personal power over ones self, written the way it was because despite the ruling politicians and religions terrorism and horrific torture and murder of just about anyone who would buck the system, they crave power over people and saw mystical writings as less threatening because of the suggestion of power over others. Don’t get me wrong. It can absolutely be misused by people who have a correct understanding. That’s how we get Musks and Zucks and Bernayses and psyops. But I’m the end, in practice, it’s just prestidigitation, casting illusions. Real power is transformation of self in order to actually individuate. And you can do it while still being bound inside the system, too. Michelangelo and other greats operated under patrons from a young age, and I’m willing to guess maybe they suffered to create their arts.
You gonna tell the hood about this dumb shit, too?