Bubble, Putrefy, Spiritize, Spiral, Ferment
Week 6 of the Flow into Fire Alchemy Challenge
Ether, Devotion, Transform, Fermentation
The dark night of the soul descends, and everything is questioned.
The 5th stage of Alchemy, Fermentation, is an uncomfortably putrefying stage of burial and a spiritual death. With broader knowledge than at the first ego death of calcination, devotion to this new path is truly tested. If the alchemist doesn’t jump ship, a strong inner flame is forged - the “heatless fire”.
photos by Erin Grimm from Ignite Your Inner Flame 2022
2 cycles are held within fermentation: putrefaction + spiritization. Mirroring the biological processes of the ancient arts of wine, kimchi, miso, sourdough, beer, and other fermented foods; the tenuous authentic self so carefully grown in the first 4 stages is crushed & inoculated with the microbiome of spirit. Transformed with time, the infant new-self becomes something greater with intense self-trust & nourishment.
The cupric ‘lesser stone’ of authentic self is crushed to liquid mercurial formlessness. The structures created for the past earthy self do not serve where the alchemist is going into the ether & beyond.
photos by Melissa Robin from Ignite Your Inner Flame 2019
Things known cerebrally such as; “Energy is infinite and limitless”, “I am a being of light”, “Positive thinking is Powerful thinking”, “The Universe has your back”, “Everything happens for a reason”... are demanded to be put into action.
So once again, it is all burned down.
Spiritual death.
Buried in the earth like a seed.
This test is to see if we hold true to our authentic self birthed in conjunction, showing up as the person we desire and say we wish to be when we are at our lowest, hardest, and toughest points.
The alchemist is more powerful in manifestation capabilities than ever before and the calls of false ego’s power + envy + greed + jealousy + harming others + negativity + base desires looks like an easier path than going forwards here.
Fermentation asks; “Prove it”.
photos by Chris Nightengale
There are no shortcuts or bypasses. It takes as long as it takes. Only the individual has the power to stay the course during the test of caterpillar to butterfly via goo cocoon. Distractions that once soothed don't serve anymore. The spirit, if ready to go on, won't let you numb out from this W O R K.
This is not depression. It is a dark night of the soul.
Here, in our pain of the death of our past self, do we bring others down with us, or do we hold personal accountability and pursue this transformation with graceful meditation and surrender to the flow?
Do we surrender into the feminine mysteries of feeling everything while deep in the dark womb of chaos and creation?
To ignite the internal flame of spirit will transform from within. Now is the time to show up as your new self, especially when it’s hardest.
photos by Erin Grimm from the Ignite Your Pussy Magic Retreat 2023
Fermentation - With surefootedness and balance now gained by way of Conjunction, Fermentation offers us a fiery ticket to rise up and “...leave the earthly realm by the fire of imagination, “gently and with great ingenuity” into a state that sets our soul afire with divine passion and inspiration. Fermentation is flooding the mind with meaningful and profoundly real images from something totally beyond us that lies at the edge of our personal reality. It is like a swinging door between one level of consciousness and another, between soul and spirit, between matter and mind.’ - The Emerald Tablet, Chapter 10, Step Five: Fermentation.
Fermentation may look or feel like:
Spiritually dying
Your world crumbling around you for no apparent reason, but knowing it’s in alignment
Devotion to your path, especially when it’s hard.
Surrendering to the flow of the universe
The darkest, lowest point you’ve felt
Igniting your inner flame to stay shining
Repeating the spiral of the past 4 stages, but with more awareness
Feeling everything
Learning to trust oneself completely
Showing up as your best self when you have no energy to. But you do.
Putting your ego aside
Compassion + forgiveness
Grace & trust
Meditation & movement to stay sane
Flow & Muse:
Can you tap gracefully into source to recreate your most authentic self yet again?
How does movement support you at your lowest points?
Why do we nourish these new patterns & ideas?
How do you flow with them in their intuitive infancy?
Flow like bubbling magic.
Listen in for more to the Know Thyself Podcast
My musings:
A breaking heart and a dark night of the soul descended last summer → winter. And perhaps continues even now in spiral patterns.
Dear relationships to me were lit on fire, the table toppled and thrown into my face with vehemence, crumbled to dust.
The communities I co-built were dissolved from the inside out before my eyes with seeded distrust, rumor stories, and accusations.
Stories told behind my ears caused my heart to drop and break.
Words to my face started my rise to anger and defense. I rose to the fight once, twice. Then, I stepped back, refusing to rise to the sisterhood fighting ring. Knowing that’s not how I wanted to show up in this world any longer. My pattern had been to step forward in defense of self & my own perceived truths.
I trusted my instincts to seed a new pattern - withdraw in, down, and away to a place where I could putrefy. To personally embody what I wanted & desired to be in this world.
To ignite my inner flame again.
There, my stalwart trust in myself ruptured. I questioned what I was doing as a leader, an artist, a friend, a teacher, a human. Structures & ways of being fell away, burned again.
It was a huge test to show up in grace, forgiveness, and positivity. I didn’t always, and am grateful for the best friends and dear ones who held so much space for me to sort through my internal musings and dialogues at this time - listening and offering advice, illuminating icky shadows I didn’t want to see, and reminding me that I was not altogether a shit-human… though I truly felt that I was some days.
photos by Chris Nightengale
My devotion to self was tested over & over with the relationships I was in that still no longer served me, raising me to anger spirals & outdated patterns, to people pleasing and staying when everything inside me told me to run.
In meditation, I reencountered my still point, the golden nuggets of heart flame.
In dance, I let it all go and felt it all.
In travel, I rediscovered my affinity to joy.
Everything felt thick.
And it still does from time to time.
I mourn the loss of these structures within my life that served me once, and know that to move forward in my next authentic self I must continue to lighten my load. I say sweet goodbyes to physical objects, ties to what once served but no longer does, relationships that circle into drama, blame, gossip, negativity, projection, confusion and anger.
To be a good friend, one must sometimes lose a friend.
I seek the simplicity of my internal eternal flame, my soul spirit, the mystery of consciousness, the god particle, the psychedelic divine me with devotion. My path is none other than my own, and I am grateful to flow alongside beloveds timeless.
I am not perfect, nor ever claim to be.
I am human.
My mantras of these days for us all:
Self love is all there is
I live artfully and align myself with my highest purpose
Deep at the center of my being, there is an infinite well of love.
Emit only love.
Remember, Dear Gaea, the deep dark is not forever.
When you’re buried so deeply, you can sprout so big.
The future ahead is brighter than you can ever imagine.
With love,
Gaea
