Alchemy, How Many Stages: Four, Seven, Twelve--Fourteen?
One of the most confusing aspects of alchemy is that authors of the various treatises disagree on the number, and names, of the stages. In literary alchemy, it seems that most authors draw on George Ripleyâs The Compound of AlchemyâŠthe Twelve Gates, though they donât necessarily include all twelve or put them in Ripleyâs order. The earliest known manuscript of the Twelve Gates was written in 1471; it was published in London in 1592 and thus was most likely known by Shakespeare and his contemporaries.
The earlier four- and seven-stage ideas remain important, however. So I thought it would be useful to set them all out in one post. Â
Four Stages
1. Nigredo (black)
2. Albedo (white)
3. Citrinitas (yellow)
4. Rubedo (red)
You can see the four colors in order on the breastplate of the Knight of the Double Fountain (Plate 3 of Splendor Solis).
The four colors correspond to the Four Elementsâfire, water, earth airâfirst described by the Greek philosopher Empedocles (c. 494-c434 BCE). Itâs unclear which color corresponds to which element. The treatise Zoroasterâs Cave links black to earth, white to water, yellow to air, and red to fire, But the nigredo (black stage) is typically dominated by water.(Lyndy Abraham, p. 78). So you have the Flood in Pullmanâs La Belle Sauvage, for example. Â
Interestingly, the four colors also correspond to the four humours of Greek medicine: phlegm is white, blood is red, bile is yellow, sharp bile is black. Ronald Bilius Weasley, anyone? Â
In later alchemical treatisesâSplendor Solis is dated to around 1600âthe yellow stage was omitted, and there were just three: nigredo, albedo, rubedo, with the cauda pavonis (peacockâs tail) sometimes appearing before the albedo. Â
The three-stage version is one the author John Granger* has adopted in his analysis of Harry Potter and other works. Â
Seven Stages
Thereâs already a hint of the seven stages in the seven stars around the Knightâs head in the illustration above. The seven stages correspond to the seven heavenly bodies known to the ancient and medieval world, and their corresponding metals. From âlowestâ to âhighestâ:
âSaturn - lead
âJupiter - tin
âMars - iron
âVenus - copper
âMercury - mercury
âMoon/Luna - silver
âSun/Sol - goldÂ
From this you get the common idea that alchemists âturn lead into gold.â When actually what they did is create a Philosopherâs Stone, which could transmute any base metal, including lead, into silver or gold. The raw material they typically used, however, was antimony trisulphide, not lead. Â
Plates 12-18 of Splendor Solis show the seven stages of the Great Work. Hereâs Plate 12: Saturn - Feeding the Dragon
Saturn in his chariot at the top presides over the operation in the flask. He holds a sickle, a curved blade just like the arakhs of the Dothraki in A Game of Thrones. Â
The dragon represents Mercurius, the base matter of the Work. Here the child simultaneously pours a liquid down the dragonâs throat and works a bellows on its stomach. These operations will âkillâ the dragon as the initial stage of the alchemical process. Hereâs the same idea in Aurora consurgens.
As Iâve written before, I believe Daenerys will have to master and tame, if not kill, her dragons to complete her alchemical journey of transformation in ASOIAF.
Twelve Stages
George Ripleyâs twelve stages - âGatesâ - describe the actual processes the alchemist should undertake, rather than listing colors or planetary influences. .  Adam McLean reproduces the treatise on his site:  https://www.alchemywebsite.com/ripgates.html
These are the 12 stages in Ripley:
The First Gate - Calcination The Second Gate - Solution The Third Gate - Separation The Fourth Gate - Conjunction The Fifth Gate - Putrefaction The Sixth Gate - Congelation The Seventh Gate - Cibation The Eighth Gate - Sublimation The Ninth Gate - Fermentation The Tenth Gate - Exaltation The Eleventh Gate - Multiplication The Twelfth Gate - Projection
One of J D Myliusâ emblem books provides a symbolic representation for most of these stages. Here is Separation, for example (âSeparatioâ in Latin).Â
The first Chemical Wedding occurs at the Fourth Gate, Conjunction, the final Chemical Wedding at the Ninth Gate, Fermentation. The Philosopherâs Stone is achieved at the Tenth Gate, Exaltation. The alchemist increases the quantity and quality of the Stone at the Eleventh Gate, Multiplication, and projects it onto base metals to turn them into gold at the Twelfth Gate, Projection. Â
Fourteen Stages
The English alchemist Samuel Norton (1548-1621) came up with a fourteen-stage scheme. According to Wikipedia, these are the stages:
1. Purgation      8. Conjunction 2. Sublimation    9. Putrefaction in sulphur 3. Calcination    10. Solution of bodily sulphur 4. Exuberation   11. Solution of sulphur of white light 5. Fixation       12. Fermentation in elixir 6. Solution      13. Multiplication in virtue 7. Separation    14. Multiplication in quantity
I am not familiar with this scheme but include it in the interest of completeness. You have to love having a stage thatâs called âExuberationâ though.
*John Granger has written extensively about alchemy in the Harry Potter books. Unfortunately, he has relied on the same limited number of sources for the past couple of decades Itâs almost as if heâd signed up for a course on literary alchemy, attended the first couple of lectures and absorbed them thoroughlyâthen dropped the course. I heard that he did finally acquire a copy of Lyndy Abrahamâs Dictionary, so perhaps his next works will be better informedâunderstanding the centrality of the Chemical Wedding, for example. Â
