Alchemical Transformations: 4. Rubedo (“Fulfillment”) [PIANO]
Advent Meditation
With ‘Rubedo’ we pull together the Darkness, the Winnowing, and the Surprise of the first three steps and put them together into a completed Wholeness.
When talking about Spirituality, we’re talking about things that are literally Not Of This (Physical) World. Thus, in order to talk about them at all, we have to rely on metaphor and poetic language. Jesus constantly used parables to teach because — um — how else?
Let’s consider an ancient metaphor to which we’re still quite accustomed, namely that we consist of Body, Soul and Spirit. One way of describing people is where they invest most of their attention and energy. Folks mostly centered in the Body might be primarily interested in comfort and luxury, or maybe “sex, drugs and rock and roll.” Athletes, too. Next, the Greek word for ‘soul’ is ‘PSYCHE’ — a really difficult word to nail down in the ancient literature. But as I’ve worked with it over the years, it always seems to have something to do with consciousness — our self-awareness. So a Soul-ish person might be primarily interested in the life of the mind, in art, in self-improvement. Scholars/thinkers too, perhaps. Finally, Spirit: As I work with this word in the ancient literature, it seems to be about that which is greater than ourselves. This certainly fits with the “Holy SPIRIT.” Gandhi and St. Francis come to mind.
St. Paul is quite explicit about using this metaphor in I Cor 2 & 3. He talks about ‘fleshly’ people — the word here frequently translated ‘flesh’ is SARX: the physical aspect of our bodies. The word translated ‘fleshly’ is simply the adjective form of SARX — ‘body-ish’. Paul also talks about the ‘soul-ish’ person — the adjective form of PSYCHE. And finally, the ‘spiritual’ person — the adjective form of ‘spirit’. Paul argues that the desired progression of spiritual growth is that we start out body-ish, then become soul-ish, and finally spirit-ish.
The idea that the world is comprised of ‘earth’, ‘air’, ‘fire’ and ‘water’ goes back to the dawn of Greek thinking. Humor me for a moment as we match these up with ‘body’, ‘soul’ and ‘spirit’. Body — well, that’s earth, because that’s literally what our bodies are made of. Soul — let’s set that aside for a moment. Spirit — that’s easy, as the Greek word for ‘spirit’ (PNEUMA) also means ‘breath’ and ‘wind’ — a pun that the ancients (including Jesus Himself) regularly put to use. So, back to soul: we’re left with water or fire — which? The ancients chose water, because in still water you can see your reflection, and that’s exactly what consciousness, self-consciousness is about. We still use deep-water as a metaphor for the soul.
So now let’s see if we can match those up to our Alchemical Transformation: Step 1: Darkness: clearly that’s Earth/SARX. Step 2: ‘Winnowing’: that’s Soul because it requires the soul’s attention to what’s wheat and what’s chaff. It’s also Water because water ‘washes away dirt’ — it’s cleansing. Step 3: ‘Surprise’: that’s Spirit because ‘surprise’ is something beyond what we expected, and Spirit is that which is beyond us. Finally, Step 4 is Fire — LIGHT! The whole point of this process is to go from Darkness to Light. Step 4 has to be Fire.
With that in mind, consider John the Baptist’s words (remembering that he’s addressing folks who are ‘dwelling in Darkness’):
“I now wash [baptise] you in WATER to bring about repentance [rewiring your consciousness], but the One coming after me is greater than I…. He will wash you in Holy AIR [PNEUMA] and FIRE.
As I contemplate the Advent/Christmas story, the arc of it overall doesn’t really fit the Alchemical Transformation. Even though we’ve seen how elements of the Christmas Story can illuminate aspects of the transformational process.
But there is something in our common Christian life that I think fits the Alchemical Transformation to a ‘T’, and that would be the structure of the communion service. Consider: after the service is launched with the call to worship. what do we do right away? 1. Confession. Sounds like ‘darkness’ to me. Then 2. Repentance/Forgiveness. Sounds like ‘winnowing’ to me. Then 3. Gloria. Sounds like ‘surprise’ to me. Then we have some extra goodness like the Scriptures and the sermon — nothing wrong with added goodness. But the climax of the communion service is of course 4. Communion. That’s the LIGHT, or better: the oneness with Christ which communion metaphorically represents is the LIGHT — the FIRE! In short, we can’t have the consummation of Fire/Communion without the preparatory steps of Darkness/Confession, Winnowing/Forgiveness, and Surprise/Gloria.
I close by pointing out that the word “Christmas” is an abbreviation for “Christ’s Mass”, and that the ‘Mass’ is an ancient name for the Communion Service. With that in mind, I wish you and yours a Merry Christ’s Alchemical Transformation!