Tarot Alchemy in Seven Stages: Calcination
AUTHOR’S NOTE: While reading about the seven stages of alchemy for another purpose, I hit upon the idea of doing a series of tarot spreads for individual self-development based on those principles. The first stage of personal growth is one of symbolic calcination, an act of depletion that chastens and corrects as it redeems.
The process of calcination, traditionally performed in a crucible at high temperatures to burn away any dross in the Prima Materia and leave only a white ash, basically means to transform the gross into the fine by purging any impurities with intense heat. For the spiritual seeker of my tarot analogy, the test is to “endure a trial by fire; face the music; run the gauntlet; pay the price; confront one’s demons” and a host of other aphorisms that signify recognizing and grappling with one’s shortcomings.
For the quaternary framework of my “calcination” spread I chose the four most incendiary trump cards in the deck: the Tower, representing fiery Mars; the Emperor as Aries, the astrological sign ruled by Mars; the Sun conveying the unquenchable solar fire; and Lust/Strength as Leo, the sign ruled by the Sun. I laid these face-up in the rectangular pattern shown below (pretend you didn’t notice that I accidentally placed the Tower upside-down). For the center I selected a Significator (in this case a court card, the Thoth Knight of Cups) to serve as the querent’s “avatar” in the reading. (The face-down cards are only placeholders showing the architecture of the final layout.)
Next I removed the rest of the court cards and all 40 pip cards from the deck and separated them into two sub-packs, setting aside the remaining trumps. I shuffled the pip cards and dealt one card face-up on top of each of the four trump cards, allowing for reversal. These cards represent the mundane “process” by which each archetypal “principle” will be wielded in the seeker’s quest for self-rectification. Then I shuffled the court cards and dealt one card on top of the Significator to indicate the “personification” or embodiment of the results of the four-fold “cleansing” initiative; this card symbolizes the “chastised” neophyte shorn of all self-defeating misconceptions and defective attitudes. I’m reminded of what they do to military recruits in boot camp: tear them down psychologically and then refit them with a more efficient mindset and battery of skills.
In this example reading, the querent received as his “process” cards the 5 of Swords (Defeat); the 2 of Cups reversed (Love, with reversal suggesting “Love Denied”); the 5 of Disks reversed (Worry, with reversal implying bottled-up anxiety that can’t find an outlet); and the 10 of Swords reversed (Ruin, with reversal possibly meaning an inability to come to grips with misfortune, the classic “being run over by a bus” scenario). The two Air cards fan the flames and the single Earth card is a passive witness; the one Water card at least makes a token effort to moderate the conflagration.
This individual clearly has his work cut out for him in banishing his demons, which will hardly break a sweat in overpowering him; the 2 of Cups is the only half-way decent card here, so the best advice would be to capitalize on its reversal by cultivating a little self-love in the face of seemingly bottomless discouragement. Even small victories are better than none.
The “personification” of his effort is the uncompromising Queen of Swords, an excellent demon-slayer who is as ruthless as she is precise in wielding that sword. Elemental Air (Queen) and elemental Water (Knight) are cooperative, so she should at least lend him a little backbone. The only danger in this outcome is that the seeker may be too hard on himself and his fragile self-love could wither on the vine. Still, merciless self-appraisal is about all he has to work with and he has precious little “wiggle room” for procrastinating, so he might as well get on with it. At least that Queen, in not cutting him much slack, won’t allow him to wallow in self-pity; he will be too busy for that if he is to measure up to the challenge.
Originally published at http://parsifalswheeldivination.wordpress.com on February 19, 2024.
