Recently the farm i work on has been giving me some signs of glass. A couple weeks back, I first noticed a shard of green glass (like from a heineken bottle) while transplanting onions. Then, I found another shard pointing towards the first sprout of some chamomile in a seed tray. My farm manager found a small glass marble in the field while we were planting potatoes, I’ve found bits of glazed rocks around, and some shards of small glass in our various delivered compost piles (but that one is probably just from the compost facility.)

I’m pretty sensitive to symbols (and sensitive in general lmao my coworker said i have “hothouse flower” energy which is not… untrue…) but i took these symbols to mean the farm was trying to say something. What is the message where the medium is glass? Coincidence, possible; synchronicity, likely. So I dove into some books.

A couple weeks back I got a copy of the Taschen book of symbols (IG ads really know how to get me) and I looked up the entry for glass. It’s a fine entry, it was delegated a single page with a couple paragraphs, but reading it felt like a download of information. To spare you from copy and pasting the entire entry, I will now go into a short word association poem on glass that hopefully gets my findings from this entry across.

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on glass

Glass.

Made of silica, sand, crystalline.

Naturally born of fire, violent, erupting, striking. From volcanic eruption — obsidian; desert sands lightning struck. Genius sees Earth’s majesty and divines the process for hands to make the material.

Crystalline, clear, inert. Refractive, reflective, perception skewed, objects revealed. Tele/microscope. The Macro in the micro.

Inert technology. Pottery glaze, vessels, champagne flutes, bottles, jars, libations, preservation. Test tubes and beakers. Progress and containment.

Stained and flat, see God. Clear and concave, start a fire; for survival.

Fragile, strong. Smooth, sharp.

Dichotomy embodied, perception enhanced.

Albedo.

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The Book of Symbols recommended that glass can symbolize the alchemical stage of Albedo. In the alchemical arts of old, there were four (sometimes three) stages to turn “lead” into “gold”. Sure one could take the myopic approach and say “hahaha silly old alchemists, you can’t turn lead into gold! they are two completely different chemicals! You would have to remove three valence electrons and there’s no way medieval scientists would be able to do that with their primitive wood wheels and windmills!” But to the astute Alchemist Philosopher, which most alchemists were, one could read the words between the words and understand their deeper symbolic meaning.

Four (maybe Three) Stages

To read in between the lines of what alchemists were writing about back then, we must remove our objective and ways of knowing and adopt a way of knowing that has symbols at its core.

Alchemists wrote that there were four stages of turning lead into gold. Sometimes they omitted the third stage Citrinas and said there were only three true stages, but for breadth of exploration, we’ll keep it to four. We won’t go too deeply into all four, simply because I haven’t unlocked them all yet, but I’ll try and share what I know of the first two.

***Before I share my knowledge of this system, I do want to caveat that this understanding of development does encompass a linear way of thinking, A -> B -> C type shit, which doesn’t always vibe with my cyclical and helical understanding of the world. I will also acknowledge that this does pull on the White = Good and Black = Bad thought form which by today’s standards and knowing what we know now isssss racist, to be sure. But please understand that the philosopher alchemists of old didn’t really think of white:black::good:bad with the racial context that we have today. ***

With that out on the table, let’s begin with the broodiest of all four stages, Negredo.

Negredo — You just like.. wouldn’t get it man…

Often called the “Dark Night of The Soul” — or “Noche Oscura de Alma” if you’re a hot 16th century friar named San Juan de la Cruz — Negredo is the phase that most of us encounter in our lives and is the easiest to name. It is depression, confusion, cognitive dissonance. We experience that the reality in which we inhabit runs counter to our expectations and prior lived experiences.

It is The Big Sad™. The deep pit of despair that comes when what we want and believe to be true in this life turns out to be different. This cognitive dissonance throws many people for a loop.

To be clear, this is not simply “i didn’t get what i wanted and now i am sad” this is “i believed the world to have certain truths, and those truths have proven to be false.”

There are many ways to be in this deep dark pit. You can sit in it, like a truck stuck in mud, slamming on the gas to go, but slipping on the mud because you have no traction. You can lose yourself in the drink or take things to alter your psyche so that you can forget for a while that you’re in the pit in the first place (you’re still in the pit when you come down btw). You can come to love the pit, say “eh it’s not that bad, the pit is deep, climbing out is a lot of work, i think i’ll just move in, maybe make a couch out of the mud, watch the bugs crawl around for entertainment, get a burrito doordashed, yea it ain’t that bad” But if you want to leave, you might find that the tools and resources to get out are not that far-fetched.

The Beginning of The Out

The first step to getting out of your personal pit, is strickingky similar to the first step of The Twelve Steps. Admitting there is a problem.

A lot of people are good at this! We are very capable of acknowledging that we are not okay. But too often we rely on old tools to deal with our not-okayness. Talking shit about ourselves or others, lying to avoid consequences, throwing others under the bus, these are all coping mechanisms that we utilize to try and maintain our sense of self worth. Spoiler alert: they come back to bite you!!

The tools to actually get out of the pit are actually just one tool in different formats.

Gaining Perspective — Albedo’s Game

In researching Albedo, or “the whitening” (again not me, please see the above ***caveat***😭😭) I found a couple of good resources. One was a blog post from the alchemical garden, where author and psychotherapist Katy Baldock (i’m assuming) says that Albedo is a time of cleansing. It is gaining perspective on your current situation. But she warns that one must be careful of applying too much perspective. This happens a lot in magickal spaces. We want so deeply to find meaning that we detach ourselves fully (not in a hot buddhist way) from our daily realities. This is the “hyper intellectualization” of our emotions.

When we say “ah well I have this reaction when my partner leaves the toilet seat up because my parents would fight a lot about the dishes”. Sure, maybe a kernel of truth there, but you’re not actually feeling what you need to feel. It’s like putting up a tarp in your pit so you don’t get wet when it rains. Don’t be mad when the floor still gets muddy because waters seeping down the walls.

True perspective comes when we acknowledge the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about our situations. Yes, our parents fought. Yes it had a negative impact on how we view relationships, AND YES we are still allowed to feel shitty when our relationships make us feel bad!!

Below is a non inclusive list of tools you can use to gain perspective and their uses and benefits.

• Journaling — in pagan and magickal spaces, thoughts are linked to the element of Air. They are like the clouds, one moment they’re there, the next they are gone. They can be tranquil like a summer’s day, or tumultuous like a thunderstorm. This linkage notes that thoughts are transient by nature. Journaling helps bring thoughts from the ephemeral to the physical. By writing down what you’re thinking/feeling, you’re able to get a better picture of your internal landscape.
• Therapy — an amazing tool (given your provider isn’t whack) to help explore and uncover personal truths and emotions about a situation. Asking probing questions, and providing alternative ways of looking at a situation. The drawback here is that if you want it covered by insurance, your provider may need to pathologiz your issues. They may ask “why are you here?” and diagnose your current mental state according to the DSM-V. Who wouldn’t be anxious and depressed as the vestiges of capitalism and empire strangle us to try and maintain their power? One of the best therapists Ive ever had asked my diagnosis. “General Anxiety Disorder — GAD” I responded. “Do you think this diagnosis helps you or holds you back?” SPEAK QUEEN!!!
• Friend Sharing — having good friends around to share discontentments with can help provide a broader perspective on what you’re feeling. Just like therapy, they can ask probing questions and get to the heart of the issue. Unlike therapy friends can try to share similar experiences that they’ve had and how they gained perspective on them. The key here is to take up space, but also to share space. If you’re the friend who is constantly in tumult, always complaining and never sharing the good, your friends may not come to you when they’re in need. They may run out of capacity to help you carry the stones you’re burdened with along with theirs. When sharing with friends, don’t be afraid to be mundane. Being in community and feeling comfortable with everyday things we’re excited about —not just mad about— is how we maintain our relationships.

https://adaperio.com/welcome-to-albedo/Another source I found was sitting on my bookshelf (thank you past me who did not understand the content at the time, but snagged a copy anyway) Mary Louise von Franz, a student of Jung wrote a book on Alchemy. And by wrote a book I mean she held a lecture and a student of hers transcribed. In Alchemy, vin Framz says that the alchemists wrote about seven metals, corresponding to seven astrological planets. Agrippa writes of these seven metals and their correspondence to the planets. Bon Franz notes that albedo is cleansing these metals (in a way perhaps seven aspects of our reality) nine to fifteen times, maybe over a decade. My main take away from this source is to cleanse thyself.

As it stands, Ive found that Albedo is about perspective. Gaining perspective, sharing perspective. We are all weird and unique creatures with specific life circumstances that may be able to help others. The way to help yourself is to share your burdens, but also take on the burdens of others when you’re able.

Take inventory of the thoughts holding you. Think about them from multiple perspectives once you’re out of the fray, au dessus de la melee, rise above your standard modes of being to approach life with new garnered perspectives. This is true cleansing, and you have to do it over and over and over and over AND OVER again.

The work is continuous, and the only way to begin is by beginning.

Welcome to Albedo. Bon voyage!