HERMETICISM & ALCHEMY · LESSON 5 OF 7 · 16 MIN
The Inner Work
Using the alchemical stages as a map — and a practice — for personal transformation.
From early on, some alchemists insisted the real Work was in the alchemist. The 16th-century Paracelsian Gerhard Dorn urged practitioners to transform themselves into the stone. In 1850 Mary Anne Atwood argued that alchemy had always been a spiritual art. In the 20th century the psychologist C.G. Jung studied alchemical texts as maps of psychological growth. Whatever the historical truth, the alchemical stages make an unusually rich framework for change.