Solve et coagula

There is a certain rigidity in me.

I inherited some of it from my father. A seriousness, a structure, something that knows how to hold itself upright. I do not see it simply as a flaw. It is also the part of me that keeps my spine straight. It gives form, endurance, integrity. It knows how to remain standing.

But anything that knows how to hold its form also needs to know how to soften.

The alchemist needs solvents.

And I have come to realize that two of my most beloved solvents have always been tears and laughter.

My first initiation was through tears.

When I consciously began the work of feeling what had been buried inside me, I cried for two and a half years. Not metaphorically. There were long periods when I cried through perhaps eighty percent of my waking hours. Sometimes I cried myself to sleep, and when I woke in the morning, the crying simply continued.

At the time, it frightened me. I would have stopped if I could have. There was no romantic idea of healing attached to it. I was not consciously “releasing” anything. Something had simply opened, and the waters kept coming.

Only much later did I begin to understand what may have been happening. There was decades worth of unfelt, completely frozen feelings in my body and they were starting to melt like icebergs, flooding out of my eyes.

This brings me to one of the old alchemical substances: Salt.

Salt is associated with the body, matter, solidity, crystallization. That which has taken form. And tears are salt water.

I find something profoundly beautiful in that image.

I actually believe that tears dissolve frozen bliss in the body, making it free to move. And what was pointing to this direction was the immense bliss I began to feel while coming to the surface from the bottom of the sea of tears once in a while during my process. It also gave me hope.

The solid became soluble.

I did not yet know how to work with the solvent. I was inside the vessel or I could even say; I am the vessle itself, and the waters came pouring inside and outaide of me.

That was my first introduction to the alchemizing force of tears.

Years later, another solvent entered my life.

Laughter.

My first conscious encounter with its power came through laughter yoga. I discovered something strange: laughter can be invited. It can begin almost artificially, but if it is fed for long enough, something takes over. The body recognizes the path. Soon I am no longer making myself laugh.

Laughter is laughing me.

This solvent feels entirely different.

Tears taught me surrender.

Laughter taught me play.

Tears move like water, softening what has become too hard to move. It feels deep and raw. It hold the elements of water and earth (salt=matter=body=earth).

Laughter comes through breath, it’s active and you can direct it. It contains air, but I experience fire in it too. It rises from somewhere around the belly and solar plexus. The diaphragm begins moving, the body shakes, breath breaks apart, sound escapes without permission.

It is difficult to remain rigid while truly laughing. The whole structure gets shaken.

And this is why laughter has become such important medicine for the serious part of me. It does not argue with seriousness. It does not analyze it or try to convince it to become lighter.

It simply shakes the throne until seriousness falls off it.

And sometimes the two solvents meet.

We laugh until tears stream down our faces. We cry until something becomes so absurd that laughter suddenly breaks through. For a moment the body itself seems to forget whether it is grieving or rejoicing.

Water and salt.

Air and fire.

The vessel shaking while something frozen begins moving again.

There is another part of the alchemical teaching that feels increasingly important to me now:

Solve et coagula.

Dissolve and coagulate.

I have understood transformation largely through dissolution. Release. Let go. Surrender. Break the old structures. Feel what has been unfelt. Allow what has been frozen to move.

But the instruction does not end with solve.

There is also coagula.

Form again.

Become matter.

Take shape.

I feel the gift of my rigidity, it contains a teaching, a golden shadow, unmet potential (as described in Charlie Morley’s

Dreaming Through Darkness).

The part of me that holds form is not something that needs to be endlessly dissolved. In its healthy expression it is the vessel. It is the spine. It is the boundary that allows something to exist long enough to become real.

Without form, everything simply pours away.

This changes the question.

Instead of endlessly asking:

What in me still needs to be dissolved?

I can ask:

What is ready to flow, and what is asking to take form? And this is the inner dance.

Ebb and flow.

The alchemist does not dissolve herself.

She learns the nature of the substances she is working with. She learns when to add water and when to allow crystallization. When to surrender and when to remain. When the structure has become a prison and when it has become a vessel.

And only now, writing this, I notice something I had not seen before.

My first initiation into these elemental forces came through the feminine.

When I began consciously opening myself to the feminine, the elements that arrived were Water and Earth. Tears. Feeling. Salt. Body. Matter. The deep waters moving through what had become frozen and crystallized within me.

Years later, after turning towards the fatherwound and beginning to meet the masculine in a new way, another pair began making themselves known.

Air and Fire.

Breath. Belly. Movement. Laughter.

Not the deep surrender of being dissolved by the waters, but an active force I could participate in, invite, feed and direct. Something that could enter the rigid structure and shake it back into movement.

I began this contemplation thinking I had found two of my favourite alchemical solvents.

Tears and laughter.

Instead, I found the four elements staring back at me.

Earth and Water.

Fire and Air.

The feminine and the masculine, not as abstract ideas, but as forces I have met through my own body.

And suddenly solve et coagula feels different too.

I am not standing outside the vessel performing alchemy upon myself.

I am the vessel.

The elements are already here.

The work is becoming less about changing myself and more about learning their language.

To know Water by the way it dissolves me.

Earth by what it gives form to.

Air by what it sets into motion.

Fire by what it brings alive.

And to become quiet enough to notice which one is knocking at the door.

What element is asking to work through you now?