IN SOLVE, BACK SOON

By Lian Brook-Tyler

I’m taking longer than expected to integrate and land after the last shamanic initiation.

A seer I know said she felt I’m shedding a skin… she’s right; I feel raw, unmade, wide open.

The doors have been well and truly blown off.

I haven’t really been writing, I haven’t been replying to messages and emails, I haven’t been putting big ideas into motion… In short, I haven’t been creating.

Ironic really, given the most gruelling struggle for me in the initiation wasn’t the physical adversity of spending 16 hours sitting in the woods in torrential rain, without food, water or shelter… it was going all those hours without creating, and feeling that it was a waste of time, it wasn’t really living. (I will share more on that when I’m able to.)

In real Magic there’s an axiom ‘Solve et Coagula’ which means to dissolve and reform, or to soften and then harden.

Charles Nicholl’s book The Chemical Theatre expressed it thus “Loss and restoration of form: this is the basic rhythm of alchemical transformation. It is expressed in the formula, ‘solve et coagula’: an injunction to dissolve and congeal.”

For those of us disinterested in the alchemy of changing metals into other metals, how is this relevant?

William Backhouse’s The Magistery brings it to life…

The Eagle which aloft doth fly

See that thou bring to ground;

And give unto the Snake some wings,

Which in the Earth is found.

In order for a union to take place between body and soul, the body (a hard substance) has to be spiritualised or made soft, whilst the soul (a soft substance) has to be materialised or made hard.

In Solve, we experience a dissolution of the constricting patterns that prevent us from knowing everything and everyone as they really are… call that Love, God or Spirit.

It seems I’m in the midst of Solve right now… I’ll be back when I’m somewhat Coagula.