Colour, Matter and Soul

As with the operations, the colour stages are read on two levels: the literal succession of colours in the flask, and the stages of an inner transformation, the death of the old self in the nigredo, its purification in the albedo, its perfection in the rubedo. The imagery pervades alchemical art and was taken up in modern times by Carl Jung as a model of psychological individuation.

The atlas gives each stage its colour, its process, and its symbolism. The operations that carry the work through these stages are treated in the alchemical-operation category, under Texts & the Canon.