Solve et Coagula

Was I wrong?

Its been a while since I darkened the door here. I had moved to another place and was applying myself to the Great Work in the thought that it was a right and proper direction, and I think for a time it was, but somethings changed.

I know somethings changed because I can taste it, I can feel it, I can smell it. What has me most askance is that its not the external that has changed but the internal, its something inside of me that's changed. So often I confuse the operation of personal transformation as a process of an external one, an alchemy of sorts.

Masonry is rife with alchemical double meanings that suggest, to me, that one is like the other that its almost impossible to separate the two at times. the first degree becomes the second, and then the third, and so on.

So, the only way I can describe the change I'm sensing is to use alchemical terminology in saying "solve et coagula" which is from the latin and translates into "separate and join together" or "dissolve and coagulate", which has been a very troubling feeling.

So, I ask myself "what has been dissolving, and what's been coagulating?" And "why is this process happening in the first place?"

In many ways, my own expectation of things has not been met, that rather than the system meeting the needs of its participants, its been the supports and external components that have instead taught me the most. Maybe that's the way its supposed to be.

The reality is probably somewhere in the middle, that the lodge has been the catalyst for so much of the external components that without it its doubtful that I would have experienced or even been aware of the other influences. Its those influences that I find myself most drawn to these days, the coagulation of ideas from the distillation of the original source.

But like the burning material in the alchemists crucible, heated to the point that its original matter is only molecules away from becoming a new substance, I see the ash of the phoenix just before it rises from below the fire. This needs an expression, the idea needs to be released from its former state into something new. And I'm thinking that's where things are going.

My thoughts: Masonry is a finite expression of something much more vast, something of greater breath, that is only toyed with at its most superficial expression. It is like the medium for paint, something to thicken and extend the original pigment and suitable for use in all colors but at the same time not a substitute for it.

So the plan is to return to the travels and see were this thing takes me.

Solve et coagula!