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Depression, as the dark night of the soul, is our gateway into understanding the shadows of the Self, and it is precisely there that the seeds of the soul’s rebirth are found.

In Part Four of this seminar, we focus specifically on four stages associated with nigredo/blackening in alchemy and their meaning in the process of depression. These four stages are:

1. Calcinatio / Calcination — Drying Out (drawing out the essence of life)

This stage represents the suffering and pressure of life whose heat dries away all the freshness of living. In alchemical psychotherapy this stage is described as “reduction to shadow.” The final metal associated with this stage is lead, symbolizing heaviness, darkness, limitation, malleability, and resistance to heat. This is the level of depression in which the heat of suffering and the pressures of life have brought us down into the qualities of lead.

2. Solutio / Dissolution — Dissolving / Becoming Submerged

This stage is represented by water. Our former beliefs, values, and identity begin to dissolve and disappear. It is a painful and necessary stage in the growth of the soul. Life ultimately destroys the conscious structure—the ego—through the very forces that created it.

It is at this stage that the journey into the dark world of the soul begins: the underworld of Hades, what in Greek is called “nekyia.” This is the beginning of the hero’s journey through the dark land of the soul, like what we encounter in Moby-Dick, Faust, or Dante’s Divine Comedy.

3. Putrefactio / Putrefaction — Decomposition and Destruction

At this stage, everything that remains from the past begins to decompose and disintegrate.

4. Mortificatio / Death — The Final Death of the Soul and the Rising of the Black Sun

At this stage the smaller self disappears and the death of the past arrives decisively. This is the final achievement of nigredo. In this death, the king—the ego—dies, or innocence—childhood—is wholly extinguished. This is the Yalda night of the soul in its fullest form, culminating in the rising of the black sun, Sol Niger (Splendor Solis).

Aydin Areta