There is something below depression that must first be overcome: a raw, inarticulate and chaotic mind—a mind that is not even depressed, but confused.

In depth psychology, depression—lead—is itself the alchemist’s first achievement. Reaching the black and heavy matter signifies the end of chaos and the beginning of the alchemical process. Yet there is also a danger to which ancient alchemists referred. The alchemical process not only begins with lead—with black, dark and heavy matter—it can also end there, because liberation from lead and its transformation through transcendence is the alchemist’s greatest difficulty and most perilous task. It demands much, for the more lead is heated and hammered, the softer it becomes; but finding this heat, and finding the kind of heat through which lead can be transformed, is never easy.