The Magnum Opus, Stage One: Nigredo - The Dark Night Of The Soul

Welcome to the first episode of a new four-episode arc exploring the Magnum Opus, the famed Great Work of the ancient alchemists.

Over the next four weeks, we’ll journey through the four classic alchemical stages: Nigredo (Blackening), Albedo (Whitening), Citrinitas (Yellowing), and Rubedo (Reddening); tracing their echoes in personal transformation, psychology, and collective myth.

In this opening episode of the Magnum Opus series, we descend into Nigredo – the dark night of the soul. 

This is Stage One of the alchemical journey: a place of dissolution and shadow, of surrender and death. 

Through the story of my own journey through Nigredo, I explore how resistance can be a threshold rather than a wall, and how the darkness itself becomes a teacher. This is the stage where everything familiar dissolves: identity, momentum, illusions, the stories we’ve built around who we think we are, our ego. 

Nigredo is the beginning of the Magnum Opus: the necessary descent that gifts us with the first embers of alchemical transformation.

Music: Hungarian Charade by Magnus Ludvigsson

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