T h e T h r e e E n d e a v o r s -A l c h e m y
First and foremost, before all other practices John Dee is an Alchemist, practicing the archaic blending of chemistry and occultism. In its most common iterations it resembles the former much more than the latter, which is fitting since it is the basis of the more modern sciences in that theater, and in fact the good Doctor's knowledge of the physical world and its chemical underpinnings is incredibly thorough due to that fact.
Despite this appearance however it is a much more intricate art and everything from the idea associated with an object to the alignment of the planets can change the underlying, and to most invisible, principles of the flow of energy and matter that make up that object and even reality itself. The alchemist knows this in a way the chemist can never understand, and indeed observes and uses it. The arcane, worldly, and astrological knowledge and the associated procedures one must observe in so doing are known to the Doctor more than perhaps any other person to have ever lived.
With that knowledge has come the ability to, with the proper time and resources, change the physical reality of anything he can get his hands on in profound and mind-boggling ways. Over the centuries of his extended life he has mastered the alchemic art in all its forms, including material synthesis and reduction, the creation of powerful arcane talismans or solutions both benign and malignant and of course all the other lesser processes that these entail. Even the first three steps of the Magnum Opus itself, the great work of all alchemists, are rendered before him as simple tasks rather than the all encompassing life-long goal of many lesser practitioners, and he alone has seen the fabled fourth.
NigredoThe first step of the Great Work, also known as "The Blackening", which represents the decay of living things or the ashes and charcoal of that which has been burned beyond all recognition.
Nigredo in its truest incarnation is the reducing of matter to its most diluted possible state, an anomalous black mass without any of its previous form or function while retaining the same amount of substance. To achieve this absolute and complete destruction of form without the loss of mass requires an incredibly thorough understanding of the composition of the object being reduced and all its component materials as well as the precise application of the proper forces that will see them to this state from their current form. Failing in that endeavor instead results in irreparable damage, if not complete destruction, of the object rather than reducing it to black matter, with more drastic and volatile destruction based on how poorly applied the process was. |
AlbedoThe second step of the Great Work, also known as "The Whitening" which represents the purification of both the physical and the ideal form in its material and spiritual sense. With the proper understanding of an object's true nature and purpose in both its physical and metaphysical aspects that which is superfluous or even worse counterproductive can be removed, thus rendering a form without imperfection.
When this process is performed upon an object it grants that purity within the limits of its extant form, enhancing its worth by removing that which holds it back. Whenever used upon the perfectly diluted black matter produced by the first step of the grand process as intended it instead re-construes it into a now idealized and flawless but similar form. This new form is the truest possible essence which is otherwise unobtainable. It should be noted that purity is not a measure of being morally untouched but rather the measure of how dedicated and suited to its function and ideal an object is. |
Cittinitas
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