The Twelve Operations · Operation 1 · Nigredo
Calcinatio Calcination
In the vessel. A substance is heated in open fire until it is reduced to a dry, white ash. Water and everything volatile is driven off.
In a life. The burning of the self-image’s pretensions. It is usually lived as humiliation: the forced recognition that the picture of yourself was a construction. The fire does not ask permission, and what burns was never solid.
If everything burnable in this situation burned, what would be left?
The full section on calcination, with the other eleven operations and the four stages, is in The Magnum Opus.