Pilgrim's Progress

Understand

Fire consumes
Yet
Fire and the rose are one

Water
Dissolution
Turning a solid into liquid
Letting go

Earth
Spirit to flesh
Heaven to earth
Solidify
Attach

(Simplify
Make the unconscious
Conscious)

Air
Vapor
Spirit ascending
- Paradox -
Ascent
Descent
What goes up must come down

(Discover
As above, so below
[Receive]
Eternalize
Personalize
[All power])

Black, White, Yellow merged with Red

Nigredo/the raven
Spiritual death, letting go
"A black, blacker than black"
The dark night of the soul
The snake which cannot cast its skin dies
Free your mind
Listen to the voice of the unlived life

The dove
White
Light in the darkness
Discovery
The energy of opposites
Power of the wounded healer

The mingling and contrasting
The peacocks tail
leading to the awareness of opposites
Black and white

White
Enamoured by the female
Femine/moon
Silver
An inferior end

Return to black to find red

"Seek the coldness of the moon
And ye shall find the heat of the sun"

Red
The sun
Gold
The philosopher's stone
The Phoenix rises from the ashes

"Only that which can destroy itself
Is truly alive"

Red of the sun
White of the moon
King and queen
Celebrate
The hieros gamos

Coniunctio
The reunification
Mercurius
Union of opposites
Brother-Sister
Lumen Novem
The philosophers stone
Symbol of uniting all opposites