The image at right represents a seven stage process. Each stage is signified by a Roman numeral from I to VII. And within each stage a substance…in response to a celestial influence…undergoes a transformation. The result is something refined and balanced that might be interpreted as a representation of wholeness.

The process begins just above the western horizon and concludes before dawn with the rising of the moon.

Here is a map of the symbols from which the image is assembled and their plain-English associations.

			Lead			Saturn			Calcination
			Tin			Jupiter			Dissolution
			Iron			Mars			Separation
			Gold			Sun			Conjunction
			Copper			Venus			Fermentation
			Mercury			Mercury			Distillation
			Silver			Moon			Coagulation

Regarding celestial influences, imagine two on-going channels of motion always at work on a cosmic scale. One is the continuous expansion of the universe such that, ever and always, structures eventually find their limit and break apart. Their components falling into new orbits. Systems ever dying. Ever being born.

And the other channel is the cycles that whirl to life as structures mature such that a person can look up at the night sky a year older and see, perhaps less clearly, the largely identical cluster of stars that shone the year before. Every thing moving a little further away from every other thing, witnessed in patterns of repetition. Much has changed, yet so much is the same that a memory stirs of the last such season. The last time Venus was there just above the horizon. The last time the moon was full. The last time.

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