R3M is an ongoing two-person interdisciplinary project combining written and illustrated musings, drawing inspiration from modern occultism, esoteric symbolism, and psychology, spirituality and philosophy in general, with a particular interest in alchemy and hermeticism.
Emilia Kaupinmäki
Antti Huhtanen
In the alchemical process, first there is the blackness, nigredo: prima materia, the dark unconscious chaos of the mind. By unifying the opposites it transmutes into albedo, the whitening, the spark of enlightenment. The final stage is rubedo, the reddening, the end of great work, symbolised by the color of blood that washes away the last traces of blackness.
In filth it will be found, in sterquiliniis invenitur, saying from medieval alchemy explored vastly by Jung, referring to this ascension from the filthy black shadows into the red dawn of understanding the Self as a whole — when the body, soul and spirit are reunified into one.
The Green Lion (agua regio, 🜆) devouring the Sun (gold, ☉) is an alchemical metaphor for the supressed urges, the terrifying animal mind behaving based on instinct — the underlying duality of the unconscious–conscious split — overpowering the ego, which is represented by the Sun. The image is about spiritual transformation: the unconscious behavior devours the ego, which dies, in order for the higher self to be born as the new Sun with the golden glow of purification and newly obtained awareness of ones primordial aspects that, with the ego, are tamed to serve the Self. The seven stars represent the seven planetary metals (Sun/gold, Moon/silver, Mercury/mercury, Venus/copper, Mars/iron, Jupiter/tin, Saturn/lead) aligning in the inner cosmos to make this transmutation take place.
The inevitable entropy facing us all, illustrated as an alchemical metaphor. The mind ☿ and the soul 🜍, released by the chaos of our perishing body 🜔, all turning into no-thing, returning to the All. Death invites that which is separate, into the unity of the opposites, the solitary fountainhead we all call home.
”Just hang loose” Bab said, but the waves were gnarly compared to what my life had been up to that point, mostly just wading through ankle slappers and chunder. Was it fresh? Hell no. But it had been safe.
The SPATLOF was held in the brimstone canyons of the underworld, just beyond the pit of despair. I was stoked to be there after the seemingly unending fields of nihilism, but the sense of imminent doom was still clinging to me like a lonely face hugger.
”You can worry about grubbing, or you can choose not to, either way, eventually, you will burn out, no matter how bitching your skills are. So, do we do this the horrible way or do you want to enjoy the ride? You decide.” And then Bab just stood there, waiting, scraping of spark barnacles with its hooves from the underside of an asbestos twin fin as I hesitated, mulling over my options and fears on the beach of annihilation.
”Is it gonna hurt?” I asked. ”If it does, that too shall pass” Bab answered. And there, at the end of things, I had to face that there was no turning back now, not after what I had witnessed, but against all that I had come to expect, there was a party here for crying out loud. Fresh? Hell yeah.
And so, as the sulfur wind dried the farewell tears for what once was, we paddled into the heart of the crucible, where the blastwaves began to break, and we carved out a magnificent run.
”That which is a paw is from that which is meow, and that which is meow is from that which is a paw”, was the message that Hermes Meowgistus gently scratched on the side of Emerald Tabbylet. It was the powerful cataxiom that Hermes used to tear up the Veil of Isis, thus granting him a knowing glance from the goddess. ”I shall call this the law of purrespondence” whispered Emerald to Hermes. And then they ate some fish.
Our dreams grow from the ground of experience, from the womb of the mother. Our dreams are the projections through which we explore and familiarize ourselves with the inner structures of our being and the relationship with that which temporarily is the other.
She’s the femme fatale, she’s the eternal mother. She eats and creates, over and over. Death and rebirth, the infinite cycle of destruction and creation woven in the cosmic web that entangles us all.
A human, a dualistic creature, on the path to balance, transmuting the opposites, the both sides of everything.