Nigredo

Caput Corvi

by Stephen Parker, Ph.D (Article Selection and Commentary) on September 23, 2010

One of the Nigredo images from alchemy is the “Caput Corvi.” Somehow the phrase Caput Corvi makes me laugh. (Literally, it means “Decapitation of the Crow.” That doesn’t sound so funny, actually. Let’s stick with the Latin.)
Out of all these serious works on the stages alchemy, I have yet to come across the the “Humerous Stage.”It seems to me there should be a “black humor” stage after these Corvis have laughed their heads off.

Solitary Crow On Fence Post Portending Doom, Analysts Warn

GREELEY, NE—Experts confirmed Monday that a single black crow perched ominously on a fence post in rural Nebraska is almost certainly a harbinger of great doom and despair for all Americans.

The crow came eerily to rest on the rickety wooden post at 10:26 a.m. Monday, according to farm hands working in a nearby field at the time. Citing a vague but certain feeling that “something just wasn’t right,” one of the laborers contacted law enforcement officials, and within hours federal authorities had converged on the site.

By late afternoon, sources in the Pentagon had received intelligence corroborating their suspicions that the crow is in fact a dark omen foretelling widespread economic ruin, famine, pestilence, and perhaps even the total collapse of the national infrastructure.

“At this point, all we can say for sure is that the sudden appearance of this grim avian prophet spells disaster for our nation’s banks, its roads, its schools, its health care system, its energy resources—for our entire American way of life,” Defense Department spokesman Bryan Whitman told reporters while examining video footage of the crow. “Would you just look at the way it’s sitting there, with those glassy, black eyes and that creepy beak. Christ. Something bad is going to happen, I just know it.” More: The Onion

Nigredo: “Blacker Than the Blackest Black”

by Stephen Parker, Ph.D (Article Selection and Commentary) on September 18, 2010

(Continuing on the theme that “The way out is through“, that depression after a trauma is not something that can be easily denied or medicated away…)


Dream of Ravens


On the mythological level, nigredo signifies the difficulties man has to overcome on his journey through the underworld. Nigredo is sometimes called ‘blacker than the blackest black’. Hercules had to accomplish twelve, almost impossible, tasks. The pilgrim traditionally encounters shadows, monsters, demons. In the ancient mysteries the candidates had to undergo difficult, sometimes painful and even dangerous initiation tests.

Putrefaction is so effective that it destroys the old nature and form of the rotting bodies; it transmutes them into a new state of being to give them a totally new fruit. Everything that has live, dies; everything that is dead putrefies and finds a new life .
(Pernety, 1758)


(Basilius Valentinus, Azoth, Paris, 1659)

The black crow is another symbol for Nigredo. The two birds coming out of the body are the soul and the spirit. One needs to become aware of one’s soul and spirit. The circle emphasizes the idea of union or unification.

In alchemy, one of the symbols of nigredo is the ‘decapitation’, and also the ‘raven’s head’ (caput corvi). Those symbols refer to the dying of the common man, the dying of his inner chaos and doubt because he is unable to find the truth in himself. In one of his works, Hercules cleanses the Augias stables. It is the cleansing of all the impurities in oneself.

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