Welcome to the first episode of a new four-episode arc exploring the Magnum Opus, the famed Great Work of the ancient alchemists.

Over the next four weeks, we’ll journey through the four classic alchemical stages: Nigredo (Blackening), Albedo (Whitening), Citrinitas (Yellowing), and Rubedo (Reddening); tracing their echoes in personal transformation, psychology, and collective myth.

In this opening episode of the Magnum Opus series, we descend into Nigredo – the dark night of the soul.

This is Stage One of the alchemical journey: a place of dissolution and shadow, of surrender and death.

Through the story of my own journey through Nigredo, I explore how resistance can be a threshold rather than a wall, and how the darkness itself becomes a teacher. This is the stage where everything familiar dissolves: identity, momentum, illusions, the stories we’ve built around who we think we are, our ego.

Nigredo is the beginning of the Magnum Opus: the necessary descent that gifts us with the first embers of alchemical transformation.

Music: Hungarian Charade by Magnus Ludvigsson

You’ve been listening to The Alchemy of It All with Fiona Meiklejohn. If this journey resonated with you, please share it, subscribe, or simply carry the conversation forward in your own life.

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