prima materia

The alchemists spent lifetimes searching for it in rare and exotic substances — and found, again and again, that it was the most common thing in the world. Prima materia is the alchemical term for the primordial, undifferentiated substance from which all things are made and into which all things can be resolved — the formless, limitless first matter that is the starting point of the alchemical magnum opus and the raw material from which the philosopher's stone is ultimately distilled. In classical alchemical philosophy, the prima materia is simultaneously the most common and the most hidden of substances: it is everywhere, it underlies all things, yet it is invisible to the ordinary eye because it lacks any distinguishing qualities of its own, being rather the pure potentiality from which all qualities emerge. The alchemists described it using simile rather than direct definition, comparing it to chaos, to the void, to the anima mundi — the soul of the world — to the quintessence or fifth element that underlies and pervades the other four.

In the Mythica's cosmological framework, the prima materia maps directly onto the concept of aka — the subtle vibrational substance of consciousness from which the qualities of the self and the circumstances of the world are shaped. Aka, like prima materia, is the foundational substance of the creation: not itself having any particular quality, but being the medium through which all specific qualities of consciousness are held, expressed, and transformed. The heroic journey, in this understanding, is itself an alchemical process: the progressive transmutation of the prima materia of one's being — the raw, unformed potentiality of the soul — through the specific initiations and transformations of the heroic journey, toward the philosopher's stone of the telos's fullest expression. Shadow becomes gift; contraction becomes expansion; the leaden weight of karmic impressions becomes the gold of genuine realization. You are the alchemist. You are also the material. Both at once.

The alchemical understanding of prima materia also speaks to the Mythica's approach to the relationship between the shadow and the gift — the recognition that what appears as the most difficult, most contracted, most apparently negative material in one's experience is simultaneously the most potent prima materia available for transformation. The alchemists taught that the philosopher's stone must be made from the most common and despised of materials; in the heroic journey, the deepest gifts and the most powerful expressions of the telos consistently emerge from the honest, courageous, sustained engagement with the most challenging shadows. The prima materia of your most difficult experiences is, when engaged with through the genuine practice of the subtle arts, the very substance from which the gold of your deepest purpose is distilled. The darkness you have been avoiding may be exactly where your treasure lives.