Chronos & Kairos

The most ancient alchemical philosophers lived in a time before time- before the accurate measurement of hours, minutes and seconds that we take for granted today. Even so, they were deeply aware of its cycles and of the effects that time’s movements had on their work, and they had their own methods for marking the passage of time and selecting auspicious moments in that flow.

The time it takes to complete a distillation has a dramatic effect on the quality of the distillate, and the moment that distillation is started creates another layer of energy that directs the end result. Some operations must be done in one season of the year, while others are only possible during grand planetary alignments that may take a decade or more to come together. All these variables were understood and accounted for in ways that were scientific, intuitive, mystical and practical, hinted at in the strange words and images of Alchemical texts.

In my own lab, I have worked with big planetary alignments and also specific elected moments to fine tune my Alchemical and Spagyric extractions, and I see it as another aspect of the animism of the Hermetic tradition- if everything is alive, then each thing must have a birth moment. Choosing the nativity of your own herbal preparations is an easy but powerful way to draw on a greater context of intelligences and energies in your work, and in this talk, we will explore the why and how of doing just that.

Watch a preview of this class: