Ablutio

Ablutio — from abluere, “to wash away” — names the alchemical operation by which the blackened body of the nigredo is cleansed and whitened toward the albedo. Abraham (A Dictionary of Alchemical Imagery, 1998) provides the canonical image: descending birds are volatile spirit returning as “showers of rain, tears or dew from heaven onto the dead, blackened bodies below, cleansing and whitening them.” The operation follows putrefactio and precedes or accompanies fermentatio: the decomposed matter is washed by the distillate, the corpse is rained upon by the spirit it once housed. Psychologically, ablutio is the moment in analytic work when the blackened material, having been fully dissolved, begins to receive what it needs from above — the dew that whitens, the tears that cleanse. It is neither the destructive descent of mortificatio nor the purifying ascent of sublimatio, but the lateral operation of washing: the same matter, now receptive, let the spirit descend upon it.

Relationships

• albedo
• nigredo
• putrefactio
• fermentatio
• alchemical-operations

Primary sources

• abraham-dictionary-alchemical-imagery (Abraham 1998)
• jung-mysterium-coniunctionis (Jung 1955)