albedo the pure, white stage in the opus, also known as the albificatio. The albedo occurs after the blackened matter, the putrefied body of the metal or matter for the Stone, lying dead at the bottom of the alembic, has been washed to whiteness by the mercurial waters or fire (see ''ablution). Artephius said of the mercurial water: 'This aqua vitae, or water of life, being rightly ordered and disposed with the body, it whitens it, and converts or changes it into its white colour' (sb, 14). Ripley wrote of the blackened matter: 'Sone after by blacknes thou shalt espy / That they draw fast to putrefying, / Whych thou shalt after many colers bryng, / To perfy t Why tenes' (t c b, 149). During the circulation, the matter of the Stone passes from the black *nigredo (the death) through the rainbow colours of the cauda pavonis (*peacock's tail) through to the white albedo where the many colours are integrated into a perfect white. The SophieHydrolith stated that after the 'peacock's tail' the matter turns 'a dazzling white' (h m, 1:83). alembic, limbeck When the matter reaches the albedo it has become pure and spotless. This whitening of the Stone's body by the ' mercurial waters is sometimes called the 'albification'. Chaucer's Canon's Yeoman tells of'our fourneys eek of calcinacioun, / And of watres albificacioun' {Canon's Yeoman's Tale, lines 804-5). At this stage the body of the Stone (the ' white foliated earth) smells fragrant and has attained to a spiritual state where it is no longer subject to sin or decay. The body has been whitened and spiritualized (i. e. the fixed is volatilized) and the soul has been prepared to receive illumination from the spirit. This is the stage at which the alchemist achieves the white stone and white elixir which has the power to transmute all imperfect metals to silver. The albedo is symbolized by all things pure, white or silver, some of which are: ' Luna (the white ' queen), the ' moon (because the matter has attained the perfect state of receptivity, ready to be imprinted by form), ' Diana, the ' virgin, ' dove, ' snow, ' swan, ' white rose, ' white lily, ' alabaster, ' marble, paradise (the ' Elysian fields), ' salt, ' ash, silver and ' white foliated earth. Edward Kelly wrote that the 'tincture or elixir' which 'melts, tinges and coagulates... imperfect metals into pure silver' is 'called the Virgin's milk, the everlasting water, and water of life, because it is as brilliant as white marble; it is also called the white Queen' {Two excellent Treatises,142). And Philalethes wrote of the albedo: 'when by continuance of decoction the colour changeth to white, they call it their Swan, their Dove, their white stone of Paradise, their white Gold, their Alabaster, their Smoak, and in a word whatever is white they do call it b / (rr, 178).
— Lyndy Abraham
Whiteness here is not innocence — it is what survives the black. The albedo comes after the nigredo has already done its worst: the matter has putrefied, gone still, settled at the bottom of the alembic like something finished. What the mercurial waters do to that blackened residue is not rescue it from death but wash it through death until something else appears. Ripley's archaic spelling catches the texture accurately — the process is slow, halting, grammatically uncertain, and the whiteness is earned by passage through the peacock's tail, that vertiginous scatter of colors that has to be lived before integration is possible.
The impulse to reach for albedo prematurely is worth naming. Every image on Abraham's list — virgin, dove, snow, paradise — is also a readily available spiritual comfort, a symbol that promises purity without the prior blackening. The alchemists were careful on this point: the white stone only transmutes because the body of the stone has itself been transmuted. The "spiritual state where it is no longer subject to sin or decay" is not a starting condition but an ending one, and it is ending only relative to what comes after — the rubedo has not yet arrived. Whiteness is receptivity, not arrival. Luna waits to be imprinted by form. The work is still open.
Lyndy Abraham·A Dictionary of Alchemical Imagery·1998