The meaning of life

This is the first of a series of answers what I am planning to write, presenting different belief systems and what they called the ultimate goal, and ways how they tried to reach them. I don't say that any of them is correct or on the right track, but I think these informations may be inspirational to people who truly think about the ultimate questions.

Alchemy

Alchemy is usually known as the art of making gold from trash. Well, alchemy is a bit more than that. First of all, it's divided into two ways: outer and inner alchemy.
Outer alchemy is what most of people know as alchemy, which really had a goal of creating gold. But this goal was formulated as follows:

Creating noble matter of ignoble matter.

Alchemy uses astrological terms to draw the ways through which they try to reach this goal. Hence alchemist's work is divided basically into two parts: the operations of the Sun and of the Moon. Since alchemy works with metals and chemicals, they also use chemical terms to name and describe the phases of the works through which they supposedly create noble matter from ignoble matter. I'm not going to tell you how it has to be done, first because I've never read anything about the success of this procedure, second, because this website is not about that.

Inner alchemy, since it evolved from outer alchemy, uses the same terminology, but the goal of it is to create noble man from the ignoble man, i.e. to create an immortal, perfect, divine being from the mortal, imperfect man. This school also separates the operation of the Sun and the Moon, and it has the same seven operations followed by each other, but meaning something what a man has to do with himself, and not with metal. Hence the phases are:

1. Calcination - this is the phase of destructing the ego and our addiction to material desires. At this phase the furnace of Athanor heats the personality, the ego, as long as it produces a new substance. To put it simple, the Athanor stands for the body. The goal of this process is not the erasement of the ego, but to gain control over it and its actions. The new substance is what expresses as self-control.

2. Dissolution - to become aware of our emotions, feel and know them, to make consciousness able to overcome and control them. This supposingly reveals some areas of the unconscious mind. Thus, this phase dissolves the ash (the veils that cover the mind) that remained back after calcination.

3. Separation - this phase is about destructing the belief of separation between us and our spiritual self. This is the phase when we are about to rediscover our "supernatural" source, and understand our unity with it.

4. Conjunction - at this phase, duality becomes unity. Here we unify the dark and the bright, the feminine and the masculine, and all the results of the previous three phases into one. Eventually, this leads to the path of enlightenment.

5. Fermentation - while the previous results and experiences slowly become our new true self, our ego goes through a deeper level of transformation. This can be experienced as visions or dreams, or as new emotions, new kind of life.

6. Distillation - in essence, this is the further brightening of ourselves, where we come to the realization of our very true, eternal nature. This phase can only be reached by a conscious decission made according to the results of the previous phase.

7. Coagulation - before us, the divine source reveals directly, as there are no veils left in the mind anymore, which may reveal the truth from us. The knowledge and direct experience of the divine truth, the ultimate answer, and all that may possibly be known, essentially leads to becoming a part of it: attaining divinity.

The next issue in this series is going to be hermeticism, which is basically the foundation of alchemy, but uses a different approach.