I’ve been struck, for a long time, at the connections between alchemy and composting. I thought it might be interesting to “thoughtstyle” on the alchemical process and what it has to teach us as a metaphor for composting. Though there’s not universal agreement on this, western alchemy is often divided into four stages identified by color:

Nigredo or blackening
“The ever deepening descent into the unconscious suddenly becomes illumination from above” as Carl Jung put it. In other words, you have to go down to go up. When you work with compost you’re literally working with poop, waste and trash.

Albedo or whitening
The nigredo stage is purified by the fire of thermophilic bacteria and transformed into the albedo or “whitening”. The dark night of the soul has concluded as the trash (poop!) in our compost pile are now a living, breathing collective entity.

Citrinitas, the yellowing
Connected with the symbolism of the sun it’s a reminder that all life, including the microbes, fungi and insect life of the compost pile are ultimately (somewhat tangentially in the case of fungi) connected to the solar power of the sun.

Rubedo, a reddening
At the final stage, the rubedo, a multiplication takes place – life pervades the compost pile in a highly concentrated form. Lead becomes gold and, in fact, everything the rubedo touches becomes gold. The same goes with our compost. Everything it comes in contact with is pervaded with microbial life.

At its heart, alchemy is a metaphor for spiritual change. When we compost, we’re participating with and accelerating one of nature’s miracles: the transformation of waste in to life. Compost, then, is the spiritual, life-giving transformation of the planet.