What Red is Not

It is not false whitening - a distortion of the Albedo phase that precedes the Reddening. False whitening is found in the ascendancy of the heroic ego: the stance of impure purity when the ego splits from its own underbelly, from the body and the subconscious, and holds forth, crusader-like, for an ideal, a flag for which it fights.

I capture an element of this process in my poem Standard Candles in which the idea of relatively constant stellar luminosity which is used by astrophysicists to measure the rate of expansion of the Cosmos is contrasted with the flickering lights of those Souls lost in the holocaust:

Standard Candles

Six million flames
Held toward the myth of the superman

By the steadfastness of these lights
Let us measure our progress

The sons of light burned only
The mothers of the world

If we do not watch out
Our purity will kill us all


Our will to power as a species finds a willing comrade in the (alchemically speaking) false ascendancy of the heroic ego. Our global approach to conflict resolution has not as yet revealed that we can negotiate the necessary whitening that preludes the enlivening power of the Rubedo.

In true whitening the Soul is able to open its imaginal gateways to the questing ego and the ego is able to find solace in the reflected light of truth found in those white gardens. Instead of believing in its own myth the ego is able to gain experience of being held, like the Moon is held, by the light of a spiritual Sun, reflected in the waters. Thus is Silver made.

Without this silver sword, forged in the Albedo reflections, the passions of the Rubedo are simply fanaticism, the projection of our inner hell on to others and to the world. With this silver sword the blood of the reddening is cut from our own heart to feed the variegated lotus of our own belief in life, in the Soul of the World. From this blood the non-local, eternally hopeful message of the Rosy Cross can grow.

Mark Jones

IMAGE: Two Candles by Gerhard Richter (1980).