DESIRE is not enough; in fact, ignorant desire frustrates itself or burns itself away. For desire to be consummated, for the opus to come to fruition – in art, in love, in practice of any sort – learn all you can about its fire: its radiance, its flickering instability, its warmth, and its rage. Fire as element below and above the range of human reason requires a “psychoanalysis of fire” – the very title of Bachelard’s exemplary study. [1] The art of the fire and the key to alchemy means learning how to warm, excite, enthuse, ignite, inspire the material at hand, which is also the state of one’s nature so as to activate it further into a different state.
Of course, the laboratory, the stove, the curcurbits and alembics, the co-workers are imaginary figments as well as materialized phenomena. You are the laboratory; you are the vessel and the stuff going through the cooking. [2] So, too, the fire is an invisible heat, a psychic heat that clamors for fuel, breathing room, and regular loving consideration. How to build the heat that can dry up the soggy, soggy dew, melt the leaden oppressions, and distill a few precious drops of intoxicating clarity?
……..