The Atomic Ladder of Life, from solid to liquid to gaseous to etheric to spirit. From The Gate Beautiful by John Ward Stimson, 1903.
The basic tenets of alchemy:
1. The universe has a divine origin. The cosmos is an emanation of One God. Therefore All is One.
2. Everything in the physical world exists by virtue of the Law of Polarity or Duality. Any idea can be defined in relation to its opposite, such as: male-female, light-dark, sun-moon, spirit-body, and so on.
3. Everything in the physical world is composed of Spirit, Soul, and Body: the Three Alchemic Principles. (In alchemy, these are called Mercury, Sulfur, and Salt.)
4. All alchemical work, whether practical laboratory work or spiritual alchemy, consists of three basic evolutionary processes: separation, purification, and recombination.
5. All matter is composed of four archetypal energies—the four elements of Fire (thermal energy), Water (liquid), Air (gas), and Earth (solid). The knowledge and skillful use of these four energy types is an essential part of alchemical work.
6. The Quintessence, or “Fifth essence,” is contained within the four elements but is not one of them. It is one of the three essential Principles, also called the Philosophic Mercury.
7. Everything moves toward its preordained state of perfection.
Israel Regardie, The Philosopher’s Stone: Spiritual Alchemy, Psychology, and Ritual Magic
Averill and Sundararajan, "Experiences of Solitude: Issues of Assessment, Theory, and Culture"
A transpersonal psyche with a collective unconscious composed of the sum of all of the archetypes as Jung’s model proposed would have features of a scale-free network structure. His methodology for approaching the unconscious, especially amplification, similarly can be seen to map and understand the psyche as such a network.
—Joseph Cambray, Synchronicity: Nature & Psyche in an Interconnected Universe
Cognitive conceptualization of borderline personality disorder
Hal Straus and Jerold Jay Kreisman, Sometimes I Act Crazy