Ave, Alchemy is difficult, to work and to understand. Like most things that are of value, it takes work to suss it out, to reap the golden wheat of your planted effort. One of the things that makes alchemy so difficult is that it's obfuscated....by time, by the intention of different alchemists who hid their processes from the unlearned, and by needless complication. There are as many different alchemical methods--ways of processing the First Matter--as there are alchemists who write about it. That isn't to say that any method at all will do, only that true Alchemical processing requires one thing, and one thing only--Fire--and that all the stages and states described in between and established as levels are arbitrary and a matter of culture as opposed to need. In one method you'll find the process described in 5 "steps", in another 7, in yet another 12. This causes difficulty for the student of Alchemy studying the emblems and methods of our forebears; one want...