Midlife as the Alchemical Yellowing

LIFE’S GREAT PARADOX

“In sum : during nigredo there is pain and ignorance; we suffer without the help of knowledge.  During albedo the pain lifts, having been blessed by reflection and understanding.  The yellow brings the pain of knowledge itself.  The soul suffers its own understanding.” 

—James Hillman

When I started approaching the threshold of midlife, around 37, my life began to unravel; long-held dreams and plans were not materialising, I was outgrowing my work as an eating disorders therapist but had little to no idea what I wanted to do next, and a few months later, I experienced a tragic loss in my close family that threw everything I thought I knew about life and the world out of the window. 

At the same time, I was being strongly drawn back to my alchemical studies that I had put aside for over a decade, and the colour yellow started to frequently and persistently feature in both my dreams and my waking life.

A link started to get woven...a connection that was going to shape the entire next phase of my life and work. 

Citrinitas

Citrinitas or the Yellowing is the third stage of the alchemical journey.

It begins when the, now, white product of the Albedo -the transformed original matter, representing the human soul- having integrated the reflective, soft, soulful qualities of the moon, starts to get exposed to the direct, dazzling, spiritual light of the sun. 

On a psychospiritual level, it signifies the shake-up of the peaceful, inner and outer, stability one has reached, so that the Work of Alchemy -transformation- can continue. The seemingly perfect, pure white state needs to get progressively coloured in the ambiguous, complex hues of yellow -and that is not an easy transition. 

The Great Paradox of Yellow

James Hillman in his seminal book ‘Alchemical Psychology’ discusses the paradoxical nature of the colour yellow that is associated both with the passing of time, aging and decay, and with radiance, luminosity, ekstasy...Gold. 

Fo me, this encapsulates the deeper meaning and essence of Midlife, and highlights the incredible both/and, a major tension of (apparent) opposites, that we are called to hold, while traversing its wild landscape: 

Grief and Growth.

Growth that comes from letting Grief move through us and change us.
Grief that emerges from choosing to Grow beyond the limits of what we, and others, have known about us.

The Grief...

Reaching the -approximate- middle of our lives is a significant threshold. By that time, we have lived enough life and have gathered enough experience for a pause and review to be order; we have chosen certain paths, careers, relationships and communities; we have identified with some parts and qualities of ourselves, and pushed other ones aside; we have built our life in one of a trillion possible ways, somewhat consciously and, largely, unconsciously. 

And we have arrived, somewhere. Parts of that somewhere may feel rewarding and satisfying, while parts of it may carry deep disappointment and disillusionment.

“Is that all there is?”
“What happened to the life I dreamt of?”
“What am I actually here for?”
“I want more.”

...just some of the common inner explorations of this stage. 

Midlife is also, usually, the time when we become more aware of our mortality; both our own and that of our people. Our bodies start changing more visibly, our energy, capacity, tolerance for certain things decreases, our desires shift, often radically. And, it is more likely that we will face actual loss; both the kind that makes “sense” in a chronological order, and that which doesn’t...

yellowing; the fragility of time catching up with us

The truth that we’ve known mentally all along now truly sinks in, in a visceral way; we won’t be here forever. A major catalyst of a truth, able to either freeze us in place or light a fire under, and inside, us -often both, alternately. 

Midlife brings us face-to-face with all that has happened -and all that hasn’t. It asks us to acknowledge, process, celebrate and, inevitably, grieve a lot of it. And make new choices, accordingly.

The Growth...

In our appearance and achievement-obsessed culture, it can be hard to speak about the Growth we experience at midlife and truly transmit its essence. 

What good can come out of so much loss, specifically of the things that we are taught to value the most? 

I find the best way to describe it is poetic, through metaphor and image.
The yellowing is meant to be a departure from the literal anyway.

Midlife Growth is different -it has nothing to do with our linear, love-and-light, high-vibe-manifestation prevailing narratives.

It is earthy, muddy and messy.
It comes from the underworld, from the ground up.

It’s much less about rising high up,
whatever ladder we have been climbing,
and more about adding substance and volume to our existence. 

Like an aging wine,
when we surrender to the maturation process,
our taste -our expression- gets fuller, deeper, stronger,
more distinct, more individual -ripe. 

It is Soul taking up more space, while ego loses some of its own 
-which is why it often feels like we’re moving backward. 

It doesn’t promise,
like a shouty new-age coach: 
“You can do and be anything you can ever dream of”
(by now, we know that that is not true, nor is this the point)
-rather, it looks us straight in the eye, and says steadily:
“You can -and must- do and be what is uniquely yours to do and be -now”. 

Midlife Growth sounds like Truth, tastes like Freedom and feels like Aliveness.

Like any initiation,
Midlife strips away what is inauthentic and empty of meaning
-identities, dreams, relationships, ways of being and doing;
those we have overused and outgrown, those that were never ours to begin with-
to make space for what wants to come into being, now,
that which is brimming with life force,
so that our alchemical journey can continue and not be halted.

When who we have been conditioned to be is taken away from us,
who we actually are can, finally, get revealed.

And isn’t that what life is actually about?
Becoming ourselves?

yellowing; our deepest inner gold rising to the surface

Midlife can feel like an earthquake that takes down the tiny, little hat we have spent our entire lives in, thinking that that’s all there is, to discover an entire wide world around (inside) us, waiting to be explored, experienced, embodied.

Losing the only home we have ever known is terrifying,
like the Tower card in the Tarot,
and it’s the only way we can gain the World.

Because here lies the ‘catch’: 
there can be no Rebirth without Death. 

Crossing the threshold,
saying ‘yes’ to the Yellowing process is a choice. 
And not everyone makes it.

Join me next time for the second part of this series, all about the choice to move from White to Yellow.