"alkahest spectrale" by Sun Thief

I am very excited to announce that my artwork is featured as the cover art for the album release by Sun Thief, “alkahest spectrale“.

In alchemical studies, the Alkahest is the "universal solvent" the acid beyond all acids, which can dissolve anything. It corresponds to the "solutio" phase - by which the psyche or matter in question dissolves and enters a liquid carrier state.

Which begs the question - how can a universal solvent, something which can dissolve anything, ever possibly be contained? In fact, I would like to suggest that only in dissolving its own container does the alkahest begin to do it's work, breaking all things down and transmuting them. As Edward Edinger says in Anatomy of the Psyche, "often Solutio is expressed not as containment, but rather as fragmentation and dismemberment."

The spectre is the result of the dis-solution of the container and its surrounding matter. The spectre emerges as what was formerly hidden, now openly haunted.