Ritual narrative | noellecarter

(Sensitivity Context: I, too, worry about the colors used in alchemy. They could possibly be taken in a racist context. However, while there is no denying racism in the Middle Ages, what research I’ve done really does point to chemistry, burning things down to the ash, and so on. So I’ll keep using the colors as useful, but let’s all agree that none of us want any connection to people in these terms.)

Stories, at their deepest level, are transformations. A character begins as one thing and becomes another. A world dissolves and is remade. A truth is lost, then rediscovered.

Long before modern narrative theory, alchemy offered a symbolic map for exactly this process.

Alchemy describes transformation through a sequence of colors. The simple version is black, white, yellow, red. (Yellow isn’t always included, but it’s relevant for our purposes and more frequently included the farther back you go.)

Carl Jung later recognized these stages not as primitive chemistry, but as a profound symbolic language for psychological transformation and individuation, the journey toward wholeness.

When we map these stages onto storytelling, alchemy becomes narrative structure.

1. Nigredo (Black): The Descent, Collapse, and Threshold Crossing

Color: Black
Keywords: Death, dissolution, shadow, chaos

In alchemy, nigredo is the stage where the substance is broken down, decomposed, and reduced to its raw essence.

In storytelling, this is the moment everything falls apart. The hero’s world collapses. Identity fractures. This is often where the threshold is crossed. The character leaves the ordinary world and enters the unknown. In Campbellian terms, the end of Act I.

Using a Jungian lens (which is useful because so much of storytelling is anchored to psychology), nigredo corresponds to the shadow entering: the repressed, denied aspects of the psyche are now part of the story.

2. Albedo (White): Purification, Insight, and Reorientation

Color: White
Keywords: Cleansing, clarity, reflection, awakening

After the darkness comes washing. In albedo, the material is separated into what is essential from what is not.

In narrative terms, this is the rebuilding phase. The character begins to understand what has happened. False beliefs are stripped away. New insight emerges but is still fragile. This is often the midpoint or inner turning point of a story.

With a Jungian lens, the albedo reflects the integration of unconscious material, especially encounters with anima/animus or inner opposites. The psyche begins to reorganize itself around a deeper truth. The character is no longer who they were, but neither are they who they will become.

3. Citrinitas (Yellow/Gold): Illumination and Emerging Self

Color: Yellow (sometimes golden or solar)
Keywords: Insight, awakening, dawn, integration-in-progress

Many simplified systems skip this stage—but historically, citrinitas represents the dawning of consciousness. In story terms, this is where the character begins to embody their transformation. Insight turns into action. A new identity starts to stabilize. It’s the difference between knowing and becoming. But it’s only beginning. The changes are somewhat understood, but aren’t fully integrated. The character has not yet become something truly new.

With the Jungian lens, you would say that this stage reflects the emergence of the Self, which is a deeper organizing principle beyond the ego.

In the story, you might have a “leveling up” montage here. Or you might have a series of wins where against tough odds, the character is really making some progress using the new things they have learned. This is the time of illumination. The caterpillar is emerging, but her wings are still wet.

Okay here’s where we have to pause for a minute to address…

THE END OF ACT II.

This is the dark night of the soul. The point where it looks like it’s all over. The part where the character symbolically (or sometimes literally) dies. If you stop here, the story really would be a tragedy.

If we look at alchemy and colors, the dark night of the soul corresponds to the crisis between citrinitas and rubedo, where emerging truth cannot yet sustain itself and forces a final transformation. All of the changing that the character has done is not enough. Whether you follow this pause with divine intervention or one last heroic try or whatever, the citrinitas in alchemy is only a partial transformation. It looks like a full transmutation of substance, and then it all goes wrong and falls apart. I think that’s helpful to keep in the back of your mind when writing a story. There comes a time when everything goes dark. I imagine the alchemist so excited by the emergence of (she thinks) gold and then putting her head in her hands in despair because the transformation goes wrong, and the whole experiment ends in toxic smoke or goo rather than gold or eternal life.

4. Rubedo (Red): Integration, Embodiment, and Return

Color: Red
Keywords: Completion, unity, incarnation, wholeness

Rubedo is the final stage. It’s the “reddening” and is associated with gold, blood, and the philosopher’s stone.

Of course this is the climax of the story. It’s where the character does not just understand change, they are changed.

The Jungian philosophy here is that rubedo represents individuation fulfilled, the integration of conscious and unconscious into a unified self. For Campbell, this is where the hero returns home with wisdom. In narrative story structure, the individual really does become a new person and crosses back into the world changed.

Denouement

One final thought on alchemy. One of the reasons why I think that alchemy works so well for storytelling is that it isn’t only about gold and eternal life (though they are certainly about that) but they’re also about purification of the soul. There is a ton of symbolism (some pretty funky) that uses symbols of natural elements and people in the process of change as a secret way of describing what was to become chemistry. So literal change and spiritual change get all mixed up together with symbols. Which makes it rich fodder for the imagination, the subconscious, psychology, and all the things that are the realms of story.

Consider keeping an eye on some of your stranger dreams. They might just include colors or at least transformations that remind you of alchemy. I would argue that is because alchemy captured some of the truth of human psychology and not the other way around.

Most writing advice will eventually point you toward the Hero’s Journey. But there’s another, older structure, and it doesn’t center on conquest. Its center is transformation. It comes from anthropology and ritual theory, and it pairs really well with shamanic thinking.

Now here’s the disclaimer, I’m not a shaman, of course. It’s a long road to become one, and most of us weren’t born with the right cultural context to even walk that path. But I love reading about it, because it provides a wonderful framework to make sense of so many things. I hope that I’m learning from wisdom and not trying to appropriate a gift that was not in my heritage.

If you’re writing a novel about hidden truths, shifting identities, or magical revelation, this framework might feel more natural:

Van Gennep’s three-part ritual structure: separation, liminality, incorporation
Victor Turner’s expansion: liminality as a space of ambiguity, anti-structure, and communitas
Shamanic cosmology: upper world, middle world, lower world

Together, they offer a useful way to think about narrative as an initiation rather than as a quest. (Quest are great too. I love a good quest. But not all stories are about quests.)

As Victor Turner expanded Van Gannep’s work, he highlighted that the middle phase, liminality, is key. It is a space of “betwixt and between,” where identity dissolves, hierarchy collapses, and new possibilities emerge. In this space, characters (and people) may experience communitas, a raw, equalizing connection that transcends normal structure.

The Three Worlds as Narrative Space

Shamanic traditions describe reality as layered into three interconnected realms:

Lower World – descent, instinct, memory, transformation
Middle World – ordinary reality, relationships, lived experience
Upper World – insight, meaning, vision, transcendence

These worlds are not separate locations so much as modes of perception. The shaman moves between them to bring back knowledge, healing, or power.

So can the main character in your book.

Mapping the Three Worlds onto Ritual Narrative

Instead of mapping plot beats, think in terms of ritual movement through worlds.

I. Separation: Leaving the Middle World

Every story begins with a break from the ordinary, which is why you start with the ordinary world that the character is familiar with. It doesn’t have to be good. But it’s working one way or another. (It might be that your identity is defined by someone else, you’re miserable, etc., but you’re used to it. The boat might be sad but not rocking.)

In ritual terms, separation removes the initiate from this structure. They are stripped of certainty, often through loss, disruption, or invitation. In the three-act structure, this is the inciting event.

II. Liminality: Descent and Ascent (Lower and Upper Worlds)

This is the heart of your novel. Turner describes liminality as a state of ambiguity where old identities dissolve and new ones have not yet formed. It is unstable, disorienting, and creative. In shamanic terms, this phase often involves movement between the Lower and Upper Worlds:

The Lower World: Descent into the Hidden is where the protagonist descends. It’s not “hell,” it’s the realm of instinct, memory, trauma, animal knowing, and transformation. 3

In a story, it’s when you have to confront your shadow. You might even literally enter into an underworld. You’ll probably have to face buried truths. The Lower World strips away illusion. It is where the character encounters what has been hidden by others or by themselves.

The Upper World is the ascent into meaning. After you deal with your shadow work (there’s a lot of psychology going in in here in case you didn’t notice), comes ascent to the upper world. This is where you find vision, insight, reframing, and contact with something larger like ancestors or Truth.

This is the place where you can see the patterns at last, where it makes sense, where you are heading for the “You have no power over me” kind of climax.

Liminality as Anti-Structure

During this middle phase, normal rules break down.

Turner calls this anti-structure—a suspension of hierarchy and order where new forms can emerge.

In your novel, this might look like Social roles reversing, or outsiders becoming guides, or the power is just shifting unpredictably.

This is also where communitas can form: unexpected bonds between characters who meet outside the constraints of ordinary identity. These relationships often feel more real than those in the “normal” world, and they are key to transformation.

III. Incorporation: Returning to the Middle World

In the hero’s journey there is a victory before the hero returns to the community. In ritual, it’s much more about the change, and often there is no physical victory. Who you are, how you see the world is different. Van Gennep calls this reaggregation, re-entering society with a new status.

The world may look the same, but it is not. You have different knowledge (power, truth, etc.), and you can’t go back to your earlier life. The difference is when the theme is about hidden identities (changelings, shapeshifters), secret truths and revelations, psychological or spiritual descent, nonlinear or dreamlike storytelling. So much more internal than external. I mean, in Campbell, there’s an internal too, but the plot and the action drive the story forward. Here, we have gates or thresholds that move us from one phase of the story to the next.

Because the story is about liminality, it’s a great structure if you want any ambiguity, instability, or multiplicity of self.

The Writer as Shaman

In this model, the writer is guiding a ritual. Think about it, you lead the reader out of the ordinary, hold them in ambiguity, and then bring them back changed. Together, you move between worlds.

Alchemy and Transmutation in Storytelling

Writing the Three Worlds: A Ritual Approach to Storytelling