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.

What happens next?

Many stories ask this question. Possibly even most stories ask this question. Think of your thrillers, your page-turners, your beach reads—but sometimes deeper things too. We want to rush to the end. The sequence, the clock, the progression pushes us forward.

Now think of about rituals.

They center around things like the moon, the sun, the harvest, the seasons, life stages. These things don’t move forward at all. In fact, some of the things that make ancient civilizations the most sympathetic to me, anyway, are those natural (nature-based) and human things that have nothing to do with progress and everything to do with return. A Roman baby bottle made of terracotta has a blessing on it to (we can only hope) prevent breakage. A girl sleeps in the right place under the right sky to dream of her future husband. An early Icelander (aka Viking) places an object with a rune on it and ties it to a woman’s thigh to protect during childbirth. I can understand these things, these rituals.

The moon has been young for a very long time.

Ritual is a place we return to, but here’s the thing, it’s not redundant or boring. It’s liminal, because each time, it’s not the actions that change, it’s the meaning.

Enter Lord of the Rings.

Remember how Frodo takes a little jaunt out hiking at night, but then he finds a place to rest at Farmer Maggot’s and again at Crick Hollow and again at the Prancing Pony? Come to think of it, Rivendell and Lothlorien are also places where our heroes rest after adventures, after times of stress. If you drew the book, it would be one long stretched Slinky toy. We go off, we encounter danger and stress, and then we get somewhere safe. But for people who like the book, it’s not boring. Why? Because those times of rest and release aren’t doing nothing. They’re not a vacation or a spa. They’re a time of meaning-making where we reflect on what we just went through.

Lothlorien

This is probably the most poignant liminal time of rest and release in the story. (Don’t worry, if you have a different scene you’d fight for, I’d listen to you. But Lothlorien is still a good one.)

What’s just happened? Big stuff. They went through the mines of Moria where they found Balin’s tomb. (If you love The Hobbit, this was pretty emotional.) They almost got lost. Frodo was sort of impaled by a spear. They get chased by a mass of orcs. And then the Balrog. If you know your lore, you know that these guys are trouble. So much trouble that this one kills Gandalf.

The whole party is exhausted and ruined by grief.

So, Aragorn takes them to his (very nearly) grandmother-in-law’s house. Galadriel. And basically, nothing happens. They talk. They eat. They sit around and rest.

Except that this is where they are all tested. This is where the seeds of Boromir’s betrayal are planted. Frodo and Sam learn about the enemy and see what Galadriel would have become if she had taken the Ring. It’s actually a busy, busy section, but only in their hearts, minds, and souls. They reevaluate everything that has gone before, and it takes on new meaning. The Ring was dangerous, sure. But now Sam knows that it is directly tied to the future of the Shire in a very real way. Frodo begins to understand the Enemy at a new level.

Can you describe The Lord of the Rings using Campbell’s Hero’s Journey? Sure. It has the right stuff:

· Call to adventure

· Refusal/hesitation

· Crossing the threshold

· Trials

· Descent into darkness

· Return

Except that at the end, there is no victory, at least, not for Frodo. He is gradually transformed, wounded, diminished, and altered. The story’s central question not about conquering the villain. The story asks, “What happens to a person who bears this burden?”

Now let’s look at how it maps to a ritual narrative structure:

Separation (from the Shire and from an innocent worldview)

Liminality (This is the whole middle of the book. They are constantly having who they are stripped away and are reevaluating what things mean. Not just Frodo—but he is extremely stripped of his identity by the time he reaches Sammath Naur. As in, that’s the whole point of the book: he’s not Frodo anymore, he’s been taken over by the Ring.)

Return (The Shire is changed forever. So is Frodo.)

That liminality section is pretty vague and big. How does it work? Repetition. Stress and release. We do the same pattern, but it means something new each time.

First Repetition

At Bree and Weathertop: Can I resist putting on the Ring? Barely.

Second Repetition

At Rivendell and afterward: Can I carry this burden? Maybe.

Third Repetition

At Amon Hen: Must I carry it alone? The question deepens. The answer is both yes and no.

Fourth Repetition

The Dead Marshes: The burden is now psychological and spiritual. What is the Ring doing to Frodo? Nothing good.

Fifth Repetition

Shelob: The burden becomes suffering and death. Will Frodo fail? Yes. (Note on this: Another time we can talk about eucatatstrophy in Tolkien, but for now, just know that Tolkien’s philosophy is that we are all fallen and doomed to a tragic end, BUT you keep going anyway because it leaves the door open for a miracle. That’s how he answers some of the Christian conundrums between salvation and works.)

Sixth Repetition

Mount Doom: The question finally reaches its center. Can any creature possess absolute power and willingly surrender it? No. No they can’t. Not even Frodo can do it. But enter eucatastrophy and salvation both in spite of and because of doing all we can do.

So, Tolkien sets up these repetitions through stress and release patterns that keep spiraling through. They circle around the question of the Ring again and again, not pushing forward, but taking something big and complex and looking at it through different lenses.

Some of the stress and release moments:

Old Forest → Tom Bombadil

Weathertop → Rivendell

Moria → Lórien

Helm’s Deep → Isengard

Shelob → Field of Cormallen

Tolkien repeatedly allows recovery after crisis. This sometimes frustrates readers expecting plot-driven pacing. But from a ritual perspective, it makes perfect sense.

There are lots of reasons why The Lord of the Rings feels like an old book that comes from tradition rather than one author. One of those is that a plot-driven narrative is not always how stories were constructed in old stories.

Circles and spirals feel old to us because they are. As old as the moon. But not all moons mean the same thing. Rituals help us to know what the moon means for us now and helps us change what the moon means on another night.

That’s the kind of story that a ritual narrative structure tells. And honestly, that’s my kind of story.

Alchemy and Transmutation in Storytelling

The Shape of Ritual, The Shape of Story