The Transmutation Of Iron Into Tin

The transmutation of iron into tin is the fifth stage of the Katabasis. This process is a process of softening. The hard edges of iron soften to become the smooth edges of tin. The colour doesn’t change, and neither does any subtle quality, because this transformation is primarily a physical one. This makes it easy for others to notice and understand.

In everyday terms, this transmutation is usually the result of becoming lazy. If the descent from mercury and silver down to copper and iron is a matter of losing the spark, the descent from iron to tin is a matter of losing the drive. The get-up-and-go is gone. A character descending to tin will lose the raw, vital energy that characterises the warrior class.

The frequency of a character undergoing this transmutation is the frequency of a character deciding to take it easy. It’s the energy of kicking back with a cigarette and a pina colada, listening to lounge music and watching golf or cricket on the television. It’s the energy of Dionysus in his role as the Grand Daddy of Festivities. It’s McDonalds on a Saturday morning with a hangover.

In descending from iron, tin becomes fat and slow.

Being a chiefly physical transmutation, the softening to tin is readily noticable to all other characters, even children. A formerly fit character will become fat, whether through gluttony, inactivity or a combination of the two.

There is a strong metaphorical connection between tin and fat. The well-shaped man of iron, in becoming a man of tin, becomes physically shapeless. His physical centre of gravity becomes much lower.

In this physical realm, a stark loss of energy is also noticable. The character of iron can bound up a set of stairs; the character of tin huffs and puffs. Where the man of iron or copper wants to push on, the man of tin wants to stop and have a rest. It’s not just that characters of tin are unfit – by descending from iron to tin, they also lose the will to remain fit, and become easily-satisfied slobs.

Gluttony is the chief vice of the realm of tin, and a character of iron can come to descend through becoming gluttonous. Perhaps they trained hard for a specific sporting event – a league final or a regional tournament – and now, without a particular reason to stay physically disciplined, they pig out.

The descent from iron to tin, and the gluttony associated, doesn’t only apply to food. A character who decided to consume enormous amounts of alcohol or cannabis, such that they became a slob, would also fit the pattern of iron descending to tin. The key element of this transmutation is overconsumption.

Socially, this transformation often occurs immediately after marriage. Many a person will make a special effort to stay trim and fit only as long as they’re trying to attract a romantic partner. Once that partner’s loyalties are secured the blobbening begins. This is similar to the transmutation of iron up to copper in the sense that the priority shifts away from physical fitness. The difference is that, in transmuting to copper, iron concerns itself with higher matters, whereas in transmuting to tin it concerns itself with lower ones.

Mentally, this transmutation is marked by excuse-making. A character descending to tin becomes soft in the head as well as in the body. As the sharp edge of iron is lost, the sharpness of decision-making is also lost. So as a character descends to tin, they start to dither and hesitate. This is, to a major extent, the result of increased levels of fear in comparison to the level of iron.

Putting everything off for another day, and neglecting one’s physical duties, is typical of this transformation. If the descent from copper to iron is marked by a character neglecting their social duties, the descent from iron to tin is marked by a neglect of physical duties. This doesn’t so much refer to personal hygiene (loss of hygiene falls under the final stage of the Katabasis) as neglect of duties such as keeping one’s house clean.

Occupationally, a character might descend to tin when they decide they don’t really care any more. A character who manages a bar might decide, after repeated harassment from local authorities, that they no longer care about obeying alcohol licensing laws. Iron is usually seen as honourable but, from the perspective of tin, it can be seen as rule-bound and rigid. In descending to tin, a character might feel motivated by a will to relax and let go of the stresses of trying to conform to a higher frequency.

This transmutation could also be reflected by a change in occupations. A soldier might decide to become an innkeeper. A hitman might decide to become a musician. A professional boxer might decide to become a chef. In any case, the character would give up a job involved with domination and take on a job concerned with sensual pleasure.

A sudden physical trauma can set in motion the transformation from iron to tin. A major injury, such as a broken leg, could precipitate a mental and spiritual change from an active person to a passive one. The time spent recovering from an injury could make anyone physically soft, but if that time makes the character mentally and spiritually soft as well, then a transition to tin is underway.

Social traumas causing a character to fall down the Mithraic Ladder are generally the preserve of the descent from copper to iron. But, in extreme cases, they can ruin a character’s will, such that they give up and allow themselves to become gluttonous. Getting kicked out of a sports team might be the catalyst to a bout of prolonged gluttony, but a social trauma that led to a descent into the realm of tin would usually be a major one, such as a divorce.

Spiritually, this transmutation can occur when a character stops appreciating the value of action. In successful cases of turning inward, a character might develop higher, spiritual qualities and transmute into mercury or gold. In unsuccessful cases, a character might develop lower, more bestial qualities and transmute into tin. These unsuccessful cases could involve a character taking massive action, only to fail, hence the loss of motivation.

From a literary point of view, this transmutation is understood by all. Everyone who reads your story will be able to understand the basic dilemma of fitness vs. laziness. Stories about this transmutation can therefore have a wide range of themes: they could be moral fables about laziness for children, or grim dissections of a mind falling to pieces for adults.

One of the best-known depictions of this transmutations in popular culture is that of Rocky in the Rocky series of films. As is ever the case, this transmutation need not imply a straight course to the bottom of the Mithraic Ladder. As Rocky was fit, then got fat and lazy, then got fit again, a character who transmutes from iron to tin can always transmute to iron again.

This is an excerpt from Vince McLeod’s The Alchemy of Character Development, the sixth book in VJM Publishing’s Writing With Psychology series. This book will show you how to use alchemy to create deep, realistic and engaging characters for your creative fiction.

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Mentally Ill? You May Actually Be Physiologically Ill

Some of the recent psychological literature has described a seachange in conceptions of mental illness. The old-fashioned model of understanding mental illness in terms of chemical imbalances has been abandoned by experts in the field. In its place is what’s being called the traumagenic developmental model. This reflects the modern understanding that most mental illness is caused by trauma in early childhood.

Throughout much of history, mental illness has been seen as a moral defect. The mentally ill were seen as weak or lazy. A person unable to sleep lacked discipline. Anyone who cried lacked emotional stability. If a person threw up, it wasn’t from stress, but from a refusal to exercise the willpower to prevent it. Social failings were all moral failings.

A mental illness was thereby different to a physical illness, as it had worse implications. A person can have a physical illness without blame. A mental illness is different. People are blamed for being mentally ill in the same way they’re blamed for being criminals. The logic is that they ought to have exerted the necessary willpower or foresight to prevent it, so if they didn’t, it was their fault.

Even the chemical imbalance theory confers some degree of blame. A commonly-heard story is that a person “blew their brains” on drugs, thanks to an irresponsible will, and as a result they’re now mentally defective. Either that or they worked too hard.

The traumagenic developmental theory, by contrast, does not blame mentally ill people for their own conditions.

This relatively new theory holds that the vast majority of behavioural problems are caused by traumatic early childhood experiences, particularly childhood abuse and neglect. Developmental psychology has long stated this, but awareness has taken a long time to reach popular consciousness.

According to traumagenic developmental theory, adverse early childhood experiences can alter the structure of the brain, leading to cognitive difficulties, impulse control problems and an overactive stress response.

The body’s stress response is mostly under control of the HPA (hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal gland) axis. If this axis is chronically overstimulated, emotional regulation becomes very difficult. Growing up with a chronically overstimulated HPA axis can lead to significant alterations in brain function, and thereby behaviour.

The amygdala is a part of the brain that plays a major role in threat detection. In people who have grown up with a constantly active HPA axis, the amygdala develops to see threats all over the place. It’s common for such people to see threats and dangers that aren’t really there. This has an immense negative impact on social function. Such people have a much harder time trusting others, which makes forming relationships difficult.

People who grow up with an overstimulated HPA axis also tend to suffer impaired pre-frontal cortex development. This part of the brain is crucial for emotional regulation. An impaired pre-frontal cortex makes it much harder for a person to rationally and calmly consider their reactions to things. The tendency is to react strongly and often without justification.

Emotionally dysregulated people who see threats everywhere are typical of those who end up getting a mental illness diagnosis, whether it’s depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, Borderline Personality Disorder, C-PTSD or something else. But many of them are not actually mentally ill according to the traditional conception. The damage is in the body – as Bessel van der Kolk says, the body keeps the score. They don’t have psychiatric conditions because the psyche is not damaged. The body is.

Many people out there, suffering from a label of mental illness, ought to ask themselves: am I mentally ill, or just physiologically ill? Because if it’s actually the latter, you might feel better about yourself.

In actuality, many schizophrenia diagnoses might truly be C-PTSD. This is because schizophrenia and C-PTSD are known to overlap heavily in terms of both etiology and symptomology. Both conditions are commonly caused by early childhood abuse and neglect, and both commonly exhibit emotional dysregulation and relationship difficulties.

How many people labour under a schizophrenia diagnosis, believing themselves to be irreparably insane, when they actually have a physiological condition that causes similar symptoms to schizophrenia, but which can be treated much more easily with the right knowledge and approach?

It has been noted that Borderline Personality Disorder and C-PTSD overlap heavily as well, so much so that some are asking if BPD is even a different disorder. As above, how many people labour under a BPD diagnosis, thinking themselves weak or unreasonable, when they actually have a physiological condition that can be treated by avoiding stress?

Hypervigilance is a classic symptom of physiological damage. Many people who have it are not, in truth, “sensitive” or “uptight” but damaged. Such people would be better off being informed about how to downregulate their nervous system in times of need, and not being left to think they had a personality defect or a weakness of will.

Anyone feeling the pain of what Pete Walker calls the inner critic might benefit from asking themselves if the supposed illness of their psyche is not, in fact, an illness of the body.

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The Transmutation Of Silver Into Copper

The third stage in the katabasis is the dullening, which occurs when silver dullens into copper. Having already deteriorated below the level of spirituality in the previous stage, here a character loses some (but not all) of that pro-sociality which demarcates humans from beasts. Herein the vision narrows further, to the level of simpler pleasures.

This descent occurs within the intellectual or mental realm. If silver is high intellectualism, copper is a lower form. As with the other steps of the katabasis, this transmutation implies a narrowing of focus, in this case from social to sexual. This narrowing of focus comes with an increase in animalistic impulses and sentiments.

For the most part, the descent from silver to copper leads to an obsession with sex. Copper is still a fairly high level of the Mithraic Ladder, so the sexual degeneracy here does not imply crimes. A character descending to copper does not become a rapist or child molester. But it does imply the capacity to be brought low by sexual desire.

One of the most common ways for this to happen is for an intelligent person to develop an obsession with their own sexual value. If they start thinking too much about whether they can attract sexual partners, and too little about their social obligations, they can decline from silver to copper.

Developing habits of constant preening and strutting are typical behaviours for a character undergoing this transmutation. Vanity is therefore a common emotion for characters at this stage. The pro-social engagement of the stage of silver becomes slightly more selfish as it becomes copper. As such, a character transmuting to copper can come to neglect social obligations in favour of opportunities to impress the opposite sex.

As alluded to above, a character who degrades from silver to copper won’t undertake antisocial actions for sex – but they will take plenty of asocial ones. The kind of person who goes to university, and then gives up on taking their study seriously to get laid and to watch pornography, is archetypal of this transmutation.

A pornography obsession is emblematic of this descent, which is why a character making it may come to resemble Coomer from Clown World Chronicles. A strained, dope addict-like stupor, constant enervation and sensory dullness, coupled with an inability to appreciate actual women, are the signs of a porn addict.

Sex obsessions in general are emblematic of this level. A relatively high-frequency character who finds themselves engaging in pestering their wife or husband for sex could be making the descent to copper. This can happen to a character at just about any age. As such, it’s not necessary for a character to be old before it becomes possible for them to make the transmutation from silver to copper.

Characters at this level don’t just become dull spiritually, they become dull to talk to. The obsession with sex leads to the stereotypical “One-track mind”. This is especially true if it takes the place of what would otherwise have been meaningful cultural or scientific considerations. So the socialite of the level of silver, in degrading to copper, becomes boring when they used to be charming.

A character making this descent can reveal their degeneracy through an obsession with sexual innuendo and gossip. Where they once focused their minds on intellectual concerns, this discipline appears to falter leading into this stage. In faltering, it becomes degenerate and bestial, but only to a minor extent.

This transmutation can be motivated by a loss of faith in the intellectual world. A character who learns how corrupt academia is might lose their ambitions for intellectual achievement, and might sink that energy into getting laid instead. Another motivation can be a character’s realisation that they will never attain the heights of mercury. A character who understands that they will peak at silver might become resentful, and, in their resentment, allow themselves to slide down the Mithraic Ladder (at least as far as the level of copper).

Insecurity is a feature of all of the levels lower than mercury, and at the level of copper this insecurity typically expresses itself as jealousy. At this level, insecurity is managable but still reasonably powerful. A character of silver who begins to suffer insecurities related to their sexual market value can degrade into copper.

Although silver is generally associated with middle-aged people, this transmutation can easily occur in younger characters. It’s said of many young people that their lives were looking promising until they discovered girls/boys, at which point their academic aspirations were left to decay. This is a typical form of this transmutation.

For middle-aged characters, this transmutation can occur as part of a mid-life crisis. Male menopause can make a character insecure, and that insecurity can find expression in a desire to date younger women. The stereotypical middle-aged man buying a sportscar and trying to attract women in their 20s is probably undergoing this transmutation.

Taking a mistress is a typical example of behaviour at this stage, as is a woman who becomes a cougar and takes on a toyboy. This is doubly true if the relationship with the younger person leads to a loss of social status for the older one.

Another example of behaviour typical for characters making the descent from silver to copper is infidelity. Giving in to one’s lower urges to reproduce, at the expense of one’s marriage and social standing, pulls a character out of the realms of the precious metals and back into the prosaic. In degrading to copper, a character proves that there’s little truly special about them.

Fighting over women is also a feature of this stage, although the fighting tends to be social and not physical. Where the character of iron throws fists, the character of copper tends to throw words. If the transmutations to tin and lead involve major sexual degeneracies, the transmutation from silver to copper is about a large number of more moderate errors.

Herein it must be emphasised that the descent to copper does not imply that a character become a rapist or any kind of sexual abuser. That kind of behaviour is the speciality of the character of lead.

Neither is it even necessary for this stage to involve sexual relations or romance. The transmutation from silver to copper could be made by a character becoming cheap, stingy or miserly for some reason. Alchemical copper generally refers to the affairs of Aphrodite, but the term also covers the crude merchantry of trade.

A character who failed as a scholar and was forced to become a relatively lowly sales clerk could be a story of this level. So could an inventor who sells a fraudulent product, knowing that it isn’t as good as claimed. A lot of story arcs that involve a decent person selling low-quality products, because they need the money desperately, could fit under this transmutation.

One well-known depiction of this descent in popular culture is the character of Glenn Quagmire in The Family Guy. Quagmire is charming, intelligent and usually pro-social, but also perverted. This perversion prevents him from achieving the social status that his intellect might have suggested he reach.

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VJMP Anzac Day Address 2024: The Common Enemies Of The Anzac Nation

It was recently shown in an IPSOS poll that populist sentiments are becoming common among New Zealanders. These sentiments are mostly shared by Australians as well. Both countries are suffering under a callously indifferent ruling class, who democracy seems only to entrench. One of the best arguments for the unity of the Anzac nation is that Australia and New Zealand have common enemies.

These common enemies are both external and internal.

Externally, the Anzac nation is beset by communists and capitalists, who have subjugated the West under their unholy alliance known as “globohomo”. This alliance is a globalist one. The people who make up the leadership of this alliance have no national home, but rather, like John Key, live wherever profits them the most at any given time.

The communists are a motley alliance of Western grifters, invariably middle-class, who have declared war on the working classes of Western nations on the excuse that those working classes refused to support globalist revolution. They are so lost in the labyrinths of their own ideology that they have lost touch with reality completely: they are willing to deny any science or history if doing so would further globalist revolution.

Communists, especially the brown communists, see Australia and New Zealand as settler nations, and therefore illegitimate constructs. If the lands cannot be handed back to the natives, then they must be converted into the common property of all of humankind. This means that infinite foreigners can be imported, and the Anzac people have no right to complain about it.

The global working class was prophecised to unite across national borders by Marx himself. This prophecy is being engineered by the world’s communists, who feel it their duty to destroy all national borders and all national consciousness, those being impediments to the rise of class consciousness.

The capitalists don’t care so much for ideology. They are chiefly concerned with the sober business of wealth extraction. Their main concern is keeping the immigration taps running on full bore, because that maximises rents and minimises wages. Because they own all the rental property, and because they hire all the workers, the capitalists are the major beneficiaries of mass immigration.

For this reason, the capitalists hate the nations: nations are icky things that tend to come together and form unions and enforce labour laws. Nations tend to care about their members not being able to afford housing. Nations tend to pass laws restricting cheap labour importation. Much better to break the nations up, the capitalists reason, into a mindless herd of individualised consumers, indifferent to each other’s suffering. More profit that way.

Both of these forces, both communist and capitalist, constitute a globalist alliance whose interests are implacably opposed to that of the Anzac nation. As globalists, they seek to disenfranchise and disempower the Anzac nation, to confuse us, to strike us ignorant of our history, and of the legacy our ancestors built with the intention that we would inherit it.

These forces couldn’t care less about the actual people with roots in the soil of the lands of the Southwestern Pacific. The actual Anzac nation. These forces have, in fact, done everything they could to impoverish and tyrannise us. Young Anzacs today have almost no chance of buying homes with money from their wages. Our younger generations today are worse off, in homeownership terms, than young people in countries that were Third World a few decades ago.

Qatar, by contrast to the Anzac countries, gives its citizens housing grants of up to 1,200,000 Qatari reals, about AUD500,000. There are no student loans in Qatar. The Qatari Government appears to operate on a logic similar to that of Scandinavian countries in the 1970s: that investing in their own people will produce great dividends in years to come.

We Anzacs, by contrast, are put to work for monkey wages that will never pay for houses. Forget housing grants – our ruling class imports hundreds of thousands of cheap labour units every year to compete with us for housing. Forget Scandinavian logic also. Investing in our people is considered a loss of profit for this quarter.

These external forces, however, would have very little influence had the Anzac nation not already been losing the battle to internal forces. These internal forces are spiritual ones. It’s as true for us as it was for Fight Club – our Great War is a spiritual war.

This spiritual war involves finding the right balance in all of the various realms of spiritual life. We must find the middle path between rashness and cowardice, between gluttony and melancholy, between pride and debasement. Finding that middle path has been difficult, because we have been pulled to and fro by the adharmic philosophies like Abrahamism and scientific materialism.

It’s time for the Anzac nation to forge our own spiritual path, and therefore our own moral path, through the morass of confusion that has befallen the West in the Post-Truth Age.

For anyone descended from the British, of course, our primary spiritual enemies are nihilism and greed.

The nihilism comes from the great void in the centre of our spiritual life. Young Anzacs are not interested in fables about Rabbi Yeshua, and the old myths about Wotan rising from the mist and fog are too distant for the warm lands of Anzac. The great Anzac spiritualities are yet to manifest; our gods are still, for now, dormant. When a true Anzac spiritual movement arises, and when the Anzac gods rise with it, this rising will banish nihilism from our souls.

The greed comes from the grandiosity that is the inheritance of the British Empire. As with all creations of the City of London, the Anzac countries are operated to turn a profit and not to help the Anzac nation meet their needs of life. A political revolution, on nationalist grounds, would allow us to assert a new set of values: one that puts our life quality higher than the mere generation of dollars.

The common enemies of the Anzac nation are not many, but they are powerful. Communists and capitalists, nihilism and greed provide both outer and inner enemies that we must wrestle with in coming decades. These are powerful foes, and their power incites us to come together, morally and spiritually, as one people.

For more of VJM’s ideas, see his work on other platforms!
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