The true Alkahest—as I wrote it—is drawn up and out of these noble but mundane ingredients in a similar fashion, by a kind of necessity. It is a piece of soul stuff not deriving from the matter in the crucible but permitted into the human world by their conjunction. The ritual is not a prayer, but a species of geometry which opens the doors of the universe to what lies outside it. The ingredients are a door, and the lock must be undone by the pain of a human soul. (Yes, yes, I was maudlin drunk by this time, and growing Homeric. Let it be.) So this part is simple: you hold your pain—all your sorrow, your sin, your self-despite and guilt, your shame—in your hand above the crucible, and let it call out in supplication to the raw blood of the divinity, and that blood will rise up towards you, and where it touches you, you are made whole, and more. If you want to lift it to someone else, you must temper your pain and shape it as a cup. The only vessel that will contain the Alkahest is the agony of the heart that calls it up. The process is one of self-sacrifice. With practice, I wrote—rather smugly, it seems to me now—you can control your own needs, and meet the needs of others.