To play with this definition a bit:
Alchemy is the process of transformation.
Day 1. Calcination: The purifying fire.
Day 2. Dissolution: Stirring the pot.
Day3. Separation: The good and bad.
Day 4. Conjunction: The point of no return.
Day 5. Fermentation: Death & resurrection.
Day 6. Distillation: Refinement in stages.
Day 7. ......
Especially in the West a lot of mixing is going on. Multiculturalism as a concept arose here because it is a reality, with the idea/hope that different cultures can mix into one society where those differences are perceived as adding value, making it stronger, more vibrant.
As opposed to a monoculture that tends to become static and eventually deteriorates into isolationism and weaker genes due to incest. I would associate such monoculture with:
Day 1. Calcination: The purifying fire
A purified culture resulting in a monoculture. It can function for quite a while, until the inevitable winds of change start to "pollute" this organism and bringing it off balance. Dissolution is at the door, creepingly slowly or perhaps with sudden force. Norway comes to mind, but any traditional society relatively unbothered will do.
Day 2. Dissolution: Stirring the pot
All places on earth are now in the process of being stirred. Physically by mass migrations of people and technology, communication and information on an exponential growth curve, it leaves nobody off grid and unaffected.
The growing desire to isolate politically, to conserve what is now exposed to change is a response to the fact that the world as a whole as pretty much one pot being stirred.
The West specifically is at the mercy of this and is now forced to separate "the good from the bad", i.e. it needs to find answers, solutions.
Multiculturalism, it turns out, not only brings juicy fruits and mutual benefits, politically it poses a real challenge: what are the ground-rules that can be embraced by everybody? And who then decides on those ground rules? Which dictatorship will enforce what type of freedom on us?
Day3. Separation: The good and bad
What values can be kept or dismissed? This is the phase the West is in right now. Various values and overlapping interests that happen to co-exist in the mix are locking horns, compete, battle it out. I would label this phase as the
UFC mode of Cultural Alchemy. The mother of all civil wars. A lot of corpses and potentially many more grinning you in the face. But not yet at the point of no return.
Day 4. Conjunction: The point of no return
This is when all variables and parameters are set with brutal causality taking over brittle quantum probabilities. The Olympic Fire is torched, the wave function collapsed. Destruction and Creation shaking hands in a moment of great intimacy.
Day 5. Fermentation: Death & resurrection
To borrow from Air Jordan Peterson:
We who wrestle with God. A match you can never win but... you may resurrect! As an ultimate act of out-maneuvering the Gods. Newborns who survived the onslaught and still free of memory mark a new day. Fermentation, the fumes of blissful oblivion.
Day 6. Distillation: Refinement in stages
Like a nursery home, new realities attended with great care. Feeding, fine tuning, calibrations and celebrations. The inevitable cycle, to further purify and have another Day 1.where things look familiar.