In order to understand the alchemical imagery inherent in the television special Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, one must first understand alchemy itself and the way that it expresses itself in works of art, specifically in literature and film. The goal of alchemy is to achieve the production of the Philosopher’s Stone: an artifact that produced the Elixir of Life and also could transmute base metals (such as lead) into pure gold. In alchemy, the path to the production of the Stone was a sequence of metallurgical/symbolic/spiritual stages known as the Magnum Opus (English: the Great Work). The Work is separated into three convenient stages – nigredo (the blackening), albedo (the whitening), and rubedo (the reddening). In the rubedo, the Stone is produced.
