Unfortunately, there are still people who do not understand metaphors at all and believe that alchemical transmutations literally take place on the physical plane.
There are also those who try to give a physical form to what is purely spiritual, turning everything into another farce of a cargo cult.
Transmutation is what we engage in when passing through the Qliphoth. It is spiritual work: without the visualisation of images, the resymbolisation of the Self does not occur.
What distinguishes real alchemy from neurotic alchemy? A person understands the nature of the spiritual and does not try to find the spiritual in matter.
Although Hegel speaks of consciousness in matter, this is quite different from what an ordinary person understands by that expression.
The first stage is distinguishing spirit from matter. Then comes purification—nigredo, the destruction of false cognitions. Only after that is a person ready to apprehend the numinous without the distortions imposed by matter.
Those who have not undergone nigredo cannot think beyond the logic of a cargo cult: matter distorts spirituality. This is how all those so-called “destiny matrices” arise.