Just before labeling and publishing the card face images for the SOLVE ⨺ COAGULA sets, I caught an important oversight at the last moment. In the rush of preparing the release, I realized I had not yet checked whether the ordering aligned with the discography of 30 Seconds to Mars—something that, in retrospect, felt essential.
In a recent UNITY LIFE Archive entry, THE SIMULATED ALCHEMY OF JARED LETO IN 30STM & TRON ARES, I explored how the band’s six-album discography appears to map closely onto the seven stages of laboratory alchemy. This framing suggests that the next forthcoming album may function symbolically as a final Coagulation stage. In that archive, I outlined the albums and their corresponding alchemical phases in brief.
Originally, the 7 of 9 system paired each alchemical stage with a major institution of power, or sector. These were arranged as a spectrum : earlier stages reflected less developed or more destructive institutional expressions, while later stages moved toward increasingly integrated and generative forms.
When I cross-referenced this structure with the 30STM album sequence, I was genuinely relieved to discover that nearly all of the correspondences aligned naturally. Only one adjustment was needed. Previously, I had associated Dissolution with the Militia Sector and Separation with the Medical Sector. However, given that the band’s third album is titled This Is War, it became clear that these two stages needed to be switched.
Rather than contradicting my thinking, this change clarified it. I had initially struggled to decide between these two sectors, and in truth, I had instinctively wanted to associate the Medical Sector with Dissolution. My hesitation came from a concern that this might be read as overly personal rather than logically sound. Revisiting the system through the lens of the album sequence brought that intuition back into focus.
While I don’t claim exhaustive expertise in analyzing the 30STM discography through this exact framework, I feel confident in the overall structure and its remaining correspondences. Some connections are immediately apparent, while others invite deeper study — something I look forward to exploring in greater detail in future writing.
The most striking alignments for me were Conjunction with Religion and the Family Unit, resonating strongly with Love, Lust, Faith & Dreams (which contains many references to religion), and Fermentation with the Political Sector, aligning with the overt national and cultural themes of AMERICA (which has a strong USA Nationalism theme). Discovering these parallels was both affirming and creatively energizing, reinforcing the coherence of the system as it continues to evolve.
Here again you can see the table that I created for the UNITY LIFE Archive about alchemy in the 30STM discography.
This was golden to find that this table was right there to support me in quickly researching this important choice :
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