anion reagent to form allylic carbinols the vinyl anion reagents useful in this step of the process are compounds having a vinyl anion and a metal cation one example of such vinyl anion reagents is vinyl magnesium bromide although other vinyl metallic halides would be useful as well and should be considered equivalent to vinyl magnesium bromide step c of the present process involves an oxy cope rearrangement to form compounds va and vb in general a strong base which will deprotonate in alcohol is employed in this step one example of which is the combination of 18 crown 6 and kh the enolization of compound vii in step f can be accomplished with a base strong enough to deprotonate a ketone preferably the base is a strong amide base such as lithium hexamethyldisilazide the sulfenylation in step f may be accomplished with trost 39 s sulfenylating agent i e benzenesulfonate s phenyl ester phsso 2 pph although other sulfenylating agents may be employed with substantially equivalent results oxidation of the product of step f may be accomplished by a strong oxidizing agent such as for example naio 4 with respect to the alpha and beta epoxides produced in step h it has been quite unexpectedly found that it is not necessary to separate the alpha and beta products even though the beta form is the desired product and the mixture contains about 20 alpha epoxide the alpha beta mixture can be employed as such in step i with the result being a good yield of the desired product xii without any apparent adverse effect from the presence of the alpha epoxide in the reaction mixture a 250 ml pyrex photochemical.