Alchemy

We take the raw material of our experiences and turn it into art. We lean into our emotional inner lives and draw from them an understanding of who we are and how the world operates. It took me a while to realize how my writing life related to alchemy along. I was told alchemy was about metals. It wasn’t about metals, really, but about emotions–working with them, exploring them, sitting with them, burning in them, being transformed by them into something better, something higher, something stronger. These emotions that we were long told to do away with, to suppress, hold the medicine we seek and offer the healing we need. Writing is one way of accessing this power.

My study of Alchemy began in 2007 during a debilitating healing journey. “I need something that maybe you’re not supposed to tell me about,” I said to my Jungian psychotherapist. We began with Maria Prophitessa’s axiom, “1 becomes 2, 2 becomes 3, and 3 becomes 1 in the 4th.” From there, I read Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist, and after that I delved into Lyndy Abraham’s scorching Dictionary of Alchemical Terms, which looks like a scholarly text, but for me it performed as a Rosetta Stone for metaphors in sacred texts, as well as a guide for anyone engaging the creative process. In these videos I share what I found: a process for allowing our emotions to heal us, if we can have the courage to feel them and move through them. Poetry and essays, for me, have been a means for doing this along. As a teacher, I find that all students move toward their own fire in their writing, and with supported training in craft can move through it skillfully.