The Alchemist’s Journey

Photo by Johannes Plenio on Unsplash

Bath salts? Beetroot juice? Bikram Yoga? Banana-bread? What little things and life’s simple pleasures bring you JOY? For me it is reading about old English folklore, some magical pagan nature ritual or blending an herbal oil. I like transporting myself in my mind to amazing places, like Highdown Hill near my home village back in Sussex, England – the imagination (correctly used) is a powerful tool as a gateway to geography and soul – just as books are literary gateways and portals to meaning. Something as small as brewing a cup of nettle or dandelion herbal tea, rinsing my lockdown locks with beer shampoo, moisturising in evening primrose oil to my face, massaging jojoba oil in my hair or honied beeswax on my lips – I can find many wild edges just in my apartment in the city. I may not be in the woods to summon up earthy natural energies from groves or invoke forces from sacred hilltops and temples – but I can travel in my mind, writing, practice, meditation, and herbalism. I can blend aura sprays for my rooms (to cleanse, clear, banish or prosper), I can blend serenity-in-a-bottle for peace and calm composure, I can practice 20 minutes of mindfulness a day to reach a state of tranquillity and purify dark thoughts with light words. I can help create my own little bottle of liquid luck. I can ground and root myself (even from a condo apartment 17 storeys high) ‘back to earth’ with balancing and centring techniques. I can overcome negativity and remove unwanted blockages trapping energies – just with some simple yoga body and breath working. I can lend my ears to lockdown-listening podcasts to expand my creative powers and be catalysts for ideas. I can create my own mindful and magically inclined mental quarantine. I can pep up positive vibes with Clary sage and Peppermint. I can establish clear thoughts with diffusing Rosemary. I can clean with Hyssop and Spikenard. I can craft botanical works of healing in my home.

^{When dark fears creep in, Lovecraftian machine like nightmares of futures to come, I never let mythic fears of the Old Ones steal my soul. Instead I choose to bathe in thoughts mystical and deep that are light and that serve me and all our mutual flourishing. I can choose to live within the flows of nature and the cosmos. Simple acts like wearing lunar Jasmine on a Monday, chewing Galangal on a Tuesday (for Mars energy), applying a Parsley-base serum or oil as a facial on mercurial Wednesday perhaps with a cup of Fennel tea to soothe fast thoughts, Rosehip oil with Rose essential oil for massage on a Friday and a sunny Chamomile tea with Angelia or Orange to scent a room on a Sunday – there is a recipe for everyday as natural therapy. For the antidote to corona is to re-enchant us – with small practical things, everyday magic. To rise but be rooted, to live slow and full, locally, and ethically. To take a leap of faith into the celestial beyond and to deeply belong to our wild earth below. These are our active choices with which we can shake the world as soul seekers journeying. Recolonise your mind and body, reclaim your aliveness and weave nature into every nook and cranny of your life. Like a master alchemist working on his Prima Materia and Master Work, we must “remove the deadening shadow from the radiance” for within every ouroboros of Chaos lies enclosed inside the tiny seed of Order within. Alchemists it is written must let their work “die before the alchemical water and fire before it can then revivify”.} 

^{We are our own master Alchemist creating our own Master Work, purifying, dissolving and coagulating towards our own Philosopher’s Stone – and that work is ourself. We are each our own alchemical dragon that we are working on and towards. And after being bottled-up for weeks in lockdowns, we must have the courage of green lions to overcome our primal angers and fears. We must evolve and rise like Kundalini snakes to higher spheres of being-ness along the tree of life. Ascendent Serpens. Rise sisters rise. Remove the deadening shadow, bathe in pure waters of clear minds and turn to face the radiance of the post-Corona true sun. Be a dragon of light, with breathe-of-fire healing. Burn the old ways and begin again, anew.}