Being an Energy Alchemist in Life and Service Today
An Introduction to Energy Alchemy
World-renowned author Paulo Coelho published his best-selling book The Alchemist in 1988. It tells the story of a young boy, Santiago, who follows the call of his heart and intuition to pursue his “personal legend” and ultimately his destiny. Along the way, he confronts challenges and discovers mystical powers and a deep connection to a vast, interwoven universe. Today, this book remains one of the most recognized and widely read contemporary stories of spiritual awakening and alchemy. When I finally read it in 2023, wherever I carried it—whether to a café or restaurant or on the street—strangers struck up spontaneous conversations with me to express their genuine adoration for it.
Alchemy has long been associated with the idea of turning lead into gold or the creation of a mysterious elixir of life or “Philosopher’s Stone” which could grant its partaker immortality. Images of ancient, secretive alchemists working in smoky labs still linger in our imagination when the word alchemy emerges. Although laboratory experiments and medicinal elixirs are still a part of alchemy, the true essence of alchemy is about something else entirely. It’s about inner transformation: realizing that we ourselves, and in a human body, are the vessel or crucible for awakening, change, healing, and mastery in life.
More and more people today are seeking paths of knowledge and awakening - to attain higher truths about reality, for personal integration, and personal power. Whether realized or not, at the heart of these quests—much like that of Coelho’s Santiago—is an energetic calling to elevate our frequency and a calling to alchemy. To me, an energy alchemist is someone who realizes they are not just made of matter, but of energy—and that energy must always move and change forms. Alchemy, in its origins and at its core, is the art and science of transformation. Life-force energy (Chi) flows through all living things and to live in a state of well-being is to live in balance and harmony with this flow and in alignment with cosmic, divine, and natural laws. So, an alchemist is someone who works with transformative energetic tools and systems like alchemy using their awareness and intent—consciously.
Alchemists choose tools, frameworks, and even spiritual paths that accelerate their personal evolution. An effective alchemist doesn’t rebel against systems and structure as a rule, in order to "go with the flow," and leave things to chance or fate. The light of an energy alchemist is always growing and expanding. The light of the illumined alchemist seeks to know itself amidst the darkness by facing shadows, dissolving the negative/destructive, unconscious ego, and embracing parts within themselves (and in others) to continue to expand their light and live from an aligned purpose. The energy alchemist writes their story as they live it—not just reading about or living someone else's.
If you take away even a single idea from this article, let it be this: modern alchemy is not really about deciphering old cryptic books and a mystical language of esoteric symbols or learning the nuanced tricks of manifestation—though it can lead to enhanced powers of manifestation and working with magickal symbols and keys. It’s about aligning your life to your purpose and living a devotional path of transformation and self-mastery. It’s about developing a very sacred intimacy with the Self, purifying the essences of who you truly are, letting go of what isn’t true for you, and becoming strong and whole. You can learn more about me and my journey as an energy alchemist here.
Grief as Sacred Initiation
From Bessel van der Kolk’s The Body Keeps the Score to the teachings of Gabor Mate, Teal Swan, Lorin Krenn, and institutions like The Relationship School and Trauma Healing Institute, our awareness of a global pandemic of unresolved core emotional wounding in humanity has grown. As the saying goes: "hurt people hurt people." Thus, for those that do not choose to become pattern breakers, the chains of inter-generational trauma and suffering continues to ripple out from us into our world and get passed on through the DNA into the future.
Today, in somatic therapy approaches we don’t really need the full stories or re-lived experiences to release or re-integrate stuck traumatic energies. While reclaiming our stories can help, the most profound keys are innately built-in and powerful—not of the mind, nor our hands, nor any modern technology or tool. What’s simply needed is of the heart. Chiefly, the human will to grieve. In essence, grief is an activation or initiation of what is referred to in alchemy as the Stage of Dissolution. Everyone cries now and then, but grieving fully and completely is a sacred and profound act of will that for most of us requires a certain level of self-intimacy and practice. If as children we were taught that emotional outbursts and tears were unacceptable and unsafe then we probably we lost contact with our own grief mechanism and shut that particular power faucet off. Truth is that a conscious, graceful ability to grieve something to completion is one of the most radical and impactful acts of healing and transformation. In this particular moment of human history—marked by violent crime, interpersonal conflict, divorces, significant mental health disorders, climate and economic instability, and apparent disconnection from our own intimacy, from eachother, and from God—grief may be one of the most essential alchemical tools we have. And, what if the most basic key to repairing what’s become shattered in our world and our relationships was always there right in front of us—in the mirror, in plain sight.
For the energy alchemist, grief is honored as the entry point to a sacred portal of personal transformation. Through grief work we become whole again. From doing our own grief work we repair and reclaim trust, courage, and capacity for loving presence–with ourselves and with others. In the process of true transformation, we must still choose to change our mind’s habits and behaviors–but typically it is heavy and uncomfortable emotional charges still lingering in the body which hold us locked down in destructive cycles keeping us from living the life we actually want. And especially true in our intimate relationships where we received the deeply cutting and bruising experiences that formed the core of our wounds in the first place.
Karmic Patterns as Creative Material for Change
In Hermeticism, the concept of karma is referred to as the Law of Cause and Effect. "Karma" is an ancient Indian Sanskrit word meaning "action" or “deed” and it refers to the idea that actions lead to certain consequences or outcomes. Though often used to explain someone’s misfortune, karma was and is sacred material to the alchemist. Recognizing a karmic pattern—especially our own—becomes a valuable gift.
One of the fundamental areas of alchemical study, particularly in lab alchemy, is centered on working with metals. Particularly how to transmute lesser value metals into higher ones. Interestingly, the base metal lead, known to be heavy, dirty, and ultimately toxic, also holds within it the spark of its own transformation. When ground to a fine powder, lead requires a vacuum storage to keep it stable; once exposed to oxygen it will easily combust into flames and transform itself. In this same way, all karmic patterns hold within them the doorways or opportunities to evolve and change their trajectory or outcome. To turn lead into gold. Most often we just need the keys to unlock those doorways within us.
As a healer of others, committed to a life of personal transformation and taking responsibility for patterns and opportunities handed to me by my own childhood and by my ancestors, I’ve come to know what it means to be human in many parts. At the essence of who we are, we are eternal and multi-dimensional beings living a physical life amidst the cosmos. We create and live life through constant transformation of matter and energy. Within us is feminine (yin) and masculine (yang) energy—regardless of gender identity or sexuality. Within the feminine energy, just as it is with the masculine, there are other polarities and essences as well. We are all made of heavenly essences (Sulfur/Mercury/Salt) and divine feminine/masculine energy. There are also earthly elements (Earth/Water/Air/Fire) and dark feminine/masculine energy.
Understanding the energetic building blocks and structures within us and their roles in our alchemical lives is a crucial piece—a crucible—to achieving a level of wholeness and peace within us that endures. Understanding what we’re made of, like the energetic constituents of a tincture, and knowing how to harness those powers is essential to mastering the creative aspects of this life and the many material things in it. Our light and dark polarities and even the unintegrated shadows within serve us—particularly when we’re ready to work with them more consciously. Please note that dark feminine and dark masculine energy (not the same as the shadow feminine/masculine) are some potent materials to harnesses, revere, and honor! Even the personal shadow—a person’s unintegrated negative behaviors/distortions/doubts/fears/ anger/terror, etc.—exist to service as opportunities for strengthening of the light within us. Again, turning lead into gold. Light would not otherwise know itself in a human form if it did not first have to shine itself upon the shadows and darkened spaces of life.
As a space and personal energy alchemist, I recognize that our environments impact us in the same way as the impact of our personal energy has upon them. Therefore, I also see that making energetic shifts in our workplaces, homes, and outdoor spaces is an essential ingredient in transforming lives. As the esoteric saying goes “As Above, So Below, As Within, So Without, As the Soul, So the Universe.” This means that cosmic (Above) and earthly (Below) realms always reflect each other. The inner world (within us) vastly shapes the outer world (outside of us) and greatly paints our view of reality. The microcosm of the soul is structured upon the macrocosm of the universe, and vice versa. These ancient concepts shed light upon an interwoven connectedness and are filled with wisdom. As a feng shui consultant I apply an understanding of concepts like these in working with and serving my clients to overcome old, undesirable patterns. And as an energy alchemist—I live by them.
All along my path I have provided services to others and today I use a suite of holistic tools like DNA Life Activation, shamanic healing, Ensofic reiki, Feng Shui, 9 Star Ki, emotional cord cutting/personal energy clearings, crystal gridding, intuitive readings, and even design of healing and sacred gardens. Some of the DNA and energy body activation tools I use are specifically designed and aimed at accelerating the resolve of negative karmic patterns. And in truth, I also work with clients to create realistic expectations for the awakening and healing journey. Very little in one’s unresolved core issues will be resolved by a single session or single act of self-love—but it can be a real beginning of a pattern shift if they continue to pursue their healing and wholeness and personal alchemy on-going. It can be a life-long pursuit to heal and grow and overcome core wounds, trauma, and karmic patterning. Therefore, there is real value and benefit in pursuing a lineage spiritual path that provides the structure and disciplined training for learning to live as a pattern shifter. Contact me to learn more about the Mystery School path I serve clients from.
Fire and Water: The Alchemical Path of Love
In alchemy, the elements of fire and water are associated with the first two key stages of transformation—Calcination and Dissolution. There are elemental energies (earth, water, air, fire, sulfur, mercury, salt) at play in nearly all stages and cycles of alchemical transformation from beginning to end and we are ourselves are made of and meant to move with these energies. To be an energy alchemist is to purify all these elements within us through all stages of a life’s transformative process. In particular, working with fire within us leads to the awakening of one’s awareness about our shadowed thoughts, distorted beliefs, judgements, and emotional reactivity. In working with water we then become willing to break-down, surrender, dissolve, and let go of the emotional wounds and negative emotional energies protecting those outdated thoughts, beliefs, and behaviors of the ego—all of it a protective mechanism to “keep us safe from changing”. However it’s change which actually the natural state, not stagnancy. The path of alchemy is for the lion-hearted, not the faint of heart. Those willing to burn, dissolve, separate, and re-combine themselves again and again within the transmuting crucible or container of their own devotional love. A conscious, alchemical path is a commitment to loving one’s shadow back into the fold of the light within. It is not an easy one, though ease in the process does come.
We’ve all had our share of personal relationships and experiences that left scars and tender places in our hearts. We bear the legacies and weights of those wounds until we choose to face them and let wounds heal. As we’ve discussed there is an inherited legacy—a backlog of opportunity left to us within the DNA by our ancestors. So, in acknowledging that, I would ask, how does one keep the wounded heart open to work with the elements of fire and water and choose to face the heavy lead within?
Opening our hearts to our own intimacy (and intimacy with others) amidst our vulnerabilities means a wounded heart must be willing to open and remain accessible through the pleasures and the pains that emerge through greater connection (with self or others). Keeping a wounded heart open through a personal healing journey and through our transformative relationships with others becomes a faithful act of will and trust. In so many ways this becomes an alchemical art form. A self-art comprised of daily choices and practices to transform emotional energies. Keeping the wounded heart open is also about learning to master mindset and what we believe about what we experience and to realize it's our opportunity and an honor to grieve through all the discomfort we feel. In grieving we transform everything. I believe that the purest energetic essence of who and what we are is divine and enduring Love. It is the moving energetic force of Light, and thus its more manifested form, Love, that transforms our physical forms and lives—when we allow their presence into the darkest cracks. And it’s specifically through the spectrums and polarities of a human life that the presence of divine love and light can come to know and understand itself. It is in a human form that we come to know ourselves as God (or god-like) precisely because of the sheer strength of will and devotion it takes in human lives to overcome what Love and Light is not.
Faith and the Power to Choose Love
Some people may find themselves on a path of devotional love through a religious tradition. Others will find it true for themselves on a yogic or Tantric path. And some may find it solely through their intimate relationships and marriages or by becoming a devoted parent to a child. Others still who go un-partnered or do not bear or raise children by either choice, karmic contract, or circumstance, may find a path of divine love and devotion within themselves through pursuing personal growth. Whichever route is taken, if there is a true commitment to embodying devotional love, the path will confront challenges to a degree that faith will emerge as a necessary tool.
Faith is more than optimism and more than hope or belief; it is a wielding of devotional love’s strength to keep a heart open when closing down and retreating from a confrontive conversation would be easier or to trust yourself or another to choose love when trusting comes under question. Spiritual bypassing by avoiding real problems or focusing on "love and light" only can also prevent real growth. Love and trust (particularly in relationships with others) should not be given blindly. However, we can choose to love devotionally and have compassion for ourselves and others through all trials, separations, divorces, and endings. Even a separation can be a new beginning in progression towards devotional love if it was best for yourself (and others) to break free and move on. Whichever the outcome of a relationship experience along an alchemists path, we need faith’s power to choose loving actions in all circumstances and to face the discomforts of a transformative process.
My Role as an Energy Alchemist
I came into direct contact with the energetic universe and my own energetic nature in 2013 during an over-seas trip to the island nation of Fiji. During that trip I had what is coined a “self-initiation.” A physically and emotionally intense awakening in which my energy body turned on to such a degree I could feel the sheer force of divine Love coursing through me, especially through my crown and heart, and during which I received the very clear and resonating thought “God is real.” It was an experience that changed the trajectory of my life and led to numerous cycles of physical and emotional healing, a reclaiming of my own authentic joy and well-being, and an unleashing of my authentic creativity and gifts and how I could be of higher service in the world. Since that awakening, I’ve lived a life in tune with the universe’s synchronicities and magick, rather than the mundanity of mere daily coincidences. Events and connections have opened countless paths and doorways of karmic patterns and contracts to learn, resolve, and fulfill and I have come to know and transform myself more and more. Life is immensely rich and filled with joy when viewing and creating it in this way. When I finally ready Paolo Coehlo’s The Alchemist in 2023, the book came alive for me and not just because it's a wondrous, entertaining story of archetype and adventure, but because in my own way I’ve lived it.
The foundations of Feng Shui teach us that our spaces are not just mere objects to be re-arranged but are our soul’s reflected opportunities to grow and break karmic patterns. To become an energy alchemist in this life, on the land, and in the places and spaces we inhabit, is to become a fire and water tender—a karmic gate keeper within the inner chambers of the heart devoted to intimacy and accountability with all shadows (inner and outer) that slow or stagnate one’s life force energy. Guiding clients through their own transformative self-development work along side the transformation of their spaces is my approach and what being an energy alchemist is all about. So, I do not clear, cleanse, or work with the energy of a space without helping my clients also transform themselves and their lives as well.
Final Reflections
The most important points on energy and alchemy I invite you to commit to memory moving forward are:
You are energy that has a physical body, not a body that has energy.
Alchemy is the art and science of transformation.
Alchemy remains an alive and vibrant energetically and physically transformative process today; happening to us, through us, and all around us every day at every scale of existence and dimensional reality.
Inner and outer shifts in life are equally vital for creating real change.
By honoring the process of “letting go” physically, mentally, and emotionally we create the space within the soul to receive the love, beauty, and prosperity we desire in our lives.
By choosing to commit ourselves to a path of devotional love, as an alchemist, we grow stronger at bringing the transformative power of divine love to every situation in life - particularly our own healing and shadow integration.
Right now, pause and take a deep breath. Tune your attention inward and ask yourself:
What whispers, aches, or speaks within my mind and my body?
Am I attuned to my own heart, its rhythms, sensations, and messages?
What’s my relationship with grief and grieving?
How frequently do I allow emotional energies to be visible, held, moved, and flow through me?
Have often do I allow the part of me which is Love to become present with the parts of me or others in need?
The Invitation
You might begin the personal practice of an energy alchemist with 5-10 minutes a day of mindful presence with your thoughts, the sensations within the body, and any feelings or emotions that emerge. Observation is a great start to awareness. To go further (as the alchemist would): seek the support and guidance of a somatic and trauma-informed therapist, a relationship coach, a certified grief counselor, an energetics consultant, or a spiritual guide. And if you’re truly ready to embody alchemy I highly recommend seeking initiation into a lineage tradition of spiritual growth and development that teaches alchemy and that resonates for you. As an initiate, Kabbalist, Alchemist, healer, and teacher with the Modern Mystery School, I am happy to share more about that path and how to begin it. It all starts with a DNA Life Activation and I offer one-on-one self-development sessions that include it.
Know whichever path of learning and growth you choose, the desires to overcome negative patterns in order to live more authentically and energetically alive, with love, passion, and in joy - is a spiritual awakening and a calling to your personal legend! Do not discount this!
It is the cosmic call to be hooked up and attuned to the divine will within seeking to move freely through you to progress and know yourself and live this life to its fullest. The way we go about this is by trusting and being willing to step into the unknown – to find the people, paths, systems, structures, resources, and tools in this life that work for us in creating real movement, change, and progression. I invite you to trust the unfolding energetic process in your life and to have the courage and willingness to walk the Path of the Alchemist that you are.
