5 Things I’ve Learned From Studying Alchemy
am someone who tends to get distracted by white rabbits.
I’ll see something that catches my attention, follow it down its long, winding, sometimes very dark little home, and before I know it I’ve spent weeks completely absorbed and changed forever(not to sound dramatic or anything)…
Alchemy has been one of those rabbits.
I started pulling on the thread because I wanted to understand what alchemy actually was. I wanted to get past the usual image of an old man in a dark laboratory trying to turn lead into gold. Were these cryptic illustrations similar to tarot cards? Illuminating something deep in our subconscious? And the further I followed it, the stranger and more beautiful it became.
Digging deeper into this art I have become much more interested in why they were so obsessed with transformation in the first place.
Oh, and what really surprised me was that I realized just how deeply alchemy is connected to the history of philosophy, mysticism, and esoteric thought.
You might be surprised what familiar names show up entangled in the art of alchemy; Plato, Aristotle, Pythagoras, Socrates, Hermes Trismegistus.
And then later you encounter people like Zosimos of Panopolis, Jabir ibn Hayyan, Albertus Magnus, Paracelsus, Isaac Newton, and countless other philosophers, physicians, scholars, and seekers who became interested in the strange relationship between matter, Nature, spirit, and transformation.
Alchemy grew out of much older philosophical and esoteric traditions. People like Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle were not alchemists themselves(the tradition of alchemy as we know it came centuries later) but their ideas helped shape the intellectual world that alchemy emerged from.
Aristotle’s ideas about matter, form, potential, and transformation became especially important to later alchemists, while Platonic and Hermetic traditions contributed ideas about the relationship between the physical and invisible worlds. Later alchemists inherited and built upon many of the philosophical questions they had been asking for centuries like what is matter? How does Nature transform things? What is the relationship between the physical and spiritual worlds? And perhaps most importantly, what does it mean for something to become something else?
So when I say that alchemy is philosophical, I don’t mean that as some modern reinterpretation where we’re taking an old chemistry experiment and turning it into a metaphor.
There truly are philosophical roots are actually there. Alchemy grew out of a much older obsession with understanding what reality is made of, how things change, what Nature is, what the relationship between matter and spirit might be, and whether there is some underlying unity behind all of these seemingly separate things.
And that is what really pulled me deeper into this hole. Alchemy is just a branch that is a much larger conversation that humanity has been having for thousands of years. I think that’s why I keep following this particular white rabbit. Because every time I think I’ve reached the bottom, there’s another door. And behind that door is another question.
People often ask me, “How and why did you even begin to study alchemy?” And honestly I think it was my existential dread that lead me here lmao Maybe your existential dread has led you to me? As you may know, maybe not if this is your first time here, I am on a quest to understand reality and the mysterious natures of being human. So if you are interested in that too, alchemy is an amazing(definitely challenging, though) place to begin that search or deepen it.
Studying alchemy felt like I was studying a philosophy of being human.
So, after falling quite deeply down this particular rabbit hole, So these are five things I’ve learned from studying alchemy that have genuinely changed the way I look at life.
1. Nature cannot be rushed
Nature is the most important thing to the alchemist. Nature is their greatest teacher.
The alchemist wasn’t supposed to work against Nature or violate nature in any way, shape, or form! In fact, the Rosarium Philosophorum says that those who work beyond Nature are deceivers and work unlawfully.
The idea was that Nature had already figured out transformation. The alchemist’s job was to observe her and to understand her processes. The alchemist is to imitate those processes and to assist Mother Nature in finishing what she had already begun.
I have read quite a few ancient alchemical text and just about every alchemist says that if you do not understand the principles of nature you can never do alchemy. One of my observations of nature is that she is incredibly patient.
You cannot rush nature, everything has its natural process. A rose doesn’t bloom because you told it that it’s time, it opens slowly petal by petal, and it is one the most beautiful processes. We should all be more like roses, take your time to be in full bloom, the unfolding is the most beautiful and exciting part. I know most of us ( even myself) just what to know what we are becoming, to know when do things get better, when we will be at full bloom and what that even looks like.
Our culture is constantly trying to rush rush rush but nature doesn’t work like that. And we are part of nature. Alchemy has taught me to respect this process of unfolding and not to rush it, because if you rush it, you may just end up ruining it. If you rush the process of creating a baby, or a seed to grow into a tree, or unfurling a rose, it could have devastating consequences.
2. Transformation requires dissolution
This is probably one of the most uncomfortable lessons in alchemy but its something we have all experienced or will experience. Again and again. Before something can become something else, it has to be broken down.
The first stage of the Great Work is often associated with Nigredo—the blackening.
It’s the stage of dissolution, decay, darkness, decomposition.
And I think it’s easy to look at that and say nope I’m good. We love transformation when it looks beautiful. We love the butterfly. We don’t love the part where everything has dissolved inside the chrysalis…
But the alchemists understood that transformation isn’t just about becoming. It’s also about ceasing to be what you were and that’s a much harder thing to accept. I’ve been someone who was deeply afraid of inner change because, for a long time, change felt like death. It felt like the person I was would cease to exist, and that somehow I would be the one responsible for killing her. I felt as though if I became someone new that it meant I would be betraying the person I had been.
But Nature doesn’t really ask for our permission to change.
She transforms everything… eventually.
And I think she gives us a choice in how we meet that transformation. She can drag us out of an old version of ourselves, kicking and screaming, forcing us to let go of what we refuse to release. Or, if we learn to trust the process, we can let ourselves be carried through it, slowly, almost gracefully, into something new.
Either way, we are changing.
The question is whether we resist the transformation until it breaks us open, or whether we learn to surrender to it and allow ourselves to evolve.
I think that’s a very human version of Nigredo. It’s uncomfortable because we’re standing between identities but sometimes we need to allow ourselves to dissolve. Nature doesn’t skip decomposition. It is a necessity. The forest floor is full of things that have died, and yet that death becomes nourishment for everything that comes next.
The alchemists weren’t inventing this idea, they were observing it.
Nature doesn’t consider dissolution a failure. Maybe we shouldn’t either.
3. Opposites are not always meant to fight
Alchemy is filled with pairs of opposites.
Sun and Moon.
Masculine and feminine.
Active and receptive.
Matter and spirit.
Mercury and Sulfur.
The alchemists were extremely interested in their union. You see this constantly in alchemical imagery: the King and Queen coming together, the Sun and Moon being united, two seemingly opposing principles becoming one. We’re often taught to think in terms of opposites.
Light or darkness.
Strength or softness.
Logic or intuition.
But what if the goal isn’t to eliminate one side or even balance the two? What if wholeness requires the merging of both? There are parts of ourselves that are incredibly active and parts that are receptive. There are times when we need to act and times when we need to wait.
Maybe maturity isn’t choosing which part of ourselves is “right.”
Maybe it’s learning how to let seemingly opposite parts of ourselves communicate. This is one of the reasons I find the alchemical marriage of the Sun and Moon so fascinating.
The Sun illuminates. The Moon reflects.
One gives light. The other receives and transforms it.
Neither is the enemy of the other, they exist within the same system. And maybe that’s true of us too.
4. Learning isn’t the same thing as seeing
This might be one of my favorite things about studying alchemy.
The texts are incredibly cryptic. A single word can mean different things depending on the context. A substance can simultaneously be a physical substance and a symbol.
A death can be a literal death...or dissolution.
A marriage can be a marriage...or the union of two opposing forces.
And the alchemists seemed completely comfortable with this ambiguity. They weren’t interested in handing you a dictionary where every symbol had one fixed meaning. They wanted you to learn how to see.
You can memorize what Mercury symbolizes.
You can memorize what the Moon represents.
You can read ten books about alchemy. And still not understand what you’re looking at.
Because knowledge and perception aren’t the same thing. I’ve started thinking about this outside of alchemy too. You can know the medicinal properties of a plant without ever having a relationship with the plant. You can know the symbolism of the Moon without ever sitting outside and watching it move through its phases.
You can read about Nature for years and never actually let Nature teach you anything. Sometimes I think we’ve become so accustomed to consuming information that we’ve forgotten how to contemplate and apply it to real life.
We’re constantly asking:
What does this mean?
Maybe sometimes we should ask:
What do I notice?
That’s a very different question and I think that is what the alchemists were trying to teach.
5. The Great Work is probably much closer than we think
The more I study alchemy, the harder it becomes for me to think of the Great Work as something that happened exclusively inside a medieval laboratory.
The more you look at the symbolism, the more it starts to sound like a description of being human.
Dissolution.
Purification.
Union.
Death.
Rebirth.
Integration.
Transformation.
We go through these processes constantly.
We lose things.
We change.
We outgrow identities.
We become someone we couldn’t have imagined being five years earlier.
We break apart and somehow become more whole.
And this brings me back to the Philosopher’s Stone.
I have a theory about what I think the Philosopher’s Stone actually is.
Personally, I think every person has access to it. Well maybe that’s not so much a personal opinion because the alchemist literally say everyone has access to it lol
But I’m not going to tell you what I think it is yet.
Partly because I’m still refining my own understanding but also because I don’t want to obscure your mind with my interpretation before you’ve had the chance to sit with these ideas yourself. That’s something I’ve truly come to appreciate about alchemy.
The alchemists didn’t always give you the answer.
They gave you the symbols and then they asked you to do the work and decode them.
So I want to do the same thing with you.
I’m currently exploring the Rosarium Philosophorum in a four-part podcast series, where I’m going through the text and trying to decode some of these symbols and ideas through the lens of philosophy, Nature, and the human psyche.
And I’d genuinely love to know what you think the Philosopher’s Stone is.
Don’t look it up or even worry about getting the “right” answer.
Just sit with it!
What do you think the alchemists were actually searching for?
Bringing the Great Work into ordinary life
This is also a big part of why I created Sanguis Draconis. I don’t want ancient knowledge to remain trapped inside old books. I want to create little physical invitations to engage with it!
Sanguis Draconis is a monthly letter club centered around alchemy, philosophy, esotericism, symbolism, poetry, art, and ritual.
Each month, you’ll receive a collection of things to explore and contemplate: a philosophical or esoteric essay, an original poem paired with artwork, a handwritten oracle letter personalized to you, ritual or symbolic card, an oracle card, and a small treasures connected to that month’s theme.
The first volume explores the Void—the unknown, the space between what was and what will become, and the strange territory we enter when an old version of ourselves begins to dissolve. The first stage of the great work, Nigredo.
If you’re someone who is endlessly curious about the mysteries of being human, someone who likes philosophy, symbolism, esotericism, poetry, old ideas, and the questions that don’t always have easy answers, you might feel at home in Sanguis Draconis.
Let my guide you down this rabbit hole. 🐇
September’s volume is currently open, but I only have a few spots left.
Subscriptions for September close August 20th.
If you’d like to receive one, you can enter here: