Alchemy got its start as a way to encode the esoteric science of transforming oneself into a higher being into allowable religious contexts. Our human soul is the base metal, and our divine soul is the gold. Basically a bunch of pagans, philosophers, and thought leaders decided to create secret societies and underground mystery schools to share their understanding of the connection between Source and mankind and avoid getting burned at the stake and otherwise murdered. They even got royalty to invest in their endeavors, because of course the kingdoms thought turning base metals into gold would make them materially rich. Clever, right?
We’re still unpacking everything that was lost from these dark times when this kind of growth and spiritual evolution had to be hidden because of organized religion and government oppression. (Sounds kind of parallel to the modern day journey of the psychedelic explorer, no?)
In a spiritual context, we hear about this concept all the time – shadow work, lightworkers, energy work, transforming dark into light, taking pain and turning it into joy, creating something out of nothing, erasing trauma and replacing it with bliss. We have been taught in spiritual communities that we can overcome our suffering and pain by manipulating the problem, studying it, sitting in it, analyzing it, and twisting it around and that somehow that will magically make it go away, or never have happened. We think that we can take a journey with entheogenic medicines and miraculously everything will be better.
This isn’t an accurate understanding of the true healing and transformational process of psychedelics or spiritual alchemy, and in fact can lead to spiritual bypassing, narcissism, and delusional thinking. The Western mindset of solving problems by leaning into them more and more and more, and thinking that singularly focusing on the pain points will somehow solve the problem, is actually creating MORE pain, more darkness, and more of what we don’t want. While the transformation and alchemical shift is possible and real, how we do this isn’t by putting all our attention on our pain, suffering, and problems.