The Alchemist

I’ve been watching a lot of nostalgic films and TV shows the past few weeks and months so I thought I might write something descriptive today.

I have a card, think tarot card but on this card it shows a type of person or type of personality a woman can embody. I got this card from a session with a Female Health and Hormone Coach called Victoria. This card was from her Rebirth Deck.

The card I pulled was the Alchemist card, which had the following persona description along with it:

I transform every experience into wisdom and growth regardless of the circumstances. 

I want to use this card as a prompt to write a description of my interpretation of an Alchemist.

The word Alchemist is an old word. It conjures up images from history. No one really uses that word in today’s language, we would probably use the word Chemist. The word Alchemist has dropped into history now and there is almost a mystic aura that surrounds it.

My interpretation of what an Alchemist did was essentially what we call chemistry today – combining liquids and solids to make a new substance, mixing herbs and tonics to create what was medicine in the past, maybe they were the village healer, or they were the wise person in the village. 

The time in history I am thinking of ranges from the 1300’s to the 1500’s, the world was not as globalised as it is today and people tended to stay in their villages. People might have lived in huts or wooden houses, roads were basic or non-existent and there was a lot of mud everywhere but community was everything.

The Alchemist was a welcomed member of the community and she lived on the edge of the village. People visited her when they were sick, lost and in need of council and she would concoct healing elixirs, care for and pass along wisdom to those in need. The Alchemist was a transformative woman as she took what she already had and created something new from it. She used ingredients on hand and food in her home to make medicine and she used lessons she had learnt from her experiences, as metaphors and anecdotes to teach those seeking wisdom.

Alchemising healing and growth.

Her hair was deep shade of auburn which she wore plainly day to day, but which she tied up when she was working and creating. She wore a simple garment, which she had dyed green from various plants and minerals she had foraged and tied a cloth belt at the waist which served as a way to carry jars, tubes and other ingredients she found when she was collecting supplies.

When she was making her tonics and elixirs she would remain in her house for hours. Grinding minerals, separating liquids, chopping, peeling, heating and cooling. The people in the village would always know when she was creating, as they saw smoke rising from her house at the edge of the village from the fire burning in her hearth.

When she would provide council to the lost and struggling, she would invite them into her house and give them a hot drink to warm their body. She would listen to their troubles and woes, allowing those hurt to talk about their problems, then she would work her magic. Using stories of old, myths, legends and her own experience, she would weave and craft together lessons, anecdotes, metaphors and proverbs, teaching the lost and troubled and guiding them through the labyrinth of their own misery. By the time she was done, people felt lighter and more whole than when they had first entered her house. An Alchemist, a good Alchemist, knew that humans understood the world through narratives, and if they could see themselves in her stories, her work would be all the more powerful…