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On Becoming an Alchemist: A Guide for the Modern Magician
Many regard alchemy as a metaphor for inner transformation. But this is only half the story. According to Catherine MacCoun, alchemy is no mere metaphor. It’s real magic. Transforming the inner world is, for the alchemist, a way to transform the outer world. Through studying the principles of alchemy, we can achieve extraordinary effects from ordinary actions by understanding how the world really works. We can perceive the hidden connections between the spiritual and the material worlds. Knowledge of these connections enables us to influence external phenomena through the powers of heart and mind alone. Yet alchemy is not, like some forms of magic, the exercise of mind over matter. It is the art of taking what already exists—whatever presents itself—and transmuting the harmful into the helpful, the useless into the valuable. On Becoming an Alchemist initiates us into these secrets, showing us how to think, perceive, and operate as an alchemist. It offers practical advice and exercises that will help the modern magician
● Understand and apply basic principles of alchemy
● Transmute setbacks, failures, and losses into sources of magical power
● Navigate one’s inner world with poise, confidence, and common sense
● Intuitively show up in the right place at the right time to benefit from magical coincidences
● Discover the potentials latent in any situation by awakening subtle perception
● Understand and apply basic principles of alchemy
● Transmute setbacks, failures, and losses into sources of magical power
● Navigate one’s inner world with poise, confidence, and common sense
● Intuitively show up in the right place at the right time to benefit from magical coincidences
● Discover the potentials latent in any situation by awakening subtle perception
272 pages, Hardcover
First published February 12, 2008
152 people are currently reading
1044 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 32 reviews
December 31, 2008
this is a great book for anyone going through any kind of internal transformation..I loved the way she addresses the challenges as well as the opportunities (too often spiritual books leave me feeling there is something wrong with having challenges on the path). she is frank, engaging and an entertaining writer...
May 30, 2023
A late review--I thought I had already done a review for this book weeks ago. I read the paperback version, but the paperback version I read isn't listed as an edition here for some reason. This book was definitely magical and some of the concepts went above me (pun intended). I know there is magic in the world. I have experienced some of it myself, seemingly out of nowhere. I'd like it to happen more often and I'm open to doing the work of it. But part of me also just wants to have it happen without forcing it or being in the energy of "wanting" it to happen. I ask and it does.
“What does seem clear is that alchemy is not merely a metaphor. It is, as Jung described, an inner process. But the contemporary alchemists who still pursue their work in physical laboratories insist that it is not just an inner process. To eliminate the material aspects from consideration is, from their perspective, to miss the point altogether. One who produces the philosopher’s stone must necessarily undergo a profound inward change, a drastic rearrangement of body, soul, and spirit. Yet the motive for that inward change is to produce outward change, that is, to rearrange the stuff of this world. The alchemist’s aim is to work magic. The traditional practical goals of alchemical magic — to promote human health and material well-being — are to be taken literally.” pg. 7
“What makes it seem magical is that the solution is at once so unexpected (getting rid of a wine stain by spilling more wine) and so effective. The magic lies not in defying the laws of nature, but in knowing them and applying them to such remarkable effect. This is what alchemical magic really is like. The alchemist can achieve extraordinary results from ordinary actions because he or she understands, better than the average person, how the world works.” pg. 8
“For the alchemist, even a modest outward result can require tremendous inner effort, because changing what is inside is how the alchemist goes about changing what is outside.” pg. 11
“Between you and anything that you might wish to influence there is a relationship. If either party in a relationship changes, the relationship itself is changed. In turn, any change in the relationship changes both parties. So if you wish to change something, the first thing you must do is discover the true nature of your relationship to it. Then you will be able to see how to change it by changing yourself. This is the basic logic of alchemy.” pg.
12
“But if you’re really doing alchemy, the outcome might bear no resemblance at all to what you thought you were going for. Alchemical procedures change the alchemist and, in the process, often change the very desire that gave rise to them.” pg. 14
“You need to move your mind. Alchemical symbols, stories, and procedures are all intended to set your mind in motion. That’s why crucial information is so often displaced, why the answer you need is located some distance away from the question. The movement you have to make between the question and the answer is an essential part of the answer. It is the difference between mere information and meaning.” pg. 25
“Style, for the alchemist, is a workable concept because it can be used to expand one’s perceptions. Starting with the hypothesis that there is such a thing as style—that all phenomena have some sort of essence or personality—you can go looking for it. Style is also the link between sensory and extrasensory perceptions. If you would like to have more of the latter, begin by learning to distinguish the style of things from their physical forms. . .
The law of correspondences is an elaboration of the style concept. It is an attempt to understand phenomena by means of analogies—a kind of metaphorical thinking that we usually associate with artists rather than scienttists. The basic idea is that disparate objects in the universe—such as planets, elements, minerals, flora and fauna, organs of the body, etc.—have stylistic similarities.” pg. 28
“The central paradox of these stories is that to attain a magician’s power, one must relinquish the impulse to force and conquer. To change anything in an alchemical way, you must allow it to change you.” pg. 32
“Devotees who become enmeshed in cults give away their power to the spiritual teacher in the belief that the teacher will grant them marvelous new powers in return. Some teachers exploit this weakness in order to expose it. They deliberately jerk the student around until the student wises up. (Gurdjieff employed this tactic, as did the EST training popular in the the 1970s.) The whole setup is based on the paradox that if you think you need the teacher, you haven’t yet learned the lesson.” pg. 43
“The subtle is that which cannot be perceived by the ordinary senses because it is pre-physical. According to alchemy, before anything manifests on the physical plane (what alchemists call the ‘gross’ or ’dense’), it passes through a formative stage on the subtle planes. If you are able to perceive this formative stage, you become adept at guessing what will happen next.” pg. 44
“It is the subtle body, not the spirit, that makes the difference between a living person and a corpse. Your spirit doesn’t have to be in your physical body or anywhere near it for you to remain alive. In fact, it’s nonsensical to talk about where a spirit is, since spirits don’t have any location in space. For the spirit to ‘go away’ simply means for it to turn its attention elsewhere, as it often does when you are sleeping. The subtle body, though, has a location. It has to stay with your physical body as long as you are alive.” pg. 46
“So what does the subtle body know? It is good at perceiving moods and emotions, qualities, meanings, trends, and connections. Compared to your physical senses, it’s not so good at perceiving hard facts. It can usually tell when someone is lying to you, but it can’t always discover the exact truth.” pg. 47
“Think of brain-based cognition as a filing system. New items of information are filed with similar items to facilitate later retrieval. Where no similar items exist, the brain tends to discard the information rather than create a new file folder. . . Since to perceive a thing is, in a sense, to remember it for the first time, we often fail to perceive the unfamiliar. Our brain doesn’t know where to file it.” pg. 51
“Self-knowledge is extremely important when you begin to encounter other beings in the subtle world. It’s how you distinguish self from other when there are no physical bodies to define who’s who and what’s what.” pg. 54
“To contemplate the vastness of the universe is an interesting variation on horizontal consciousness. The mind is moving out, not up. If you’re truly moving up, you don’t feel small.
Some people conceive of the vertical world as a series of ‘inner planes.’ The planes are stacked, so that one is higher than another. But on each plane it is apparently possible to move laterally, as if it were another horizontal. Looking down from any given plane would give you a panoramic view of the one below. ” pg. 75
“Your point of entry to the upper vertical is situated directly above wherever you happen to be standing in the horizontal. Thus, it is unique not only to you, but to the particular moment of entry. Though you are always in just one elevator car at a time, your consciousness focused on a single point, you can expand the range of vertical experiences you have over time by establishing multiple points of entry. Each new interest or experience in the horizontal is potentially a new elevator. . . . Though each vertical experience remains narrow, you feel like the vertical world has widened, because you can reach it through multiple adjacent entrances.” pg. 77
“Consider what it’s like to have a conversation that you later describe as ‘mind-blowing.’ From the outside, it appears to be an ordinary horizontal meeting, since you and the other person are sitting in the same physical room. But at some point, the conversation achieves liftoff. Though you continue to exchange audible words, you almost don’t need them, for your rapport is such that you can neglect to finish your sentences and the other person still knows exactly what you mean. You feel like your mind is soaring and your companion is soaring right along with you. That’s levity. . . . you feel in in sync with how their mind is moving. To move along with them is exciting, uplifting. You feel as if your consciousness has expanded. When something like that happens, you have encountered an incarnate human being in the vertical.” pg. 78-79
“In the monotheistic traditions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam), angels are defined as higher beings who have never been incarnate. They were created from the beginning as something other than humans. In other traditions they are believed to have been an ancient race of humans who have long since ceased to incarnate, dwelling now in a higher realm from whence they serve as teachers and guides. The gods of polytheistic traditions are also lighter beings.” pg. 79
“The fact that neurological activity can be observed and measured while a person is thinking does not prove that the brain is originating thoughts. Rather, brain activity is a response to thought, in much the same way that stomach activity is a response to food. Physical digestion is a process of transmuting the foreign into the familiar. Your body sorts through what you have eaten, breaking it down into its various components, determine what to assimilate, what to discard, and what to transform into energy. You might try to change yourself by changing your diet, yet on the whole you remain the same person no matter what you eat, because of your body’e preference for the familiar.” pg. 80-81
“When the human mind approaches angel velocity, its subjective experience is stillness. This feeling of inner stillness is a sign that you have achieved vertical liftoff.” pg. 82-83
“This desire to make horizontal sense of what is perceived in the vertical is what differentiates mysticism (pure experience) from gnosis (higher knowledge). To come back from the vertical with something intelligible to report is the way of the sage or seer. For some people even that isn’t enough. In addition to knowing what will be well and why, they want to participate in making it so. They want vertical insight to inform horizontal action. This is the way of the magician.” pg. 85
“What most of us are used to calling our ‘will’ is actually a form of thinking: our conscious intention. What we call ‘willpower’ is our effort to make that intention stick, to force ourselves to act in accordance with our thought. The actual will is that which tends to subvert whatever we are trying to achieve by ‘willpower.’ If you’ve ever broken a New Year’s resolution, you know what I’m talking about. The trouble is not that your will is weak. Rather, your will is strong in some direction that has nothing to do with your conscious intention.” pg. 90-91
“In everyday conversation we often use the words ‘instinct’ and ‘intuition’ interchangeably, for both refer to motives for action that we haven’t thought about in a rational way. While reading this book, I’d like you to make a distinction between them. Intuition refers to impulses that come from above. Instinct refers to impulses that come from below. For instinct and intuition to wind up on the same page, both the spirit and the body must be transformed. This is what the alchemists’ Great Work is trying to accomplish.” pg. 91
“The pleasure we take in our senses and our emotions depends on the participation of lower beings. From above, you might get a great idea for a work of art, but in order to create a work that profoundly moves other people, you have to mine the depths as well. Below is where you find the feelings, the colors, the juice.” pg. 96
“In alchemical work, downward movements of the soul are precipitated by what has occurred during upward movement. When you form a clear and conscious intention in the upper vertical, you are, in a sense, making a pact, requesting that your will be transformed in accordance with that intention. Soon afterward, events may ensue that are beyond your control. As these events carry you downward, you can’t for the life of you see what they have to do with your intention. Often they seem to be carrying you in quite the opposite direction.” pg. 96-97
“So how do we shed all these layers of self-consciousness and go down for real? It’s easy; slip on a banana peel. Trying to lose control on purpose is contradictory, and nobody can be 100 percent sincere in their desire to do so. We descend as the true innocents we long to be when we descend by accident. There is no need to make a project of it. The shocks and sufferings of ordinary life send us below quite reliably, if reluctantly. If nothing has occurred lately to take you down, you must not need to be there.” pg. 101
“The most fundamental motive for seeking spiritual knowledge in the first place is to discover the meaning of life and our true role in it. We want to know that our lives count for something. Genuine vertical experience reassures you that you are important, for lighter beings take a lively interest in you and your personal development. You don’t have to do anything special to earn this interest. Lighter beings are fascinated by human life, consider it extremely important, and feel honored when asked their opinion.” pg. 104-105
“Do you consider the matter largely or entirely accidental, or do you feel that there was something inevitable about it? Have you ever felt, or do you consider it possible, that the victory of the sperm that made you was somehow ‘meant to be’? What do you prefer to think? Is there a difference between what you prefer to think and what you actually believe to be true?” pg. 119
“What you believe about causality has direct bearing on what you believe you can accomplish through magic and how you go about it. You can’t succeed at it if you’re hedging your metaphysical bets. So let’s see if we can sort through our conflicting notions of causality and come up with a workable hypothesis.” pg. 120
“When we say that something has worked out for the best, we are seeing our present good fortune as the reason for ill fortune in the past. We had to be unhappy then, so that we could be happy now. Without noticing that we are doing so, we reverse chronology, make the present the explanation for the past. Ask anyone and they’ll tell you that cause precedes effect. It is to the past that we naturally look when seeking the cause of what is happening now. But as events recede in time, we become more inclined to explain them in terms of meaning. The more meaning we can see, the less we care how something came about in a material sense. We care more bout why than how, and the why usually turns up after the how.” pg. 121
“Notice, too, that when we place the cause after the effect, our explanation tends to be cheerful. We feel the reason something has happened is benevolent and makes sense. Contrast this with how we feel when we seek our explanations in the past. If the cause lies in the past, we can’t change it. We can’t get the spilled milk to go back in the jug. To answer a why question with how tends to stir up feelings of helplessness, blame, and regret. If causes come only from the past, our lives can never be quite up to date, for while we may grow in wisdom, we are always trying to dig ourselves out from under the pile of our previous errors. Our circumstances reflect who we once were better than they express who we are now. The longer we live, the less room we have for possibilities in an existence overcrowded with facts.” pg. 121
“The power of positive thinking is certainly not to be despised, but I don’t believe it’s the whole story. Jesus was suggesting that a cause coming from the future actually has the power to reverse a cause coming from the past. He proved that this idea was workable by restoring the blind man’s sight.” pg. 122 [the man was born blind so that he could be cured from the blindness in the future]
“In its pure form, we do not experience time. We can perceive and measure its movement only if we use something physical as a reference point, i.e., the hands of a clock, the transit of the sun, the growth and decline of our own bodies. Because physical objects are absent from the spiritual world, time cannot be marked there. In a sense, the vertical is a dimension of time alone. You could call it ‘absolute time’ or you could call it ‘timelessness,’ for it lacks the forward march that we on earth regard as they very essence of time. It can’t go forward, because there is nothing fixed to serve as a departure point.” pg. 122-123
“Having no boundaries, the vertical moment can expand indefinitely. Past, present, and future are all one moment: the absolute NOW.” pg. 123
“The ordinary movement of time from past to future meets a second stream that, from our perspective, appears to be flowing from future to past. How meets Why. If you find the point where the two streams converge and step into it, magic happens. The knack for finding that meeting point is called intuition.” pg. 123
“It sounds more remembered than hoped. The extraordinary outcomes that we call magical are quite often accompanied by this sense of remembrance.” pg. 125
“That’s intuition. It’s how anything unprecedented gets created or accomplished.” pg. 125
“At the time she was wishing on earth, she was, in the vertical world, already in possession of that for which she longed. You could even say that her earthbound self was missing him.
That could be why, once they met on earth, they were able to come so quickly to the point. When they saw each other on the train, there was some quality of mutual recognition. It was as if they were attempting to recall why they had come together. When each spoke to the heart of the matter—Hannah by offering the birthday cake, the monk by offering his love—the other wasn’t surprised. We rarely feel surprised when we’re merely being reminded.
Any true desire is a kind of memory. By ’true desire’ I mean one that arises directly from the soul, not the myriad trivial wants induced by advertising, nor the ambitions to which we are driven by our own insecurities and the expectations of others. I mean a desire you can really feel in your heart. Such desires are often the distant call of something we already possess and have forgotten, something we are missing. They are a kind of nostalgia for the future. A future which, in the vertical world, is our NOW.“ pg. 126
Book: borrowed from NB Branch.
“What does seem clear is that alchemy is not merely a metaphor. It is, as Jung described, an inner process. But the contemporary alchemists who still pursue their work in physical laboratories insist that it is not just an inner process. To eliminate the material aspects from consideration is, from their perspective, to miss the point altogether. One who produces the philosopher’s stone must necessarily undergo a profound inward change, a drastic rearrangement of body, soul, and spirit. Yet the motive for that inward change is to produce outward change, that is, to rearrange the stuff of this world. The alchemist’s aim is to work magic. The traditional practical goals of alchemical magic — to promote human health and material well-being — are to be taken literally.” pg. 7
“What makes it seem magical is that the solution is at once so unexpected (getting rid of a wine stain by spilling more wine) and so effective. The magic lies not in defying the laws of nature, but in knowing them and applying them to such remarkable effect. This is what alchemical magic really is like. The alchemist can achieve extraordinary results from ordinary actions because he or she understands, better than the average person, how the world works.” pg. 8
“For the alchemist, even a modest outward result can require tremendous inner effort, because changing what is inside is how the alchemist goes about changing what is outside.” pg. 11
“Between you and anything that you might wish to influence there is a relationship. If either party in a relationship changes, the relationship itself is changed. In turn, any change in the relationship changes both parties. So if you wish to change something, the first thing you must do is discover the true nature of your relationship to it. Then you will be able to see how to change it by changing yourself. This is the basic logic of alchemy.” pg.
12
“But if you’re really doing alchemy, the outcome might bear no resemblance at all to what you thought you were going for. Alchemical procedures change the alchemist and, in the process, often change the very desire that gave rise to them.” pg. 14
“You need to move your mind. Alchemical symbols, stories, and procedures are all intended to set your mind in motion. That’s why crucial information is so often displaced, why the answer you need is located some distance away from the question. The movement you have to make between the question and the answer is an essential part of the answer. It is the difference between mere information and meaning.” pg. 25
“Style, for the alchemist, is a workable concept because it can be used to expand one’s perceptions. Starting with the hypothesis that there is such a thing as style—that all phenomena have some sort of essence or personality—you can go looking for it. Style is also the link between sensory and extrasensory perceptions. If you would like to have more of the latter, begin by learning to distinguish the style of things from their physical forms. . .
The law of correspondences is an elaboration of the style concept. It is an attempt to understand phenomena by means of analogies—a kind of metaphorical thinking that we usually associate with artists rather than scienttists. The basic idea is that disparate objects in the universe—such as planets, elements, minerals, flora and fauna, organs of the body, etc.—have stylistic similarities.” pg. 28
“The central paradox of these stories is that to attain a magician’s power, one must relinquish the impulse to force and conquer. To change anything in an alchemical way, you must allow it to change you.” pg. 32
“Devotees who become enmeshed in cults give away their power to the spiritual teacher in the belief that the teacher will grant them marvelous new powers in return. Some teachers exploit this weakness in order to expose it. They deliberately jerk the student around until the student wises up. (Gurdjieff employed this tactic, as did the EST training popular in the the 1970s.) The whole setup is based on the paradox that if you think you need the teacher, you haven’t yet learned the lesson.” pg. 43
“The subtle is that which cannot be perceived by the ordinary senses because it is pre-physical. According to alchemy, before anything manifests on the physical plane (what alchemists call the ‘gross’ or ’dense’), it passes through a formative stage on the subtle planes. If you are able to perceive this formative stage, you become adept at guessing what will happen next.” pg. 44
“It is the subtle body, not the spirit, that makes the difference between a living person and a corpse. Your spirit doesn’t have to be in your physical body or anywhere near it for you to remain alive. In fact, it’s nonsensical to talk about where a spirit is, since spirits don’t have any location in space. For the spirit to ‘go away’ simply means for it to turn its attention elsewhere, as it often does when you are sleeping. The subtle body, though, has a location. It has to stay with your physical body as long as you are alive.” pg. 46
“So what does the subtle body know? It is good at perceiving moods and emotions, qualities, meanings, trends, and connections. Compared to your physical senses, it’s not so good at perceiving hard facts. It can usually tell when someone is lying to you, but it can’t always discover the exact truth.” pg. 47
“Think of brain-based cognition as a filing system. New items of information are filed with similar items to facilitate later retrieval. Where no similar items exist, the brain tends to discard the information rather than create a new file folder. . . Since to perceive a thing is, in a sense, to remember it for the first time, we often fail to perceive the unfamiliar. Our brain doesn’t know where to file it.” pg. 51
“Self-knowledge is extremely important when you begin to encounter other beings in the subtle world. It’s how you distinguish self from other when there are no physical bodies to define who’s who and what’s what.” pg. 54
“To contemplate the vastness of the universe is an interesting variation on horizontal consciousness. The mind is moving out, not up. If you’re truly moving up, you don’t feel small.
Some people conceive of the vertical world as a series of ‘inner planes.’ The planes are stacked, so that one is higher than another. But on each plane it is apparently possible to move laterally, as if it were another horizontal. Looking down from any given plane would give you a panoramic view of the one below. ” pg. 75
“Your point of entry to the upper vertical is situated directly above wherever you happen to be standing in the horizontal. Thus, it is unique not only to you, but to the particular moment of entry. Though you are always in just one elevator car at a time, your consciousness focused on a single point, you can expand the range of vertical experiences you have over time by establishing multiple points of entry. Each new interest or experience in the horizontal is potentially a new elevator. . . . Though each vertical experience remains narrow, you feel like the vertical world has widened, because you can reach it through multiple adjacent entrances.” pg. 77
“Consider what it’s like to have a conversation that you later describe as ‘mind-blowing.’ From the outside, it appears to be an ordinary horizontal meeting, since you and the other person are sitting in the same physical room. But at some point, the conversation achieves liftoff. Though you continue to exchange audible words, you almost don’t need them, for your rapport is such that you can neglect to finish your sentences and the other person still knows exactly what you mean. You feel like your mind is soaring and your companion is soaring right along with you. That’s levity. . . . you feel in in sync with how their mind is moving. To move along with them is exciting, uplifting. You feel as if your consciousness has expanded. When something like that happens, you have encountered an incarnate human being in the vertical.” pg. 78-79
“In the monotheistic traditions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam), angels are defined as higher beings who have never been incarnate. They were created from the beginning as something other than humans. In other traditions they are believed to have been an ancient race of humans who have long since ceased to incarnate, dwelling now in a higher realm from whence they serve as teachers and guides. The gods of polytheistic traditions are also lighter beings.” pg. 79
“The fact that neurological activity can be observed and measured while a person is thinking does not prove that the brain is originating thoughts. Rather, brain activity is a response to thought, in much the same way that stomach activity is a response to food. Physical digestion is a process of transmuting the foreign into the familiar. Your body sorts through what you have eaten, breaking it down into its various components, determine what to assimilate, what to discard, and what to transform into energy. You might try to change yourself by changing your diet, yet on the whole you remain the same person no matter what you eat, because of your body’e preference for the familiar.” pg. 80-81
“When the human mind approaches angel velocity, its subjective experience is stillness. This feeling of inner stillness is a sign that you have achieved vertical liftoff.” pg. 82-83
“This desire to make horizontal sense of what is perceived in the vertical is what differentiates mysticism (pure experience) from gnosis (higher knowledge). To come back from the vertical with something intelligible to report is the way of the sage or seer. For some people even that isn’t enough. In addition to knowing what will be well and why, they want to participate in making it so. They want vertical insight to inform horizontal action. This is the way of the magician.” pg. 85
“What most of us are used to calling our ‘will’ is actually a form of thinking: our conscious intention. What we call ‘willpower’ is our effort to make that intention stick, to force ourselves to act in accordance with our thought. The actual will is that which tends to subvert whatever we are trying to achieve by ‘willpower.’ If you’ve ever broken a New Year’s resolution, you know what I’m talking about. The trouble is not that your will is weak. Rather, your will is strong in some direction that has nothing to do with your conscious intention.” pg. 90-91
“In everyday conversation we often use the words ‘instinct’ and ‘intuition’ interchangeably, for both refer to motives for action that we haven’t thought about in a rational way. While reading this book, I’d like you to make a distinction between them. Intuition refers to impulses that come from above. Instinct refers to impulses that come from below. For instinct and intuition to wind up on the same page, both the spirit and the body must be transformed. This is what the alchemists’ Great Work is trying to accomplish.” pg. 91
“The pleasure we take in our senses and our emotions depends on the participation of lower beings. From above, you might get a great idea for a work of art, but in order to create a work that profoundly moves other people, you have to mine the depths as well. Below is where you find the feelings, the colors, the juice.” pg. 96
“In alchemical work, downward movements of the soul are precipitated by what has occurred during upward movement. When you form a clear and conscious intention in the upper vertical, you are, in a sense, making a pact, requesting that your will be transformed in accordance with that intention. Soon afterward, events may ensue that are beyond your control. As these events carry you downward, you can’t for the life of you see what they have to do with your intention. Often they seem to be carrying you in quite the opposite direction.” pg. 96-97
“So how do we shed all these layers of self-consciousness and go down for real? It’s easy; slip on a banana peel. Trying to lose control on purpose is contradictory, and nobody can be 100 percent sincere in their desire to do so. We descend as the true innocents we long to be when we descend by accident. There is no need to make a project of it. The shocks and sufferings of ordinary life send us below quite reliably, if reluctantly. If nothing has occurred lately to take you down, you must not need to be there.” pg. 101
“The most fundamental motive for seeking spiritual knowledge in the first place is to discover the meaning of life and our true role in it. We want to know that our lives count for something. Genuine vertical experience reassures you that you are important, for lighter beings take a lively interest in you and your personal development. You don’t have to do anything special to earn this interest. Lighter beings are fascinated by human life, consider it extremely important, and feel honored when asked their opinion.” pg. 104-105
“Do you consider the matter largely or entirely accidental, or do you feel that there was something inevitable about it? Have you ever felt, or do you consider it possible, that the victory of the sperm that made you was somehow ‘meant to be’? What do you prefer to think? Is there a difference between what you prefer to think and what you actually believe to be true?” pg. 119
“What you believe about causality has direct bearing on what you believe you can accomplish through magic and how you go about it. You can’t succeed at it if you’re hedging your metaphysical bets. So let’s see if we can sort through our conflicting notions of causality and come up with a workable hypothesis.” pg. 120
“When we say that something has worked out for the best, we are seeing our present good fortune as the reason for ill fortune in the past. We had to be unhappy then, so that we could be happy now. Without noticing that we are doing so, we reverse chronology, make the present the explanation for the past. Ask anyone and they’ll tell you that cause precedes effect. It is to the past that we naturally look when seeking the cause of what is happening now. But as events recede in time, we become more inclined to explain them in terms of meaning. The more meaning we can see, the less we care how something came about in a material sense. We care more bout why than how, and the why usually turns up after the how.” pg. 121
“Notice, too, that when we place the cause after the effect, our explanation tends to be cheerful. We feel the reason something has happened is benevolent and makes sense. Contrast this with how we feel when we seek our explanations in the past. If the cause lies in the past, we can’t change it. We can’t get the spilled milk to go back in the jug. To answer a why question with how tends to stir up feelings of helplessness, blame, and regret. If causes come only from the past, our lives can never be quite up to date, for while we may grow in wisdom, we are always trying to dig ourselves out from under the pile of our previous errors. Our circumstances reflect who we once were better than they express who we are now. The longer we live, the less room we have for possibilities in an existence overcrowded with facts.” pg. 121
“The power of positive thinking is certainly not to be despised, but I don’t believe it’s the whole story. Jesus was suggesting that a cause coming from the future actually has the power to reverse a cause coming from the past. He proved that this idea was workable by restoring the blind man’s sight.” pg. 122 [the man was born blind so that he could be cured from the blindness in the future]
“In its pure form, we do not experience time. We can perceive and measure its movement only if we use something physical as a reference point, i.e., the hands of a clock, the transit of the sun, the growth and decline of our own bodies. Because physical objects are absent from the spiritual world, time cannot be marked there. In a sense, the vertical is a dimension of time alone. You could call it ‘absolute time’ or you could call it ‘timelessness,’ for it lacks the forward march that we on earth regard as they very essence of time. It can’t go forward, because there is nothing fixed to serve as a departure point.” pg. 122-123
“Having no boundaries, the vertical moment can expand indefinitely. Past, present, and future are all one moment: the absolute NOW.” pg. 123
“The ordinary movement of time from past to future meets a second stream that, from our perspective, appears to be flowing from future to past. How meets Why. If you find the point where the two streams converge and step into it, magic happens. The knack for finding that meeting point is called intuition.” pg. 123
“It sounds more remembered than hoped. The extraordinary outcomes that we call magical are quite often accompanied by this sense of remembrance.” pg. 125
“That’s intuition. It’s how anything unprecedented gets created or accomplished.” pg. 125
“At the time she was wishing on earth, she was, in the vertical world, already in possession of that for which she longed. You could even say that her earthbound self was missing him.
That could be why, once they met on earth, they were able to come so quickly to the point. When they saw each other on the train, there was some quality of mutual recognition. It was as if they were attempting to recall why they had come together. When each spoke to the heart of the matter—Hannah by offering the birthday cake, the monk by offering his love—the other wasn’t surprised. We rarely feel surprised when we’re merely being reminded.
Any true desire is a kind of memory. By ’true desire’ I mean one that arises directly from the soul, not the myriad trivial wants induced by advertising, nor the ambitions to which we are driven by our own insecurities and the expectations of others. I mean a desire you can really feel in your heart. Such desires are often the distant call of something we already possess and have forgotten, something we are missing. They are a kind of nostalgia for the future. A future which, in the vertical world, is our NOW.“ pg. 126
Book: borrowed from NB Branch.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 7, 2012
Finally, a great guide to practical alchemy. You can't go wrong starting here or ending up here. All the obtuse alchemical literature I read before finding this book is refined by Maccoun so I'm able to grasp both the larger picture of generating a great Work and its details.
October 22, 2016
Deliberately written to bore those with short attention spans. She is like my other beloved, Bourdieu, in this.
One of my favorite books ever.
One of my favorite books ever.
July 6, 2023
On Becoming An Alchemist shows up in the bibliography of Piver’s enneagram book, where she says it is “not about the enneagram, but the best book I have ever read about how transformation actually takes place.” I actually have no interest in the literal practice of alchemy (“turning base metal into gold, or finding a universal elixir”) or in magic (except possibly the magic that Trungpa describes in chapters twelve and thirteen of Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior), but I read the early pages of the book and was hooked by various statements, including its definition of hermeticism (“A hermeticist—literally an associate of Hermes—is one who seeks to understand the mundane world in light of the spiritual world”) and the idea that the alchemist cannot transform anything in the outer world until she transforms herself. I was also drawn in by the fact—here I go again—that the book included meditation instructions at the end.
It’s obvious from the instructions that MacCoun is also a student of Trungpa’s, though in the text of the book she speaks of her Buddhist days as being behind her, but I love some of the things says about meditation. “It opens a space in which subtle perceptions can arise by teaching you to make friends with boredom. . . . On those occasions when your attention is so scattered that you can’t for the life of you control it, sitting still anyway develops control of impulsiveness. That’s a very good ability to have. The beauty of this practice is that you can’t fail at it. If you’ve remained seated for the allotted time, it counts as meditation. Often the greatest gains come from persevering when meditation seems to be going very badly. The more regularly you meditate and the longer the time you devote to it, the better. Half an hour every day is good. An hour a day is twice as good.” Finally, she says, “If you were to ignore every other exercise in this book and simply do mindfulness meditation every day, you could still make excellent progress with the Great Work.” The Great Work being that of becoming an alchemist.
MacCoun is obviously a person who has done her spiritual practice—whatever it is—for many years, thought about it extensively, and absorbed it deeply. Her writing isn’t heavy—it’s surprisingly lighthearted in places—but her subject is a deep one and takes us to some places I’m not used to traveling. She speaks of the subtle body, for instance—something I believe I’ve encountered in meditation—and also states that it survives our death, that we are surrounded by beings that are not embodied—some of them having been previously embodied, some not—and of the way all of these beings can be of help to us in our spiritual journey. I sometimes felt I was entering Edgar Cayce territory here, but MacCoun writes with such assurance and authority that I kept reading even when I wasn’t entirely buying what she said.
This is indeed not a book about the enneagram, but the system she describes (she says that alchemists describe various steps in the process of the Great Work; she describes seven) resembles it in some ways, especially the chapter on fear, which naturally caused me to perk up. The virtue she sees fear leading to is confidence, a suitable substitute for courage. She follows that with a chapter where the base matter is desire, which is eventually transmuted to devotion. She doesn’t exactly talk about how to do all this, though she hints at it. She talks about how it happens. She does include various exercises, but the only one I do is meditation. I recently went on a five-day retreat where, as usual, fear and desire came up together (desire being my classic way to escape fear). She says we’re never entirely through with any of these steps (something which my experience seems to agree with). Life is a perpetual process of transformation.
I expect to read On Becoming an Alchemist again. It’s a startling book.
www.davidguy.org
It’s obvious from the instructions that MacCoun is also a student of Trungpa’s, though in the text of the book she speaks of her Buddhist days as being behind her, but I love some of the things says about meditation. “It opens a space in which subtle perceptions can arise by teaching you to make friends with boredom. . . . On those occasions when your attention is so scattered that you can’t for the life of you control it, sitting still anyway develops control of impulsiveness. That’s a very good ability to have. The beauty of this practice is that you can’t fail at it. If you’ve remained seated for the allotted time, it counts as meditation. Often the greatest gains come from persevering when meditation seems to be going very badly. The more regularly you meditate and the longer the time you devote to it, the better. Half an hour every day is good. An hour a day is twice as good.” Finally, she says, “If you were to ignore every other exercise in this book and simply do mindfulness meditation every day, you could still make excellent progress with the Great Work.” The Great Work being that of becoming an alchemist.
MacCoun is obviously a person who has done her spiritual practice—whatever it is—for many years, thought about it extensively, and absorbed it deeply. Her writing isn’t heavy—it’s surprisingly lighthearted in places—but her subject is a deep one and takes us to some places I’m not used to traveling. She speaks of the subtle body, for instance—something I believe I’ve encountered in meditation—and also states that it survives our death, that we are surrounded by beings that are not embodied—some of them having been previously embodied, some not—and of the way all of these beings can be of help to us in our spiritual journey. I sometimes felt I was entering Edgar Cayce territory here, but MacCoun writes with such assurance and authority that I kept reading even when I wasn’t entirely buying what she said.
This is indeed not a book about the enneagram, but the system she describes (she says that alchemists describe various steps in the process of the Great Work; she describes seven) resembles it in some ways, especially the chapter on fear, which naturally caused me to perk up. The virtue she sees fear leading to is confidence, a suitable substitute for courage. She follows that with a chapter where the base matter is desire, which is eventually transmuted to devotion. She doesn’t exactly talk about how to do all this, though she hints at it. She talks about how it happens. She does include various exercises, but the only one I do is meditation. I recently went on a five-day retreat where, as usual, fear and desire came up together (desire being my classic way to escape fear). She says we’re never entirely through with any of these steps (something which my experience seems to agree with). Life is a perpetual process of transformation.
I expect to read On Becoming an Alchemist again. It’s a startling book.
www.davidguy.org
August 9, 2018
A powerful, subtle book that shares an impressive array, and depth of information that can be utilized within any category of life focused on improving.
The subtitle offers a glimpse at the power of these tools. The language, and tone are personable, easily conveying the sense that this book, every word, is for the reader; a friend passing knowledge. Several instances when the answers, or techniques look simplistic, demonstrates how the secrets are more obvious than expected, although, as the author points out, this is the work of a lifetime-- on-going.
Divided between Principles, and Procedures, the author equips one for the journey. Principles contains an exercise at the end of each chapter that enhances the focus of each chapter.
A text that should be referenced often for its wisdom. Using a seven-fold model of alchemy is new to me. Her choice of terminology speaks to her broad experiences. Although there are mentions of physical alchemy, this is a work of spiritual alchemy -- which assuredly leads to physical outcomes.
Her model does use God (non-specific interpretation other than as a broad representation of a Christian ideal of who God is), occasionally mentions angels as among a number of beings one might encounter, and a sprinkling of Biblical quotes that frame the imagery she uses, particularly, True Vine. Chthonic, and "lower" spirits are described as "heavy", thus limiting to those that use them. She offers this as a single model/ method to construct the Great Work onto this map of the territory, while recommending changing it if that personally suits.
The subtitle offers a glimpse at the power of these tools. The language, and tone are personable, easily conveying the sense that this book, every word, is for the reader; a friend passing knowledge. Several instances when the answers, or techniques look simplistic, demonstrates how the secrets are more obvious than expected, although, as the author points out, this is the work of a lifetime-- on-going.
Divided between Principles, and Procedures, the author equips one for the journey. Principles contains an exercise at the end of each chapter that enhances the focus of each chapter.
A text that should be referenced often for its wisdom. Using a seven-fold model of alchemy is new to me. Her choice of terminology speaks to her broad experiences. Although there are mentions of physical alchemy, this is a work of spiritual alchemy -- which assuredly leads to physical outcomes.
Her model does use God (non-specific interpretation other than as a broad representation of a Christian ideal of who God is), occasionally mentions angels as among a number of beings one might encounter, and a sprinkling of Biblical quotes that frame the imagery she uses, particularly, True Vine. Chthonic, and "lower" spirits are described as "heavy", thus limiting to those that use them. She offers this as a single model/ method to construct the Great Work onto this map of the territory, while recommending changing it if that personally suits.
February 12, 2022
There were some very engaging and eye-opening concepts at the start of this book, which I appreciated very much. She also included some very illuminating information about Theosophy, which I am mostly interested in criticizing.
But-
She really did lose me at the ‘How to Speak Angelese’ (what?) and the concept of upper and lower, vertical and horizontal??? I really just felt that the conclusion she ultimately drew was rooted in…Christianity, which was sort of ironic considering, but unfortunately not very surprising. Also I did not agree with her assertions of how animals interacted with their own desires and free will, and the claim (more than once) that we were somehow above animals (which wasn’t explicitly stated but very much implicated in her philosophies).
But-
She really did lose me at the ‘How to Speak Angelese’ (what?) and the concept of upper and lower, vertical and horizontal??? I really just felt that the conclusion she ultimately drew was rooted in…Christianity, which was sort of ironic considering, but unfortunately not very surprising. Also I did not agree with her assertions of how animals interacted with their own desires and free will, and the claim (more than once) that we were somehow above animals (which wasn’t explicitly stated but very much implicated in her philosophies).
November 17, 2021
This book is not a how-to manual for turning base metal to gold, but if you pay attention, you will still learn where to find the philosopher's stone.
Crytpic? Why, yes. Because parts of this book go way too deep or way too high to get, but I took my time with it and came away with profound understandings. It has influenced my yoga practice and my interactions, my listening and my hearing, my horizontal and my vertical.
Read the last paragraph on p. 193 to get a picture of whether or not this book is for you.
Crytpic? Why, yes. Because parts of this book go way too deep or way too high to get, but I took my time with it and came away with profound understandings. It has influenced my yoga practice and my interactions, my listening and my hearing, my horizontal and my vertical.
Read the last paragraph on p. 193 to get a picture of whether or not this book is for you.
April 13, 2024
This book came at the right time for me to grasp the concepts within it. It was a great help in the exploration of energy and where to focus it, as well as just how to direct your energy through the heart . It changed how I feel into my body… and arrived in my life at a time I have been going through transformation. I have a feeling it will arrive at this time for many readers too!
June 4, 2018
I liked the tone and intellect of the author. There was a little too much confident talk about ghosts for me to take this seriously. Saying matter of factly that there are ghosts and that you understand them doesn't sit well with me.
January 25, 2019
This is a well-written and well thought out account of what it means to become an alchemist and at the same time uncover, create, and develop the philosopher's stone. It's not what you would expect and it's strangely telling in how we do not pay attention to certain aspects of our humanity and desires. Regardless of its spiritual implications, this is an excellent book to read if you are on the road to self discovery or to strengthen your own convictions on life. Prepare for your thinking to become transformed. You may even find parallels to certain phases of your life already with further insight into what was actually going on psychically. If not, this book's contents could enable you to grow and learn and improve the quality of your life.
July 20, 2019
Good work
Brilliant writing
Clear and motivating
Ita early in the morning and i despise amazon for forcing mentors keep writing
Done
Brilliant writing
Clear and motivating
Ita early in the morning and i despise amazon for forcing mentors keep writing
Done
February 7, 2023
First this book was written through a Christian mystical lens. I enjoyed the book and would recommend this book if you are in a process of transformation.
March 17, 2025
"to change anything in an alchemical way, you must allow it to change you"
July 9, 2015
One of the best books on the subject of Alchemy. Yes, yes, there are many books out there, but lets admit it, they are all so dry and convoluted. So hard to read. And yes, I know why, but still... I love Catherine's writing. She is like a friend you want to have. Well, at least, I want to have. She is empathetic, funny, warm, cynical, smart, human and really knows what she is writing about. Its been a year and a half since I read the book and I went back and re-read parts of it at least 10 times. Maybe more.
I would recommend this book to anybody who feels the calling on the insane path of Alchemy. You know who you are. The whimsical path where life has a sick sense of humor.
All in all, a great book! A must have guide
I would recommend this book to anybody who feels the calling on the insane path of Alchemy. You know who you are. The whimsical path where life has a sick sense of humor.
All in all, a great book! A must have guide
January 18, 2016
I'm not sure what I expected out of my first book on alchemy, but this was probably a good place to start. It's both dissatisfying in its lack of concrete, grandiose alchemical experiments to conduct immediately, but also elucidating in illustrating the core concepts of alchemy in general. I find myself thinking about some of these subjects (subtle perception, transmutation, astral projections) when my deeply rational mind doesn't quite have the tools to understand them fully. This, I suppose, is the value of the book. Though it didn't read like a lightening strike, it definitely stirred the pot and - in MacCoun's terminology - created the file folders for further alchemical study.
July 24, 2014
This was an excellent read, written from the perspective from personal experiences of the author. It is also written in an approachable manner ie-she uses many day to day examples and allegories when talking about the alchemical processes. I would recommend this not only to those curious about spiritual alchemy, but those as well who are into esoteric and hermetic studies generally, in the sense of spiritual unfoldment, progression on ones path ect, this book would complement things to that nature too-An awesome read all and all :)
September 21, 2020
This is, without exaggeration, the best book I've read to date in terms of guiding and influencing my life.
It is rich and dense like a textbook but presented in a charming, fun, nurturing, and conversational tone.
I expect to return to its pages many times. This is the curriculum I wish I was taught in school and Catherine MacCoun is the teacher I wished had taught me. Very easy to relate to, understand, and implement. It is understated and yet packs life-changing potential (world-changing even).
It is rich and dense like a textbook but presented in a charming, fun, nurturing, and conversational tone.
I expect to return to its pages many times. This is the curriculum I wish I was taught in school and Catherine MacCoun is the teacher I wished had taught me. Very easy to relate to, understand, and implement. It is understated and yet packs life-changing potential (world-changing even).
November 25, 2011
I read a lot of information about alchemy and alchemists all seemed fanciful and frankly impossible. This book I have read multiple times and made notes that are helpful but I know I have not reached the complete essence. Do not expect to turn lead to gold but to expect to take many things and make them better for you and those around you. Dare to try it.
January 19, 2015
I wrote notes and I put some of the exercises given into practice. It is an engaging and practical book for someone interested in the subject. There were some things that I definitely disagree with the author with regarding her philosophy and view of society. However it is a book with many sections I wouldn't mind reading over and over again.
April 30, 2015
Would perhaps give 3.5 stars--fascinating read, coming from not knowing anything about alchemy. Sort of "convenient" that there are parts of the practice you have to be able think about without thinking about and certain things that can't be spoken about, but there were still helpful/intriguing points to consider.
July 29, 2025
Fenomenaal. Een doorgronde benadering van alles spiritisme in de alchemistische rede. Het raakte ook inzichten en vragen die al lang in mij leefden.
→ Aanzetten tot puzzelen leert je meer.
&who would not be enticed to play with time, transform self n go to night school?
→ Aanzetten tot puzzelen leert je meer.
&who would not be enticed to play with time, transform self n go to night school?
March 22, 2009
A quick "how to" guide; what could be better?!
January 7, 2011
Throughly enjoyed reading On Becoming An Alchemist, and one of the few books I actually go back and flip through. Each time I do, I catch something I missed before.
March 15, 2012
a good text
Want to read
July 2, 2013Can I read this on the app?
October 13, 2013
This book is written SO well and clearly. Her analogies are perfect to drive home her point. Its not in any way preachy and its totally accessibly. Loved it.
March 20, 2016
Not my favorite writing-style as it sometimes felt borderline-condescending, but worth reading until the last pages. It does contains a lot of wisdom.
March 26, 2016
I've now read this 5 times and each time I pick up something new. I love it, and would highly recommend it.
May 24, 2016
Great book about inner transformation,will keep me company until I leave this planet,if anyone has suggestions for inner work has good as this one please let me know !
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