soul alchemy merging power and love
Image by Deflyne Coppens 

Alchemy is the magical art of fusion within the psyche and within our creative energy fields. This coming together creates a spontaneous evolution of new possibilities. Our consciousness is rebirthed. In alchemical individuation we merge the opposing forces of our inner energy and desires, often expressed as fire and water or masculine and feminine. 

In practical terms, this reflects our need to balance our desire to open our hearts to others in unconditional love and understanding, with the need to maintain our own personal power and boundaries, which protect and guide us through our life. Inside the friction of these desires, we find our greatest paradox as humans: we are unlimited, unconditional beings, who have the power to apply conditions and limits. On Earth we are eternal beings having a limited experience. Alchemy seeks to unite these opposing desires into complementary teammates.

Birthing A Golden Consciousness

Medieval alchemists were dedicated to birthing a golden consciousness. This awakened consciousness was key to living in harmony with one another and Earth. Their wisdom sought to preserve a prehistoric religion, which understood the need to balance the incredible spectrum of our infinite emotions and desires as human beings with the reality of living in physical forms on a planet with finite resources. Alchemy is rooted in this deep understanding of Earth magic.

In alchemical traditions the goddess Ma’at and the principle of Ma’at also embodies this mystical marriage. Ma’at is also symbolized by the astrological sign of Libra and the scales of justice, which are constantly tipping from one end to the other. In Egyptian lore, only those whose heart is light as a feather, who have balanced the opposites perfectly to embody divine order and justice, can enter heavenly realms. This divine harmony is a psychological state of unification, which births the consciousness of innocence, where all transgressions are forgiven and integrated.

Modern Psychology and Alchemy

The founders of modern psychology also drew inspiration from the ancient art of alchemy and this tantric fusion of our lunar and solar selves. They expressed this in psychological terms as the merging of our oral baby self and our sexual teenage self through a process of individuation and psychic integration. This individuation marries our personal power to our interpersonal love and does not separate them.


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We first experience this interpersonal and symbiotic unconditional love as a baby growing in the womb of our mother and suckling on her breast. This is a heart-centered time of unconditional love. As an adult, as our sexual creative power awakens, we then individuate into a separate being with our own personal boundaries and desires that comes from our own creative resources. This is a time of conditions and exploring what boundaries and limits to apply.

Rites of Passage

In ancient and indigenous societies, rites of passage — to mark, birth, menstruation, and coming of age — were the key to helping the psyche to adapt to new stages of consciousness. It was known that without marking these important thresholds symbolically, in ritual, the psyche would not be able to individuate into maturity.

As a baby, numerous rituals — from preconception to conception, gestation, birth, and postbirth — helped a new baby adjust to life on Earth. He or she received her own soul song, and the placenta was buried in the earth so that a deep umbilical connection was created between the baby and the Earth Mother who would feed, clothe, warm, and protect the baby during its life and take him or her back upon death.

This helped the baby feel safe and held during this delicate period of dependency, where the baby is reliant on the birth mother’s love and care for its very survival.

A person experienced their second birth during their teenage years, usually around the age of thirteen, when they came of age and physically matured into creative beings who could seed or birth a new human life and seed and birth other energetic creations. For a girl, this was marked by celebrations of her first menstruation. For a boy, this was marked by rites of passage that initiated him into his manhood — teaching him maturity, self-responsibility, and the consequences of his actions.

The Modern World

We see how in the modern world, without any rites of passage or knowledge of alchemical principles, a state of psychic disintegration occurs. The world is full of wounded babies living in adult bodies and sexual desires disconnected from love or appropriate boundaries. Some have never managed to grow up and own their power or creativity, and others have broken the umbilical cord of connection to achieve a false power in separation from mother consciousness.

Alchemical individuation is when our child consciousness, formed in the root of the motherworld, grows toward the sunlight to express itself uniquely and bloom into a beautiful flower, without disconnecting from the mother root that created it.

This connection is held within the archetypal Great Mother, who lives as the essence of all birth mothers (who are not always able to embody their own mother essence). We know the truth of our symbiosis with the Great Mother and the web of life, while also birthing the unique creative power of our own wildness, passion, desire, and longing.

Psychic Alchemy

Psychic alchemy is not achieved by separating or individuating away from either pole of energy but by the unification of the two complementary forces at the heart of life. When our infinite love and our embodied power marry, a new divine child of potential births.

This is a collective energy field of consciousness that transforms us, restores us, and allows us to have the maturity to wield our power wisely and become adult co-creators with life — rather than spiritual adolescents who trash the earth as if we are ungrateful teenagers throwing a party in our parents’ house. Or unhealed children who must depend entirely on others to survive.

Awakening invites us to grow up, to bloom, to fulfill our true creative potential.

I celebrate myself and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belongs to me as good belongs to you.
                    ~ Walt Whitman, from “Song of Myself” 

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Article Source:

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book cover of Spirit Weaver: Wisdom Teachings from the Feminine Path of Magic by Seren BertrandInviting you onto the spiral path of the spirit weaver, Seren Bertrand shares wisdom teachings and rituals from the feminine path of magic and her own ancestral lineage of old European witches and faerie folk, spirit keepers and story weavers. She explores Flower of Life teachings, the moon mysteries, and dragon wisdom. She unveils the shamanic powers of grief and deeply examines the feminine archetypes of the witch and the priestess.

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About the Author

photo of Seren BertrandSeren Bertrand is a visionary creatrix and spirit keeper with a degree in English literature and modern philosophy. She is dedicated to restoring the lost global feminine wisdom traditions and is the coauthor of Magdalene Mysteries and Womb Awakening.

Visit Seren's website: SerenBertrand.com/

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