By Sarah Taylor
“You will be able to recognize facts and call by name things which other people would prefer to sweep under the carpet. This entails a great responsibility on your part. Be sure never to express your insights heartlessly. But when you are fully in contact with Love, use your sword without sparing yourself or others.”
Gerd Ziegler, Tarot: Mirror of the Soul
Alchemy. The alchemy of thought, of clarity directed energetically — in other words, of intent. This is such a dynamic reading that I’m finding it hard to step away from the vitality enough to encapsulate it in words in a way that does it justice. Once again, it is a reading to intuit and to interact with visually — it is by immersing yourself in it that you will derive the most accurate meaning it holds for you. But I will try and equip you as best I can for that moment of immersion.
First, let’s look at the word ‘alchemy’, embodied in Art (also known as Temperance), the fourteenth card in the major arcana. This word has come up several times over the past week in conversations I’ve had with others. But what does it mean? Historically, alchemy is the process of turning base metals and elements into gold. The more I read up on this process, the more I have understood that this is a literal pursuit as well as a metaphorical one, even if the process itself is shrouded in mystery. However, I am going to focus on the metaphorical meaning of alchemy because it is the one with which I am more familiar and personally involved.
If traditional alchemy is the transmutation of base matter into gold, then psychological alchemy is the transmutation of base experiences into something altogether precious. “Base” can mean formative, such as the experiences of childhood. It can also mean raw, vulgar, corrupted: anything that we find hard to digest in ourselves, which we consign to the shadows — some of which are also experiences formed in childhood. In psychological alchemy, our personalities and experiences are the base matter, our psyches are the labs, and our devotion to self-transmutation is our task.