Alchemize This

A term that has been whitewashed

In my exposure to various online presentations, etc., I’ve come across the use of the word ‘alchemize’ more and more, recently. I was struck by this, because some years ago, the word alchemy was rare, obscure, and had haunting negative vibes. People didn’t use it and were even afraid of it and its dark aura. And now, it’s become a widely used term. What happened?

One thing that I feel happened is that the word has been sanitized. It’s been co-opted and its meaning has been watered down and made more palatable, or more ego-friendly, more ‘use’-ful.

As a side note, alchemy (and alchemize...when did that even become a word?) are not the only words this has happened to.

I feel there’s a loss when words get sanitized like this and made ‘use’-ful to the ego. The word can be bandied about, without inviting in something that scares the ego (perceived as that dark aura), the invitation, the beckoning, the harder-and-harder-to-ignore call into one’s own wilderness. Dante opened his epic poem Inferno with the lines “Midway upon the journey of life / I found myself within a dark forest / For the straightforward path had been lost.” That, to me, is alchemy, a surrendering, a willingness to take the ego off its pedestal and surrender to the wilderness, the dark forest, within one’s soul.

I really don’t think that’s what alchemize means. It has been sanitized to imply a sort of dry-cleaning of anything that one might want to avoid, e.g. feelings that have been labeled as negative such as rage or anger. Rage and anger can be powerful guides into initiation and transformation, but I feel that this recent use of ‘alchemize’ means that these powerful, ‘negative’ emotions can be dry-cleaned and made to be useful to the ego. In reality these negative emotions and other Shadow aspects are more powerful than the ego, and thus, when we encounter them, when they take us over, it’s hard and humbling for the ego, the story of ourselves. It is important to face these ‘negative’ emotions, but even more so, to surrender to them, to let them transform us (alchemize us), to be forced to change one’s ego story of oneself, instead of our ego alchemizing them into something ‘use’-ful. That’s the fundamental inversion and dry-cleaning of the term, a shift of what change means and what needs to change.

My deeper view of alchemy comes from C. G. Jung, who saw in it, in the pure language of the unconscious, not polluted by modern psychological concepts, the natural processes of the whole psyche. He called the journey from the ego, the limited, conscious sense of who I am, to the Self, the union of opposites, of ego and unconscious, Individuation. (Which means something very different than Individualism.) The biggest hurdle is that the ego has convinced us that it’s all that exists of the psyche, and that the unconscious either doesn’t exist, is not important, or is scary. These views are all ego barriers. The discovery of the reality of the psyche, the soul, the unconscious, requires that the ego goes from being the boss or the king into a role of service to the soul, an ongoing process of surrender and becoming more whole. It’s hard, because the ego keeps trying to take control.

This is why the recent use of alchemize bothers me, because it feels like a trick of the ego. As if the ego says, “We can transform these negative, challenging emotions, but this doesn’t mean we really have to change.” The ego resistance, the seductive, convenient offer, prevents genuine holistic growth and individuation. Challenging emotions and the inconvenient power of the Shadow could facilitate a powerful transformation of our ego, towards the Self. Instead these challenging powers and emotions can be alchemized into something ‘palatable’ to the ego, so the ego doesn’t have to change.

To be alchemized, to me, means to have the ego ground down, dismembered, etc., so something new can form. Something new, that has not existed before and cannot be conceived by the limited perspective of the ego, like going from 2 dimensions to 3 dimensions, a new ‘third’ that emerges. To me, the benefits of Jung’s interpretation of alchemical terms, are that we can recognize the particular flavor of transformation our ego and entire psyche are in. All the flavors are challenging, because the ego gets transformed, yet becoming aware of the particular flavor, for example the fiery transformation (Calcinatio), or the death-like Mortificatio, or the frustrating Separatio, to me allows me to tolerate it a bit more. The awareness becomes a container, like the alchemical vessel. The transformation is still challenging, because it transforms us, or more precisely our story of ourselves, deeply. Since these are the natural processes of the unconscious psyche, we have to surrender. Our dearly held beliefs, such as the story we have come up with of ourselves, our ego story, gets dismembered and burned up. That is genuine transformation, healing, Individuation.

And perhaps when people recently use ‘alchemize’ they express this deep soul need to surrender to this process, but then maybe the ego interferes, waters it down and sanitizes it, so it doesn’t really have to change. Sometimes using these terms is an ego defense. What do you think?