A ‘Mythic Alchemy’ Primer

When I close my eyes, a kingdom blossoms into existence.

If I place my hands on my belly, I feel heat, and a blue whorl turning.

Hands on heart yields a pulse, a sense of expansion, a gravitational pull.

I grin, because this is all so ridiculously fucking beautiful.

———

This year has unintentionally unfolded into a cascade of awakenings.

Head. Heart. Belly. Energetic.

I never intended any of this to happen. My mind has been scrambling, learning at hyper-speed in a desperate attempt to keep up with my body. 

In January, my mission was simply to heal a long-held heartbreak, and find my voice. 

(Which at the time, I meant purely in context of writing.)

Simple. Logical. Sensible. Rational. Overdue. 

I didn’t expect the complete tearing-down and re-architecting of my inner world. 

I didn’t expect my nervous system to thaw; a squad of internal archetypes to awaken; my intuition to sharpen into a velvet-dipped blade; desire to emerge like a bear from hibernation; my voice to find freedom and teeth; my life to become the myth I’d always dreamed was possible but slowly lost hope in ever coming true. 

I thought I was choosing writing and recovery. 

What I really chose was coherence, embodiment, mythic truth, emotional integrity, and the slow unwinding of every pattern that kept me small.

I tugged on two little threads, and the whole tapestry of me began unravelling.

———

Every descent into the underworld led to more of the tapestry unravelling. 

Each time I returned home, the tapestry held more truth, more beauty.

I spent a lot of time in the underworld.

———

In many ways, this year has hunted me.

Sometimes by choice, sometimes by chance, and sometime in a flash of “what the fuck is happening nooow,” I’ve been dragged through every little death and moment of release I needed in order to become the man I always knew I could grow into.

The once-mythic version of myself who felt buried, lost, wounded, abandoned…

Now wakes up with a grin on his lips and song tumbling from his throat.

This is the crux of what I’ve come to call Mythic Alchemy: a process for becoming the version of you that’s been clawing and screaming for freedom.

———

The deeper I drop into my body, the more sensation, voltage, and truth arises.

What was once brushed off as random flashes, urges, or impulses of whatever…

I now know how to read as somatic expression; the language of the human body.

———

The body isn’t merely a container for your energy, spark, spirit, soul, or whatever you’re most comfortable labelling your consciousness as.

The body is a vessel.

The difference is this:

When you see the body as a container, you treat yourself like a storage unit.

Energy lives inside you but doesn’t move through you. Your body becomes a box: something to hold emotions, contain stress, absorb sensation, trap memory. 

Containers accumulate. They clog. They brace. They harden. They rot.

A container-body is heavy because nothing is allowed to flow. Everything gets stored.

When you live from “container,” you think embodiment means feeling what’s happening inside the box. You might track sensation and notice emotion, but everything is inward, internal, pressurized. You hold more than you release. You feel more than you express. You try to manage, rather than channel, your energy.

A container-body can be aware, but never free.

When you see the body as a vessel, everything changes.

A vessel conducts, receives, transmits, transforms. 

Where containers accumulate, vessels circulate. Energy enters, moves through, expresses out. Your body becomes an instrument—playing with energy, rather than hoarding it.

A vessel-body doesn’t ask, “What am I holding?”

It asks, “What wants to move through me?”

When you shift from container to vessel, embodiment stops being introspection, and becomes self-expression. Energy stops pooling, starts flowing. 

You stop managing yourself, and start moving as yourself.

This is where coherence clicks into place.

This is where desire becomes your compass.

This is where intuition sharpens into a trusty blade.

This is where the human transforms into the myth.

———

Above all else this year…

I’ve learned that when you let your body lead…

Life becomes less an experience to endure, more a game to play.

With love from the forest,

~ Alexander