The Beginners Guide to Alchemy: Practical Lessons and Exercises to Enhance Your Life By Sarah Durn

Transform your life with the principles of alchemy-a beginner's guide

Alchemy is an age-old mystical science based around transforming yourself and the world around you for the better through purification of objects into their highest forms. The Beginner's Guide to Alchemy welcomes you to the alchemical world, distilling and demystifying alchemy's concepts on the path to improving your life by embracing the alchemist within!

Examine alchemy's historical roots and basic principles, including an overview of its three primary facets: physical, spiritual, and mental. You'll find an easy-to-digest primer on the importance of using earthly elements to refine substances, before diving into the Great Work and alchemy's influence on contemporary scientific and creative fields, like chemistry, psychology, art, and literature.

The Beginner's Guide to Alchemy includes:

Alchemical images-Explore illustrated sections on notable alchemists, like Nicolas Flamel, Christina of Sweden, and Albert Einstein-as well as clear charts on the Ladder of the Planets and their corresponding elemental associations.Magnum opus-An in-depth, digestible overview delves into the phases of the Great Work: including Nigredo, Albedo, and Rubedo, among others.Alchemy apprentice-Thoughtful experiments and insightful exercises make alchemy relevant and accessible with insightful activities and introspective journaling exercises.

Discover the transformative, purifying powers of alchemy and change your life with this beginner's guide. The Beginners Guide to Alchemy: Practical Lessons and Exercises to Enhance Your Life

I recieved this book free from the publisher.
If you've ever wondered what the word alchemy even means...this is the book for you. Not only does it define the word, it expounds on everyday examples. Even people and movies and books we have all heard of can be linked or are because of alchemy! This book is really interesting and I am glad I picked it up! This book is an excellent place to start if you don’t have a clue what alchemy is. The author breaks alchemy down into easily digestible sections and includes further resources, a glossary, and a fairly large (for the size of the book) reference section.

Personally, the exercises aren’t too insightful, but that doesn’t mean they won’t be for someone who is still new to spirituality and alchemy as a whole.

I received a copy of this book for free from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. I really loved the information and illustrations in this book. The details and information is very well organized and presented. The chapters are well planned out and easy to understand. I feel this is a fantastic introduction into alchemy and those seeking to learn or increase their knowledge in this area will be pleased with this book.

I received this book from Callisto Publishing and Rockridge Press for an honest review Great Intro to Alchemy and Super Accessible!

This book was my obsession. As someone who never read up on alchemy this was a great primer. Easy to read, and digest with a glossary and more books to read, recommended by the author as well! Kindle Edition This book is a precursor to scholarly alchemy, with its close association of historical timelines attached to alchemy-specific terms. This book gives specific steps to make alchemy recipes, from ingredients, and recipes to problems to face. Not stopping there, the author also links between the past and reality to show readers the importance of alchemy in modern life such as Chemistry, Psychology, Life, and the Universe. This means that alchemy still has a great influence on people's lives today that we are still mixing into it, until we finish reading this book, we will realize it.

Amazing Beginnig

I'm a mage. I've been attracted to magic since I was a teen. Maybe sooner. I use magic from different spiritual beliefs. One Full Moon I got inspired to try Alchemy and ran into this book. Little to my surprise I have using alchemy without even realizing it in my spell work by working closely with the four elements and the transformation stages. Now, I know what they are called. This book is a great start for anyone interested in Alchemy. The alchemist believes that our Great Work in life is to better ourselves and the world around us.

This book is a mix of alchemy's history, its guiding principles, entertaining facts, historical profiles, and unique experiments and exercises.

This was a HARD READ. I was looking forward to more personal development exercises but it was still an interesting and gorgeous book, I learned so many new elements! The Sulphur/Mercury journaling exercise was extraordinary! That was a new concept for me. Breaking down one's Salts was another highly intriguing topic.

The pages were absolutely beautiful and I loved the old-time illustrations. I did struggle with how this book was organized though. Various topics presented were mentioned but not expanded upon until later chapters. To keep mentioning the White Queen and the Red King and not explain it until chapter 5 really got tiresome because I had no idea what was being discussed. I'll have to re-read this at a later date to gain a better understanding of the material. The excerpts or extras of this book were placed in between pages, interrupting the flow of the subject. I was constantly flipping pages and being distracted by the exercises.

I look forward to further researching the historical female alchemists mentioned in the text. I thought it was quite wonderful their books were sourced!

My favorite thing I read about was delving into the history of the Philosopher's Stone and the Flamel families' part in it all. I thought it very neat J.K. Rowling's first HARRY POTTER book was based on this mysterious concept. I'm even more excited to explore this field now! I have a lot more studying to do and a ton of resources the author so generously mentioned in the resource section, to check out. I can't wait! This guide got me excited to continue my alchemy journey again!

Much gratitude to the publisher Rockridge Press, compliments of Callisto Media, for the early copy I received. I was under no obligation to write a review, my honest opinion is freely given. Kindle Edition Great intro to alchemy

I didn’t have much knowledge about alchemy and learned a lot, it does a good jobs at Introducing the principles, symbols and the ideologies behind alchemy.
Only negative for me was that it was a bit like a scholar essay at times, with introductions introducing intros, but overall things are well explained and I feel like I’ve learned a lot. I definitely want to learn more after this book.
And it is very well presented, it was an enjoyable read, loved the many parallels which prove that alchemy has influenced a lot the world we live in. Kindle Edition 3.75 stars

Alchemists, even today, are often misrepresented as kooky, Merlin-like sorcerers. It's an association that bears some truth, though...

Alchemy is often referred to as the precursor to chemistry and has been a source of fascination and intrigue for hundreds of years.

Turning lead into gold was certainly a piece of the alchemical puzzle, and a few legendary alchemists are even believed to have successfully created gold, but there's a lot more to alchemy.

This book begins by describing what alchemy is and how it relates to the various elements.

It then delves into the Great Work of Alchemy - a central theme to many alchemists.

From there the book talks about the inner-workings of alchemy, from its relation to the planets and other key aspects.

...the three dominant forms of alchemy today: mental, spiritual and physical...

Throughout the book, there were tie-ins to the modern version of alchemy - from journaling activities to focusing the mind.

I really liked the illustrations and images that tied in to the history of alchemy.

I only really know of alchemy from references here and there in other books (hello Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone), so it was cool to separate the fact from fiction in this case.

I also thought it was interesting how the author tied various activities to the forms of alchemy today (mental/spiritual/physical).

Overall, this one felt good but it was missing that sparkle a bit - it felt a bit dry at times and I wish there was more oomph to the book.

A huge thank you to Rockridge Press, Callisto Publisher's Club and Sarah Durn for sending me a free copy in exchange for an honest review.

YouTube | Blog | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | Snapchat @miranda_reads The Beginners Guide to Alchemy: Practical Lessons and Exercises to Enhance Your Life Prior to reading this, I knew little to nothing about alchemy. But as a rabid fan girl of Carl Jung, I felt that I should acquaint myself with the subject to deepen my understanding of his work. And I’m extremely glad that I did! Learning about alchemy is akin to that feeling of gratification that you get when you slide the last puzzle piece into place. Alchemy is really all around us once the doors of your mind are open to perceiving it.

This is certainly a beginner’s guide, but it was written with panache. Durn does a stellar job of covering all of the bases so that you have a strong foundation. And I felt that she went into depth enough that I have more than a surface-level understanding. She writes in a warm and conversational way that’s engaging and enlightening.

That being said, The Beginner’s Guide to Alchemy sparked my interest in a big way, and I plan to supplement my knowledge with heavy hitters like Marie-Louise von Franz’s Alchemy: An Introduction and Carl Jung’s Psychology and Alchemy and Alchemical Studies. Who knows, maybe I’ll even follow it up with Principe’s The Secrets of Alchemy if I’m feeling frisky. I am thirsty to learn more about psycho-spiritual alchemy.