As I’m revising The Alchemical Detective, I realize I understand a lot more about alchemy now than I did when I first wrote the book. The alchemical process is described sometimes as a distillation process, sometimes as a fire that burns the matter to ashes. The remains are refined only to be destroyed again and refined again, and on and on and on. Alchemy is a metaphor for deep emotional change. Something happens. Maybe we’ve spent the last year with a regular meditation pra