Practical Magick: Applied metAlchemy

"Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new." - Albert Einstein

These simple words from a complicated man embody the spirit of the third mantra of metAlchemy. Where there is surplus energy, extract it to convert it to something you can use in the future. This applies as much to walking away from arguments until you're calm enough to have discussions as it does to learning from an over-enthusiastic mishap in the kitchen that costs you dinner for the night.

How to Recognize an Energy Surplus

Do you ever feel manic? Do you have days where you feel like you're in the zone but everything you do is an overshoot? Are you ever in arguments with people in your life, professionally or personally? Then you have experienced an energy surplus. That moment of overstimulation, the tipping point, the climax—it marks the transition into extraction.

You have now begun to learn from this experience on a biomechanical level. Your reflexes are being informed by the sensory and para-sensory information coming in right now. Your nervous system is forming a memory of this event to further decide your fight, flight, fawn, or freeze responses. Extraction is a process that will occur on some level, whether or not you are conscious of it.

Why Is Extraction a Mantra of metAlchemy?

If extraction is an inevitable natural process, why then is it a mantra of metAlchemy that when there is surplus energy, you must extract it? Put simply, to guide the process and choose what we take from each extraction instead of inserting a syringe at random and hoping for the best. By becoming cognizant of the process, you take the reigns for yourself.

Imagine you have the choice between two surgeons. One, you learn, became a doctor after years of diligent study and a lifelong dream of helping people which informed his choice to be a general surgeon—to help as many people as possible in the biggest ways he can. The other, by contrast, was pressured culturally and familiarly into his role as a surgeon; he became a general surgeon because his heart wasn't in it enough to have a specialty.

You gravitate towards the first. He took the reigns of his extractions and guided his development into the shape of his dream, rather than ending up where he is by happenstance. That is a powerful thing.

How to Extract from an Energy Surplus

The tricky thing about extraction is it's almost an art as well as a science. By that I mean it changes shape depending on the situation, but they all have a few things in common. The goal is always the same: stop and learn. Sometimes this means stopping oneself from doing something, others it means intervening in another's actions, or even stopping an inanimate process. This is where you hold your boundaries, protect yourself or others, or process traumatic experiences.

Make an active effort to learn something from the situation as soon as it is resolved. Search for the bright side of the tragedy, a warning sign for next time, or an objective to build toward. The idea is to return the universal scale to zero and ground yourself in the present. DBT techniques such as TIPP (temperature, intense exercise, paced breathing, progressive muscle relaxation) and sensory grounding can be helpful in getting yourself back to a baseline.

More about metAlchemy

In addition to Part One: Evocation and Part Two: Evolution, I have written a basic primer on the twelve metAlchemical principles which goes into a modicum of detail but not like these deep dives. I also wrote a humorous piece called "so i started the world's worst cult" and it's mostly a rundown of alchemy top-to-bottom.