Ep238: Alchemy the Divine Work - Katarina Falkenberg & Tommy Westlund
Katarina Falkenberg & Tommy Westlund are alchemists, practitioners of Western Esotericism, and authors of ‘Alchemy, The Divine Work’.
Available on Youtube, iTunes, SoundCloud & Spotify – search ‘Guru Viking Podcast’.
Katarina and Tommy recount the history of Western alchemy from Egypt, through Ancient Greece, the Islamic golden age, Renaissance Europe, to today and consider critiques of alchemy as mere proto or indeed pseudo-science..
Katarina and Tommy reveal the language of the birds, the hidden language of symbol and intuition used among initiated practitioners. The detail the stages of inner transformation that the alchemist ascends in his quest for spiritual evolution and compares them to the stages of other meditative traditions.
Katarina and Tommy also discuss today’s changing cultural mores around masculinity and femininity and their implications for the metaphors used by the alchemical tradition to express polarity and the union of opposites.
00:00 - Intro
01:04 - Writing ‘Alchemy, The Divine Work’
05:56 - The language of the birds and hidden language
09:14 - Are alchemical symbols specific to certain cultures?
11:13 - Alchemy vs other esoteric traditions and religions
14:20 - Intuition vs intellectual study
19:39 - People have changed in the last 5 years
21:03 - Me too movement & the pandemic
24:42 - Are masculine-feminine paradigms of polarity still relevant?
29:47 - Polarity is essential to alchemy
30:55 - Tommy’s hopes for masculinity and femininity in culture
35:32 - History of Western alchemy
41:57 - Spiritual alchemy vs metallurgical techniques
46:47 - Proto-science or pseudo-science?
49:17 - The relationship between the outer and the inner
56:56 - Who is attracted to study alchemy?
01:01:24 - The role of experimentation
01:03:44 - Collaboration with the egregore of the tradition
01:05:26 - Katarina and Tommy’s collaboration
01:09:32 - Greek philosophical influence on alchemy
01:11:40 - The first element of creation
01:12:52 - Pythagoras
01:15:44 - Cosmogony and alchemical application
01:18:01 - Metaphilosophy
01:18:47 - The prima materia
01:20:48 - The principle of love
01:22:24 - Gnosticism and alchemy
01:25:04 - The gnostic revolution
01:29:26 - Religious traditions as living metaphors
01:31:00 - Alchemical stages
01:35:44 - The dark nights of the mind and soul
01:41:47 - Blissful stages and beyond
To find out more about Katarina Falkenberg & Tommy Westlund, visit:
Music ‘Deva Dasi’ by Steve James