Sublime
An inspiration engine for ideas
The archetypal qualities of the Alchemist reveal her to be a mistress of transformation: she’s not afraid to burn things back to the bare bones to expose what lies beneath. She’s both a visionary and a catalyst for the irreversible changes she conjures into being; in effect, she reimagines, and so recreates, the world.
Sharon Blackie • Hagitude: Reimagining the Second Half of Life
“Why are you called the alchemist?” “Because that’s what I am.” “And what went wrong when other alchemists tried to make gold and were unable to do so?” “They were looking only for gold,” his companion answered. “They were seeking the treasure of their Personal Legend, without wanting actually to live out the Personal Legend.”
Paulo Coelho • The Alchemist

the founder of Astrology; the discoverer of Alchemy.
Matthew Schmitz • The Kybalion (Illustrated): A Study of the Hermetic Philosophy of Ancient Egypt and Greece
Alchemy was a slowly evolving, loosely knit, and not mutually exclusive group of Gnostic and Hermetic theories concerning human origins and the dichotomy of spirit and matter. Its roots reached back deep into time, to at least Dynastic Egypt and the slow accumulation of jealously guarded secrets of processes for dyeing fabric, gilding metals, and m
... See moreTerence McKenna • Food of the Gods
‘People call me a philosopher or a scientist or an anthropologist. I am none of those things. I am an anamnesiologist. I study what has been forgotten. I divine what has disappeared utterly. I work with absences, with silences, with curious gaps between things. I am really more of a magician than anything else.’
Susanna Clarke • Piranesi
Kening Zhu • your art, ecosystem, and alchemy — kening zhu

