Real life alchemy

Alchemy is real. I did it with my friend Mette. Right here in the 21st century.

Alchemy, or the transmutation of something precious from something base, has been an occult practice for thousands of years. Lots of stories abound, from old guys with long beards trying to make gold out of lead, to the lovely golden thread of alchemy in Discovery of Witches from Deborah Harkness.

All of the stories about alchemy are supernatural, fantastical and the skills are hard, dangerous even. The whole thing feels out of the reach of everyday people like us. Until I realised that being a Creative Witch is literally like being an alchemist every damn day.

I know a beautiful alchemist who creates paint from the earth. She takes pigment and blends them with her heavy glass muller (think of a large glass doorknob) until she has the most stunning watercolours. She turns the body of our earth into magic and if that’s not alchemy I don’t know what is.

Recently, Mette (for that is this alchemists name) asked me to conjure a new blue into being with her. We were going to dream up a brand new colour and make it real. I couldn’t believe that I could make this possible, that someone would be inviting me to step into this witchery with them!

We took a blend of two blue pigments with no real idea how they would mix or what the result would be. The resulting colour was a bit meh… It was a new colour but not one that would really speak to artists. I have a trick when I mix my own colours, I use peach pink to desaturate and deepen them, so without knowing what would happen, we added some peach pink pigment to the mix too. And BOOM! It was Creative Witchery right there on the palette.

I’ve called this colour Saltwash Indigo, because it has a coastal, salty, denim look. It granulates beautifully and goes from a deep sea blue to a washed out foamy wave.

Was it any wonder I made a sea salt-inspired blue? Was the alchemy always going to work through me like this given I am a sea lover with a salty tang running through me anyway?

And then I realised - the tools, the pigments, the mixing, all of that was the ritual, the real life alchemy was me. The real life alchemy is all of us.

If you’d like to see the blue and the other artist-mixed colours in the Blue Palette of Time head to Art To Basic’s website here.