Ever mourned a fictional character that died?

Something inside me had dropped away, and nothing came in to fill the cavern. There was an abnormal lightness to my body, and sounds had a hollow echo to them.

(Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood)

A shedding. A release. A nakedness. A rebirth.

When I think of what it means to shed, I think of there first being a covering, a veil, the putting of something over something else, a shelter, protection, a shrouding in mystery or darkness (cloaked), a sheath of some sort. There’s this element of danger to it. If you’re outside of the sheath, do you know what could truly be underneath? Even if you were to know, it could become something different beneath the surface with each passing moment. Change is but inevitable. Like a caterpillar in chrysalis, or a beetle in ecdysis… And if you’re inside of the sheath, were you ever to step outside of it, you’d be faced with the unknown as well. The ‘XXX’ — forbidden and potentially poisonous elements.

Stepping outside of what shields you is synonymous to the butterfly rapturing the cocoon, the snake slithering out of its exoskeleton — your many masks that have always identified you, they begin to peel off of your body… You transition from a fluid death—submerged in the black, amniotic and ancient waters of which we come and go—to a different form, a different world, a new life.

Deep rivers run quiet.

(Haruki Murakami, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World)

My mother recently told me that when people are on the verge of death, it’s a sublimely serene experience. However painful the physical circumstances of their going is, when they finally meet the lips of the other side, the kiss is soft, the breath is lost, and it feels freeing. What temptation. Your will to live must be supremely resolute if you’re met with that sort of seduction and actively dismiss it in order to continue living your incarnation. You earn the “rebirth” that you’ll have, that go-again at life, from your masterful use of Alkhemey. (And maybe, regardless, we all earn the ultimate rebirth of death, if it’s initially as sweet as my mother says it is.)

We’ll explore those thoughts and experiences in this podcast entry, through the lens of farming (yes, crops-on-land farming), the spiritual significance of the phoenix, Rasquiat’s second awakening, my personal loss of identity, and more. This entry concludes our dive into the void on empty avenue (EP - Single), for The Alkhemey Of Temptation podcast. We’re visiting the fields of heart space (EP - Single) next.

To hear all 34 minutes of the Alkhemey in this entry and immerse yourself in other facets of it, enter the Land of the Unknown by becoming a paid subscriber (Elite Alkhemist).

Thank you for entering my Void.