Element Descriptions for Inner Alchemy

©2024 Michelle Fuller www.FullerConsciousness.com

Michelle's work may not be copied, re-printed or used in any other capacity without her permission.

“Real Gold Does Not Fear the Furnace.”-Chinese Proverb

Fire tests gold, purifies it, and makes it brighter. You are gold, and alchemy is consciousness itself.

This entire reality is created by individual and collective consciousness. You are using everything that comes into your awareness and onto your path to alchemize the lower nature of consciousness in this realm into higher consciousness, through you. This happens within you and overflows into the external realm that surrounds you.

This knowledge integration is how you alchemize your experiences here in this realm. You use every aspect of human relating and experience to point you to beneficial integrations of your true self and soul’s intentions through alchemy. If you do, you will awaken more deeply, you will remember who you are on a soul level much more expansively, and you will integrate and alchemize non-beneficial psyche energies. The polarity, the increasing awareness of light and dark in your realm, creates the tension for YOUR expansion of consciousness and remembrance. Your expansion is always a benefit to you, and every experience carries the momentum to create more consciousness expansion.

In other words, either way, you will step fully into alignment with your abilities here in this physical realm, as intended by YOU when you came here, when you use everything this life experience throws at you to do your inner alchemy work.

While expansion of consciousness itself is alchemy, and every aspect of this realm carries the potential for alchemy depending on one’s level of consciousness, it is helpful to first understand some basic principles.

Feminine principle=emotion, care, intuition, spiritual sentience

Masculine principle thought sentience, reason, discernment

There is always a trinity. Together, the feminine and masculine principles birth the wisdom of right action. On a triangle, you can perceive this as one bottom angle representing the feminine or receptive force (3), the other bottom angle representing the masculine or active force (6), and the upper angle (9) representing the "baby" or reconciling force that is conceived when masculine and feminine principles create together via right action and wisdom. Please apply these concepts to yourself as a living being and to your relationships, whether with an individual or a collective.

When you stop repressing your emotional body and identity (feminine) and balance your emotions and identity with your mental body (masculine), or your reason and discernment, you access the equilibrium known in alchemy as Hieros Gamos. This is the sacred marriage of the masculine and feminine, or divine Union withIN. True Love.

We all carry these energies, regardless of sex organs or gender.

We see darkness as feminine energy and light as masculine energy, as represented by the lower and upper chakras, respectively. The heart chakra is the portal where the two meet, or where spirit joins flesh. We can look to the yin-yang to see the overlap of energies, and this is important because it shows you how masculine energy is present in feminine energy and vice versa for inner alchemy to occur.

Feminine darkness also correlates to the unconscious mind, while masculine light correlates to the conscious mind.

Let’s look at inner alchemy from an elemental perspective to better understand the energies. You carry these elements within you, as you are nature, come from nature (Source/God), and will return to nature.

Earth and Water (matter, feminine principles)

Air and Fire (spirit, masculine principles)

Earth

“Positive” or beneficial energies on the spectrum of Earth energy within your being are grounded and steady. Centered. Firm and resolute. Certain. Also, socially unconditioned in the remembrance of joy, connectedness, and freedom in self-expression.

Earth energy is life force, and perhaps you already know that the earth itself is the divine mother energy manifested in the physical. A living, conscious being, Earth reflects your abilities to create. Everything you do with your energy, which is everything you DO, is your creation. Earth also reminds us of birth and death cycles, as metaphors for your own cycles. Your own cycles show up here in the physical realm and in spirit: when your physical body dies here, you regroup with your source stream and continue to a new experience beyond this realm. Earth also reflects the importance of allowing aspects within ourselves to die; many parts of ourselves are needed in certain phases of our lives, but later need to be integrated within as compost, so we can expand into new versions of ourselves. The challenges and interference on your awakening path will highlight unconscious fears, beliefs, and illusions that would serve you better when integrated than when unacknowledged leaders of your experience. Maybe they kept you alive in some way before, but they are keeping you from leading with your cohesive power now.

We are shown the overlap of spirit and matter in this realm through the earth, as she represents source energy made physical. Just as the womb of a mother is the place where spirit is made flesh, the earth shows you YOUR creator abilities to do the same. You have the power to bring heaven to earth; to bring yourCELLf to earth; to create everything your soul wants to create in alignment with your intentional thoughts (air energy), balanced emotions (water energy), and will (fire energy). This last sentence is an example of how all elemental energies must be experienced, understood, and cohesively integrated within for inner alchemy to occur.

Earth energies to be integrated, born of wounds, trauma, and inversions in this realm: Instability. Not knowing you’re safe. Stubbornness. Refusal to “move” or change. Inability to consider new perspectives or possibilities. Stuckness. Contraction, or a feeling of being closed or shut down. Disconnection from your unique identity. Fear that being your true self will bring rejection, judgment, persecution, and pain. Shut off from feeling your body, and where/how emotions are somatically present. Also, avoidance or dismissiveness to feel safe from what is happening around you, with you, to you, or to people/causes you would care about if Earth energy were integrated organically. Lack of stability in your emotional and mental experiences, which will also be mirrored by your physical world. Inability to figure out how to get your needs met. Disconnection from your divine right to have your physical needs met.

Also, disconnection from the earth in general. Grounding/connecting to nature are major components of connecting to your Source Stream/Soul. Disconnection from your “wild and free.” This is also indicative of disconnection from your inner child. Examples of this:

-You do not feel comfortable taking off your shoes, boots, or socks to walk barefoot on the earth. You may clomp around in heavy boots or sneakers on the nicest of days. Your bare feet rarely, if ever, touch the earth. Note that your feet have “soles,” or souls. That is a major clue for you: benefit from grounding as often as possible to access inner alchemy, your soul memories, and your power. You knew this when you were a child. Earthing also discharges non-beneficial energies from your physical body, chakra system, and aura, and assists in regulating your nervous system. The earth does that for you. Ions in your physical and energetic bodies are balanced by earth ions.

-You would never sit in the wet grass or even on a wet bench/chair to look at the sky or the trees because your butt will get wet. This is conditioning. Whatever the reasons you came here, a benefit you knew about on a soul level was to experience this physical realm. It is so beautiful here. Allowing yourself to receive the beauty, wonder, astonishment, joy of the natural realm into your heart is a major aspect of inner alchemy. You will have to push yourself to do this at first. You must open to it.

-This one relates to all the elements, but I’m adding it here in the earth category. You don’t notice the birds. You look at water and see….water. You look at a tree and see….a tree. You forgot about the magic. About our interconnectedness with the natural world. Put your hand on a tree and close your eyes. Lie on your back and look at the sky, the birds. Speak aloud to every living thing you see. Hi Bird! Hi Tree! I love you, River! These words come from your essence, your cosmic inner child wanting to experience all there is, and will help you remember the reciprocal nature of love between you and the earth energy within you. Sing to the waters; get a drum and sing love songs to the waters to bring Source love to this realm. Sing the waters to sleep at night and greet them in the morning. Every element of the organic world has its own consciousness. I am dropping important keys here to help you unlock the cage around you. Your connection to all elements is a superpower that brings joy and magic and deepens our connection to the truth of our own "nature."

Water

Source, God, the prima materia, or aether, is also called “the waters” in esoterica. This is because it gives birth to all things. In this sense, it contains all that is, was, may be, and all that is not. It is the beginning and the end. “The waters” are neither cold nor hot, wet nor dry. They contain all elements and all things. Your subconscious mind is also related to water in esoterica, because it holds “the waters” within it; all your memories from this lifetime, your soul memories, and your knowledge of all things here and beyond, including who you are (Source, a Creator God/dess), why you are here, and all your accumulated soul experiences.

When we fear the waters of the subconscious mind, we are also fearing the return to our power and our truth as creators. We can move into a state of non-being, akin to nihilism. It is the state of not caring about anything, not seeing the point, and the refusal to Be. This is also linked to the energy or archetype of the Devil, as the state of Being is God, and non-being would be the Devil, or atrophy; the opposite of creation and agreeing to be the creator you are.

In this way, I have seen psychosis arise for many spiritual seekers on the awakening path, as we must move through the fear and the associated mental holography we have held for decades in order to remember our power, sovereignty, and self-authority.

Psychosis is always spiritual in nature, and it is all of our human fears coming to the surface to be identified, integrated, and transmuted into unconditional love. Unconditional love is YOU.

Integrated, beneficial Water energy is flowing, accepting, and carries emotional wisdom. Emotions are held and balanced. Water energy is infinitely intuitive and spiritually sentient. Water holds memories, and water knows. Like earth energy, water is life. Water is You, and you are water. You enter this realm through the amniotic waters. Water also holds and protects the freedom of pure child energy within your subconscious mind, asking to be made conscious, within the inner children of other adults around you, and in the children around you. It creates the environment for pure love to grow, as represented by womb waters.

It represents blood as well: menstrual blood, the blood in your veins, etc. Life. At its fiercest, it may look like a necessary, energetic bloodbath intended to purify the love and divine will that is you, or to wash away what is not you so you can see the truth of yourself better.

Included in the spectrum of beneficial water energy, the water element can present as the stillness of a pond or a pocket at the edge of a river, surrounded by river rocks, where it holds space, sits calmly with what is, and allows what is to be. It is reflective and a mirror for seeing yourself and your inner world.

It is an intuitive oracle, holding understandings of nuance and paradox within the depth of its being. This last sentence is an example of how integrated beneficial feminine energy holds within it masculine energy, because emotional intelligence also carries the element of air, or balanced thought, or a bird’s-eye view perspective that sees the whole landscape of things. It sees not just parts of the whole: it sees the whole thing and sees how everything connects. It understands paradox, which is elevated polarity.

Water IS nuance, in its ability to manifest in many forms across a spectrum of water energy: still waters, raging waves, tsunamis, the endless flow of a river, rain, snow, ice, vast oceans, puddles, the water that comes from your shower head, the water you drink from a cup, the water in YOU, etc. To this end, we are also reminded of how water exists in the sky (masculine energy) and manifests as rain (feminine energy), etc. Do you see how feminine/masculine inner alchemy energy connects? You cannot have inner alchemy without this overlap.

Unintegrated, wounded Water energy is emotionally unbalanced or histrionic. It leads with fear rather than the fierce knowing of its creative power. It denies its ability to create, to flow, to move on from what doesn’t serve. It is a victim. It identifies with the darkness of ocean depths from a perspective of suffering, rather than power. It may take pride in suffering, too, and may love to place blame and/or validate its suffering. Validation arguments may be illogical. We see unintegrated water energy a lot in vulnerable presentations of narcissism, or narratives around the “dark empath.” It does not feel safe to flow, and it certainly doesn’t feel safe to be a powerful tsunami of controlled, intentional, clean feminine energy.

Unintegrated wounded water energy seeks to control what is external to it because it does not remember that it is safe to be in this state.

To connect to integrated feminine water energy on a deep level, I recommend singing the Algonquin water song. As explained by Grandma Nancy, “We sing this song like a lullaby. The song means the water is the lifeblood of our mother, the earth. Water is the lifeblood of our own bodies.”

Find a body of water. Center in your being with your hands on your heart. Close your eyes and breathe into the center of your being. Imagine your spirit seated in your hips. Remember your mother energy, your goddess energy, your feminine energy, regardless of your gender. Sing or chant four times, each time facing one of the four directions in this order: East, South, West, North. Use your phone’s compass if you need to. Go to the website www.singthewatersong.com to hear this song aloud:

Nee bee wah bow

En die en

Aah key mis kquee

Nee bee wah bow

Hey ya hey ya hey ya hey

Hey ya hey ya hey ya ho

Singing and drumming to the waters and/or the earth are powerful grounding, empowering, and connecting techniques. If you don’t want to sing, just drum; I suggest you try singing. It doesn’t matter how well you think you sing. That is not the point. Opening your throat chakra for singing is immensely beneficial for inner alchemy. “In the beginning was the word.” You know this, beyond this realm.

Beyond this realm, you pulled specific frequencies into your mouth and spoke what you wanted to experience into existence. It is the same way in this realm, because as above, so below. It just takes a bit longer here to see the results; manifestations are instant beyond this realm.

Sing songs to call true love into existence here in this realm. You have the power to bring high-frequency energies, divine love, to earth. You are that powerful, and more.

Air

Integrated, beneficial air energy is discerning and wise. It leads from higher consciousness, thought, and perspective. It identifies what is not love and balances energetic nuance. Beneficial air energy is self-aware but not self-degrading; it leads from integrity and self-love. It does not operate from shame or fear holography, but instead from interpretations derived from expansive consciousness. Therefore, it accesses inner work, self-truth, and external truth, or truths about this realm, with openness and understanding.

Air thinks for itself and is individuated, rather than caged in hive-mind narratives or narratives that give power away. The intellect of air energy cuts through What Is Not Love with a mighty sword of truth. This includes, first and foremost, ways in which you are not loving yourself. You will note that the sword and the pen have often been compared. The pen is not mightier than the sword—the pen IS the sword, when used beneficially. Sword/Words. Air does not allow what is not love to create any aspect of this realm. Integrated air energy embodies higher, expansive perspectives for discerning and reconciling paradox, rather than fear-based ego perspectives that need to be “right”. Air shifts shame holography and fear consciousness into empowered, loving perspectives.

It seeks knowledge but also integrates gnosis and remembrance through its own experiences and initiations. It is both teacher and student and is self-responsible, self-authoritative, and self-reliant. Self-authority is key. Air energy does not give its authority or its mind over to anyone or anything else. Air makes its way through labyrinths of information, back to the heart, where information is purified. Remember, the heart is the portal where spirit meets flesh.

The story of “The Sword In The Stone” is much more than just a story, myth, or legend; it contains metaphorical codes and clues through the use of symbols. The sword represents masculine air energy, as the sword is the esoteric symbol for air, or the masculine principle. Note its phallic shape, as well. The stone represents earth energies, a feminine principle. The sword IN the stone represents divine union within, when the masculine and feminine principles merge. You could perceive this as a metaphor for sexual union: the penis entering the vagina. Sexual union in this world mirrors the energetic union in inner alchemy, when masculine and feminine energies integrate. As above, so below. When masculine and feminine energies merge, a third force is created (revisit images above).

In this physical world, this is represented by an actual baby. Metaphysically, it is what you create when you bring your thoughts and words to earth via your action (fire, the solar plexus chakra) and creative pleasure (water, the sacral chakra). As a Creator, you are here to bring YOU to this realm, via your creations, within the limitations of time and space. You are love; therefore, this is also how you bring love to this realm.

Beyond this realm, thoughts become words instantaneously. So, if you have the thought, “I’d love to experience a forest right now,” you will find yourself immediately in a forest. You leave just as quickly as you entered, through your thoughts and spoken words, or swords. Words carry frequencies, like music, that create. Here on Earth, within the limitations of time and space, it takes longer to see the manifestations coming from our thoughts, words, and actions. However, you may be noticing that thoughts become things much more quickly in current energies than last year and certainly 10 years ago, or more. This is because this realm is shifting into a higher frequency energy dynamic, and so are you. You may even notice time passes differently now than it used to, and this is not just because you are "getting older," as humans have experienced in the past.

Integrated air energy brings divine knowing to earth. Divine downloads, knowings, or claircognizance are commonplace. As much as it can tap into Source knowing of the All, integrated air energy is also individuated and honors the importance of self-responsibility in seeking knowledge for itself. It views the knowledge of others as codes and clues to help in its own remembrance of truth.

Integrated air energy brings higher mind, reconciling perspectives to emotions created by non-beneficial lower mind interpretations. It is the element with which we parent the inner child, utilize active imagination techniques, and through which we bring our Source consciousness. Working actively with air energy via imagining the masculine aspects of our source stream is very useful here. We can bring “him” in by imagining what he looks like and allowing him to parent the inner child, calming turbulent emotional waters through conscious reasoning and the assurance of safety. As this realm is a mental projection, everything you experience in your body, including emotional and nervous system sensations, is formed within the mind. Therefore, using air energy to guide emotional experiences through beneficial interpretations is infinitely useful to you.

Unintegrated air energy produces power struggles, greed, control, and oppression. It leads from a sense of lack, rather than from a knowing that it is innately abundant and can meet its needs within a love paradigm created by itself. It wants to possess or siphon power from others, because it does not know it already IS power. It does not believe that power and love can be intertwined. It only extracts.

Another way in which unintegrated air energy may surface is through the forgetfulness of divine self-authority, sovereignty, and individuation. It may become entrenched in victim consciousness because it gives its power away to systems and to others through fear and shame-based mental holography created in childhood.

It may also act as a tyrant toward others. It expects others to blindly accept its authority, rather than honoring the fact that all others are leaders in their own journeys. It may view other beings as extensions of itself to meet unconscious emotional needs, rather than recognizing that everyone is individuated and sovereign. This disregard of spiritual sovereignty and individuation comes from emotional wounds, psyche fragmentation, and results in service to self narcissistic scripts (or 'narci-scripts') to appease the unconscious desire to feel worthy through the power and control of others. In this sense, it may need to feel elevated, or “above” that of others.

In some cases, these humans may embody service-to-self souls who are consciously choosing this path. In other cases, these humans may be experienced souls who remember love, but experienced extreme psyche fragmentation in this human lifetime. In these cases, service to self dynamics are a maladaptation to the trauma-installments, constructs, and disempowering systems of this realm.

Non-beneficial air energy also engages in logical fallacies to falsely argue against the truth, rather than for it. It is afraid to be wrong or to be seen as wrong and will create whatever illusions are necessary to protect itself from exposure. It is manipulative and self-serving, rather than acting in a way that benefits all beings, in alignment with love.

Another manifestation of unintegrated wounded air energy is overthinking, ruminating, catastrophizing, and/or having an emphatic inner critic, an outer critic, or both. “What you don’t want to be doing is obsessing,” said my source stream to me in sleep time, as a giant number 9 with blinking lights flashed behind my eyes within my traveling-consciousness state. 9 represents the third force. The third force reconciles the tension between the first and second forces, which are active and passive forces. This reminder was given to me during a time when my air energy was imbalanced, obsessive, and had me in a holographic mental cage.

There are nuances here that integrated air energy innately understands. For example, outer critic energy is beneficial when it is utilized inside an energy of observation, discernment, or data collection that leads to self-care and healthy boundaries. Inner-critic energy is useful when self-work is beneficial, so we can be honest with ourselves on our alchemical integration journey.

A couple of questions to ask yourself when you have awareness of inner critic/outer critic thoughts: Is this thought empowering me? If not, how can I alchemize it so that it becomes empowering and self-loving?

Integrated, beneficial fire energy is action-oriented and diligent. It is associated with the solar (sun) plexus chakra, which represents your WILL. When your actions are aligned with YOU, your passion and purpose, nothing can stop you. It represents the DOING of your unique soul and human identity, and it is determined.

Fire energy is also associated with the sun, or the Son, and the Father. It is divine light. It protects feminine water and earth energies within you, guides, and lights the way. It sets healthy boundaries and uses its power to declare them. Fire is the action piece applied to air’s knowing that you are safe (earth energy) to be you and create from you, and sovereign to create from the energy/emotion of water, as water is the fuel for the fire of creation. Your waters represent your subconscious mind and the womb of what you are creating, and your actions will stem from what you believe about yourself, how you see yourself, and how you interpret everything around you. This is why it is so important to do integrative inner work, so that your fire arises from the truth of you, rather than from a disempowering, fearful, shame-based mental hologram. This is the furnace of love.

Fire burns away all that is not you. This process is known in alchemy as the nigredo, or blackening. We also see this represented by the Phoenix, which burns to ash and then rises again. On this path of integration and remembering, we often feel we are being forged in the fire. This is because, in alchemy, fire is needed to turn base metals into gold. YOU are gold.

Fire knows that what you say NO to is just as important as what you say YES to. It provides beneficial, loving boundaries to stay on your own path, in alignment with your spiritual sovereignty and individuation. It applies relevant actions to air energy, when air determines something is not for you, or does not represent what YOU are creating here. It assists you in staying on your own path and in your own mind via the actions you take, even as infinite herd/group narratives roll out around you. 

Fire is commitment to divine will and divine love. It does not shrink itself to the extracting demands of What is Not Love. Access clean fire energy to integrate masculine action pieces that require willpower and courage to do the work you came here to do.

Non-beneficial fire energy is destructive with no purpose. While divinely aligned fire energy understands that some things need to burn away (or be set on fire) to make room for the new to grow, non-beneficial fire energy just blows shit up and burns things to the ground because it feels good to destroy. Wound-related unintegrated anger is the fuel on one end of the spectrum, but on the other end is life-dishonoring, self-serving psychopathy. Whatever the root, this energy creates momentum and circumstances that will have to be navigated in the future.

Non-beneficial fire energy may also be fed by thoughts that are reactions to matrix programs. The concept of “the spiritual trap of the revolutionary” is a good example of this, in which initially well-intentioned humans become entirely disconnected from their hearts and from love as they rampage in pursuit of their cause, driven by fear, hatred, and rage. They are lost in the fire, used to fuel divide-and-conquer agendas, and drawn into programs and social engineering/psychological operations they are unaware of. They are blinded by the fire, too, in that they will scream they are “awakened,” but they simply fall back asleep inside another dream.

Fire may also appear as “righteous protection and boundaries” rather than healthy masculine boundaries. The former will close the heart as it leads from grief and fear. The latter provides the energies for an open heart center. The latter, “righteous protection and boundaries,” may also play the role of prey or victim in perpetrator/prey and villain/victim dynamics, validating unintegrated emotional pain. It is so important to process our emotional pain with self-compassion and validation, so that we can open our hearts again.