Fires of Alchemy didn't start from a place of having things figured out. It started from needing a map out of darkness then realising I had to build one myself.
I'm healing in public. That's the honest description of what this site is.
Everything here — the research, the frameworks, the tarot, the courses, the unexplainable stuff I've stopped trying to explain — is documented as I go. Not from the outside looking in, but from inside the process itself.
If you're here because something in my content resonated, that's probably why. I’m building this thing as I go and it is very much subject to change over time.
My Background
I spent years working in health settings before I started building this — cardiology, trauma, emergency, mental health, drug and alcohol, youth & adult crisis. That work didn't make me a philosopher, but it showed me things I can't unsee: what people carry that nobody talks about, how rarely the crisis in the room is actually about what it looks like on the surface, and how much of what makes a person suffer was installed before they had any say in it.
I also have my own mental health history. That part is very relevant. There were years — a lot of them — when I wasn't sure I wanted to stay. Getting through that, and then slowly learning to understand what those depths were actually about, is what led to building most of this.
Nothing on this site is clinical advice. It isn't healthcare. It's the perspective of someone who has spent a long time watching what happens when people don't have a clear way forward or any way to remind themselves how in control they really are and can be again.
What I Believe
The brain is unreliable — and that's not an insult. It's a pattern-matching machine shaped by every experience you've ever had, most of them before you had any say in what they taught you. The beliefs currently running your life weren't chosen. They were installed. Decades of research in neuroplasticity is clear that this can be changed — not quickly, not without resistance, but it can be done. If you don't like what's in your operating system, you can edit the code that’s running.
Spiritual beliefs are real, and they're yours to choose. I grew up in a Christian school for most of my formative years, then crashed out and became a committed atheist. Finally, I found my way to an open-minded ‘spirituality’ that doesn't require abandoning science or pretending the unexplainable doesn't happen either. There are questions we're not going to answer in this lifetime. Given that, I think the most practical thing you can do is deliberately choose the beliefs that help you live — rather than the ones that make the dark feel darker. Whatever you can't prove, at least let it be useful.
Science is the best imperfect tool we have. I take peer-reviewed research seriously. I cite it. I also know that institutions can be corrupted, that funding shapes findings, and that healthy scepticism is not the same as paranoia. Science is designed to be wrong then correct itself over time — that's the whole mechanism, not a flaw in it. The more we push into physics, neuroscience and consciousness research, the more we arrive at territory the mystics mapped centuries ago. I find that interesting, not threatening.
These three things — a changeable brain, a chosen spirituality, and a grounded relationship with evidence — are what everything here is built on. The woo-woo and the research aren't in competition with each other. They're two maps of the same mountain.
Discernment, Not Certainty
One thing I try to be clear about: I'm not here to tell you what to believe.
A lot of spiritual content asks you to take things on faith, and a lot of scientific content asks you to dismiss what can't be measured. I'm not doing either. What I'm interested in is teaching discernment — the capacity to evaluate what you're being told, what you're feeling, and whether it's actually serving you.
That includes everything I say. Take what's useful. Leave what isn't. If something I share doesn't hold up against your own experience, trust your experience.
Staying grounded while going through spiritual growth cycles isn't about being sceptical of everything. It's about knowing what ground you're standing on. The further out you go, the more important that becomes.
What I Do
Collective Tarot readings are the part of this process that came the most unexpectedly for me. Something I used to write off as nonsense ended up unlocking more for me than just therapy alone. I read tarot as a mirror, not a crystal ball. The cards don't tell you what's going to happen. They give the deeper part of you something to organise around. What surfaces in a reading is usually what you already knew — the part of you that reads patterns and energy long before the conscious mind catches up.
My promise in a reading: I'll tell you what I actually see, not what I think you want to hear. I won't manufacture hope or manufacture alarm.
Soul Mapping is a 49-day structured self-reflection course that moves through seven phases — identity, life review, mind, body, spirit, alchemy, and integration. It draws on psychology, neuroscience, somatic awareness, symbolic thinking, and ritual. It's for people who already know what their patterns are and want a guided map through them. The course is built to increase your independence, not your reliance on me.
Unblock Your Life is the starting point — a free 14-day foundational course for anyone who wants to begin before committing to the full map.
My promise across all of it: you are the one who does this work. I’ll hopefully hand you better tools. What you build with them is up to you.
Why This Exists
I'm doing this for everyone who felt what I’ve felt and didn't have anywhere to put it. For the kids who experienced their sensitivity too much before they had words for any of it. For everyone who came before me and didn't get to be publicly, fully themselves - or who didn’t get to make it at all. You're all part of why this exists.
I want to make something that lasts. Something that would have helped me, and might help you too.