The Three Castes Of Woke New Zealand

Many Kiwis look with astonishment on the caste system of the Hindus, thinking it a barbarism that should have been abolished long ago. The caste system of Imperial Spain, with its division into Peninsulares, Creoles, Mestizos, and Indigenous peoples and Africans, seems likewise bizarre to us. But few appreciate that the people of New Zealand are divided into their own caste system. This essay explains.

In the woke New Zealand of 2024, we have a tripartite caste system involving high, middle and low castes. The highest caste are the Tangata Whenua, the middle caste are the Tangata Moana and the lowest caste are the Tangata Tiriti.

The Tangata Whenua are the Maori people. As the highest caste, they are effectively the only full citizens in the Woke Regime. Tangata Whenua means ‘people of the land’, and in this context means those who are naturally here. The implication is that everyone else is here unnaturally, and thus at the pleasure of the Tangata Whenua. Only a Tangata Whenua can be a true resident of New Zealand; everyone else is a mere guest.

Because the Treaty of Waitangi is considered New Zealand’s founding document, and because the Te Reo Maori version of this is considered the true version, the power to interpret that document lies solely with those who can speak and read Te Reo Maori. This makes them the equivalent of the Brahman caste in the Vedic system.

Because everyone else in New Zealand is a mere visitor, only the Tangata Whenua may consider it a true homeland. Thus, when giving a pepeha, only Tangata Whenua are permitted to claim an association with local mountains and rivers. Tauiwi (a term that covers both Tangata Moana and Tangata Tiriti) are just passing through, even if their ancestors have lived in an area for two centuries. Thus they are categorically different to Tangata Whenua.

In Woke New Zealand, whatever Tangata Whenua says goes. They are openly acknowledged to have more rights than tauiwi, and must be consulted on all decisions.

Tangata Moana are the middle rank. This caste refers to other people of the Pacific Ocean: Samoans, Tongans, Fijians et al. (Fijian Indians count as Tangata Tiriti however, because this caste system is racial in nature). Tangata Moana are presumed to have “allyship” with Tangata Whenua, hence why Tangata Moana are a higher caste than Tangata Tiriti, who are the oppressors of Tangata Whenua.

Hence Tangata Moana can step off a plane and instantly qualify for benefits and scholarships that Tangata Tiriti don’t get, not even with eight generations of ancestry. It’s also why people can move to New Zealand from a Pacific Island and then immediately start crying about colonisers (see tweet above). Tangata Moana also have their own Super Rugby team (Moana Pasifika) in order to prevent contamination from associating with Tangata Tiriti.

There is an unspoken law in New Zealand that the protections of the Treaty of Waitangi also apply to Tangata Moana. Hence, conversations about the obligations of Tangata Tiriti to Tangata Whenua tend to drift into obligations to Tangata Moana. This is why Samoans and Tongans are considered victims of systemic racism, despite knowingly moving to a country where systemic racism existed instead of staying in one where it didn’t exist.

Working-class whites, even if their ancestors have been here since before New Zealand was fully civilised, are mere Tangata Tiriti. Tangata Moana, in other words, are people of the nearby region, unlike Tangata Tiriti, who are people of distant lands. Thus they occupy a higher caste status. This higher caste status explains why Pacific Islanders have their own dedicated government ministry, while working-class whites do not, despite similar levels of deprivation.

Tangata Tiriti are the lowest caste, roughly equivalent to shudras in the Vedic system. In this caste is everyone without any Maori or Pacific Island ancestry. It doesn’t matter if a person’s ancestors have been in New Zealand for 200 years: that person is still categorically lower than any Tangata Whenua or Tangata Moana.

The logic of the New Zealand caste system is that Tangata Tiriti are only allowed to be here thanks to the permission of Tangata Whenua. It was the Treaty of Waitangi itself which gave Tangata Tiriti the right to be in New Zealand, hence the name of the caste. Should that permission ever be revoked, Tangata Tiriti would no longer have any right to remain in New Zealand, and would presumably have to move overseas or be killed. So they better behave themselves.

The purpose of the Tangata Tiriti, in practice, is to labour for the benefit of the higher two castes. Thus, Tangata Tiriti have no right to complain that they are forced to pay heavy taxes on the income from their labour. Neither do they have the right to complain about anyone in the upper castes being on welfare. The upper castes simply have the right to be on welfare paid for by the Tangata Tiriti.

The Government is not obliged to consult with Tangata Tiriti or to take the interests of Tangata Tiriti into account when making decisions, ever. It is understood that Tangata Tiriti already have it good by being permitted to live here. Political rights over and above that are considered egregious.

Tangata Tiriti are not permitted any pride. Even saying ‘It’s Okay To Be White’ is not allowed. It is permitted, however, to identify as Tangata Tiriti, because this is considered to be an acceptance of lowest-caste status. Distinguishing oneself within that caste, however, is verboten. All Tangata Tiriti are the same, whether white, Asian, Indian or African.

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Workamania

Society in the Clown World of 2024 is full of mental illness. This mental illness operates on all of the individual, family, community and national levels. Although some of this mental illness is organic, resulting from the natural struggles of biological life, most of it is artificial. One of the most prevalent psychiatric problems today is almost entirely artificial: workamania.

Workamania, simply put, is the artificially-generated obsession with working as much as possible.

This involves the obsession with being in the workplace for as many hours as possible. It particularly involves being seen in the workplace for as many hours as possible. From this mindset comes the phenomena where workers try to arrive before their boss but not leave until after them, and where employees are on-call 24/7. From these phenomena come all kinds of stress-related mental and physiological disorders, most of which are considered normal when they’re really caused by workamania.

Workamania comes with its own complete moral schedule.

In the same way that, for money worshippers, a person’s value can be measured by their net worth, for workamaniacs a person’s value can be measured by hours worked. In truth, it is not hours worked but amount suffered that is the measure of moral value for the workamaniac. But hours worked serves as a useful proxy.

For money worshippers, the outgroup are the poor. For workamaniacs, the outgroup are the idle. Beneficiaries are a special enemy. No-one is permitted to live a low-consumption lifestyle in an effort to reduce environmental pressure. Hippies are almost as low as beneficiaries.

The deep ingroup are employers, who are like gods. Employers give meaning to life. Before the employer came into the world, all was chaos. A person is only considered a legitimate human being if they have an employer giving them directions all day. Anyone without an employer has no real status to the workamaniac. One’s employment is one’s identity.

The concept of a universal basic income is anathema to the workamaniac. The automatic assumption is that a UBI would encourage laziness, and no-one would ever work again. This masochistic logic reveals that Protestant Christianity is one of the major influences on workamania.

Implicit to workamania is the acceptance that an employer can never offer so low a wage that a job isn’t worth doing. No matter how miserly the wage, it’s good honest work. In fact, the worse the working conditions, somehow the more honest the work. In any case, the experience will no doubt be invaluable, the workaholics say. In no case is a worker permitted to think that an offered wage is too poor to accept a job.

Another aspect of workamania is that all is forgiven if you work a lot. You can beat your partner, abandon your kids, drive drunk and cause accidents, but if you work a large number of hours then you’re still an upstanding member of society. This goes double if you have worked for a large number of years at the same place.

Likewise, a person who is known to not work long hours is irredeemable. Even if that person spends their time looking after elderly family members or doing volunteer work in the community, they’re still a bad person if they don’t have a job. Taking a holiday is only acceptable if your doctor says you have to do it for stress-related reasons.

It’s crucial to note that workamania is not a naturally-occurring phenomenon. It’s pushed on us by a sadistic, slave-driving ruling class that controls the mainstream media and, by so doing, controls our moral sentiments.

Our rulers want two things from us: productivity and obedience. Productivity makes our rulers rich and powerful, by giving them a big surplus to skim off our labour. Obedience makes the position of our rulers secure. Workamania achieves both objectives, which is why people are brainwashed into it through the school system, the media and in their place of employment.

In C-PTSD: From Surviving To Thriving, Pete Walker describes four major types of reaction to traumatic stress: fawn, freeze, flight and fight. Flight is the moderately extraverted response that involves using high amounts of energy to escape a situation. In today’s society, many people with traumatic stress disorders develop into workaholics. This is because they can’t sit still and enjoy their own thoughts.

Workamania can be considered the collective-level equivalent of what workaholism is to the individual level. It’s a traumagenic self-hatred that leads to an inability to enjoy everyday life. It’s when an entire people cannot appreciate its own company, and has to keep itself busy to avoid coming face-to-face with that fact.

Workaholics and workamaniacs naturally get on well together. After all, they share very similar goals. The difference is that the workaholic is escaping something and is thus usually in a state of low-excitement depression, whereas the workamaniac is in a state of high-excitement hysteria.

None of this is to suggest that working is bad, or that a work ethic is not important. The high standard of living that has been built in the West in recent centuries has been made possible largely through a good work ethic. Working hard is the most likely way to go from poor to comfortable.

We need to draw a line, however, between a healthy amount of work and workamania. A healthy amount of work is one that maximises the worker’s quality of life. An unhealthy amount of work is one that maximises the profits of the worker’s owners, to the exclusion of all other considerations.

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An Open Letter To The Minister Of Justice Regarding Psychedelic Use For Spiritual Purposes

Dear Minister of Justice,

I am writing to seek clarification on New Zealand’s current stance regarding psychedelic substances, particularly in the context where these substances are considered spiritual sacraments.

The New Zealand Bill of Rights Act states in Section 13 that “Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience, religion, and belief”. Section 15 states that “Every person has the right to manifest that person’s religion or belief in worship, observance, practice, or teaching, either individually or in community with others, and either in public or in private”.

A fair reading of these sections suggests that New Zealanders have the right to use spiritual sacraments.

Indeed, this is already true with regards to the religious use of wine in the Christian Eucharist. New Zealand Anglicans use wine as a spiritual sacrament, the psychoactive ingredient being, of course, alcohol. But there are many other substances that serve as spiritual sacraments in the religious and spiritual traditions of the world.

The use of psychedelics like psilocybin mushrooms, ayahuasca and other entheogens has been deeply rooted in various spiritual and religious practices around the world for millennia. These practices often regard these substances not merely as drugs but as sacraments crucial for spiritual exploration, healing and connection with the divine or the deeper self.

The Eleusinian Mysteries were the most famous of the mystery schools that characterised pre-Christian European spirituality, running for 2,000 years and attracting anyone who was anyone in ancient Greece or Rome: Socrates, Plato, Sophocles, Aeschylus, Euripides, Thucydides, Herodotus, Marcus Aurelius and the Emperor Julian were all known or believed to have participated.

Cicero wrote of them that “Though Athens brought forth numerous divine things, yet she never created anything nobler than those sublime Mysteries through which we became gentler and have advanced from a barbarous and rustic life to a more civilised one, so that we not only live more joyfully but also die with a better hope.”

Initiation into these mysteries involved the consumption of a drink known as kykeon. The mycologist R Gordon Wasson, the chemist Albert Hoffmann and the historian Carl Ruck have argued that the kykeon contained an entheogenic substance. Their book Road to Eleusis made a compelling argument that the use of psychedelics as spiritual sacraments played an integral role in the creation of Western Civilisation.

Robert Graves believed that linguistic evidence revealed the kykeon to include some kind of mushroom. Terence McKenna supported this assertion, pointing out that psilocybin-containing mushrooms had both the capacity to cause extreme psychospiritual change and the safety profile that would have allowed thousands to use them every year without getting a reputation for being dangerous.

The claimed benefits of the Eleusinian Mysteries included losing one’s fear of death, gaining a belief in the afterlife, learning to understand the will of the divine and improvement of moral rectitude. These benefits are very similar to those claimed by modern psychedelic users – Erowid.org lists hundreds of mystical experiences of people who have taken psilocybin.

It’s apparent from these arguments that the use of psychedelics as spiritual sacraments played a role in the moral and civil development of Western peoples during our greatest ages. But the potential of psychedelics to induce spiritual insight is not limited to the ancient age or to the West.

The Marsh Chapel Experiment conducted by Walter Pahnke in 1962 discovered that psilocybin is capable of inducing powerful spiritual experiences in modern people. A long-term follow-up questionnaire found “experimental subjects wrote that the experience helped them to recognise the arbitrariness of ego boundaries, increase their depth of faith, increase their appreciation of eternal life [etc.]”

One of the participants in the Marsh Chapel Experiment noted in the long-term follow-up, regarding death, “I’ve been there. Been there and come back. And it’s not terrifying, it doesn’t hurt.” Such an insight is profoundly spiritual. Many of the other participants made similar observations. One remembered their experience as “one of the high points of their spiritual life”.

This experiment demonstrated that the link between psilocybin and spirituality can be established within a modern, scientific paradigm. More recent research has supported this, with a 2024 paper in Current Psychology finding that “psychedelic use is linked with a variety of subjective indicators of spiritual growth, including stronger perceived connections with the divine, a greater sense of meaning, increased spiritual faith, increased engagement in religious and spiritual practices, an increase in feelings of unity and self-transcendence, positive changes in worldview, increased connectedness with others, and reduced fear of death”.

Albert Hofmann described how the teonanacatl of the Aztecs was a psilocybin-containing mushroom. This teonanacatl, or “flesh of the gods”, was used as a spiritual sacrament to commune with the divine. Indigenous North Americans have used psilocybin-containing mushrooms as entheogens for thousands of years. The Aztec use of entheogens, including both mushrooms and others, is extensive.

R Gordon Wasson believed that the soma referenced in the Rig Veda was the fly agaric amanita muscaria. Supporting his contention was the fact that Siberian shamans were still using this mushroom for spiritual purposes. More recently, Russian researchers have found evidence suggesting the active ingredient in soma was psilocybe cubensis. In either case, psychoactive mushrooms have a history of religious and spiritual use in India as well.

Although the record of historical psychedelic use is not as strong in Europe as it is in the Americas and Asia, there is still evidence of magic mushroom use in Spain from some 6,000 years ago.

In New Age spirituality, psychedelics are used extensively. In Nelson, where I am from, it’s common to use psychedelics as spiritual sacraments outside the purview of any institutional authority. “Mushroom Season” describes the time of the year beginning in early winter and ending around midwinter when psilocybin-containing mushrooms are foraged, dried and consumed as spiritual sacraments.

In light of all this, significant questions arise concerning the human rights implications of New Zealand’s drug laws as they pertain to psychedelic substances. Once it is understood that psychedelics are spiritual sacraments, there’s a compelling argument to be made that restrictions on their use infringe upon the freedom of religion and belief, a fundamental human right protected under various international treaties to which New Zealand is a signatory.

Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that “everyone has the right to freedom of religion” and “to manifest his belief in practice”. Given the widespread use of psychedelics as spiritual sacraments throughout time and space, this right must surely encompass the right to use psychedelics to manifest spiritual belief in practice.

An appropriate reading of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act suggests that the right to use psychedelics for spiritual purposes is guaranteed. In reality, however, a hierophant who wanted to conduct a sacramental ritual akin to the Eleusinian Mysteries could potentially face life imprisonment for the supply of Class A drugs.

This letter seeks to understand how current New Zealand drug laws reconcile with the rights of individuals to practice their spirituality freely, especially when such practices involve substances that are currently classified under the Misuse of Drugs Act.

The laws against the use of psychedelics for spiritual purposes reflect, to a major extent, the historical Christian dogma against pharmakeia. This is the same dogma that led the Christian fanatics under Alaric to destroy the Eleusinian Mysteries in 396 by killing its priests, that led the inquisitors of medieval Europe to burn witches at the stake for using spiritual sacraments, and which inspired the Catholic invaders of the Americas to eliminate the sacramental use of teonanacatl by murdering the shamans who specialised in it.

It has also been suggested that much of the modern opposition to the use of psychedelics as spiritual sacraments comes from organised religious groups who want to position themselves as ticket-clipping intermediaries between the people and divinity. However, as can be seen from reading the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, Kiwis have the right to commune with divinity without the need of an intermediary. This necessarily means the right to use spiritual sacraments.

As other laws based on Christian prejudices – such as those regarding marital rape, homosexuality, prostitution and abortion – have been discarded in favour of greater freedom, the laws prohibiting the use of psychedelics for spiritual purposes ought to be discarded. Indeed, many countries and territories have reformed their psychedelic drug laws, based on arguments such as the ones made in this letter, plus others.

In closing, I respectfully request a detailed clarification or review of how New Zealand’s drug policies align with the principles of religious and spiritual freedom and human rights. Understanding the government’s perspective on this matter would not only inform those within New Zealand who use psychedelics as spiritual sacraments but would also contribute to broader discussions on drug policy reform that respects cultural and spiritual diversity.

Thank you for considering this important issue. I look forward to your insights and hope for a dialogue that can potentially lead to policies that honour both the law and the deeply held spiritual convictions of many New Zealanders.

Yours sincerely,

Vince McLeod

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The Mithraic Ladder And The Hero’s Journey As They Pertain To The Alchemy Of Character Development

The Mithraic Ladder

The Mithraic Ladder is an occult concept referring to a ladder of seven steps. This ladder is not a physical object, but something that exists in the World of Forms. To climb the Mithraic Ladder is to perfect oneself spiritually. Thus, climbing higher involves going through a number of spiritual transformations. Symbolically, this ascent represents a return to God, to fully harmonise with the will of the Tao.

The Ladder of Mithras was a concept from the Mithraic Mysteries, a mystery school of ancient Persia. The Roman Empire stretched as far as Persia during the time of Trajan, and some of the Persian gods were syncretised into the Roman pantheon. By the time of the Late Empire, many legionnaires had been initiated into the Mithraic Mysteries and were followers of Mithra.

Initiation into the Mithraic Mysteries involved a series of seven degrees, wherein the candidate was subjected to a number of ordeals, with each ordeal somehow related to the degree in question. Precise knowledge of the true nature of each ordeal has been lost, but it is known that each one had an alchemical correspondence.

Symbolically, the Mithraic Ladder can be understood as the entire spectrum between good and bad, arranged vertically and then divided into seven steps, such that the bottommost step was the most bad and the topmost step the most good. These seven steps represent ascension through the degrees of the Mithraic Ladder.

The Mithraic Ladder is very similar to what an Elementalist would call the Great Masculine Axis. This is because it is in the nature of the masculine to divide between good and bad (as opposed to the nature of the feminine, which is to divide between masculine and feminine). It’s a line that runs directly upwards.

The seven steps of the Mithraic Ladder are roughly equivalent to the seven chakras in Vedic philosophy. As such, the process of rising up the Mithraic Ladder is similar to a kundalini awakening. Because this book is written primarily for a Western audience, it uses primarily Western esoteric terms to describe this process. Thus, the seven steps, from lowest to highest, are named in this book after the seven alchemical metals: lead, tin, iron, copper, silver, mercury and gold.

The level of spiritual development of any person – whether real or fictional – could be described as a position on the Mithraic Ladder. The bottommost step represents an undeveloped person, still an animal. The uppermost step represents a spiritually perfected person. The five steps in between represent the intermediate stages.

The book makes the argument that the most interesting thing about the development of any character (in this context, we are talking about fictional characters, but much applies to real-life ones) is their spiritual development. As such, the plot of any story can be summarised as the protagonist’s efforts to climb the Mithraic Ladder – or to descend it, in the case of tragedies and anti-heroes.

The Hero’s Journey

The Hero’s Journey is the ultimate archetype of fictional stories.

The most complete description of the Hero’s Journey was made by Joseph Campbell, the American mythographer. Campbell, in his landmark Hero With A Thousand Faces, wrote “A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow men”.

Campbell described the Hero’s Journey as the monomyth underpinning the heroic stories and folk tales of cultures all around the world and all throughout history. It’s the one basic template of a story that everyone seems to naturally take an interest in, whether old, young, male, female, educated, uneducated, black, white or anything else.

Campbell’s basic formula is separation-initiation-return. The hero begins the story in their ordinary world, where their ordinary life progresses as usual. Then, some event upsets the natural order of life. Usually there is an evil antagonist behind this event. The hero is then cast into the special world, where they undergo a number of trials. If they pass them, they are initiated into a higher order of being. Then they return to their ordinary world, transformed into a hero.

Over the course of an interesting story, the protagonist has to change – from an ordinary person into a hero. They have to develop, otherwise the author is writing pulp fiction. The term ‘Hero’s Journey’ describes the typical pattern of development. It can have up to 20 stages depending on how detailed a person wants to get.

In children’s stories, it’s acceptable for the protagonist to develop in crudely material ways. They gain a fortune, they kill the enemy commander, they rescue the princess. But the sort of person who keeps reading fiction into adulthood soon wants more from their literature. They want more subtle character development.

Sophisticated literature is more about the emotional, mental and spiritual journeys than about physical ones. Readers want characters who change, who become permanently transformed by the trials they have undergone. What they want is a relatable Hero’s Journey that appeals to them on a deep level.

In a complete story written for modern audiences, the plot will be more complicated than separation-initiation-return. There will be multiple separations and initiations, and multiple false returns. The tripartite nature of the monomyth doesn’t change, however. The general pattern can be thought of as a descent down the Mithraic Ladder, then a spiritual transformation, then an ascent back up.

The contention made by this book is that this Hero’s Journey is most interesting if it’s considered in alchemical terms. Thus it is changes in a character’s frequency of consciousness over time that primarily makes a story interesting to a sophisticated, intelligent reader.

Alchemy

Alchemy is defined in this book as the process by which a person goes up or down the Mithraic Ladder. It has nothing to do with the transmutation of anything physical into anything else physical – it’s all about spiritual transformations. As such, there are two major types of alchemy: anabatic and katabatic.

Anabatic alchemy is the process of increasing one’s frequency of consciousness and ascending the Mithraic Ladder.

The ordeals of the early stages of this process only require small efforts, but they must be diligently repeated. Once the process is underway, greater efforts must be made to progress further, but with less emphasis on repetition. The process is finalised by a few acts of immense will.

This is what is typically referred to as the alchemical process. Spiritual lead is made into spiritual gold through a series of six refinements: enlarging, hardening, colouring, brightening, quickening and perfecting. This process is discussed in detail in the six chapters under the ‘Anabasis’ heading.

Katabatic alchemy is the process of decreasing one’s frequency of consciousness and descending the Mithraic Ladder.

As with anabatic alchemy, the process of katabasis begins with a large quantity of actions of individually low impact, and ends with major acts of high impact. The essential difference is that acts of katabatic alchemy are bad ones, increasing the suffering and misery in the world. Thus, spiritual gold is made into spiritual lead by a series of six defilements: imperfecting, retarding, dullening, discolouring, softening and shrinking. These stages comprise the six chapters under the ‘Katabasis’ heading.

This reverse alchemical process is not generally considered to be alchemical or heroic, but the fact is that before any character can rise to perfection, they must have first fallen out of it. As Carl Jung wrote “No tree, it is said, can grow to heaven unless its roots reach down to hell.” Any character can be made more realistic and easier to identify with if they have a bit of a dark side. Also, katabatic alchemy can help expand your antagonist’s back story, letting the reader know how they became that way.

The alchemical maxim solve et coagula, is very much like separation and return. This is closely analogous to the katabatic and anabatic stages of the alchemical process. The idea is to break apart one’s consciousness and then build it back stronger, like an athlete breaks apart his muscles in order to grow them.

The initiation phase, which occurs outside, between and beyond katabasis and anabasis, is where the real magic is. This initiation phase, in alchemical terms, is where the real magic of the fictional story happens, where katabatic energy is transformed into anabatic energy, and a character begins to ascend the Mithraic Ladder again.

At least in theory: a real story plot will be far more complex than this. In practice, a character attempting to rise up the Mithraic Ladder will encounter numerous obstacles, reversals, challenges and setbacks that will knock them back down a level or two. Betrayals and unexpected events might demand a temporary step down the Mithraic Ladder in order to get business done.

The Alchemy of Character Development

Understanding the Mithraic Ladder, the Hero’s Journey and alchemy, the reader of this book will understand the essential nature of excellent literature. The alchemy of character development is the storytime magic that causes your fictional characters to transform from one spiritual level to the next.

Almost everyone can relate to the basic struggle of wanting to be good but sometimes being bad out of weakness. Even young children understand the basic challenge of temptation to do things that aren’t in their long-term interest. This is why so many intriguing stories are based around temptation and moral dilemmas (for more on this specific topic, see Book 3 in this series, 16 Moral Dilemmas).

In alchemical terms, this is the struggle of wanting to rise up the Mithraic Ladder. The desire to rise up and reunite with divinity is understood by people everywhere. Mature readers will also understand that there is a dark side to the human being, something that drives them down the Mithraic Ladder, and that this is in conflict with the first force.

This alchemy is what makes fiction good, and what makes literature memorable.

The goal of this book is to describe, in the clearest terms, all the possible alchemical journeys that could be taken by a character in dramatic fiction. This description can be thought of as a series of archetypal templates of psychological transformation. How those transformations happen is explained in depth in each of the individual chapters.

This magic of alchemy, as described in this book, is not limited to the protagonist of your story. Minor characters that undergo the transformations described in this book will be much more interesting than static characters. So will antagonists that undergo katabatic processes. Even characters that are only described in passing can be made more interesting if their backstory is explicated in alchemical terms.

You can also use this book as a source of prompts by randomly choosing one of the twelve transformations described in the Anabasis and Katabasis sections, and using that as the basis for a story.

However this book is used, the information contained herein will deepen and broaden the reader’s understanding of the spiritual aspects of reality as well as the alchemical process.

This is an excerpt from Vince McLeod’s The Alchemy of Character Development, the sixth book in VJM Publishing’s Writing With Psychology series. This book will show you how to use alchemy to create deep, realistic and engaging characters for your creative fiction.

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