I don't often go into the logistics of how I make or write my content. But with the rise of all things artificial, I've felt it might be helpful to share alternate approaches for creative inspiration. This is why I made a few videos peeking behind the curtain at my process. It's guided in part by intuition, but also by the practicality of the month I'm currently in. I honestly can't tell you how lighter I felt handing a part of that over to the cards, spirit, the universe, whatever you want to call it. I liken it to the same feeling when you just start putting paint to canvas and letting it guide you somewhere.

This new form of content creation has evolved The Alchemist Papers from a place where I felt the need to try and be some artificial authority to a place where I'm actually just documenting how I live out my practice. I let the cards and my intuition guide me while staying informed through the massive amount of books that I've collected along my journey. Always staying open to learning and evolving along the way. I've been fortunate enough to see the true power and force of what personal sovereignty, respect, and curiosity can create, and my goal is to share and inspire you to find it for yourselves as well.

I learned so much about myself in July that I'm both eager and nervous to see what August brings. So when I pulled the cards and found all water and earth, it impacted me on a more personal level than what I shared on socials. I've been emotionally exhausted the past few months, trying to find my feet again. I've been trying to stay grounded through a bit of chaos that has come at me from different angles while also staying connected to my practice and intuition, which seem to be the first things to go when I get overwhelmed.

For most of my life, I worked incredibly hard to reason my emotions away. I think it was part Virgo and part coping mechanism to keep me safe and secure. I could compartmentalize something within seconds of it happening. When I started to run out of compartments to store things, I started being guided by my anxiety. I would think of all the possible things that could cause an emotion that would need to be boxed up, and make sure I avoided all of those scenarios. I used to call that intuition, but it was from a place of constant protection and scarcity, which always made it feel slightly skewed. The problem with having so many boxes filled with so many emotions is that eventually you run out of room and they begin to spill open.

It took me an incredibly long time to clean out that attic space and sit with the different parts of me that I had also hidden away in those boxes. But once you start to integrate, I think that intuitive anxiety that protected you for so long begins to evolve. It no longer acts as just a form of protection, but a form of joy, comfort, connection—things you're not able to feel when you're constantly running on empty at 100mph.

And I've spent the past few months working on this exact part of my intuition, which is why I shifted a little in my chair when I started looking at those cards more deeply.

A few weeks ago, my mom and I went to see a medium. It may come as a surprise to you because I follow so many amazing practitioners online, but this was a new experience for both of us. I'll tell you up front that I still don't know what I believe happens when we die, and unlike a lot of people in this space, that uncertainty has genuinely never stressed me out yet has raised many an eyebrow from others. I'm not in a hurry to have it solved because what came before and what comes after isn't something I genuinely think about all that often. Not because I'm afraid of it, but because I'm just not sure it matters to me. (I know that sentence sounds like AI, but it was all me, chill out.) I want to focus on where I am right now, with the ground under my feet.

I spent many years in a conservative religion whose every decision and move was based on the outcome of your judgment after you die, and I've found it's just not a way that I enjoy living. If I want to do something good, I want to do it because I want to do it, not because it might increase the scorecard for my afterlife. But I do believe the people we love stay with us in some form, and watching someone tune into that as if they were adjusting a radio dial was one of the more fascinating experiences I've had in a while. And one I will forever be grateful for. And yes, my grandmother did send a message from the beyond telling me to feed my tomato plants, because of course she did. Thank you, granny!

I bring it up because that ability to listen and tune in is really what this month’s all about. There's a version of "intuition" that's really just a heightened state of anxiety, and there's also a version of it that's a calm, quiet knowing that shows up before your thoughts do. Telling those two apart is, I think, an actual spiritual skill. Not necessarily having visions or predicting the future, but being able to tell which inner voice is worth listening to. That one distinction, the quiet knowing versus the loud spike, has done more for my own practice than any spell. I plan on writing more about that later in the month.

We start off with The King of Cups paired with Patience, which to me was the deck's way of telling me to slow down before I've even started. From there we move into being seen under the Leo eclipse on the 12th while also running on empty (my current life state), then into the stormiest stretch of the month, where our work will be about naming our feelings correctly instead of mislabeling them, and finally back down to solid ground as the first green pushes up through what looked like nothing but dirt. The Full Moon in Pisces on the 28th closes it all with a much-needed release, all that deep stuff finally rising up and out.

If you take one thing into the month, let it be this: when a feeling shows up huge and urgent, take an intentional pause and sit with it. Sometimes the size of a feeling is information about the present. But sometimes it's an old feeling wearing today's clothes, and the most useful thing you can do is notice the size doesn't match the moment.

xo,
Chad

These are the four books I'll primarily be pulling from for August. Links are below if any of them are calling to you.

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